Reviews by Sharpe

"Debt" is another work in Twine that's neither a "game" nor "interactive." Unfortunately, "Debt" didn't have to suffer from that common problem, which makes it a double tragedy. It would have been easy to make this linear, traditional flash fiction a fully interactive "choose your own adventure" style IF.

As a matter of fact, had almost any effort been made to make this an interactive fiction, I believe it would have been pretty good. Give the player a choice to carry out the mission, or refuse to do so. Give the player a choice about how much collateral damage they are willing to inflict to complete the task. During interrogation, should force be used? What amount?

As it is, the reader (note: "reader," not "player") must sit back and watch as they are spoon-fed scrolling text. While the scrolling text was novel at the very beginning, before it was over, I would have rather just read through it at my own pace.

"Debt" did make good use of sounds in some places (in others, it was annoying and likely the reader will mute it) and the ending was good. If only one could have arrived at that ending by choice while playing, its impact would have been much more profound. As it is, the reader doesn't feel any responsibility, nor is there any attachment to any of the characters in this short flash fiction.

Gave the game two stars rather than one because for what it is, it was well done. Had it been interactive, I could see it getting as high as four stars, a big rating from me. I love robots. I love bounty hunters. I love dystopian near-future sci-fi and evil corporatocracies. This had all the elements of a good interactive fiction . . . Except interaction.



— Sharpe

Though short and unfinished, Enlaya: The Prison isn't too bad of a CYOA. It's refreshing to see a work of Twine with plenty of "agency"—choices that have an affect on the game. Unfortunately, many Twine works can't be called games (or even interactive) as they are completely linear flash fictions. Thankfully, that ailment doesn't afflict Enlaya.

The writing is adequate, good at parts and less so in others, and the presentation isn't quite the (awful) stock ("Sugarcane") format that comes with Twine. The author at least increased the font size so that it was legible. Had the author not made that consideration, I probably wouldn't have bothered straining my eyes to play this game.

Despite the decent writing and abundance of choice, I found it hard to grant a three-star rating due to its rough, unfinished shape. If I could have given it 2.5 stars, I would have done so. However, I chose to round up since fun and re-playability are more important than length in my opinion.

It was certainly worth the five minutes or so that it took to play through it twice.


— Sharpe

Just so you know, you didn't upload your game correctly. Neither of the download links will work for anyone except you, because it's linked to your 'C' drive (file:///C:/Users/Timothy%20Butcher/He%20grabbed%20a%20hemmer.html). So, when you click them, they work, because the game is on your computer. No so for anyone else.

It also makes me wonder who the one person was who rated the game four stars...

Oh, and while I tagged it "Twine" for you, you might want to put the correct Development System if you want people to be able to find your game. You have "custom" right now.

Just a heads up!


http://twinery.org/forum/

For such a short game with so little content, this game sure has a lot of reviews.

To pretty much sum up the thesis of all the reviews here, this isn't so much a game as it is a long joke with a singular punchline. There's only one real choice: read the comments or not. If you do, you get one ending. If not, you get the other.

If the joke is something you'd appreciate, then this will be worth the five to ten minutes of clicking that it takes to reach it. If not, then this is a total waste of time.

That's pretty polarizing and it's why we have reviews from "Short, Simple & Sweet" to "Never Play this Game."

In my opinion, Don't Read the Comments' prose isn't particularly good or bad. It's yet another Twine "not-game" where the "player" is actually just a "reader" clicking through passages. That alone makes three stars the very highest score I'll give this "game" on Interactive Fiction Database. With adequate writing, one can rate two stars from me so that's what I dolled out.


— Richard Sharpe

This game has the trifecta—it's unique, interesting an fun. It's also well written, and that's a big plus.

Like the description says, the player takes the role of a space station. Basically, this game is 2001: A Space Odyssey from HAL 9000's perspective. If that simile didn't reach you, your cultural knowledge needs expanded.

As a space station, you perform menial tasks and maintenance as instructed by the solo human serving as your crew. That doesn't sound fun because it isn't. The author didn't intend it to be. I'll stop there.

Despite having the trifecta of good choose-your-own-adventure games, the game isn't perfect. Avoiding spoilers, there is a video recording described in the game and it's of a unique circumstance, something that would only happen once. Every time "Dave" plays the file, it's the same thing. Honestly, there should have been a variable in the game that made it play only once, then move to randomly play other video files that could have been watched over and over. There's a perfect example that would serve the exact same purpose that the author wanted: a ball game. (Spoiler - click to show)As the computer, you could choose to end the playback right before the "big play." There are other examples, for instance a soap opera with two random name arrays (Joe, Sam, Jack and Jill, Mary, Sue).

That doesn't sound like a big gripe, but in actual game play, it's jarring. The player must ask, "Why is the pilot re-playing the same video? How does he not know what happens in it?"

Randomized events would help this game dramatically. The crewman always deliberates about what he'll have for lunch, then asks for a pork loin to eat. Variables could have been used to easily create a list of different food that has the same intended effects, food like steak and chicken. Also, day after day, the pilot spills his drink in exactly the same way at exactly the same time.

All this combined made me wonder if we were actually stuck in some kind of time loop. Spoiler alert: you're not. Simple, randomized events of a common nature would have alleviated that misconception.

Despite all that, I gave the game four stars. I played it for quite some time, 664 days of game time to be exact. Then, I re-played it a few more times. That alone makes it a solid game by all measurements.

How long will you play it?


— Richard Sharpe

The Lighthouse's Tale is yet another Twine "game" that isn't a game but is instead a (very) short story.

Since the prose was so good, I really don't want to discourage the author with a strongly negative review of their first interactive fiction. If this was another one of those click-through collections of sentence fragments—"Darkness. You're falling. Flash of light! You hit the ground. Get Up."—I would have really unleashed a scathing tirade. I'm so sick of those.

At some points, it did feel just a tad bit like the author was flexing vocabulary muscles before a vanity mirror making what would otherwise have been a good, descriptive passage sound a bit sappy, a bit forced.

I rated The Lighthouse's Tale two stars instead of one for its use of complete, well-written sentences. The highest I've ever went with one of these not-games is three stars, and that was for the incomparable, award-winning Ex Nihilo, a work that's in a whole 'nother ballpark from The Lighthouse's Tale.

All that said, I'm not the best person to review this type of literary work and its for that reason that I omitted my rating from the game's average. Apparently, there are a number of Twine fans who like this sort of thing, but I'm certainly not one of them.

I want interactive fiction where interactive means something much deeper than just "click, click, click, click . . ." I want a game. I want to have fun. Sure, teach me what you want, impart your message to humanity if you must, astound me with your linguistic gymnastics or glamor me with flashy text graphics to the brink of giving me a seizure, but if at the end of the day it isn't a fun IF game, then I'm passing.


—Richard Sharpe

This review started as a question that can be read in the spoiler below and in further comments. Now that I've completed the game, I'm back to write a review. :-)

Despite being short, this game has tons of re-playability. It's basically one big puzzle, the goal of which is to slay the classic monster under the bed. The only problem is, you take the role of a child—no machine guns or proton packs! :-)

Under the Bed is well written. It makes sense. There are no sudden, unexpected deaths or frustrating quandaries that leave one wondering what the author was thinking.

On one hand, none of the non-player characters are interesting and there is next to no communication or interaction with them. However, there doesn't really need to be. It would have been cool, but the game is fun and entertaining without character interaction. Like I say, this game is distilled into a single, multifaceted puzzle. There's very little window dressing to hide that fact and that is clearly the author's intent.

There are several possible endings, but there's only one way to truly accomplish the goal: slay the monster. It can be done and I had a lot of fun figuring out how to do so. I'd recommend fans of any genre of IF give this game a try.

I gave this game four stars because it was fun and well-written. If I could have rated it 4.5 stars, I would have done so. It would easily rate five if it were fleshed out more and if a few minor glitches were fixed (glitches such as (Spoiler - click to show)the monster retreating into the closet while the player and/or the blacklight is in the closet, and being able to apply the detergent to the sword at any physical location in the game).

Great game!


—Richard Sharpe


Here is the question that I posed before writing this review (contains spoilers): (Spoiler - click to show)I found four endings but was unable to slay the monster. Is there a way to do so?

I couldn't find a use for either the sword or detergent, though I tried to leave, pour, spill, and empty it in the closet. Opening it didn't work either. Standing in the closet holding the light didn't work as the game seems to ignore that you're inside the closet when the monster enters. I took the sword, put the sheet under the bed, the detergent and blacklight in the closet, and turned on the blacklight when the monster appeared. It went in the closet and disappeared.

If The Sleeping Princess was written by a child, it was a child with an A-level high school writing ability at least.

The story progresses logically and there are no sudden deaths or tasks that require clairvoyance to complete. This is actually the first IF I've ever completed all the way through. I did it in about twenty minutes between classes at school—college, not high school. ;) It was really fun and simple, not some punishing experience that frustrated me enough to quit. I stuck with it and was glad I did.

There was only one thing that confused me. The first hallway in the game, it goes south. When the player first enters, it's not explicitly stated that the player can go further south, though it does tell the player they're in the north end of the hall, so it can be inferred; I just didn't. I thought the only ways to go was back into the starting room or into the boarded-up room, which cannot be entered at first. So, I burned a hint there, but it didn't help. Thankfully, I accidentally tried to go south and it allowed me to do so.

Other than that, I'd have liked a more lengthy ending. More fanfare. More about what happens after waking the princess. More "happily ever after." However, that's not a big complaint; the story wraps up nicely leaving little to be imagined.

Two thumbs up!


—Richard Sharpe

Here's the first passage:

you wake up in a dungeon with a thief in the same cell as you do you...
>trust the thief
>don't trust the thief

Ouch.

It gets worse from there. I'm not entirely certain if Dungeon Escape was meant to be satire or not. I really don't think it was, though.

If it were . . . we get it already. There are a whole lot of bad interactive fiction games out there with horrible writing, no plots, flat characters—or characters with absolutely no description at all, like in this game—and choices that are completely random with sudden death around every corner. However, this is just one more in a long line stretching across the Internet's horizon. So, as a satire, this game fails on all levels. It is not amusing in any way.

Satire of this type can work; however, this one most certainly did not. This is not "hilariously" terrible. It's just plain terrible.

If it truly isn't a satire, then this writer is probably very young and I applaud what's likely his first IF. Good job on having the attention span and tenacity to actually complete the game. That's a major accomplishment and proves that one day, you'll become a good writer who can create fun and interesting IF if you stick with it. Other than a lack of capitalization and constant run-on sentences, Dungeon Escape is probably as good as anything I could have written in in the fourth grade, and that's a huge complement if you're in the eighth grade or lower.

All that said, there are signs that Dungeon Escape is, in fact, a satire, so I don't think this was just a very young writer. For example, the author consistently used apostrophes correctly, as well as quotation marks. There are a few complete sentences, usually if an exclamation mark or question mark is needed, and in those rare cases, they are used correctly. That tells me the run-on sentences are probably intentional.

As far as I know, I tried every combination of choices and none of them lead to an ending other than death or waking up at the start of the game.

Dungeon Escape is a complete waste of time. Thankfully, I was totally board and had nothing better to do than randomly click on games and review them.


—Richard Sharpe

Bell Park, Youth Detective isn't really so much a game as it is a funny short story. It isn't meant to be taken any more seriously than a skit on Saturday Night Live—and what's even better is, I can see this actually being a funny skit on a show like that. Suspension of disbelief shouldn't be a problem at all.

To say it has multiple branches like a CYOA is true, but it's more like a series of jokes with multiple punchlines. At first, I chuckled a few times here and there throughout the story, but upon reading one passage toward the end, I burst out laughing. At that point, Bell Park certainly served its duty and became a worthwhile read.

It's very well written, fun, and simple. Two thumbs up.


—Richard Sharpe

Riveting. Inspiring. Chilling. Provoking.

If only all fiction, from video games to novels, could end so profoundly, so powerfully.

What is End Boss? It's not just a story about a hero and the final confrontation of his or her quest. It's a story about the player. Not the character—the reader, the real person at the keyboard making the choices.

Though short—it took me about five minutes to play—End Boss is rich with a voluminous background story that could fill the pages of an expansive series of novels, but it's almost entirely unexplored. We get only the most fleeting glimpse of a high-fantasy masterwork rivaling the likes of Lord of the Rings. What we see through the eyes of the main character—let us not call him or her a hero, though this story is a far cry from morally ambiguous—is a long, hard path of bloodshed and turmoil, of political conflict and inner struggle, of nations at war and personal battles, of love and loss, all played out in a series of questions posed by the "end boss."

However, the story's unspoken question echoes loudest. End Boss begs the reader to question their own heart.

How far would you go to defeat your enemy? Do the ends really justify the means?

Though he may never gain literary fame, Nick Keirle will go down as one of my all-time favorite authors.

Bravo, sir. Bravo.

And, thank you.


—Richard Sharpe

Thanks, Anna, for transcribing this! I remember it fondly.

My first ever choose your own adventure game—"The Quest of Madness," four sheets of paper with numbered boxes of handwritten text and line drawings made when I was in the seventh grade—was inspired solely by this. (It was also the same year I discovered the awesome Lone Wolf series of game books, but I saw this first.) Now, more than 20 years later, I'm still playing and writing interactive fiction. Pretty big influence on me.

Unless it's for nostalgic reasons, or if you're not a child of the 80's and early 90's, there's really no reason to play this. I gave the game five stars out of love, but it's really a two-star game at best. Perhaps only one to be brutally honest.

When this was released, the video game market wasn't well understood. The fires of the North American video game crash of 1983 were still smoldering if not raging in some aspects. Thankfully, Nintendo came along and picked up the pieces of the apocalypse Atari wrought upon the land. Atari giveth, and Atari taketh away; Nintendo gave it back. Nintendo thought Dragon Warrior (Dragon Quest) would do well in the American market. After all, it was very popular in Japan. They were taken aback when it met a lukewarm (at best) reception here. They had to give the game away for free with subscription to "Nintendo Power," its house organ magazine. That's how I got my copy. They weren't the only ones who were wrong; as a child, I thought other kids would like the game as much as I did and couldn't understand when most my friends hated it.

Perhaps Nintendo thought Dragon Warrior was unpopular because American children (and their inferior intellect, those stupid cowboys) couldn't understand the game. So, they made things like this, "The Dragon Warrior Text Adventure." They broke it down to its most basic, simple form. Of course, the reason why American children didn't like Dragon Warrior was because it was just plain boring as hell to all but a small niche group. Tastes differ. Some people like action games. Others like RPG's. Only the very most extreme hardcore RPG lover would dig Dragon Warrior. There just weren't enough in that target group to warrant it being marketed here. Besides, WE had Dungeons & Dragons, the real thing! Why would we want a D&D simulator—pale in contrast and vastly inferior to the genuine table-top experience?

This was a fantastic trip down memory lane. Thanks again, Anna, for giving me the opportunity to re-live my childhood love for this little adventure.


—Richard Sharpe