Ratings and Reviews by EJ

Errand Run is a short Twine work, nominally about going to the grocery store, but all is not what it seems. It has a few choices that I feel work well to keep the player engaged, (Spoiler - click to show)although there’s no real branching.

The writing sketches out an intriguing portrait of the PC in a short amount of time and doles out “wait, what?” details with carefully calculated escalation. By the time the player reaches the ending, the broad strokes of the situation are unlikely to be a surprise, but there’s still a lot that’s unexpected in the way those lines are filled in, with some striking, well-chosen imagery. The Twine styling is Harlowe default, but the use of text effects and colors was effective and I never found it unpleasant to read or distracting.

It won’t be to everybody’s tastes, of course, but it’s a short enough piece that I think it’s worth checking out. I found it well-crafted and look forward to trying this author’s other entries.

The Burger Meme Personality Test is a satirical short game that mocks the personality tests that some companies use as part of their hiring process.

Certainly there is a rich vein of absurdity to be mined here. The last test of this nature that I took consisted of placing yourself along a continuum between two statements, except that the statements weren’t really in opposition—think “I like to make friends” vs. “I like to experience new things.” How do you answer if it’s neither, or both? What answer are they even looking for when both options seem like things you would broadly want? I probably thought a little too hard about the implications of it all. I didn’t get an interview. And that’s on the tame side for this type of thing.

Burger Meme definitely gets some good hits in. I like the unexplained “sins” counter at the bottom, and the part where it makes you rate the relevance of the test and then reveals that it’s taking those answers into account for hiring. (I do always wonder if they’re doing that.) The game also makes good use of multimedia, is highly polished, and is short enough not to overstay its welcome. On balance I definitely think it’s worth your time to play through at least once. (I played twice and got two different endings, neither of which involved getting the job.)

But the “good ending” you get for refusing to completely abase yourself feels a little hollow, to me. Like, sure, I’m too good for that evil company, good for me! I still need a job, though, don’t I? Do I even have any non-evil options? (I’m projecting a little, of course, but at the same time, the game seems to invite that.) “How much am I willing to suck up to the corporate overlords in order to pay my bills?” is in real life a complicated question, and in providing karmic rewards of a sort to anyone who decides the answer is “not that much”, the game makes it seem much simpler.

But hey—in the unforgiving landscape of the current job market, maybe a little bit of (occasionally schadenfreude-flavored) wish fulfillment is perfectly reasonable.

(That said, if you question the AI nature of the supposed chatbot administering the test, there is another suite of endings that are a little less expected—but I haven't had the chance to explore them very fully yet.)