Ratings and Reviews by Stian

Congee is low on interactivity, but it does tell a cute story about homesickness, friendship and family. Interspersed with the text are music and occasionally some nicely drawn pictures. A problem for me, playing it on a poor internet connection, was the size of the images, some up to a megabyte. I’m sure they could be reduced to a tenth of the size without sacrificing much detail.

Literally an idol survival game, giving you options to sabotage and hurt your competitors, this choice IF is based on an uncomfortable premise, though probably one that unfortunately mimics some of the reality of that environment. Also unfortunately, the game seems to be broken, as I was unable to progress beyond a certain point, even after a second play with completely different choices. The layout also leaves something to be desired, with sidebar text overlapping the main text in my browser.

A short choice IF equally remixing and paying homage to classic literary works on the theme of pirates, Captain Graybeard’s Plunder speaks to the value of literature as escapism, in the best possible sense. There is no particular story here, though there is a certain beauty to the remixing that your choices determines. A nice touch are the various fonts used to represent the different authors the game refers to.

Phantom is an investigation into the myth and the various portrayals of Erik, the Phantom of the Opera. As a choice IF, it reconstructs the story – albeit in a very abridged form – based on which aspects of the different adaptations you would like to see, including an option for further modernisation. Although this rendition is too short to be considered a thorough discussion of the character, it is nicely done, with the music being an extra nice touch. Only slightly bothersome was a strip of white background below the text on most pages, which does not seem intentional and should be changed to black.

Ghostfinder: Shift is a truly professional piece of IF. Set in a consistently well imagined and thought-out world of shifters and ghostfinders, the story features the player as an occult investigator trying to solve a string of horrific murders.

As with the world building, the writing is on a professional level all the way through, and meticulously detailed. With access to case files and your order’s private database, a choice IF interface allows you to draw connections and approach the identity of the killer. As such, the choice mechanisms here function as a way to solve the puzzle, rather than navigating a branching story.

Every aspect of Ghostfinder: Shift is impressive, but even though the puzzle aspect was well done, its writing is where it truly shines. However, as with every genre work, it does cater to a niche audience. I can easily picture a Ghostfinder series of novels in the adult urban fantasy section at my favourite book store.

Primarily poetic, Sana is a choice IF brimming with links, making for intentionally confusing navigation. The stories seem old, from a different time, a different culture, the metaphors obscure. I did not see much variations in two different playthroughs, but maybe it is enough.

This is a cute little love story, featuring some weird sci-fi elements that remain unexplained in the background. It is not really interactive at all, though at one point the choice IF medium is utilised in an elegant way.

SOUND is a particularly experimental choice IF that I’m not entirely sure whether I finished or not. If it were not for the blurb, I would have thought I encountered a serious bug of sorts, but no, what happened seems intentional. There are a few instances where you have more than one option to choose from; I played it twice to discover that it did not really matter what choice you make – the result is more or less the same. I’m afraid I understood very little of this IF, but perhaps people who are more experimentally inclined than I will get something profound out of it.

A simple and charming choice puzzler, The Eidolon’s Escape took me about 10 minutes to play through. As long as you go for the reasonable choices, escaping is quick and simple, though if you want to experiment and see all branches it might take as much time as the listed one hour. The story itself is the most fun aspect of this game, told from the perspective of an alien spirit who utters compliments such as “…you aesthetically pleasing specimen, you.”

A minimalist but effectively scary horror choice IF, The Shadow in the Snow features good writing and a moody soundtrack (albeit with slightly cheesy synthesizer sounds). Even after ten playthroughs I still wasn’t able to survive though, despite following what was apparently clued to be the right path.