Ratings and Reviews by streever

I could tell it was fantastic, and it kept getting better.

This is essentially an autobiography, with a fun element of interactivity in that you can control some of the details; ages, names, and relationships of (relatively) minor details can be changed by the reader until you've progressed out of a scene, which fixes them for future copy.

Essentially, this is a story of a self-described gender-queer person growing up between different cultures and customs. It is well-written, engaging, and provides a fresh perspective to interact from. The interactivity largely influences the emotional aspect of a scene, in ways that may or may not be significant; I kept feeling like I was having a really solid personal conversation with a close friend, where everything I said was something they'd already thought of, and we were just clarifying our discussion and our deep friendship.

Kiai has a real talent as an autobiographer in making their story personal and relatable. Although it is vastly different from my own experiences, I found myself seeing comparisons to my own life, and feel grateful to have read this story.

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the formatting, which was done quite well. I narrowed my browser window to make it a bit easier to read it in a flow, but the type-size, typeface selection, and color scheme all worked together well to make the experience flow nicely.

I had to let this one sit for a bit.

It's well-done. The writing is good, poignant, and authentic. It's a Twine game, and with that, comes the feeling of restriction/lack of options and interactivity that often comes with Twine; in this case, the feeling of restriction serves the plot and overall experience, in a way that isn't completely clear until you've reached the end.

You are a robot; you work for a bitter, unkind woman who comes across as a rich once-upon-a-time debutante turned petty tyrant.

Your choices are extremely limited; each page typically has several prompts to explore memories, followed by a misleading list of choices. Mousing over the choices crosses them out, leaving only one choice--submissive compliance to your owners latest command.

At first, it felt like a gimmick, or a novelty, but the truth is that the unclickable links are significant and build on one another as the story progresses, leading to a fitting & unexpected ending. Portions of the game that initially confused me took on deeper meaning and poignancy.

My standard criticism of many Twine games holds true here. The text formatting and layout doesn't make it easier to read. Text is presented in dark on a dark background at a fairly small size. It's hard to read, and does at times detract from the overall experience. This doesn't in any way change my enthusiastic enjoyment or recommendation; it's fairly typical of Twine games, and is more of a criticism of the medium than any individual work.

In this story, I didn't have a good sense of progression, which made it hard when I was reading some of the longer memories. I wasn't sure what any of it was building up to, or when I'd get there. Make no mistake; the journey was enjoyable on its own, and the destination definitely made up for any rocky moments, but I think the writing could be tweaked slightly to give the sense of progression, so the reader has a sense of how far they've progressed and how far they have to go. It's a basic 'mechanic' of books that we appreciate without noticing; simply by virtue of their physical size, we have a sense of how far we've gone and how quickly.

The game design in particular is impressive, but I can't talk about it without spoiling it. I'd recommend playing the game before reading this next bit.

(Spoiler - click to show)OK; something that at first alienated me from the game was the memories. I wasn't sure who the memories belonged to, and kept looking for ways that the memories were inter-connected. They weren't (well, some of them weren't); some of the memories were from different people, but I kept thinking there was a thread through them. Largely, I thought this because of the use of color for the memories. I thought it was a hint as to whose memories were being experienced. I think it wasn't as clear as it could have been.

Regardless, though, I appreciated the lack of clear delineation among the memories, as the game revealed that you're holding the memories of many people. The jumble and confusion made sense in the new context, and made me appreciate the earlier experience.

At the end, they finally open up the choices, which works exceedingly well. It's quite clear that any of the decisions you make now are permanent; that they will advance the story and close off one line of inquiry. I really appreciated that, and thought it made the overall experience stronger. Too often, games want to leave every door, path, and side-street open to the player; it's a brave decision to let the player definitively decide "I'll read this, but not that." I appreciated it, and it worked into the context of the overall piece nicely; in the last moments of the story, you realize how significant all of your earlier non-choices were. In each case, you were reading the submerged and, out of necessity, personality of your character.

In that regard, I saw the earlier choices as all being valid; each one accurately expresses how your character feels. I even used the browser back button to go back and re-read them; it provides a fresh insight into the experience and story.

In my re-read, I was surprised at just how many themes the game touches on or addresses, all without ever resorting to a polemic or feeling pointed. From social justice issues to existential questions, You Were Made For Loneliness is a surprisingly deep game.

Lastly, I appreciated the meta-commentary on the reader in this work. Much like the robot, you're constrained and forced to submit your own opinions and expressions in order to proceed. This was particularly well-done. It's a staple of good interactive fiction, but is easy to do poorly. I was impressed at how well it was handled.


This is a strong story, with solid writing, authentic dialogue, and some genuinely creepy/tense moments where I was worried for my character. In addition, it cleverly uses the limitations and strengths of Twine to build a strong thematic work that resonates well after finishing. While I have a few minor quibbles, I strongly recommend this game 'as is' and appreciate the subtle ways it handles a number of complex themes and ideas.

I've spent a lot of time on this game and barely scratched the surface, so my review may be a bit premature; after 2 hours of play, I've gone through 2 or 3 objectives out of (I assume) a great many, and I'm finding the game play and mimesis engrossing and believable.

The writing occasionally falters; there are more than a few cliches and overly used turns of phrase, but the experience on the whole has been fun and incredibly deep.

This game is a Spring Thing entrant for 2014; while I haven't played all of the entries for this year yet, I suspect this will be among the deepest games in the entry list.

This is a game that invites lengthy and slow exploration. There are dozens of layers, and I believe, deeper and more sophisticated problems than the initial setup of losing the phone number of your love interest.

I don't know how the game will end; I don't know if it is capable of delivering on the exceptional early promise it has shown. I expect it will; the intuitive and player-friendly 'ui' (including objectives list and excellent feedback when you're on the right track) make this one of the most easily navigated parser games I've played in a while.

I was a little put off by the initial barrage of text, but am happy I stuck with it through that; the sheer complexity and depth of this game is reminiscent of classic infocom titles, but without the convoluted verb guesses and noun mismatches that ruin many classic games. This game has a believable and well-implemented world, and I'm happy to spend hours exploring it in a leisurely fashion.

Through Time is a dating/romance/slice of life CYOA with a number of endings and potential romantic paths.

It includes some 'puzzles' of the date sim genre (which activity do you do first on your date? how do you respond when a person you are interested in asks about your feelings?) and the puzzles are clued well, so you can get a satisfactory result an make choices that feel in-character with the role as you see it.

The writing could use some polish, but after a first play-through, you'll be doing more skimming than in-depth reading; the writing isn't bad. It just would be stronger with some editing and paring down of some sections and a few over-wrought passages.

Overall, this is a strong entry from (I believe) a first-time IF author, and I'd love to see more of their work. I'd recommend this game to new players as well; it provides minor but non-frustrating challenges.

The story-telling, mapping, and overall design is very good. The writing is very strong, and the use of Twine is beautiful; the maps in the background add a lot to the experience.

I really enjoyed the creative way-finding; it wasn't your standard (N, S, W, E) coordinates, but I didn't find it distracting or confusing. Other noticeable improvements on the standard Twine experience included the hand-drawn maps and elegant inventory system. This game recreates some of the feeling of a parser game, while stripping away the learning curve and 'guess the verb/noun' confusion that can occur in a parser.

The writing was strong, and the hinted at domestic problems were an engrossing mystery, as was the identity of the character you play. The narrative has a strong punch, and includes the use of red herrings that give you further insight into the character and the story. I recommend playing this game like an exploration on your first go, and 'in character' on the second--as you imagine your character to be, based on the first play through.

(My original review of this game referred to a puzzling early maze-like puzzle; it has since been reworked and improved dramatically.)

This is a clever, short little game, with plans to expand beyond the introductory version it is currently in and into a full game.

The premise and concept are both strong, and I'm hopeful that the writer does create a full-length game from this introduction--I'd play it! The basic puzzle is well-clued from a player perspective, and makes sense in the context of the game.

This is a game with some beautiful writing and a deep, profound story.

It is largely linear but not lacking in agency; the outcome is predestined, your decisions will shape how you feel in reflection and about the story you've engaged with.

This is effectively a CYOA with a largely linear although deep plot, strong player interaction, and a non-judgmental narrative voice.

I enjoyed the story immensely and the writing was very good, although at times the author's experiment with procedural generated content could detract from the experience. It is possible--for instance--for the game to tell you that a character is silent when they are actually speaking or to tell you that you feel deep pain in a moment that seems unlikely to produce such a feeling.

I don't want to be negative; I really loved this game, and would have happily rated it at 4 stars, but I do think that the content generation experiment holds back the narrative proper. I expect with that removed, we'd be able to gain a little more depth in the piece, and it would free the author up to focus on the rest of the experience. I think the procedural-generation probably added a lot of value/interest to the creator, but I don't see that it adds much value for a player. It has the most minor impact on re-plays, which will be different anyway--no one is going to play this game the same way twice in a row on purpose, so it leaves me feeling like the experiment was technically a success (that is to say, in mechanical terms it succeeds well), but a failure in a narrative sense. I don't see what it adds to my experience as a reader, and I think that largely the story/game is already successful.

The final narrative punch, as you approach the denouement, is successful and strong. Some reviewers criticized it for being too divergent from their intentions, and I see their point; for people who assume a lot more emotional agency in the narrative, it would break immersion slightly. I was completely wrapped up in learning more about me the character at this point, so it didn't have a negative impact. Rather, I just felt a positive sense that I'd learned something important about the character, and it influenced my second play-through.

Ultimately, this is a strong game with a well-crafted plot and authentic dialogue. I enjoyed it and played it several times to conclusion to explore different journeys.