Reviews by Tabitha

First, caveat that this isn’t the kind of IF I’d normally play; I’m interested in the early days of the medium, but not so much in modern games that hearken back to them, and I generally like a strong story to go with my exploration and puzzle solving. So I am not the target audience for this one, but due to it being a part of this year's Review-a-thon, I still wanted to give it a try!

First, the presentation is very nice—it’s a clean layout with text encapsulated by boxes over background images that set the mood of each chapter perfectly. An inventory pane on the left side is a nice touch, and during one puzzle, a handy reference pops up in that sidebar too.

One aspect of the UI that didn’t work as well for me was the separate box for command responses. The room description always remains static in one box, but then all the other text cycles through the other—so you type a command, get a response, and then the response disappears (relegated to the text history, which you can view with a click) after you enter the next command. I found this a bit inconvenient when there was a description of something that I wanted to refer back to frequently, and this setup also requires a LOT of pressing enter—the response text was often broken up into two or more pieces, with an enter press required between each pair.

I also found myself fighting the parser at times. One example:

You can see a glowing blue object.

>x blue
You can’t examine that.

>x glowing
You can’t examine that.

>x glowing blue object
You can’t quite make out what the glowing blue object is.

>get it
You can’t get that

>get glowing blue object
You can’t get that

The first part of this sequence primed me to think that I had to type the full name of a thing to interact with it, but then the full name didn’t work when I tried to take, rather than examine, the object (the correct command turned out to be (Spoiler - click to show)“get object”).

There were other points where I struggled due to a lack of cuing. For instance, in the first room you’re collecting pieces of a cube, guided by a four-line poem. (Spoiler - click to show)I thus assumed I needed four pieces, and kept looking after finding three, but actually three was it; I learned this by re-examining the fragments, but I would have expected to be told I had them all upon collecting the third. I did enjoy that area (Chapter 2), though, especially the moment when I tried, certain it wouldn’t work, (Spoiler - click to show)putting my amulet in a lion statue’s mouth as a way to get rid of it—and that was actually the puzzle solution! The mirror area in chapter 6 was another highlight, with the portal being a fun mechanic (although I used the walkthrough for the exact wording—I didn’t remember (Spoiler - click to show)what the game had called the place where I dropped the sword, and it didn’t accept “chasm” or other synonyms that I tried. And I had no idea at all how to refer to the room where the sphere was).

In other areas, I leaned pretty heavily on the walkthrough. In Chapter 4, for example, (Spoiler - click to show)the game had cued me to be afraid of the toad, so I would never have guessed that purposely making him angry was the solution. I was also a bit disappointed by the final puzzle because it was so repetitive and, I felt, unintuitive ((Spoiler - click to show)I’d noticed the beast always lost focus after I dodged, but because it then immediately prepares an attack as usual, I hadn’t interpreted that as a cue to attack it); it didn’t feel like the strongest note to end on.

On the other hand, I liked the ending (Spoiler - click to show)twist about our mysterious guide and the player character’s fate. And the environments were fun to imagine and inhabit; the steampunk flying bridge, the firefly torch, the rotating room, were all memorable and cool. Some of the issues I brought up are definitely a matter of taste, and some good playtesting would smooth out the others.

I really like this one. The blue, grainy images and the sounds of wind and crunching snow capture the mood of the long, oppressive winter where just surviving is a struggle, and likewise evoke the protagonist’s emotional isolation. We quickly discover that their life is shaped around caring for their sick partner; they’re forced into a maternal role they expressly don’t want, preparing his food, collecting blood for him to drink because he insists on it, not because it’s actually shown any efficacy as a treatment for his illness.

The reason the protagonist, Resunotek, rejects the idea of motherhood is, to use modern terminology that they don’t have access to, that they’re transgender. Early on, they relate the feeling that “someone could rip these pelts from me… revealing that I don’t belong, or that I’m not who I say.” Their partner’s assertions that “You’re the woman I love most on this Earth” and “I want nothing more but to call you my wife” are a twisting dagger. While Resunotek loves their partner, in part because “He’s everything [they] want to be”, he represents the patriarchy, continuing to adhere to his blood-drinking regimen because “[his] father and his father before him” attested to it; “to go against their word would be a betrayal.” Obeying the wisdom of his forefathers is more important to him than allowing his partner a respite.

The only suggestion he has for making things easier on Resunotek is that they have children, because when the children are old enough they’ll be able to help out—never mind that being pregnant and then having an infant to care for would only create more/harder work for Resunotek. Their conversation about the subject is clearly one they’ve had before, and it’s easy to believe that the partner’s claim that kids will be useful is just a way to try to convince Resunotek to fulfill his wishes, which would mean playing a role that does not fit them.

At the end of the story, Resunotek has a moment of identification, feeling momentarily “like [they] belong,” with the mythical figure described as a demon, a parasite, a monster, a mistake, who takes the guise of the goddess of the hunt in order to feed on hunters’ blood. This figure is not a provider, but a taker; she’s “a coward,” “hiding behind long hair,” “surviving only by playing the role of someone she was never born to be. Born to a world that gives her no other option. Born to a world where she cannot be.” my baby needs blood is a story about queer people identifying with the monstrous, the other, because we see ourselves in those figures who are unwanted, cast as frightening and dangerous, who do not and cannot fit with society’s expectations.

This piece hit me hard emotionally both when I first played it last year and when I replayed recently in preparation for reviewing. Having had a death in my family a few years ago that reminded me in several ways of the death at the core of this work, I felt a strong resonance with its depiction of how it feels to be left with unanswered questions in the wake of an unexpected death. And more particularly, how visiting the deceased’s house—getting an intimate glimpse into the life of someone no longer living—can create more mysteries than it solves.

The story is told by an unnamed teen; the deceased was their aunt, Carmen, and they visit her house with their mother, Carmen’s sister. The two lived far apart and don’t seem to have kept in touch regularly: the teen narrator barely remembers Carmen, and the mother doesn’t initially display, outwardly at least, a strong reaction to her sister’s passing. There’s not even any mention of a funeral. The narrator and their mother make the journey to Carmen’s house solely (purportedly, at least) so that the mother can pick up some things Carmen was storing for her. This means the narrator sees the house and all its quirks, from the garage Carmen turned into a combination wood shop and greenhouse to the funky art pieces Carmen created and scattered around her yard, only after Carmen is gone.

As this is a horror work, the mother’s apparent stoicism doesn’t hold as the two explore deeper and deeper into Carmen’s space, encountering unexplained things like a basement full of party streamers and mail addressed to someone the mother has never heard of. The mother is seeking those old belongings that Carmen held onto for her, but no matter where she searches, basement to bedroom to the maze Carmen created on her property, she can’t find them. She remains convinced, though, that Carmen wouldn’t have thrown the stuff away, telling herself and her child that she knows Carmen would respect her possessions because she knows Carmen, despite the evidence to the contrary.

Seeing the mother’s grief bubble up and spill out through the eyes of someone who doesn’t understand it and can’t relate made it hit all the harder. The story is told over a backdrop of colorful edited photos and digital paintings, not trying to realistically capture Carmen’s house and yard but very effectively creating a mood. The mother sprite, and the changes it undergoes, was a visual highlight as well. (I just wish there was a “history” feature, like Ren’Py has, so that I could have referred back to earlier text.)

This is a tight, focused game set in the trenches during a war—the first game with that setting I’ve encountered! I will confess that I tend to dislike war fiction (war is horrible; I don’t need stories to remind me), but this piece isn’t actually focused on the horrors; rather, it uses that backdrop to create some neat little puzzles and a compelling reason to solve them.

It’s hard to establish a crisis mood in a parser game, and in this one, while ambient messages every few turns mention the explosions ringing out overhead, their repetitiveness and lack of impact on the gameplay made them fade into the background quickly. But the descriptions of the immediate setting really captured the place, with succinct and evocative images such as:

An unknown liquid has turned the bottom dirt to muck, requiring a haphazard layer of pallets to provide flooring.

>x pallets
The pallets have half-sunk into the mystery muck at the bottom of the trench. It would take heavy pry bars to move them.

These kinds of details really made it feel like this game could be set nowhere else, and while it feels weird to say I enjoyed inhabiting this space, I did like experiencing this unusual IF setting.

I said above the game is tight; I didn’t count the number of rooms, but it was quite low (five or six?), with typically one significant object to find and collect in each. Because the possibility space was so small, some of the time I felt like I was stumbling upon the puzzle solutions ((Spoiler - click to show)“I need to extend the reach of this wire—I guess the tripod must be for that since it’s the only item I have left?”) rather than actually figuring them out. On the other hand, I also turned to the hints twice (for (Spoiler - click to show)tuning the radio and for looking at the back of the code page); having them built-in and context-dependent was much appreciated! And on the third hand, (Spoiler - click to show)making the series of radio calls required to secure my escape was very satisfying.

In all, it’s a well made little game that’s much better than it had to be given its origin as a programming exercise to learn TADS. In my own learning-Inform game, I just made a simulation of a few streets in my neighborhood. This is much more imaginative and fun to play!

I'd been intrigued by the idea of Charm Cochran's Inventory Puzzle Seedcomp seed when I saw it, so I was excited to play the game that it sprouted. And it was fun to see the concept executed, with worldbuilding and a narrative around it. While ultimately I used the author's provided hints to solve it, I had gotten very close to one of the three possible solutions (albeit more through stumbling around than any cleverness).

I played online to take advantage of the game's custom features, implemented with Vorple; these include a bottom bar listing actions, which have menus that pop up upon hovering and can then be clicked (so hovering on the "take" action, for example, will open a list of takeable objects, and clicking one attempts taking it), and a compass with icons representing adjacent locations, which you can click to travel to. These features all worked well, except for a bug that causes the compass and all action links to duplicate every time you restart the game.

I used the hints to see the two alternate solutions as well, but I think they would both be difficult to arrive at organically, both suffering from underclueing and/or misleading descriptions; one I struggled with even after reading all the hints. (Spoiler - click to show)Trying to turn on the stove gives the response "It isn't something you can switch", which made me think the stove was merely decorative, and even after the hints told me to boil the safta, doing so was a challenge. My various incorrect attempts gave no feedback, but eventually I hit on the correct two-command sequence "put safta in pot. put pot on stove." At that point, the safta starts to heat without the player needing to actually turn the stove on. As for the other, I didn't realize the (Spoiler - click to show)posts were directly below the tower; when you're in the field, the description says "the tower looms over you to the west", but the tower isn't implemented here, which made me think it was distant scenery.

With these issues polished up, I think this would be quite a solid little puzzle game!

I can certainly see what the intent of this work is, but for me it wasn’t very successful. It wants to humanize the suffering that’s happening in Palestine, but it speeds through multiple generations so quickly and perfunctorily that I never felt like any of the characters were real people. It’s just a sketch of a family, with 100% predictable story beats--a house and land passing down from one generation to the next, young love, an aging parent, a tragic death. The game wanted to elicit emotion from me, but it didn’t do enough to earn that. If it had slowed down and developed its characters as individuals, and really explored the circumstances they find themselves in instead of skipping from one major development to the next, I think it would have been a lot more effective.

A confession: I’ve only ever read one Agatha Christie novel, and it’s the Poirot-less And Then There Were None, so I went into this game with absolutely zero knowledge of the characters or their circumstances. But fortunately, that didn’t matter. There was enough context provided that I could easily pick up the backstory, and I was charmed right away by both the writing and the setup--a bachelor and a widower sharing a flat and co-raising the latter’s children together. The homoerotic potential of this arrangement is high, and the game doesn’t disappoint there; I loved the results of repeatedly examining Poirot and the response to telling the PC to kiss him.

As other reviewers have mentioned, the biggest hiccup I encountered was the mystery bit; I spent a fair bit of time re-examining everything I’d already looked at, which was kind of tedious, and when it came time to make an accusation, the game’s multiple layers of “Are you sure?” made me chicken out the first time--but at that point the game wouldn’t let me reload a save, so I had to quit and restart. But that was the only rough spot I encountered; overall, this was a very enjoyable experience.

This one resonated a lot with me. I was glad to get to follow all the threads of Yancy’s thoughts, feelings, and reactions about/to their mother’s death; there are a lot, and some of them are contradictory, because this is a situation where of course their feelings are complex and messy, and the game did a great job exploring that. While initially I thought some of the conversations with the friends felt too neat, too pat, the game itself called this out, with Yancy’s sort-of diary entries reflecting that while they may have told their friends they agreed with their advice or found it helpful, really they just said what their friends wanted to hear while knowing things aren’t actually that simple or easy.

There’s also a meta element where Yancy talks to us, the players, about the fact that they are the main character in a game. They wonder whether they’re really a person, and essentially ask us to treat them like one, because there is a real human behind their existence, who created them and has given them some of their (the creator’s) own trauma and complex emotions. This made me think about the vulnerability of sharing a work like this, and how it’s reviewers’ responsibility to take care with how we approach writing about it, because when we judge the characters or emotions on display, we could very well be judging a real person.

This is one of my favorite games of the comp, which I say having both tested and recently replayed it. The presentation is gorgeous, with the designs and colors of the backgrounds adding to the mood of each scene, evoking a storm-beset sky, light from a distant lighthouse, a closeup of a lighthouse lens, a solar eclipse. The writing is rich and clever, with coinages like “lightmare” and brief poems where clicked-on words transform, “loathsome” for instance becoming “lonesome”.

The setup is a fantastical student/master conflict, a sorcerer-in-training forced to study under a proud, power-hungry teacher who insists that his way is the only way, dismissing the student’s ideas out of hand. Raekard, the master, views the demons they’re capable of summoning as tools rather than people, deserving only of subjection and control. Finnit, the student, refuses to participate in a system that he recognizes as cruel, seeing these supernatural entities as fellow sapient beings. The tension of these competing viewpoints is brought to a head when Raekard demands that Finnit complete a seemingly-impossible trial at a cursed lighthouse (the titular Pharos Fidelis); faced with this challenge, Finnit turns to a demon for help, putting both of their beliefs to the test.

While Vosphar, the demon Finnit calls upon, does have the potential to be dangerous, he comes across as the more vulnerable party of the two, having been previously used by Raekard as a demonstration of the complete control sorcerers are capable of exercising. Finnit’s treatment of him is a complete contrast, and results in him choosing to trust in Finnit’s good intentions: “The master summoner’s circle had felt like a steel clawed hand grasping his heart and shredding him through the fabric of reality itself. This summoner’s circle felt like fingers too soft to even grip his tattered sleeves.” As the two settle in to working together, Vosaphar provides a new perspective on everything around them. He’s able to communicate with the strange, seemingly-menacing creature that lingers around the lighthouse, revealing that she doesn’t want to hurt anyone, and he sees the beauty of the place where they’ve found themselves rather than viewing it as an obstacle to be overcome:

Grim though Finnit alleged the environment to be, the devil found it much more inviting than the calciferous wastes. It was full of energy. Full of life. The wind was ferocious, sending his dark hair aflutter. Torrents rushed around him, forming and reforming in ceaseless rhythm. Filaments of lightning painted the sky in dazzling colors. It was astonishing to witness.

If this was—as Finnit insisted—the result of a curse, Vosaphar wondered why anyone would want to end it.

These themes are mirrored in the history of the Pharos Fidelis, whose backstory unfolds over the course of the work; it’s a layered narrative, with historical records interspersed with the present-day story. In a site of every-stormy seas, the original inhabitants found a peaceful way to live, having “fine-tuned their relationship with the island to keep things running”. “Relationship” is the key word here; these residents worked with, rather than against, their environment. But then empire arrived and did what empire does, dominating, subjugating, and killing. When the lighthouse, a marvel of engineering, was finished, it only continued the pattern: “It drank and drank the soul of the sky, but its thirst never sated. It found other souls to imbibe, betraying enough light to pierce the mantle of misery it maintained. Commerce resumed.”

Finnit and Vosaphar bond as they investigate the present state of the lighthouse and study its history; the historical documents are presented with both Raekard’s annotations and Finnit and Vosphar’s commentary, with the latter demonstrating the rapport between them and showing the development of their relationship. There are other lovely, understated moments, like this one where Finnit turns Vosaphar’s frequent address of “[adjective] one” back on him:

“I should look at your shoulders,” the devil said.

“Later?” Finnit turned over on his bedroll. “It’s not that bad. I appreciate the thought,” he mumbled. “You’re sweet. Sweet one.”

Vosaphar stared into the crimson flames for a long while after that.

Raekard insists that demons are evil; that overpowering them and using them as killing machines is perfectly appropriate because, he claims, they are inherently monstrous. But as we witness Raekard’s viewpoints versus Vosaphar’s reality, and the full history of this place, we have to ask who the real monsters are here. The records relating to the Pharos Fidelis reveal a history of human atrocities: a werewolf is listed as a “proscribed entity” that’s been “lawfully destroyed by hunters”; demons were summoned solely to be burned on the pre-lighthouse pyre (to which Raekard’s only comment is, “A senseless waste of ritual components”). And in the earliest recorded history, we see the seeds of all this, when an outsider who sought to understand the islands’ inhabitants rather than conquer them is put on trial:

JUSTICIAR:
At what point did you realize this entity was a vampire?

ACCUSED:
Not until after, when…

JUSTICIAR:
When what?

ACCUSED:
When you killed her. Robbed us of her wisdom, kindness, perspective, heart, all she contributed to her community. And for what? Some ash? Dust? Is there not already enough collecting between the folds of your ◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆?

JUSTICIAR:
Cleric, strike that last term for obscenity.

ACCUSED:
What, you’re more scandalized by me describing your dust-crusted ◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆ than your violence?

Finnit and Vosaphar’s relationship shows the transformative power of approaching the Other with kindness rather than aggression. Early on, we learn of Vosaphar’s wounds, for which Raekard is to blame: “They had become so central to his existence, for so long, that they had infested his identity.” But later, this changes as a result of his bond with Finnit. “His slash wounds scabbed over more readily, healing further with each attempt. […] From his back spread wings wrought of fire, eldritch blue roiled with red and magenta—the colors of Finnit’s own magic, now intertwined with Vosaphar’s.” In the end, the two discover the secret that let the indigenous residents live peacefully in this fraught environment, which results in a shattering of the cursed lens, destroying the symbol of subjugation and colonial power.

I mentioned earlier that this is a layered narrative, and there’s a final layer that I haven’t addressed yet. The story is told in third-person, with moments where the player can choose between two impulses for Vosaphar to heed. It’s a different way for the player to shape the story than the typical IF approach where you’re playing as one of the characters, but it doesn’t feel jarring or out of place. (Spoiler - click to show)But then hints creep in that something more is going on, until a moment that was literally jaw-dropping for me, where it’s revealed that we the player actually have been a character in the story all along—one who is entwined with the Pharos Fidelis, with Vosaphar, and with Finnit, and has been watching and shaping the events for our own purposes. But in contrast to the Raekardian approach, we’re only able to exercise influence, not control, and there’s even a point where Vosaphar may reject your choice and make his own decision.

At the story’s end, the choices you’ve made are summarized in a way that makes it clear which ones took you away from the ideal path, and you have a chance to change any you’d like so that you can reach the best/most satisfying ending. But there’s value in seeing the worse outcomes; the choices play off each other in different ways to make quite a few ending variations. It’s a very rich work, as evidenced by the length of this review. The whole thing rings with resonance for our present moment. As those in power cast marginalized groups as dangerous Others who don’t deserve basic rights, we always have a choice of whether to fall in line with this ideology or to resist it.

What’s the purpose of IF reviews? Why do we write them? Is it to point out issues in a work to help authors improve? To point out issues in a work to warn potential players away? “Too buggy, don’t bother.” I’ve written reviews in an effort to better understand a work; to encourage others to play it; to give hopefully helpful feedback to the author. I’ve written reviews to call out harmful content in a work, solely for the purpose of “I want it on the record that this is in here and I don’t think that’s okay.” I’ve written reviews that were overly harsh and nitpicky, reviews I wouldn’t write today.

This game doesn’t need any more reviews saying that it needed testing. One of those is enough; it’s a statement that doesn’t need repeating. But I don’t think we can ever have too many reviews engaging with the content and themes of a work. And if reviews get written that only engage with the technical side of a game, why not one that only engages with the story?

I played this one back at the beginning of the comp, and it’s stuck with me. “A baby is crying. His baby. His baby is crying. And you are him, your baby is crying.” The PC’s weariness, helplessness; how can you take care of another human being when you feel so exhausted and broken? Dragging your aching body around the bed. You care about your child, of course you do, but in this moment you don’t know what to do for them. You’re a single parent, living in relative poverty. Can you give this being you’ve brought into the world a good life?

You feel your own vocal cords contracting and stinging, as if you are the one who has been crying all this time.

You try to comfort the baby, rocking it and shushing, but the baby keeps crying despite your best efforts.

There’s an added layer revealed at the end, that the PC, George, is a trans man. He asks his child:

"Will you grow up to be trans, like me? Will I influence you? Can you be trans if you don't get an assigned gender at birth? I certainly haven't assigned you anything...assigned basket at birth only. I hope the fact that i am raising you on my own won't like...scar you in any way. Isn't that what people say too, if kids only get one gender role parent instead of two, that turns them gay? Well, if you do turn out gay at least I can help you. Maybe if you turned out straight that would be the real issue, we would have no common ground and slowly grow apart...well, that would be very silly of us. Let's not let that happen."

These reflections on being a poor, trans single parent without much of a support network are moving. And I love seeing George maintain a sense of humor despite the circumstances. I think the answer to my question above is “yes”; George clearly loves his child and is determined to do his best for them, despite his fear and uncertainty.

"I want to give you so much more than I have, now. I don't know what I'm doing. I haven't known since I found out you were coming. One day I was just going about my life, and the next I was going to be a parent. [...] i still feel like it will not be enough, like i will not be enough."

You/George manage to briefly soothe the baby, but when they start crying again, the game ends with you doing what’s needed, pushing through the weariness and pain for the sake of the brand new human who's now in your care:

Only that bottle will do now, probably. You lay it back in its basket, and prepare to get up.