Ratings and Reviews by bluevelvetwings

...but unfortunately, I found that the whole was less than the sum of its parts. Don't get me wrong, the parts are all very nice. The presentation is pretty great - one word at a time, in most cases, with a hyperlink at the end of a series of related words. The story is conveyed with extreme minimalism, and the first part felt quite poetic.

It's a cute idea, and the overall theme it explores is cute, but at a certain point it seemed to lose its charm - (Spoiler - click to show)someone's shooting of one of the girls is abrupt and kind of lame, and it tore me right out of the atmosphere. But not in a good way, like you'd expect from such a twist. Instead, it made me think oh, this is random and sudden and cliché. In fact, tellingly, the suddenness (Spoiler - click to show)actually made me sympathize with the shooter. And the ending felt like a cop-out, after all that.

Plus, repetition kind of bogged the experience down. I understand that these girls are in love; the word kissing three or four times doesn't make me understand it any more. People who are in love do things other than kiss. Maybe it's just me, but the repetition made the experience feel kind of corny toward the end.

I recommend trying it out, though - for all the storytelling flaws I've pointed out, it's definitely unique and worth your four minutes.

This game is actually rather worse than I expected, and that's saying a lot. I think it's a parody, but it's... far less than clear. At points, it seems genuinely racist, and at others pretends to mock racism. I could go into a deep philosophical ramble on the nature of parody, Poe's law, and politics in general, but I'd rather not. I'd rather talk about the game in itself, rather than as a gestalt. I have no wish to meddle in politics - the only reason I played this game is because somebody had to, and somebody had to review it. Not knowing would have killed me. Thus, I'd like to talk about the game aspects of this work, but that's hard.

It's a mess. The grammar is poor, and the design in general is poor - more often than not, lines of text overlapped each other in my browser, making reading it a nearly impossible task. It doesn't matter what hyperlink you click on, as they all (to my knowledge) lead to the same thing, stretching the definition of "interactive" to its limits. The writing, as I said, is muddled and misguided, and riddled with repetition and punctuation errors. There isn't anything to it that hasn't been done before - done better.

This work is angry and bitter, but not at anyone or anything in particular. The only one it unleashes its full vitriol on is you, the player. Play at your own risk.

And yes, I'm a masochist, before you ask.

Very, very meh. There's just about nothing here - at least it's functional, but that's just about the only compliment I can summon. There are grammar errors, as well as some things that I think were probably spelling errors (does anyone name their child "Bell"?). It doesn't even take a minute to play through to find all the endings (none of which I personally cared for, since they lacked any sort of impact), but the font is so big that you'll have to scroll down to get through a single sentence at times. Very linear, very bland. But I was expecting that going in, given the description.

For people looking to play the game: you can probably skip this one. This review is mostly meant for the author. In the future, author, if you're going to make a game as linear as this one, you'll have to have better prose rather than one-sentence screens.

As an author ((on the side) who definitely has struggled with writers' block before) I felt like this game COULD have struck home with me, especially as it goes downhill in the latter segment. But it didn't. It felt self-pitying, "look at how badly I treat myself just to write stories for you!". It's more of a rant than anything else, though an occasionally well-written one, but I can't get behind its sentiment in the least. That's a danger everyone exposes themselves to when they rant; you run the risk of turning people off - and the game did that for me.

Also, the formatting is somewhat unpleasant on the eyes. I understand that it's supposed to be a dig at Twine's typical formatting, but as someone who can't quite understand the hate for the default, it seemed quite overbearing.

The prose is decent, and the author seems to be technically experienced, but... sorry, just doesn't do it for me.

As someone who is working very hard at getting my J.D. in the US, I find this game nothing short of nasty and vengeful. As narrow in scope as it is in mind, it's not an accurate simulation by any means, and is more of a vent piece than anything else.

If you want to click through someone else's whining, then sure, by all means, play it.

If, however, you want to play a game, have any goals in life, have hope for yourself, don't fit into one of two categories (ignorant or materialistic), or don't want to put up with someone who talks like your whiniest drunk friend, leave it alone.

And yes, I'm also bitter with this game, and a bit whiny about it, but I'm also right.

Spoiler alert: this game has no good end.

Other spoiler alert: life might have a good end. If you keep trying.

This game feels more tired than anything. There's nothing new about any of it - none of the points of view explored are groundbreaking; everything has been done far better before. The choices are extremely limited and largely unappealing even in a storytelling sense. Prose is weak at best, incredibly bland at worst. I might have given it a 2 star rating, because the author seems to have at least tried, but because of my personal opinions I only gave it 1 star (I hated the art style).

Nevertheless, if you've never played a 'guy does stuff' game... this will probably be new to you? Maybe entertain you for the 45 seconds it takes to play it? There are better offerings out there, though, so I can't really recommend it even on that strength.