Ratings and Reviews by Tabitha

An expansion of a short review originally published at Intfiction.org on May 8, 2025. I beta-tested this game. This review is based on the published version.

This game is simply delightful. A good-hearted cat protagonist, protective of her human boy but also empathetic to other creatures; a constrained environment that’s still full of details and ripe for exploration as only a cat can explore. Simple on the surface, but deep underneath, and cut through with an understated sadness that adds poignancy to what could have been a purely light-hearted adventure story.

There are many player-friendly features, making the game accessible even to players who may be new to the parser game medium. To boot, there are also several charming illustrations as well as bonus material that you can unlock based on your score. Highly recommend!

An expansion of a short review originally published at Intfiction.org on May 8, 2025.

Radiance Inviolate had me at “queer vampires”, and it did not disappoint. Trapped in a pit with sunrise on the way, the vampire Lysander has few options... but the options he *does* have lead down more different paths than you’d expect, revealing different layers of his backstory on each route and presenting some quite varied possibilities for his future. The game encourages replay with a friendly ending screen that summarizes your choices and lets you jump back to past choice points. Other highlights are the enjoyable NPCs, rich worldbuilding, lovely writing, and gorgeous UI. Highly recommend.

An expansion of a short review originally published at Intfiction.org on May 8, 2025.

My overwhelming feeling after playing Succor was frustration. I related a lot to the protagonist's situation; I've been in that kind of headspace many times before, no energy or motivation to do anything besides lie in bed. The game starts just when you finally do drag yourself out of bed because you need to eat. But almost immediately, I found the work's portrayal of living with mental illness overly simplistic. Early text spells out your goal:

Hunger drags you awake despite your wishes and you reluctantly get out of bed. It's already almost the afternoon, and you're starving. [...] Time to find some food.

But initially, your only options are to explore your apartment... and clean it. *Deep* clean it. Fridge, sink, microwave, stove--you can scrub them all to shining, before you've had even a bite to eat! This really clashes with the "too depressed to get out of bed until hunger literally drives you to it" protagonist the game set up, and simply makes no physical sense to me--I, at least, would literally be unable to do all that work on an empty stomach.

The other aspect I found grating is that at certain points you're presented with a choice of coping mechanisms that are clearly framed as either healthy or unhealthy. Pick the healthy ones, and you’ll feel better. Ah, I wish it were that simple in real life!

One aspect of the game that did work for me was the sections where the protagonist reflected back on various memories tied to food and cooking, giving us a picture of their life up to this point, including family, school, and what led to their current bout of depression. I found these parts much more effective than the “mental illness simulator” aspects.

An expansion of a short review originally published at Intfiction.org on May 8, 2025.

This is a very vibes-based piece; I got a strong sense of emotion from it, and feel it was successful on that front. However, I never fully understood the chronology or the details of what was going on. Past and present melded together, slipping back and forth between the two; characters blended together, leaving me uncertain exactly how many lost loves the protagonist had to mourn. Possibly this ambiguity was intentional, but I would have preferred a little more concreteness. As other reviewers have mentioned, I also struggled with the lack of contrast between the text and the background images.