Reviews by Tito Valenz
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Unrelenting action, November 13, 2021This game does a great job of slamming you right in the middle of the action and pummeling you with a sense of urgency. I haven't read through a story this quickly in a long time. Everything in the text drives the story forward at an incredible speed, and I felt like I didn't have a moment to waste. Having an NPC robot partner constantly shouting directions and telling me to quit wasting time contributed to the stress level. Luckily, the interface is incredibly intuitive. I thought it was set up so that the player can quickly decide what needs to be done with minimal exploration. Even when I got to a moment where things seemed to have settled down, the tension remained right up until the end. I also appreciated that the author used the description box to show the moments before the game started. More episodes in this series would be highly anticipated.
Would you like to be praised for saving the realm?, November 13, 2021Here is a game that is quick and easy to play. It is choice based, usually offering two links at the end of short passages. It is a little underwritten; some things get skipped over, some things get minimal descriptions. One thing that bothered me is that dialog was not separated into paragraphs. A sentence from one speaker would be followed in the same line of text by another sentence from a different speaker. However, I don't think these things keep you from understanding what is going on. If you want to visit a fantasy realm for a brief adventure, "Enveloping Darkness" gets you in and out with great economy.
Stick to clicking links -- don't type anything other than your name, November 13, 2021I liked the mechanic of playing a game in Messenger. To progress, you usually have three options you can choose from. It is a spy thriller, but much of it is played like a comedy. You are given a mission at the very beginning: to kill a man and his two children.
I was very interested to see where this would go. I played several times to get better endings. It seemed like a large percentage of the choices, mostly dialog, don't change the course of the story at all. I tried to pick different options on each playthrough, and eventually ended up at the same place, although I did find different endings.
Something that disappointed me: (Spoiler - click to show)I don't think you ever get the choice to actually complete the mission and kill the family.
The description says that it is a game about making difficult choices, but the character seemed to make the biggest decisions on their own. There is a mini-game with a bartender that I wish I could have skipped over when I played the game back. Also, I don't think there is a way to save. When I typed it in, the game ended.
I wish there was a walkthrough that showed the different endings and how to get them. I would keep playing to find them myself, but with no way to reload a game, I would have to click through a long series of choices to get to the part where things start to branch. If there ever is a sequel, I would definitely play it.
"There is nothing that can be said...to console us in our loss.", November 13, 2021This was a short, choice based story set in the future. The description tells us that a girl has died and our player character is Angra, the investigator. I thought the tone of the story was kind of odd. A lot of the writing is what you might think of as traditional sci-fi: futuristic technology in an advanced society, effective world-building, presented with slightly disaffected, clinical descriptions. A server is called a "food-giver." Other occupations include "logic-workers" and "wet-workers." Then there are moments that are worded in ways that feel different from the rest, such as, "The doctor by now is ugly crying," and the reminder that everyone is "...a hot 30 years old looking person..." We get to think about how living in a violence-free world of immortals would affect us, such as when one character asks if a murder suspect should face any penalties. In response, the investigator answers, "Punishment seems pointless." We are told in the description to think of the story as the first episode of a larger narrative. Perhaps we will get to see more of this world one day.
I enjoyed this game, November 13, 2021This was a well-written, enjoyable parser game set in a fantasy world. It had a fun game mechanic where you have to switch your character's form depending on the puzzle you are working on. I thought the puzzles were low difficulty, as it seemed clear what was needed in almost every situation. The exception was (Spoiler - click to show)the maze. I used the walkthrough. I still don't know where in the game you find out how to solve it. When I got the most successful ending, I was hoping for a little more story as to what happened afterwards. My favorite part would have been (Spoiler - click to show)finding out that all the rats in the game are related. When I delivered bad news to one of them, I was wishing the story had more moments like that. I would probably have liked a little more description in some places. For example, the villains are known as "The Raiders." For whatever reason, I pictured them as some kind of creatures, like maybe Gamorrean Guards or something. When they finally appear, they still are not described, but since it is possible to infiltrate them, I guess they must be human? However, I appreciated that there was a way to get some backstory, including details on the boy you are trying to save. So, I would say there is a lot to like. I wouldn't mind a follow-up game set in this world.
Don't read any spoilers, November 11, 2021I recommend playing this game. I do not recommend reading too much about it before you play. I didn't even read the description, and I'm glad I didn't have any expectations on where it would go. It is a Twine game (categorized as suspense), and you make most of your choices by clicking links. You also have a game mechanic where you are able to try to combine items in your inventory.
One thing I appreciated about the formatting is that when I got to a page full of links, they were color-coded so that I knew which ones were descriptions and which were choices. The descriptions were short, and there were reasons to go through all of them.
When I finished the game, I found that it wasn't quite as vast in scope as I guessed it would be. I would say that anyone who decides to play should be prepared to not have all of your questions answered, and not to expect every detail that seems important to necessarily lead to something. It didn't bother me at all, personally; I thought it was all worth it when I was done. I do think it could have been nice to have had even more to the story, and I would absolutely play a follow-up if the author ever decided to offer it. But again, I got plenty of satisfaction just from what was there, more so than I seem to from most IF games.
Was it really worth the reduced floodplain inundation rates?, November 10, 2021This game looks nice and is easy to navigate, but it wasn't much fun. It's very repetitive. It makes a heavy-handed point if you play through to the end, but some of the subtle changes that happen during the game are easy to misinterpret. I believe that the purpose of the game is to demonstrate what effects water mills had on river-floodplain systems. It sounds like it probably was bad, but I'm not 100% because I don't understand anything I read when I did a search on it. I also don't know what a river-floodplain consists of, or how many there are, but I guess we can be thankful that cheap electricity means we don't have as many water mills around anymore.
Treat ‘em and street ‘em, November 9, 2021This game is super-short, but your choices absolutely matter. You play as a doctor in a post-apocalyptic setting, struggling to treat patients with dwindling supplies. It is written very economically, but establishes the situation so well that you never doubt that what you decide is going to affect lives. I enjoyed several playthroughs, and will probably continue playing until I am sure I have seen all the outcomes. I want to make a comment about the endings, because I was really interested in knowing more about how things turned out. However, a lengthy epilogue might clash with the brevity of the rest of story. I’m not usually interested in dystopian fiction, but I thought the setting helped emphasize the urgency of this character’s situation.
Designed for children with kidney failure, November 9, 2021The "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.
“One cat just leads to another.” – Ernest Hemingway, November 9, 2021Reading the tagline about becoming a cat breeder, I'm not sure I could have been any less interested in a premise. Turns out, I was thoroughly engrossed by this story. The author eases you in to the situation with just the right amount of detail to get you to care. Even if I wasn't entirely won over by the cats, I had fun trying to get things to turn out as well as possible for the main character. You have some challenges to overcome, but things remained fairly upbeat and hopeful. I was a little disappointed, however, (Spoiler - click to show)with my second playthrough, being that I tried to choose as differently as possible from my first try. It didn't seem to make much difference, even when I intentionally selected what seemed to be the poorer choices. I was worried that I wouldn't have a reason to keep replaying, until I looked at the "cheat sheet." There is actually a lot of variety in what can happen. I would totally recommend giving "Fine Felines" a chance. I'll bet you end up playing again and again!
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