Reviews by Tabitha

Another comp game that I'm a bit torn about, although the parts I liked made it one of my favorites this year. As a sucker for historical settings, I loved exploring the lighthouses and pubs of mid-nineteenth-century Baltimore and meeting people dressed in gibuses and gabardine (well, I actually encountered both of those items while they were not being worn, but you get the point). I loved the way the plot unfolded as I collected clues and pieced together what had happened to Poe and what was going on with the mysterious characters around him. When I did some Wikipedia-ing after finishing, I was impressed by how well the game was written around the actual circumstances of Poe’s death!

On the other hand, the present-day sections were significantly less engaging to me. That layer’s PC was so minimally fleshed out that I wasn’t really invested in him as a character (I don’t think gender is ever specified, actually, but I definitely imagined this PC as a man); we don’t get any backstory to reveal why he was willing to go to such lengths to achieve his goal of being known for writing without having actually written anything. And as a writer myself, that goal was impossible for me to relate to!

I quite enjoyed this game; highlights were the progression of newcomer knowing no one to being part of the community, the coziness of the setting, the several main NPCs’ stories, and the casual queerness. I did neglect my meal-planning a bit at first in favor of the social aspects, as I'm not much of a cook or foodie, but I hit 4 stars on a meal eventually!

Lowlights: I found the sheer number of recipes I could make by the end (having bought all the cookbooks) a bit overwhelming, and largely ignored some categories (sorry, salad- and sauce-lovers!). I also was a little confused on the theming, as I tried to do a regionally-themed meal but didn’t receive a bonus for it. My only other real friction point was that I didn’t learn how to get berries until over halfway through, and since my third noticeboard request was for a berry pie, I was stuck sitting on that one for a while. But these are minor complaints about what was overall a charming, pleasant, and well-made game!

This game has a unique UI that has a sleekness to it, but is also rather disorienting. Other reviewers (at intfiction.org) have covered this aspect well already, but I'll echo that because of the way the UI and navigation is set up, it took me a bit to realize that you have to look at the truck from three different locations to get all the items you need to proceed with your mission.

While I spent a fair amount of time with the game, replaying more times than I can count, I never managed to get the “good” ending. Even once I (eventually) realized how to do it, I got too impatient (Spoiler - click to show)just sitting in the truck waiting and went to flip the pump switch to make the disposal go faster… and got eaten. I restarted, determined to try again… and that time (Spoiler - click to show)I got eaten just when I’d finished setting everything up. I didn’t have the motivation to do it all over again, so I gave up, only discovering far too late that you can save the game—all those times I replayed from the beginning when I could have been reloading a save!

I enjoyed the spooky vibe and all the different possibilities for what you can do/what can happen. Those aspects reminded me of last year’s A Thing of Wretchedness, although here you have a concrete goal and more of a sense of stakes, which was nice. The glimpses of the world that we get are intriguing, and I enjoyed seeing the descriptions of the environment change (Spoiler - click to show)once you become a mutant—honestly, I think the Mutant Jake endings were my favorites. I also like that (Spoiler - click to show)the duct tape can be used in (at least) two different, mutually exclusive ways (tape the hose to have no leaks, tape the pump switch for speed); I’m so used to items in adventure game puzzles being single-use, so having two different options here and having to choose your trade-off was a nice design feature.

This game is quite polished and has a smooth parser and a nice UI. I followed the advice from other players to look at the instructions for minigame #1 before attempting it, and was glad I did because I don’t think I would have figured that out on my own. However, I did get a bit tired of that puzzle by the fifth or so go-round. Part of the reason, I think, is that having 24 tries after getting the implant upgrade took away the sense of pressure and made me stop thinking very carefully about my guesses, whereas the two I solved with only 8 guesses had that sense of tension and needing to make every guess count.

My other main critique is the writing of the NPCs, of which there are six or seven. It’s immediately very clear that they only exist as pieces of the game’s puzzles; none of them interact with you until you approach them, and while some are introduced with a characterizing line like “A bureaucrat peers at the deck’s monitor with dead eyes,” others simply get “X is here.” Livening up those introductory descriptions (sure, Dr. Mohr is here, but what’s she doing?) and having them act more naturally—e.g., greeting you when you walk into their offices—would go a long way toward making them feel more like actual people and better integrating them into the game.

Overall though, if you're looking for a short, word- and grid-puzzley hacker game, you'll have fun with this one.

This was a polished and well-written game that unfortunately I didn’t really connect with. After finishing my first playthrough, per the game's explicit encouragement I restarted, expecting to see entirely new memories and paintings. But then five out of seven paintings and the same number of memories were repeats from my first playthrough. The memories were tied to different paintings, though, and it was disappointing to learn that the pairings hadn't been deliberately curated.

I also was never really emotionally engaged. The PC is clearly a specific character, rather than a blank-slate/self-insert; they have these specific memories of their relationship with the artist character, and they’ve made certain life choices like giving up painting to work at an ad agency. So I couldn’t pretend it was actually me going through this, but I also didn’t learn enough about the PC to really give me a sense of them as a person, which left me feeling emotionally distant from them and their remembrances of the artist. (It doesn’t help that the memories I got on my initial playthrough made that character come across as an asshole who I personally wouldn’t have kept putting up with.)

I also didn't vibe with the choice (Spoiler - click to show)to make the painting be automatically created for me at the end; it felt like the game was dictating what my emotional response to the memories should be. (Spoiler - click to show)I would have found it much more meaningful to get to decide for myself what subject, mood, etc. the painting should focus on—being able to interpret the memories for myself, using the choices of what to paint to reflect on what I took from them. Being allowed to adjust the painting afterward was nice but didn’t hit the same way doing it myself from the start would have.

I was very excited for this one, and it didn’t disappoint. It’s got a similar-but-distinct mechanic from the Prime Pro Rhyme Row series, so it was fun to get to try something new. It’s also shorter and a bit simpler than the longest of those games, which may make it more accessible to newcomers. At first I worried it would be too easy, but there were some spots that stumped me!

Unlike in the PPRR games, there are no in-game hints or puzzle cheats, so I turned to the walkthrough a couple times. Hints and a bit more clueing on some of the puzzles would make the game just about perfect IMO. (Update: after writing this I found out that there is a hint item; I just didn't realize its function while playing. So a clearer indication of its use would be helpful!)

I apparently didn’t get the best ending on my first playthrough, so I’ll definitely be coming back to see if I can fix that!

(Warning: This review might contain spoilers. Click to show the full review.)I’m torn on this one. It’s like a bleaker Queers in Love at the End of the World—you only have a brief amount of time left with someone close to you, and you have to choose how to spend it. Both play out in real time, with a clock far too short to exhaust your myriad options. In this one, though, only one of you will die when the clock runs out, which brings an entirely different (grimmer) mood.

There were moments where I really felt the emotional weight of the situation, but also moments where I was thrown out of it and felt very disconnected. The game starts in media res; the PC is already here with their friend, both of them knowing these will be the friend’s final moments. But the game didn’t fully sell that; the range of options you’re given includes things like “do research” and “ask if she ever learned why this is happening, neither of which makes sense when she’s literally dying in front of you. There was a tension between “let the player try all the things” and “these two people know each other and have history together and would naturally already have exhausted some of these options.”

Going along with this, on my initial playthrough I felt a bit overwhelmed at how many options there were and wanted to know more about the situation, which immediately put me at odds with the PC, who would already know all the things I was curious about. Instead of roleplaying as a good friend, at first I was just seeking out information to give me more context for the present moment.

In general, there’s a feeling of coldness and remove, which contrasts with the horror of the situation. In the friend’s final moments, as her death is actually described, you can no longer act at all; she melts away and all you can do is sit back and watch. Over and over if you replay, which I did, wanting to try different options, and seeing her die repeatedly left me desensitized to it. Replaying also made me very aware that while the game is about trying to comfort the friend, the emphasis is very much on the PC. They’re the the only one with agency; the friend has no last requests unless you prompt them (e.g., if you bring up her family, she asks you to keep an eye on her brother after she’s gone, but she won’t mention that otherwise).

But then, there are some excellently written, emotionally hard-hitting details that convey so much in just a few lines. If you take her hand:

"You hold it lightly. There is a shocking amount of give to it. You could squeeze, and her whole hand would gush out from between your fingers. It wouldn’t even be a hand anymore."

In response to this gesture, she tells you, “My mom wouldn’t hug me, wouldn’t even touch me, the last time I visited. She said the ‘goop’ I left would stain her sweater… she said to keep off the rugs.” Damn. No wonder she values my simple company so much. The line that hit me the most with its pure evocative horror was: “You listen to the steady drip of her toes and feet along the rim of the drain.”

And in all my replays, I managed to find some options that felt the most right, the most meaningful. There aren’t any wrong choices—even if you do absolutely nothing, just let the clock run out, she’ll still say she’s glad you were there—but my favorites were the things that made her smile or laugh (dancing, and drawing in the goop of her melting body). Like in QiLatEotW, seeing those moments of joy in the midst of horrible circumstances made me feel something.

Bad Beer is an enjoyable little game! “Little” in that it’s a pretty quick experience; in contrast to the stated playtime on the IFComp page, I reached an ending in less than 30 minutes, but did spend some time replaying. The setup is brief and lets you quickly get into your investigation, which rapidly reveals that there is something (Spoiler - click to show)supernatural going on…

I enjoyed exploring around the pub and chatting with the several NPCs; the game uses an “ask person about subject” conversation system, which worked well here, as your explorations and conversations reveal new topics to ask about. There are two people, June and Sally, in the kitchen, and sometimes one would chime in while I was talking to the other, or I’d ask one about a subject then ask the other and get a different answer, and both of these things made the conversation feel natural and well developed—the NPCs aren’t just information-giving-machines, but have their own personalities.

Something that clashed a bit with this, though, was the ambient messages (is there an actual term for these?)—the ones that fire every one or two turns and usually repeat in a cycle or at random. They got repetitive fairly quickly, and the ones in the kitchen were sometimes at odds with the ongoing conversation.

The pacing felt a bit rushed, too, especially since the investigating was less about finding clues and more about (Spoiler - click to show)triggering a supernatural incident that suddenly whisks you back into the past—but that was a very fun and unexpected twist, and I enjoyed (Spoiler - click to show)seeing the same place in two vastly different time periods. Even better, you’re given the chance to change the past and thereby put to rest the ghost who’s been causing the problems in the present day.

This was a fun little puzzle that allows for experimentation, as you get several attempts before the game moves on. The reset felt a bit random, though, as there was no in-game explanation for why you were given repeat chances (but only three of them). But fortunately it’s easy to continue trying, as the sub-optimal ending conveniently gives you the option to jump back to the beginning of the puzzle.

Either way, after you fail or succeed, the story suddenly skips ahead an unspecified amount of time (Spoiler - click to show)(back in the present day), with no transition explaining what happened when you returned to the present, how your friends reacted to your story, etc. I liked (Spoiler - click to show)the wrap-up at Will’s grave with the vicar, but I would have preferred some closure with the pub owners, too, given that they were the reason the PC got involved in all this. But overall I definitely enjoyed my time playing!

This is a sweet, fairly simple game that wasn’t quite what I expected based on the blurb. The mystery is solved via notes you happen upon throughout the castle, and is incidental to the main objective, (Spoiler - click to show)which is collecting items of armor (and possibly a sword) in order to defeat a dragon. It took me only about a half hour to finish, and my playthrough started with this infelicitous exchange:

Castle Entrance
You see the entrance to the castle in the east, and it has been thrown open, with no one inside. The entryway is covered in soot and burn marks. Whatever caused this doesn't seem to be nearby anymore. At your feet is a small booklet with the heading "Instruction Booklet"

>get booklet
That's hardly portable.

>x entryway
You can't see any such thing.

>x marks
You can't see any such thing.

>x soot
You can't see any such thing.

I liked this one a lot! Normally I get a little antsy when an IF game starts with several long screens of non-interactive text in a row, as I start wondering when I’ll be able to participate in the story, but I was drawn into this one right away once I learned the identity of the protagonist: a starving mother taking a desperate, foolish risk for the sake of her family. Way more interesting than a confident, sword-bearing hero! When “what do you do”-type choices start appearing, while they don’t always necessarily matter plot-wise, I liked how much they focused on characterizing the PC, Madelaine. For instance, the first one comes after you’ve entered the monster-infested cave and the opening seals up after you. You can stoically continue on, or have a moment of panic and bang on the blockage with your fists. I chose the latter, which only resulted in bloodied hands, but I liked getting to roleplay Madelaine as getting freaked out in that moment. Games where the PC is a specific character that I get to inhabit are usually my favorite mode of choice-based IF (and the one I largely write), so that alone had me hooked.

As the story went on, the plot got me, too. This game has a familiar fantasy backdrop but puts its own spin on magic and magical creatures, and I enjoyed accompanying Madelaine as she finds out there’s much more to the world of the Saltcast than she ever knew, and gets pulled into their struggles while still sticking to her own goal. I chose to play her as compassionate, willing to give these creature the benefit of the doubt and choosing kindness as much as she could, and the fact that I could have taken contrasting, more ruthless and self-serving options made my choices feel more meaningful. And playing Madelaine this way meant that the mission she ends up on with the Saltcast became personal, rather than just a means to an end. Even as the stakes grew beyond just Madelaine and her family, the story always stayed very grounded in Madelaine’s role in the events and her concerns, which I appreciated.

(Spoiler - click to show)When, in an excellent twist, Madelaine becomes fully (literally) absorbed in the larger-scale goings-on, I loved the author’s choice to do a time-skip and a perspective shift. Part 3 has the player embodying Madelaine’s daughter, 10 years after the end of Part 2, as, in a parallel to the game’s opening, she enters the cave for her own family-motivated reasons—discovering her mother’s fate. This lets us see the effect Madelaine’s actions had on her family (and beyond), and allows for a resolution to her story that wouldn’t have been as satisfying if we’d stayed in her perspective.

I do have a few things to nitpick as far as presentation. I think a slightly more dressed-up UI would be nice, something with stronger fantasy vibes—a more distinctive font, a curated color for the links, styling of the sidebar, etc. And while I liked the artwork—I think the one of Grissol was my favorite, and the changing representation of the lantern in the sidebar was a nice touch—it could be integrated a bit more smoothly; it usually loaded slower than the text, and its placement in the middle of the page felt a bit awkward. (I also encountered a broken image toward the beginning, the one of a spellbeast.) So some adjustments to the UI and the handling of the images could make the whole appearance tie together better.

There are also some immersion-breaking moments, like when a link reads "Go back", referring to the player returning to the previous page after a digression--I don't want to be suddenly reminded that I'm essentially navigating a website (this is more fully explained in the Intfiction.org version of this review here). But I only mention these things because they’re fairly small changes that I think would make an already great game even better!