Ratings and Reviews by Sam Kabo Ashwell

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IF is Dead. Long Live IF., by Joshua Houk
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Krypteia, by Kateri
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Venus Meets Venus, by kaleidofish
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Slasher Swamp, by Robot
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With Those We Love Alive, by Porpentine and Brenda Neotenomie
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80 DAYS, by inkle, Meg Jayanth
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Light My Way Home, by Caelyn Sandel (as Venus Hart)
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
Going Gentle, June 10, 2014
by Sam Kabo Ashwell (Seattle)

Light My Way Home is a simple, evocative little game. The unfolding of exactly what is going on is, I think, important to its emotional arc, so I'll avoid spoilers.

Knowing how to make use of empty space is a big deal in most artistic disciplines. Home is deft in how it employs the gaps often present in games: the dark loneliness of night-time in interstitial urban space, the gaps in recognition and memory, the unbridgeable distance between PC and NPC. It shows rather than tells, and doesn't overshow. It's able to do this without being frustratingly opaque, because the underlying story is quite simple; it is more of a tone piece than a plot or character piece. There is a small knack to interaction, and a little thought is required about how to progress, so the pacing is neither puzzly-slow nor trivially-rapid.

To some extent, it felt akin to a small, moody point-and-click 2D Flash adventure: the single mode of interaction, the genderless NPC who follows your actions rather than being explicitly directed, the atmospheric music and emphasis on lighting.

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ULTRA BUSINESS TYCOON III, by Porpentine
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Little Blue Men, by Michael S. Gentry
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Even Cowgirls Bleed, by Christine Love
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