Reviews by Stian

Divis Mortis is an excellent first foray into interactive fiction, with strong writing and good puzzles.

As a zombie survival game, it draws heavily on common tropes, making the player feel comfortably at home in terms of understanding and reacting to the situation. Descriptions are properly gruesome, with human limbs and putrid flesh strewn about, but always with a certain distance; the PC finds it as repulsive as you do. The particular scenario here is well imagined and cleverly told, providing an intense sense of danger, further heightened with several urgent matters for the player's attention.

According to another reviewer, there is apparently one way of getting locked out of victory without realising it, if you do things in the wrong order. If this is the case, it was probably an oversight by the author, and nothing that I experienced myself. Apart from that, however, I would place this game as Polite on the forgiveness scale; there are many ways of dying, but a simple UNDO always let me correct my mistake and carry on. Personally, I found all the puzzles I encountered well clued, perfectly reasonable, and very much in the spirit of the situation, without being overly simple.

A bit too easy for experienced IF players looking for a challenge, but that was somewhat expected. 77 Verbs is a thoroughly implemented tutorial game, familiarising the player with the different commands commonly used in parser IF. The story is great fun and features references to a wide range of classic works of IF, making it enjoyable even for the seasoned player.

I have played IF before that had three games in one. This is the first time I have encountered one game in three. These games tell three sides of the same story and are in fact impossible to finish without each other. While I see that it could be confusing for someone who stumbles upon just one of them, I had fortunately already noted their connectedness and expected some degree of intertextuality, though perhaps not at such a level.

As for the game(s) [it|them]sel[f|ves] (referred to in singular from here on), I quite enjoyed it! The Knot features a very curious mix of cultural references, including, but not limited to: Nazis, spaceships, magic, alchemy, youtubers, fairy tales, Jabberwocky-type Nonsensish, and several religions, both existing and imagined. For some reason, for me, this mashup works rather well, probably because it actually feels linguistically grounded. The puzzles in The Knot are easy, especially since they are overly clued, which is done in a very funny way, and the whole thing should take no more than half an hour to play.

I did not experience this as a horror IF at all, but rather as a sad and personal story, a story that is depressingly relevant for many of us during the current pandemic. It is really well written, very emotional, and feels very real. The author provides the choice between playing a truncated or an extended version of the novella. I started out with the extended version but found it excruciatingly frustrating and changed to the truncated version after some minutes. I’m glad I tried the extended version first though; the frustration is indeed intended, and it does drive an important point across. While not exactly interactive in terms of choices, Better than Alone does use the medium of choice IF in an unexpected and elegant way.

Excellently written and very peculiar, Toadstools takes you on a mythical-scientific trip through the forest. A good amount of thoughtful world-building seems to lie behind it, part satirical and part wondrous, providing enjoyment, engagement and immersion. As a choice IF, it certainly feels like a puzzle, like you could get rich, crazy or die of hunger, depending on your choices. Still, I was not able to ascertain if this actually is the case, nor whether a good ending exists, during my play. As a horror game, it’s not particularly scary, at least not in a brutal way, though I guess one would have to be of some age to enjoy it.

Despite some lack of polish, this is actually a pretty good horror story. I’m mostly impressed by its narrative arc, which is well grounded in classic storytelling while also offering a few well placed extensions in just the right places. On the other hand, there is no interesting interactivity here; you get to choose a few traits for the protagonist, which I don’t think has any bearing on the story, and a few details that appears to be completely arbitrary. I think A Very Dangerous Criminal easily could be a great novella, but a lot of work would be needed to turn it into a good piece of IF.

A choice IF set at a Halloween party, this one has only minimal amounts of dialogue. Here you are tasked with a puzzle of sorts, which involves going back and forth a bit. I’m not entirely sure what to take from this story, but the writing was pretty decent, and the cover art was nice.

Playing this game was a truly horrifying experience. I’m afraid I can’t say more; the memories are too painful…

Not particularly scary, but hilariously funny, The Curse of the Scarab is an optimisation parser IF inspired by Captain Verdeterre’s Plunder and Sugarlawn. Here, you are attempting to loot an Egyptian tomb, which is not only filled with treasures but also deadly traps and flesh eating creatures. I have never used UNDO so many times in an adventure, and never had so much fun doing it. The Egyptian lore and hieroglyphs present in The Curse of the Scarab may be meaningless or fake, I don’t know, but they are perfectly convincing and really contributes to the immersion. I also don’t know what authoring system Fagerburg has used for this game; while there was no download link, the online interface was really lovely, with tasteful fonts and adorned by subtle decorations. All in all an excellent game!

It’s hard not to love Veeder’s Balderstone series of parser IF – perfectly framed horror anthologies where each tale has its own style, both literary and in terms of play. This latest instalment may be the most impressive yet, if only for the second of the evening’s tales, one which gives a whole new meaning to the term interactive fiction. Although I’m not sure I can vouch for the literary quality of that particular story, it was certainly a delightful experience. The other several other tales here are as elegantly written as I have come to expect from Veeder, although I do sense a slight shift to a more humoristic approach than the previous tales offered. Puzzlewise, all the stories here are very straightforward and you’ll hardly be stuck for more than a minute, leaving you to enjoy the imaginative descriptions from Veeder’s dark side.

Capturing some of the same eeriness as Alien (the film), The Imposter is a very short story set in a spaceship. It’s hardly interactive though; the only choices you make is the order in which you visit the different locations. The little text there is is well written; the only issue is that it did not always feel coherent with the spectacularly creepy ending.

Not really interactive, Rat Chasm features a single link that takes you to a news article on which the story is based. Apart from that, it simply consists of scrollable text. The story behind it is gruesome enough. Here, it has received a subjective treatment of the accounts, and a truly hellish one at that. The ending was a bit abrupt though, with a message that may be a bug of sorts. Perhaps there should be more to it.

I have no idea what is going on here.

It really doesn’t seem to be randomly generated.

The sentences are cool and coherent.

It’s very, very short.

I played it ten times in a few minutes.

But I have no idea what is going on here.

This is a choice IF with lots of endings and achievements, presumably a mechanism designed to have you replay again and again, to discover all there is. I’m afraid it did not grip me enough to motivate more than one play. The foremost reason for this, I guess, is the stereotypical American party setting that the game takes place in. The choices are to a large part dialogue options that lets you choose between fake sincerity and disinterested excuses to shift your focus elsewhere, and there is a discomfort number that represents your feeling of awkwardness. Suffice to say I have never attended an American party, and the situation described in Social Lycanthropy Disorder is so far from my reality that it was impossible to feel any involvement with the story. The writing is decent enough, however, and although it was low on spookiness, it does fit the Halloween theme well.

The most realistic story I have encountered in Ectocomp, Duck Diary is all the more scary for it. Dealing with anxiety and trauma, the protagonist finds comfort in a rubber duck that keeps them company through baths and through dreams. As a choice IF, it does not appear to be properly branching. Rather, the choices affect only the next screen. As such, you get one narrative, but with some variations in the details. The writing is of course the essence here, and it’s positively superb, mixing the realistic melancholy with touches of comforting humour provided by your rubbery friend, and a gradually unveiling horror that builds up as the story unfolds.

Really more funny than scary, this choice IF parodies the famous chess scene in The Seventh Seal. Death Plays Battleship is very short, so you can easily try all paths in a matter of minutes. As far as parodies go, this is a rather good one; Death is recognisable as based on the character in the classic film, though this one is more fun to hang out with.

A very short Choicescript game, Phantasmagoria provides a single puzzle of escape, with several endings available. As a puzzle, however, it is fairly easy; it took me two playthroughs in five minutes to emerge victorious. The writing seems to be more essential here, but though it was horrific enough, I found it a bit too chaotic to properly enter the story. It has bits of Lovecraft, touches of Shakespeare, and references to both christian and pagan occultism, but all this was disjointed and lacked a certain coherence. It certainly has its scary elements, but it would have been more terrifying with a more solid foundation that could have suspended my disbelief.

A meticulously crafted parser IF, Ritus Sacti starts off innocently enough with a school task of translating a Latin passage into English. This is as far as puzzles go in this game, and for me, someone who is interested in languages and knows next to nothing about Latin, it was actually a fun and interesting exercise. I have been wondering, as a matter of fact, whether Latin is the most evil sounding language to modern ears. The author may agree. Here, Latin is used to great effect and builds up the horror slowly, slowly. The writing is excellent throughout and may even offer up a surprise or two.

In Last Day, the only progression you will achieve is counting down to the apocalypse. With a ambitiously large map for a game made in less than four hours, it is not surprising that there is little polish, and no puzzles involved. What this IF offers you is a bit of time to explore your neighbourhood and decide how to die. In the end I managed to experience four different endings, one of which the author seems to regard as optimal.

Sumbitted to the La petite mort category in Ectocomp 2020, Fracture is a very short and slightly experimental parser IF that puts you in a precarious position and allows only a single command to be used. The whole IF is actually based around this limitation, and it makes very good use of it. Thematically centred on suffering and decay, the story is splendidly horrid, and the writing is excellent.

Made in less than four hours, A Pilgrim provides an intriguing glimpse into a different world. As a lonely wandering pilgrim in an area reminiscent of a mythical South America, the protagonist allows you to experience a day (well, a night really) in their sandals, sharing their perspective and their dreams. There is no spooky twist or clever puzzles here, but rather strong and imaginative imagery that is strange yet familiar, lending an eerie sense of the Unheimlich.

The Long Nap is written in Dialog, and the first Å-machine game I have played locally. It’s short, clever, appropriately spooky, and solidly implemented for a La petite mort game. The playthrough took about five minutes, and I was smiling with enjoyment all of the time.

High Jinnks is a funny and well written story about a Jinn trying to get home. As a choice IF, it is more or less completely linear, the choices mainly being between funny responses.

Due to its detailed historical portrayal, A Catalan Summer gives the impression of being based on the story of a real family, describing not only the conflicts between love and family duties, but also the question of Catalan independence and the emerging anarchist movement. Whether or not the Vidal family in the story was real or imagined, the issues are approached with care and understanding. The interactivity here is similarly impressive, probably more so than in any other choice IF I have played. Part of this is the constant change of protagonist, which admittedly was slightly confusing, but lets you shape the paths of several family members, and in turn the family’s place in history. Also a bit confusing was the inclusion of parser-style navigation, with links to go east, north and so on. For a choice IF like this, it would have been more practical with simply a list of the possible destinations. Still, it provides an interesting read, no matter your choices.

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.

This choice IF seems to be unfinished. It has clearly been translated, as there still are words in Spanish throughout the game, and it’s rather riddled with typos. From what I could gather, the battles with demons are the central element here, but those felt like playing Amazing Quest again: it doesn’t really matter what you choose because it’s all random. Perhaps it’s actually not the case here, but I was unable to find any logic in them. Designwise, At Night focusses a lot on using sounds for navigating in the darkness. This is a neat feature, but I’m afraid it didn’t help me much with the demons either. According to the author, it is not random, but I was still unable to make sense of it.

The purpose of this short choice IF seems to be simple moral education. Following anything other than the most virtuous path will quickly end the game and encourage you to try again. Although I’m not strictly opposed to this – it was, after all, a groundbreaking element of Ultima IV in its day – it feels here too simplistic, which undermines its educational value. There is also some polish lacking in Equal-librium: for one, the blurb contains several typos, and at some point I even got an error message

The story in this choice IF is mostly linear, with only minor details determining which of the endings you eventually receive. As such, it’s not terribly exciting in terms of interactivity. On the other hand, it is really well written; the main character and the world described are both quite unique and soundly developed. The abilities and operations of the protagonist are particularly interesting and could actually be an excellent starting point for developing great and fun puzzles. I would certainly love to play a five hour parser game based on Doppeljobs.

Quite humorous and really well polished, Tavern Crawler is a choice based role playing story that works remarkably well. The author has managed to craft a work that is equally parts story and game, and where the RPG elements play to the strengths of choice IF and vice versa. The storylines are intricately and reasonably structured, and your early character choices allow for different methods of overcoming your obstacles. Especially good were the variety of choices. There is never really any choice that feels wrong or right in terms of story progression, and everything brings you forward, at least somewhere. To experience a fun story with Tavern Crawler, you can’t go wrong whatever you do.

Fumbling rather randomly around in the dark, you will experience a lot of repetition in The Cave, but not much in the way of self-discovery. Your goal is to get out, and underway you get some spells, abilities, and improved stats. I’m not sure how these affect your chances, but they probably somehow do. I’m also not sure how I managed to get out of the cave in the end, but somehow I did.

The Pinecone is a very quick piece of IF with a few branches, all of which are related to goatlore. It does not seem to carry any deeper meaning, but is somewhat imaginative and slightly entertaining.

Essentially an expression of activism, Stand Up / Stay Silent is a sci-fi parable for Black Lives Matter. While I certainly agree with the message, I did not find it notably interesting or effective as IF. The parallel of the story and the choices was too obvious to offer any deeper meaning.

I actually had to consult the other reviews before writing this to see if I had missed out on anything substantial. I turns out I probably had not. In essence, it’s a cutely made RPG parody that you may or may not understand is a parody. I did not get it, but I did find some of the dialogue funny.

This story, for it is a story much more than a game, utilises choice in a way I have not seen before in IF, allowing the reader to reflect on real life agency in difficult situations. I found this surprising and remarkably well done, but also emotionally challenging.

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.

This is a classic style fantasy adventure, seemingly written for young children, but much too hard for me. I picture the boy from Time Bandits as the protagonist, taken from reality and inserted into a fictitious world filled with magic and fraught with danger, but nothing a young boy can't handle.

The reason I did not get very far in two hours is mainly down to the verbs. Perhaps Adrift has a different set of standard verbs than Inform and Tads; a lot of the ones I'm accustomed to were not recognised, and when I finally gave up and had a look at the walkthrough, the solutions surprised me. I was reminded of the challenges Jason Dyer writes about when playing very old games. In these games, you need to forget any expectation you have about which verbs will work and which will not. In a sense, Inform games have made me very comfortable with a certain way of interacting with parsers, and I'm not really equipped with the lateral mindset for something completely different.

As far as I came, I found the story to be quite okay. It's very stereotypical, but also cute in a way. The moments in which it shines are whenever it is obvious that you are a little boy, and a rather obedient one at that. A feature I enjoyed -- which sometimes was necessary, but only occasionally implemented -- was being able to examine elements over a distance. In the end I think I might have enjoyed it more if I had consulted the walkthrough earlier and gotten a bit further, though that would also have been counter to my instincts.

I am fairly familiar with Flatland, but only had a brief glance at Fallen London prior to this game. Flattened London is a truly delightful mash-up of the two. Featuring a consistent, weird, and lovingly created world that shines of respect for its inspirational material, it offers some of the most intriguing exploration. In this world, most everything is strange, but naturally so. It also remains mostly unexplained, but also naturally so.

Both the writing and the puzzles are impeccable, and fit right in, both in the narrative and in the world. Descriptions are just as detailed as they should be, and almost everything has been implemented thoughtfully. Although puzzles are slightly on the easy side, they are fun, and there are enough of them to delight and amuse; most of them can be worked on in parallel. It also seemed pretty clear that there are several ways to solve several of the puzzles, and there are several possible endings. In the end, I managed to reach a particularly enjoyable one in just over two hours. All through this I only stumbled on a few minor issues with the implementation, which is greatly impressive for a game of this size.

In Captivity, you start off as the fair maiden locked in the tower, but in contrast to most fairy tales, the boys trying to rescue you are completely useless. You need to make your own escape. To do so takes you (or at least me) around two hours, most of which are spent searching up and down the castle for various hidden objects. Some of these objects are only there after performing another action first, which means you may need to search everywhere twice or thrice. The problem with such puzzles is that they are not gratifying; what you get from them is merely the relief that you finally can proceed. To be fair, these are not the only puzzles in the game, though the rest are fairly obvious.

As far as fairy tales go, Captivity carefully balances traditional storytelling with a modern perspective, and does this pretty well. There are only sporadic touches of humour here, which makes it all the more effective, though there are not really any astoundingly funny moments either. Its strongest aspect is probably the various colourful characters you can talk to, who are all decently implemented.

The castle is relatively big, so it is no surprise that a lot of rooms are lacking relevant scenery, such as windows, or that things described are not implemented as objects. This, along with a few bugs here and there, do unfortunately hinder the immersion that I find is necessary to enjoy a fairy tale.

BYOD is a very short parser game, with an estimated playthrough of about 10 minutes, but it packs a lot of coolness into that time. Coming complete with an .nfo and an e-zine, this game puts you in the shoes of a humble hacker and lets you save the day. The feelies are fantastic, the hacking is elegant, and the implementation is flawless. Great stuff!

Another piece of puzzleless parser IF, though I’m not sure I understood this one. Then again, perhaps I’m not supposed to. What seems to be wayward in The Wayward Story is the story itself. Alternating between mystical, adventurous places and familiar everyday situations, it certainly lives up to its billing as “surreal / slice of life”. The narrative seems to be the essential thing here, and the writing is pretty good, with a rather unique voice and embroidered descriptions of that which seemingly is deemed important. I’m afraid the story didn’t provide we with much though. However, playing through it took me only 20 minutes, while the estimated playtime is 90 minutes, which means I might just have missed out on large parts of it. On the other hand, I never felt that I left anything significant unexplored. If anyone should tell me that there is much more to it, I may give it another chance, otherwise I’m satisfied, even if not entirely convinced.

Having just finished Ferryman’s Gate, I’m suddenly worried that my use of commas in previous reviews are not entirely up to standards. I will, however, resist the temptation to spend the night going through them, and instead do my best to make sure at least this review is as well punctuated as I can manage.

Several of the elements in this game are fairly stereotypical: an inherited mansion, secret passageways, and a sacred task that only you can take on. Still, as an educational game, Ferryman’s Gate makes good use of them, allowing you to focus on the important things, such as comma rules.

Although somewhat under-implemented, I did enjoy it, and learned something underway, which probably means that its mission is accomplished.

Written entirely in javascript by the author, Happyland is a showcase for a custom parser engine initially inspired by both Infocom games and choose-your-own-adventure books. It has been developed beyond that, however, and sports functionality almost on par with games written in Inform or TADS. Lacking some fairly standard verbs, such as pull and move, your interaction with Happyland is confined to walking, talking, taking and examining, though it also features a neat system for taking and comparing fingerprints.

Considering the importance of asking questions in an investigation like this, character responses are very brief and to the point, which makes for simpler deduction but takes away some of the immersion; you never get much of a deep understanding of the characters. The same goes for descriptions of rooms and objects. As a puzzle, it is quite simple and straightforward; visiting all the locations and talking to all the characters makes it obvious who the murderer is. Nothing is well hidden either, and there are no red herrings to speak of. In the end it took me less than an hour to complete. It was not particularly challenging, but rather enjoyable nonetheless.

A lot of science fiction literature makes use of concepts that cannot be appropriately described in the vocabulary of the present, and demands an inductive approach; just go along with it, and it will become more or less clear as the story progresses. Accelerate is bordering on linguistic overload in this sense. Add to that a horde of strange metaphors and you have an “enormous piece of extravagantly confusing art”, to use a quote embedded in the work itself.

While it was occasionally hard to understand the protagonist or the context in a given situation, the story is actually relatively clear: you become indoctrinated into a cult of religious terrorists and attempt to bring forth some kind of revolution. In this, you have no agency. Perhaps you have no choice.

Regarding it as a gesamtkunstwerk, my feelings are varied. Its strongest point is definitely the writing; Accelerate reads like a modern sci-fi classic, only more poetic, though I would have had an easier time accepting it if I had sensed more coherence between the different contexts. As it is, I often felt I found myself in a new situation, not understanding how I got there, which also compromised the connection between the player and the protagonist. The visual presentation was the most lacking element of Accelerate. With a plain interface and simple animations, it brought thoughts of the 1990’s, rather than of the future. The music, on the other hand, was nice and appropriate; most of it I would describe as cyberpunk muzak, although at times it became uncomfortably brutal.

It’s hard to say much about A Rope of Chalk without revealing any spoilers, but it certainly is a masterful implementation of exemplary interactive storytelling. I would hardly call it a game; rather, it is parser fiction proper – a story that would not have been as good if told through any other medium. Framed as a true story edited together by the author from individual statements, it recounts an event that is rather trivial from the outside but had a drastic effect on the characters involved. Throughout the narrative, the interaction lets you experience this event from the perspective of several of these characters, in various states of consciousness. Although essentially puzzleless, navigation eventually becomes a hassle, though in a particularly interesting way. I would not necessarily say that I loved it, but I am mightily impressed.

A particularly well implemented parser game, Entangled is primarily a social realist sci-fi story. The emphasis is on getting to know and understand a typical small town and how it has changed through the years rather than about actually solving puzzles. Actually, in this case there is only a single puzzle: how to get back to your own time. I got the impression that there may be more than one way to achieve this, but it doesn’t seem to matter much. My solution took me to the end in about half an hour.

Exploration is key to understanding the game, but although I felt that I did it quite thoroughly, my final score was only half of the maximum number of points. This probably means I missed out on quite a few details. Regardless, as a story narrated through a parser interface, I regard Entangled as largely successful. Mainly through talking with other characters, who all have a rich set of responses to all sorts of questions, you get a good glimpse of the hopes, dreams and situations of the town’s inhabitants. There were a few things I did not understand, in particular at the very end, but I still quite enjoyed the story.

In any case, the implementation of this game is certainly minimalist. With extremely sparse descriptions and mostly empty rooms, Elsegar I is part frustration and part charm. The puzzles are very straightforward in themselves, though they are made slightly harder through a strict parser constantly having you guess both verbs and nouns. At one point, you even have to repeat an action before it has an effect; this was for me the most difficult point in the game and made me consult the walkthrough. No estimated play time is mentioned; it took me around 25 minutes to finish, albeit with less than a full score.

The writing has quite a few typos, so even if the minimalist approach is an artistic choice, a lot of polish is still needed. As for the story, who knows? The player starts in a peculiar situation, but no answers are given throughout the game. I guess they will come in Elsegar II.

This game contains many elements I had not expected. Suffice to say it makes the story peculiar and interesting. It is nicely imaginative and features a surprising mechanic as well. Puzzlewise, it felt a bit strange, like an ocean of red herrings. The author seems to have created takeable objects for almost every conceivable thing that reasonably could exist in the house, including a full wardrobe and tons of kitchen utensils. After a few turns of “take all” my inventory list felt demotivatingly long.

One major problem with Turbo Chest Hair Massacre (the version marked 8 Oct) is that a certain item completely takes over the “it” pronoun, something I obviously kept forgetting about every two minutes. I encountered a few other bugs too, though nothing big. Overall, the game is quite well implemented, and the story is good, though I think the playing would actually be more enjoyable with slightly fewer pairs of socks in the inventory.

When given the choice, I strongly prefer to play IF in a local interpreter rather than a web browser. It’s faster, uses less memory, and I can adjust the fonts to my liking. In the case of Shadow Operative, the author was quite insistent that I play the web version. So I tried it, and I’m glad I did.

Visually, the interface of the web version is really nice. The colours and fonts are somewhat similar to the Alien Night theme at intfiction.org, which, combined with the good looking cover art in the top right corner, sets the mood nicely. For further mood enhancement, there is also music, though it was impractical for me to listen to it while playing. The window is divided into three columns: the leftmost lists accepted verbs and available exits, the right column shows the inventory beneath the cover art, and in the middle we find the command window which works exactly as I’m used to from Lectrote.

Of particular note is that relevant nouns in the output are links. This makes it possible to play the game using only the mouse; I tried it a bit, but for me, typing was faster. The downside to this is that playing it in an interpreter would have been quite a frustrating experience, as most nouns are not links, and therefore not implemented at all. I’m not entirely sure this is the case; I tried a few non-link nouns and they were not recognised. Another consequence of this is that the play experience becomes extremely streamlined, the exploration limited, and the puzzles really easy with such a small noun space. As such, the challenge was next to none and I was able to finish it in less than an hour.

Still, the writing is decent enough to make Shadow Operative engaging for that time. The cyberpunk elements are stereotypical – including VR cyberspace, biohacking, and touches of Japanese culture – as is your eventual mission, but in a rather cute, nostalgic way. There is also a brilliant twist in the story that took me by surprise.

Linus Åkesson, the author of this game, is the creator of the Dialog authoring system and his three games seem to have been made in tandem with its development. Being fundamentally different in terms of both premise, story and interaction, they each play to different strengths of Dialog. This time, the author presents us with a real puzzlefest, and it is as delightful as they come.

Taking on the role as a six year old girl you start the game tidying up your toys, but it soon turns into a clever, whimsical and imaginative journey through your house in order to make everything ready for dinner. Storywise, The Impossible Bottle certainly alludes to Alice’s adventures in wonderland; it is equally surrealistic (though admittedly far less trippy). And like the books about Alice, Åkesson’s story also contains hidden layers of depth that are gradually uncovered during play. Despite a few instances of parser strangeness, the implementation is mostly brilliant, and the writing, though sparse, is perfectly suited to the protagonist and her world.

It took me just over two hours to finish The Impossible Bottle, and I loved every minute of it!

Puzzleless and for the most part smoothly implemented, Academic Pursuits uses the parser format to tell a story in a clever way. While not essentially humoristic, the gradual discovery of new information – conveyed by the thoughts and feelings of the protagonist in the process of unpacking – has twists and turns that made me smile. It’s all well written and I really appreciated this way of storytelling.

This is a game where I found myself resorting to hints. Not because the puzzles are particularly difficult, but because the parser was frustrating, to the point where it was not fun any more, and I just wanted to finish it. In addition to guess-the-verb-issues on every corner, most of the progress is being done with “ask/tell person about something”, which in the end resulting in me adopting a brute-force approach, asking and telling everyone about everything in turn. On top of that, I also ran into several cases of runtime errors – nothing game breaking, but certainly adding to the frustration.

I would like to point out, however, that I loved the premise, the characters, and the writing of Deelzebub, and I sincerely wish I had played a more polished version of it.

Short, funny and easy, Vampire Ltd. offers 15 minutes of delightful IF escapism, to a world where vampires suck. The writing is lovely; though not particularly unique it’s certainly a good foray into the humoristic style that characterises a lot of popular IF. Although the puzzles are straighforward, they are mostly well implemented, fun and fits the story well. The lack of other entries on IDFB indicates that this may be the author’s first IF, and if so it’s certainly a solid first effort.

A rather cute fan- and fantasy fiction featuring Isaac Newton as its protagonist, Standing on the Shoulders of Giants is a short story in parser format rather than a game. As the playing time was less than 10 minutes, the experience never achieved a deep level of immersion or engagement, but the writing was solid enough to carry it through. The story itself was friendly and somewhat imaginative, but lacked the depth and/or length to make it properly interesting. While parser commands are used to progress, puzzles are just about absent, and exploring is explicitly discouraged in room descriptions.

A smart – and particularly well written – puzzler that needs quite a bit of polish on the implementation in order to be truly enjoyable. Described nouns can not be seen, worthy synonyms are not understood and objections are being made to using objects in objectively reasonable ways.

As Karella is an experienced author, it came as no surprise that the narration is solid and professional, with a unique language suited to the strong characters and humoristic premise. The puzzles were properly reasonable, apart from being very strict in terms of how to properly formulate the required actions.

A puzzle-heavy game that in its current state is unfortunately severely under-implemented. Around half of mentioned nouns could not be referred to, and many actions gave peculiar unintended responses. With polish, however, Seasonal Apocalypse Disorder could turn in to a fine piece of IF. The world building is particularly interesting, inspired by several fantasy tropes but adhering to none. The strangeness here reminds me a bit of the Myst series; it is not similar, but rather similarly strange. Probably due to the particular ending I managed to reach after just under two hours of play, some of the world remained unexplored and some questions remained unanswered.

The puzzles are generally good, though hampered by some confusion resulting from the lacking implementation. As expected from reading the description, you travel through time in order to affect the future through your actions. This, the authors have managed to construct quite well. Neither of the puzzles I solved were anywhere near far fetched, but it still felt like a good challenge.

If the game gets a proper update, I might be tempted to play it again and try to reach a different ending.

A lovely homage to certain classic works of IF, Desolation certainly lives up to its title, putting the player in a desperate situation with only one way forward. The pacing is excellent, feeding the feeling of running away from danger in desolate surroundings, emphasised by suitable bursts of real-time delays in the narration.

The puzzles are not too complicated, especially for those who have played the games Desolation pays tribute to, but delightful to tackle nonetheless. My only real criticism is of the ending, which came very suddenly and felt premature, like the ambitions had been cut short by a deadline. I’m hoping for a continuation.

An especially funny historical comedy, despite the notable absence of pigs. The writing is mostly superb throughout and manages to make the village idiot protagonist genuinely likeable.

The puzzles were suitably clever, with some rather unique ones; it took me quite some time feeling lost in the middle of the game until I figured out that I needed to be creative with the verbs. In the end I finished the game in about 90 minutes and learned several new words on the way.

Having, as one should, duly enjoyed ‘Alias’ The Magpie, I was very excited to see this sequel turn up. To my further enjoyment, it turns out this sequel is almost just as good! Not that there is anything particularly wrong with it; I just wish it was longer and slightly more challenging, matching the length and difficulty of the original. Completing The Magpie Takes the Train took me 45 minutes.

Perhaps due to having played more IF than (most?) other humans, Rushton has managed to perfectly adopt the style of ‘Alias’ for this game. The language, the humor and the puzzles could all as easily have emerged from J. J. Guest, and are just as delightful.

Despite it never mentioning Lovecraft, the feeling I got from playing Ascension of Limbs is very much Lovecraftian, more so than from many works that are outright fan fiction. Some of the paths the game allows you to choose are pretty gruesome, though always in the service of a higher… something. Other paths still imply this something, although more peripheral.

To accommodate the approach of an antique store proprietor simulation, the list of verbs have been strictly limited as have the possible nouns you can refer to. Considering the mechanics of the simulation this is certainly reasonable, although it feels visually a bit messy to constantly have the full lists repeated after each command. A two-column format would have been an improvement. Other than that, the parser system has been very well adapted to this type of game. You easily get the hang of it, while doing it well is a certain challenge.

Playing Ascension of Limbs provides a curious feeling actually. The very visible game mechanics and the objective voice of the narrator explaining how your store is doing are coupled with horror elements that get more and more central to the game as you progress. You can serve the dark forces, but the level of abstraction lets you get away with it, emotionally; it’s an emotionally peculiar game.

I did two playthroughs with two different endings in about one hour, though I only managed a fraction of the achievements either time.

For being the first game of the author, The Eleusinian Miseries is remarkably well done. The implementation is more or less as flawless as they come (at least in the face of a deadline), and I found nothing here to remark on.

Being first and foremost a historical-farcical puzzle game, it seems to be heavily inspired by the excellent Lost Pig and The Wizard Sniffer (this one also features a pig!) and provides them with good company. The approach to humor is similar, although here it feels at times a bit too verbose. Most of the 90 minutes I spent playing The Eleusinian Miseries were spent reading, rather than thinking how to solve puzzles. While the puzzles do a good job of retaining the humoristic style, they are not particularly challenging.

The strongest aspect of Jay Schilling’s Edge of Chaos is the storytelling, narrating a crazy and imaginative story with a language very much suited to it. To be frank, neither were perfectly up my alley, but it is of consistent and solid quality.

The puzzles are not that interesting, however. The game is completely linear and the solution to the obstacles are for the most part so obvious that they feel more like small nuisances. There are a few exceptions to this – some clever constructions, but also one that I found far fetched and impossible to guess without reading through all the hints for it. The hint system was very thoughtfully implemented though, with clues in order of specificity. My final playtime was 80 minutes.

A nice bonus were the images: lovely drawings of several characters that show up the first time you look at them.

Alone gives you the role of the protagonist in a zombie apocalypse, and does it well. For the most part, the immersion is quite successful. It's a no-nonsense horror game -- not particularly brutal, but the mood is pleasantly scary. The writing is pretty straightforward and well balanced, neither original nor too cliché, but perfectly effective.

I quite enjoyed Winters' previous entry, The House on Sycamore Lane, and Alone is a worthy follow-up. What I particularly liked about both games are how the puzzles are perfectly integrated in the story; they are all reasonable and natural obstacles for the protagonist. While never really difficult, the puzzles are still challenging enough to make you feel clever for solving them. Finishing the game took me 65 minutes, and I'm pretty sure I got the optimal ending -- a perfect length for such a game.

The least fun you can do with Sheep Crossing is doing everything correctly. Many works of IF contain various amusing things you can do, playing a bit outside the box. Sheep Crossing takes this to the extreme. If you ever have stumbled upon a common conundrum involving your three pieces of companionship, you will have no problem pleasing your grandmother; a straightforward playthrough takes less than five minutes. The value here is doing silly things, laughing out loud, then restarting and trying something completely different.

This is a classic style parser game heavily inspired by the Indiana Jones movies – an exotic treasure hunt taking place in the jungle.

Dr Ego and the egg of Man-Toomba adheres closely to common tropes, both of IF and of its inspirational material, and for this reason most of the puzzles are a bit on the obvious side. Still, it was not completely without challenges. Although it was always clear what the next step should be, there was always some need for searching and rethinking which made the game quite enjoyable overall.

The writing, as the puzzles, is not particularly original or engaging, but rather decent. In fact, I feel that decent is the word that best describes this game. There is nothing particularly bad or wrong about it, but nothing exceptional either. In the end it took me 45 minutes to finish without a walkthrough.

like its predecessors, Sage Sanctum Scramble features a masterfully implemented minimalist parser interface and hours of fun. Despite the similar approach to the interface, DiBianca's games are quite different from each other in terms of play. This time the author took on the genre of word games, including at least 60 different challenges, including crosswords, anagrams and everything else I can think of.

My initial worries that the game may be too easy were quickly allayed, and some of the puzzles had me stumped. I have a feeling that solving all of the puzzles will not be necessary to finishing the game, and that completing them all may require a team effort.

As usual for DiBianca, this game is a lovingly crafted puzzlefeast without attempting to convey any deep meaning or emotion. With the many puzzles being split into separate rooms, it reminds me somewhat of his previous minigame extravaganza Skies Above, though Sage Sanctum Scramble makes for a much more thoughtful play.

Randomized Escape did mostly not make any sense, as even the descriptions seem randomly generated. Still, it tries to be scary, and that is noticeable: There is some thing, in some fog, and some blood. However, as long as passages such as “This van is very dirty. Maybe I should limit my examination to visual perception. And you did.” and “You cannot see any obvious issue through the fog. There is no time for hesitating.” appear, it’s hard to become immersed in the horror. The introduction recommended drawing a map, but I found that to be difficult and not very useful; many rooms have the same name, and the protagonist might suddenly run only to find themselves in a different (random) room. Still, despite not being a particularly enjoyable game, it’s interesting to see an experiment like this.

Limerick Heist does impress,
its story impresses no less.
I thought I was smart
but then must restart,
finding myself in a mess.

Flight of the CodeMonkeys is based on the neat idea of setting an IF into a programming notebook. You can play it even if you don’t know any programming from before, and probably even learn something through it. The game doesn’t go very deep into coding, however, and the opportunities you get to hack the system end up feeling less than immersive. Still, I liked the idea, and think it demonstrates how you can use IF as an educational tool to teach programming. My main criticism of this game is that you need to create a Google account in order to play it.

Fat Fair is really well implemented, with special verbs, alternative endings and several secrets. The main task is rather simple to achieve, while the challenge lies in finding the alternative paths. I was very impressed to read in the ‘about’ section that this was the author’s first game. However, the humour that is integral to the game did not really appeal to me. I really hope the author continues to make IF games, though somewhat less crass.

Mental Entertainment was a curious piece of IF. It is essentially puzzleless, and although conversational you don’t really get responses to anything but the set of keywords listed in ‘about’ and whatever the replies are to those. You are assigned the heavy task of assessing three people’s mental states and deciding whether they are addicts or not. However, the outcome is the same regardless of your decision; you do not get to see the consequences.

As such, as a work of IF, Mental Entertainment doesn’t really reach very far. What we are left with then is the fabula, the story behind the plot. In this, Mental Entertainment is slightly unique and somewhat cliché; we are exposed to a world of the future where everything right and real is gone, and where VR is the only reasonable escape. To me, this is a decent premise, and the world has been crafted with passion and care, but the IF aspects, or rather lack thereof, left me somewhat dissatisfied.

Gone Out for Gruyère is based on one of the most silly, crazy and absurd premises I have encountered in an IF. It’s also quite easy; here I ultimately find the writing and the humour more essential than the puzzles. And with a talking cheese that mocks your every move as its antagonist, it is very funny.

The homage that is Frenemies does not only feature a die-hard fan who has filled his dorm room with objects from Andy Phillips’ games, but is also centered around a single puzzle that should make Phillips proud. Of the games alluded to in Frenemies, I have only played Inside Woman 1, which is without doubt the longest and most difficult game I have completed. The main puzzle in Frenemies is possible to solve in five minutes, but more likely to take you close to two hours of tears and frustration, followed by a deep and fulfilling sense of accomplishment. If the game were significantly larger, I would have probably regarded this puzzle as too clever, but as it stands more or less alone in a one-room game, I think it’s just perfect. The writing is mostly excellent, though the humour a bit juvenile at times, while the protagonist carries some of the naïve, self-mocking touch that characterised Tom from the Bullhockey games.

Ocean Beach is primarily meditative, beautifully and frustratingly so.

Pauses are part of the game.

Pauses are a big part of the game.

They take time. At sunset.

Sunset begins.

I quickly realised I wasn’t going to get far in Very Vile Fairy File without the walkthrough. Almost all of the interaction in the game consists of coming up with a suitable alliterative rhyme. I can absolutely acclaim an admirable alliteration (with or without a rhyming sensation), but managing this was beyond me. In the required rhymes were old English, American slang and several words I had never heard. For those who feel they are up to a serious rhyming challenge, the game does feature an innovative help system, and for those who don’t, it’s still worth playing through with a walkthrough. Very Vile Fairy File is funny, clever, and well implemented.

Jon Doe - Wildcard Nucleus clearly alludes to the classic James Bond stories, most notably in its opening scene, but generally lacks the humour to be characterised as a good parody. In fact, the absence of humour throughout the game becomes rather noticeable after introducing two silly names in the beginning: Miss Bestbeforedate and Adolf von Bolzplatz (Adolf of the football field). I do get the feeling that the game was intended to be essentially parodic and funny, but that this focus was lost during production.

While the descriptions generally are good and paints a decently vivid picture of retro-modernity, some of the language bears the mark of a rudimentary translation. This, along with several bugs and the fact that little of the described scenery is implemented, made Jon Doe a somewhat disappointing experience. The puzzles are also few and not that interesting – and I still got stuck twice. However, I would probably not have been equally disappointed if it weren’t for the promising premise and the intriguing blurb. Jon Doe has a lot of potential, but requires more work to fulfill it.

This is not so much a game as a demonstration of ancient Greek myths, with Zeno’s paradox thrown in for good measure. It’s a fun idea, and decently implemented, but only slightly more fun to actually play than the punishments themselves. On the positive side, you can quit whenever you want. Or even restart and try another punishment.

The House on Sycamore Lane is a very traditional haunted house mystery. It’s also riddled with bugs and typos. Despite this, I actually quite enjoyed it. None of the bugs I noticed were game breaking, and they also did not stand in the way of solving the puzzles. The puzzles were generally really nice, albeit a tad easy. What I liked about them were how they were integrated in the story, that they always felt reasonable and that they give a nice flow to playing the game. The story was nothing special, but decent enough and provided a certain level of immersion, enough to make it enjoyable. Some extensive testing and a good update could turn The House on Sycamore Lane into a rather good piece of IF.

Citizen of Nowhere was not particularly engaging. The story is a hodgepodge of disparate elements and tropes not properly coming together to form a consistent and convincing world. While the map is large, descriptions are extremely sparse and the few details mentioned in the descriptions are rarely implemented as (scenery) objects. NPC’s are equally limited; asking them about things they should know about provided usually either their default response or “You can’t see any such thing.”

Puzzles are a big part of the game, and while I had fun with a few of them, most were either very straightforward or bordering on unguessable. Synonyms are usually lacking. A crucial tip if you want to play the current IFComp version: you need to use the verb "attach".

In other words, there is room for significant improvement to Citizen of Nowhere. With sufficient polish, it could certainly become quite decent, but, considering the size of the map, a lot of work seems to remain.

For the Moon Never Beams is a tricky horror puzzler, though most of the trickiness comes from not really knowing what you are supposed to achieve, rather than from being easily devoured. I would have appreciated some inner thoughts from the protagonist giving clues about the end goal. Should I flee or should I fight? Is there hope of salvation at the end? After having played it twice (earning 10 and 70 points out of 100, respectively) I still have no clue. This, I felt, was also its greatest weakness. On the other hand, both the writing and the implementation are solid, and the pacing – emphasized by a constant fear of dying – is great.

Bradford Mansion is a largish puzzle oriented parser mystery that is possible to solve without understanding anything of the mystery. When I finished it (after 2 hours, 10 minutes and 24 seconds according to the end message) there were still four locked things, and 12 more points to achieve (out of 74). Perhaps a lot is hidden behind these points, perhaps not; without them, at least, the story was quite thin, with the biggest mystery being the behaviour of the butler. Throughout the mansion there are, however, a large amount of symbolic paintings, hinting at a strange and deep mystery that reasonably should stretch far beyond my 12 missing points. I am curious as to what I have missed, but perhaps not sufficiently to play it over again.

I don’t always mind a thin story if the puzzles are good, and for the most part, they were good enough, although not very original. Both interestingly and frustratingly, however, Bradford Mansion is written with a seemingly custom engine, running directly in the console. One one hand, this gave it somewhat of a classic parser feeling, though on the other hand, everything goes much slower without the shortcuts and assistance that modern engines provide. You can’t use pronouns, you often have to write the full name of a thing, the up arrow doesn’t bring up the last command and there was no abbreviation for ‘look’.

During my playthrough I ended up consulting the walkthrough twice. While the last one was the matter of me overlooking a fairly obvious clue, the first was the result of a very strict parser to the point where I never could have guessed the correct syntax. In fact, the parser is generally quite unforgiving here, with many reasonable synonyms not being accepted. For anyone else that would like to play Bradford Mansion – and it’s still quite likeable, despite its limitations – I’m fairly certain that you don’t need to ‘search’, nor to ‘look under/inside/etc’, something that would have reduced my amount of moves significantly had I known it.

Old Jim’s Convenience Store is somewhat simple and unoriginal, but rather sweet nonetheless. It is essentially a very short and easy parser puzzler, made slightly more difficult by having to guess a few verbs. It’s also quite unpolished, something that rather detracted significantly from my enjoyment of it. The writing is decent enough, but also nothing special. Still, it only takes about 15 minutes to play through it, and that much it was definitely worth.