Reviews by Sam Kabo Ashwell

cyclic

View this member's profile

Show ratings only | both reviews and ratings
View this member's reviews by tag: abuse adverbs aesthetics afghanistan aif alice anatomy ancient rome animal protagonist animals anime april fool's art atrocity baseball based on songs bdsm boardgame body parts bondage bureaucracy casual games character portrait character stats childhood children's Christian Christianity classics collaborative combat comedy coming of age compulsion conspiracy constrained writing conversation cooking cryptology cyclic cyoa darkness dating sim detective developing world dinosaur discordian dracula dream easy games easy puzzles ectocomp education educational emotion environment epilogue eris ethics experimental fairytale family fan fiction fanfiction fantasy feminism fictionalised flashback flight folktale food frame-story freud frustration gender genre gimmick gods graphics guilt Harry Potter heroic fantasy historical historical fiction history hoax holocaust homeschool horror how not to do it if comp 2010 incomplete institutions intertextuality jesus kink large large map leonora carrington lesbian linear love magic magic system make-believe marriage medicine metaphor minicomp minigame miracles movement MUD multimedia multiple narrators multiple protagonists mystery myth narrative narrative structure narrow verb set noir non-genre nostalgia nouns NPCs old-school oldschool one-trick pony oulipo out-of-comp palindrome paranormal persuasive games philosophy platformer poetry polemic political politics pornographic pornography postmodernism psychology PTSD puzzles quest random religion religious remix rhetoric rhyme roborally romance rpg satire science fantasy science fiction setting sex SF simile simulation simulationist smell smut speedif spelling sports spring thing Spring Thing 2011 spy steampunk stiffy makane superhero surreal surrealism survival horror teenage textuality theatre theology theory therapy They Might Be Giants time tone tragedy train transposition treasure hunt trial and error trophy case urban legend vampire varytale Victorian videogame adaptation Vorple wacky war wedding weird wordplay words young adult Zorkian
...or see all reviews by this member
1-1 of 1


She's Actual Size, by Jake Eakle
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
Chrono Love-Slaves of the 50-Foot Woman, March 28, 2012

A strikingly surreal piece, with the feel of a (feminist?) short story written in the 1960s or 70s, or certainly in a time when people took Freud way too seriously. Unfortunately, version 1 is crippled by some major bugs.

The game has two PCs; one, Paul, obsesses over Lisa and in doing so distorts her reality. While the content is technically PG, Paul's obsession is in a pretty fetishy idiom, and the story as a whole is one of those works (see also Portal, maybe make some change, Loved) that plays heavily on creepy compulsion and manipulation of the player. For the most part, you have very limited options and the game makes it extremely clear what they are. There is one rather odd puzzle, which is less complicated than it looks (which means that it can be solved without being fully understood.)

As of version 1, there's an annoyingly repeating run-time bug (attempt to look up a non-existent correspondence in Table 1) in the second scene, although I can't tell if it breaks anything critical. More seriously, I was unable to finish She's Actual Size due to a major bug later on that failed to switch between protagonists at the appropriate moment. This is a shame, because it's a fascinatingly weird beast.

Was this review helpful to you?   Yes   No   Remove vote  
More Options

 | View comments (3) - Add comment 


1-1 of 1