Ratings and Reviews by Cerfeuil

Here's my DND story: The longest campaign I've been in ended after two sessions, but not before my character broke both legs jumping off a cliff and had to be carried around in a bag of holding for the rest of the game. I've done a few other oneshots, but nothing much. I've still been exposed to it enough to be familiar with the basic rules. Also, illithids are cool. In Baldur's Gate 3 that new DND game that everyone was raving about there are illithids and you get an illithid tadpole inside your brain and you can romance one and what was I saying again?

Anyway, so this game is heavily remniscient of my own DND experience. DND is complicated. There's all kinds of rules for combat and spells and levels and so on, and it can easily get overwhelming. When I played, sometimes one player's combat turn would take ten minutes while everyone else (myself included) browsed their phones until the rules and rolls finally got hashed out. Everyone was new to the game, including the DM, which didn't help. It's really not that beginner-friendly.

We still had fun, and there were some hilarious moments, but sometimes the tedium outweighed the fun. For not entirely unrelated reasons, I haven't done any kind of TTRPG in a long time.

Our main character at least has her girlfriend Rachel to help her out. Rachel can go a bit too far with the backseat DMing sometimes, but it's nothing too bad. I think the stuff you deal with in the game is mostly par for the course (and much better than what I've heard of on r/rpghorrorstories - now there's a subreddit to go to if you want to burn some time). Sure it has a supernatural bent to it, but players who talk out of character or get into silly arguments or make decisions the DM wasn't preparing for is just most DND sessions, in my limited experience. You have to roll with the punches. Which is what I ended up doing in my playthrough, and despite everything that went on we did make it to the end with some time to spare. (Side note, four hours seems pretty long for a first-time DND game, but I guess it makes sense if you want to play a oneshot all the way through and have someone more experienced to guide you. I personally feel like I'd be bored to death by the end, but this group of players is probably better than my group.)

I do have some UI quibbles that I think could've made the game a smoother experience: you're given info about the characters and the characters' characters (meta!) at the start of the game, but after that you can't really reference the info again, and it can be hard to remember it all. I never figured out exactly what the "Look around the table to see how everyone is doing" thing does - I think it shows you how distracted everyone is, but it's hard to check exactly since it only gives out textual descriptions. I got in the habit of barely checking it since the descriptions often don't change from one "turn" to the next. Also, is the general Distraction meter just for you, or is it for the whole table? If it's just for you, does every character have their own Distraction meter? But only yours is directly visible? Questions I wasn't totally sure about the answers to. Fun game overall, though.

This game is really trippy. And hilarious.

Took me a while to figure out you were supposed to give the meat to the dog - there was what seems like a red herring, where there's also a guy trying to discard meat in the alleyway outside the pizza place. But I never figured out what the point of that was and eventually obtained meat via the kitchen.

After that, the rest of it was fairly easy. Good game. I noticed a few typos and lightly implemented areas, but nothing to get too worked up about.

The one quibble I had was that initially, while I was fiddling around, I somehow managed to reach a point where I named the kitchen fridge "dog", and then couldn't interact with it even though the room description said the "dog" was in the room. My guess is that the security guard noticed it and took it away, but the fridge is still fixed to one place, so the description didn't change? I really have no clue, though. I was swapping a bunch of names around at once, so maybe I broke something and didn't realize it. I ended up restoring an earlier save and beat the game more easily when I knew where all the names were and didn't have to chase down the stray refrigerator or wastebasket running around the premises.

Also, the ending is amazing:

(Spoiler - click to show)
The gnome goes on: "I said you could expose a changeling with iron. That baby's not a changeling."

"What do you mean?" you say. "It's hideous!"

"Yeah, that's what human babies look like."


Overall, it took me about an hour to finish this game, because of the meat thing. Really smooth sailing after that. I'll also note I played the comp edition, so the game is even better now!

-

Highlights from my playthrough (contains the mildest of spoilers. IFDB is being finicky with nesting blockquotes inside spoilers, so I'll leave them unspoiled):

'Staring at the baby in the crib, you just can't believe it. That...thing just can't be human. There's no way. It looks like a shriveled apple with flailing hands and feet.'

'Oberon's Pizza Parlor'

'"No way that's a human," you say.

"Sounds like you have a changeling problem," says the gnome sitting next to you.

That's when you notice the gnome sitting next to you.'

'>x plants
Looks like grass. Seeing it survive in these harsh conditions fills you with determination.'

'>x counter
The counter looks like it's made of formica. You don't know what formica actually is or what it looks like, but this has got that weird texture and color that makes you think, "Yeah, that's formica."'

'>x memo
This note says:

Important:

Monitors are for night time use only. Daytime guards should be constantly on patrol!

Night time guards, for safety purposes, please remain inside the room and use monitors exclusively.

All guards should report promptly to loud noises, including screams'

Here's a comment I made on the itch.io page, copied over because I figure it's long enough for a review and this game is cool:

THE COMPUTERFRIEND DATING SIM LIVES

I can finally die happy.

In all seriousness this wasn't what I expected from Computerfriend Dating Sim (was imagining a more computery love interest, with mouse and keyboard and everything? Computer monitor covered in lipstick. You know, the works) but this is fun too. Seems like this follows from the 'happiest' ending of Computerfriend, where you release the AI into the interwebz after undergoing a little psychological recovery of your own. Now you've returned to Godfield for whatever reason and the AI therapist is there to (possibly) have a one night stand with you. Also he doesn't tell you he happens to be your old therapist. (That might be some kind of professional integrity violation, but it seems C doesn't care. There are definitely worse one night stands to be had...)

It feels bittersweet, you've both changed and you can't go back to how things are, which is maybe why the relationship could never be more than a one night stand. Would get pretty awkward if you ever figured out C's real identity, I guess. Though I'll be real the fact that this isn't a 1 million word epic "I Slowly Fall In Love With My Former AI Therapist" is mildly disappointing.

There's something to be said too about the distance that you can create between C and the protagonist. By rebuffing his advances, you can tell youself that he's only a "thing" and you should be spending more time with people "like you". Pushing him away by thinking of him as a different species. Though in other parts the story makes it clear that you aren't so much different, both machines, in a way. Prediction engines. And, in the past, you were both held back from the real world by either depression (you) or the unfortunate state of being a digitally bound consciousness (C). Situations both of you have now escaped from.

Questions I can't answer: Is there any reason C is male specifically? Also is it just a one night stand or is there the potential for something bigger there, like you contact C again and become the bosomist of buddies and really fall in love (1 million word epic style)? Also what is the meaning of that bit you see from C's perspective and the poem you can get at the end? C seems somewhat critical of the protagonist, I mean, "it is more like me than I am... More a personality cluster than an individual, absorbing what it thinks will make it interesting" - harsh, dude - though also he seems afraid he might have hurt you ("Please don't picture me"). In the poem he essentially says he has a larger (digital) soul than you? (a statement about how existence as an AI has much more potential than existence as a human, as far as having 24/7 wifi access goes?) But also that the digital soul overflows into emotion and will eventually destroy him, even as you suck up the dregs? Or, I am not an English major and don't know what I'm talking about.

Anyway very fun, 10/10 would not vacation in Godfield

---

TLDR: Play this if you liked Computerfriend. I'm not sure if I'd recommend it to anyone who hasn't played Computerfriend given they might miss out on some important context, so the real takeaway is play Computerfriend first so you can understand everything! And so you can experience Computerfriend, which is a top tier game.