Ratings and Reviews by Tabitha

This was an unusual one, starting with a short Twine piece that leads into a parser game. While the “a father made this for his daughter and wants her to play it right now in the hospital” conceit led me to expect a fairly small, simple parser game, it was actually quite large, with many rooms, hidden objects, and multiple NPCs. I started out exploring all the places and collecting all the things; the notes especially were an intriguing layer, and I felt motivated to hunt them down (I wish I could have talked about them to the dad in the “after” segment). So I was settling deep into the parser, when… I realized that my two hours of IFComp playtime were almost up.

Since I wanted to get to the second Twine part before my judging window ran out, I went ahead and skipped to that one without having reached the end of the parser game. Which made the experience of playing out that portion fall somewhat flat, because the PC had finished the game, whereas I hadn’t. It didn’t help that I had already felt at a distance from the PC in the first segment; for example, when I got the choice of whether or not to lie to my mom, I had no idea why the PC might want to. I couldn’t get a read on her relationship with James, either.

The parser game also suffered from some typos, lack of implementation, and disambiguation issues; at first I wasn’t sure if this was intentional, painting the dad character as an imperfect programmer, but nothing in the game supported that reading, so I think it just needed a bit more polish.

As a whole, I didn’t emotionally connect with this game, and I think the large-parser-between-two-Twines format wasn’t ideally suited to a comp with a two-hour judging window. But I did enjoy my time in the parser game, and will definitely be going back to explore more.

I liked this game a lot! It’s very aesthetically pleasing, with soft, shifting-color backgrounds, a map that expands as you go deeper, and lovely art. The engine worked well and made for a smooth choice-parser hybrid experience. After a bit of a slow start, I became invested in the PC’s forest exploration, partially due to her strong voice—her youthful enthusiasm and joy are captured so well. Discovering new things to photograph, interact with, and collect for my sample box was delightful, especially since trying each action on each item has its own unique flavor text. For instance, photos of certain things may come out blurry or not live up to what they’re trying to capture, which was an excellent detail. All in all, this really captured the experience of going on a rambling forest hike.

A layer of intrigue was added once the worldbuilding started trickling in, creating a sense of potential danger in the forest and of precarity about life in general in this world. The small-scale stakes of potentially getting lost, getting in trouble for sneaking out, or even getting attacked by a creature played out against an off-screen backdrop of warring ideologies and a forever-damaged planet. The way that glimpses of this larger geopolitical situation were meted out throughout the story was very effective, providing one puzzle piece at a time that never formed the whole picture, but were enough to convey a strong impression.

I love exploration in games, and this was a thoroughly satisfying experience on that front, with a few small puzzles along the way and an enjoyable PC to spend the time with, along with a compelling world to do it in.

I didn’t realize to what extent this game was based on the song mentioned as inspiration (“The Blessings” by Dar Williams) until I looked up the lyrics:

And the blessings were like poets that we never find time to know,
But when time stopped I found the place where the poets go.
And they said, "Here have some coffee, it’s straight, black and very old, "
And they gave me sticks and rocks and stars and all that I could hold…

Honestly, I’m super impressed at the way the authors ran with these lines, implementing them very literally into this surreal game about a PC processing the end of a relationship (and now I know the answer to my questions “Why sticks? Why rocks?”).

I love character/emotion/relationship-focused games, so I liked the premise of this one and enjoyed playing out the layers of the PC’s self-reflection and increasing insights. I think the game would have resonated more with me emotionally, though, if both the PC and their ex were more developed as characters; as-is, neither is named and both are characterized fairly vaguely, with some glimpses of their personalities and the tenor of their relationship, but not enough for my taste.

The puzzles and the surreal environments were fun, and I enjoyed the kind-of twist that not all puzzles in each location were fully solvable at first. Because of the unintuitive nature of some puzzles, though, I definitely resorted to lawnmowering several times (and I ran into one minor puzzle-related bug).

Highlight: Mouse friend!
Lowlight: After all the other animal-based puzzles required helping/being kind to them, I was disappointed to have to throw a rock at a bat.

This is an unusual one, and one I quite enjoyed. I’m not super familiar with the history and politics of the USSR, but some Wikipedia-ing early on helped provide the context I needed to understand the backdrop that the play’s five characters are operating against.

I love stories with high stakes in the background that choose to focus on how those stakes affect individual people, and that’s exactly what we get here. A strained sibling relationship, a developing romance, and a long-term marriage are all tested by the oppressive political climate. The image of whispering becoming everyone’s normal way of speaking, because they’re not safe even in their own home, was a very effective one. It contrasted well with the spark of finding a like-minded person who you can trust, which is what Agnessa finds in Nikolai. Even then, though, the two can’t truly be happy together, because they have a fundamental difference in what they want out of life. These lines capture their relationship so well:

Nikolai: Agnya, I love you, I-
Agnessa: Do you? Do you really? Or do you love what you want me to be?
Nikolai [pause]: I think you are what I want you to be. You just won’t let yourself be.

(Spoiler - click to show)And ultimately, this love that gives Nikolai a reason to wake up in the morning is what dooms him. In the end, this felt like a story about futility, especially after I played through several times; there’s no “good” ending, no matter which of the two options the audience chooses at each junction point. Agnessa and Nikolai are always going to be caught and arrested. We’re never choosing their fate; each choice is simply one of two equally bad options. The fictional authors of the play have written our choices for us, and they all lead to those authors’ singular chosen destination.

Except… there’s the secret ending. (Shoutout to Manon for telling me about it!) And that provided an interesting twist, where the audience breaks out of the choice binary and demands a different—happy—ending. Which the actors and the play-runner/actor, the Guide, provide, albeit reluctantly. But then, this ending rings so very hollow, as it obviously wasn’t planned; it doesn’t feel true to the story, and it’s impossible to imagine the characters actually living happily after these events even if the NKVD did have a sudden, random surge of compassion and let them go. So we’re back to futility now, inevitability. You can fight but you can’t really change anything. I don’t read that as the game’s universal message, but for these characters, in this situation… no matter how much we, the audience, might want it to end differently, there was always only ever one place they could end up.

This is a very well-crafted game—impressive that it’s the author’s first time working with Twine! The art is moodily evocative, and I enjoyed the way the puzzles were built around it. The hint system and its tiered approach, with the first level letting you know when you didn’t need to worry about a specific object/puzzle yet, was a nice touch. (Spoiler - click to show)And I loved the ending, the way it clicked for me what the answer to “whodunnit” was—and the extra “whydunnit” twist/reveal, which explained so much in retrospect. The answer to the mystery of “who locked me in here with all these weird puzzles??” being “I did, and for good reason!” was very clever.

Damn, this game. It’s got so much depth, and I spent a lot of time thinking about it after playing. There’s so much emotion here, so much hurt, and yet we have this reflective distance from which to interact with and interrogate it all, even as it feels very personal given that two of the NPCs are different iterations of George Dyer, Francis Bacon’s doomed lover. This is a window on suffering people who in turn inflict suffering on others; on self-destruction/self-harm; on pain channeled into art. It begs the question of what the purpose of art is, why people are led to create and view it, and calls out how it can both connect and alienate us. It makes me feel very conflicted, and I think that’s a good thing. Altogether a brilliant game.

...despite the rather stressful situation the PC is in! The PC’s position as somewhat of an outsider who’s suddenly plunged in over their head was a compelling one, and I enjoyed navigating through the various scenarios (especially those involving cute cats or a mischievous monkey). I also appreciated the social management aspects; it was very gratifying to facilitate a nice breakfast chat between guests despite language barriers, and to save two teenagers from a boring day with their parents and also spur a friendship between them in the process.

So much excellence here—the premise, the characters, the setting, the humor, the puzzles, the narrative voice… it’s all so well done. Highlights include the Torch and Pitchfork Society and their perfectly reasonable demands, Hans in general (and specifically, the conversations with him and the possibility of asking him out), and every interaction with the devil. A very smooth and just plain fun experience!

I hadn’t played any of Andrew’s Prime Pro Rhyme Row games when I tested this one, but as soon as I got into it I loved it, and after finishing I immediately played through the rest in the series. As a lover of rhymes, alliteration, and wordplay in general, I found it delightful to be tasked with coming up with my own alliterative rhymes as the central mechanic of gameplay. Comparisons to Dr. Seuss are apt, as this is a wacky wordplay-ful world that defies logic, and is all the more fun for it.

A game about your husband’s last night before his execution has no right being this fun! But Victor has accomplished that with a big dose of humor and a richly drawn protagonist who can’t help but be entertaining. Alongside the silliness, though, there’s a lot of emotional depth as the couple’s relationship history and its various layers of love and hurt is gradually revealed. Their conversation—litigating past wrongs, discussing what Xanthippe’s future might hold, and hashing out what they mean to each other—swings from anger to affection in a way that felt very authentic. I liked the bittersweet note of the end, where they’re both able to come to a sort of peace with the impending loss. I was glad to have spent time exploring their relationship, and getting to know Victor’s version of Xanthippe—who is very far from one-dimensional.