Reviews by Tabitha

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

I'm clearly in the minority on this one, but I didn't find The Goldilocks Principle effective. The piece wants readers to interrogate why we're engaging with it, but while I can understand asking the question, “Why do you want to know details about someone’s eating disorder?”, in this case, the author specifically chose to put the game in front of a (relatively) large audience. I opened it up in good faith, prepared to take in a personal story that the author clearly wanted to share... only to be met with a confrontational tone by a narrator who seemed to be judging me for having clicked the "play" link at all.

I think that generally when IF authors write about sensitive, personal topics, they're choosing to be openly vulnerable in that way because they want to share their stories--they want readers to understand what they went through, or for people who have experienced similar things to feel less alone. So presenting a piece that looks like it's meant in that spirit, then pulling a "gotcha" on the player and mocking them for wanting to engage with the work, was very off-putting to me.

During Spring Thing '25, I wrote full reviews of several of the games in this anthology. I never made it to all of them, but I'm posting the ones I did write here, as I figure sharing some reviews is better than sharing none!

A Brand New World by Raiden

This is a fun story that starts with a relaxing walk on the beach but (possibly) goes somewhere very different! The opening descriptions drew me in, capturing the feeling of unwinding from your stress in nature: “It’s moments such as these that remind you that you are alive, that you can breathe and simply… be.” The descriptions are detailed and vivid, with some nice phrases like “the horizon painted in a hot pink colour as the last bits of sunlight embrace it.”

The main storyline is about visiting a fantasy world, but you can choose not to go, and in that case you get a completely unrelated story about encountering a lost child (with two possible endings). I think the game would be stronger if it eliminated that second possible storyline and focused on developing the fantasy world further and giving the player more choices about how to explore/interact with it (which I’ll elaborate on in the next two paragraphs!).

Remy was a good NPC; we get a strong sense of their personality, and I liked seeing their interactions with Mikhail. But I wanted to have more choices for how I interacted with them. For instance, at this part: “Should you say something? Should you keep quiet? Should you question why the dragon took to the skies the moment they showed up?”, I would have liked these to all be options I could pick from. I wanted to feel like I was shaping my relationship with Remy through my choices, instead of the game simply telling me how I responded to them.

I liked the choice of whether to approach the dragon or not—the text clearly signaled that doing so would be risky, and if you choose to do it anyway, you face the natural consequences! But the final choice of whether to stay or go was weaker; similar to entering the hole or not at the beginning, it felt like a “Do something interesting” or “Don’t do it” choice. I think it’s generally more fun when both choices are interesting; for example, at the end you could pick which trinket you want to buy, or which part of the market you want to explore before you have to leave.

Anyway, I had fun with this and I look forward to more IF by this author!

Fragments of the Nile by Storyteller

This story has a fun historical-investigation plotline and a twist! I especially liked the scene where I entered the memory. And this was a funny reference by one ending to another: “At least you died pain-free, unlike some poor guy who might have been cursed in a parallel reality.”

Some of the choices were “Do the interesting thing”/“Don’t do it” like I talked about above. I liked that at the beginning, even if you choose to stay home you can still get a full storyline related to the Egypt mystery, and I think it would be nice if the choices reflected this. Instead of simply go/don’t go, the choices could be “Travel to Egypt” and “Offer to help out with research from home.” That way, the player knows they’ll get an interesting story no matter which one they pick.

A few other small things!

-I was confused when I exploded like a tomato but wasn’t dead! Maybe the game could tell me I died, but give me the chance to go back and try again? Or make it clear that the explosion wasn’t life-threatening.
-I noticed only one ending has a link to go back to the beginning, but it would be nice if all of them did.
-There are a lot of small spelling errors (a frequent one is “trough” instead of “through”), so I’d suggest running the text through a spellchecker, or having someone proofread it.

Power Turtle by 3N

This game is very cute; I enjoyed playing through multiple times and exploring all the different outcomes for my new turtle friend.

I liked that the opening choices were not “investigate the interesting thing”/“ignore it”! But, when I replayed, I found that both choices just lead to the same result, finding the turtle. Because of this, I don’t think a choice is needed here; you could just give a “Look in the water” link, and then let the choices start once the turtle has been found.

It was fun how many different paths there were in this story. “The fish and the turtle became besties” was one of my favorites; that line made me smile. There were some paths where storylines I was interested in didn’t get resolved; in one, the turtle grows bigger than me, but after that happens it isn’t mentioned again. In another, the turtle refuses to eat, and I never got a chance to solve that. So my advice here would be to keep exploring those story threads once they’re introduced. When the turtle gets big, maybe I can ride it, or I need to find a medicine that’ll make it small again.

Overall, a cute story with many different endings to find!

Those voices are getting louder, captain by Mushroom

This is a very funny and clever work; I replayed a bunch to see all the different possibilities, and every one was delightful. I loved the voice of the narrator talking to me, giving commentary and advising on what I should or shouldn’t do. And when I discovered the in-story reason for it, it was even better! Some examples:

-Ask him if he´s okay -Simply ignore him. (I mean…this guy is always nervous, why would you bother him and yourself by asking stupid questions.)

This is the first choice in the game, and it’s kind of the “do the interesting thing”/“don’t do it” sort of choice—but it works here because we have that outside voice pushing us to pick the “don’t do it” option. To me, this makes both options equally intriguing. I want to find out what’s up with this guy, but I’m also curious what will happen if I listen to this mysterious voice.

(You´d better comfort him, I´m not giving you other options.)

I loved this moment, where the voice takes away my agency because this poor guy just needs comfort so badly.

(Don´t. You. Dare.)

Another great moment, where the voice does give me two options, but it really doesn’t want me to pick one of them! (Of course, this meant I had to pick it…)

One tiny note that should be an easy fix—when I start up the game, it goes straight to the story instead of the opening menu screen like the others in the anthology (but the opening menu screen does exist; the “Play Again” button takes you there).

Finally, two more very funny quotes that I copied into my notes:

´´Crow, Crow! Captain is a #### !´´the parrot says. You don´t argue. The captain truly is a #### . You´re just about to teach the parrot a new curse word when the captain walks in.
.
“AND STOP MAKING OUT!!!´´ Captain yells with his nerves on edge. (He hates when sailors are not doing their job, he hates not yelling at sailors and he hates love…

Basically… go play this game.

I like history as a subject, but for a long time I thought I didn’t, because it’s often taught as a zoomed out, big-picture overview with few points of connection to individual human lives. This work illustrates a perfect way to counter that remove, presenting decades of Poland’s history through the lens of how it impacts, and is impacted by, one particular woman.

Thousand Lives has an unusual format for IF, each of its six chapters delivered by email 24 hours after you make the preceding chapter’s choice. A decade can pass in a few hundred words, with events both large- and small-scale described in brief summaries. Every chapter ends with a life-changing choice, establishing the path the PC will take through the next few years.

The story is in second-person, but because of the broad strokes, I didn’t feel immersed in the character; I was picking choices for her rather than as her. I thus found it easy to choose the more noble actions—for instance, when (Spoiler - click to show)I the character was told I was tempted to sleep with my imprisoned friend’s partner (“One warm evening, after a few drinks of moonshine, he kisses you and asks you to stay at his apartment. Your body wants this. Your heart wants this”), I as the player was not actually tempted, because I didn’t want to play out the narrative arc of her betraying her friend.

But while at first that remove led me to easily pick the choices that seemed like “the right thing to do”, on my final choice, in chapter five, I wavered. Here, I had to choose between (Spoiler - click to show)exposing files revealing political corruption that also implicated the PC’s brother, or covering up the story. I hadn’t gotten to know the brother at all; I didn’t particularly care about him as a character. But that didn’t matter, because once again I didn’t want to play out an arc of personal betrayal—even though it probably would have more sense for my heretofore politically-minded PC to make that sacrifice in service of the greater good.

Typically, after finishing a branching work like this, I’d immediately restart and play through again in order to see different outcomes. But Thousand Lives explicitly does not want you to do this—the description says “you have to live with your choices. There’s no do-overs or restarts.” If you return to an email and try clicking the other choice, you’ll get a message saying “You’ve already made your choice for this chapter. Sorry, no do-overs!” The title is "Thousand Lives", but while many different lives are possible, the format impresses on you that everyone only gets one life; that we can wonder about the roads not traveled, but never know where they would have led. This is a work where each reader collaborates with the author to tell a story, and seeing other versions of that story isn’t the point. But, while that's my conclusion about the intention behind this choice of format, I do have to admit that a big part of me would still appreciate the ability to easily replay after doing an initial "six days of emails" round.

Clearly, this work gave me a lot of thoughts about form, point-of-view, branching narratives, and the player’s relationship to the player character. I appreciate all of that, just as I appreciate the look at late-twentieth-century Poland, and the focus on one woman’s life there.

I played and quite enjoyed Lauren O'Donoghue's Eikas in last year’s IF Comp, and have been meaning to play Ataraxia ever since. I’m glad I finally did! While the structure, and in some ways the plot, is very similar to that of Eikas, it’s different enough to feel distinct. I enjoyed crafting with found materials, investigating various local mysteries, getting to know the four main NPCs, and developing a romantic relationship with one of them (Sanvi <3). The flavor details are delightful; I particularly enjoyed the sonnets and the lesbian romance novel. The setting is a highlight too—I was as intrigued by the island as naturalist Ivo (although I have a correction for his book—mushrooms are not plants!), and as eager as Jonah to learn about the force inhabiting the woods.

The gameplay loop was well designed; save for one hiccup that I’ll discuss below, it felt like there was always something to do: something interesting to investigate, someone to spend time with, something new to buy, with well-paced progression as you unlock new areas to visit, items to craft, etc. Certain actions you can repeat indefinitely, like having your significant other over or walking in the different zones of the island, and while eventually the scenes you get will repeat, I was impressed by the number of different vignettes each one presented. The relationships grew slowly over time, built over plenty of conversations and time spent with the NPCs, making them all feel really developed.

The caveat that I mentioned above is that close to the end of the game, I ended up feeling pretty stuck. I only had two items left on my to-do list, but I wasn’t sure how to accomplish them, because as far as I could tell I’d done everything there was to do. I repeated many actions many times trying to figure out which would let me progress, racking my day count up to 75 by the end. Finally, I discovered that I just had to (Spoiler - click to show)keep walking in the forest until the randomizer gave me the game-progressing event. Because I’d already done that several times and gotten repeated text, I hadn’t realized there was anything new to see there and wondered if (Spoiler - click to show)“observe the forest” on my to-do list was a bug. So this one is partly on me, but it was a bit of a momentum-killer after the steady pace I’d progressed at up to that point.

My other quibbles are about the UI and the opacity of the energy stat, but clearly the author recognized these weaknesses because they’ve been addressed in Eikas! The sidebar with certain links always accessible and the energy/action count being displayed are big improvements. In Ataraxia, it was mildly frustrating not to know how much energy an action would take or how much I had left, and I was confused about why it ran out so quickly some days (after finishing, I discovered that each day’s energy level is determined by how well you sleep).

Despite these nitpicks, I found it an impressive and charming game, and thoroughly enjoyed my time with it.

This one had me at “explore abandoned spaces”—but this isn’t your average abandoned building; rather, it’s a Howl’s Moving Castle-esque fortress, forever roaming. The second-person protagonist wakes up with only a vague grasp of who they are or why they’re here, putting the focus on what you do in the here-and-now rather than your backstory. Explore the accessible rooms; discover the few remaining inhabitants. As you do, you’ll uncover a rough idea of the purpose of this place, and what happened to bring it to its current state.

The heart of the game, though, is the creature that appears to be powering this massive, semi-organic(?) vehicle. The first room I visited happened to be the one containing them, and their description is evocatively disturbing:

“A creature perches upon the dais, clawed talons curled around the edge of the platform. Fire engulfs their body, consuming their feathered wings, but the blaze appears to spare their flesh. Other than the flutter of feathers burning and growing in perpetuity, the harpy is motionless, upright but unconscious. …No visible bindings hold them in place, yet they cannot move.”

After trying and failing to communicate with the harpy, I continued my exploration, but remained intrigued and troubled by this trapped figure. A (Spoiler - click to show)soon-discovered discarded voice box appeared to be the key to freeing them, but (Spoiler - click to show)upon returning, I didn’t see a way to give it to them. So I (Spoiler - click to show)returned to the room where I was promised deep, dreamful sleep, and so found my first ending.

Of course, (Spoiler - click to show)giving the voice box to the harpy is, indeed, what you’re meant to do, which I discovered when I played again. To get that option, you have to go to the engine room, click the “approach” button, then click the “examine” button. On my first try, I’d stopped at the “approach” level. I’m trying to decide whether I consider this a design flaw or a perhaps-intentional way to channel players toward getting the “Lotus-eater” ending first. Because on my second playthrough, having initially failed made it more exciting when I discovered that I actually could provide the harpy with the means to communicate, and then escape with them.

Stories about kindness in the face of grim circumstances will always get me. After my second playthrough, I looked up “habeas corpus” to refresh my memory, and found it a fitting title for a game where we play as the judge vested with the power to set a wrongful prisoner free.

Moody games focused on traversing significant places and memories are always going to be my jam. This one is a quiet exploration of a flooded town, playing as a protagonist who knows this place intimately and is now set on leaving. As you wander, you encounter layers of memories on what is essentially a farewell tour. Mechanically, you need to acquire goods for your journey away, but it’s the emotional landscape that’s really important.

Ghosts of the past are everywhere; the game’s opening image, describing a washed-out bridge, mirrors the relational broken bridges the protagonist reminisces on throughout the game. Friends who’ve left, former friends still physically present but your friendship irrevocably lost. The protagonist moves like a ghost themself, lingering in the various locations largely unobserved or ignored, acting out echoes of the past. In one instance, they flee from a possible interaction. A sense of loss permeates; we and the protagonist pause in spaces once carefully designed and curated that are now abandoned, useless.

The protagonist has decided to leave before they really know where they’re going, but the emotional heart of the game is discovering a sense of purpose, reviving a broken connection. Leaning in to the memories instead of shying away. Following this path requires some minor puzzle-solving; while you can reach an ending without it, it’s definitely the worse of the two.

The game is accompanied by music written by the author. I played with it off on my first playthrough, but listened to it my second time through and found it fitting, a subtly melancholy backdrop.

Atmospheric, evocative, bittersweet. I liked it a lot.

I loved the slow-paced, realistically grounded exploration around London in this one, as the characters visit real places (illustrated by real photographs) and discuss real films, books, and politics. The premise—Nica is meeting her long-distance girlfriend, Chun, for the first time—was compelling and also very of-the-moment. The clear divide between them was captured so well, with Nica’s thoughts contrasting with what she chooses to actually say/reveal to Chun. And then halfway through, at an emotional cliffhanger of a moment, we switch and get the same few days recounted from Chun’s point of view, seeing the divide from the other side.

As an outside observer, and especially after getting both perspectives, I wanted them both to just be more open with each other; each character’s internal monologue reveals so many things they could be talking about and connecting over, but they both choose to play it so safe, keeping conversation surface-level. I love seeing this kind of thing explored in fiction, how terrifying and difficult connecting with other humans can be, and this was an excellent portrayal.

At the end, when the two finally discuss their relationship, their interactions explode a bit into melodrama, and this part didn’t feel as believable to me, both as to the characters’ emotions and their dialogue. (Spoiler - click to show)I also had a hard time believing either of them would want to continue the relationship after that. Overall I quite enjoyed and appreciated it; the ending just didn’t quite land.

(Sidenote: I loved the quality-of-life feature of the little progress bar that lets you know how many pages are left.)

Not marking any spoilers because, given the nature of the game, it's not really possible to spoil the solution!

This one really drew me in; I liked the *Toby's Nose*-esque setup where you can guess the solution to the mystery at any time, but to gain any basis for guessing you first have to thoroughly investigate. I enjoyed checking out the different locations, unlocking more information as I explored, uncovering potential murder weapons, and most of all learning about the deceased circus employees, their backgrounds and their relationships to each other.

So far, so good... but eventually I hit a wall. A massive, impassible wall. I'd been to every location many times; I had taken notes on which bodies I'd found, where I'd found them, and how they'd died. The problem was, there was one body I hadn't found---Vivian's. And without finding her body, I had no way of guessing where or how she had died. I also had no idea who had done it. I'd been able to concretely rule out a few weapons, and... that was it.

I finally came up with some semblance of a theory and guessed. Wrongly. Again, and again. Through brute force, I finally got the answer... and was absolutely baffled, because I hadn't seen anything that would have led me to that conclusion. (I was able to solve the after-puzzle very handily, though, because *that* information I had!)

I now know that the who, how, and where of the murder are all randomized---different players get different solutions, and it seems some of those solutions are discoverable! I really wish I had gotten a different one, because finding the clues and piecing the answer together would have been very satisfying. I can only conclude that either I completely overlooked a description of me finding Vivian's lion-chewed bones in the illusion gallery (I ended up opening the source in Twine to see *how* I was supposed to have gained the knowledge that "lions" was the murder weapon), *or* that the game had a bug and her bones simply didn't exist in my playthrough. I also am not sure if I missed something implicating Casper; I did uncover info related to them, but nothing sufficient to make me believe they murdered Vivian.

As alluded to above, the randomized solution will make players' experiences with this game vary widely. Sadly, for me, it was a game with a lot of promise that ended up falling flat.

This is a short game with a lot of depth, and one of my favorites in the 2024 Short Games Showcase. It starts with a classic “protagonist wakes up with amnesia” conceit, but not as an excuse for having a second-person AFGNCAAP protagonist; this MC is a specific character, a knight named Lazarrien, and his story is told in third-person past tense. We don’t play as him, but we share his disorientation as both he and we work to piece together his backstory and what’s happened to wreck the land around him.

The latter is depicted with vivid imagery—a field of burning roses, hills made of wax; evocatively described devastation. And through a series of encounters with NPCs, our hero gains a sense of purpose: to break the curse that’s caused all this. We follow Lazarrien as he makes his way toward the mountain peak where the solution apparently lies, with a demon in slow but steady pursuit. As he draws closer to his goal, the straightforward narrative he’s been given is slowly called into question. The story starts with uncertainty, then provides clarity, only to make us and Lazarrien question it.

This game was written for the Single-Choice jam, the conceit of which is that there can only be one point in the story where the player is given a choice between multiple options. Lazarrien builds to that choice and gives it momentous-feeling weight, letting the player decide whether Lazarrien will continue to doggedly pursue his mission at all costs, or whether a new desire has supplanted that. (Spoiler - click to show)However, the game then quickly subverts the importance of that choice, revealing that both options ultimately lead to the same result—which doesn't at all undercut the choice’s emotional impact.

The ending finally reveals the full truth of what’s going on, but even beyond that there’s one more layer to the game that I didn’t discover until I replayed it to write this review. Which path you’ll take through the story is randomized every time you start a new playthrough; it’s possible for you to encounter each of four NPCs in any order. And this is cool not only because it means you’ll see a slightly different story on a replay, but also because it’s diegetic: the story’s ending reveals that Lazarrien is undergoing a trial, for which he’s allowed endless attempts (although his memory is wiped at the beginning of each), and the only thing that might change each time is the order of the encounters.

In a different game, this could be a setup for players to try again and eventually succeed—but here, it’s made very clear that Lazarrien will never pass the trial. Players can repeat the game over and over, seeing the different iterations of the encounters, but no matter what choice you make at that single choice point, there’s only ever one ending—he fails. And this feels fitting; I’ve avoided stating the one big spoiler, but I will note that the subtitle is “A Love Story”. Lazarrien is repeating this endless, doomed cycle for love—what could be more romantic than that? (Here I will break my big-spoiler avoidance to add: (Spoiler - click to show)Especially when, in addition to being an outright queer story with the m/m romance, there are queer resonances to the “forbidden love” aspect, such as Lazarrien’s father decrying him as a sinner for loving a demon.)

The fatalistic ending does clash a bit with the fact that the game rewards replays; I’m typically a big replayer, but after my first playthrough of Lazarrien, having made my preferred choice and then seeing that it didn’t ultimately matter, I didn’t feel a need to play again. But after I replayed the other day and discovered the trick, I found it a cool design choice as a way to maintain the linearity but still give the player a fresh experience. I just think there needs to be a little more of an incentive to replay (maybe instead of the ending going back to the title screen, the game starts again automatically?).

All in all, I found it an excellent work of IF. As a bonus to everything I discussed above, it’s also presented stylishly, with a nice layout of the text and good use of color (I would just up the contrast of the brownish text a bit). I very much look forward to future work by DemonApologist!

This is a story I can't imagine being told as effectively in any other medium. The combination of short bits of text with "click to continue" interactivity, letting the reader take each new piece of information in at their own pace, and the lo-fi Decker illustrations and text effects all work so well together. The childhood loneliness, the gendered expectations, the horror of having a womb when the idea of pregnancy repulses you--it's all here in this tiny package, presented matter-of-factly but with so much underlying emotion. An engaging and impressive work.