Reviews by Hanon Ondricek

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.

It took barely five minutes. You may wish to wait for more of this to be released before trying it, especially since the game wants you to maintain a browser cookie to remember your progress.

This game is brilliant, and you should play it before reading a review. No really. Play blind. Then come back. It's in Ren'Py? I think? That's the dating simulation engine where the anime characters slide in shrewdly from the sides...but this game doesn't do this - it's not annoying at all. Install this and play it. There's enjoyable music and graphics and it all works perfectly.

(Spoiler - click to show)I'm not sure I got everything out of this game, but I am a HUGE fan of meta and I love intricate recursion. So when I figured out this game was going to let me actually use save and reload to affect the story, I was hooked. It's got a lot to say about the contract between an author and a reader, and a gleeful sense of absurd humor. I almost think this even does a better trick than THE STANLEY PARABLE because there is no narrator and the author colludes with you wholeheartedly. It's almost got a bit of INCEPTION in its world-controlling aspirations.

Brilliant.

In the Stanley Parable, you play a man named Stanley who discovers all of his coworkers have mysteriously vanished. A helpful narrator guides you along and you win. That's no fun though, and the point of the game is to disobey the narrator and change the story in bizarre, surreal, and interestingly-meta ways as he not-so-enthusiastically rewrites the tale to fit your actions. It's an amazing game that everyone should play.

Cobblestone is a text version of this implemented on a minuscule scale. It's got the rude narrator and the ever-expanding clown-car of possible choices. I didn't have a lot of patience for this because I have actually *played* The Stanley Parable, so a text version without the graphics, the audio, the music, the wry British narrator, and all of the other trappings ends up becoming just an argument simulator with you holding out while the parser/author try to convince you continuously take the proffered "best" choice.

This could work as a parser game, most likely, but as a choice-based narrative, it loses a lot, becoming "Push this button. Don't push this button. NO I said push that button!" It doesn't work when all you have are two choices. In the graphic adventure (and I would surmise in a parser game) there are fewer binary choices and more freedom to disobey other than clicking wrong.

A very nicely styled Twine story. Low agency, but paced very nicely. The story is oblique but understandable, there's a little bit of gore as you are a psychic who enters the minds of the dead to get clues about their demise.

The writing is restrained, but a little bit on the nose at the beginning. The writing gets better as the story goes along and the author settles in.

I would definitely read more of this if it were a full-length novella or a slightly expanded and more interactive experience as a full-blown game. There are lots of hooks in this set up to give the reader more choice and more chances to explore and examine and interact. The author does a lot of good things with word-changing paragraphs.

This game starts off with you in the middle of a desert being led nearly naked in shackles as part of a caravan overseen by a four-breasted Slaver riding a lizard. Oh my god. How did this author read my mind?

This purports to be a class writing project. The prose is at times lurid and descriptive in a good way, in others the author snarks at the reader for making the wrong decision. It's well done, but I'd like a little more breathing room between dying points in the story. I don't know if I'm supposed to be able to survive, but my options are Run, Fight, and Reason. I can't bide my time and see where we're headed, nor, can I try to talk to a companion to see if I can start up a proper revolt. The only viable option is to run, and these each lead to binary die-or-not situations which are interesting. A potential temptress lures me in and turns into a slime creature.

I almost feel I'm reading a stealth parody of both AIF and pulp science-fiction romance. Nudity is pointed out and exploited, and the whole thing has a thrown-together 80's barbarian movie vibe that I like. I'd like more decision points and a slightly more nuanced range of responses.

I don't have trouble with my narrator being snarky and *clever*. I think the author is very influenced by THE STANLEY PARABLE, and has the potential to write to that level, but I'd enjoy more relish of the situation instead of the ones that go "Oh you're think you're so smart for turning left..." Death messages should not last an entire page.

If I go north into the sandstorm I get lost with a one word description, and there is no "retry" button. The quick restart did manage to get me to play through all the permutations I could find, I felt that it should have been available in the sandstorm death as well.

You are an ambassador attending a dinner with an alien race who value etiquette above all, and you are offered a pointed list of no-nos and names and rankings and suggestions like "don't discuss the traffic situation with this person". This leads to some instant death scenarios, ("Oh gosh, this food looks great!" !!STAB!!) but I very much appreciate what a good idea this is. It feels like a logic puzzle and has some interesting art.

An Equine Reproduction Adventure doesn't sound like an enjoyable subject for a text game, but I was surprised to find this is a medically instructional sort of interactive quiz that would help a veterinarian review procedure to diagnose a champion horse that's not breeding properly.

The interaction here is actually quite clever, hooking responses to directions, using the standard map of rooms and locations to make decisions. For example, the room description explains to go east to do a visual exam, or west to decide the problem is not with the mare. Five stars for thinking outside the box to make IF a viable medium for an educational simulation.