Reviews by Tabitha

This is a well-written, well-made game with some unusual aspects. While it uses the default Twine Harlowe font and color scheme, there is some customization, including the use of text effects and a dynamically-updated family tree. The latter (which is complete with little illustrations!) is a touch that’s both just nice and also proved helpful to refer to during the game ((Spoiler - click to show)especially when things get more complicated than they first appear… Also, seeing Ben added to it at the end was really sweet). The game also employs hyperlinks well, making use of false choices, cycling links, and even the simple “click to proceed” to control the pacing, ensuring that the player never faces a wall of text.

Players will also soon discover that there are special links (usually highlighted with a text effect) sprinkled throughout that lead to NPC flashbacks. I have to admit that I didn’t initially realize these weren’t the memories of Jay, the PC; this is fully on me, as on a replay I noticed that the first one makes it clear by having the POV character addressed as “Jimmy” twice, but I somehow managed to overlook that on my first playthrough. Even putting that aside, because these sections feel set off from the main story, I think a graphical cue (change of background color and/or font?) would be nice in order to differentiate them. I also wished there was an undo/back button, because sometimes I wanted to look back at the last screen of text (whether to refer back to something or because I clicked too fast and accidentally missed a flashback link).

Now, talking about a different aspect of the flashbacks, at first I thought that they were simply giving me, the player, a look into the NPCs’ pasts, giving me knowledge about them that Jay didn’t have. I liked the way they humanized even the worst characters (looking at you, Uncle Jimmy…), adding depth to portrayals that could otherwise seem stereotypical or one-note. But where it gets weird is when it becomes clear that Jay is experiencing these flashes on some level, too. This gave what had initially felt like a very grounded and realistic game a surreal vibe, injecting some sort of magic into the world that never gets addressed or explained.

I liked the exploration of the complicated family dynamics, but I think the game packed in one or two too many sensational reveals about Jay’s family history; it got a little over-the-top, and the more extreme ones weren’t really explained, which left me more confused than anything else. I also wasn’t sure what the purpose of the ambulance flashback was; I didn't feel it added much to the story. And one of the two possible endings felt more satisfying to me ((Spoiler - click to show)the Venice one, due to the emotional beat of Jay meeting Ben’s grandmother and being immediately accepted, after all he went through with his family).

But while I didn’t feel like all of the elements fully cohered, I was engaged and invested in the story and enjoyed both my playthroughs, and what I saw as the central theme resonated with me: while we can’t choose our families, and we’ll always be stuck with their trauma and mess to some extent because it’s where we came from, we CAN choose the other important people in our life, and it’s possible to find love and acceptance elsewhere even if our families can’t or won’t provide it.

This is a fairly brief and mostly straightforward sci-fi puzzler that’s a bit rough around the edges. There were a decent number of times when the first command I tried wasn’t accepted by the game; fortunately, that was never a problem, as it was easy to figure out the correct command (sometimes thanks to helpful customized error messages). Ideally, though, more synonyms would be implemented, and there’s also the classic “you can’t see any such thing” when examining some mentioned nouns. Interactable nouns, on the other hand, often tend to be capitalized and set off on their own line, e.g. “You see Crate here,” rather than integrated more naturally into the room descriptions. There’s also one puzzle that felt very “read the author’s mind” to me, and I would never have solved it without the walkthrough.

My other main point of critique is that I wasn’t emotionally invested in the story. You, the ship’s captain, regularly come upon the bodies of colleagues who have been wounded or killed, but there’s no emotion in the descriptions of them, and more often than not their only purpose is to provide you with an item or clue you need to progress. For example:

The dead body of, Lieutenant Yostin, lies on the floor. It looks like his left arm has been severed from his body.

>x yostin
He is wearing his dress uniform and dress coat with pockets.

And then you need to "x pockets" (the uniform and coat are not implemented) in order to obtain a plot-necessary item. While clearly the PC knows who this person is, the presence of his dead body elicits no reaction; nothing would be different if he was, say, a desk, with a drawer you had to open and take the item from.

I did enjoy exploring the ship and working my way through the puzzle chain, and the story had me intrigued. I’d just have liked to see more acknowledgement of the horror of what happened on the ship, and thus be made to feel a sense of the stakes, rather than simply being told about them.