Ratings and Reviews by EJ

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.

Dad’s Shiva is a choice-based game about visiting your sister during the official mourning period for your father, though you didn’t have a good relationship with either of them. The family’s past is a thorny mess of hurt and secrets and resentment (mind the content warnings if you’re sensitive to stories about child abuse), and while poking around your sister’s apartment you can ferret some things out, but you can’t really fix anything.

The writing is simple and effective, and I liked the specificity of the New York Jewish community that it’s set in, reflected in the details of the setting and the distinctive Yiddish-inflected syntax of some of the dialogue. The PC is a little bit of an enigma outside of their trauma; the true character centerpiece is not the PC nor even the titular father, but the PC’s sister, Miranda, who is complicated and unpleasant but not one-dimensionally hateable.

The endings deny any real closure or catharsis; I wouldn’t say they come unexpectedly, but there’s an uneasy sense of non-resolution, a lack of some significant final action to take. Which is perfectly appropriate to the subject matter; really, anything else might have felt too pat.