Ratings and Reviews by Fie

A limited parser game, like Blue Lacuna in that you type keywords to interact with them, without verbs. You are in a workshop full of automatons that interact with the noun you type in. For example, typing >ambler has a mechanical hand pick up the ambler automaton.

Even >look is disabled. If you type >wait or its shortform >z, you get an equivalent. Additionally, the bolded 'items' in the room remind you of their existence every turn, so there's no need to scroll back up. I found this feature very useful.

The puzzles remain decently hard, despite the limited verbset. You can get permanently stuck, but the game is very short and it's easy to restart.

The writing is also very in-universe. I thought it maybe was trying to do a little too much for such a short game, but I did really like how you could (Spoiler - click to show)apologize to the invading dragon and have a peaceful ending.

The mechanic is fun and I would love to see it used again/the game expanded.

This game describes itself as "a playful exploration" and inspired by "guided sleep meditations", and it goes about as deep as it describes.

The title - "You Can Only Turn Left" - I would think it has something to say about not having choices, despair, intentional sadism directed at the player. It has no such thing.

The first long paragraph of text is a memory of being a child and seeing some tadpoles, disabled, so they couldn't swim right and would starve. No more thought to it. No thinking about how it could've been avoided, no analysis about if it's something to do with the fish tank, no human empathy of trying to keep them alive even still. Just a bad memory, one you sometimes think about when you're half-asleep, with no real meaning to it and no ability to change it. It's not even painful, or gross, just scary, to see something broken. Title explained in one swoop. Time to slip to the next thought.

It tries to invoke nostalgia. Playing video games when your parents are asleep, secretly. Okay. The school with an excellent this and that, rigorous, freedom of having a job, trying to be like Leonardo Da Vinci, deciding to stay awake for 22 hours a day, room growing up painted like you chose, getting an education, working towards buying a car, a flourishing social life, guided meditation. Okay. Nostalgia of someone trying to be superhuman, horror of someone who doesn't see beyond their own life.

The most intense section is a dream about hot pink hyenas eating their family. The hyena art is very cute. The eating scene is sterile and insipid, and could only be scary to someone who's never had anything beyond a breakup to feel bad about. It's rather pretentious. Or rather, it's by someone who thinks their dull drug trip, happy childhood, and average college experience is a lot more meaningful than it is, all colored by the assumption that everyone else can relate to such universal things.

What gets this any stars from me is the sound design. I listened with headphones. It's eerie, it's deep, you can feel it in your ears crawling, but not harsh. I never felt like I wanted to turn down the sound. There was nice variation and mixing, and I feel like it did something smooth with left and right audios at points like the chanting.

The visual effects are also neat. The moving background is fun to watch and adds a feeling of movement that's really nice.

This is a comedy that doesn't take itself too seriously.

It's not trying to say anything about feudal Japan, though it is set in feudal Japan. I feel it is also of dubious historical accuracy.

I liked the English haiku generator. You get to keep generating poems until you get one you like, and they range from rather pretty environmental metaphors to silly-funny lines like calling the royal guy who sentenced you to death a blockhead.

I liked the archers who have really bad aim.

I liked the bear whom you can optionally feed to get past, instead of killing.

I didn't like the fat/thin jokes about two samurai foes. >amusing suggests throwing a rice ball at them which will get you some nettling about how they behave upon seeing food.

In the end, the game takes itself so un-seriously that it recommends to you a USAmerican Antebellum novel about sad confederate soldiers.

It to me held a lot higher regard - and perhaps even a bit of cleverness - before I saw that. The twist makes perfect sense for the game already. The literary reference added nothing but disgust.

Should've just shamelessly stolen the twist and not credited it, tbh.