Ratings and Reviews by Hanon Ondricek

I suspect this game was written by someone either very young and new to writing, or someone whose primary language is not English.

I quit reading this Twine after several clicks due to:

*A huge number of spelling and grammar mistakes right at the beginning that don't encourage me that the writing will get better. For example "Mars" is capitalized when you are speaking of the planet.

*Poor writing above and beyond spelling and grammar. Awkward phrasing, adult language that seems completely inappropriate for the situation, prose changes from second person to first person and back again. Here's an example:

You notice who it was that was yelling for you, and immediately wished you hadn’t. “Hey captain.” She says in her overly excited voice of her with her sound piercing your eardrums. “So I’ve been meaning to talk to you lately you haven’t been coming to your check ups recently, and I know a certain someone who needs one.” The last bit she says with a patronizingly cheerful change of voice.

“No.” You say in the harshest tone of voice you can.

“Awww...,” she says as if she’s five. “But you promised you would at least have one session with me before the trip was over.”

“You’re no fun Mr.Poopypants.” She says as if that’s spouse to make you feel bad rather than making her look foolish.

“Now if you don’t mind I’d rather eat my breakfast in peace.” You say with a gentle happiness in your voice and a sly smile on your face.

“Fine, but you own me two visits on the way back to earth.” She says cheerfully as if she’s won some argument or something, but in all reality she just acted like a kid. But either way who knew that Therapists can be such a child, let alone necessary in space travel. Your stomach growls suddenly

Without picking it apart, there are uncapitalized proper names ("Earth" "Captain") capitalized words that are not proper names ("Therapists"), comma splices, incorrect quotation punctuation, sentence fragments, and things such as the word "spouse" substituting for the word "supposed" which is why I have a hunch this was written by a young author just writing what they heard in their head and neglecting to proofread. Despite that, this petulant exchange between purportedly the captain of a starship and its doctor sounds more like lunchroom "cootie" talk then dialogue between two people over the age of ten.

*General lack of meaningful choice. Most of the clicks I make are a choice of one to get the next story bit. The couple of times I had a choice of two things, it's your typical "get out of bed/don't get out of bed" sort of false choice that doesn't affect the story one bit.

I would have continued with this if the writing was competent, or if the plot started off with a bang. I encourage the author to continue writing and also reading; doing both are only real way to get better at writing. I also suggest to always get someone you know to proofread a work before releasing it to the entire world.

This autobiography of Deirdra "Squinky" Kiai (tubaist, graphical adventure creator) is delightful and I enjoyed it thoroughly. I felt like Kiai's best friend having a conversation with someone I've known my whole life. There is generous interaction written with an open and honest modesty and assured voice that never made me feel uncomfortable like a poorly considered personal Twine can occasionally do. Kiai allows the reader to proceed without delving deeper into every twisty anecdote, so I look forward to a second read. Even if you don't hit every node, it's an enjoyable conversation.

This is a spectacular example of an experience not possible in non-interactive fiction. Extra difficulty points for an assured rare tick in the IF autobiography genre that doesn't see much action.

These get better as they continue. The author has finally stopped the one-move random death traps and delivered a new chapter that actually manages to attempt a slight story and character arc. The writing continues the zany, stupid, cartoon humor from before that follows the somewhat Monkey Island form of "Normal Response, Wacky Response, Audacious Response" but I find them funny, and at last I've gotten through an episode without having to smash my keyboard as I angrily start over. The jokes work ever so much better when you only see them once!

No summary because it's too short and simple for that. You're a zombie wizard, hijinks ensue.

This story delivers a mad sort of intensity casting the reader as a past-its-prime robot which is purchased at a yard sale and pressed into service by a seemingly-horrible woman who gripes that she has to issue specific commands to you. You're about two decades obsolete, but old robots make good spare robots. You're not one of the newer ones that can carry out implicit actions.

And it also seems the robot's hard drive has been recycled several times. Snippets of other people's lives can be reviewed, nearly always at high-pitch emotional moments. These become almost too extensive to read in one sitting. The angst here is pitch-dark and unflinching in the places it goes. This is not a bad thing.

What worked against this piece is the text styling. If you know enough html to make the background dark gray, you know enough to change the teeny default 8pt Arial font to something else and make it bigger.

I love the interesting games the author plays with agency. I was overwhelmed by some of the lengthy, almost short story-length interludes. Many of these I did read are internet-age adult situations (not the fun kind by any means) that ache under the weight of lived experience. Some are seemingly related to the frame story, some seem out of left field. I was most interested in the owner of the robot. You're not the best one available, and people enjoy interacting with you with about as much care as they do with ATM machines and dial in voice-recognition menus.

Worth it if you like your fiction brewed emo-black and bitter. If the output were more comfortable to physically read I'd definitely want to delve into more of the tangental stories.

Progression is a dungeon delve into the underworld that seems to borrow a bit from Andrew Plotkin's Bigger Than You Think in that it seems that the player is meant to fail multiple times in order unlock new options to move further in the game. There's even an XP display that does not reset during multiple play throughs.

The "die to proceed" mechanic can be interminably frustrating in most games. Many Twine games are filled with these unhinted arbitrary choice clicks leading to an unpredictable game-over as a way to add the illusion of choice without the work of actually writing extensive choices that are meaningful. I remember a particularly egregious Ecto-Comp entry where the character has a choice of "Proceed down the sidewalk" or "Cross the street". Since no specific goal or direction had been given, it was infuriating to choose "Cross the street" only to summarily be told "You have been hit by a car, try being more careful next time," when there was absolutely no clues that the player could have made use of to know that was a death-end. Bigger Than You Think used dying abruptly as a gimmick - you died but were able to drop a rope into a chasm where it remained for the next incarnation of your player to use it and proceed further so "bad" choices could lead to new interactions.

That *seems* what's supposed to happen here with the XP count. Progression's text is evocative but sparse, and there are passages with several links that the player cannot choose since the preceding paragraph dims out when one is chosen. A few repetitions, therefore are not unwelcome. The problem here is some choices provide only a few words in response or a slight text variation, and then new links not seen before appear later on with very little to clue the player why. (Spoiler - click to show)Three scenes in I had to choose an answer to the Sphinx's riddle from about four provided. Each time I was wrong and had to replay the previous scenes. I steamrollered through them, restarting each time. At one point I was given a *fifth* choice, ostensibly based on what I had done before. Since I didn't try that one immediately, and didn't remember what slightly different sequence of clicks led to that choice appearing, I wasn't able to proceed.

I was hoping that the XP meter was the games way of keeping track of this and would offer greater and greater explanation of what's going on and more choices in each scene, but this didn't come into play in the sequence of the game I worked through - even though I got the XP count pretty high. Is it just a matter of grinding XP to make the game winnable?

The succinct writing style is good since the text must be read multiple times, but even then I was eventually just clicking hard and fast to get back where I was. Early on, the player is plunged into darkness with just two words "torch" and something that's not the torch. You're not told what the torch will do, but having the screen fade then from black up to deep blood red was a nice bit of styling. Despite being short, Progression quickly becomes tedious. There's no save/reload mechanism that might make this less frustrating because that would defeat the game of setting all the right flags so progress can be made.

This is unfortunate, as I genuinely liked the scenario. It seems like a step toward creating a larger puzzle in a choice-based adventure besides "Choose A, B, or C", but I grew quickly tired of it after about nine times through. Better feedback when the correct choices are made would go much toward improving this. Also some more extensive variations of the opening sequences so the player feels like they actually are "progressing". A way to review the choices that were made previously with a hint or nudge in the right direction after the death screen might help. Maybe this all happens later in the game past where I gave up after trying every response to the Sphinx.

There is no "about" or "hints" option, and no setup other than "You descend..." which could come off as pretentious, but works into the mysterious impenetrable-ness I think the author wants to evoke. If this game wasn't tested, it should have been. Perhaps if the player made enough correct choices, they could be returned just to before the incorrect one to save some tedium. I liked the game, I just didn't like repeating the opening ten times and not knowing how I could improve by taking different links. Appropriate and clear feedback is a must in a game like this. If you like experimenting and trying to find every nook and cranny that a Twine game provides, this will keep you busy a while.

(Spoiler - click to show)
‌‌‌‌‌‌‌‌‌‌Your descent is over.

This place is changing you.

You have died 6 time(s).
You have killed your brother 1 time(s).
You have eaten 2 sandwich(es).
You have incorrectly answered the Sphinx's riddle 4 time(s).
You have earned 175 experience points in total.
---
This is not true. These results are from one extra play I did to check things while writing the review. I may have restarted without a death several times, but I earned a lot more XP than that in my initial playthroughs. Apparently there's a cookie to remember some bits of your play but not others.

I'm unable to download this from the link...is it on the ifArchive?

I thought this was yet another Twine simulation of the affronts experienced at the hands of men that are quite popular currently. Then I hit prose like this:

The massive industrial building pumps smog into the air at a breakneck pace. You can physically feel the disapproving, accusatory frowns of 21st Century environmentalists looming over you and your future workplace. You hear the sobs of orphans and puppies coming from throughout the area.

The prose is actually quite funny, and I enjoyed it a lot more once I realized it was a parody.

There are actually footnotes, and references, and art included to illustrate this poor pregnant protagonist with rotting teeth and a lagabout husband.

This would have gotten a 3-star, but the game crashed in the middle when I tried to get a job in the factory.

“Are you here to inquire about a job?”

“Yes.”

This opens a new browser window with a neocities site missing content. I'm just hoping this wasn't meta-humor showing the futility of factory work, but both the "Yes" and "No" options lead nowhere.

Gaming Pixie presents here a short Twine piece which I can possibly describe as "bisexuality simulator". Everyone's got a sexual identity, but there is an uncanny valley that many civilians don't comprehend that represents omnisexuality or bisexuality. It seems that heterosexuals and homosexuals can both agree that their identity is hard and fast and isn't going to change. Where does a person fit who is not so similarly signed in ink to prefer traits and derive pleasure from the beauty of only gender or the other? Within welcoming communities, those who "decide not to decide" are sometimes looked upon as untrustworthy, and possibly something to be shunned, despite the lessons learned from fundamental sexism one meta-level up.

Anyway. This game rings true, and is a quick and informative read with several interesting choices.

My outcome: Yay, I'm a lesbian.

Remember those carnival dark rides with all the lurid artwork on the sheet metal facade that looked like it was done by an artist who did both tattoos and album covers? They promise chills and thrills within, but once inside the bumpy cart and crashing through the doors, the flapping tent doesn't keep out the daylight, and you're supposed to quiver in fear at some random blasts of air, a buzzer in the dark, an air horn, and an occasional brief illumination of a halloween mask by a bare bulb? The outside suggestion of what goes on inside proves to be the most interesting part.

Shadow of a Soul purports to be a sexually and violently explicit tale of the afterlife. It is written in Twine, however the text is not styled, using the ugly and way-too-small default white on black format. The game does contain some images and some well-chosen music.

So you've made a deal with dark creatures for a long and happy life. It's not immortality, but it's more than a hundred years, which seems reasonable for this kind of story. You're allowed to choose or not choose your gender, and also specify what gender attracts you the most. This is nicely done and the text varies to adapt to this.

So instead of just going to hell, you are pressed into service by a dark minion to "release" seven souls as a pre-quest before going to your final reward. Your performance here will determine your ultimate fate; whether you are kept as a pet by this minion, or turned over to the minion's "sibling" who is purportedly not as nice.

This is a great setup, and suggests a dark and gritty scenario rife with geysers of blood and lava, horrifying creature fights, and some down and dirty sexual scenarios as well as some soul-searching and some insight into the human nature of mercy and punishment, pain and pleasure...all the the trappings of an imaginative take on Dante's Inferno.

What happens next is barely a skeleton of that idea. You fight seven identical creatures. Even the art for each one is the same. A few are differentiated only by the words "this one looks stronger". You get the choice to stab them with your knife or feed them your blood, and every time this happens, it is described exactly the same. There seems to be a slight bit of randomness in how many times you stab or how much blood each creature requires, but this is arbitrary and involves no strategy. When you give blood, you can give "a little" "more" or "a lot". Twice you can perform sexual favors to replenish your blood, and these encounters are described with only the slightest bit more detail that wouldn't even come close to making a soccer mom who's read Fifty Shades tingle even a bit.

It's a horribly missed opportunity to show off some amazing creature art, and some disturbing sexual and violent prose. The story as told doesn't go far enough for all its suggestion of afterlife prurience. And the "battle" game part isn't fun or strategic or varied enough to make up for the uninspired descriptions. Once you stab a demon, you can't retreat and offer it blood. It's about as pulse-pounding as a solo game of Battleship.

I did think the music worked well and seemed to follow what was happening, providing a smudge of the atmosphere I wanted in the prose, if it wasn't in the monster art. The scream when a demon dies by the knife is a bit humorous though.

(Spoiler - click to show)I believe there may be different endings besides the two extremes that I played to (all blood, all stabbing). When you reach one, you pretty much are given the fate that was promised, without irony, nor an endgame twist, which was disappointing.

I so wish this worked better, because it's a solid skeleton for a game, but it's a plastic skeleton illuminated by a red bulb accompanied by buzzers and air horns instead of being a ghoulish and decadent dive into depravity promised by the painted facade.

It's really a shame this author didn't polish this another week and submit it for the Adult Interactive Fiction Competition.

The Fuzzy Little Adventure is another story by PaperBlurt which attempts to capitalize on the shocking humor of cognitive dissonance. Framed like a children's book, the gushy narration talks of happy rainbows and sharing, but the three furry animal characters in the story are only interested in making a drug deal, shouting at each other in threat-laden, profanity-stuffed invective that wavers between creatively original and boringly overblown.

If this sounds groundbreaking to you, stop reading this review right now and play this story. You may get a few laughs out of some imaginatively overblown methods of anatomical torture and punishment, (these are all discussed but never actually happen, so it's essentially that Saturday Night Live skit with the catchphrase "I hate when that happens!")

There's no real interaction, save for a couple of choices at the end, and you spend most of the story clicking on an ellipsis that I couldn't find when I originally tried reading this on my phone. The reader does not participate in the story but makes a couple of choices that slightly alter the finale.

The concept of portraying an adult Quentin Tarantino-ish plot using the trappings of a children's story has been done before and better by several programs on Adult Swim, such as Robot Chicken which never subjects the viewer to any concept longer than a minute, and South Park which has practically run every permutation of dissonant humor while almost never losing focus on telling a story. Even Family Guy knows that shocking humor shouldn't preclude things like plot and characterization (thin though they may be.) The initial humor of fluffy animals making a drug deal is amusing at first, but beyond that, the story has no original ideas and doesn't develop in any surprising ways. I expected the narrator to turn on the characters, but this story isn't ambitious enough to attempt a second humor trope.

PaperBlurt's previous Dad vs. Unicorn saved the joke for the end, and did not overstay its maudlin welcome. The Sadness of Rocky Barbato had some plot aspiration and the germ of an original idea. Despite some mild amusement at the audacity of this concept, this unhappy badger is sad to report that this fuzzy little adventure contains no adventure at all.