Reviews by Hanon Ondricek

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.

This is a brilliant piece of IF, and I'd call it a classic. It's a one room comedic farce told in dry Victorian sensibilities where you must coerce your hot-air balloon passenger, Mr. Booby, to relinquish a ridiculous number of heavy items he is concealing in his inventory to gain enough altitude so you don't crash and burn in the steadily approaching volcano. Delightful.

You are part of a crew of four investigating a 32 year old derelict space ship. To say that standard space exploration horror tropes ensue is sort of accurate, but not in a bad way. It's a bit Event Horizon, but this is not a story about bloody alien/demonic rampage, although violence does occur.

Instead, it's a personal narrative that plays with agency. It's more of a game than the last few Twine stories I've reviewed, giving you choices at the story level instead of the "turn right at this hallway" level, which works very well. The story can play out at least three different ways, although with the same general outcome, but each one is surprisingly different and provides a smidgin more information about what's going on.

Lots of imagery is very well-written. I especially liked the description of the sense of infinite emptiness crossing from one ship to the other, and a description of weightlessness evokes spectacular imagery in the mind.

Originally I thought there was no denouement, until I tried one of the separate paths at the main fork. It is here that the story changes. I initially believed this was a false choice and would have the story end the same way, but although what happens is the same, there are three slightly different how paths here.

I liked The Cradle of Eve a lot. It has a very sure sense of its world, and changes the endgame of the story completely depending on your choice, although there's no way to change the outcome that I actually found. On first play I thought I had the whole story, and only playing the other two branches did I get the information that I actually wanted -(Spoiler - click to show)regarding what the entity in the seed actually wants to happen- but I still wish it was made clear whether -(Spoiler - click to show)is the seed using you opportunistically, or does it care about you? Apparently it's probed your memories and use them to its advantage, so I'm curious if the seed is actually malevolent or just doing what it needs to do to get planted.

Definitely play through if you get a chance.

Beyond the title, which earned a laugh from me, the game doesn't go very much farther than to detail the "stages" of hive spider infestation, and "what to expect" exactly as it says on the tin. It's nicely written, but doesn't go very much farther than that. Less a game than a slightly interactive guide that never tries for a better joke than the title.

I guess Twine is the system of choice for expressing angst, as the last few I've opened up have provided a list of "triggers"...in this case "spiders, body-horror". That's a decent way to self-regulate, I suppose.

I hate when Twine stories keep the default sugarcane theme with no modifications, and wish that authors would scale their text up if they are never going to provide a page of text that fills down past the top quarter of the screen.

A neat and interesting Twine story that casts you in an unusual role. There's an interesting story to be told. I was promised seven, but got one...where are the other six?

I wish I could ask all Twine authors to increase the font size when their story only takes up the upper sliver of page in the Sugarcane theme.

This Twine narrative by Merritt Kopas is a stellar example of how the interactive medium can communicate things that a standard book or poem or treatise cannot. It's kind of a standard thing Twine has become - a place where people with poetry or just imagery can write it out and sort of get things off their chest.

This one is extremely well done. There are pauses built in, and some ambiguity about whether you are supposed to click something or not at times, but this serves to make the incident that Merritt Kopas relays feel like a very personal telling, with all the hesitation and occasional tangents that might be interjected into having words with a friend who will listen.

There are also times when the script spawned another window full of what appears to be twee/twinecode. I am unsure if this was supposed to happen this way, but seeing the Twine broken out and reading some of the English sentences within the code I think supplement the personal feeling in that I was reading behind the fourth wall and seeing what Merritt actually wrote behind the flash of html. I hope I was supposed to be seeing the code and it wasn't just a glitch.

This is not a game so much as a short experience where you can connect with the author and perhaps empathize or sympathize with raw feeling and experience put forth. I can't say I really enjoy this type of presentation in itself and hope to read lots more of them...but the piece is definitely worth a read if you enjoy raw image-filled prose poetry that can exist in an artist's head.

This story is very directly written and horrifies with emotion and monstrous implications. It feels like some of the moody J-horror short films without splattering blood, but rather the rumbling, queasy burn of ideas in your brain where you don't know if the monster is internal or external to your point of view.

Very nice use of Twine. I'm starting to think one of my requisites for any Twine story is going to be that the author *must* style the text outside of the default - at minimum, MAKE THE TEXT BIGGER. If your story only takes up the top quarter of the screen, you have problems.

This is about the right length for a choice-based scenario, and nicely paced between text and choices. The writing is not indulgent, but gives enough details to get the goosebumps across.

This is a great use of the Quest engine for CYOA masquerading as a correctional class to teach you about corporate personhood. I almost don't think I was smart enough to play the game, but it's a very tongue-in-cheek and surprisingly-well researched fractured history lesson.

And there's a scene where you play Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas as he tumbles down a slide into the National Archive.

No plot, but some raw emotions on display. Thank you for making the text big!

The Axolotl Project is a choice-based narrative written in Twine. You are a lowly intern researcher working as an animal handler on the moon where research into new drugs is being conducted. Per usual in these types of stories, a sinister plot reveals itself, and you must untangle the threads and save yourself and humanity.

This game got hold of my attention and absorbed me. The prose is well-written and never indulgent. There's a surprising amount of agency, and I never got stuck so the narrative never lost momentum. I'm not sure if I was funneled, but after the exploratory first act, I was always given a well-timed nudge on what to do next. I never felt as though I was being forced to the conclusion, but once the diegetic hints start coming (they're all explained in the denouement) you appreciate them.

My only slight gripe is the story was in the default Twine font and format (I think it's called Jonah? The dark one that clears the screen after each choice). I always appreciate when authors make the font a little bit larger and more readable. There was only once or twice when the text filled more than the upper fourth of the screen, so that would be my only suggestion: style the HTML a bit more nicely.

I went from skimming some of the descriptions at the beginning to actually fully invested and interested in the story that Samantha Vick was telling, as well as her characters. So many of the Twine offerings have very abstracted plot lines or provide just so much metaphorical poetry (which Twine does very well), or are so poorly written that you may as well not bother. So if you've never read a good fully-fleshed out and plotted narrative in a CYOA-type wrapper, then The Axolotl Project is here as one of the best and most recent examples of how Twine can be used to tell an actual linear, non-abstract story.