Ratings and Reviews by Christina Nordlander

As a story, my father's long, long legs is original, weird (in the Lovecraftian sense of the term), and excellently scary. It is the kind of story I will need to mull over for a while, (Spoiler - click to show)especially given the lack of a conclusive ending. The writing occasionally feels a bit lacklustre, but when it is good, it is very good. The concept is excellent and uncanny.

As a Twine creation, I'm in two minds about it. Visually, it's very good. The grayscale background is a subtle, superb touch: representing the dwindling light falling into the father's basement; brightening or darkening depending on the events of the story. However, once the novelty wore off, I ended up feeling that the Twine format was a gimmick. The story is static; the vast majority of segments only have one link to click to get to the next one. The narration didn't even use the simple trick of second person to give the reader a sense of agency. I enjoyed the story, but I felt I would have enjoyed it equally if I'd read it in print or on a static web page.

(Spoiler - click to show)Then I got to the final section, and the story unleashed all Twine's possibilities: a more game-like structure with several possible actions, sound, and a spotlight effect I've never seen in Twine before. All these factors do an excellent job building atmosphere and creating claustrophobia. The music at the end is perfect.

I give my father's long, long legs four stars on account of the story, mood, and some excellent use of Twine's possibilities. However, players who prefer some agency in their IF might want to look elsewhere.

Not on an intellectual level: the plot makes perfect sense once you get to the end. However, the fear that underlies the story in this game is alien to me. I'm sure that sounds insensitive, and that's not my intention - when I read the blurb, I was expecting gender dysphoria, which is something I know of, even though I'm lucky enough to never have experienced it. Not to spoil anything, the body dysphoria in Staring at a Single Face Forever is something different, and I can't really connect with it.

That said, the game is well implemented, and the writing is top notch. Especially the desert sequence is jealousy-inducingly well written.

In short, a good story and stylistically beautiful. It just didn't connect emotionally with me, which is a bit of a problem when reading an emotionally-driven story. Other players may very well have a different experience.

Even if not, it's well worth a playthrough.

Firstly, I'm fairly obsessed with The Stanley Parable, so I was thrilled to find an IF tribute to it.

So. The Larry Parable isn't nearly as rich or complex as the original (partly, of course, because it's just a demo so far), with only two choices per scene (if you're lucky). However, the Narrator's voice is pretty spot on and a very entertaining constant throughout your little adventure. While some of the humour is a bit too silly for my personal taste, there are several hilarious lines: the response to repeated button-pushing, for instance, and several others which I won't spoil.

The game seems a bit unpolished. It seems weird to list your options in plain text and then have the links below, but I can't figure out whether that's a coding error or intentional.

To sum up: shallow and silly, but should provide a decent amount of entertainment, whether you're familiar with The Stanley Parable or not. If it gets made into a full-length game, I'll play it.

I give this two stars because the writing is pretty good, in its self-imposed succinctness, and the story ties together well. But the premise is hardly original, and this isn't even a CYOA: there are no choices.

Disclaimer: I spoiled myself for this game by reading some IFComp reviews, which gave me hints for how to solve the final puzzle, as well as some ideas of what the plot may mean.

The House at the End of Rosewood Street is very well-written. The descriptions are beautiful, the only problem being an occasional (but only occasional) reliance on clichés. Most of the characters aren't particularly deep (though I believe there is a reason for that; see the spoilered section below), but fairly memorably sketched. The antagonist is vague in terms of motivation, but an enjoyable character. There is a special ambience to this story, a mystery that doesn't try too hard to be scary, and the plot... well, I'd be lying if I said I understood everything that's going on in the plot. Though I have a couple of reservations, I do like it.

As a game, however, it's a mixed experience. It's mostly puzzleless; OK, that's not a problem in a post-Photopia world. But puzzleless IF still needs a hook to keep us going. Photopia itself has the exploration of the science fiction settings and the player's desire to piece together Ally's story; Galatea has a different kind of exploration (the drive to discuss various topics with the title character), and so on. The House at the End of Rosewood Street does not have any kind of exploration. Until the end of the game, you will be doing the same routine of delivering newspapers and carrying out odd jobs for the residents, without finding any new areas or points of interest. A couple of new characters show up, but your interaction with any of the characters is not deep. There is not even a progression in the mood of the game: your dreams get creepier, but the ambience of your daily work stays the same. The repetitive tasks fall somewhere between "soothing" and "boring", for me. I occasionally got the feeling that I would have enjoyed this more as a static fiction story.

Technically, all this is well implemented. Sometimes, it felt like the implementation was a bit sparse, but I didn't run into any "guess the verb" moments.

Then you get to the puzzle - arguably, the only puzzle in the game. Further discussion of it, and of the plot of the game, will be spoilerfied.

(Spoiler - click to show)I am in two minds about the puzzle. I can agree with those reviewers who found it underclued, given that the wrong action will send you back to the start of the game. On the other hand, I like it, because (and what follows is only my interpretation) it requires the player to understand what exactly is going on on Rosewood Street: the PC is in a coma, the other residents are shards of his/her psyche, and the mirror is said to contain your soul. You need to collect all your constituent parts (except for Caius, who is in some way the force keeping you asleep), and only then will you be able to wake up.

And there we have it: another coma dream story, along the lines of Madame Spider's Web. This isn't a particularly new storyline in IF, but apart from the fact that it's been done before, I think it's well done here. I found Elisabeth a bit too obviously the good guy, and, to a lesser extent, Caius a bit too obviously evil, but I can live with that.

There are still many things I don't get (and man, I hate it when readers say they don't get my writings. Mr. Thomét, I apologise): is Caius just another part of you, the one that doesn't want to wake up, or some malignant entity? What exactly is the connection of Lisa to the PC's story? Given their similarity of names, you would expect Elisabeth to be some sort of avatar of Lisa, but if there is a connection, I don't see it.

All in all, not a flawless game, but it does what it does very interestingly, and the writing is high quality. I might require another playthrough to see whether I can make more sense of the story.