Ratings and Reviews by Danielle

This wasn't what I expected when I picked it up. I figured some kind of game about ants, maybe being tortured by people...perhaps like ANT BULLY: THE TEXT ADVENTURE.

Instead I got this really strange piece with insects anthropomorphized into beings more like people (a widow, a lawyer, a damsel, not a spider, slug, and damselfly); more importantly, I got a tale of twisted tenderness and ambiguous triumph.

The navigation was a little strange ("sunwards" and "widdershins" replace some traditional directions), but once I got that figured out, interacting with the other characters was...interesting. After a number of encounters, you start (Spoiler - click to show)wondering how THIS daughter is going to die. It puts the reader/player in an interesting position, to (Spoiler - click to show)root for your character's demise, so you can "win".

That (Spoiler - click to show)"repeated-death-to-gain-victory" mechanic would be all well and good, but it's the epilogue (Spoiler - click to show)from the Queen's point of view that elevates it from "a strange tale" to "a strangely beautiful tale."

When I played RALPH and A DAY FOR SOFT FOOD, I was hoping for a couple of great animal games, where I could slip out of the human mindset and check out a different perspective on life.

But I felt both the abovementioned games suffered from hard-to-comprehend puzzles and really hostile NPC owners ruining the fun.

So what a delight when I picked up SNACK TIME! It's not very big, no, but I had a lot of fun exploring the little apartment from the Hardy's POV. It has a lot of cute humor sprinkled throughout.

The action for the last point wouldn't have occurred to me, but that's a nitpick from me.

If you love animals, you've got to give this one a try.

I'm gaga for cats, despite having never owned one (allergies). I love games where you get to be an animal (just like I like books where you get to experience the world through an animal's eyes and "culture")--so slam dunk, right?

Well, the descriptions are extremely cat and deadpan. But the puzzles made no sense to me; they didn't seem to follow a cat's mind (unlike the descriptions). And the hostile owner always showing up and ending the game--I got fed up real quick and left for another game. I suppose I wish it were more forgiving as a game, so I could enjoy the cat's life for a while.

I was hoping for a ghost story; instead I got almost nonexistent implementation and some repellant characters/situations.

The atmosphere is effective, in that I (as a Westerner) found it very foreign and a touch hostile-feeling (as can be the case when you're a stranger in a strange land, minus the language).

But little implementation means you can't explore the setting. The show's on rails, but in a bad way; the whole event feels futile, the main NPC you interact with is a real creep, and the ghost arrival, to me, felt "out there," like there wasn't enough buildup; it just showed up..

Futility + your repellant friend + poor implementation = 1 star in my book.

This isn't a review. I really didn't like this game. I found it obtuse, confusing, weird, impossible.

But the ending has given me an experience I will cherish forever.

Back in college, my friend and I played a lot of IF together. This was one of the games we played, and it holds a special memory for us.

We had no idea what we were doing. We started off without a map ("We don't need no steeekin' map!!" is our philosophy for most IF) and got lost a lot. Then, after a certain point (Spoiler - click to show)the city blew up and we were inside the city and we died. And it felt pointless.

So we downloaded a map and a walkthrough. We did what the walkthrough told us. We discovered the (Spoiler - click to show)what, conspiracy theory? and (Spoiler - click to show)escaped the city.

What happened next is sort of remarkable and nostalgic for me. This shared experience has become a joke between us, much like how "The cake is a lie" is a shared joke for all players of PORTAL. However, it does kinda spoil the ending so... (Spoiler - click to show)We quietly escaped the city. We met a man there who was very zen. The city blew up. Then the man asked if we wanted to go get a Blizzard.

My friend and I looked at each other, went "??! What the heck was that about?" And then (Spoiler - click to show)we went straight to Dairy Queen.

Basically the author made the perfect frozen yogurt commercial for intellectuals.