Reviews by Cerfeuil
IF Comp 2022
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Interactive dream, March 27, 2024Interesting style of writing which is more poetry than prose. Prose poem, if you will. Love the surrealism and the moody atmosphere with its urban melancholy. The game reveals just enough to keep you guessing, but doesn't overexplain. The puzzles are dreamy enough to fit the mood, with sensible solutions, though the frequent deaths were slightly annoying since each takes you back to the beginning.
Sadly there are a few errors with spelling/grammar that detracted from the experience. And I thought the true end was too melodramatic for my tastes, but the writing is gorgeous. One of my favorite entries for the comp.
A few excerpts:
The seventh flight
Is dark and stifled like
Sleep after middle age,
Oxygen thin,
Never quite enough,
You wheeze on the unseen stairs.
Borough
You see the tongue of the main road,
Pearled with streetlights,
The sigil shape of the intersection,
A track-flash light up the crowded sky,
The lamplight-snake of the slope down onto the common
And, deep in the park,
A white light
That illuminates the error between the trees,
A glass house
Under a tiled roof,
A wrong home in a place not for people.
The school eats you alive.
Not at all surprising,
You were certain it would from the very first day.
They used to make you prey here,
Taught you about homophones and stripped you down to your underpants
To stretch on the greasy floor,
Provoked vomiting fits in the hall at lunchtime
And put you on a table with your
Face turned to the wall
And told you every day
To grow up
So you could get old enough to die.
You remember writing something on the wall,
Scored a red wound in the brick
By the exhaust pipes that steamed like dragons
In a secret language no one could read,
Not even you.
You wonder what it said.
You wonder if it's still there,
Somewhere inside the monster,
Down in the black of it
At the very end.
Tonal dissonance, December 1, 2022This may just be me, but I liked the 'fall into a deep depression' part much more than the (Spoiler - click to show)'friend comes in and magically uplifts you out of your deep depression' part. Probably it's just me. But the ending seems incongruously upbeat when coupled with the very bleak beginning. I really enjoyed the beginning, though. Captures that process of withdrawing from the world.
It's a short game, so if you think you'd like it, I'd encourage you to play it yourself.
Escalatory workplace horror, November 29, 2022In which you're a generic office worker with a bit of a problem. Love the escalation in this one, it starts off maybe realistic then keeps ramping up and up. The beginning is slow, a little boring in my opinion, but when the visual effects kick in that's when the real fun starts. Wish things would go downhill faster and farther, actually. What if you could burn down the company office? What if you could kill your boss?
The writing is a tad too "woe is me" for my tastes, but that's personal preference. I do feel sorry for the protagonist.
Have to mention the last line as well. That last line is gold. It really makes the story for me. (Spoiler - click to show)The idea that everyone else is dealing with this and there's absolutely no reason for you to worry about it, but you hate it anyway, resonates with me on a personal level. I wish it had been foreshadowed more, since on replay it seems more like a 'comes out of nowhere' twist, but I love it anyway. The concept of an otherwise-ordinary world where everyone is just bleeding out of their noses all the time is excellently surreal as well. End note!
Great game for AI fans, November 29, 2022So I didn't manage to beat this game within the 2-hour mark (spent too long trying to access the janitorbot's security logs before I gave up and looked at the walkthrough). Very fun game. Nothing super unique about the setting, but the whole 'you're trapped in an abandoned ship with one questionably helpful character who may or may not be a mass murderer' is a great concept. Also, Portal reference. Also you can make friends with the rogue AI! what! I am a sucker for AI and character interaction so this was good. The puzzles are well-balanced, no stupid guessing involved, but talking to the AI is the real draw of this game and it delivers. Love how every new thing you discover tells you more and more about what actually happened, until you finally figure out the dark truth. I guessed that (Spoiler - click to show)the AI was responsible for the deaths early on, though. After seeing Trell's logs it becomes rather obvious that Solis has gone rogue, though I didn't know why until the reveal about the technician.
Beat the game after 2.5 hours. Detail on endings: (Spoiler - click to show)got the fifth ending (because of course), friendship acquired. Went back for the fourth ending but didn't feel like getting any of the others because I like Solis and don't want anything bad to happen to them. Good game.
Witch and familiar, November 29, 2022Fun little game. You play as a witch trying to escape a mental prison. Well, you actually play as her familiar (?), who apparently lives inside her head? Like a lot of other things about the plot, it's never fully explained. But I liked seeing the two characters work together, and there's a nice sense of playful camaraderie going on. No matter what choices you make, it's clear that you're great partners who've been together for a long while. Wish it was explored more.
There are cool scenes inside the mind prison—you can do fortune telling! Brew potions! Feed a cat! But ultimately the game isn't very complex, and there are too many interesting details that are thrown out there and then not really addressed. A few grammatical errors too, but they didn't detract heavily from the experience.
Also, my minor gripe is the potion game takes too long to show you which ingredients you have. Would have replayed, but didn't have the patience to prepare all the ingredients again.
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