Reviews by EJ

Reflections is a brief and charming game in which you play as the grandchild of a sorceress trying to awaken your magical powers, which are connected to mirrors. Your grandmother is, in fact, the Evil Queen from Snow White, but other than the mirrors there isn't much connection to the story, and the PC's family doesn't come off as particularly evil, even in an aesthetic sort of way. I admit I half-expected an Addams Family type vibe, but save for the references to the Evil Queen, you might as well be a regular fairytale hero/ine, albeit a twenty-first-century one with a smartphone.

Because this game was made for the Text Adventure Literacy Jam and the tutorial is an important part of the goal there, I played with tutorial mode on even though I didn't strictly need it. The tutorial mode seemed well-constructed, starting by explicitly giving you the commands to progress in the first room and then falling into a more hint-like role. The game also seemed like a solid introduction to the kinds of tasks one might have to accomplish in a standard text adventure--examining the environment to find hidden objects, finding a light source to go in a dark cave, getting past hostile NPCs.

The art was simple, colorful, and appealing, and the onscreen map was helpful (my main struggle as a parser player is that I have no sense of direction or ability to remember what is where). I also appreciated the opportunity to interact with various cute animals.

I did have some issues with the parser; the game says it accepts only two-word commands, but in practice more complex commands (PUT thing IN thing or GIVE thing TO NPC) are understood just often enough to trip you up when they're not. I also had some guess-the-verb issues unrelated to that, notably with the dirt piles, and struggled with (Spoiler - click to show)having to refer to the crystals as a unit in order to get a disambiguation menu to interact with a specific crystal, despite the fact that they're called out individually in the room description. But it's possible that my parser experience and learned habits are working against me here and the game's target audience would actually have less trouble than I did.

Speaking of target audience, though, I wonder if the story and aesthetics are pitched a little young relative to the age of a child who would be able to comfortably play a typing-heavy game and read some of the bigger words used. My feeling (as someone who works in an education-adjacent field and does sometimes have to vet texts for reading level appropriateness) is that the content says ages 7-9 to me but the reading and typing aspects say 10-12. I do think it would be a great game for a child and adult to play collaboratively, though.

His Majesty's Royal Space Navy Service Handbook is a dystopian work-com. The setting is the military of an evil space empire led by Smurg IV (whom I'm afraid I couldn't help picturing as Emperor Zurg from Toy Story, but that's neither here nor there), but the protagonist, Sheryl, isn't as interested in fighting the rebel forces as she is in the minutiae of bureaucracy and finding out who's been microwaving fish in the break room.

Gameplay is very smooth; the game has a limited verb list, and in a handy little quality-of-life feature, it even tells you when you no longer need a particular verb to make progress in the game (though in some cases you can still use these verbs to get optional extra flavor). Once you get into the flow of the game, it really carries you along, which is great for a parser-curious newbie or an occasional parser player who finds the possibility space of a more open parser intimidating (as well as for someone who might, hypothetically, be way behind on their Great Play Marathon game list because they were busy attending their sister's college graduation).

The writing's biggest flaw is that it can be a little obvious; if I told you to imagine Office Space in the setting of Star Wars you could probably make a pretty solid guess as to the plot points and jokes it covers. But what really stood out to me was the character of Sheryl. At first, she seemed like a caricature of a petty tyrant middle manager, judgmental and focused on all the wrong things, but the game has more sympathy for her than that would suggest, especially if you chase down some of that optional flavor I mentioned earlier. And it makes great use of her (limited third person) POV on her environment. I've always maintained that one of the secrets of creating a memorable PC in IF is that no item description is too mundane to be a vehicle for characterization, and this game really runs with that philosophy. Here's what you get when you examine the office coffee maker:

A basic osmosis coffee machine that's as old as Sheryl, but it still does its duty diligently without complaint or delay despite other, younger coffee makers being promoted past it because this coffee maker still believes that faith and loyalty are qualities worth believing in even if Senior Command, in their otherwise perfect leadership, are overly-dazzled by supposed innovation that only serves to mock the old ways without actually improving anything.

You can just hear her saying this, with increasingly heightened emotion and a worrying lack of pauses for breath.

And as the game went on, I increasingly felt the pathos of her efforts to metaphorically rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic. Haven't we all been there, trying to focus on the petty things we can control and shut out the sneaking suspicion that they don't really matter much in the face of the explosions happening outside the window?

Upon reading that this was "[t]he most realistic and verismilitudinous text-based simulation of petting a cat ever written", I thought that might be meant sarcastically; I thought there might be something zany going on here. But as it turns out, it

Sorry, where was I? My cat sat down next to me and I started petting him and then he rolled over onto my hand, which he doesn't seem to realize makes it harder for me to continue petting him. But I'm free now, so back to the review.

Anyway, it really is just a very realistic slice-of-life game about petting a cat, with every moment of the petting session described in loving detail. I'm a bit impressed by this; I don't think I could get this many words out of the topic. It's absolutely adorable.

Admittedly, it won't be for everyone; if you're not a cat lover, there's nothing else for you here, and it's unlikely to appeal if you prefer games that are strong on plot. There is some measure of gameplay, though, with the game silently tracking how pleased your feline companion is with you and presenting you with a score at the end. (I got a lukewarm 11/18, probably in part because I did not stop to pet the cat before getting my fries out of the oven as I was afraid my fries would burn if I did.) It also has multiple endings, although the differences are of course not too consequential.

For those who are fond of cats and slice-of-life works, though, it's a very pleasant way to spend a little time, and I would certainly recommend it. But now, if you'll excuse me, my cat feels strongly that I should be petting him again.

I live in a city where a lot of the public buildings are in the Brutalist style. If you hang out with architecture nerds at all, sooner or later they'll start in on an impassioned defense of the style, which goes something like this: Making a building out of poured concrete is actually an incredibly difficult thing to pull off, so every single one of those train stations and city offices is a marvel of engineering that one or more clever people put a huge amount of effort into. And I appreciate that! I really do! But at the end of the day, my feelings on Brutalist architecture can't help but be shaped by the fact that I don't really enjoy being in those buildings.

I thought about that a lot while playing The Van der Nagel Papyrus. The things it does with Inform are very impressive, all the more so for having been done on a very short time limit. And unlike with architecture, I do in this case know enough to understand how hard this stuff is to do and admire the technical chops it must take. But as impressed as I am, the feelings I'm coming away with can't help but be shaped by the fact that I spent a lot more time feeling like I was slogging along than actually having fun.

The Van der Nagel Papyrus is set up as a classic "treasure hunt in an eccentric person's mansion" puzzlefest; the Van der Nagel mansion is about to be demolished and it's up to you to try to rescue its treasures, most notably the titular papyrus, before this happens. The details of who you are and why you're doing this are unspecified and basically immaterial. You're here for the puzzles; that's the point.

This is not to say that the writing isn't good; it's fairly spare but has well-chosen, vivid details. There's a general atmosphere of eeriness and melancholy that I think makes the moments of humor hit harder when they appear, similar to Veeder games I've enjoyed like Fly Fishing (and in contrast to the more consistent zaniness of the Little Match Girl games, which I personally don't have a lot of stamina for). But it's a garnish, and the puzzles are the actual meal. If you're enjoying them, you'll probably have a great time! If you're not, it's not really a "play with the walkthrough open to see where this goes" kind of game. (There is no walkthrough currently, but I assume there will be soon.)

Anyway, picking up the papyrus turns out to be only the beginning, as it transforms the world around it in strange ways. I did enjoy this initial phase of exploration (which takes about an hour); the puzzles were reasonably sized and satisfying to solve and the rewards of new discoveries come pretty steadily. But once that initial phase is over, the effort to reward ratio changes considerably as the game comes to revolve around a fiddly, time-consuming puzzle mechanic that I did not enjoy engaging with.

In fairness to the game, once that initial phase is over, it does tell you that you can quit, and it goes on to restate this several times. But doing so gets you nothing that really feels like a finale, either narratively or mechanically, so the "really, you can stop if you want, you're not expected to continue, it's fine!" assurances feel a little hollow.

I will now discuss in more detail the puzzle mechanic that makes up the bulk of the game by play time and why I didn't enjoy it; this is technically a spoiler, so I will hide it for the sake of people who don't want to diminish the "wow!" moment of the initial discovery, but it may be worth looking at regardless if you, like me, enjoy some kinds of puzzles and don't get on at all with others.

If you’d rather not be spoiled, I’ll just say this: The game’s considerable length is not because it has a ton of content (understandable given the constraints under which it was made), and only a little bit because the puzzles are fiendishly difficult and take a long time to figure out. It’s mostly because, once you get past that initial segment, the puzzles are of a type where actually executing the solution is quite time-consuming (and easy to mess up, and more time-consuming if you do). And that, for me, was not a very satisfying game structure—I prefer the ratio of figuring-things-out to grinding-away-at-a-solution to be a little more weighted towards the former. Obviously I’m in the minority here; a lot of people did love it. And again, from a technical perspective it’s a very impressive achievement. But I hope my perspective might be helpful to people in deciding whether this is the kind of thing they would enjoy or not.

This is set up as a classic piece of “explore a weird and architecturally impossible house” horror, and the uncanniness does escalate nicely, especially if you decide to turn back at any point. Instead of reaching a spooky climax, however, the endings present situations that are merely sort of odd, and the PC’s muted reaction (“Huh.”) contributes to the draining of tension.

I suppose it feels a little like games you play as a child to try to scare yourself, or even just the experience of walking down the hall to the bathroom at night at an age where that passes for spooky. Coming out in the light and finding nothing too badly amiss is somewhat fitting for that kind of vibe. But as a grown-up I think I’d prefer some actual payoff.

This is unfortunately one of the less accessible pieces I’ve encountered in this year’s ECTOCOMP, and I don’t mean that in the way that poetry can be inaccessible to people unfamiliar with the artform. I know I repeat this constantly, but please, please use a contrast checker to make sure your text is legible. This gave me a headache to read. Also, I don’t usually complain about font sizes since that’s the easiest thing to change on the user’s end—any old browser will do it—but as someone who doesn’t generally need to boost the font size for vision reasons I did need to boost it here because it is tiny and my poor fine motor control was not up to clicking to continue when the target was so small.

The chained poem conceit is interesting, with each poem taking the last line of the previous as the first line and spinning off into a different direction with it, and the poems cover many different topics. The one that stuck with me most was the one about relatives squabbling over an inheritance, which I thought made interesting use of the unique affordances of the medium in what it was doing with cycling links. The rest of the poems don’t really make use of anything besides (sometimes very slow) timed text; I see in theory why that’s appealing to a poet and seems like a natural outgrowth of the way line breaks and general space on the page are used in static poetry, but I personally did not feel like it added to the experience. I do think there’s promise here and I would be interested to see more interactive poetry that really explored the question of “what can you do with interactive poetry that you can’t do with the regular on-paper kind?” (Other than make the text fade in really slowly.)

The least important thing about this game is that every time I see the title I start humming the similarly-titled folk song, and I don't want to be the only one doing that so I'm sharing it with you. You're welcome.

Moving along, Beneath the Weeping Willow is an Ink game where you play as a ghost. A couple of vacationers have rented out your old house on AirB&B on Halloween night, the only night you can interact with the living, so this is your one shot to try to get them to solve the mystery of your death and lay you to rest properly. Despite the ghost situation, the spookiness factor is low, and the general atmosphere is one of autumnal coziness tempered by slight melancholy.

You can’t interact with your guests directly, so it’s a matter of figuring out what you can interact with, what effect it will have, and how the guests move around the house at various points in the evening. Restarting at least once may be necessary, as the whole thing is on a tight timer. The apparent complexity of it really impressed me given the four-hour limit on a Petite Mort game. In general, I found it surprisingly polished and rewarding to play, and I would recommend it to anyone who is looking for a satisfying bite-sized puzzle game of moderate difficulty.

Sometimes the mechanisms we develop to protect ourselves or make ourselves feel better outlive their usefulness and become actually detrimental. (Sometimes, also, they weren’t that healthy to start with.) They can spin out of control and start running your life while you feel helpless to break free of them and do the things you actually want to do.

Also, some types of internalized bigotry can create a kind of double-think, especially for a well-meaning person who wants to extend some understanding to others: Here’s why it’s okay for other people to be like this, but not for me. It’s perfectly valid and I wouldn’t judge people for it, it’s just that I don’t have it bad enough to really count. Of course, despite one’s best intentions, this often ends up manifesting in ways that do hurt others, especially if they remind you of yourself.

To elucidate how I Got You explores these themes would be to spoil several of the turns its narrative takes over its relatively short play time, and I do think it’s better to go into it with minimal knowledge about where it’s going, but I will say I found it effective and relatable.

When I first played it, I assumed this was an "illusion of choice" type of game; the outcome I got felt fairly inevitable, and a lot of time choices that I made that were too honest or vulnerable got redirected to a "safer" choice, so I assumed that would happen regardless of what you chose. But in fact it turns out that options that are silly or obviously inappropriate will not be redirected, and you can choose those and see a wildly different version of events in which nothing very horrific happens to you because you self-sabotaged to avoid confronting how you really feel. So that's... good...? (Well, narratively and as a way of using interactivity, it's very effective! For the PC, though, hard to say what's a better outcome.)

Detective en habitación cerrada es un juego de Inform alucinante protagonizado por un detective que sólo puede investigarse a sí mismo. Sin embargo, necesita un delito que investigar, un cliente y un culpable; descubrir cómo conseguirlos es el objetivo del juego.

El tono de la narración es sarcástico, y la premisa se utiliza para satirizar el individualismo y la privatización, deleitándose con un juego de palabras sobre los distintos significados de “privado”. La prosa es uno de los puntos fuertes del juego (aunque la perspectiva cambia de segunda a primera persona a veces; no se si era intencional).

Una vez que entendí la mecánica básica, pude avanzar bien un rato, pero hacia el final empecé a tener problemas con entender la lógica, aunque parece que me he encontrado con algún error en el juego.

Al final logré resolver el caso; el resultado no fue precisamente un final feliz, pero en este juego me sorprendería si algo así fuera posible. En general disfruté de la experiencia.

Detective en habitación cerrada is a mind-bending Inform game featuring a detective who can only investigate himself. Nevertheless, he needs a crime to investigate, a client, and a culprit; figuring out how to produce these things is the goal of the game.

The tone of the narration is sarcastic, and the premise is used to satirize individualism and privatization, playing on different meanings of “private”. The writing is generally a strong point of the game (though the point of view slips from second person to first person at times; I wasn’t sure if that was intentional).

Once I figured out the basic mechanics, I was able to make good progress for a while, but towards the end I started to struggle with the logic, although it seems like I may have encountered a bug in the game.

In the end I did manage to solve the case; the result was not exactly a happy ending, but in this game I would be surprised if such a thing were possible. Overall I enjoyed the experience.

Go-Strange-Ghost Range is one of Andrew Schultz’s oronym games in the vein of Why Pout and Us Too. If you’ve played those games, you likely know whether you’ll enjoy this one; if not, this might be a good way to see how you get on with this particular form of wordplay-based gameplay, since it’s a short and straightforward experience. There is a particular order puzzles need to be solved in, but you’re not keeping track of a complex interlocking set of dependencies like in the longer games. A set of progressive hints is available for each room, I believe, although I only needed to turn to them once. The whole thing is remarkably smooth for speed IF, and in general I found it a delightful little morsel.

Especially impressive is that this (and its two companion games) was created in Adventuron, so none of the code from the previous oronym games was used. As an added bonus, this has allowed the addition of pixel graphics, which are an endearing supplement to the game’s whimsy.