Ratings and Reviews by Tabitha

I liked this one a lot! Normally I get a little antsy when an IF game starts with several long screens of non-interactive text in a row, as I start wondering when I’ll be able to participate in the story, but I was drawn into this one right away once I learned the identity of the protagonist: a starving mother taking a desperate, foolish risk for the sake of her family. Way more interesting than a confident, sword-bearing hero! When “what do you do”-type choices start appearing, while they don’t always necessarily matter plot-wise, I liked how much they focused on characterizing the PC, Madelaine. For instance, the first one comes after you’ve entered the monster-infested cave and the opening seals up after you. You can stoically continue on, or have a moment of panic and bang on the blockage with your fists. I chose the latter, which only resulted in bloodied hands, but I liked getting to roleplay Madelaine as getting freaked out in that moment. Games where the PC is a specific character that I get to inhabit are usually my favorite mode of choice-based IF (and the one I largely write), so that alone had me hooked.

As the story went on, the plot got me, too. This game has a familiar fantasy backdrop but puts its own spin on magic and magical creatures, and I enjoyed accompanying Madelaine as she finds out there’s much more to the world of the Saltcast than she ever knew, and gets pulled into their struggles while still sticking to her own goal. I chose to play her as compassionate, willing to give these creature the benefit of the doubt and choosing kindness as much as she could, and the fact that I could have taken contrasting, more ruthless and self-serving options made my choices feel more meaningful. And playing Madelaine this way meant that the mission she ends up on with the Saltcast became personal, rather than just a means to an end. Even as the stakes grew beyond just Madelaine and her family, the story always stayed very grounded in Madelaine’s role in the events and her concerns, which I appreciated.

(Spoiler - click to show)When, in an excellent twist, Madelaine becomes fully (literally) absorbed in the larger-scale goings-on, I loved the author’s choice to do a time-skip and a perspective shift. Part 3 has the player embodying Madelaine’s daughter, 10 years after the end of Part 2, as, in a parallel to the game’s opening, she enters the cave for her own family-motivated reasons—discovering her mother’s fate. This lets us see the effect Madelaine’s actions had on her family (and beyond), and allows for a resolution to her story that wouldn’t have been as satisfying if we’d stayed in her perspective.

I do have a few things to nitpick as far as presentation. I think a slightly more dressed-up UI would be nice, something with stronger fantasy vibes—a more distinctive font, a curated color for the links, styling of the sidebar, etc. And while I liked the artwork—I think the one of Grissol was my favorite, and the changing representation of the lantern in the sidebar was a nice touch—it could be integrated a bit more smoothly; it usually loaded slower than the text, and its placement in the middle of the page felt a bit awkward. (I also encountered a broken image toward the beginning, the one of a spellbeast.) So some adjustments to the UI and the handling of the images could make the whole appearance tie together better.

There are also some immersion-breaking moments, like when a link reads "Go back", referring to the player returning to the previous page after a digression--I don't want to be suddenly reminded that I'm essentially navigating a website (this is more fully explained in the Intfiction.org version of this review here). But I only mention these things because they’re fairly small changes that I think would make an already great game even better!

I overall enjoyed this game--two of the puzzles were particularly fun ((Spoiler - click to show)wacky navigation!), and overall it wasn't very hard (although I did peek at the walkthrough once or twice). You have a clear goal and get to explore a limited space and collect items in order to accomplish it.

However, I had nearly completed the game when I discovered that I'd softlocked myself early on. (I also did so another way mid-game, but it was easy enough to go back to an earlier save.) Lacking the motivation to completely start over, I just read the ending in the ClubFloyd transcript. And now I'm mostly writing this review in hopes of saving futures players from my fate!

The big softlock: (Spoiler - click to show)Selling the pillow to the thugs too early. This should be the last thing you do, not the first! (The reason being, (Spoiler - click to show)if you go back to that area after selling it to them, they'll kill you on sight, and you need to go there at the end of the game to (Spoiler - click to show)put the egg in a nest in a tree there.) If you're stuck on how to progress initially, (Spoiler - click to show)take a closer look at the inn's back room.

Another potential softlock at the beginning is (Spoiler - click to show)eating the egg. Don't eat it!!