Ratings and Reviews by Rui Pires

I initally thought the game was worth 4 stars, then I realised that I had never forgotten the game after playing it so many years ago. Playing it yesterday again, it still managed to feel chilling - not because the whole backstory is particularly grand, but because, using that as an excuse, the game does manage to explore what it intends to explore. And it's more playable and less guess-the-author's-mind than a whole bunch of other games.

Bliss is an exploration of a theme. It's not a pleasant theme. It will make you confront the fact that your intentions and your reality may not be what you thought they were. I don't want to spoil it any more (if there is anyone left who hasn't played this game and who might).

Mostly you will be in a fantasy setting. And you know, it's a really nice fantasy setting. It's clichèd - in exactly the right way, considering the context of the whole game. The elements are right. I particularly like the fireflies; it seems obvious enough what they are supposed to represent, but just because it's obvious doesn't mean it's not good.

The puzzles are decent. I spent some time trying to figure out how to escape from the courtyard, I experimented, and I eventually got through it. No hints, no handholding, no obvious clues, but also no struggling with the parser, no guess-the-mind, no guess-the-verb. I just experimented in ways that felt natural. Eventually I succeeded. I mean... that's just good.

If other reviewers (and players) will be put off by the lack of a grand meaning to this game, I will defend in on the merits on what it achieves. I am prepared to believe the backstory is merely a device to set all of this in motion (just as I am prepared to believe that it's merely a very incredulous device that (Spoiler - click to show)asylum attendants would go around carrying clubs to hit patients with). So what I am interested in is what it actually does when it's in motion.

It has an effect. Undeniably. And it's ugly. Undeniably. And that's exactly what the author wanted.

The last line of the ending still chills me.

I cannot dismiss this game easily. I cannot dismiss it at all. I think it sets out to explore something very specific - and I think it succeeds admirably.

There is also something that the game does very well which I think is a lesson for authors in puzzle feedback. It concerns getting out of the courtyard.

I remember when this came out. It's a kind of Zeno's Paradox, or Schrödinger's Cat; a tangible thought experiment about the nature of interactive fiction, and what constitutes interactive fiction. Like Zeno and Schrödinger, this piece says "Well, according to what a bunch of guys are saying, this would qualify as IF, because there is a world model and you interact with it. So, is this IF?"

I always thought it was an interesting experiment, and it took me a while to grok that what was actually going on here was a bit more subtle.

This is not "an IF version of Moby Dick". This is an IF version of someone reading the book Moby Dick.

I know it seems obvious, but it upends the original question entirely. The question is, partly, "is the act of writing >READ MORE sufficient to call something interactive fiction?". The story of Moby Dick is totally incidental. It could have been any book. It could have been anything. You are certainly not interacting with Ishmael or anything in the book. You are in a room; in the room you have a book. That is what the world models, that is what you are interacting with. The fiction is not "Ishmael met Peequod and Ahab and an epic adventure followed in which you incidently learn more about whales than you ever thought was sane". The fiction is, "a book is before you. Do you continue to read?"

In fact, if the book were the Necronomicon, or Clive Barker's "Mister B. Gone", the decision to READ MORE might have some weight!

There is a cheeky review that consists of an original contemporary review of Moby Dick. That was a fun move, but it misses the point, because this game is not Moby Dick. This game is an entity reading the book called Moby Dick.

Is it IF? Like Schrödinger meant for his Cat to expose the ridiculousness of what was being proposed and instead finding it to be completely embraced, I would say yes. A world is modelled. You interact with an object. There is no story, there are no puzzles - but storyless and puzzleless IF is no less IF. You might even say that a world model isn't strictly necessary for IF, though we enter a more esoteric realm; even choice-based IF models a world in some respect. Not necessarily the way that parser-IF does; sometimes more narrative than world-building; but there is a world model in which the player makes choices.

Is this good IF? Erm, I would say not, no. It's dull.

Is this a good provocatory thought experiment? Heck yeah.

What is it? It's the story of a person reading a book. Nothing else. The whole point is that it is not the story of Moby Dick. That happens to be what is written on the book.

Playing "Beat Witch" was certainly an interesting experience. Somewhat uneven, to be sure. More than once I wondered why the author had made this a parser game, as opposed to a choice-based game; the game advances practically on rails, and is a sequence of scenes that you move along; at the key points (usually the ones where death is a threat) you find the command that lets you go on, but it's so heavily hinted (this is a good thing in a game that's this narrative-focused!) that it might as well be an explicit choice.

Then I realised I was falling into the trap of judging the work by my expectations instead of judging it by what it is. Funny how easy it is to do that. When I realised it, I started to notice how the author uses the conventions of how locations are presented to achieve certain effects, and how the parser really isn't a senseless fit. The sense of exploration that the parser gives, and of experimentation in a game with a few non-standard commands, may be something I've come to take for granted. I shouldn't. It's very much part of the DNA.

The premise is sublimely weird. Beat Witches, mute women who can kill with a thought and are lethally vulnerable to music.

Whoa.

It starts in media res, so you'll soon have to find a way to survive before you know what's going on. And... the whole game is going to be like that, because it'll keep throwing weird shit at you, and the stakes will always be high.

Playing this is quite an experience. Be prepared for lots and lots of text. Not that there's a lot of text overall, but what there is tends to come in large sections.

It is well written. It is a cohese world. Implementation is about right, though there isn't a lot to interact with (by design). The characters are consistent and... well, weird. Everything about this game is weird. In exactly the right way for my tastes.

I did often tune out, as the weirdness became harder to follow. I'm not entirely sure what happened near the end, and I don't think I mind not being sure. At that point I was just experiencing it, not worrying about it too much.

You know how you know you like a game?

When, at the end, it says "Polly Miller will return" and you sit there for a while, and you go "Yeah... yeah, I think I'd like that. Yes, please."