Reviews by Tabitha

I can certainly see what the intent of this work is, but for me it wasn’t very successful. It wants to humanize the suffering that’s happening in Palestine, but it speeds through multiple generations so quickly and perfunctorily that I never felt like any of the characters were real people. It’s just a sketch of a family, with 100% predictable story beats--a house and land passing down from one generation to the next, young love, an aging parent, a tragic death. The game wanted to elicit emotion from me, but it didn’t do enough to earn that. If it had slowed down and developed its characters as individuals, and really explored the circumstances they find themselves in instead of skipping from one major development to the next, I think it would have been a lot more effective.

A confession: I’ve only ever read one Agatha Christie novel, and it’s the Poirot-less And Then There Were None, so I went into this game with absolutely zero knowledge of the characters or their circumstances. But fortunately, that didn’t matter. There was enough context provided that I could easily pick up the backstory, and I was charmed right away by both the writing and the setup--a bachelor and a widower sharing a flat and co-raising the latter’s children together. The homoerotic potential of this arrangement is high, and the game doesn’t disappoint there; I loved the results of repeatedly examining Poirot and the response to telling the PC to kiss him.

As other reviewers have mentioned, the biggest hiccup I encountered was the mystery bit; I spent a fair bit of time re-examining everything I’d already looked at, which was kind of tedious, and when it came time to make an accusation, the game’s multiple layers of “Are you sure?” made me chicken out the first time--but at that point the game wouldn’t let me reload a save, so I had to quit and restart. But that was the only rough spot I encountered; overall, this was a very enjoyable experience.

This one resonated a lot with me. I was glad to get to follow all the threads of Yancy’s thoughts, feelings, and reactions about/to their mother’s death; there are a lot, and some of them are contradictory, because this is a situation where of course their feelings are complex and messy, and the game did a great job exploring that. While initially I thought some of the conversations with the friends felt too neat, too pat, the game itself called this out, with Yancy’s sort-of diary entries reflecting that while they may have told their friends they agreed with their advice or found it helpful, really they just said what their friends wanted to hear while knowing things aren’t actually that simple or easy.

There’s also a meta element where Yancy talks to us, the players, about the fact that they are the main character in a game. They wonder whether they’re really a person, and essentially ask us to treat them like one, because there is a real human behind their existence, who created them and has given them some of their (the creator’s) own trauma and complex emotions. This made me think about the vulnerability of sharing a work like this, and how it’s reviewers’ responsibility to take care with how we approach writing about it, because when we judge the characters or emotions on display, we could very well be judging a real person.

This is one of my favorite games of the comp, which I say having both tested and recently replayed it. The presentation is gorgeous, with the designs and colors of the backgrounds adding to the mood of each scene, evoking a storm-beset sky, light from a distant lighthouse, a closeup of a lighthouse lens, a solar eclipse. The writing is rich and clever, with coinages like “lightmare” and brief poems where clicked-on words transform, “loathsome” for instance becoming “lonesome”.

The setup is a fantastical student/master conflict, a sorcerer-in-training forced to study under a proud, power-hungry teacher who insists that his way is the only way, dismissing the student’s ideas out of hand. Raekard, the master, views the demons they’re capable of summoning as tools rather than people, deserving only of subjection and control. Finnit, the student, refuses to participate in a system that he recognizes as cruel, seeing these supernatural entities as fellow sapient beings. The tension of these competing viewpoints is brought to a head when Raekard demands that Finnit complete a seemingly-impossible trial at a cursed lighthouse (the titular Pharos Fidelis); faced with this challenge, Finnit turns to a demon for help, putting both of their beliefs to the test.

While Vosphar, the demon Finnit calls upon, does have the potential to be dangerous, he comes across as the more vulnerable party of the two, having been previously used by Raekard as a demonstration of the complete control sorcerers are capable of exercising. Finnit’s treatment of him is a complete contrast, and results in him choosing to trust in Finnit’s good intentions: “The master summoner’s circle had felt like a steel clawed hand grasping his heart and shredding him through the fabric of reality itself. This summoner’s circle felt like fingers too soft to even grip his tattered sleeves.” As the two settle in to working together, Vosaphar provides a new perspective on everything around them. He’s able to communicate with the strange, seemingly-menacing creature that lingers around the lighthouse, revealing that she doesn’t want to hurt anyone, and he sees the beauty of the place where they’ve found themselves rather than viewing it as an obstacle to be overcome:

Grim though Finnit alleged the environment to be, the devil found it much more inviting than the calciferous wastes. It was full of energy. Full of life. The wind was ferocious, sending his dark hair aflutter. Torrents rushed around him, forming and reforming in ceaseless rhythm. Filaments of lightning painted the sky in dazzling colors. It was astonishing to witness.

If this was—as Finnit insisted—the result of a curse, Vosaphar wondered why anyone would want to end it.

These themes are mirrored in the history of the Pharos Fidelis, whose backstory unfolds over the course of the work; it’s a layered narrative, with historical records interspersed with the present-day story. In a site of every-stormy seas, the original inhabitants found a peaceful way to live, having “fine-tuned their relationship with the island to keep things running”. “Relationship” is the key word here; these residents worked with, rather than against, their environment. But then empire arrived and did what empire does, dominating, subjugating, and killing. When the lighthouse, a marvel of engineering, was finished, it only continued the pattern: “It drank and drank the soul of the sky, but its thirst never sated. It found other souls to imbibe, betraying enough light to pierce the mantle of misery it maintained. Commerce resumed.”

Finnit and Vosaphar bond as they investigate the present state of the lighthouse and study its history; the historical documents are presented with both Raekard’s annotations and Finnit and Vosphar’s commentary, with the latter demonstrating the rapport between them and showing the development of their relationship. There are other lovely, understated moments, like this one where Finnit turns Vosaphar’s frequent address of “[adjective] one” back on him:

“I should look at your shoulders,” the devil said.

“Later?” Finnit turned over on his bedroll. “It’s not that bad. I appreciate the thought,” he mumbled. “You’re sweet. Sweet one.”

Vosaphar stared into the crimson flames for a long while after that.

Raekard insists that demons are evil; that overpowering them and using them as killing machines is perfectly appropriate because, he claims, they are inherently monstrous. But as we witness Raekard’s viewpoints versus Vosaphar’s reality, and the full history of this place, we have to ask who the real monsters are here. The records relating to the Pharos Fidelis reveal a history of human atrocities: a werewolf is listed as a “proscribed entity” that’s been “lawfully destroyed by hunters”; demons were summoned solely to be burned on the pre-lighthouse pyre (to which Raekard’s only comment is, “A senseless waste of ritual components”). And in the earliest recorded history, we see the seeds of all this, when an outsider who sought to understand the islands’ inhabitants rather than conquer them is put on trial:

JUSTICIAR:
At what point did you realize this entity was a vampire?

ACCUSED:
Not until after, when…

JUSTICIAR:
When what?

ACCUSED:
When you killed her. Robbed us of her wisdom, kindness, perspective, heart, all she contributed to her community. And for what? Some ash? Dust? Is there not already enough collecting between the folds of your ◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆?

JUSTICIAR:
Cleric, strike that last term for obscenity.

ACCUSED:
What, you’re more scandalized by me describing your dust-crusted ◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆ than your violence?

Finnit and Vosaphar’s relationship shows the transformative power of approaching the Other with kindness rather than aggression. Early on, we learn of Vosaphar’s wounds, for which Raekard is to blame: “They had become so central to his existence, for so long, that they had infested his identity.” But later, this changes as a result of his bond with Finnit. “His slash wounds scabbed over more readily, healing further with each attempt. […] From his back spread wings wrought of fire, eldritch blue roiled with red and magenta—the colors of Finnit’s own magic, now intertwined with Vosaphar’s.” In the end, the two discover the secret that let the indigenous residents live peacefully in this fraught environment, which results in a shattering of the cursed lens, destroying the symbol of subjugation and colonial power.

I mentioned earlier that this is a layered narrative, and there’s a final layer that I haven’t addressed yet. The story is told in third-person, with moments where the player can choose between two impulses for Vosaphar to heed. It’s a different way for the player to shape the story than the typical IF approach where you’re playing as one of the characters, but it doesn’t feel jarring or out of place. (Spoiler - click to show)But then hints creep in that something more is going on, until a moment that was literally jaw-dropping for me, where it’s revealed that we the player actually have been a character in the story all along—one who is entwined with the Pharos Fidelis, with Vosaphar, and with Finnit, and has been watching and shaping the events for our own purposes. But in contrast to the Raekardian approach, we’re only able to exercise influence, not control, and there’s even a point where Vosaphar may reject your choice and make his own decision.

At the story’s end, the choices you’ve made are summarized in a way that makes it clear which ones took you away from the ideal path, and you have a chance to change any you’d like so that you can reach the best/most satisfying ending. But there’s value in seeing the worse outcomes; the choices play off each other in different ways to make quite a few ending variations. It’s a very rich work, as evidenced by the length of this review. The whole thing rings with resonance for our present moment. As those in power cast marginalized groups as dangerous Others who don’t deserve basic rights, we always have a choice of whether to fall in line with this ideology or to resist it.

What’s the purpose of IF reviews? Why do we write them? Is it to point out issues in a work to help authors improve? To point out issues in a work to warn potential players away? “Too buggy, don’t bother.” I’ve written reviews in an effort to better understand a work; to encourage others to play it; to give hopefully helpful feedback to the author. I’ve written reviews to call out harmful content in a work, solely for the purpose of “I want it on the record that this is in here and I don’t think that’s okay.” I’ve written reviews that were overly harsh and nitpicky, reviews I wouldn’t write today.

This game doesn’t need any more reviews saying that it needed testing. One of those is enough; it’s a statement that doesn’t need repeating. But I don’t think we can ever have too many reviews engaging with the content and themes of a work. And if reviews get written that only engage with the technical side of a game, why not one that only engages with the story?

I played this one back at the beginning of the comp, and it’s stuck with me. “A baby is crying. His baby. His baby is crying. And you are him, your baby is crying.” The PC’s weariness, helplessness; how can you take care of another human being when you feel so exhausted and broken? Dragging your aching body around the bed. You care about your child, of course you do, but in this moment you don’t know what to do for them. You’re a single parent, living in relative poverty. Can you give this being you’ve brought into the world a good life?

You feel your own vocal cords contracting and stinging, as if you are the one who has been crying all this time.

You try to comfort the baby, rocking it and shushing, but the baby keeps crying despite your best efforts.

There’s an added layer revealed at the end, that the PC, George, is a trans man. He asks his child:

"Will you grow up to be trans, like me? Will I influence you? Can you be trans if you don't get an assigned gender at birth? I certainly haven't assigned you anything...assigned basket at birth only. I hope the fact that i am raising you on my own won't like...scar you in any way. Isn't that what people say too, if kids only get one gender role parent instead of two, that turns them gay? Well, if you do turn out gay at least I can help you. Maybe if you turned out straight that would be the real issue, we would have no common ground and slowly grow apart...well, that would be very silly of us. Let's not let that happen."

These reflections on being a poor, trans single parent without much of a support network are moving. And I love seeing George maintain a sense of humor despite the circumstances. I think the answer to my question above is “yes”; George clearly loves his child and is determined to do his best for them, despite his fear and uncertainty.

"I want to give you so much more than I have, now. I don't know what I'm doing. I haven't known since I found out you were coming. One day I was just going about my life, and the next I was going to be a parent. [...] i still feel like it will not be enough, like i will not be enough."

You/George manage to briefly soothe the baby, but when they start crying again, the game ends with you doing what’s needed, pushing through the weariness and pain for the sake of the brand new human who's now in your care:

Only that bottle will do now, probably. You lay it back in its basket, and prepare to get up.

I played this one a few weeks ago now, and I’m not going to talk about the puzzles or gameplay or implementation at all, because I know other people will cover them and they aren’t what stuck with me. What I remember about this game is the sense of inevitability; you will progress, you will go onward (you don’t navigate with directional commands, just “forward”), deeper into this cave system, closer to your fate.

What is the fate that awaits you at the end, and why are you being compelled toward it? These are questions that arise early on, as I wondered why the PC, accompanied by two guards as well as someone called “the heir” who seems to be their lover, was being brought to this place with no say in the matter. There’s clearly a purpose to it, one the heir fully believes in; we don’t know what the PC thinks.

The guards start out derisive, disgusted by the PC (again for reasons unknown), but as you progress, a transformation begins. (Spoiler - click to show)You start falling apart, skin peeling away, fluids oozing out—and your companions transform too, in their attitude toward you, the guards becoming fawning and worshipful, wanting to taste your leavings, while the heir grows near-ecstatic. We’re leading up to something, to a conclusion, a revelation… except not, because the game ends before bringing any of this together; it’s another “Part 1” situation, weirdly common in this comp, but this one didn’t warn about that in the front matter, so I had no idea that it wasn’t a complete work in itself (okay, looking back at the comp page just now, there is a “Part 1: The Descent” subtitle [which here on IFDB is part of the blurb, making it even clearer], but in my defense the placement and formatting of the subtitles on that page has led my eyes to skip over them, so I hadn’t noticed it before). So while there’s certainly an interesting setup here, sadly it doesn’t go anywhere in this piece.

An edited version of a review originally posted at intfiction.org on September 24, 2025

I... did not enjoy this game, for multiple reasons. One was that it's buggy; it frequently referenced choices I hadn’t made and items I didn’t have with me. But much more significant was that it’s gross toward its female characters, including playing the idea of sexual assault for laughs.

BERT: Who has the gold?
SEWARD: The King. It is well-guarded, in the castle.
CICILIA: As is my sister. [...] I guess she was the beautiful one.

Cicilia later elaborates, "Every maiden, when she comes of age, must present herself at the castle. Some never return." And later we get very explicit clarification:

BERT: Is she being violated, there?
CICILIA: Of course.

However, Cicilia is not actually particularly concerned about her sister; she's more focused on aggressively flirting with the PC and fretting that she wasn't being beautiful enough to be taken. Besides the cavalier treatment of the sister being kidnapped, this is a case of a female character being written shallowly to prop up the male protagonist (who, frankly, has done nothing to deserve her attention except... be from the 21st century).

She winks. Is she flirting or suggesting that…
CICILIA: She’s the most beautiful girl in the village, you know. And unmarried. Unsullied. We think. A Wizard for a husband! What girl should be so lucky?
BERT: Are you trying to seduce me on behalf of your…
CICILIA: Legs like this!
CICILIA lifts her skirts.

Overall, I found the story and the main character actively unpleasant. His attitude made sense at the beginning, while he was being treated like crap at a miserable retail job, but he's also a total asshole to his mom and friends. He then gets rewarded with the opportunity to become a hero in a poorly-realized version of the medieval era. Very much not a game for me.

The opening of this one had me intrigued, with the PC waking up with amnesia on a boat surrounded by five shadow-selves. You have to travel to five islands to get back your memories, which for the player means gaining more and more of an understanding of this world and what led the protagonist to be in this situation. Sadly, I can't say I fully enjoyed this process--the PC is a pretty unpleasant person, and unluckily for me, the first island I picked had gameplay that fell afoul of Brian Rushton's “a perfect simulation of a boring or annoying situation is boring or annoying” wisdom. Made to complete a series of repetitive tasks, the PC becomes angry at the NPC giving the orders; meanwhile, I became frustrated at the game for simulating tedium too well.

I'm not sure if I was meant to empathize with the PC once I got the full story. (Spoiler - click to show)Basically, the presence of gods and spirits in the human world started giving people a nasty illness that makes them deteriorate and fall apart... and the PC decided that the best way to do that was to defeat and drive them out forever. I had a lot of questions, though, like--did anyone try talking to the spirits about this? Did anyone investigate to learn why this was happening and if anything less drastic could be done about it? Because of my lack of conviction that the PC's course of action was the right one, I didn't feel aligned with his goals during the climactic ending section(Spoiler - click to show), and certainly wasn't happy when he inevitably triumphed.

It is very possible that I missed or overlooked some crucial piece of the story; after encountering that tedious section, I was somewhat disengaged from the rest of the game. I'm interested in reading more reviews to see what others make of this one.

Violent Delight begins with you ordering an old video game cartridge… and then waiting. For one hour, in real-time. This mechanic has been talked about a lot; mostly, people seem to be frustrated by it. But I think it’s definitely got a purpose in the game. For one thing, the player and PC are aligned in the wait, and it’s for lack of anything better to do that you’ll try to check out the “Iffy Camp” games on your simulated computer… only to receive the message, “Sorry, art can no longer be experienced in your country as a measure to protect the children.” We’ll come back to this. Besides that, I saw it as a commentary on our instant gratification culture. Imagine ordering something from eBay and having it arrive within one hour. We already have next-day shipping (and I think same-day shipping is a thing with some companies?), but this is next-level: the PC can purchase something and have a mere hour wait… and yet players are still going to be impatient, wanting it to come even faster. This is underscored by the option to “demand efficiency” from the already very efficient shipping company.

After the one-hour wait, the cartridge arrives and the meat of the game starts. Other reviews have described this part, so I won’t repeat it, but as we go down the layers of “The Playground”, we see the child characters from the first level get older, and as they do things basically get worse and worse for them. There’s a hell, but that’s an early level; just wait till you get to the office. At the end, the boundaries of the world of The Playground and the PC’s real life blur and merge. Because everything that’s happening in the game is just… life. School is cruel, hospitals are cruel, workplaces are cruel… the world is a shitty place, systems are evil, and we’re stuck inside them, getting beaten down and ground up.

Remember those geoblocked IFComp, I mean Iffy Camp, games? They’re blocked to protect the children, because god forbid children be exposed to violence… Except real life is violence, and that irony of hand-wringing fears about “the children” while the same governments let said children grow up in poverty and be dehumanized by capitalism and stripped of the things that give them joy is captured so perfectly by Violent Delight.

I’ve now played all three games entered in IFComp 2025 by Lamp Post Projects (LPP; this review is going to get fairly acronym-heavy!), and have, inevitably, been comparing them. My favorite is Fantasy Opera (FO); one reason for that is its specific details, making it very grounded in its 17th-century-Italy-inspired opera house setting. The other two LPP games, while drawing on specific historical inspirations (which are detailed in the “behind the game” documents that each links to at the end), had much more generic-feeling fantasy settings. Another thing I preferred in FO is that the PC was a bit less of a blank slate; they have a defined profession (detective), and depending on the stats you pick, they may have knowledge of different areas of the world/society.

In The Path of Totality (PT), the other LPP IFComp game which this review is not actually about, you get to pick at the beginning what it is that’s drawn you to go on the central pilgrimage, which allowed me to characterize the PC a bit. In The Secrets of Sylvan Gardens (SSG), though, you are pretty much the blankest of blank slates. In both SGG and PT, a big part of the focus is on forming relationships with the NPCs—but in both, the way to form those relationships is basically just to always pick the nice/pleasant dialogue option, as opposed to the more neutral or cold/rude ones. As such, the relationship building in SSG didn’t feel authentic to me; I wasn’t developing relationships with these people, but just avoiding being a jerk, and that alone was enough for them to become attached to me. I would have liked opportunities to actively characterize the PC more. For example, what if there were multiple nice/supportive options, but in different tones, like earnest/sincere, commiserating, and lighthearted?

I liked the setup of SSG, with the PC’s mysterious draw to the titular gardens, getting pulled into an old mystery and the current woes of the staff. But again, I preferred FO’s investigation mechanics—rolling dice for knowledge or dexterity checks, interviewing people; in SSG it often just felt like “make sure you click every option.” And the puzzles felt too easy: the (Spoiler - click to show)naiad’s name was so strongly signposted it didn’t really feel like a puzzle; the (Spoiler - click to show)tooth one was easily solved by lawnmowering (although I did like the line-drawing one; it was satisfying to get it right on my first guess!). I also missed the sense of time pressure from FO; the pacing of SSG felt almost too leisurely, where there was a sense of (or sometimes it was literal) just waiting around until circumstances were right for the next story beat. The journal segments also slowed the pacing; I’d prefer if they were available to view anytime from the menu, so I could refresh my memory on prior events (as I played over several days), instead of being inserted into the story.

Going back to the actual plot: you discover that (Spoiler - click to show)three staff members at Sylvan Gardens have magical ailments (one of which is an “everyone you love will suffer a terrible fate” curse) and that the long-deceased founder of the estate, Pecunia, hid her store of magical plant seeds behind various puzzley gating mechanisms. The fourth NPC, ostensibly the gardens’ hermit, later reveals himself as a centuries-old dryad who’s the only surviving member of his species as far as he knows, after Pecunia destroyed his forest to build her home, inadvertently wiping out all the other resident dryads. So there’s a lot of pain and trauma in these characters’ backstories, more than I had expected given the gentle tone and vibes of the game, and the way these past tragedies were incorporated didn’t quite work for me. For example, (Spoiler - click to show)Felix the gardener discovered his curse when his wife died tragically, but I don’t recall ever getting to ask him about her; she’s just a sad fact to add pathos to his plight. I wanted the game to sit with the tragedies imposed on its characters a bit more, rather than just using them as motivation for the player/PC.

This is a fairly critical review, but I think LPP is a skilled author who’s clearly put a lot of work into all three of these games and is doing cool things with Ink (replacing the continuous-scroll text pane with a single page + history view; adding a nice menu system with multiple save slots; incorporating lovely watercolor art and original music). I did enjoy my time with SSG, and I look forward to seeing what LPP does in the future!

Originally posted at intfiction.org on September 25, 2025

This is a visual novel that drops you straight into the life of the PC with little to help orient you. In short order you meet a virtual boss and a character that seems to be an AI that lives in the PC’s head, and learn that the PC is happy with her low-level waste management job and has no interest in climbing the ranks (which, it’s later revealed, does seem like it comes with more risks than rewards).

What is “waste management” in this sci-fi world? It seems to be collecting detritus from various planets, cataloging it, and then destroying it. But it was never clear to me why this is being done. Why is this corporation “managing waste” on a bunch of long-abandoned planets? In a way the finds are treated as archaeological objects, with the cataloguing component of the process, but the motivation behind documenting rather than just destroying is never elaborated. Also, when the gameplay shifts to you going on these search-and-collect missions, you’re only allowed to take one object from each, which seems entirely counter to the idea of waste management, and is likewise never explained.

The heart of the story, though, is the PC’s relationships—with Maria, the AI she (from what I gathered) designed and had implanted in her own brain, and with the two mission companions you get to choose between. I replayed to experience both paths, one with the company golden child turned defector turned reeducated drone (or so the PC initially believes) Zinnia, and the other with the volatile former racer, now condemned criminal Raven. In my playthroughs, at least, the PC develops an attachment to whichever one you choose, which happens largely without player input; the main player choices are of which piece of junk you salvage on each trip, and from peeking at the walkthrough, these are what determine which ending you’ll get.

On the Raven path, my choices led to (Spoiler - click to show)me forming an attachment to him, ripping the AI mechanism out of my head, and preparing for the two of us to flee together… only for me to ultimately betray him to the company, turning him in and ending the story with my AI back in place. I’m not sure what it was about my choices of objects that led to this dramatic series of events. The Zinnia path, in contrast, was much more subdued—the PC’s opinion of her slowly changed, and (Spoiler - click to show)the two ended by professing love for each other. This path also had more tension with Maria; her presence seemed like more of a burden to the PC in this route, with regular interludes emphasizing that.

While the sprites are original art, the backgrounds are photographs of real places (mostly buildings), some with real people in them, which made them a hard sell for portraying abandoned sci-fi planets. Maybe this was on purpose, the game using its sci-fi trappings to comment on real life, but if that is the case, the parallels it’s drawing definitely went over my head.

So yeah, there’s a lot of interesting stuff in here, but my main feeling coming away was one of confusion. The company the PC works for seems to be powerful and evil, but I was never sure what they were actually doing aside from sending employees on these waste management missions. What do higher-ranking employees do? What does it mean to be a “defector” in this world?

I’m not sure if this is the kind of VN where getting all the endings will unlock a “true” ending that sheds new light on everything that’s gone before; I only played each path once, but the walkthrough reveals they both have a variety of possible endings. Having spent an hour and a half with the game already, though, I wasn’t particularly motivated to replay several more times in order to collect all the endings. I may dip back in at least once, though, to at least see just how different the outcomes of each path can be.

I really liked this one... up until the ending. I enjoyed inhabiting the main character and exploring the unique situation they (she?) found themself in, pulled from academia into the military to work on a top-secret translation assignment, with the shadow of their deceased war-hero mother constantly looming over them, influencing everyone's perceptions and expectations. But ultimately, the payoff was disappointing. In my first playthrough, after making basically zero translation progress, the outcome of the climactic moment came down to a random guess--which I got wrong, to disastrous consequences.

Fortunately I had enabled the "back" button and could easily try different choices until I got a "good" ending, but even this one felt very abrupt and perfunctory and was unsatisfying. Both endings referenced a character who I hadn't heard of before, leaving me feeling like I had missed something important. But with the "save" function broken, replaying over and over until I discovered the key path(s) felt like more trouble than it was worth (until today, when I opened the JS file and poked around a bit to get some guidance. But obviously, having to resort to that is not ideal!). This feels like a game where you need to see multiple paths to get the full picture, but it fights against itself by not making it easy to do so.

I had fun playing this one, but ultimately came away with a rather poor impression of it after looking at the walkthrough. Initially, I really enjoyed exploring the possibility space, both as far as testing out commands and, on replaying, being more strategic and seeing if any of my strategizing would pay off. After five playthroughs (some of which, admittedly, were not actual attempts to do well), I thought I had a pretty good handle on what was and wasn't possible. But when I cracked open the walkthrough out of curiosity, I saw multiple possible actions that I'd never thought of.

The walkthrough starts out with a list of useful commands, which I think should have been included in the game itself; players could have a choice of whether to view them or not, but I think the player should definitely be made aware of their existence. Especially because I learned from the walkthrough that some of my attempted actions that had been rejected by the game were actually possible, I just hadn’t been using the right phrasing. Implementing more synonyms and/or including helpful failure messages that point the player toward the correct wording would help with that issue, too.

But what's a bigger deal to me is that, pre-walkthrough, I’d concluded that ending the game (Spoiler - click to show)with some level of failure was inevitable—whether the empire being completely overtaken, or its borders shrinking. And I liked that; the game seemed to be saying (Spoiler - click to show)“No matter what you do, empires are doomed to fall.” But the walkthrough presents (Spoiler - click to show)a series of commands that leads to an ending where you've not only held onto your current territory, you've expanded and conquered others'.

Given that this is the only path presented in the walkthrough, clearly the author considers it the ideal ending. With Drew Cook's essay on "The Game Formerly Known as Hidden Nazi Mode" fresh in my mind, I couldn't help feeling that my whole experience of the game had been deflated by this authorial intervention. My own interpretation went out the window, replaced by "Oh, it's just a game where (Spoiler - click to show)you win by growing your empire." The game's fantasy world is very generic/traditional, with barbaric tribes harassing your borders and women appearing only as courtesans or brides. Before, when left to interpret the game myself, I could see these as purposeful choices; now, though, they just seem lazy.

This is the third mystery IF game by thesleuthacademy. I enjoyed the previous ones, and I had a good time with the exploration and deduction process in this one too, ultimately successfully figuring out the killer, motive, and means (although I did miss the actual murder weapon). Some of the criticisms I had of the previous game, The Case of the Solitary Resident (my review) were resolved here, making for overall smoother gameplay, although some of them still apply (namely, the lawnmower nature and not distinguishing between visited and unvisited links).

But the biggest issue with this one is something I only mentioned in passing in that last review. There’s a limitation to these games in that the scenarios and the characters all exist solely in service to the deduction puzzle. With this one in particular, that setup really didn’t work for me. While we meet a whole cast of characters, with names and emotions and secrets, in the end, all that matters is finding whodunnit; the details—the human details, that is—aren’t important.

This is a straight-up spoiler of the solution, so be forewarned: (Spoiler - click to show)at the end, having successfully solved the case, we’re told: “Lionel Litchfield, a workaholic [and the murder victim], barely had a social life. He ended up having an affair with the young Marguerite Hansel [the culprit].” Marguerite is Lionel’s child’s governess. Lionel is married. So these lines reveal him as both a cheating husband and an employer who’s fine with starting a sexual relationship with a young woman in his employ.

The short story A Jury of Her Peers, in which (Spoiler - click to show)two women choose not to share their conclusion that a neighbor murdered her abusive husband with the local sheriff, came to mind as I thought about this game. In The Litchfield Mystery, (Spoiler - click to show)Marguerite doesn’t get a jury, of her peers or otherwise; she gets a male police detective, embodied by me the player, whose only pursuit is of law-defined justice. There’s no option to take the power imbalance implicit in an employer-employee relationship, in the even-more-sexist-than-today society of 1937, into consideration; neither is there any concern for what Marguerite’s fate may be as a young women convicted of murder at that time. I think a version of the game that did consider these things, and perhaps let you choose whether or not to reveal your findings after solving the case, would be a stronger one.