Ratings and Reviews by Kastel

This game is an antidote for those obsessed with personal histories and their ultimate meaning.

We first learn that this game was originally created in 1993 by a thirteen-year-old Eddie Hughes. It was rediscovered by a forty-year-old Ed Hughes in 2020, and the version we have includes his thoughtful commentary. Hughes has also helpfully provided us with maps of the game in the form of his old math notebook. And as we'll learn later, the game is a recreation of the old lake house and the time he and his good friend Richard spent at the lake.

As the player progresses through the game, the author seems to gain and lose interest in a work he was once obsessed with but now barely remembers. Hughes laughs and apologizes for his younger self's antics -- a fully realized house with descriptive rooms like More Halls is very funny -- but the player will almost immediately encounter oddities. They can't go to his sister's room -- in the maps provided, it's blotted out. (Spoiler - click to show)Why are we collecting memory shards? The more we traverse, the more personal this game becomes.

It’s very tempting to compare it to B.J. Best’s other old-IF-in-IF work, And Then You Come to a House Not Unlike the Previous One. Not only are they reminiscences of the past via interactive fiction but they relate to the relevance of the past and interactive fiction in our present. That work is, however, a coming-of-age relationship between two adolescents. We are playing the game with someone who is reflecting on his youth.

Instead, the game is more like Drew Cook’s Repeat the Ending as both include fictional commentary and also look to the past for meaning. In Cook's game, we find an affirmation of interactive fiction as a mode of artistic expression. We leave that game emotional and hopeful for Cook's growth.

In Hughes's game, we find nothing.

What remains of LAKE ADVENTURE is an adventure game full of bad memories not worth revisiting. Hughes doesn't want to remember (Spoiler - click to show)how heartbroken he was over his sister's death from leukemia nor does he want to think about Richard's death after drifting apart for so long. But the past has caught up with him and won't let go.

The finale gives me dread, especially since it felt like I was roped into relive his trauma. I wonder what went through the minds of young and old Eddie. Why did they put me through this torment? I guess they just didn't know what they were getting into -- and that's the really terrifying thing about rediscovering memories: we don't know what's going to come out of it.

This game is my nightmare. It goes against my beliefs about the importance of memories and traumas in autobiographical works, but I cannot simply look away from it. I know I have to stare at its truth because it is after all naive to believe that uncovering and reliving memories is unconditionally good for you. It can harm you. It can compound your trauma. It makes you remember what you've rightfully forgotten. You become an empty shell, begging "ancient history" to fill you with something, but all you've really done is widen the hole in your heart.

LAKE ADVENTURE is a tragedy for Ed Hughes and people like me who seek comfort in introspection. We can only relive the past for so long before it hurts us in our most vulnerable. Only through forgetting some memories can we find real meaning in our personal histories.

DICK MCBUTTS GETS KICKED IN THE NUTS is about a guy named Dick McButts who gets kicked in the nuts. That's the entire story in a nutshell. However, questions remain: How did Dick McButts get kicked in the nuts? Who did this? Where? Why?

These pertinent questions deserve to be answered by the most curious players of interactive fiction. While I recognize that people may feel uncomfortable about this game, this is actually a witty work that plays with the expectations and mediums of interactive fiction. It rewards curiosity and good faith with tons and tons of silly humor. In fact, it's most interesting when we realize it's having a deep conversation with us about how it's using the craft of interactive fiction to achieve its one goal.

But it sure doesn't mind giving players a bad first impression. Unlucky players with less patience may stumble upon a colorful bonanza riddled with typos and punctuation. They will be forced to read the epic highs and lows of the nut-kicking saga between Dick McButts, Adolf Hitler, and, of course, Darth Vader. Their session ends all of a sudden, with a red hyperlink that goes to nowhere.

If those players keep at it, or -- as in my case -- get lucky the first time, they'll get a more normal-looking page. If we pop up the Twine editor and look up the game's code, we can marvel at the Freudian symbiology and also uncover a script that can randomly put any player into two different game states: the aforementioned battle royale with Darth Vader and the calmer and more fleshed out DICK MCBUTTS GETS KICKED IN THE NUTS scenario.

The Dick McButts in the latter scenario is calmer and more intelligent. Unfortunately, he's also aware of the game's title and hates it. He wants to avoid this terrible fate. There are many scenes where the player must choose between two ridiculous options: one option is the correct one and the other choice results with Dick McButts getting kicked in the nuts. McButts may lament all he wants, but he'll soon be chased by cyborgs with impressive hydraulic legs ready to deliver the final blow. At one point, (Spoiler - click to show)a time-traveling Hitler materializes into existence and McButts simply has to deal with it. And somehow, the absurdity keeps on escalating from there: (Spoiler - click to show)Chapter 2 begins, Fanny McTits doesn't want her nips to be flipped, and the ending defies explanations. This whole scenario is a cinematic romp full of crude humor -- and I loved it!

But I understand why people might be put off by this game: it's just a one-note joke, nothing more and nothing less. The game is so proud of this that it refuses to consider alternative ideas. That approach will ruffle many people's feathers and it's almost certain it'll win the Golden Banana of Discord.

At the same time, I also find its commitment to this one single joke inspiring and ballsy. This title was a creative shitpost with a surprising amount of depth thrown at an unsuspecting public. Everyone may choose to laugh at it or with it. Those who laugh with it will find deep within the game a genuine appreciation for what makes interactive fiction fun and engaging: the choices, the little snippets of text revealed, the comedic timing... all in service of a nutty joke. The real comedy comes not from the copious amounts of immature humor; it comes from the fact that someone has dedicated their passion to the craft of interactive fiction to make a bombastic work about jokes about genitalia. The fact the author is willing to hide that makes the work even funnier to me.

DICK MCBUTTS GETS KICKED IN THE NUTS is delightfully juvenile because it encourages curiosity into its one-note joke. I am left with questions like "Why?" and "How?" because it's so strange and weird. It leaves an impact on me, not so different from getting kicked in the nuts. But instead of cowering in pain, I am crying with laughter at how much effort the author had to put into this game. I won't be able to get up for a while and that's okay.

Sometimes, you gotta let the pain do its thing. It's part of the joke.

We know little about Socrates. We know even less about Xanthippe, the second wife of Socrates. And yet, here is a story that imagines their last romantic night together before the esteemed philosopher took the hemlock.

As historical fiction, it teeters on the edge of implausibility. As an homage to the philosophy of Socrates, it is deeply Platonic and not very Socratic. But as a fantasy that disrupts our popular notions of the past, it does the job quite well.

On the Dedication page, Gijsbers writes that we'll never know who Xanthippe is or what she's like. However, it is possible to "complicate our idea of her; reimagine her; give her a voice that is necessarily our own voice." Putting on the mask of Xanthippe (and Socrates by extension) in the theater of interactive fiction brings them back to life and lets us "dwell in possibility". They speak with our voices, of course, but "the dead do not resent us." Instead, they will recognize this dialog between Xanthippe and Socrates as necessary "for our sake".

Keeping in the spirit of relevance, the game revels in our current vernacular of love-making: Xanthippe calls Socrates her "big man" and may choose to stroke his cheek. She wants to fulfill her marital duties and the player can make her pounce on poor Socrates. It is no wonder then that Gijsbers's version of Socrates often shudders at her actions. Grumpy at first glance, he is actually vulnerable to Xanthippe's sensuality. He becomes apologetic after a fit of rage and even uncertain of his own beliefs when he talks to her -- a far cry from the popular image of the individualistic Socrates from Plato's Apology. But it's also later revealed that (Spoiler - click to show)both characters lead adulterous lives because they can't help it. Socrates even gets a feminist lecture from Xanthippe about the sex workers he's involved with because they might not be consenting figures. As a result, their relationship has the baggage of most contemporary amours, but they choose to stay together in Socrates's final hours. Their love transcends time and space itself. I imagine their affection is strong enough to melt even the most stoic of hearts.

This is only possible because we have a rigid conception of the Ancient Greek world. We read in Plato's Phaedo that Socrates drinks the hemlock because he believes in his own philosophy and is first and foremost an Athenian citizen. A simple shift in this narrative changes everything. Socrates is not the ubermensch of Platonic philosophy in this story; he is someone who loves Xanthippe in his own way and he owes his life and death to her. Everything in Phaedo, from the Forms to the immortality of the soul, is attributed to his love for Xanthippe. She is his muse and, echoing Stephen Granade's romantic masterpiece of age and death, he "will not let her go". This work reframes everything we know about Socrates and his philosophy into a love ode for Xanthippe.

It's ahistorical and improbable, but the fantasy in Xanthippe's Last Night with Socrates is so strong that I want to believe in it. Those amorous embraces between those two characters we'll never know feel so real to me because I know it's fiction. The dialectical tensions between anachronisms and the quasi-historical details only speak to a higher understanding on why the love of wisdom feels so empty.

Perhaps, Socrates never loved Sophia. Xanthippe is a "horny cow" who sees Socrates as a "beast" that knows how to make her feel good. She's a far more beautiful figure than wisdom herself.

I'm always fascinated by puzzle Twine games with inventories because there's the obvious question, "Why not parser?", that lingers in the background. Many answer that question differently -- and with this game, there's several reasons but one particular reason stands out the most: it evokes transient, elliptical connections that remind the player is never fully in control, which is perfect for a story like this.

Your player character is packing up things in the middle of the night. Scattered around the apartment are photos of the past, of what felt like better days now long gone. But as the player mindlessly clicks hyperlinks to figure out where to go next, they'll (Spoiler - click to show)stumble upon three poets in a cafe who cryptically ask them to consider (and interact with) some old history between the player character and someone whose name is obscured. There, the game finally opens up and reveals its true self, a meditative journey on the meaning of memories and what to do with them in the face of necessary change.

As I played through the game, I'm reminded of Amanda Walker's After the Accident and especially Steve Evans's Photograph: A Portrait of Reflection as both games explore flashbacks as interactive spaces and are relatively puzzleless. However, The Gift of What You Notice More takes a more dream-like puzzle game approach: it has light adventure game puzzles that border on the surreal. These memories are to be puzzled out, grasped, shaken to their fuller meaning by the player character. They are, in other words, allegories that only make sense to this character.

I think this is the main reason why this game has to be hypertext. In parser games, you have a direct connection to the player character because you're typing their actions. Clicking on links feels more detached. The player character in Twine games always feels more autonomous than their parser counterparts. Some decisions we as players make in the game feel life-changing, but we won't see their results. Their consequences are secrets only known to the player character.

As a result, the title was more of a spiritual journey for the player character than the player, despite it being written in second-person. It feels like I've just played through someone's dream-diary except it's lightly dressed up as an adventure game. This is likely why I couldn't connect with the player character, but at the same time, it felt good to help them achieve their goals. The game itself is therapeutic for the character and their resolution to change things resonates with me.

That said, I don't think the puzzle design is perfect. My issues boil down to two things:

(Spoiler - click to show)1) You have to keep going back and forth between the poets and the photos in order to advance the game state, which can be quite cumbersome.

2) I came into the game assuming all the puzzles in each memory are internally solvable, but some puzzles require items that are only acquirable in a future game state. It's frustrating to advance a puzzle so far only to be confused why I haven't found the next step. In the end, I ended up following the walkthrough, which is a shame because I was enjoying the strange puzzles.

But overall, I like The Gift of What You Notice More because it's simply an uplifting game that inspires and soothes. While I've seen the subject matter played out before in different contexts, its use of hyperlinks and allegorical constructions of memory evokes the relatable tensions of uncertainty, powerlessness, and the necessity to change. I came out of the game feeling like I had just helped someone untangle their feelings, and that's not an experience I get to have in games every day.