Ratings and Reviews by Stian

An extremely short action thriller choice game, Move On demands you figure out its rather neat trick if you want to survive. The little writing there is is good. Apart from that, it doesn’t offer much.

Renowned comic book author Alan Moore has written a book called "Voice of the Fire" that similarly to this game depicts evolution from a subjective perspective, starting out with a primitive language that develops through the narrative. The Moore book, however, is based on a more common hypothesis of evolution and a much heavier read. Also, it does not have minigames.

The subtle humour here is brilliant, starting with the tagline “where the imagination stretches as far as limitations can reach”. I also appreciated the strangeness of the vastly diverse experiences I was subjected to, but overall found it had too many choices and too much repetition.

This was rather nice actually, though not, as one could have expected, a good way to learn a new language. Rather, it’s a discussion on cultural identity and the value of the mother tongue among second generation immigrants. It’s simple and does not go particularly deep, but still quite effective.

Algorithmically generated based on the author’s previous prose, this work does occasionally resemble poetry. While I do consider generating coherent text an interesting technical challenge, I’m rarely able to find meaning in its output, and this was no exception.

This “game” has been thoroughly dissected on the intfiction.org forum, and there is not much I can add in terms of content information. I did manage to play it early on, before having read the dissection. At that point I just though it was really boring. Now I understand that it’s postmodernist art.

In What the Bus?, “nightmare” is not a metaphor. A playthrough is essentially a typical bad dream that someone who does rely on public transportation in their daily life might have. At least here, the nightmare is quickly over, and mostly free from monsters.

In #VanLife, your task is to enjoy life as much as possible while at the same time being able to do so sustainably. There is not much of a story here, simply a series of choices surrounding spending or saving electricity. Sometimes you are quizzed on Watt usage, and sometimes you pick an inspirational quote of the day. The best thing about it was reading the detailed player statistics at the end.

A truly well written Lovecraft fan fiction, which would fit right into any such anthology I have read. In terms of choices, there does not seem to be many branching narratives that do not end with a quick death; rather, choices are usually either correct or deadly.

This game takes on the classic style fantasy genre head on, albeit with a more adult focus. The writing is remarkably solid, which perhaps is not surprising, seeing as Return to Castle Coris is episode eight of a series. Here, the action takes place underground, further and further into the unknown. It actually reminded me a lot of certain games taking place underground that I played in the past, especially Ultima Underwold and Legend of Grimrock. Such were the feelings evoked by the writing. Unfortunately, however, I found this game incredibly hard; not only are the verbs many and (to me) obscure, but it seems you also have to imagine nouns that are not described, and perform rather random actions that work in specific places while giving no informative response in others. Perhaps it’s a learning curve, going through the episodes chronologically. At least I managed to die spectacularly a few times.