Ratings and Reviews by Hanon Ondricek

The text gives you two viewpoints almost simultaneously, and seems to respond mostly with the one you react to. Like Schroedinger's cat, you're in two states until you resolve by observation and reaction.

It's a neat concept which has been toyed with in stories such as My Name is Tara Sue. On my play-throughs, I was only able to get the non dreadful ending. I don't know if there's a way to change that.

I was afraid it would be overwritten as the first paragraphs are a little overwhelmingly complicated in construction. It either gets better or serves the game, as I didn't notice after the first couple screens.

(Spoiler - click to show)It may just be comparing and contrasting roaming packs of college kids out partying with packs of college kids rioting and being beaten down by the police in areas such as the Ukraine. That may have been the point possibly - that we as Americans might consider violence in other countries but really it isn't forefront in our minds, considered and forgotten as we seek "another bar." I could be way off.

This game purports to simulate a PC with Alzheimer's disease in a city that caters to Alzheimer's patients. I thought this was a cool concept. I played through pretty quickly. The text is nicely styled to avoid the annoying tiny print white on black. It appears there are multiple paths, and the Twine does that "switch word when you click" thing. Due to the concept, though, I wasn't so much in control as I would have liked or needed to be given the status of the PCs health. Worth a play.

This game was written for a Ludum Dare where the theme was 10 seconds. The author does an interesting thing in letting you play one second out of a relationship in consecutive different time periods, which is a pretty cool idea. 1 AM on your first move might zip you to 1 AM a year later for your next. It's like a more built-out version of Aisle where you get a follow-up to your one move.

While this is a really cool concept in theory, this game only glances the surface of making good use of the idea. I played a couple of times, and even with such a small work I felt railroaded. This could be a prototype for a longer game. I almost wish this were in a parser language like Inform so the decision of what to do could be more open. Since the concept would limit you to ten moves, I'd like to see the resolutions actually seem to make some difference like some of the wildly divergent denouement seen in Aisle. Or even Pick Up the Phone Booth and Aisle if it had a similar sense of random chaos.

This is a sparsely-implemented but well-written piece in Playfic. It feels like an example game, but contains Veeder's usual wit and noodles around with the PCs identity and inventory in a way that could be interestingly fleshed out in a longer piece. Any more description would spoil. Worth a look if you have ten minutes.

I'm a Wonderland nerd, so I enjoyed this immensely. I would love to see the entire text done with some creative styling similar to what this falling sequence does.

This is an on-rails Twine story with a couple of choices and a chance of dying. Normally a linear story where you do little but click for the next part of the story is a bore, but the writing is sure and imaginative, hinting at a mind-bogglingly interesting meta concept. Hey, a waterside is linear, and that doesn't make it any less entertaining. I hope the author continues this!

This game is your basic FML office game with some horror thrown in. I played once. (Spoiler - click to show)Wandered around a bit, then died. Did the coffee poison me?

Very well written. I liked where this might have been going, but I think I'm happy with the (Spoiler - click to show)"Failed to quit my Job" resolution to my quest!

This was done as a challenge to create a story with 23 passages in Twine. The writing is clear, evocative, and sure.

Other than the brief length, the limitations seem to pose no problem for the author, although I did find myself looping to the same passages several times. This doesn't hurt, because there are extra links to investigate each time.

23 screens doesn't seem like much, but the author intelligently structures this so it doesn't feel like a small story. Very well done.

It's not so voyeuristic, actually, as the author has invited you to snoop around his real desk and narrates what each item is. It's a good example of how Twine might be used to create an actual graphic point and click sort of adventure game.