Ratings and Reviews by Tito Valenz

The "Kidney Kwest" game was developed to give something to children to play while they are on dialysis. It is meant to teach them about a medication they take, what kinds of foods to eat, and to let them explore some parts of the stomach.

It was made using a new engine that requires the player to use full sentences instead of standard IF commands. This is to help the patients have an easier time knowing which commands to type.

The game will tell you that if you do not enter a complete sentence, it will cause it to slow down and process the request before it responds. A few commands such as "go west" do bring up an immediate response, but as the game is now, you WILL experience numerous lags. Some of these lag times are ridiculously lengthy.

The description of Kidney Kwest says that it was designed for patients ages 8 to 18. That is a pretty vast range for a piece of media to cover. Children who are 9 or 10 are at a very different level of development than those in their late teens. I think that as it is written now, the game is best suited to a middle school audience. I believe it would be more effective to adapt the writing to create at least one other version for older students.

In the game, you must collect items for a costume and find food. Some reviewers have pointed out that you are only able to hold two items at a time, but actually, there is a way around this. However, it will take an extra command for each item to add it to your inventory. This is just one of the ways the game adds extra steps to your kwest. The reason why extra steps are a problem is because the player has a limited amount of time to find food before the game will end. Once you have played and know what you are doing, you can plan for this; however, on the first several explorations, I can imagine many of the younger kids being kicked out before they are able to make sense of what needs to be done.

There is no randomization; once you have figured out how to solve the game, it will be the same every playthrough. Kids might not look forward to coming to dialysis to play the same steps over and over. At the end of the game, it is suggested that you play again to get a different costume. The costume you will put together will be almost exactly the same, except it will either be gold, silver, or bronze, depending on what food you ate. I almost didn't notice the color difference; to me, it just seemed like I was getting the same items to make the same costume.

The area you explore consists of five rooms. There is a map onscreen to help players navigate, but it is somewhat small. There are some illustrations, but they look like very old pieces of clipart. The interface only uses half the screen, is very plain, and sometimes displays so much text that it doesn't fit in the small window, so you have to scroll back up to see where to start reading. The game is very unappealing visually.

You have to take your medication before or after you eat, otherwise you will go back to the start. There were times when the character was so hungry, I had to eat an unhealthy food just to survive. After several playthroughs, I knew where the healthy food was, and went there first. When you eat the chips or the hamburger, the game will tell you that Kelly has changed color because the food was salty. However, the graphic of Kelly disappears on your next move, and I would always completely forget that anything was wrong.

Whenever you take your medication, or eat something after taking the medication, you travel into your stomach to look for phosphate crystals to remove manually, because your kidney is not able to do it for you. This might be the least effective portion of the game. You are given a list of several parts of the stomach to explore, and the crystals hide in them. However, the majority of the time, the crystal is immediately visible upon entering the stomach, meaning that no exploration is needed, and the child has no chance to become familiar with the inner workings described. I got a little confused by some of the descriptions in this portion. The only visual given here is a picture of the crystal when you are near it. There wasn't much description for the parts of the stomach. An illustration of this area seems like it would be a helpful component for young learners, especially if it were designed like a map that you could track your movements through.

The game mascot is Kelly, the magical kidney. Does an illustrated character aimed at kids always have to be alliterative? When you first find Kelly, and every time you look in your itinerary, she is called "Kelly the magic phosphate binder container". However, if you look just at Kelly separately, you find out that Kelly is the character sitting on top of the container that the phosphate binders are in. So you actually have a phosphate binder container, which is just the container that medicine comes in, several pills called phosphate binders, and Kelly the magical kidney sitting on top. It took me more than one playthrough to understand this. It was confusing when I needed to take a pill what I actually had to ask for. When I typed "Look at Kelly the kidney," I was told that there was more than one kidney and that I had to be specific. If I typed "Look at a kidney," I was told that no kidneys were visible.

I feel that media aimed at children need to be as carefully considered and receive as much effort as those for adults.

There is so much to this game. I don't know if I would have had more success if I was familiar with Tumblr or had been active in an online fan community, but I don't think getting ideal stats is the point. The reason to play "A Paradox Between Worlds" is to explore, try things out, and think about how you would react to certain situations. In the story, you are a fan of a series of books, and you like them so much that you keep a blog and write fanfiction. I liked reading the different users' blogs and interacting with the other fans. The sections of the game dedicated to passages from the novels weren't as interesting to me, nor was the fanfiction. This caused me to try to hurry through some portions of the story. I expect to read them more closely on my next playthrough, which this game absolutely warrants. The "walkthrough," which includes an extensive list of influences from all kinds of sources, is especially magnificent. It gives you some sense of how much effort was put into this work, and it is an uncommon amount of care.

D&D fantasy elements mixed with Lewis Carroll imagery? Why not! Your character is an orc who is hired to battle adventurers that have paid to live out their dreams. I liked how the game evolved--there was a definite arc for us to follow. The battles got more fun as the game went on. The puzzles were not difficult, but still enjoyable to work through. There is opportunity for exploration, and a few surprises to be discovered. I have to mention one behind a spoiler warning, but you CAN NOT read it until after you have played: (Spoiler - click to show)If you examine your nametag, you will see it contains a code. If you then examine that code, a QR code appears. Scan it, and you will see updated information on what level your character is at, plus get a password to a bonus point. The descriptions were well done, but the illustrations were absolutely hilarious. I would have personally liked it even more if the NPCs were a little less flat; they never go further than stock characterizations. That might be intentional, but I still wished the dialog had been as imaginative as the other aspects of the game. This, for me, was one of the highlights of the IFComp 2021.

This game is very short. It is categorized in the 2021 IfComp as "Fantastic." It is surreal and abstract. The main character is investigating a hazardous area with an ex whom they split with five years earlier. It seems implied from the disjointed descriptions and dialog that the narrator may have a deteriorating state of mind, or may be experiencing the effects of some environmental anomaly. There is a lot of focus on the relationship the pair once shared. Choices are mostly made up of three hyperlinks. I hope that what is happening to the characters in this story never happens to me.

I am glad I didn't read the description before playing this game. It really gives too much away. It's another dystopian future/post-apocalypse sci-fi story. This one has a retro look to it, as if it was developed in the 80's, but I didn't feel any sense of nostalgia playing it. The storyline was much too sophisticated to resemble a classic parser game. It's mostly pretty serious in tone, but throws in jarring bits of humor in odd places. It's also timed, so there is a sense of urgency. I appreciated the detailed walkthrough--it was easy to forget steps or get confused on how to phrase commands. Now I want to make a suggestion about IF games in general: (Spoiler - click to show) Authors, please allow for some branching in your IF. I really liked how this one turns out; it would be the path I would want to find if there were several options. But it feels like more of an accomplishment to get an ending you like when you know your choices mattered. It also provides motivation to play again. Also, I thought there was a missed opportunity in this particular game (extra spoilery spoiler): I made it back to shelter 4 after being exposed, but refused to leave the airlock because I wanted to see what would happen when I went crazy with other characters around. The game just ends. I would have really liked something shocking to have happened. There were some little nitpicks I encountered, but I don't think they're worth mentioning, because they didn't take away from my enjoyment. One of the reasons I don't usually seek out dystopian fiction is the sense of hopelessness that comes from descriptions of everything being ruined. This story does a good job with that. That leads me to recommend this game, since I liked playing it even though I don't usually care for writing this bleak.

Here is a brief comedy piece where you listen to a guest speaker lecturing at your college. He is presenting his stance on the titular “Smart Theory.” None of his claims make any sense. Will you be persuaded to devote yourself to this new belief system? The game might be a send-up of some element of contemporary society, and there are surely multiple interpretations to be made as to who or what it’s aimed at. Then again, maybe the author just wanted to challenge himself to see how off the wall he could get and keep it going as long as possible. I thought it was pretty funny.

The puzzles in this game are not like common IF puzzles. Most are more like puzzles you would get in a puzzle magazine. They occur in an ever-shifting storyline that throws you from one scenario to another in quick fashion. It gets more wacky and irreverent as it goes. I think most players will enjoy the humor. What's really thoughtful is the authors make it very easy to access hints and solutions for every puzzle. The choices are easy to make by clicking the links, although some puzzles are timed. You can play in an easy mode that turns off the timers. Personally, I was more curious to see where the story went than work through every puzzle, so I used lots of hints.

Looking at the map of this game, I thought it would be a decent length, not too unwieldy, especially given the brisk pace up to the point where the map turned up. Instead, I felt it was fairly expansive. Not because there are so many locations, but because of the amount of exploration needed to thoroughly interact with each area. I was really enjoying the puzzles, and I felt like they were just the right difficulty for me. I first became frustrated when I realized that the "examine" command wasn't revealing everything about the places and objects. Instead, you had to use "search" in some situations to know if you could interact or not. Sometimes the two were interchangeable, sometimes completely different, which means you have to try both on everything. I'm not sure if this was intentional, because it doesn't seem like it's reflected in the walkthrough. The game felt like it got harder as it went, and I started to check the hints and then the walkthrough with increasing frequency. There were places where the directions each one gives didn't match up. I did like the hint system, but sometimes the way it was worded caused me to misunderstand what I had to do. For example, (Spoiler - click to show) at one point, the hint reads that you have to look at the bottom of a statue for a way to activate an exit. I tried many, many commands before I found out that I needed to visit another location first. Using the command "look" never actually does anything. I was way over my head by the third act, struggling to know what my objective was or what area to revisit. I enjoyed the story, but even though it included horror elements and gloomy locations, I didn't really feel a sense of immersion. It felt more like an intellectual exercise than writing that creates a mood. I got the impression that a translation caused some unusual phrasings, and possibly compromised the effectiveness of some descriptions. My favorite parts were interacting with the NPCs who are able to provide some background information. There were also numerous written documents you could collect, and they all added to the story nicely. Still, I feel like I should have had more of a visceral response to this piece given the sorts of things it describes. To me, the very best games create an atmosphere or a feeling, and wanting to re-experience those sensations again is what motivates me to replay them. I was hoping "D'Arkun" would be one of those, but for me, it wasn't.

These games are hard! I was able to win poker from time to time, and I made some money sticking with the safe bet at the horse races. But the zombie game? The computer would always pick them off while I couldn't even get started. I was not able to figure out the parser game. I don't know anything about football, so I didn't do too good there. And the Keno game didn't pay out very much when I played the 20-spot. I didn't come anywhere close on the slots, and even when I made it to the bonus game, I immediately matched two zeros. Also, I had a terrible flight home. I got sat next to this annoying guy who was going on about how he beat all the games and made a ton of money. Next year, I'm using my vacation time to visit Amsterdam.

On my first playthrough of Goat Game, I was really enjoying the direction the story was taking. There was a lot going on, and the game was described as taking two hours, so I started to settle in for a lengthy exploration of this world it was establishing. I got an ending in less than half an hour and it was really confusing. I thought that maybe I had made a choice that skipped me through a large chunk of the story. Also, I didn't know how to feel about what happened to my character--he seemed to be unhappy, even though his situation changed for the better. I couldn't think how any of the choices I made got me to this result. And it seemed like there were a LOT of things that were touched on that didn't get to develop. I played four more times and found three more endings. They were all pretty negative, even though I thought I was making choices that were good for my character. The game tracks three stats, but it appears that you only get one choice to change each stat. So I went from "low" to "medium" in each one, but never had an opportunity to move it any further. I am curious to continue playing to see different endings, but I'm kind of thinking they might all be bad.