Ratings and Reviews by Andrew Schultz

We've all read a story about someone who was told how they were going to die, took steps to avoid it, and had it happen anyway. Or that someone they loved would die a certain way. Years ago Ryan North built on this to say, what if there was a machine that could tell anyone how they were going to die? It spawned a short-story collection I read and enjoyed. One I didn't find out about until I played Machine of Death. I don't remember any of the stories, but I remember MoD, maybe mostly because it was part of IFComp, and so naturally I read what others had to say about it, and I remembered details.

But I think MoD's interactivity allows us to remember certain things. Anyone who got a card from the machine would wonder about all the details and start what-iffing. It must feel awful to know the walls are closing in, and you aren't even near. So should you? Well, in MoD, you're hanging out near a machine, wondering just that. Or maybe you'll just engage in Deathspotting, a wonderfully evocative word MoD uses that I don't think I need to define. You even chat with someone who got a card. It all seems impossible, even in this enlightened day and age where we can evaluate risk factors for a certain sort of cancer or whatever. But the moral and emotional import is pretty clear. We'd change what we do and who we are. It would be on our mind. Knowledge would not bring power.

So yeah there's a way to sneak out of the mall and say "nope nope nope." You can still learn a lot in the process. You can waste your remaining $5 at a fast food restaurant that gives discounts to people with certain death cards. There's a story of a famous person who did well by embracing his cause of death and another who lied about theirs.

But what if you choose a card? Well, then, there are three scenarios. I don't want to spoil them, because they're quite different and worth seeing, and with something like your own cause of death, it's a surprise. The game lets you restart from the beginning of the death scenario, or you can go back to the machine, where you can loop to the next choice. It doesn't directly allow undos, which might feel artificial given the theme, but this feels about right, since we all do trace through the past and think "could I have done better" and sometimes even hope for verification we did as well as we seemed to.

Suffice it to say one is pedestrian, one is absurd, and one contains a corporate slogan of sorts that can mean anything. This variety allows MoD to poke at certain tropes or obvious considerations without beating on them too much. For instance, if you're in a normally life-threatening situation, you can be risky because, well, you can't die THAT way.

I found the absurdist one to be the least effective, though it gave me the most laughs on the surface. There's some celebrity doppelganger stuff in there, which only goes so far, and because the cause of death is so specific, you really do try to do everything you can to avoid it, which weirds some people out. But hey, it wouldn't be weird if they KNEW. Still, there are ways out.

The corporate slogan is a bit different--you have a boss at work who knows their cause of death, and they let you know "I know my cause of death and I'm not letting it stop me! So I don't want to hear any whining." It's like "there's no I in team," but far, far worse for underlings. One of the main dramas here is getting to work on time. The bad end is lampshaded quite effectively, but the good ending blindsided me a bit and yet still made sense. The author, of course, wrote a lot of stuff to just make people laugh, but I appreciated the twist here, after skewering awful corporate types, to take some sting out of them abusing a catch phrase.

The pedestrian scenario makes a few things obvious, but the thing is--you know you aren't going to die violently! At least you're pretty sure. So everything's okay, right? But then you have a chance to look at someone else's death card. There are some implications there of what you might have to do. But one neat bit is that if you think you can do or avoid something because you're invincible, you only sort of get away with it. You aren't told what state of mind you'll die in, and that's something you have control over, for better or worse, with certain drastic actions.

The author is good at stringing juvenile jokes together without being cruel, and here he's a bit more profound than in In a Manor of Speaking. I can't say which entry is better, but I appreciate them both a lot, and it's neat to see the author have two drastically different successes from one IFComp to the next. MoD contains a lot of deep thoughts and worries under the jokes. It'd be ideal if we didn't need that to explore serious matters, but we often do. Replaying MoD almost ten years after its original release, I felt relief I hadn't found any stupid ways to die. I remembered the ways I worried I might die, instilled by teachers or peers or whomever because I was too careless or conservative. But I do think MoD is one of those things that help you worry less about dying so that you can, you know, pack more life in. And the whole concept of the Machine of Death turns out to have been prescient--ten years ago, we knew that machines knew a lot about you, but with political campaigns and so forth, knowledge of microtargeting and such has expanded to where it seems like machines can figure everything except how we're going to die. MoD lets us join in the fight against that sort of fatalism, or at least imagine how to, which would be worthy even if it weren't well-written.

At the start this just looks like another story about meeting a shade rowing a boat on a river. The river and the shade's identity will be obvious to anyone with a passing knowledge of mythology. Yes, it looks like you've died, and there's not much left, except the entrance/exit interview.

It's something the ferryman has clearly done a lot of, playing Death's good cop, letting you know your possessions don't really matter any more where you are going, and that's really okay. There are two pretty clear paths here. I found the path of resistance clever.

You see, you can keep asking "What?" This causes a number to go up on the screen. That number is, in fact, the ferryman's word count. He has a certain plan to small-talk you into submission, and it usually works, and in fact the direct "it can't be me, this can't be happening" approach is shut down quickly. There's the whole cliched bit about seeing the light, and so forth. It's been heard and done before.

But playing dumb and making him speak eventually makes him mad. You start with four candles, and each hundred words the ferryman speaks wipes one out. This plays along nicely with the concept of a 500-word jam, but it still falls within its bounds, since the conversation can cycle. (It's okay to reuse words/passages.)

The small talk on the boat reminded me of when I'd heard small talk that ostensibly was to put me at ease but really it was to stop me thinking, hey, wait, something's off here. And it is, if you pay attention and poke around. You may need several cycles through. The third solution, between meekly accepting your fate and getting zapped by the ferryman, is clever and satisfying.

It also raised a ton of questions for me. Was the ferryman just bored of their job? How did they feel about the people they helped across?
and how death is inevitable, etc. You don't seem to have much choice in the matter. Or do you? There are a couple of clues that may help you figure what is going on, or after a few times poking around randomly, you may figure out the mechanics. Either way, the third ending is rewarding, and you will feel accomplishment at finding it. I'm not spoiling it!

This was the sort of neat puzzle I'd originally hoped to see in Neo Twiny Jam. It took a while to uncover, and in the meantime there was other writing I found and enjoyed. It would be hard to recreate in a parser setting, which might give too many red herrings with standard verbs, and it also plays quite nicely on the jam's theme. So, well done to the author.

THJ is a short reflection on what it means to be happy, or at least to try to be. Of course there are people who will pontificate "don't search for happiness, search for fulfillment/service/enlightenment, etc." These people are tiresome if they do it too often, especially when you are really asking for ways to help certain things make you feel less unhappy. But on the flip side, grabbing it doesn't work. I mean, we don't like it when other people are clingy around us. Not even if we're the mean sort of people who laugh at others for being too clingy. But all the same, we do want to go reach out and find it and save it when we can for a rainy day.

It's hard to capture how fleeting happiness can be, and in this, the two main characters place a happy thought in a jar a day, to take it out when necessary. But when is it necessary? When do we realize we were happy? I know too often I've been captivated by someone who is clever with dialogue, but they were just selling the sizzle and not the steak. And yet -- happiness is that undefinable sizzle. And this shows through in the writing, as small arguments become big ones. You click through to see more text, and it's never clear where the next thing to click will be. Again, chasing happiness, thinking you've pinned it down, and it changes. Until it doesn't and you realize there's no more happiness to chase.

I found this quite an effective way of grasping something that seems obvious when you're five but is confusing now. It's clearly much sadder than SpongeBob trying to explain fun to Plankton, but it does search for things and acknowledge others do, too. And it highlights pitfalls to happiness without pointing the finger at you for falling into ones you should have avoided. It reminded me of the times I wrote something down and was thrilled to, then I worried it might lose excitement to read it too soon, or too late. Nevertheless, the arguments the characters had reminded me of times I was happier than I thought I was and times I convinced myself I was happy when I wasn't. I enjoyed the perspective.