Ratings and Reviews by Tabitha

This game is quite polished and has a smooth parser and a nice UI. I followed the advice from other players to look at the instructions for minigame #1 before attempting it, and was glad I did because I don’t think I would have figured that out on my own. However, I did get a bit tired of that puzzle by the fifth or so go-round. Part of the reason, I think, is that having 24 tries after getting the implant upgrade took away the sense of pressure and made me stop thinking very carefully about my guesses, whereas the two I solved with only 8 guesses had that sense of tension and needing to make every guess count.

My other main critique is the writing of the NPCs, of which there are six or seven. It’s immediately very clear that they only exist as pieces of the game’s puzzles; none of them interact with you until you approach them, and while some are introduced with a characterizing line like “A bureaucrat peers at the deck’s monitor with dead eyes,” others simply get “X is here.” Livening up those introductory descriptions (sure, Dr. Mohr is here, but what’s she doing?) and having them act more naturally—e.g., greeting you when you walk into their offices—would go a long way toward making them feel more like actual people and better integrating them into the game.

Overall though, if you're looking for a short, word- and grid-puzzley hacker game, you'll have fun with this one.

This was a polished and well-written game that unfortunately I didn’t really connect with. After finishing my first playthrough, per the game's explicit encouragement I restarted, expecting to see entirely new memories and paintings. But then five out of seven paintings and the same number of memories were repeats from my first playthrough. The memories were tied to different paintings, though, and it was disappointing to learn that the pairings hadn't been deliberately curated.

I also was never really emotionally engaged. The PC is clearly a specific character, rather than a blank-slate/self-insert; they have these specific memories of their relationship with the artist character, and they’ve made certain life choices like giving up painting to work at an ad agency. So I couldn’t pretend it was actually me going through this, but I also didn’t learn enough about the PC to really give me a sense of them as a person, which left me feeling emotionally distant from them and their remembrances of the artist. (It doesn’t help that the memories I got on my initial playthrough made that character come across as an asshole who I personally wouldn’t have kept putting up with.)

I also didn't vibe with the choice (Spoiler - click to show)to make the painting be automatically created for me at the end; it felt like the game was dictating what my emotional response to the memories should be. (Spoiler - click to show)I would have found it much more meaningful to get to decide for myself what subject, mood, etc. the painting should focus on—being able to interpret the memories for myself, using the choices of what to paint to reflect on what I took from them. Being allowed to adjust the painting afterward was nice but didn’t hit the same way doing it myself from the start would have.

I was very excited for this one, and it didn’t disappoint. It’s got a similar-but-distinct mechanic from the Prime Pro Rhyme Row series, so it was fun to get to try something new. It’s also shorter and a bit simpler than the longest of those games, which may make it more accessible to newcomers. At first I worried it would be too easy, but there were some spots that stumped me!

Unlike in the PPRR games, there are no in-game hints or puzzle cheats, so I turned to the walkthrough a couple times. Hints and a bit more clueing on some of the puzzles would make the game just about perfect IMO. (Update: after writing this I found out that there is a hint item; I just didn't realize its function while playing. So a clearer indication of its use would be helpful!)

I apparently didn’t get the best ending on my first playthrough, so I’ll definitely be coming back to see if I can fix that!

(Warning: This review might contain spoilers. Click to show the full review.)I’m torn on this one. It’s like a bleaker Queers in Love at the End of the World—you only have a brief amount of time left with someone close to you, and you have to choose how to spend it. Both play out in real time, with a clock far too short to exhaust your myriad options. In this one, though, only one of you will die when the clock runs out, which brings an entirely different (grimmer) mood.

There were moments where I really felt the emotional weight of the situation, but also moments where I was thrown out of it and felt very disconnected. The game starts in media res; the PC is already here with their friend, both of them knowing these will be the friend’s final moments. But the game didn’t fully sell that; the range of options you’re given includes things like “do research” and “ask if she ever learned why this is happening, neither of which makes sense when she’s literally dying in front of you. There was a tension between “let the player try all the things” and “these two people know each other and have history together and would naturally already have exhausted some of these options.”

Going along with this, on my initial playthrough I felt a bit overwhelmed at how many options there were and wanted to know more about the situation, which immediately put me at odds with the PC, who would already know all the things I was curious about. Instead of roleplaying as a good friend, at first I was just seeking out information to give me more context for the present moment.

In general, there’s a feeling of coldness and remove, which contrasts with the horror of the situation. In the friend’s final moments, as her death is actually described, you can no longer act at all; she melts away and all you can do is sit back and watch. Over and over if you replay, which I did, wanting to try different options, and seeing her die repeatedly left me desensitized to it. Replaying also made me very aware that while the game is about trying to comfort the friend, the emphasis is very much on the PC. They’re the the only one with agency; the friend has no last requests unless you prompt them (e.g., if you bring up her family, she asks you to keep an eye on her brother after she’s gone, but she won’t mention that otherwise).

But then, there are some excellently written, emotionally hard-hitting details that convey so much in just a few lines. If you take her hand:

"You hold it lightly. There is a shocking amount of give to it. You could squeeze, and her whole hand would gush out from between your fingers. It wouldn’t even be a hand anymore."

In response to this gesture, she tells you, “My mom wouldn’t hug me, wouldn’t even touch me, the last time I visited. She said the ‘goop’ I left would stain her sweater… she said to keep off the rugs.” Damn. No wonder she values my simple company so much. The line that hit me the most with its pure evocative horror was: “You listen to the steady drip of her toes and feet along the rim of the drain.”

And in all my replays, I managed to find some options that felt the most right, the most meaningful. There aren’t any wrong choices—even if you do absolutely nothing, just let the clock run out, she’ll still say she’s glad you were there—but my favorites were the things that made her smile or laugh (dancing, and drawing in the goop of her melting body). Like in QiLatEotW, seeing those moments of joy in the midst of horrible circumstances made me feel something.

Bad Beer is an enjoyable little game! “Little” in that it’s a pretty quick experience; in contrast to the stated playtime on the IFComp page, I reached an ending in less than 30 minutes, but did spend some time replaying. The setup is brief and lets you quickly get into your investigation, which rapidly reveals that there is something (Spoiler - click to show)supernatural going on…

I enjoyed exploring around the pub and chatting with the several NPCs; the game uses an “ask person about subject” conversation system, which worked well here, as your explorations and conversations reveal new topics to ask about. There are two people, June and Sally, in the kitchen, and sometimes one would chime in while I was talking to the other, or I’d ask one about a subject then ask the other and get a different answer, and both of these things made the conversation feel natural and well developed—the NPCs aren’t just information-giving-machines, but have their own personalities.

Something that clashed a bit with this, though, was the ambient messages (is there an actual term for these?)—the ones that fire every one or two turns and usually repeat in a cycle or at random. They got repetitive fairly quickly, and the ones in the kitchen were sometimes at odds with the ongoing conversation.

The pacing felt a bit rushed, too, especially since the investigating was less about finding clues and more about (Spoiler - click to show)triggering a supernatural incident that suddenly whisks you back into the past—but that was a very fun and unexpected twist, and I enjoyed (Spoiler - click to show)seeing the same place in two vastly different time periods. Even better, you’re given the chance to change the past and thereby put to rest the ghost who’s been causing the problems in the present day.

This was a fun little puzzle that allows for experimentation, as you get several attempts before the game moves on. The reset felt a bit random, though, as there was no in-game explanation for why you were given repeat chances (but only three of them). But fortunately it’s easy to continue trying, as the sub-optimal ending conveniently gives you the option to jump back to the beginning of the puzzle.

Either way, after you fail or succeed, the story suddenly skips ahead an unspecified amount of time (Spoiler - click to show)(back in the present day), with no transition explaining what happened when you returned to the present, how your friends reacted to your story, etc. I liked (Spoiler - click to show)the wrap-up at Will’s grave with the vicar, but I would have preferred some closure with the pub owners, too, given that they were the reason the PC got involved in all this. But overall I definitely enjoyed my time playing!

This is a sweet, fairly simple game that wasn’t quite what I expected based on the blurb. The mystery is solved via notes you happen upon throughout the castle, and is incidental to the main objective, (Spoiler - click to show)which is collecting items of armor (and possibly a sword) in order to defeat a dragon. It took me only about a half hour to finish, and my playthrough started with this infelicitous exchange:

Castle Entrance
You see the entrance to the castle in the east, and it has been thrown open, with no one inside. The entryway is covered in soot and burn marks. Whatever caused this doesn't seem to be nearby anymore. At your feet is a small booklet with the heading "Instruction Booklet"

>get booklet
That's hardly portable.

>x entryway
You can't see any such thing.

>x marks
You can't see any such thing.

>x soot
You can't see any such thing.