Reviews by Tabitha

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.

This tiny Inform game is built around plays on the engine's standard responses, and the nature of Inform games in general. It will be nonsensical to players who aren't familiar with those, but for players who are, it's very cleverly done. I had a lot of fun poking at it to find all the jokes, and laughed regularly along the way.

Your Body a Temple takes a dark premise—your body has been destroyed, and you’re now choosing from a variety of “spare parts” that will form you a new one—and turns it into a fun, powerful game. You're presented with four options for each significant body part (face, torso, arms, legs, genitals), which range from a robot head to live branches, and seeing what the slate would be each time was a big part of the appeal. But what really makes the game excellent is the narrative voice. An unnamed person, referred to with she/her pronouns, is building this body for you, speaking to you as she works. She describes each potential option—its pros and cons, the ways it will affect your new life—in a caring, maybe slightly fussy, voice that’s rich with personality and sets a tone of lightness and kindness even as you can build yourself a face of nightmares and arms of live wires.

The intention of getting revenge on those who hurt you is mentioned, but it's left up to the player to decide what that will mean. There’s a human option for each body part, and the descriptions of those note that while they will offer connection with others, they also make you vulnerable. Monstrous/inhuman parts, on the other hand, will help you protect yourself and/or be a threat, at the cost of possibly driving others away. But embracing your humanity may be the best revenge after all: a “distressingly human” face “asserts personhood in the face of dehumanization. It declares agency in the face of destruction. This is a face that demands to be remembered. It is a face that haunts assailants' dreams.”

As has likely been evident from the get-go, this is a very trans story. Beyond just the conceit of choosing one’s own body, the genital options include a “masculinized orifice” and a “feminized appendage”, with no standard P or V in sight. And in a choice that feel adjacent in the way it inverts cultural beauty standards, the human option for the torso is “fat”, and its description pushes back against any negative connotations: “This is a torso built for intimacy. You will be good at cuddling, good at warming others.” In its queering of bodies and embrace of other-ness, even monstrousness, this game is quite beautiful.

This game hurts, but in the best way--capturing a little slice of what it's like to be someone else, in this case someone experiencing psychosis brought on by advanced dementia. You don't understand where you are or why you're here or what's happening around you; what else can you do but lash out? Knowing the author's personal experience with the subject (read the author's note, linked on the Itch page) only made it all the more heartbreaking. A very well crafted game, especially given that it was made in only four hours.

From the get-go, this game was just plain fun. You wake up in the middle of the night in your newly-purchased house, a fixer-upper with "good bones", and you have to pee. But beware--it turns out the house has some surprises in store, and creatures ranging from apparitions to zombies are out to get you! With frequent, humorous asides (one of my favorites: "something like a leg or maybe an arm, with too many joints and fingers (like something out of AI-generated art)") and player-friendly design (after dying, you have the option to jump back to the choice that got you killed and try a different option), it was a delight to play.

Despite the frequent deaths, the game stays away from gore, which felt like an appropriate choice in a story meant to elicit more laughs than chills. Part of the fun in fact is collecting deaths; the game keeps a list of which premature endings you've reached, and once you've won, it lets you jump back to any checkpoint to find the ones you missed (in case, like me, you're compelled to learn exactly how each creature can do away with you in an alliterative manner. Yes, I may have perished once again, but this time it was because I was yeeted by a yeti!).

The game also has a very attractive presentation, including the color scheme, the font, and the skull emojis marking choices you've tried that have led to a death. A very polished and enjoyable game!

This is a horror game based on the common-to-real-life feeling "Why am I such a mess when everyone else has it together??" Which is really underscored by the chilling ending. (Spoiler - click to show)Learning that everyone else suffers the same thing as the PC, and yet they still have no sympathy and just expect the PC to handle it, was so reminiscent of when you tell someone about a struggle you're facing and their response essentially boils down to "Yeah, that's a problem for everyone, you're not special." There were a few aspects of the game that didn't work for me, but overall I found it a clever use of the Texture engine and an interesting, well-done game.

I played this because of Porpentine's recommendation in her 2012 interview with Emily Short. To quote her:

"Highnoon is a remake of a 42 year old BASIC game ported to Twine that I find fascinating–strategic and CYOA elements entwined in a squishy way, intfic bleeding out of the mechanical layer. It’s a Wild West duel that gives you almost as many ways to fail or reject the scenario as to play it. Give me interesting failure or give me death." (Twine version)

This sums up exactly the reason I enjoyed it--it was easy to win, but the failures were honestly more fun (and funny), and I was motivated to play again multiple times to try to discover more of them.

While there are a few typos and unimplemented nouns, I absolutely love short, tightly-focused games, and this is an excellent example. Deceptively simple, it has a creeping sense of dread that grows as you progress, culminating in a reveal that both surprised me and felt completely fitting. Definitely recommend if it at all intrigues you.

CWs: (Spoiler - click to show)Dead animals (described in detail), dead body (briefly described), blood, body horror