Ratings and Reviews by Enrique Henestroza Anguiano
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Haunting story about the sacrifices made in service of art, October 21, 2020Night Guard / Morning Star explores art, sacrifice, and the difficulties of living in the shadow of a self-centered parent. These themes are beautifully rendered through scenes where paintings come to life in ways that illuminate the protagonist’s past, revealing and developing the characters through off-kilter, scattered memories.
It’s a wonderful example of interactive structure serving the story, as the physical layout of the gallery, the description cards for all the paintings, and the ability to enter paintings in order to explore a scene from the past, all fit tightly and satisfyingly with the dark and vivid story being told.
The aunt and the Morning Star are vividly rendered and memorable as their images become embodied in different ways while they beckon and cajole the protagonist into action. And the relationship between the protagonist and her mother is deliciously fraught: the protagonist is able to see conflicting perspectives she and her mother had on different moments in the past, and this, along with their occasional clashes during the course of the story, lead to real character development and multiple endings that each feel like a unique resolution of the protagonist’s journey toward empowerment, as well as an exorcism of the ties and memories that have haunted her for a long time.
An apocalyptic sunset over the world, October 21, 2020A classic short Twine story, The Golden depicts a moody, near-future setting at sunset in a beachside house, with hints toward a more symbolic, apocalyptic sunset over the world at large.
While the location and choice design, as well as the Twine stylings, are relatively bare-bones, the story builds slowly but stealthily as details are revealed piecemeal about the unsettling backdrop to a seemingly normal family life in a house by the sea.
The story’s coup de grâce occurs when the family plays a matching card game to pass the time. There is an almost grotesque variation of figures on the cards that seems to grow as the game progresses. The characters’ startling realization at one point that the cards have stopped matching creates a brilliant metaphor for the loss of control; the reader senses that pretense has finally fallen by the wayside, and maurauding pirate ships might be coming at last to claim their bounty.
A tale of growing obsession with a mysterious figure in the wilderness, October 21, 2020Another Love Story presents a tale of obsession that features a series of photographs of open, remote places in nature that are woven into the story.
It’s unclear to me how much choices affect the course of the story, but it seems as though the protagonist can make decisions that either show more compassion and understanding for their live-in partner in a remote town, or drift further and further into a sort of outdoor dream world in pursuit of a shadow that becomes a lover.
The rapid pace of scenes helps build suspense and keeps the reader hooked, though this ends up feeling a bit at odds with the vast, dreamy locations that the characters inhabit. I occasionally found myself wishing for more space for the prose, and story, to breathe. However, there is undeniably a strong sense of isolation, beauty, and mystery that permeates the story and holds interest to the very end.
A suite of experimental stories on the concept of sand, October 21, 2020So Are The Days consists of a suite of very short experimental stories that play with various qualities of sand, evoking a sense of the malleability of it, how it can represent the passage of time, and how the tiny pieces can wash away or form into something larger.
One story allows the reader to move backwards and forwards as events transpire in a town, shifting how randomized occurrences from the past rewrite the story that plays out in the future. Another is a single page of text with a sort of slider at the bottom that gradually erases letters or brings them back.
Most importantly, though, a sure writing voice holds together these formal experiments by maintaining focus on the underlying themes and ideas, infusing meaning into the structures. The combination of high quality prose and interesting experimental forms results in a work that I could see getting recognition in year-end awards.
A satirical experience with the same binary choice at each step, October 21, 2020A command-line focused game, Amazing Quest is true to its sardonic title in providing an "experience" with binary choices and some randomly generated content.
I appreciate the throwback interface and I figure that there are likely some hidden references here that might make this a funny joke to adventure game insiders, though I admit I didn’t really get it.
Setting aside any meta-level merit it might have, the game doesn’t offer much; there’s no progression, story, or conclusion, and the choices are repetitive and don’t seem to matter. I’ll also note that I didn’t read the separate intro/walkthrough for the game, since I believe the play through experience should stand on its own.
A sendup of influencer culture in gamified form, October 21, 2020#Vanlife is an odd game whose goal seems to be to juxtapose the veneer of an enlightened life on the road with the hell of dealing with freelance work (and terrible batteries).
I was very on board with the wry humor underlying this piece, and I appreciated the design: nice visuals and interface, and what appears to be a storylet engine that generates events.
Unfortunately, there are issues that make the experience very hard to enjoy. The math problems are jarring and not very accessible, the resources don’t seem balanced, and the events feel a bit random and repetitive after a while. Above all, it was hard for me to stay motivated after losing repeatedly to obscure battery management issues, even on “easy” mode—funny the first time, not so much after that.
An auto-generated piece of prose poetry, October 21, 2020With a zinger of a title, You Will Thank Me As Fast As You Thank A Werewolf leverages a machine learning model to re-conceptualize a corpus of the author’s writing.
The piece uses an interesting “formal paper” style, with a doc-like format and footnotes as interactive marginalia elements. And I like that the goal isn’t to mimic a narrative, like with the AI Dungeon project, but rather to take a shot at something more poetic.
It can be difficult to review something like this; maybe someone wants to write an essay on philosophy and literary criticism about what this piece means for authorship and art? Trying to set aside how it was created, the effect to me was unfortunately more nonsensical than poetic. While there are some phrase-level gems (see the title), overall it lost me, especially given that the interactive links seem a bit tacked onto the experience.
Short, room-based RPG mostly set in the dark, October 21, 2020The Cave is an RPG that involves exploring a dark cave and interacting with the environment, all while philosophical musings pop up on occasion to add color to the game.
I found there to be an evocative sense of place, with the design, color scheme, and flow of the game feeling very cave-like. There are also a variety of interlinked encounters with items, spells, and NPCs that hint at a puzzle that will lead to a solution.
In terms of writing and interaction, the fantasy tropes are present but don’t seem to provide any new twists on these concepts. And the philosophical musings that appear throughout are occasionally interesting, but feel somewhat at odds with the other aspects of the game. After circling the cave a few times, interacting with characters, and picking up items, I felt a little lost and didn’t quite have the motivation to finish looking for the solution to the puzzle.
Cerebral, text-focused story with a large fantasy cast, October 21, 2020Chorus ambitiously follows a large cast of fantasy-inspired characters through a day of carefully mediated interactions in a city full of secrets.
I was impressed by aspects of the writing, which is intriguing and uses evocative characterization to flesh out what appear to be a dozen or more unique characters. There also seems to be a nifty engine underlying the game that takes user-selected teams of characters and lets their interactions play out from different perspectives, Rashomon-style.
Unfortunately, the experience bogs down a bit throughout. The opening is very long, with stretches of text containing almost encyclopedic character-level details. These details then seem crucial to successfully choosing how the final sections play out, which is a cool idea, but the dizzying amount of information about each character and their motivations/relationships within the large cast is very difficult to track, so I ultimately felt rather lost.
Escape from a Jurassic Park knock-off, October 21, 2020With a parody title that signals wackiness from the start, Big Trouble in Little Dino Park is a choice-based game heavily inspired by the classic Choose Your Own Adventure style, which follows a disaffected teen as they try to escape from, well, you can guess where this is going.
The setting and writing are hilarious, with very strong world building and snappy dialogue. Also, the amusing deaths and twists feel like loving throwbacks to CYOA, although I also like that there appears to be thought put into creating a puzzle that can potentially be solved to actually escape.
Unfortunately, the CYOA influence is a double-edged sword for me, because the experience can be frustrating. There’s a lot of branching leading to dead ends with trial and error required, and many choice points have that CYOA feeling of choosing between “go right” vs. “go left” with random-feeling consequences and little sense of agency. One other note is that while I appreciate the large sense of scale to the park, in some sections like the boat hopping scene it’s difficult to spatially follow what’s happening.
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