Ratings and Reviews by Tabitha

This is a haunting story with gorgeous visuals and a lovely, unobtrusive soundtrack. It opens with a pair of mysterious, compelling lines and then shifts into a slice-of-life scene of the young teen narrator, Pierce, having a typical interaction with his mother—which serves to immediately characterize both of them and sketch a picture of their relationship. Brief statements from Piece, who often speaks of logic and uses mathematical analogies, his voice tending toward mechanical and detached, illustrate what it’s like to live in this house, with these parents:

"I set my backpack against the leftmost wall of my room and check the note [from his mother] on my desk. On our better days, this note makes up most of our communication."

"Father has already taken his seat at the chair opposite mine. I don't usually see him for dinner."

The initial backdrop for the text is an abstract digital illustration done in soft pastels, but the visuals shift as the narrative progresses—becoming louder, darker, the colors less harmonious. Pierce doesn’t understand just how wrong things are here, from his limited, inexperienced perspective, but readers will start to pick up on it, and the horror is only amplified by the gap between his knowledge and ours.

His neighbor and peer Avery makes for a good contrast, more worldly, picking up on things Pierce has missed, pointing Pierce toward truths he's failed to see. While the story never becomes genre horror, the vibes remain: a refusal to confront or acknowledge grief or to address underlying issues; children scrutinized and molded without commensurate care or love—these are all their own horrors, and Pierce does realize that on some level:

"It feels like every wall is a window with something on the other side looking in, looking at me."

"I don't think I could take him into this house, even if he wanted to give it a try."

"This house is not your home, no matter what everyone around tells you. Every hall has no end. Every window is just your reflection for someone else to see."

The use of second person here is a subversion of the typical IF “you”; the reader is not an agent in the story, the character we inhabit not playable at all. Pierce is addressing his lost sister, who has already made her choices. I won’t spoil this plotline at all, but it's the central throughline of the piece, and its resolution both cements the horror and also leads to hints of hope. At the end, the visuals resume the same colors they started with, soft and gentle again. The long-unacknowledged truth has been revealed, and maybe that means that for Pierce, the horror won’t continue indefinitely.

(One note to hopefully prevent future players from flailing with this as I did: if you visit any of the menu options, the way to return to the story is to right-click!)

An expansion of a short review originally published at Intfiction.org on May 8, 2025. I beta-tested this game. This review is based on the published version.

This game is simply delightful. A good-hearted cat protagonist, protective of her human boy but also empathetic to other creatures; a constrained environment that’s still full of details and ripe for exploration as only a cat can explore. Simple on the surface, but deep underneath, and cut through with an understated sadness that adds poignancy to what could have been a purely light-hearted adventure story.

There are many player-friendly features, making the game accessible even to players who may be new to the parser game medium. To boot, there are also several charming illustrations as well as bonus material that you can unlock based on your score. Highly recommend!

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

Radiance Inviolate had me at “queer vampires”, and it did not disappoint. Trapped in a pit with sunrise on the way, the vampire Lysander has few options... but the options he *does* have lead down more different paths than you’d expect, revealing different layers of his backstory on each route and presenting some quite varied possibilities for his future. The game encourages replay with a friendly ending screen that summarizes your choices and lets you jump back to past choice points. Other highlights are the enjoyable NPCs, rich worldbuilding, lovely writing, and gorgeous UI. Highly recommend.

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

My overwhelming feeling after playing Succor was frustration. I related a lot to the protagonist's situation; I've been in that kind of headspace many times before, no energy or motivation to do anything besides lie in bed. The game starts just when you finally do drag yourself out of bed because you need to eat. But almost immediately, I found the work's portrayal of living with mental illness overly simplistic. Early text spells out your goal:

Hunger drags you awake despite your wishes and you reluctantly get out of bed. It's already almost the afternoon, and you're starving. [...] Time to find some food.

But initially, your only options are to explore your apartment... and clean it. *Deep* clean it. Fridge, sink, microwave, stove--you can scrub them all to shining, before you've had even a bite to eat! This really clashes with the "too depressed to get out of bed until hunger literally drives you to it" protagonist the game set up, and simply makes no physical sense to me--I, at least, would literally be unable to do all that work on an empty stomach.

The other aspect I found grating is that at certain points you're presented with a choice of coping mechanisms that are clearly framed as either healthy or unhealthy. Pick the healthy ones, and you’ll feel better. Ah, I wish it were that simple in real life!

One aspect of the game that did work for me was the sections where the protagonist reflected back on various memories tied to food and cooking, giving us a picture of their life up to this point, including family, school, and what led to their current bout of depression. I found these parts much more effective than the “mental illness simulator” aspects.