Reviews by Tabitha

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.

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

This is a very vibes-based piece; I got a strong sense of emotion from it, and feel it was successful on that front. However, I never fully understood the chronology or the details of what was going on. Past and present melded together, slipping back and forth between the two; characters blended together, leaving me uncertain exactly how many lost loves the protagonist had to mourn. Possibly this ambiguity was intentional, but I would have preferred a little more concreteness. As other reviewers have mentioned, I also struggled with the lack of contrast between the text and the background images.

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

I'm clearly in the minority on this one, but I didn't find The Goldilocks Principle effective. The piece wants readers to interrogate why we're engaging with it, but while I can understand asking the question, “Why do you want to know details about someone’s eating disorder?”, in this case, the author specifically chose to put the game in front of a (relatively) large audience. I opened it up in good faith, prepared to take in a personal story that the author clearly wanted to share... only to be met with a confrontational tone by a narrator who seemed to be judging me for having clicked the "play" link at all.

I think that generally when IF authors write about sensitive, personal topics, they're choosing to be openly vulnerable in that way because they want to share their stories--they want readers to understand what they went through, or for people who have experienced similar things to feel less alone. So presenting a piece that looks like it's meant in that spirit, then pulling a "gotcha" on the player and mocking them for wanting to engage with the work, was very off-putting to me.

During Spring Thing '25, I wrote full reviews of several of the games in this anthology. I never made it to all of them, but I'm posting the ones I did write here, as I figure sharing some reviews is better than sharing none!

A Brand New World by Raiden

This is a fun story that starts with a relaxing walk on the beach but (possibly) goes somewhere very different! The opening descriptions drew me in, capturing the feeling of unwinding from your stress in nature: “It’s moments such as these that remind you that you are alive, that you can breathe and simply… be.” The descriptions are detailed and vivid, with some nice phrases like “the horizon painted in a hot pink colour as the last bits of sunlight embrace it.”

The main storyline is about visiting a fantasy world, but you can choose not to go, and in that case you get a completely unrelated story about encountering a lost child (with two possible endings). I think the game would be stronger if it eliminated that second possible storyline and focused on developing the fantasy world further and giving the player more choices about how to explore/interact with it (which I’ll elaborate on in the next two paragraphs!).

Remy was a good NPC; we get a strong sense of their personality, and I liked seeing their interactions with Mikhail. But I wanted to have more choices for how I interacted with them. For instance, at this part: “Should you say something? Should you keep quiet? Should you question why the dragon took to the skies the moment they showed up?”, I would have liked these to all be options I could pick from. I wanted to feel like I was shaping my relationship with Remy through my choices, instead of the game simply telling me how I responded to them.

I liked the choice of whether to approach the dragon or not—the text clearly signaled that doing so would be risky, and if you choose to do it anyway, you face the natural consequences! But the final choice of whether to stay or go was weaker; similar to entering the hole or not at the beginning, it felt like a “Do something interesting” or “Don’t do it” choice. I think it’s generally more fun when both choices are interesting; for example, at the end you could pick which trinket you want to buy, or which part of the market you want to explore before you have to leave.

Anyway, I had fun with this and I look forward to more IF by this author!

Fragments of the Nile by Storyteller

This story has a fun historical-investigation plotline and a twist! I especially liked the scene where I entered the memory. And this was a funny reference by one ending to another: “At least you died pain-free, unlike some poor guy who might have been cursed in a parallel reality.”

Some of the choices were “Do the interesting thing”/“Don’t do it” like I talked about above. I liked that at the beginning, even if you choose to stay home you can still get a full storyline related to the Egypt mystery, and I think it would be nice if the choices reflected this. Instead of simply go/don’t go, the choices could be “Travel to Egypt” and “Offer to help out with research from home.” That way, the player knows they’ll get an interesting story no matter which one they pick.

A few other small things!

-I was confused when I exploded like a tomato but wasn’t dead! Maybe the game could tell me I died, but give me the chance to go back and try again? Or make it clear that the explosion wasn’t life-threatening.
-I noticed only one ending has a link to go back to the beginning, but it would be nice if all of them did.
-There are a lot of small spelling errors (a frequent one is “trough” instead of “through”), so I’d suggest running the text through a spellchecker, or having someone proofread it.

Power Turtle by 3N

This game is very cute; I enjoyed playing through multiple times and exploring all the different outcomes for my new turtle friend.

I liked that the opening choices were not “investigate the interesting thing”/“ignore it”! But, when I replayed, I found that both choices just lead to the same result, finding the turtle. Because of this, I don’t think a choice is needed here; you could just give a “Look in the water” link, and then let the choices start once the turtle has been found.

It was fun how many different paths there were in this story. “The fish and the turtle became besties” was one of my favorites; that line made me smile. There were some paths where storylines I was interested in didn’t get resolved; in one, the turtle grows bigger than me, but after that happens it isn’t mentioned again. In another, the turtle refuses to eat, and I never got a chance to solve that. So my advice here would be to keep exploring those story threads once they’re introduced. When the turtle gets big, maybe I can ride it, or I need to find a medicine that’ll make it small again.

Overall, a cute story with many different endings to find!

Those voices are getting louder, captain by Mushroom

This is a very funny and clever work; I replayed a bunch to see all the different possibilities, and every one was delightful. I loved the voice of the narrator talking to me, giving commentary and advising on what I should or shouldn’t do. And when I discovered the in-story reason for it, it was even better! Some examples:

-Ask him if he´s okay -Simply ignore him. (I mean…this guy is always nervous, why would you bother him and yourself by asking stupid questions.)

This is the first choice in the game, and it’s kind of the “do the interesting thing”/“don’t do it” sort of choice—but it works here because we have that outside voice pushing us to pick the “don’t do it” option. To me, this makes both options equally intriguing. I want to find out what’s up with this guy, but I’m also curious what will happen if I listen to this mysterious voice.

(You´d better comfort him, I´m not giving you other options.)

I loved this moment, where the voice takes away my agency because this poor guy just needs comfort so badly.

(Don´t. You. Dare.)

Another great moment, where the voice does give me two options, but it really doesn’t want me to pick one of them! (Of course, this meant I had to pick it…)

One tiny note that should be an easy fix—when I start up the game, it goes straight to the story instead of the opening menu screen like the others in the anthology (but the opening menu screen does exist; the “Play Again” button takes you there).

Finally, two more very funny quotes that I copied into my notes:

´´Crow, Crow! Captain is a #### !´´the parrot says. You don´t argue. The captain truly is a #### . You´re just about to teach the parrot a new curse word when the captain walks in.
.
“AND STOP MAKING OUT!!!´´ Captain yells with his nerves on edge. (He hates when sailors are not doing their job, he hates not yelling at sailors and he hates love…

Basically… go play this game.

I loved the slow-paced, realistically grounded exploration around London in this one, as the characters visit real places (illustrated by real photographs) and discuss real films, books, and politics. The premise—Nica is meeting her long-distance girlfriend, Chun, for the first time—was compelling and also very of-the-moment. The clear divide between them was captured so well, with Nica’s thoughts contrasting with what she chooses to actually say/reveal to Chun. And then halfway through, at an emotional cliffhanger of a moment, we switch and get the same few days recounted from Chun’s point of view, seeing the divide from the other side.

As an outside observer, and especially after getting both perspectives, I wanted them both to just be more open with each other; each character’s internal monologue reveals so many things they could be talking about and connecting over, but they both choose to play it so safe, keeping conversation surface-level. I love seeing this kind of thing explored in fiction, how terrifying and difficult connecting with other humans can be, and this was an excellent portrayal.

At the end, when the two finally discuss their relationship, their interactions explode a bit into melodrama, and this part didn’t feel as believable to me, both as to the characters’ emotions and their dialogue. (Spoiler - click to show)I also had a hard time believing either of them would want to continue the relationship after that. Overall I quite enjoyed and appreciated it; the ending just didn’t quite land.

(Sidenote: I loved the quality-of-life feature of the little progress bar that lets you know how many pages are left.)

Not marking any spoilers because, given the nature of the game, it's not really possible to spoil the solution!

This one really drew me in; I liked the *Toby's Nose*-esque setup where you can guess the solution to the mystery at any time, but to gain any basis for guessing you first have to thoroughly investigate. I enjoyed checking out the different locations, unlocking more information as I explored, uncovering potential murder weapons, and most of all learning about the deceased circus employees, their backgrounds and their relationships to each other.

So far, so good... but eventually I hit a wall. A massive, impassible wall. I'd been to every location many times; I had taken notes on which bodies I'd found, where I'd found them, and how they'd died. The problem was, there was one body I hadn't found---Vivian's. And without finding her body, I had no way of guessing where or how she had died. I also had no idea who had done it. I'd been able to concretely rule out a few weapons, and... that was it.

I finally came up with some semblance of a theory and guessed. Wrongly. Again, and again. Through brute force, I finally got the answer... and was absolutely baffled, because I hadn't seen anything that would have led me to that conclusion. (I was able to solve the after-puzzle very handily, though, because *that* information I had!)

I now know that the who, how, and where of the murder are all randomized---different players get different solutions, and it seems some of those solutions are discoverable! I really wish I had gotten a different one, because finding the clues and piecing the answer together would have been very satisfying. I can only conclude that either I completely overlooked a description of me finding Vivian's lion-chewed bones in the illusion gallery (I ended up opening the source in Twine to see *how* I was supposed to have gained the knowledge that "lions" was the murder weapon), *or* that the game had a bug and her bones simply didn't exist in my playthrough. I also am not sure if I missed something implicating Casper; I did uncover info related to them, but nothing sufficient to make me believe they murdered Vivian.

As alluded to above, the randomized solution will make players' experiences with this game vary widely. Sadly, for me, it was a game with a lot of promise that ended up falling flat.