Reviews by J. J. Guest

It took slightly less than two minutes to finish this game, and I can only imagine it took the author a similar length of time to write it! Having said that, it is a funny idea, and the clue is right there in the title!

This is a very simple, one-room Adventuron game with a single puzzle. You have decide what clothes to wash in order to flush a ghost out of a washing machine. The washing machine is in a graveyard and the clues as to which clothes to wash are on a trio of gravestones.

This premise raises all sorts of questions. Never mind about why washing clothes of a particular colour (and not just any old colour) would draw a ghost out of a washing machine; the question foremost in my mind is, how do you operate a washing machine in a graveyard? Presumably there are water pipes and electrical cables trailing all the way back to your house.

Once I'd worked out what the game expected of me, it became a matter of working out the clues on the gravestones and washing the right three items. Some reviewers got it right away, but I found the last of the three clues (on the marble gravestone) rather ambiguous and it took me eight goes to beat the game. Depending on your interpretation, I think there are at least six right answers to that final clue.

Anyway, it was fun and silly.

Sparks Fly begins with a nightmarish scenario, you're all alone in your car which has broken down in a remote area. Your only hope is a strange man who comes to your aid, but right from the off, there's something off about him.

He turns out to be a horrible predator, who lives with his almost-as-horrible grandmother. What follows is a kidnap and escape scenario with a nonconsensual body modification aspect. There are, apparently, four endings (of which I found two).

After reading another review, I was expecting a mechanical body-horror game in the vein of Cyberqueen, but Sparks Fly doesn't go nearly that far. There's minimal gore and the body-modification aspect is implied rather than graphically described. As such it almost feels unnecessary. The chief antagonist is creepy enough as it is, and the complicit grandmother somehow makes the situation worse.

Presentation is excellent, with well-chosen music and images. There's an element of character customisation - you can change your character's name, hair colour and gender, but it doesn't appear to have any bearing on the game.

Structurally, Sparks Fly is quite linear, with all of the important choices coming right at the end. Having found (I think) the best and worst endings, I felt as though I had done it justice. It's a worthy first effort, and I look forward to seeing what this author produces next!

Beneath the Weeping Willow is a short, sweet ghost story in which you play the ghost. It's written in Ink, using a tasteful and well designed custom interface. It's the "open map" type of choice-based game, in which the player is free to move back and forth between rooms much as they can in a parser game.

The player character is a ghost who has a limited time to alert the new owners of her house to her presence and guide them towards discovering her fate. Being incorporeal, this is not as easy as it sounds. I must have the right instincts, though, because I solved the game on my first go!

I enjoyed this game despite it only taking me a few minutes to complete. It's well written, though I feel the descriptions could be more atmospheric. I noticed one typo (a repeated word, in the letter). The presentation is excellent, including one innovation I hadn't seen before: the page refreshes each time you make a choice, but there's also a history option which shows you the whole text of the game so far.