Reviews by Tabitha

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.