Ratings and Reviews by EJ

Quotient is a game in which you are a new recruit to a secret superspy organization and have to fulfill various missions to increase your agent ranking and maybe incidentally save the world. It starts with a gratuitous homage to Zork that concludes by earnestly explaining to you that it is an homage to Zork, which is a signal of what you’re in for on various levels: first, that this is an old-school throwback game with treasures to collect, mazes, sometimes wonky puzzle logic, and everything-but-the-kitchen-sink wacky worldbuilding; second, that it is packed with references to all the media the author enjoys; and third, that it is not in any way subtle.

It’s also got all the polish issues common to first parser games—underimplementation, lack of synonyms, minimally responsive NPCs, and so on—and puzzles tend to be underclued. It has a tendency to intercept you doing X to tell you you need to do Y first instead of just making Y an implicit action, which was often frustrating. It’s also very wide-open after the first big puzzle, with little direction as far as where you should be going and what you should be doing in what order. I relied a lot on the helpful puzzle dependency chart that the author has supplied, but I frequently yearned for a proper walkthrough (or better yet, a little more signposting within the game). I didn't have a strong sense of my overall goals and spent a lot of time just wandering around looking for puzzles that I was currently able to complete.

Part of the problem is that it uses a slightly unorthodox approach to NPC conversation, in which ask/tell is implemented, but so is just plain TALK TO [NPC]; not only that, but sometimes TALK TO [NPC] will get you different information if you enter it multiple times, something I didn't really try because I did not expect it to be useful. There is a certain amount of redundancy between what different NPCs will tell you, however, which is ultimately what allowed me to get through the game despite never figuring out that sometimes the intended solution is for the player to just TALK TO [NPC] three times in a row.

I did appreciate that interactable objects are usually in boldface, while examinable scenery is usually italicized. (Though there are a few exceptions, which may or may not have been intended.) An “exits” command also makes up for the occasional unlisted exit and makes the mazes much more tolerable. Having an old-school feel doesn’t have to mean eschewing any quality-of-life features that the original Zork didn’t have, and I appreciate that Quotient understands this.

And in general, for all that Quotient is unpolished and the play experience can be chaotic, a massive enthusiasm consistently shines through—enthusiasm for Ohio chili restaurants and tourist spots around the world, for classic text adventures, for most of the major sci-fi and fantasy properties of the 20th and 21st centuries, and for the author’s own creations. While playing the game, I kept thinking of a bit from Susan Sontag’s journals (is this a hideously pretentious reference to make in a review of a game that says things like “It’s a maize maze… get it”? Probably). Sontag wrote that a writer, ideally, should be four people: “the nut” whose obsessions provide the material for the work, “the moron” who lets those obsessions flow onto the page (or screen), “the stylist” who makes the material artful, and “the critic” who supplies intelligence. But, she argued, you only really need the first two. Polish and style are nice, but that enthusiasm is irreplaceable; without it, a work feels soulless. And when it’s there, it’s hard to keep from getting swept up in it, at least a little.

(I played the commercial version of this game.)

The Roottrees Are Dead is what you might call an Obra Dinn-like, a subgenre of mystery game in which you're given certain information about past events involving a large group of individuals and must organize that information and use it to find more, with identifying which person is which a major aspect of the gameplay. The commercial version consists of the base game, which I understand to be the same as the free version except for having new art, and the new "Roottreemania" scenario.

Other entries in this genre that I've played have mostly revolved around gory deaths and supernatural happenings, but Roottrees has lower stakes. Here you're doing genealogical research to untangle the family tree of a wealthy family, and the game is quite adamant that there are no skeletons in the family closet worse than infidelity and a bit of period-typical homophobia (anytime there's the suggestion that something more dire might have occurred, you quickly run into assurances that that's not so and is just conspiracy-theory sensationalism). This may disappoint fans of the genre who prefer the darker vibes of Obra Dinn itself, Type Help, or the Golden Idol games; on the other hand, there must be people out there who enjoy the style of gameplay but would prefer to do without all the murder and curses and whatnot, in which case Roottrees might be exactly what they're looking for.

The base game seems very well designed, with reasonably logical connections between bits of information, a decent amount of redundancy (I missed several documents referenced in the wrap-up but still managed to fill out the family tree, including almost all optional info), and a story that can get a little melodramatic in parts but never seriously strains credulity. I found it a bit on the easy side, but I've played a lot of this type of game and done a lot of logic puzzles (plus I used to have a job that involved fact-checking via information publicly available on the internet, which might have helped).

I did come out of it wishing for a bit more challenge, but "Roottreemania" soon had me feeling like I'd made that wish on the monkey's paw. "Roottreemania" does several things to increase the difficulty, but in general I found them more frustrating than fun:

• There is more information that can be found in only one place, without even nudges in the right direction when you search something that's close-but-not-quite, leading to more bottlenecks.

• In particular, there is a lot more information that can be found only in periodicals and not from the general in-game web search. There are also more periodicals and there is less hinting towards which ones would be useful to search on a given topic. This leads to a certain amount of busywork plugging search terms into every available periodical.

• Texts are, on average, longer, leading to a certain "pixel hunt" feeling of "wait, which proper nouns from this very, very long article have I not searched in every available database yet?"

• There are more multi-step chains where you have to go down a rabbit hole that at first glance doesn't seem relevant in order to get necessary information, but the game will also let you go down rabbit holes for red herrings sometimes, meaning that just the fact that you're still getting information doesn't mean you're on the right track. A more authentic internet research experience, perhaps, but not ideal for a game.

I ended up making a lot of use of hints while playing "Roottreemania", but the adaptive hints respond to what documents you've seen and not to what bits of the family tree you've locked in, and as there is still some redundancy, that wasn't always the most helpful.

Parts of the narrative in "Roottreemania" felt a bit more contrived as well, with some obvious retcons.

I did enjoy my time with the game overall; the gameplay in the base game is satisfying even if it is a little easy, and the writing is often fun--it is at its best when poking gentle fun at internet culture and the ways people interact with celebrity. (This is set in the '90s, so the oversharing, parasociality, and general weirdness aren't quite in full swing, but the roots are visible.) But I didn't feel that it ever quite managed to offer a difficult but rewarding challenge.

Flight is a game about leaving an abusive relationship with only one significant choice, which I thought was used well. The PC has been living in a foreign country with their abusive partner and is now trying to make a flight back to their home country, only to be beset along the way by various obstacles (some more self-inflicted than others).

It’s a very small slice of this character’s life and the toxic relationship they’re trying to escape, but as the description above may indicate, it avoids the common trap of over-genericizing to try to make things more relatable. It’s very strongly grounded in this specific character’s somewhat unusual experiences and in who they are as a person.

As the PC makes their way through the cavalcade of complications that attend international travel, the stark, simple prose efficiently conveys their bone-deep exhaustion. It’s not just that they’re coming off a restless night at a hostel (where they didn’t even get to use the shower!); the whole situation has been draining their energy for as long as it’s been going on. It’s the kind of exhaustion that makes it so much easier to keep doing what you’re doing than to make a change—underscored by the knowledge that if you don’t make the change you’re never going to feel any better.

Whether they do make that change is, of course, up to the player. I recommend taking the time to see both options.

Making dumplings is a sweet storylet-based game about cooking with your partner and connecting with your family’s culture (with which you as a queer person have a complicated relationship) via food, both things that are near and dear to my heart.

I don’t know how well it reads if you haven’t played any of the other Pageantverse games, but I’m very proud of Karen and Em for overcoming their hangups enough to move in together, even if Karen still isn’t sure if they’re actually in a relationship for real. Both the early-relationship awkwardness and the food are carefully observed with many endearing details, and even if the dumplings come out looking a little messy, I believe that they taste delicious.

(I have to say that I did not put in the frozen shrimp, not because of Em’s possible concerns about the environmental impact of aquaculture, but because the thought of putting in expired shrimp horrified me even if they’re frozen.)