Reviews by Hanon Ondricek

I played Murphy's Law for the IFComp, so a couple of the minor problems I had may be worked out in subsequent versions.

This game reminded me of some old school Infocom in a good way. The descriptions are relatively terse, but the author did a great job implementing pretty much everything described,(Spoiler - click to show)(except for the robbers in each corner of the bank) and little details abound. The writing is full of very subtle humor; your goal is to pay your last mortgage payment so you will own your house free and clear. In the process of doing so, things go wrong, and the whole affair becomes more complicated. It reminded me quite of bit of BUREAUCRACY, the infuriating puzzler by Douglas Adams, but isn't nearly as complicated as one would first think given the concept. I was never unsure of what to do except during one major bug:

(Spoiler - click to show)
>get in car
You get into your station wagon.

>close car
You close your station wagon.

>start car
You'll need to get inside first.

>get inside car
I only understood you as far as wanting to get inside.

>enter car
But you're already in your station wagon.

>start car
You'll need to get inside first.

>put keys in ignition
You put your keys into the ignition.

>start car
You'll need to get inside first.

>enter car
But you're already in your station wagon.

>get out
You can't get out of the closed your station wagon.

>start car
You'll need to get inside first.

>open car
You open your station wagon.

>start car
You turn the key, but the car only makes some pathetic whining noises before falling silent.


This type of game setup is a classic babel fish puzzle - All you have to do is press the button to get a babel fish, but it falls through an unseen grate. Blocking the grate causes cleaning robots to steal the fish...and so on. A simple task turns into a picaresque affair.

That said, I didn't think the game went far enough with it's machinations. There is one timed puzzle (boo!) at the beginning where you can die. The finale seems to set up an uber-puzzle that is thrown away by going nowhere. (Spoiler - click to show)You stand in a relatively short line at the bank and when you get to the window, masked men enter and stage a robbery, setting up would could be an intricate DOG DAY AFTERNOON type scenario, with four guards each in one corner of the bank, prompting me to think I would need to work out a four-way manipulation puzzle, or that each one would need me to do something for them to give up on the lead robber - IE the situation is rife with possibility and I could see how your mounting frustration through the game could wind up in a comic catharsis as you attempt to thwart the bank robbers...(Spoiler - click to show) but all you need to do is wait and the robbers are paid, they leave, and the bank continues normal operation. Even if this resolved as it does, I would have loved to have seen the bank teller report "All our money and paperwork is gone, so I can't do anything with your payment..." sending you off on another branch of the adventure, perhaps to a wacky post office. As written seems just a tad short and anticlimactic. However, I thought the denouement was great and just right, I just wasn't *frustrated* enough by the game for it to pay off like it seems it should.(Spoiler - click to show) The protagonist is pretty unfazed by this, and I believe the "frustration" is supposed to build up in the player. If there had been a little more backstory about how you've grown to *hate* this house and through the process something better had opened up, say a way to escape to the robbers' hideout in the Cayman islands with your wife and live happily ever after...or something.

That said, it's a great short game that shows promise and has lots of room for expansion into a moderately longer game.

This CYOA is very nicely written with Inklewriter, which I tried out and gave high praise to. Inkle works well for moderate-sized conversation-based stories, and that's what this mostly is. A piece has gone missing from a code-breaking/encrypting machine and you might be responsible.

The bulk of the game is an interrogation, giving answers to questions that are posed to you. You often will get yes/no agree/disagree, often with a choice of lie/truth. The only downside to this is on your first playthrough you're the dumbest person in the room. Several crucial plot points are known to the protagonist and antagonist but the reader only learns what's actually happened after several random stabs at answering the questions. This is not an amnesia game, and the story does not shift based on your answers. It feels like a really good conversation section from a Mass Effect game if it were set in WW2. If this were an endgame to a slightly larger scenario it might not feel quite so trial-and-error.

I never did get the best ending, which might be a testament to the potential of inkle and CYOA, or it may mean that I tired out after giving the same sequence of yes-no-no-lie-yes-agree-yes-no to get to the part of the story that actually branches out and will not let you double back.

It's worth a try - I played this on a lunch break on my android device, and the text is very nicely formatted and readable with large finger-sized buttons for your choices.

This is a nice short game that is written in a very hyper! manic! STYLE! It almost reminded me of a Japanese commercial or a muppet short.

It's about delicious breakfast, and gives you a lot of things to make DELICIOUS BREAKFAST! So you eat delicious breakfast, and many people think delicious breakfast is difficult but they are over thinking DELICIOUS BREAKFAST.

(Spoiler - click to show)Once I got the idea that the game was kidding about everything it laid out and I didn't have to prepare anything, and the entire game is solved by eating, I almost was disappointed that (Spoiler - click to show)the game didn't go to it's logical conclusion and have you eat every single thing within reach including the silverware and the curtains and then yourself as if you were an oruborous.

Definitely worth a quick play. It made me laugh with its manic intensity at the end.

Molly knows how to write, but I swear to goodness, I know nothing more about Rocky Stampede than I did at the beginning of the game. Things like the fortune cookie he mentioned and his shoelace that he keeps tying are unimplemented. His deafness, his band, his song, new stuff, his career...he couldn't hear a word of what I asked. Perhaps that's the point.

This is a great effort at a first game, but I'd love if the conversations were a little deeper.

This is CYOA where you click on keywords. Usually there are two or three choices per page, and there are lots of branches, and lots of endings that happen unexpectedly. There's not a whole lot of through line to the plot as it meanders on a trippy, poetic tangent. I played about four times, and was surprised that what I thought would be the length of the story branched out somewhere totally new and continued. You won't be engaging any sort of problem solving or rational progression muscle. What happens next is usually random and is based little on the wisdom of your choices, but this is definitely worth a read or two if you like some fervently written prose in a psychedelic fantasy-horror vein.

boxed quotation.
sparse text.
"noun verbs".
tiny game.
review longer.
poor dog.
horror what?
author nightmare?
half star.

Just as it says, this is a short tutorial game about being lost at sea that would be a good example game for new players. The player is guided the entire way through.

The only niggle is the last action in the game (Spoiler - click to show)PICK UP THE GLOBAL CELLPHONE is not spelled out, and synonyms PHONE, CELL, CELLPHONE do not seem to work. Perhaps the point is to get new players adjusted to guess-the-noun puzzlery?