Ratings and Reviews by Hanon Ondricek

Anyway, you got your typical Porpentine urban/medieval/futuristic dirty/slimy/barren wasteland which reveals itself interestingly by adding interaction words to a menu as you explore. If you LISTEN in the first area, that lets you GOSSIP and then SKULK, and you have access to an increasing list of areas where you can LISTEN, GOSSIP, and SKULK and acquire new buttons like KEY and DEVOTION and HORROR. Basically each one of these is potentially a sensory description of the location you are in and an action, but you won't know until you click, and it doesn't matter because there's not much you're going to do wrong by just clicking. Getting new interaction words and then revisiting locations where you didn't have them before is the bulk of exploration. I never felt like I was doing anything intelligently with this, just click every interaction, find a new area, go to that one and click every word, loop back if I have a word I didn't try in an original area. I like this as a prototype for a larger work.

Porpentine excels at visceral imagery and making Twine do what she wants. I don't think she's interested in story cohesion or character development. Perhaps it's a flavor you either get or you don't, and this type of thing over and over is obviously not intended for me. I appreciate and admire the imagination and HTML skills that go into her works, but I don't feel in any way affected at the end as many other people are. Does that make me a monster?

Howwl is a choice-based game, but the interface is interesting. It sort of looks like a Wordpress site with pictures. Beneath the description are a list of parsery-type things to do, which seemed quite satisfying. Everything you'd probably want to try in this situation is presented. You have an inventory, and choices to use items you have show up automatically without you needing to fiddle with them in the inventory.

The story says it's "loosely apocalyptic" but I'd say it's fully apocalyptic. You start in an abandoned apartment with no memory or idea who you are or why you're there. You do the expected scavenging, and encounter several odd creatures pulled from mythology and art. Helpfully, the story links to information about the creatures or items you find with pictures. If you're not sure what a molotov cocktail is, there's the wikipedia entry.

It's very nicely done. The writing is straightforward and dead-serious without any IF wacky. I got through the game basically lawnmowering choices waiting for something interesting or explanatory as to what kind of apocalypse this was (museum of art paintings suddenly come to life and eat the populace?) but then I hit a message saying "End of beta ###". It was a little disappointing, but an example of a smart balance between parser and choice systems.

I'm not the target audience for this Twine story with 8bit graphics and music, which also claims to be based on Legend of Zelda. This has the same sort of METAL ROXX!! intentions as Tim Schaefer's BRUTAL LEGEND. The font is 8-bit, and so is the music, which the author says wouldn't play in a browser, but eventually loaded and was also very retro 8 bit grindy. I've heard some amazing and beautiful 8bit arrangements, but this was ostensibly some sort of metal tune with sat in my ear like a jackhammer.

After the intro where there's lots of long scrolling text and un-skippable dramatic pausing, the game turns into a sort of RPG. The PC is on an invisible grid with links for NSEW. For the little I explored, every location is a "Temple of [something]" and you have to type in the answer to a password to enter. I wasn't sure whether these answers were available in-world or if they were some sort of metal trivia. When presented with "Number of the Beast", answering "666" did not work, so that's when I gave up.

That's not to say this wouldn't be an enjoyable diversion for someone into all of the elements that went into it: heavy metal, 8-bit retro, and LoZ. A good amount of skill is on display.

This was a dashed off piece by Porpentine, but it's got a hysterical sense of humor. It's like someone on sugar and cocaine telling an improvised story, both outlandish and perfectly reasoned at the same time.

It's not a game, but it's a neat little dose of Porpentine sense of humor if you're not into her more visceral stuff.

I don't want to spoil any of this, it's very short, but does have a major trigger in it. It's a clever short jam-idea. I would have liked if it were longer and kept the conceit that the words in the title are the only links you have to click on.
(Spoiler - click to show)
Major animal violence trigger.
Also I don't know if the order you select links could solve the mystery somehow.