Ratings and Reviews by Kastel

Bydlo; or the Ox-Cart by P.B. Parjeter

Pictures at an Exhibition is a famous piano composition by Modest Mussorgsky that depicts a musical tour of an exhibition made by Viktor Hartmann. The ten numbers are all based on Hartmann's works, one of which is called "Bydlo", which imitates an ox slowly pulling its cart. Its slow tempo and repetitive nature echo the menial labor of the ox as it trudges forward, ceaselessly, painstakingly, without ever stopping. The music rises and rises as if the ox is approaching the listener, culminating when the listener is finally close enough to inspect the hard work of the passing ox. The instruments then soften, suggesting that the ox is receding into the distance -- this song captures a moment of labor, both its ordinariness and its grandeur. It is boring, exhausting work for the worker, but it is also a kind of spectacle for the listener.

That is my interpretation anyway. We don't have access to the paintings on which this composition is based, but most people tend to agree that it is a negative interpretation of labor. Patrick Bouchard's stop-motion animation of the same name reanimates an overworked ox, which is then overwhelmed and eaten alive by miniature clay-like humans. The dread this track inspires makes it difficult for anyone to present work as something positive or meaningful.

This is where P.B. Parjeter's Bydlo comes in: it is a Bitsy game where you play as a human who has to capture dots in a small farm while an ox moves across the screen. Each time the player collects all the dots, they are taken back to the beginning, but the layout of the farm has changed. More and more obstacles appear in the fields, turning them into a chaotic maze full of abandoned objects and bones. When the ox finally leaves the screen, the player can follow its trail [spoiler]and reach an orchestra with a conductor and the letters FIN.[/spoiler]

The game describes itself as a Bitsy game about [spoiler]the triumph of art over drudgery[/spoiler], which left me a tad confused. I understand the game is trying to say something about labor. The repetition is meant to provoke boredom and ennui in the player, and the choice of music makes it clear that it's meant to signal to the player to reflect on how tedious the gameplay is. However, it ends on a laudatory note: the tasks you have performed are actually quite meaningful and artistic -- think about it, player, because you are just like the ox that worked its heart out and that labor is beautiful.

The message reminds me of the realist movements in painting: these painters reject their predecessors who painted historical and mythical figures in favor of ordinary laypeople working under the sun. When painters take their fine oils to paint a butcher's shop or a woman cleaning turnips, they are making a statement that these people are as remarkable as the kings and symbols they once painted. There is beauty to be found in the people who break stones or people harvesting potatoes according to these realists and I think so too.

However, there are many tensions for those who subscribe to the realist dogma in the art world. These ordinary subjects will only be art if someone bothered to paint or photograph or make a video game about them, and that's only relevant to the people involved in the art world. For the workers, they certainly want to be listened to and loved, but they also work to attain subsistence.

This usually doesn't matter because there are plenty of grounded works of fiction in our world that follow and respect the lives of ordinary people doing ordinary things. (I like to think of myself as doing just that.) However, I think this particular game describes a realist philosophy of art in the abstract and implicitly valorizes work. This creates a tension with the imagery of the ox, an animal that is chained to our exploitative production methods, that the game does not resolve or tease out.

As a result, I find the ending particularly strange because the [spoiler]orchestra[/spoiler] suggests that the way we produce goods, while exhausting and debilitating, is still artistic. And I think that's a risky conclusion to arrive at: the rhythm of field work is always pleasant to listen to, but it does not negate the environmental and political implications of labor. Art does not overcome our dependence on labor. It can heal us from the drudgery of work, but that's about it.

All that said, I think this game is an interesting, if not provocative, interpretation of a notable piano piece. I enjoyed thinking with this game a lot. If anything, it was fun writing this review and figuring out where to place this game in the contexts of labor discourses and people's interpretations on the piece. While I disagree with the message of the game, I respect that the creator has written a love letter to the song and what it means to them in a language that may confuse most people unfamiliar with the song's history. The language they've chosen is full of love and care and I'm glad they've stuck with it because it makes me engage with its themes on labor and art on its own terms.

Deep Dark Wood by Senica Thing

This is an anthology of micro IF written in Twine by seven elementary and middle school students from Senica, Slovakia. More information can be found here. Each work goes in different directions, but the framing narrative is always the same: the player is "entering a dark place full unpredictable twists and hostile creatures." If they feel uncomfortable or have exhausted all the options found in these works, they can return "to the Main Crossroads and try another path". The premise of a dark forest is more than enough to spark the children's imaginations, and I like how the games are different from each other. It's great that they're collected in an easy-to-read anthology like this.

Some of the games have not been edited by adults, with zero or few changes at all ("The Land Owner left the path nearly untouched"). Others were redesigned ("The Land Owner had to redesign some parts of the story to balance the beginning and the ending and make the adventure sound bit more logical.") for us unimaginative adults in mind. So all these games are written by kids whose creative voices are not drowned out by outside forces, and I like that.

Overall, Deep Dark Woods is an impressive anthology of children's fiction. I own several anthologies of children's poetry and fiction, and this would fit right into my library. It's fun to read what kids have to say about the world they live in, what they find scary and exciting, etc. And I would say this is a step up from the anthologies I own because there is a common theme/setting. We can trace the imaginative journeys kids take from the premise here, and it's quite enlightening for anyone interested in children's education.

I'm going to go through each game because I think they deserve their own review and I agree with the project's goal of giving feedback and encouragement to the kids.

Back to the City by David

The game begins with us standing in front of a log cabin. We are presented with three choices: join the party, leave the forest, or explore the forest. Each choice leads to other choices that may or may not help the character find their way back to the city.

Leaving the forest is a rather funny option as it's the quickest way to safety. Joining the party doesn't help us achieve our goals, but we are able to talk to some of the characters for a bit. It's unfortunate that I wasn't able to party with them for long because our character realized that it had little to do with getting home. That's probably true, but maybe talking to these people in the party could give us some clues about how to get home, and we could have some fun and intelligent conversations with them.

In fact, I think we see that opportunity when the player character meets Steve the horse when we choose to explore the forest. Steve has a map to the city, and that means that our exploration of the forest is rewarded. It feels good to help someone and then find a way back to the town. This is my favorite path because we can lead Steve back to his owner by exploring the town.

So the best parts of the game involve the player character talking to other characters and working together to solve a common problem. I would have liked to see situations like the one with Steve in Back to the City. Steve is also a fun character and I think it would be great to see more scenes of him horsing around with the player character. All in all, a pretty good game.

Dark Dreams by Baily's Sisters

The player character wakes up in an old house that has a table with a lamp, an apple, and a cup of coffee. The windows are closed. You have three choices related to the items on the table.

Without giving away the game's secrets, the choices are excellent and lead to some incredible scenarios. I laughed at the hand-standing wolf and was engaged when I learned I was poisoned. The game knows that things have to happen to the player or they will get bored.

The best part of this game is how each ending reflects what the player has done while exploring the house. I like how it remembers what I did and what I didn't do. It's nice to play a game that remembers my actions and implies that I should have done something better. More games should do that.

This is a well-designed game that makes you think about the consequences of your actions. There are many satisfying endings, and there's always something to do and think about on every page.

Halloween by Hailey and Milka

The game starts by asking us to enter our name and then welcomes us to the Halloween Hunt. There are many different paths the player can take, but I think there's a bit too much.

I think the main problem is that the choices don't feel connected to the previous scenes. I don't feel like I'm in control of the world or my character, so the choices don't feel as meaningful as they should.

Still, I am deeply impressed by how much text there is in the game and how much attention is paid to building a world full of surprises. I enjoy exploring every link and being surprised that there's more to read and explore. I feel their energy and passion in their words.

I think developers should think about which branches are important for the player to reach. They should try to play the game at least once, so that they can imagine what the player will feel while reading through their game. It's an ambitious game that could be even better if the developers considered how people will experience their title.

IXI in the Forest by Leontine

IXI wants to make friends in the forest and there seem to be two animals he can befriend: a doe or a bird. The doe turns out to be hostile, but choosing the bird gives us a story of friendship.

It's a pity that the bird is "good and nice but lazy". The choices in this game revolve around making the bird or the doe do things, so we need to make the bird not lazy.

I like the bird because she seems happy to help people out but only if we remind the bird what it should do. I also like the rabbits who can choose to invite the bird or not. I wish I could learn more about the bird, rabbit, doe, and IXI. They seem like interesting characters and I would like to know what each of them had for dinner. Animals do have interesting meals after all.

The game is short, but I think it has memorable characters and environments. I just want more because I think it's very good.

Little Frogie by Natalie

You are a hungry frog, but you can choose not to buy food and starve. It will be a sad moment, but that's how the game begins: it wants you to consider your choices to find the best moments a frog could have.

The mistakes the frog could make are mistakes many of us would make. On a personal level, I understand using salt instead of sugar for pancakes, or how a delicious cake could make my teeth hurt. We have to consider things like the time of day and our other needs if we want to help our frog friend.

So I think the game does a very good job of exploring how our actions and choices should be aimed at satisfying a need and nothing more or less. Why would we want to paint the Mona Lisa when we could paint a cool cat with funny sunglasses? Each page makes me think about what I should do next, and it's fun to click on a choice I know is wrong to see the hilarious results.

This is my favorite of the Seneca Thing games because of the balance between gameplay and text. Looking for different endings always makes me laugh, and I like how Natalie finds ways to summarize the endings into moments. It's an impressive game with a good sense of humor and a great understanding of interactivity.

Survive or Die by Unicorn Sisters

This is a real horror game. We are in an old house and we have to explore the creepy attic or stay in the hall.

The atmosphere of this game is really captivating. I didn't know what to expect, so I was surprised that there was a monster running around. The descriptions of the attic and other rooms are very well done and make me anxious on what I should do next.

I also like how the good choices are the ones people don't tend to do in horror movies. Sticking together is always the best idea, but movies don't do that. This game does and I appreciate that it has some common sense, so when the scary stuff happens, it feels more believable.

The monster is also quite effective at spooking me. The game never describes the monster, so it's up to my imagination what the monster should look like. My own imagination is scarier than anything the developer can come up with, so I'm glad I was given the space to come up with the scariest monster to crawl around the house.

The ending surprised me, but it made a lot of sense since the monster was hungry and [spoiler]we just happened to order pizza[/spoiler]. That was a great twist and I think the ending is very clever. Scary yet hilarious, this game is a great example of how horror can be mixed with comedy to create something very special.

The Dark One by Mushroom

This game starts by talking to you and asking if you'd like some blueberries. It feels like you are talking to a friend who has come up with a fascinating story. However, this friend doesn't seem to know much about you since you can't swim and oops.

So I like how the narration has personality. The narrator doesn't know everything about you, but they are friendly and helpful if you earn their trust.

That said, I want to know more about the narrator and why they wants to help me. Their lines are so funny that they make me curious. It would be fun to see scenes where the narrator and I hang out and do things together, like friends tend to do. I would also like to read what the narrator thinks of me, so that we can avoid the swimming accident from now on.

I'm also interested in the title. The game never mentions what The Dark One is. Is the Dark One the narrator? Or is there something lurking that I haven't found yet?

There are a lot of mysteries in this game that will be fun to unravel and explore. I like mysteries, so it will be fun to solve a few and leave the rest for me to ponder about the world. I'm looking forward to learning more about The Dark One, the narrator, and the world this game takes place in because it feels like there's a lot of potential here.

That's a lot of writing, and I hope it's useful to developers and readers alike. Writing all this was exhausting, but I'm glad I did it.

A rewarding moment.

These are the three words that keep popping into my head as I read and re-read idle hands, a game about "idolatrous devil-fucking". I keep coming back to this title, not just for its erotic prosody, but for the way it taps into the modern world's complicated relationship with religious customs and symbols.

Its epigram and namesake seem to originate from Proverbs 16:27 in The Living Bible:

Idle hands are the devil’s workshop; idle lips are his mouthpiece.

Other translations like the King James do not mention the devil, rather preferring to describe an "ungodly man [who] diggeth up evil" and his lips "a burning fire". They are certainly clearer about its messaging, but they don't evoke the kind of tantalizing imaginary that the game needs.

What is so inspiring about this particular translation is that it evokes a taboo, a possible transgression for the player to seek their desires.

The player reads how the devil caresses their character, the way his hands slide over their body, and the intricate movements that titillate both him and the player character. No backstory or character motivation exists: we just read what the devil's idle hands do to the player character. There's pleasure in treating religion as erotic and erotic as religion.

But we know that this is "wrong". Its wrongness is sexy, though. I'm not into most men, not especially the way the devil is described, but I was thrilled to see him reach into regions so private and intimate to me. His seduction is so successful that I drop any religious pretense and feel as if I have surrendered to his words and actions.

I wonder if people in the future will find this erotic. It's hard to say what kind of future we're entering, but suppose we're entering a more secular, atheistic future or a future that is quite theocratic, would this still have the same kind of power it had over me? I'm sure people will appreciate what Sophia is writing -- it has a timeless quality -- but I feel that its erotic qualities are too "dated" for future earthlings to appreciate. They reflect, I think, a lot of people's qualms about religion and symbols at the moment: even agnostics know a thing or two about Jesus and Krishna. The ambivalence modern society has toward religion is what I think that makes this work so erotic for me right now. Our inability to reach a consensus on how we should think about religious customs really speaks to our times, and more importantly, it gives us a space to explore, transgress, love, and despise the many facets of religion -- something people from the future may never get.

For now, idle hands is an excellent work of erotica for our times. The prose and the symbolism it possesses are able to seduce me and make me think about why I thought the devil was so sexy. He provoked my imagination in a way I didn't know I had: a quasi-religious one that I wanted to cross and feel his devilish touch. Even my strong adherence to agnosticism must admit that I was seduced by his idle lips.

Kiss of Beth is a debut game from Charm Cochran before they ever set foot in the interactive fiction community. The player character is a roommate of Beth's who seems to be doing a vibe check on Beth's date before he's allowed in her room.

This premise seems strange: what is so scary about it, except that maybe the date is someone scary? The more you learn about the date, the more he sounds like an average guy who's neither great nor bad, but at least he seems to have a future. What is the horror of an average-looking date besides boredom and a potentially soulless future?

That's part of the mystery of Cochran's games. They often explore horror in unconventional ways: Gestures Towards Divinity is a meditation on the queer contradictions of a famous artist, Studio plays with the paranoia of living alone in a studio apartment, Your Body a Temple, or the Postmodern Prometheus allows you to redefine your body, and 1 4 the $ toys with the consumptive nature of cryptocurrency and how it devours its own consumers. The horror of Cochran's games may vary, but I notice a common thread: the range of possible actions is already determined by a predetermined story that the player may not be aware of.

It's interesting to see this "players make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please" philosophy taking shape in this early game. Once I realized what I had done, I felt like there was no way out. The game says it has two endings, but neither is a "good" ending; they're both bad endings, just with different outcomes. The guilt sustained by this abusive loop of actions cannot be wished away by the player. The past, which the player cannot see, can only offer so many choices before it must inevitably betray expectations of a happy ending. The game traps the player in its unwritten history, and the perpetual cycle of abuse and addiction between the player character and Beth can only be imagined. All we have is one episode of their relationship, everything else is left to the imagination to fantasize endlessly.

I enjoy playing debut titles by creators I've played before because there's a certain kind of raw simplicity that foreshadows the later and more sophisticated titles they'll make in the near future. Kiss of Beth offers much more: with a simple premise, it's able to conjure visions of the Cochran games made and not made, of how meaningful interactivity can be when negotiated between the player and the fictional past to which they are not privy. It's an intriguing title that predicts the unpredictability of Cochran's work, and I look forward to seeing more of their work.

This game, for better or for worse, simulates the drudgery of waking up to a new day.

It plays with the expectations we have as we go through our morning rituals, but the prose betrays its own optimism. "Another day is here," the narration greets its players, "rise up!" This seems too bright, too cheerful for the player to take the text seriously.

Even before I typed in a command, I anticipated some layer of irony around the corner. I looked for a corner to no avail -- no "corners" were implemented in the parser -- and examining myself simply reassured the player character they'll always stay as themselves until the end of time. Going to the light as the game wanted only repeated the cycle.

"Another day is here," the game says again, "rise up!"

Even though the player is locked in these two rooms, the game does not induce anxiety or even the feeling of being trapped. Rather, a sense of ennui and regression permeates the air. The player character must constantly mask their exhaustion with the most false language as the cycle repeats itself over and over again.

Until the player figures out the solution, Look Around the Corner is a rather melancholic experience. It captures the somber violin tones from the song it's based on through the player's gentle struggle with the parser. There are only vague clues provided by the sparse implementation, and this evokes a gloomy spell on the morning I spend playing and writing about the game. It's such a dour experience that the cloudy morning I see out the window seems so appropriate: I look for the rays of sunshine, but everything feels so gray.

The solution, on the other hand, is a clever throwback to the song, but I don't think it extends its exploration of the liminal state between waking and sleeping. It ends without any buts or ands. The idea of endlessly waking up to a new day is nipped in the bud.

What would a respite from the drudgery of looking around the corner would look like? Or is there no way out? These are tantalizing questions that cease to be once the player reaches the end.

Indeed, I wished Look Around the Corner could have been a little more curious since it did a convincing simulation of waking up in the short time it had. The game is doing something very clever with the idea of "new day" as a vague promise, but I'm not sure what it is. With a little more looking around the corner, I suspect the answer could be very interesting.

As it stands, this is a very cute game that is worth your time. I just think it could have been something very special.

How Dare You puts the player in a strange situation: they must find the verbs that will hopefully resolve a potential breakup between the player character and their partner.

It doesn't take long to realize that there's no way to move the conversation forward. The (ex-)partner is simply not interested in reconciliation, leaving the player to wonder what kind of transgression the player character has committed that makes them so beyond forgiveness.

I've always found parser games like this interesting because they suggest that communication is much more than language in action. There is, of course, the interpersonal communication as explored in the game, but there is also the relationship between the player and the parser.

Whenever I encountered errors or silence from the parser, the friction seemed to unfold a wordless story in my head. As I pondered what else to type, I began to imagine nice dates, arguments, and all the little things that couples tend to do. There is a sense of mystery, of something terribly wrong that has torn this couple apart.

The game gives no clues as to what this history might be, but the limited agency the player has in navigating the game provides more than enough clues. There is no need to observe the build-up of tension: I think the player can intuit the "solutions" to this puzzle by simply struggling with the parser a bit and wondering what the parser is trying to say about the relationship between the characters.

The parser in How Dare You is almost like a character in this standoff, an intermediary between the player and this unwritten history. Given life, it wants to write the friction between these characters into parser errors. While the prose uses second-person narration, it's more fruitful to see the implemented verbs and responses as a translator trying to get as much nuance (written and unwritten) into the small space the game has.

And I believe the parser has done a great job at it. When I finally entered one of the many correct solutions, I didn't feel a eureka moment -- it was more like a confirmation that I was on the right track, and I felt like the parser and I were on the same page. While I can imagine players being upset by the game, I wasn't surprised, and that's okay: the "translation" served its purpose because the clues to the tragedy are so well foreshadowed.

But there is something to be said about how opaque this same dynamic can be in real-life relationships. There are no parsers, no puzzles to indicate that something is wrong. People only realize they're in shitty relationships after the fact. We're all unreliable narrators, unaware of the genre we're in.

The fantasy (for lack of a better word) of How Dare You is that it can make such dynamics legible to the eyes of the parser player. I found temporary catharsis when I read the last lines of the game. But as I wrote my thoughts and reflected on life, I realized that this was a pyrrhic victory and the game seemed to ironically acknowledge this: if the player tries to undo an action, the response is

"If only you could undo whatever it was that led you here. But you can't."

I read this as the player character's inability to diagnose what actually went wrong. Instead of discovering a systemic problem that defined their abrasive personality, they searched for the one action, the one incident, the one verb that caused everything to spiral out of control.

The real world is full of scumbags like the player character. They'll never learn to read their transcripts and become someone better.

The premise of NYX is one that many science fiction and horror fans have heard over the years: the cosmic horror has taken over, and the humans must respond to this otherworldly threat. While writers and artists will fixate on the details and how they differ, the real point of divergence is the nature of the human response. How should humans retaliate or negotiate with the alien? Do they succeed or fail?

NYX describes itself as "the final transmission of the ESPM-05 (NYX-V) crew on their final spaceflight". No other context provides any information about what actually happened. Instead, we hear lamentations: the narrator cries that they are not a poet and that their astronaut vocabulary cannot condense the spiritual exhilaration of oxygen and the otherworldly being into prose. Yet, they believe they can make a "final stand, gazing nobly unto the abyss". The narrator can only make choices that lead to three different outcomes.

The game ends, the consequences of the player's choice left untold and only speculated upon by the mind.

There is much to delight in: the minimalist aesthetics, the wide possibility space the game offers with three simple choices, and the intense fear that no choice is perfect and the being will find ways to overcome the setback.

But what I found magical is that there are three potential stories in NYX. Each choice could create a story with its own specific theme, different from the other two, and highlight the player character's lingering dreams and fears before their last breath.

When we put the three choices together, we see a spectrum of what human beings can be when facing the unknown. They are almost like blank slates until that moment, when they see an Other and form a response that "humanizes" themselves. Their actions and inactions, the final stands if you will, create the human in these kinds of science fiction stories.

Rather than settle for a short story with one theme and one theme only, NYX lays the groundwork for many short stories to come, suggesting that there are many ways to define what it means to be human in a first contact story. It allows the player to evoke the human as a wide range of possibilities and to imagine what humans can be, making it a richer and deeper story upon reflection.

There is value in short stories that seem to provide a canvas for the reader to think about the constellation of meanings and ideas out there. We have so many conflicting ideas about what the human condition is that it's worth finding a place to think about what that means. NYX is one such canvas: it shows how human beings are so malleable and indeterminate until that single mouse click, and I'm very grateful to have discovered this little sweet piece.

I'm not familiar with Baldur's Gate 3, but I know that people like Astarion and playing the game made me understand why.

After a grueling battle at the camp, the player character searches for Astarion who is trapped in a never-ending nightmare. He's trapped in a tomb and he's losing his mind. You can only manifest as an incorporeal being and have to spend your precious ten energy points to learn Speech, Touch, and Spell to reassure Astarion that he's not going mad and that there's someone who still needs him. You can only tell him so much to make him remember that he's not alone in this tomb. Astarion is starving and dying of loneliness, so every interaction you have with him is important. I realized I was enjoying this game when I saw him lose his guard and reveal his vulnerability to me. It confirms that not only did I manage my resources well but that I was able to connect with him as a person in need of companionship. The feedback loop feels rewarding and I feel closer to Astarion as a character.

I appreciate how much Corfman is able to express how much she thinks Astarion is a compelling character, but what I find particularly cool is that she's able to show how lovable this asshole character is to non-BG3 players like me. It made me even more interested in the game (if only it weren't so expensive and data hog) because I really like characters like that.

Unfortunately, it was a shame that the game ended early. What we have so far is an early access game that shows the first act. I wanted to read and learn more about Astarion. He's the kind of character whose moody temperament is intoxicating and I can't imagine the volume of interactions one could have in future acts. I trust Corfman to flesh out the mechanics and put him and the player in interesting situations that challenge how I've handled resource management and his trust.

I didn't expect to like A Dream of Silence as much as I did. I was not the "right audience", but I think Corfman's approach to the character worked well with me. Her prose invited me into the world of Baldur's Gate 3 in a way that few reviews can because she focuses on a specific character she adores and is able to express what she finds so fascinating about him. It is a passionate and infectious love letter to the character and I can't wait to see the full version one day -- maybe after I finally get to Baldur's Gate 3.

This is the kind of horror that gives me nightmares. There are no supernatural beings in this story, just a diminishing sense of security in a world that is getting increasingly dangerous to sleep in.

For the avid (and paranoid) parser player, it pays to get to know your player character and what she's like. In the first half of the game, she has to do her chores like emptying the dishwasher and (Spoiler - click to show)remembering her new identity. As the game progresses, the web browser turns orange and gradually dims, imitating the sun going down. If the player snoops around with the right commands, they'll learn about her backstory, why she has moved to a new part of town, and why she's constantly exhausted but still aware of everything around her.

As the second half begins, the web browser goes dark and everything onward is written in the future tense. The inciting event hasn't happened yet. All the parser input the player enters is the sequence of actions she will take to overcome (Spoiler - click to show)the armed intruder.

Studio is a very tense game, especially when the player is starting out. The game reacts to your every command without hesitation and you can feel how precious every move becomes in this (Spoiler - click to show)life-or-death situation. Every step feels like a step into the unknown and I have to remember the right numbers, where things are and where (Spoiler - click to show)he is.

I've lived in studio apartments this small before, so it's impressive how spacious this environment becomes when we add this obstacle to the mix. Navigating around the apartment, grabbing important items, and possibly creating distractions makes this living space feel a bit larger -- but it's still overwhelming because I have to remember that her smartphone is by the bed, her laptop is in the office area, etc. This game could have been set in a house, but the compactness of the studio apartment makes it more intense. In the parser game model, the player character and the obstacle are in different rooms. In the actual writing of the game, they're just a few feet away from each other. This proximity overrides the way I usually map parser games in my head, and I find it thrilling, if not nerve-wrecking.

There are multiple endings to this game, which may not seem like much at first. However, the game only counts endings not by how we got there, but what the outcome is. (Spoiler - click to show)Multiple ways to kill the intruder exist as a quick example. This made me replay the game a lot to explore what other outcomes are possible and which one would be satisfying for the player character. Normally, I would find replaying a horror game less unnerving. However, the constant search for new things to do keeps me on edge, and I really like how the game encourages that experimentation.

If I hadn't, I wouldn't have noticed that (Spoiler - click to show)fleeing the apartment with everything you have is the same as fleeing the apartment without your valuables. After all, the armed intruder can still find you and kill you. Or how the armed intruder reacts to sounds and things that look off (he noticed the keychain was missing). Or how you can just turn on the radio and listen to some great hip-hop. This makes the setting very believable and grounded while creating a kind of sandbox environment for the player to play around in.

It took me a while to get the last two main endings, that is (Spoiler - click to show)subduing and murdering the intruder while alerting the police. And I had to ask Cochran for help for that since they weren't really smart ideas for the player character to have. But I do appreciate that these endings exist as they remind the player that every variable is in fact in check.

While I enjoyed the game very much, I have to admit that the game doesn't go beyond its atmospheric horror roots. The way the game handles its themes doesn't make me want to write an essay about it. I think this can be a downer for people who want more than just a sandbox horror game.

That said, I think its brevity works in its favor. Studio knows what it wants to do, and it delivers. I am extremely impressed with the title and how many secrets it has -- I'm sure there are more to be found, even though I've spent hours on the game. It's simply an effective horror parser game because it preys on something most people feel vulnerable to: our safety.

I remember wondering what the player character meant in the second half when she said that (Spoiler - click to show)she was missing the weapon that kept her safe, and I restarted the game and searched the apartment as if I were burglaring her place. After a day of searching, I found (Spoiler - click to show)her taser and time stopped for me. I thought about all the associations with the object, her backstory, and why she needs it.

The object, in my view, challenges how we balance safety with other needs while reminding us that one wrong step could be the end of everything. It is a symbol of how (Spoiler - click to show)gender-based violence is everywhere and the police are useless. All she can do is fend for herself, and I think that's the real horror of the story: she's alone in a violent, violent world.

The studio apartment just happens to be a microcosm of that world.

You have recently been hired by a generic dystopian science fiction corporation to filter poetry from an accidental merger of the Database of Subsumed Cultures. By filtering, they mean deleting these cultural artifacts from the database because they're unnecessary and pointless.

At first, you're preserving factoids and deleting poetry, but someone named PROSPER.0 comes into your interface, quotes some Shakespeare, and lets you "reclaim" words from the poetry you're about to delete. And now you're tasked with creating a poem based on the words you've recovered. You could create a poem commemorating the highs and lows of the ancient civilization you deleted, or you could create a poem expressing your desires -- whatever you want.

The concept is quite interesting, but I found it awkward at best. I found myself hovering over a sentence and clicking endlessly to grab as many words as I could. The game does throw in a few curveballs like limiting the words you can grab as a creative challenge, but that's about it. The game doesn't test you in any way, and the individual words are so divorced from the specific cultural meanings of the alien civilization that they don't really carry any weight for me when I write my found poetry.

(As an aside, the game reminds me of 18 Cadence by Aaron Reed where you reorganize sentences and paragraphs from an already constructed story to make something creative and personal. I wonder if PROSPER.0 would have benefited from preserving sentences instead of single words.)

As for the in-game poems written by the aliens, they were generated through a telephone game of public domain poetry and several rounds of Google Translate. I've seen reviewers say that this made the poetry sufficiently alien to them, but I was already familiar with some of the poems, and the experience was like reading a recitation by someone who had just forgotten how the lines went. I would prefer original poetry, but I also recognize that writing different poems in different voices is rather impractical. Still, it diminished the credibility of the alien poetry for me.

Now, I have to take off my reviewer's hat for a bit and admit that artistic works that advocate the power of art and culture in a world that rejects them are becoming too superficial for me. Many works in this vein, including this game, advocate for artistic and cultural expression, but they don't really have anything more to say after that. Works like this require you to believe that the plot, that art must be defended once again against the tyranny of dystopias, is enough. No critical interrogation of art or culture -- just the notion of (poetic) injustice.

The game does lampshade this tension: the player character asks PROSPER.0 if their poetry will even memorialize these alien civilizations since the game doesn't check if you do. It responds with a non-sequitur gotcha: you wouldn't be able to summarize the civilization with all the words you have, so make do with what you have. Point taken, but it makes me wonder what the player character is supposed to be: a savior, an egotistical artist, or all of the above? We also don't get much of a sense of PROSPER.0, even with the lategame reveals. I just view them as someone who's way into Shakespeare sonnets and nothing else; their interest in poetry is intentionally superficial, but it's not really explored or acknowledged beyond a few lines.

I'm partly sure that the intention of the game is to open up discussion, especially about the symbolic meaning of the player character and PROSPER.0. However, I found the oblique direction this game takes to be underwhelming: it doesn't explore anything but the surface of the relationships between capitalism, art, and technology. I almost feel like I have to read more of my own theory and philosophizing into the game in order to make sense of the themes in the story because the game lacks any of that exploration.

Which is a shame because I think found poetry is one of the more unique genres that interactive fiction is predisposed to. It would be fascinating to play found poetry that follows the beats of narrative games in the same way that some photography games (like Umurangi Generation) have a narrative for players to engage with. That would make the poetry we make and share more meaningful. I didn't feel like I was part of a movement that the game wanted me to be a part of, but I liked the idea of a movement.

I just wish it was a real movement.