Reviews by End Master

When I first heard about Sunless Sea, I figured it was just Fallen London, but on the water, which is basically is, however this one took everything good from Fallen London and took out all the things I really hated from it, resulting in a game I liked a whole lot better. I could buy the full game and never have to interact with other people!

Much like Fallen London, it doesn’t really hold your hand on what you’re exactly supposed to be doing, but you can choose a long term goal for yourself. Whether you bother to try to achieve it or not is up to you. It’s definitely a sandbox you have a lot of room to mess about in.

The game is a mix of several different genres. From RPG to even action given how the combat works. Early game is tough going since you’re sort of stumbling about at first and your ship isn’t very fast or powerful. You’ve got to resource manage your food, fuel and crew too. As you start unlocking new things though, it gets a bit easier, but you’re definitely never completely safe since there’s a lot in this game trying to kill you. Of course I’m a big fan of grimdark settings.

Sticking with the IF bits of the game, the writing in this was just as good as it was in Fallen London. I always found the lore interesting in that game, so it worked in this one as well. I also had the Zubmarine DLC which added some more content and the ability to go under the water. Made an already Lovecraftian toned game even more so with the new locations to discover.

There’s a lot of choices to make and most of them change things quite a bit in the game. Companions you can bring with you all have their own stories which you can participate in to determine their fate. (Sometimes resulting in them leaving forever) Doing stuff like helping governments being overthrown or putting intrusive creatures in harbors can have dire permanent effects on those places. Choices definitely have consequences.

As unforgiving as the game can be, the funny thing is there are even times when a game will outright warn you NOT to do something, claiming it’s a very bad idea (Like eating your crew and going insane) but you’re free to choose it anyway!

Death via the Zee is just one common ending to your character, you can certain choose to just retire or even get a different type of non-standard ending. This doesn’t end the game as you can just pick things up with a successor who can inherit some of your stuff. If you bothered to get married and have a child, that successor can be from your direct bloodline.

The only complaint I have with the game is it didn’t get rid of the grinding aspect which slows down the exploration process more than I’d like. I’ve played the game quite a bit and I know I still haven’t discovered everything. I probably won’t either given how massive the game is.

If you don’t mind the traditional “gamey” elements in your interactive fiction, then this one is worth playing.

I sought out Fallen London after years of hearing a few others on other writing forums mentioning it and saying that it was fun to play and there was all sorts of things to discover. Some were even saying it was the greatest thing ever if you were into choice based RPGs.

When I eventually sat down to play it, I definitely was captivated by the setting, the lore, and the general writing. There was certainly no shortage of things to explore or do. The game doesn’t really tell you what your goal is, but I didn’t mind that since I figured finding your own path was part of the game. With as much stuff is packed in the game, I probably would have spent a lot more time on it, however two major things stopped me from enjoying it as much as I would have.

The first one being you only get a limited amount of turns to do stuff and then you have to with wait until your turns fill up again or pay to play. Yep, not going that route. I can be convinced of buying a game with a one time expensive price. Hell, I can even be convinced to shell out another twenty or so for sizable DLC for a game that probably should have came with it in the first place. What I’m not doing though is paying real money for more play time.

Okay so I’ll have to wait. That’s not ideal, but I’ve certainly played games with that sort of system before, and played them for a few years in my rare dabbling of online games. This makes grinding a lot more unfun since not only do you have to do it (Staple of a lot of online games) but you can’t even do it consistently to maybe get it out of the way to achieve whatever goal you were going for.

Okay, well I can sort of deal with that aspect to some degree too. But then the final nail in the coffin is in order to advance in some of the storylines, you have to actually interact with other people on some level and when I’m playing something with IF trappings, I’m just not looking for that aspect.

So yeah, with all those things working against it, the game just wasn’t for me, even if I found the setting very interesting. I don’t see myself ever going back to it, but I was glad to at least give it a few plays.

Reigns has you take the role of a king dealing with the kingdom’s day to day operations based on what various problems people come to you with. Most of these are royal advisors, but they can range from mad prophets to your queen (if you should marry).

The game primarily uses a binary choice system to move the narrative along. Swipe left or right like one of those new fangled dating apps I’ve heard so much about and usually something happens to the four stats that you have to keep an eye on as the game moves along. The four stats are religion, people, military and money. Let one of these stats go completely to the bottom and your king will suffer some sort of bad end. It’s equally important to not let the stat reach all the way to the top either though or else you’ll still reach a bad end! The type of death is a bit different though, so for example, if you let the military run out, you get overthrown by the peasants. If you let the military reach the top, you suffer a coup. Nice of the game to have variation like that. The game’s dedication on insisting on balance probably helps in making sure you don’t just keep picking things that will top out any of the stats.

Death however isn’t the end, far from it. You just continue with a new king and pick up where the predecessor left off. This inevitably can result in repetition of choices, however based on some of the choices your predecessors made, future kings can potentially get new ones opened up to them and new characters to interactive with. There’s plenty of hidden stuff and bonuses to discover such as certain things that can render a stat “safe” meaning you don’t have to ever worry about it going up or down anymore. There are few conditions which will slowly increase a stat over time without you even doing anything. This is a double edged sword since while you never really have to worry about it going down, you definitely have to keep picking choices that make it go down on a regular basis.

Another one that occurs is when your king has managed to survive many years which makes everything everyone says appear jumbled as a result of your king going deaf. This of course makes the game a lot harder to make choices since you can’t exactly tell what you’re agreeing or not agreeing to. I’ve yet to have a king die peacefully of old age. Besides all the hidden stuff to find, the game has a lot of achievements to unlock which adds to a reply value with a game like this.

It’s very quick to play through a few king’s lives while you’re waiting somewhere so it’s nice in that regard. Even with as many times as I’ve replayed it, I still haven’t unlocked everything so it’s definitely one I’ll come back to every now and then.

If you’re familiar with the old scifi show Farscape or the even older Buck Rogers, Out There combines both of being a frozen astronaut being flung very far from known space several centuries later and you trying to find your way back home. It’s certainly a premise that sets itself up for plenty of adventure.

At it’s core, it’s a CYOA style graphic IF with a lot of resource management. The background visuals themselves are nice and have a comic book style look about them. You’ll have to visit planets constantly to get the elements you need for your ship to keep it running while along the way you’ll get events popping up where you have to make a choice which can have good or bad results. You’ll also encounter aliens which you can eventually learn to communicate with more clearly as you learn certain words with each passing encounter. You don’t need to ever have to worry about any sort of combat stat since there isn’t really any fighting in the game. There’s a couple of choices which might involve references to combat, but those are rare and just dependent on randomness. And you never fight with any of the aliens you might encounter on planets.

Your survival is highly luck dependent at times, which to some extent is fitting with the overall theme which has a nihilistic tone even if it is wrapped up in colorful exploration. You really are just one lone human in the deep reaches of space, your existence is pretty meaningless in the scheme of things.

And you’ll find out more about that if you even manage to survive that long. From that point, you’ll sort of have new branches opening up as far as endings go. It’s still a difficult journey even if you go for the easiest one, and most of the endings aren’t sunny ones. Even the added endings with the new content updates are still a bit bleak.

It’s a pretty tough game to win with any of the endings given the high luck factor involved, but if you don’t mind that sort of thing or a narrative that takes a more grim tone, the game is worth playing through multiple times.

Basing an IF game off of an already established book is always a bit challenging since you have to make it entertaining while still adhering to the source. Make it too similar to the source and you’ll get complaints about it feeling too confined. Make it too different than the source and you get complaints about it not being anything like the book.

80 Days is one of the few that managed to maintain that balance and be a fun game. Though the choice to go the completely steampunk direction is sort of a no brainer given the time period and the fact that the original was a Jules Verne work in the first place. Most of the existing views here cover a lot of the positives of the game, I’ll probably go over those a bit briefly before going into the few negatives.

First, the writing and branching are well done. While there’s some places where it has a “fake choice” not really mattering too much which choice you pick, most of the time there is at least a bit of a consequence for it even if it’s a minor change in your character’s hidden stats or something similar. Besides all that, there are enough events and locations to explore that it’s hardly noticeable.

The resource management portion of the game is implemented very well too. Not just determining what might be directly useful on your trip at any given time, but also a bit of a trader mini-game since some items aren’t really useful directly but you can sell them for a large profit at certain locations which is somewhat important as you’ll definitely need a good supply of money on this journey

Plenty of variety of events, ways to travel and secrets to uncover so replay value is high. It’s worth derailing from the original goal just to uncover new things.

If I had any complaints about the game it would be the lack of danger or rather the lack of genuine danger since the game does a good enough job of making you feel like you’re in danger a lot of times. But it’s almost impossible to actually DIE in this game. Fogg has a heart meter which can go up or down, but other than one place, it doesn’t really effect much. It’s sort of a “fake stat” which is a bit disappointing really. There are many instances where I think the adventure of the game could have been better with some risk involved.

It’s not a deal breaker, indeed several video games like the old SCUMM point and click adventure games eliminated death and were still very enjoyable, but I’ll always appreciate a game that has genuine risk involved a little more. In fact, this one could have done the deaths very well given the one main example of it occurring and the writing in general.

Other than that, the game is excellent (especially with the added content) in just about every other way.

At CYS, we’ve long been aware of this little experiment and even more amused that the creator used popular CYS stories at the time as the foundation to create the monster. We even spoke directly with the creator who popped up on our forums and discord, everything was generally civil.

I know some folks were going on about some stuff about monetary compensation for using our works without at least even asking first. Not sure how likely that is to happen, however I’ve never really written “for the money.” If I did, I’d surely grow to hate writing altogether. I can’t enjoy a hobby if it becomes work. I primarily write for my own enjoyment and if others like it, that’s fine. If they don’t well that’s fine too.

However over the years as I’ve done this hobby of mine I’ll be the first to admit, I don’t mind my influence being spread to far reaching corners of the internet. Surprising more than one would think considering I virtually use no social media at all and my name or stories still pop up in some of the oddest places on the web.

So what does this exercise in pontificating about my own ego have to do with AI Dungeon? Quite a lot since most of the stories used to help build the foundation were mine. As a result various names of characters, places, monsters and other things pop up enough in AI Dungeon stories that people on its Reddit and Discord have lists of them, asking who they are, what they are and ultimately linking to the original sources of said things, which is as you guessed it, to most of my stories.

I’ve played through AI Dungeon myself on more than one occasion and I feel like I’m playing fan fiction of my own stories at times. I’ve spoken to some of the players of AI Dungeon on their discord given them a bit of background on the origins various names they keep wondering about which was probably more fun than actually playing the game itself since the AI is very “forgetful” and inconsistent. I know programming something like this probably difficult and I can appreciate the ambition, but it just really doesn’t work excessively well as a game. Boredom inevitably ensues as the AI generations get repetitive.

I know they’ve updated and reworked it a bit to try to curb some of the “CYS references” but apparently they keep popping up since people still keep mentioning them (or complaining about them). Well maybe you should have thought twice about building your mansion on top of an underground necropolis. You’re stuck with the undead roaming about now pal.

Other changes I know they’ve made is “cleaning it up” so certain words can’t be used or they get altered. Pretty sure that’s drawn complaints too since I’m fairly certain at least more than half of the users are just creating weird sex fetishes on the stuff. Take some of that away and you’re eliminating most of the fanbase right there. I think they recently added a “payment” plan too so you can only take so many actions before you have to wait to play some more unless you pay money. I definitely know that is causing some ire from the fans (or soon to be ex-fans) of the game.

Still, this game is basically like a monument to CYS. So even if I feel like it falls short of what it tries to actually accomplish, I can’t help but like it on some level since its helped in spreading our glorious influence. (And mine in particular)

To sum up, as a game it has several flaws and isn’t that great. As an indirect advertising tool for CYS on a mass scale, it’s actually pretty good considering we got someone else to do for us without even asking.

So now we’ve come to the last of the four games and given that the questionnaire “story” is the best of the bunch really says it all on how bad the other were.

Now don’t get me wrong, this is probably the worst story and worst game of the four since it fails to do either that the other three at least attempted. This one is just a questionnaire which leads me to wonder why the hell it’s on here in the first place.

However, there is a certain “creepy” vibe to this one that I thought MAYBE the author was leading up to midway through it, but that was misplaced hope I suppose.

A few of the questions towards the end start to ask if you’d rather murder people or if you fear being murdered and similar questions like that. I feel like this would have been a good jumping off point for the questionnaire to start going into horror territory. I have seen stories done in “quiz” format before and done successfully. It’s difficult to do, but it’s possible.

Not saying it would have even been a five star story or even three, but it might have at least gotten a two.

As I said though, if the author was attempting to do this then they failed in such an endeavor. I suppose the whole sudden “Thank you for your submission” at the very end could be considered a little creepy as it may make the reader briefly wonder if the data is actually being collected and what exactly for.

But more than likely, the reader is going to just wonder why the hell they wasted their time and not dwell on whatever this was supposed to be as soon as they finish.

Moving on to the third game, this one seems more like a rant about the medical system rather than a game.

Someone also mentioned that it seemed autobiographical which I’d agree with too given how it comes across. This is also probably why out of the four games recently uploaded from this author, this one was the most annoying despite it having the most plotted out storyline. The last thing I want to do is play as the author insert complaining about whatever isn’t going right in their lives. Just not a fan of IFs being used a personal soapbox.

Even ignoring that potentially being the case, there is no real game here even from a CYOA perspective. It’s mostly linear with a few fake choices here and there that just change the text rather than leading to any different endings. This would have worked better as an angry blog entry than a game considering the lack of branching.

Definitely the worst of the four.

So moving on to the second game, this one is about playing as a detective trying to catch murderer. The beginning claims that it’s neither a tragedy or comedy which may depend on how amusing or tragic you find wasting your time.

Though perhaps it’s comedy for the author and tragedy for the reader in that case, but even in an “author trolls the reader” sort of way it doesn’t really do a good job since it’s short enough that it wouldn’t really annoy a reader that much.

There isn’t much here in general, there’s like two choices in a mostly linear game and only one of which changes the ending. The odder thing is the killer changes gender mid way through the story. In the beginning they are referred to as she, then later as he. Not sure if that was intentional or just the author getting so bored with the story that they couldn’t be bothered with consistency.

If it hadn’t been for the sudden sex changed murderer, the story would have had even less for me to write about in the review.

So four short twine games suddenly showed up on the IFDB and everyone seemed to be saying how bad they were so I decided to see for myself starting with this one.

It’s not a very promising start.

The “game” basically boils down to judging how successful your life is based on how much sex you’ve had. Have sex in more rooms than you cried in and congrats you’ve won! Do the the opposite and you’ve lost. Not sure why constantly picking neither is considered the “worst” life of all since I’m fairly certain that would still be way better than crying all the time, but I guess the author had his own world view of things.

In any case there isn’t much sense to this one and the title makes even less sense. Could have been called Chad and incel and it would have made just as much sense (And been a little more amusing)

If there was supposed to be any deeper meaning behind it then the author failed in conveying it and I’m not exactly motivated in analyzing it further to discover such a hidden meaning.