Ratings and Reviews by Dawn S.

machina caerulea is an entry in a number of jams, among them the Neo-Twiny Jam (sub-500 words) and the Bluebeard Jam. And those are the particular “constraints” that make this game really stand out.

First, the word count: The story is told from the POV of a cyborg–Bluebeard’s latest wife–waking up for the first time. Much of the narration omits articles and other parts of speech in favor of terse constructions consisting mostly of nouns, verbs, and the occasional preposition. This is so effective at creating tension and conveying a sense of urgency. The rhythm of the sentences feels like breath or like heartbeats. I appreciated, too, that clicking links functioned in different ways in this game: sometimes links worked like the parser commands “take” and “examine”; other links underscored the PC’s distressed state by making normally unconscious actions (“inhale” “exhale”) into “choices” the player must deliberately make. And of course there are also the standard “choice” links, like “stab him,” “stab body,” or “drop iron.” I loved this variety; it was even more impressive because the author was able to make all these different modes work with so few words.

Second, the Bluebeard story: machina caerulea presents a terrifying and exciting twist on the tale. In the more canonical versions, the slain wives are all different women. In Machina Caerulea, it seems as though (Spoiler - click to show)the dead wives are all versions of the protagonist, who is herself a cyborg possibly created from the consciousness/body of Bluebeard’s human wife, who may have died from a terminal illness or accident? Maybe I am reading too far into things or perhaps misreading some of the text. But if the dead wives are indeed all the same woman, then wow! It opens up all kinds of potential interpretations. For instance, does being married to a tyrant necessitate disassociating and essentially fragmenting yourself into seven different individuals in order to cope? Is marriage to a tyrant akin to being killed by him over and over again? Or is this a story about Bluebeard making something rather than destroying it (or doing both), which would make it more like a Pygmalion story? Future Pygmalion jam, anyone? There are certainly other notable IF games that already fit that brief!

Anyway, I thought this game was really a standout for styling, language, and its take on the Bluebeard story. I’m so glad I got the opportunity to take a closer look, and I’m really happy it got more eyes on it during the thon.

In The Deluge, floodwater doesn’t pollute, drown, conceal, or cleanse–at least not totally. It mostly just makes everything–the town, the landscape, the protagonist’s sense of themselves, their memories and relationships–kind of vague and eerie and unstable, which is a vibe that I am super into.

Many of the locations have a kind of generic placelessness to them: the mall with its thrift shop and basement club, the school (designed by a “moderately famous architect”), the town square, the forest. There are vague references to the history of the town and the Indigenous people who lived there first, but nothing specific enough to actually place it anywhere on a map (besides being somewhere in an ever-widening flood zone, I guess). Similarly, the main character is going through what seems to be kind of generalized early-20s soul-searching: “In the half-light from the rooms outside, your face’s reflection looks unfamiliar. You can’t look at it for a moment before turning away, colder than you were before.” The other characters feel just as hazy: the “frenemy” who is committed to staying in town, the friend (perhaps more than a friend?) who got out. Everything in this game seems to float just beyond the edge of feeling “real,” which I suspect is very intentional, especially in light of the H.D. poem that closes the game.

On the Review-a-thon poll, the author mentioned that this is their first game, and I did get the sense that, in addition to telling a story, the author might have been testing out a location system, a clueing system, and using conditionals to gate off progress. The clues did help me proceed through the game pretty smoothly, but in future efforts, I think stronger narrative motivation for actions (beyond, e.g., you have a feeling you need to come back here) would be more effective.

In general, though, I thought this was a solid first effort, and a great depiction of a town and a character suspended between here and there.

I moved to a new town in my late 20s. Every week, I drew a map–from memory–of my neighborhood and the spots I regularly visited: the park, the bougie deli, the library, the old timey movie theater. The map started out as basically my house, two streets, and one or two landmarks that I placed in the wrong locations. As the weeks progressed, my maps became more detailed, with side streets materializing, as well as locations of friends’ houses. It was a gentle exercise, and for me, it was a helpful way to make tangible the process of slowly settling into a new life. This is the feeling I got when I played Lauren O'Donoghue’s Ataraxia. In this game, you play someone who’s recently moved to a small island. Over the course of the game, you build relationships, grow vegetables, adopt a pet, and slowly earn the trust of the island’s inhabitants.

I thought this game was terrific. Several factors contributed to its success in my estimation. First, the mechanics and pacing: Soon after you move in, you begin receiving mail. Your first letters are from the Council of Islanders, inviting you to periodic festivals and special events. These punctuate the story and prevent the resource-gathering aspects of the game from feeling too grindy, and the day/night cycle from getting too monotonous. As you settle into your new life, letters from other neighbors begin arriving, which introduce additional opportunities to change up your routine. A seemingly “small” feature like being able to pick a book off your shelf and read it pulls way more than its weight in terms of freedom it gives the player.

Second, the character interactions: In my playthrough, I began a very tender romance with Sanvi the publican. In my interactions with her–and the other characters too, in fact–I felt less like I was manipulating a battery of stats, and more like I was just talking with somebody. Maybe this is because the stakes were lower than something like, say, Mask of the Rose, where your dialogue choices determine whether or not another character is executed? I don’t know. But as a player, I felt relaxed enough to let conversations and relationships unfold naturally.

Finally, the language: The language in Ataraxia was evocative without being self-conscious. This is my favorite kind of writing. Of course, the vocabulary and syntax were modulated when necessary (different in-game books are written in different styles, for example, and characters have different linguistic quirks). But overall, I could remain happily immersed in the game world rather than being jostled out of it by the showiness of particular words or constructions. There was so much care taken even with the “flavor” text that appears when you choose to explore a particular region (rather than collecting resources or talking to someone). From the insects beneath the forest rocks, to fishing boats returning with their nets full, to the habits of the village cats, there’s a world brimming with life there, whether you choose to look deeper or not

If I had a suggestion, it’s that I would have liked to have reached the game’s ending without being required to play through all four of the main character arcs. I was more invested in some stories than in others, and personally, I love the feeling of exiting a game world knowing that there’s still more left to explore.

This brings me to a theme that I really appreciated: (Spoiler - click to show)the impossibility of definitively “knowing” a place or people. Throughout the game, there are references to conflicting histories, gaps in knowledge, and the importance of holding multiple truths at once. For instance: “I was looking for answers. Clear, straightforward answers. But there’s no such thing, is there?” (Jonah). “My attempt to catalogue some of the most fascinating examples here will never be sufficient, but may at least give an impression of the curious nature of this ecosystem” (Ivo, A Natural History of the Western Archipelago: Volume 2). “Though record-keeping in that era was poor, it is now believed that…” “Accounts of what followed are conflicting. What we do know is that …” (Our Island Through the Ages). Insisting on the indeterminacy of the island’s ecology, mythology, and history introduces breath and movement to the game. It very effectively animates the world.

Earlier in this review, I mentioned that the game didn’t feel too grindy. That’s not to say that it didn’t feel grindy at all. And to me, the grind was actually the most effective part of the game. (Spoiler - click to show)I can’t remember how many days my playthrough took, but I think it was around 50-something? That means, 50 times over I repeated the sequence of harvesting my fruits and vegetables, visiting different parts of the island, talking to people, and sleeping. There is a cumulative effect to this mechanical repetition that is delivered through the descriptions: The house gradually feels more and more like home, you become accustomed to the forest paths and smells, you have fewer nightmares. The mechanics of the game suggest that a big piece of adjusting to something, whether it be loss, grief, a new environment, a new relationship, is just straight up time and repetition. It’s developing enough muscle memory so that, groping in the dark, your hand immediately connects with the lightswitch.

I’m so impressed (and kind of dumbfounded, tbh) that Ataraxia is this author’s first game! It felt so sure, so polished. I would put it up there with games like Master of the Land as an exemplar of how much depth, breadth, and freedom of movement an author can create in a Twine game. I very much look forward to this author’s future games.

A House of Endless Windows by SkyShard is a moody, claustrophobic game about a child trying to understand a family secret. Its soundtrack is evocative without being intrusive, and it is beautifully designed, with clean lines over abstract backgrounds that feel pensive and restless. Sometimes the backgrounds resemble the marbled endpapers of a book; sometimes they evoke 19th-century photographic processes (another kind of glass window), with images in various states of emergence and obfuscation, like spirit photography. This game’s vibes are definitely strong.

The story is told in first person, from the perspective of 12-year-old Pierce Windrow. In addition to managing their studies and social life, Pierce is coping with their mother’s depression, their father’s absence, and, most centrally, the death or disappearance of their sister Jane. There is a stiffness to the language that very effectively mirrors the tension the characters feel around each other, and the walls they have built to protect themselves. For instance, Pierce praises their mother this way: “I appreciate her thoroughness,” and they describe returning home from school this way: “I set my backpack against the leftmost wall of my room…” In fact, the narration is so analytical and unemotional that I initially thought that either Pierce was a robot, or that (Spoiler - click to show)their dead sister had been returned to the family as a robot. The game builds on that strangeness in the way that it employs architecture as a metaphor for deception, isolation, and convoluted thinking: “Every hall has no end. Every window is just your reflection for someone else to see,” Pierce says. This is a house that’s dark even during the day, where all the windows are shut tight, and each room has secrets.

When Jane (Spoiler - click to show)returns home six years after her disappearance, the parents try to convince Pierce that she is a live-in housekeeper named Ms. Stirling. She mostly stays indoors, bringing soup and tea to the mom’s bedroom. She avoids church, and when she does go outside, she wears a veil over her face, “for the mosquitoes.” I found this detail so strange, dreamy, and chilling. What’s most chilling, of course, is the parents’ lie. I mean, convincing their child that their dead sister is now the family housekeeper? This is some truly next-level gaslighting! And this is the part that sort of rang a little hollow for me. A teenager having a tough time at home and going to live with a relative for a while does not seem like a super uncommon scenario. Faking the sister’s death and maintaining that lie for six years feels totally out of proportion as a response.

Then again, our understanding is limited by Pierce’s perception, and Pierce is an unreliable narrator. For instance, they try to comprehend the distance between Earth and Saturn this way: “I know very little about engineering, but the space between here and Saturn is almost impossibly large. I could not walk or run or drive that distance in a lifetime.” On the one hand, it makes sense to conceptualize this distance in terms they understand, and it’s technically true that they could never walk or run or drive that distance in a lifetime. But the units feel so fundamentally ill-suited to the distance being described. For me, this encapsulates the way Pierce, with their child’s logic and frame of reference, tries to make sense of the family’s huge, adult-sized secrets.

Several reviewers have commented on the lack of choices in this game, but to be honest, I didn’t even notice. The game so effectively created an atmosphere of confusion and confinement that I guess I wasn’t expecting to have any choices!

Blood and Sunlight is one of three games in a series. The author notes that it also stands on its own, and this is how I experienced it. In this game you play Zach, a 23-year-old vampire who must decide whether or not to spend New Year’s Eve at the house of his partner Lyle.

Some of the most charged vampire tropes (blood drinking, forbidden desires, sleeping in coffins, etc.) are rendered rather benign and quotidian in this game. Spending the night with your ~lover~ (using that term to be dramatic) is, in Blood and Sunlight, more about discreetly trying to figure out whether or not to borrow their toothbrush (for your fangs?) while they’re passed out. Being turned to ash in the morning sun is, in this game, more like trying to make your way home on new year’s day with a very bad hangover. Because, as we learn, sunlight won’t kill you, but it will make you pretty sick. Waking up in Lyle’s bedroom, therefore, means waking up without the blackout curtains and other lightproofing measures you’ve implemented at your own place. It means navigating Lyle, Lyle’s sister, and Lyle’s Mario Kart-loving cousins while trying to call an uber and trying not to barf or otherwise embarrass yourself and/or Lyle.

Defusing vampire tropes really opens up the story, and gives the player a lot more room to explore what the game really seems to be about: your attitude toward aspects of your identity and your body that you can’t change, but that impact those you love. You can be stoic and isolate yourself; you can endure discomfort for the sake of your partner–but in a passive aggressive way; you can endure–but in a sincere way; you can accept help or not; you can feel sorry for yourself or not. And you can do all of these things in a way that’s jumbled together and even contradictory, which I thought was just terrific. Throughout the game, I felt like I was really just doing my best to navigate a stressful and fluid situation, sometimes being whiny, then immediately after that being stoic, and then totally contradicting myself. I never felt like the choices were trying to maneuver me onto one of four or so distinct “tracks”--or that there were “good” endings or “bad” endings.

A small thing: As someone who hasn’t (yet) played the other Blood and games, I felt like I wanted a little better understanding of the context and significance of what Lyle is asking of Zach. Would this be the very first time that Lyle and Zach spend the night together (in which case it’s presumably a big step for them)? Or is it just the first time they’d spend the night at Lyle’s house instead of Zach’s (a big step, but in a different way). I assumed the latter was the case. If it had been their first ever night together, my choices might have been a little different, skewing more toward agreeability at the expense of my own comfort.

Finally, I just wanted to add that the family scenes were described with such warmth, which really underscored Zach’s loneliness and his longing for connection. I’m looking forward to playing the other Blood and games and perhaps even future installments? Lyle was so sweet and Zach was such a relatable overthinker. I’m really rooting for the two of them.