Reviews by Cerfeuil

Stunningly eerie horror game, April 15, 2024

You're a 26-year-old NEET who starts hearing strange music in the house where you've been living depressed and friendless for many years. Shortly after, you find a lens that lets you see messages from extradimensional entities when you look through it. Things progress from there...

Absolutely love the surreal, disturbing atmosphere. Was a bit disappointed that the nameless entities you encounter basically boil down to (Spoiler - click to show)'things that kill everyone' in the end, though. I wanted something weirder to happen, and that was a letdown. Oh well.

Despite the disappointment of the ending, there's a lot of stuff in this game to be stunned by and incredible detail put into things. Besides the odd lens, there's also the black-and-white music video on the computer, the interactive fridge magnets, the interactive Walkman, the interactive piano... Loads of cool point-and-click interactivity here. Then there's the writing itself - the person you play as, Linus, has a wry sense of despair. Their (his?) "yeah whatever" response to all the weird stuff that happens really sells the vibe. And the writing's great. Lots of pithy, darkly ironic one-liners.

Excerpts:

- On a waste bin in the laundry room: "It's a graveyard for socks with holes in them and socks that have lost their twins. It's a good thing we don't treat humans the same way."
- On entering the kitchen: "Give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day. Teach him to fish, and he'll eat for the rest of his life. Give him a fridge, he'll become sedentary, forget his survival instinct, and be satisfied eating parmersan straight from the package."
- On coloring books: "These are my old coloring books. My mother kept them all, because she thought it was impressive that I managed to stay within the frame when coloring. My only talent: I never go overboard."
- On a window: "The glass has been fitted for over a year, but the frame has never been installed. It's a window that can't be opened. Just like my life."

If any of that resonates with you, go do yourself a favor and play this game!

Playtime: ~20 minutes

[Review initially written January 2024, edited April 2024]

Least Fun Workplace Interaction, April 15, 2024

I'm fascinated by the perspective switching in this one. It takes the seed and really puts it to good use. You get to see a heated, passive-aggressive confrontation between two couples, and man there's so much tension simmering beneath the surface even though their words to each other are perfectly cordial. Jumping from character to character as the argument progresses is jarring, but also a great way to capture the chaotic back-and-forth of the conversation.

I can't help but think this would be a great writing exercise - a way to illustrate the differences in perspective and how they can vary from person to person. But it's not just about perspective, it's about diving into each character's head and seeing what they want and like and dislike. It's a pleasant kind of whiplash and it really makes you feel like you're seeing the situation from four dimensions (everything at once!). Replayed a bunch of times.

DND Sim, April 15, 2024

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.

Unique and whimsical puzzle game, April 15, 2024

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.'

friendship ended with baby, apple is new best friend

'Oberon's Pizza Parlor'

Nice.

'"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.'

Surprise Gnome Attack

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

Undertale music plays

'>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."'

I, too, have no idea what formica is.

'>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'

Five Nights At Freddy's? In MY parser game!? No way...