Reviews by streever

Short on character and story, this game is almost entirely a collection of word puzzles, specifically of the anagramming sort. If you like word puzzles, you'll like this.

The in-game help system is first-rate and should allow any wordsmith to complete the game without a walkthrough.

The writing is good, at times slightly over-verbose, but never unnecessary.

I was slightly confused by the intro: it took me a little more time to puzzle out the difference between the gadget and the slider, and why I'd take one and not the other. I think it could use a little more exposition earlier on. It may be a minor spoiler, but I think the game would be improved if the player knew early on that (Spoiler - click to show)the gadget is easy mode--the slider is hard mode. You can probably complete the game with either, or neither, if you're adept at anagrams, but it'd be nice to be able to swap between them mid-game, so you could start with the slider & switch to the gadget when under extreme duress.

If you can't wait for the Sunday Puzzle by Will Shortz on NPR each week, this is a game for you. If you're more interested in character/narrative driven story experiences, you'll probably be less enthusiastic about this game.

I love the word-puzzle aspect, and am glad that I discovered Schultz work via InfoComp2013 and 3diopolis.

This is an interesting game with clever narrative clues--expect to play it more than once to find the good ending.

I do think this game could benefit from an undo system. Ultimately, some of the options and choices feel arbitrary, and it'd be nice to be able to rewind if you choose one not realizing the real implications of it.

The writing is good, and the attention to design is appreciated: many web-text games feel a bit overwhelming, but the author has condensed and laid-out the type in a way that invites reading and experimenting.

The theme here is simple, and immediately relatable to most people interested in computer games--you play as a woman torn between the tedium of her white collar job and a sense of adventure.

I enjoyed this game--where the play mechanic felt weaker, the writing certainly kept me going.

Despite some (very minor) hiccoughs, this is a strong game.

I didn't play the previous releases, but started with the open beta of release 5. A solid effort, the gameplay is fun and novel, although at times I did try each object until I got to the right one. The experimenting didn't detract from the overall experience, however, and I never felt stuck.

Some of the sequences were stronger and flowed together better. Some of the simile-based puzzles early on felt a little shoehorned or simple, but they improve substantially as the game goes on. In particular, everything after (Spoiler - click to show)your first confrontation with Camino was strong, challenging, but fair.

The help system is clever and useful, although it may over-simplify some parts of the game, so I'd suggest not resorting to it as quickly as the tutorial might suggest. A few puzzles that I could have solved on my own were rendered easy by the use of it, and it felt a little bit like cheating.

The denouement had a surprising last twist--although it felt very straight-forward, there was a well-done plot twist your player could create. It doesn't substantially alter the game, but it is a hidden choice that really engaged my mind and made me consider the morality of my character, the story, and the other participants. It also made me wonder what I'd do in real life--all in all, a very well done example of choice in a narrative.

I highly recommend this game on the strength of it's writing, gameplay, and novelty.

The javascript behind this game is broken, but even if it were working, I'd be disappointed.

The game mechanic is essentially a few trivia puzzles that you either know or have to google the answer to. Because the javascript is broken, you don't get to see the hint system when you get one close but wrong.

If you wanted to play through it, you could use the browser console to get each page from the broken javascript code, but I wouldn't recommend it: the puzzles really are just trivia or mathematical conversions. In general, there is nothing in the story or the game that helps you solve the puzzles, they entirely rest on out-of-game knowledge.

I'm not sure what the basic premise is a nod to--cultural elites guarding the treasures of our society perhaps--but it didn't engage me enough to actually attempt converting different numerical systems.

This is a parser game, but it doesn't really need the parser--the concept behind it feels a bit shoehorned into the format.

The writing is typically good, although a few typos and over-written descriptions do appear.

I think this would really fit a twine/web format, with a changing color background corresponding to the different memory states, and other visual touches.

This is a very linear story with only one possible way to progress through--because of the use of a parser, you end up re-typing the same commands over and over, giving it the feel of a puzzle, but you are really just walking through color-coded rooms until you find a memory, which you simply carry with you.

I believe this would have done better in the competition as a twine game. The sense of exploration would be improved by a clickable structure, and the story could have been more in focus.

I found this game frustrating. It seemed to suggest a lot of depth hidden beneath the layers of my protagonists self-hate and self-disgust, but I didn't ever experience a pay-off.

The game gives clear indications--either in mis-labelling days or contradicting itself, or openly telling you--that you can't trust the narrator.

In a way, the game felt a little like a murder ballad--a body is floating down the river in a small town, and at times I think my character has committed the crime. At times, I think he killed a woman--at other times, a man--and then I wondered if it was my body in the river.

Although all three seemed vaguely possible, none seemed particularly plausible. There is a disjointed mention of hanging another person at another point, but no clear connection between the hanging and the body floating.

There are multiple endings, but I couldn't see a real relationship between what I was doing and what led to those, so it felt random.

The writing didn't always make sense to me. I had a hard time parsing the meaning in several sentences, and found myself trying to entertain the perspective of the character. Instead of telling me what happened, or what my character experienced, the game told me how my character felt. Without more context to make this meaningful, however, I felt a little pushed. I suspect if I lived in a despised small town I might have a little more perspective to appreciate the view point, but as it was, I felt like the feelings and emotions were being pushed on me instead of shared.

This is well-written and engrossing. A clickable twine text game, Solarium has an interesting alchemical system which is quickly grasped through exploration of the narrative. As you progress through different memories, you obtain new story paths, and part of the fun is in speculating which will lead you to which.

There was only one moment where I worried that the game may have a dead end, early on, when I had gone through what I thought were all my options in remembering the story through alchemical reagents. I quickly realized that I simply was missing one of the options, and hadn't realized it was clickable.

Well-written, engrossing, and with an interesting ambience, this game is a mystical take on the idea of a nuclear apocalypse. The action mostly takes place in one room, as your character relieves past experiences that contribute to your understanding of what led to the apocalypse, and the limited role you played. The denouement is satisfying, and leaves you with a real choice, shaped by your perception of the text you'd just read, instead of by your collection of macguffins and plot points.

This is a very short game, created as a tribute to the first track of TMBG's Apollo 18 cd, "Dig My Grave".

It is short, linear, and rather limited, but a fun quick play. The writing is clever and gives a sense of place (Veeder is a very good writer), but the actual game and the mechanics of it are not on par with his other games. If you've never played a game by Veeder, skip this one, and try Taco Fiction or Robin and Orchid first. Veeder makes games with surprisingly deep gameplay, mixed with fun, quirky, well-written text, and this game doesn't show you what he is actually capable of.

This is a game of exploration, with a great help system, hidden inside an NPC.

I loved the depth of this game, and enjoyed just reading through the notebook that my character has from her friend.

I was wishing for a little more out of the camera system, but I'll leave it at that--and I'll acknowledge that I may have found it too fussy if the game delivered what I expected from the camera system. Once you've solved the case, it is quite obvious what was happening. Still, with the wide array of choices, I think the ending could use some (very minor) tweaking to show a relationship between the photos you took and the outcome.

A for instance; I took photos of the sleeping chaperone, which I thought was pretty funny. It would have added something to it if my character got a detention or some other mild punishment as a result, despite solving the case, in the epilogue.

The puzzles are really well done, and if you are stuck, you can pay attention to other characters to get a clue. This game unfolds nicely and includes great red herrings.

The writing is top-notch. I'd highly recommend anything with Veeder or Boegheim as writers.

Despite being an essentially linear game with one ending, this twine suggests the experiences of agency and exploration beautifully and with meaning.

The narrative is strong, and very creepy, and the technical capabilities of Twine are well-used here to give a sense of exploration and terror. Through text, sound, and limited sight, fear slowly creeps up on the player, and you may find yourself more in the perspective of the narrator than in a graphical video game.

The side stories and anecdotes shared throughout are well-done and plotted well. Although the story has only one ending, the possibilities suggested by that ending are complex, provoking speculation as to deeper meaning and intent.