Reviews by streever

Akabane Nights is a fairly small, short experience that convincingly creates a sense of greater depth and openness.

The story is told from the perspective of a vampire who wakes up and seeks sustenance from human prey; major decisions which involve conflict and causing harm to others are mixed with mundane day-to-day decisions about showering and basic hygiene.

The contrast of the serious and the inconsequential creates a deeper experience, and makes the otherwise alien perspective more relatable and human.

The author has included atmospheric gifs of dark, moving city scenes and other small graphical flourishes which break up the otherwise dense text nicely, but the type could use additional formatting; it's small and at times straining to read.

The sense of place is strong; I felt as if I was actually exploring an unfamiliar city and learning about it.

The choices are strong, and well-telegraphed; this is not a piece that relies on sneaky choices or tricks. In all, it's highly recommended.

The World Turned Upside Down is well-written and rather short; it seems to build on the worlds depicted in Cape & Mere Anarchy, but I didn't feel the connection.

The world-building is as spare as it is in Mere Anarchy, and it's effective at creating the sense of something deeper; however, this work seems to struggle to create a sense of character, which surprised me after the success of Anarchy & Cape in creating a very believable protagonist and side characters. The side characters are interesting and I want to know more about them, or see what they think about the main interaction between the protagonist and the visitor, but we don't get to, and I can't help but feel that we're missing an important chance to learn more about the story and the experience.

You are immediately informed that you can finish the game with only 3 commands; wait, interject, and examine. Examine gives slightly more context, and interjecting vs waiting changes the ending, but I couldn't really understand the motives or outcomes here. I played through Cape & Mere Anarchy thinking I was missing some crucial context, but I didn't find it. I may have missed something important, but I was left with the sense of an unfinished vignette that takes place somewhat related to the other two stories; I could see this story as a unifying episode establishing a link between the other two, or as simply a side story in the same world.

Ultimately, the story-telling is good, the writing is solid, and I recommend this short game; I'm looking forward to whatever comes next & hope that we can learn more about the characters and situations in this world.

Cape is an engrossing take on the superhero genre, avoiding or subverting many of the worst tropes, while remaining faithful to the more noble themes from the genre.

Bruno Dias explores themes of class conflict, gentrification, and the corruption of authority in this impressively long choice-based game. Interactive elements feel meaningful and clearly telegraph your agency as you tell the origin story of a superhero.

There is no sense that you're closing off parts of the story, and the writing is fairly clear around choices, so you may or may not feel a need to play this one twice. I felt completely satisfied with my choices; the excellent writing made all of my decisions well-informed ones, and the sense that the story didn't change (just my character) left me feeling satisfied that I'd learned all there was to learn.

Plot-wise, the climax was less satisfying than expected; the writing is solid throughout (both in characterizations and plot development), but the ending feels somewhat quick and unsatisfying. This may be a very subjective bit of criticism; others may enjoy this as a self-contained setup for future stories (which seems to be the intent), but I couldn't help but feel like the pacing loosened up at the end.

To be frank, this is a quibble, and shouldn't detract from the rest of the experience. Cape is friendly and welcoming for newcomers and veterans alike, and is an excellent way to spend your time. I highly recommend it.

Mere Anarchy is a fairly short work of solid prose writing and descriptions.

Dias leads the reader through a hidden world of magic, where class divisions and privilege allow murder with impunity, and the upper class, elite, wizards practice a might makes right ethos.

The basic plot points seem fairly fixed; most choices seem to resolve more around how you see your actions. Are you seeking revenge or justice? Do you have an optimistic view or a nihilistic view? Much of the story is told through hints and style, creating a sense of curiosity and wonder.

Thematically, the story is reminiscent of Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere or China Mieville's Kraken; the class conflicts and hidden world concepts in particular work well in this format and with this type of spare storytelling.

There are a few game elements; a meter tracks your inventory and status, which includes descriptions like "Cautious", "Healthy", and "Steady". I didn't find much utility in these stats, but I suppose they add something to the overall feel and flavor; this is ultimately the only area of criticism in this otherwise excellent work. I'm not sure why it's an interactive story and not a short story; the style and prose would provide for an engaging short story that would likely find a larger audience outside of the world of interactive fiction. This criticism could apply to many works of interactive fiction; it stuck out here because the game elements felt grafted on. I do think it's a strong work of interactive fiction, and the interactive elements work and feel solid; it's the UI elements that felt a little off.

This piece is still strongly recommended; well-written, compelling, and engaging, I suspect this story could appeal to anyone.

This is a short little game where the player repeatedly shoots robots until the end; it's repetitive in the same way that a classic FPS game is, but missing any real sense of interactivity or agency.

This isn't completely new ground; a number of other IF games have explored the repetitive nature of FPS games, and they've done so in more interesting or subversive ways. 'Flowers to womans, guns to mans' for example plays with gender roles and uses poor English to imply that stereotypical gender roles and limited ideas of game design come from an uninformed or uneducated perspective.

I wouldn't recommend Bullets talk faster to someone who enjoyed 'Flowers to womans', though, because it has a number of issues. The writing is somewhat stunted and halting; this may be because I played the English language translation from the Russian original. It's possible that the Russian prose is far more developed, fluid, and natural, but the English translation feels artificial. I also struggled to find original ideas or novelty; despite several playthroughs with variations in my choices, this game seems to have a completely linear structure with no variations.

Ultimately, I have to leave this review as unfavorable, but I encourage the author to keep trying & to keep exploring their narrative voice.

I am a human reviewer. The function of a human reviewer is to review humans.

A normal human activity at this juncture would be to provide a review of the human, Birdland, but Birdland is not a human. Birdland is a sublime and transcendental experience created by the human Brendan Patrick Hennessy.

Birdland tells the story of a young human woman at a summer camp, where she is experiencing human emotions of melancholy, isolation, and loneliness, and she dreams that she is in a strange world of birds who ask her puzzling questions about common-place experiences each night.

These dreams affect her daily moods, which in turn close off or open up different actions she can take.

A large cameo/guest-appearance by Bell Park, Youth Detective, is a delightful reference to Hennessy's last game, but absolutely not required reading.

I can't say enough good things about Birdland; the formatting, style, design, and narrative are all excellent.

I initially found the language a little challenging; this game takes place with a separation of player and character that confused me slightly. I think it ultimately works, but it wasn't easy at first to identify my actions with the character.

I really liked the atmosphere, style, typography, and design of this piece; I enjoyed following through it. I enjoyed making decisions as I played. Perhaps it's a bit of a (very minor) spoiler, but I'm not sure how I felt about the lack of consequence to my choices. Is it a meta-commentary on Interactive Fiction? Part of the decision-making process for many players is about establishing their identity and playing with hypothetical scenarios that let you project a possibly idealized self-identity. I didn't bury the apple core because I would do that in real life; I also didn't do it to 'win' the game or 'follow the good path'. I did it because I like to think that I would do it, and I liked that the game let me express that level of conscientiousness and thoughtfulness.

I don't know how I feel about the ending, and I don't know if I enjoyed the experience when I got to the end; the game features a lot of repetition, and nothing I did made any change to the outcome. I think I'm OK with that, but it did detract from my enjoyment of the game. I think it was brave of the author to play with the expectations of players, which makes me think it's worth trying, even if it fails ultimately; it's hard to deliberately end a game in a way that may be dissatisfying to the player, and I think that was the decision made here. That, combined with the styling, atmosphere, and sense of mystery, make this a worthy play.

This is a nice little puzzle game, with a great hint system and several endings; I found the finale exceptionally frustrating, however, as even after using the otherwise excellent built-in hint system, I simply didn't know what to do.

The 5 minute timer is a great gimmick that adds to the sense of urgency. Some of the puzzles are examples of 'game logic'; that fiddly, highly specialized language of IF puzzles. Luckily the hint system is quite good.

That didn't help me with the finale, however; I have no idea what verb to use, and even the verbs used in the hints don't get the job done. If you don't guess right, you end up fighting the clock as you try to guess the proper verb, even with the right items & the right idea.

It's short on character (we mostly know about our character through her anger at her ex boyfriend, who sounds like a real jerk), but that's pretty par for the course on a tiny puzzle game like this.

This is a well-polished story that lets you experience being in a really tough situation.

If you've ever had a friend who had a problem you couldn't fix, you've probably experienced something similar to this, and the story--an autobiographical one--is definitely something that will tug your heart strings.

It's short and reads fast; the flow and rhythm of the words moves quickly. It feels strange to say I enjoyed this; it's an intimate view into a very private exchange, and a very sad one at that, but the actual mechanics of the story and interaction and use of medium were perfect for this type of story.

Instead of making me type "N" "Talk to x", the story is a linear one with limited player agency, meaning I could largely press 'space' to advance and 1 or 2 to choose a response. The limitations on player agency and ending outcomes functions as a meta-commentary on life, listening, and relationships.

Playing the game multiple times reveals how little you can change, and makes you question approaching it as a game at all; which made me simultaneously question how we communicate with one another. While we may have our own goals in mind for each conversation, we run the risk of ignoring the agency, feelings, and goals of the people we interact with.

This game raises the question of who we're really helping when we try to help our friends, and it does it so skillfully that I couldn't help but replay my own difficult conversations, running through them and trying to imagine different outcomes.

This is a game of questions without answers; like the Socratic method or a rorschach test, you'll be asking & answering the questions yourself without any real arbitration or feedback.

Eventually, Time does something I found novel and interesting; this was the big reveal, the a-ha moment, and if it had stopped shortly after this I'd rate this 3 or even 4 stars. The problem I had was after being forced to stare at a screen with nothing happening, for an amount of time I had picked, and then being asked to be honest about my patience and my feelings, the game took a weird digression into questions about feelings, reality, and even ghosts.

I thought this second branch detracted from and took away from the real success of the game in making me challenge my own assumptions about myself and my ability to wait/be patient.

I don't know that I recommend this game; I'm not sure that it's entertaining, at least not for a broad audience, but I do think it deserves recognition for it's ability to challenge and subvert the players sense of self.