Ratings and Reviews by frolic

At first sight, this Twine game seems to be one more variation on a well-known theme : the end of the world, because of "zombies" with eyes as gold as Midwich cuckoos. Nevertheless, the story goes crescendo, as your interest, and when it ends, you can replay it, but from another point of view, and this simple trick (like the famous Rashomon from Akira Kurosawa) makes the game even more interesting, because you had to reconsider the feelings that go through you at the first reading...

More than a slice of life, The Golden is a simple Twine game which manage to bring you in his world and to convey true feelings only by telling small events ; this quite behaviorist way to proceed (like a Kiyoshi Kurosawa film) works better than any Hollywoodian story, despite of its brevity. To sum up, this is a kind of haïku in Twine.

This is typically the kind of game which have the faults that go with its qualities : as many Twine games, it manages to give you a feeling of flowing time (here, very fast, an emergency tempo), but the downside is that it moves too fast to appreciate the writing (it needs screenshots). So an emotion is conveyed, but it's a quick one (and it was certainly the purpose of the author).

This game use silent and cycling links in relationship between a concise style (maybe too sometimes) to tell a basic horror story, (Spoiler - click to show)which two alternative endings (but the happy one allows you to replay the unhappy !). This is quite efficient, but maybe it would work better with more variations and clearer spatial organization (one passage summarizing the different ways to explore, for instance). However it remains an interesting game for horror fans.

This parser game is primarily a well-designed puzzle, which intrinsic upsides and downsides. The upsides : the gameplay is really easy to master, and the way to escape is a tricky one (hint : (Spoiler - click to show) to convert a east door in a west one, you must leave it on the garden wall and pick it up by the other side). The downsides : it's just a (good) game, which offers only the pleasure to map an unknown place (like one can do reading a CYOA book).
For the curious (for instance these who wants to program in Inform) or the cheaters (but it only help them to map the place, nothing more), the author left the codesource on his website

Using simple tricks (a round for symbolizing a step, a bunch of pictures), Summit builds a fantasy world, which seems first a bit too various but becomes more and more consistent while the story walks. The simple desire to see the famous summit leads you to a true thinking on the meaning of your life or the value of your choices, but this thoughts are conveyed throught live feelings rather than arid speeches. So this is really the kind of game you wants to play again...

Porpentine quotes herself Harlan Ellison as a major influence, but it seems obvious that Alien and 2001 also play a role in her inspiration. She does more than mixing all these well-known stories in a whole game, she moves the cursor higher and higher, until it reaches its conceptual limit. The result is a perfect piece of techno-horror.

The game is now directly available on the author website.

This short Twine game makes a clever use of the cycling links to show you how labels are troublesome in social life, but it doesn't go far enough to really touch you (maybe because each choice stay in a quite reasonable range). So it's just another slice of life, but an interesting one.

Neon Haze had an easier gameplay than another games of Porpentine, but it is indubiously a Porpentine game : time and links between passages are well-managed (the running, for instance) ; each word matters and touches your heart (moreover, the graphic and sound design by Brenda Neotenomie are perfect).

In addition, Emily Short's review of this game is just here.

"Beautiful Dreamer" is obviously inspired by the Sandman universe created by Neil Gaiman, where dreams are ruled by an immortal (Dream, renamed Lune by Woodson), and death by another one (Death, which look likes Cephiros). Thanks to subtle changes to this pattern (the moths, for instance), the game is nevertheless pleasant, in spite of too long passages.