Ratings and Reviews by Zoe Victoria

This is one of my favorite hosted games I have ever played. The story and characters are engaging, the worldbuilding is beautifully done, and my favorite part personally? The way the ace route is handled!
I'm aroace, and personally romancing characters in games makes me uncomfortable. But since I don't speak romance, it's sometimes hard for me to understand what the romantic choices are since I'm pretty affectionate with my friends. But thanks to the author's foresight I can simply hide the romantic options, so I don't end up putting my PC in an unwanted situation.
But something that I like even more than being able to disable romance is that it doesn't stop me from making connections. Being able to have a route with a character I like, but having a platonic route instead of a romantic one is something I did not know I needed until it was presented as an option, and I think Hidden Sanctum handles this phenomenally. I can be close with a character in a platonic way without the game unintentionally (or at least I hope it's unintentionally) making it feel less valuable or fulfilling than the romantic route. Games where you have to romance a character to save them/get the best ending, anyone?
I just realized I haven't really talked about the story, whoops. I love the way the magic system works: being chosen by a certain supernatural entity based on the person you are and gaining powers from that. The author does a wonderful job of making you feel the magic of the powers, and the Sanctum location. And all the characters are pretty fleshed out as far as I can tell, and very well written. (Spoiler - click to show)My only complaint is that the "plot twist" of who the bad guy is isn't really a twist at all, so much so that I'm not even sure if it was intended to be a plot twist, or even a reveal.

I've only played this game through completely once, and I enjoyed it, so much so that I purchased the rest of it (I used the Choice Of Games app and thus could have a preview of it before buying.) Overall it was quite funny with cool and quirky characters; the only thing that could make it better is if it didn't jump around in the timeline so much. I'm not really the biggest fan of non-linear tales. Hopefully the second installment of this series won't do that as much.

In the parenting simulator, you play as a single parent doing the best they can to raise their child from infancy to adulthood. Like in real life, your choices shape who your child becomes as they grow, and how successful they will be.

This game is s dynamic and touching experience which has good pacing and a nice sense of humor. I recommend it to anyone and everyone who wants to try their hand at being a parent.

This game was one of the Many Preinstalled text adventures that came when I downloaded Frotz on my iPad. The title seemed interesting so I decided: why not try it out?

I can't say I regret that decision really, I mean the experience was Pretty enjoyable. I enjoyed the dialogue options, that's not really something seen often in this medium, at least not to my knowledge. But I can't help but find the gameplay a little lackluster, you basically type what it tells you to type to advance the story, one of which I personally couldn't manage because I'm (Spoiler - click to show)Not very familiar to the way these games are coded since I use quest to make my games rather than inform. Point is, there really isn't any exploration, or puzzles, or challenges of any kind. So much so that you could probably sell this just as well, if not better, as a non-interactive fiction. A short story, a Zarf fanfic if you will.

I think I'd get a bit more enjoyment out of this game if I had watched the movie this game was based on, or played the game this game was based on,or knew a bit more about the IF community than I do at present. But despite my nitpicking, there We're Things that I enjoyed about this game, namely how the author described locations and such differently depending on the current PC, especially Zarf, I think they nailed his descriptive manner of writing fairly well. So if you're a fan of Zarf and his work, then check this game out. I'm probably just not the target demographic.