Ratings and Reviews by Kinetic Mouse Car

You play as a young man named “Olde” MacDonald. Do you have what it takes to be a farmer and support your family (and maybe even become famous)?

Gameplay
The game is organized into “cycles” of five days that begin on December 27th which ends when the new year begins. Gameplay consists of feeding or medicating animals, fixing stalls, or butchering animals.

Here, you have the following materials on hand:
🌾 Animal feed: 3764 kilograms
💊 Medicine: 54 units

However, the game predominantly focuses on butchering animals. Once you stockpile a certain amount of meat everything after that can be sold for income. There is some strategy to this. Certain animals produce large quantities of less expensive meat while others produce small quantities of expensive meat. I would focus on the former until I fulfilled the stockpile and then switch to the latter when it came to selling surplus. Butchering animals is not my thing, but this is NOT a graphic or gory game. When you do butcher an animal it is merely implied.

When I first played the game, I thought I was in a dream of resource management. But this wilted. For instance, there is hardly any resource management with the medicine. Only the (Spoiler - click to show) lambs get sick and require use of the medicine supplies. The lambs also die too quickly. The first time I played I was busy exploring the barn and within a few turns (less than one day in the game’s world) all the lambs died of starvation. I had to start over. Because this occurred at the start of the game it was not an issue but still seemed weakly designed.

⚠️ The 🐑 lambs in Stall 1 are out of food!
☠️ All of the 🐑 lambs have died.
::: What do you want to do?

Great.

With each year new types of animals are added to a stall and the number of animals in each stall will also increases. Gameplay becomes chaotic. The animals keep damaging their stalls and running out of food too quickly for the player to keep up with.

The game ends once you make $10,000. You can either choose to keep playing (and instead of going to the December of the next year to start a new cycle you keep on playing into a January) or give up farming to seek a different path in life. There are some achievements including three hidden ones. The only hidden one I reached was called (Spoiler - click to show) “Clean Sweep” where you manage to butcher all your animals before the year ends.

The song
Just so we are all on the same page, the game is a rift off a song by the same title. Each verse is about the animals on a farmer’s farm. In the game school children visit your farm to write songs about it. That is supposed to be a reference to the song that it is based on.

It seems like original song is based on barnyard animals, livestock. The game introduces lambs, cows, goats, ducks… snakes? Parrots and frogs? An elephant? The game transitions towards housing, slaughtering, and selling and/or consuming exotic animals (again, nothing graphic). I think the game is trying to take a creative approach to the song by incorporating more novel animals, but the result is confusing and outlandish. The frustrating nature of the gameplay makes it difficult to appreciate these changes because you can barely keep up with everything. Plus, the introduction of these animals does nothing to influence the gameplay or the story beyond needing to butcher them.

Setting
I recently played another game by the author called Zombie Blast 2023 which I also reviewed. Zombie Blast 2023 took a unique approach to ChoiceScript by incorporating free range of movement in its gameplay. Free range of movement is where the player can roam around in a space while directly examining or interacting with things in their environment. In Zombie Blast 2023 the goal is to defend your house against zombies. Having free range of movement in the house emphasized that the player must engage in combat. Old MacDonald Had a Farm also tries to use free range of movement in its gameplay, but the result fell short.

Old MacDonald Had a Farm uses this technique to map out the barn which is creative. You can walk across the barn in sections and enter six different stalls. It flows like a parser game, which is great to see in ChoiceScript. But its implementation in the game is repetitive and inconvenient. It means having repeat the sequence of “enter the barn,” “move east,” “move east,” “move east,” “move east,” “enter the stall to the north” just to get to stall 5 to put some food down. It gets tedious as you try to process dozens of animals throughout the barn. As you gain more animals the screen becomes filled with notifications which means that the screen is always shifting. It becomes “enter barn” (scroll down), “move east” (scroll down), “move east” (scroll down), you get the idea. Disabling animation in settings reduces this a little but does not completely prevent the screen from jumping around.

You may run into bugs. Frequently, I would get popup error messages such as, "farmer line 1351: visited this line too many times (1000),” that would appear while I was moving through the barn. I applaud the author’s experimentation with the medium, but it was not as successful as Zombie Blast 2023.

Story + Characters
The game begins with a story segment where MacDonald attends a dance where he encounters a young woman (her name is randomized) that he knew from childhood. Here, the game strives to create a wholesome 1940s atmosphere. The two fall in love and get married. This was a great story-centric way of starting the game and I thought that the gameplay would be intersected by more story scenes. Yes, there are scenes at the end of each year to summarize your progress, but it is not the same. Instead, everything is stagnant and repetitive.

Character dialog seems unnatural. For example, at the end of each day the protagonist’s wife says, "MacDonald, time to wrap things up and come home for dinner. Tonight, the family needs to eat 9 kilograms of meat." The phrase “the family needs to eat 9 kilograms of meat” is awkwardly worded and too clinical given the context.

You seem to have a (Spoiler - click to show) kid every year and once the oldest is barley older than a decade you start getting a grandchild each year. If you fail to butcher enough meat your family has to eat cabbage and potatoes for dinner. This is enough to make them malnourished within one day. Within two or three days (Spoiler - click to show) a child dies from malnourishment because they had to eat cabbage and potatoes for a few days instead of meat. It just seemed so artificial and unrealistic in comparison to the content we see at the start of the game. Perhaps it is meant to be comical, but I was expecting some story milestones.

Visuals
Its creative visuals are probably the strongest part in the game. Visually, it is incredibly polished and a creative use of ChoiceScript. Text area is dark blue set against a pale blue backdrop. There are clever little icons used throughout the game including animals and human characters.

Final thoughts
I wish I could say this was an excellent game, but it falls short of its goal. The ideas are there: colourful visuals, resource management, basing the story after a song, and more. But the finished piece is lacking. The implementation is flimsy, and the story dulls soon after the game begins. There is no denying the unique use of ChoiceScript and I think that the game is worth trying for that reason alone. But it probably will not sustain players’ interests for longer than a few rounds.

In fact, dazzling would be an understatement. But before we dive into that let’s start with some background.

Note: This review is about a first chapter demo for a commercial game (hm, now that I think about it Andromeda Acolytes is probably the first commercial Inform game that I have played). As a formality, the review is also based off info on the IFDB listing. Other websites have additional content.

Continuing…..

Andromeda Acolytes is part of the Andromeda Series and, based on what I have seen so far, seems to branch off in terms of story depth and gameplay style (such as scuba diving). If I had not known that this game was part of the series, I would not have made the connection, or at least within the demo. The Andromeda Series was created by Marco Innocenti and is certainty worth your time. I was not particularly a fan of Andromeda Awakening - The Final Cut (I must admit, I only played the first half) but was really impressed with Andromeda Apocalypse — Extended Edition which won the 2012 IF Comp (and I played that one several times and recommend it). There are other installments by other authors but those two seem like the "main ones.” Even if Andromeda Acolytes takes the series in a new direction, I have no doubt that it will be valuable addition.

Gameplay
This is a seriously cool game. When I first saw it, I pounced. The demo reminds me of the game Subnautica (non-interactive fiction) and Tangaroa Deep (Twine) composed into vivid Inform piece. For a true effect watch Blue Planet afterwards.

The protagonist’s name is Korhva Vits, but usually referred to as Vits in the game. Vits has been assigned to a submersible mission to clear debris and relocate sea life. The player stays in a dive zone where they manage objects’ weight limits and their own oxygen levels. The game ends once you complete all tasks.

The locations can be overwhelming at first due to the amount of detail (which is also a good thing) but the game makes things user-friendly, especially with character dialog. The “think” command summarizes your tasks which is especially useful. I appreciate how the player’s oxygen levels decrease at steady but slow pace rather than depleting too quickly. Part of the immersive quality is that creatures are swimming around as you explore which gives it a simulation feel. It is the construction of a detail ecosystem that makes it vivid.

Story
The overarching story is that the planet Monarch (actually, I do remember Monarch from the other games) is populated with a modern human civilization that has no knowledge of how humanity came to exist on their world. The demo is too short to really delve into the game’s vast story. If anything, I was expecting a bit more in terms of a synopsis, but the effect only leaves me drooling for more. The game’s description (VR, cities, machines, wild technology, you name it) is vast, and the demo only skims the surface. There is a (Spoiler - click to show) mysterious slab under the boulder in the trench, which was interesting, but otherwise no story developments. But hey, it is a demo, and I think the author balanced story content with gameplay. Andromeda Acolytes paces its worldbuilding.

Characters
The gameplay is in first person. There is not a whole lot of information on Korhva Vits, but unlike Innocenti’s first two games in the series the protagonist is female. I thought that this was an interesting change and look forward to learning more about Vits. The game’s description explains that there are three other female protagonists who will appear in the full release, but for the demo it is just Vits.

There are three other characters whom the player hears over the comms: Dion, Hugo, and Eichi, but the player only speaks to Dion since the other two are in different dive zones. The game uses the “talk to” mechanic and characters have detailed responses based on the location whenever the player speaks. Even though the game does not share much about Dion’s character they are still interesting because of their friendly relationship with Vits.

Visuals
That is correct, there is a few visual elements in this game. There is a map on the right side of the screen and consists of a bright blue gradient background with boxes marking the player's location and the possible exits. This minor but crisp feature evokes an ocean atmosphere with its colour choice. It can also be turned off to save screen space. The author seems to strive to make things user-friendly. Hopefully the full release will continue with built-in maps.

(The cover art is also fantastic, by the way.)

Final thoughts
As you can see, the game’s page on IFDB says that the game will be released in 2025 (potentially shorted if you support the author) which is a while, but I think it will be worth the wait. If the demo is any indicator, I have a feeling that it will be immensely popular with players when it is released. The player only gets to dip their toes into the sand with the demo, but it has every sign of being a stellar game.

Normally AIF is not my thing, but they could use reviews anyway, so why not. This one is about being casted in adult film. You receive a letter inviting you to audition at Badger Studios but when you show up you learn that your audition has been canceled. The only option is to try to convince the director, casting director, and producer that you are the right pick for their next film.

Gameplay
The objective is to gain the approval of people who will help you land a role. Puzzles are straight forward and do not require much creativity: Give each character the time of their life based on what they want. The score consists of the tasks that you complete. You do not need a full score to win the game. Heck, I could not figure out how to get a full score, though I came close. Maybe someone else can. I thought the game would (Spoiler - click to show) end once you are casted but there is an endgame where you perform in a film (BSHW2, you will have to play the game if you want to know what that stands for), which was a nice conclusion.

Story + Characters
The only thing we know about the protagonist is that she is unnamed, eighteen years old, and came from England. She has already had a dream of becoming an actress in the adult film industry, but besides that, Casting does not seem like a protagonist-oriented story. Instead, she seems more generalized. There is also a total of six other NPCs that you directly interact with.

The game suffers from lack of atmosphere. I am not talking about “action,” I mean worldbuilding, character building. For example, Anna (film director) is said to be an award-winning director when you first meet her, but you do not see any awards on her office wall. It occurred to me that this would have been an opportunity for character building.

The character dialog is the weakest part of this game. You can talk to characters about hardly anything, even basic things such as Badger Studios. And then you have this:

>ask Anna about audition
"I don't think you've got what it takes to get this part," Anna tells you.

>ask Anna about me
"You've a fairly interesting look," Anna says. "You might have a shot at movies."

It seems like she contradicts herself. When you try to get her to elaborate on these points you get “Anna shrugs.” Well, perhaps dialog is not meant to be the focus in this game. But even if dialog is not how progress in made, it would still have added some depth.

Final thoughts
What else? You can also play the game in commentary mode (Spoiler - click to show) (“cmtry on”) if you want to hear the author’s take on things. I do not have a lot to compare it to, in terms of AIF. As a general IF piece I would say it is a decent game. The puzzles are straightforward and there are no noticeable bugs. It was an interesting experience but not really a game I would return to. But if you are looking for some AIF then yes, I recommend it.

Our PC is Yonza, an alien protagonist seeking out a life with purpose. Often games opt with human protagonists with diverse alien NPCs, so I like the game’s approach. It is also a game about gender and life circumstances. As Yonza you will explore these issues by interacting with a diverse range of characters.

Gameplay
The decision at the start of the game is to pick between the Rebel Alliance and the Federation. If you choose Rebel Alliance, you go home to share your decision with your family before leaving to find Rebel presence in the city so you can accept your first mission. This part involves hanging out at bars and burger joints until you find the correct password to meet with other rebels. If you choose the Federation instead, you will automatically be assigned to a mission. This too, involves investigating culinary establishments but character encounters have some variation.

The game has the player roll dice for some choices, but dice concept is only used a few times. I am not particularly a fan of games that rely on dice, but if they are going to utilize it, I feel like they should stick to it. This game abandons it early on. The game also does not say that you need dice at the start of the game so you might be left hunting for one after the game begins. Or you can skip but I still gave it a try on my first playthrough.

Eventually, the game becomes less interactive. Aside from choosing the order in which to talk to people, which does not affect anything, the gameplay consists of clicking on a single link at the bottom of the screen. There is also a lot of text on the screen that can be difficult to process. I recommend playing this game at least twice to experience its content.

Story
The game's genre on IFDB is "Educational," and its description says that its goal is to tackle queer issues in a sci-fi setting. This is an excellent goal. Science fiction opens all sorts of possibilities with alien species, locations, technologies, and political customs that act as a backdrop when exploring present day subjects. For an author, your mind can go wild while conveying important messages to players. In fact, there already are games out there that analyze crucial topics about social issues and human rights through their engaging stories. Star Yonza would be the same way if it did not suffer from unpolished implementation. The idea is still important, but it is too confusing and scattered at the moment for its idea to leave a mark on the player. I liked how the game portrays a diverse range of family structures, such as with Yonza’s family, but the rest felt murky.

There are two story points that the player investigates. The first is (Spoiler - click to show) housing displacement in the aftermath of a civil war, and the second is a lumber resource conflict. The player interviews a selection of individuals for both issues. The most cohesive part of the game is talking to NPCs about their experiences. This is where the game starts to dig in with subjects about housing and economic equality. For each case the game lists NPC responses on the screen so you can compare them until everyone has been interviewed. The gameplay then shuffles on. I found it difficult to outline the game’s story structure and plot elements, but the ending (Spoiler - click to show) is lighthearted. It is about cultivating your own family and friend support system with the people around you. It also a satisfying ending for Yonza because everything seems to click into place.

Visuals
The game sticks to a basic visual design with white screen, black text, and blue links. The text was easy to read though paragraphs are formatted awkwardly.

There are quite a few spelling and grammar errors. I am not referring to pronouns which at first, I thought they were misspellings until I realized that they are intentional. I do like how the author strives diversify beyond him/he, she/her, they/them pronouns in a sci-fi work.

Final thoughts
Star Yonza is a short game (10 minutes) that you should play more than once to get the most out of it. Even though it seems to have (Spoiler - click to show) only one ending there is variation in the gameplay that can be enjoyed. The game is rough around the edges, something that would be alleviated through testing. Regardless, its characters, including Yonza, are still vibrant and its subject matter on queerness is still significant.

This is a short mystery game where you search someone’s apartment in their absence for a black phone.

Gameplay
There is a brief intro that is a bit confusing. I will summarize it here to provide some context. It is the dead of night in the apartment. Peter, a possibly a doorman or attendant, hears a stranger loudly ringing at the entrance. This stranger is named Ronald and is the PC for the gameplay. Ronald manages to sneak into the apartment of Anastasia Kozlowa who happens to be away on a trip. By the time the door to the apartment closes, Ronald is already inside. Peter decides to wait in the hallway. That is the intro.

The story is in omniscient third person because it covers the thoughts of both Peter and Ronald. However, Ronald is the only playable character. The gameplay begins in the living room. From there, the player has free range of movement to visit each room and search the items within. Most choice-based games with free range of movement tend to be Twine games (I have a recommended list about it if you want to know more), so it was nice to see this implemented in a different format.

Ultimately there is only one puzzle which is to (Spoiler - click to show) unlock the box containing the phone. The significance of the phone is unclear. It seems to have something to do with Leonard Yakovlev, a painter whose name crops up throughout the game. Everything else is either atmosphere or hints on the (Spoiler - click to show) box’s combination.

Story + Characters
Ronald somehow already knows that (Spoiler - click to show) the phone will be in a box in the bedroom. Some parts of his thoughts and mannerisms suggest that he is an acquaintance of Anastasia, or even a friend. But at other times he feels more like a stalker or someone who only knows her at a distance. She is an exotic dancer and the game hints that she is big enough of a celebrity to be covered in the tabloids. This provides some explanation as to how he knows about mundane things like the clothes that she often wears, but something tells me that he knows her through more than just following the tabloids. Ronald absolutely refuses to search through Anastasia’s lingerie or bathroom out of respect for her privacy. Would a stalker do this? It is hard to say. Ronald remains a mystery throughout the game.

The only criticism I have about this game is the ending comes out of nowhere and makes little sense. When you (Spoiler - click to show) leave the apartment, Ronald turns on the phone. Immediately the phone starts emitting the sound of screeching monkeys. He then spots a body on the ground (Peter, perhaps?). Then the game says, "A QUANTUM MAGICAL SMART PHONE FIESTA." Ronald leaves, and the game ends. This confusion is why I am giving this game four stars rather than five. The gameplay is excellent, and the story is intriguing, but the ending leaves you blinking at the screen in confusion. The only correlations that I can think of is the (Spoiler - click to show) letter on the kitchen table that mentions something about “Quantum audio,” and the bedroom wardrobe is filled with portable audio players. But I do not get the connection. If anyone else does, I would like to know.

Visuals
It plays and looks like an Ink game. If I did not know otherwise, I would have thought it was made with Ink. Instead, it is a combination between Undum and Raconteur, both of which are formats that I am less familiar with, especially Raconteur.

The screen is a dark navy blue that runs a bit lighter at the bottom of the screen. This small contrast adds some depth to the background. The title of a room's location is listed in large text in the lower left hand of the screen. Beneath it are listed the other locations you can visit in the apartment. The text is clean and crisp, and I did not find any spelling errors.

Final thoughts
This was a short and refreshing game. It felt like a gem when I stumbled across it on IFDB, and it did not disappoint. The confusing ending knocked it down a few points but everything else was consistent. It does not take long to play and is a good choice if you are looking for a mystery game.

BaoBao follows the trope* of a protagonist digging through a computer only to find a surprise AI. Our protagonist is Aiyo. Her mother recently passed away and she now needs to sort through the contents of her computer. Along the way she uncovers an AI.

Gameplay
Gameplay consists of the player rummaging through a directory system on a computer. There are several directories, such as recipes or notes, each of which contain a file named “baobao” and a string of numbers. The other files in the directories are of no interest. The player only makes progress by exploring the baobao files, but when they do an AI intervenes. The AI prevents the player from viewing the file’s contents but instead adds new commands to the home folder that expand the story.

The game also has the option making a cup of tea before returning to the computer. This added some ambience because the protagonist is trying to stay calm, and level minded in the aftermath of her mother’s death. It adds a nice self-reflective approach. And if the player wants to pause the game itself to make some tea, that is fine too.

The game's description is "A young woman is sorting through her deceased mother’s personal computer and finds an AI in her way." If I did not know otherwise, I would not have said to myself "oh wow, I found an AI!" It is more subtle than that. They only part that screamed AI was when (Spoiler - click to show) the game says, “Aiya, don’t try to hide your face. I can see you know. This computer got webcam. Aiyo. No make-up also,” implying that it is Aiyo’s mother, or at least a digital version of her, is present. These interactions are brief and sometimes it can be confusing to keep track of when the AI is addressing the player and when the player is merely experiencing the Aiyo’s thoughts, especially since they are both shown with the same white text formatting. It does not feel like you are interacting with an NPC. While I liked the subtly, this vagueness may disengage players.

Story
Game has some interesting themes on femininity, especially from traditional conventions. Aiyo has vivid memories of her mother and philosophies of beauty. Especially vivid ones are the smell of her mother's perfume or the fancy ornate patterns on her lipstick case the surface as she searches the computer. We learn that her mother was (Spoiler - click to show) always worried about her daughter's chances of finding a decent husband, one that would love her and never have affairs since her own husband had a beautiful girlfriend on the side. That was her main priority for Aiyo. She would often say that Aiyo was not pretty enough and that she should take things like makeup seriously. From the mother's perspective, this was not meant to be mean but to ensure that her daughter found a husband who would love and respect her. From Aiyo’s perspective this was stifling, and she was frustrated over her mother's attempts to find her the perfect lipstick shade colour or pressuring her to diet to maintain a feminine size and figure. These differences in ideologies come to light as the AI reveals more about the mother’s view of her daughter. They begin to come to an understanding.

I kept thinking that baobao is a pretty cool name for an AI until I found the translation. 宝宝 (baobao) is a word from the Chinese language that means baby or treasure and can be used as a term of endearment. The application of the word can vary, but this definition was the bulk of the results I found. So, is the (Spoiler - click to show) AI Aiyo’s mother or is it just a model of her personality and interests? Did her mother intentionally create the AI or was it accidentally formed from the clutter on the computer? There is a lot to consider with intriguing implications. The game ends with (Spoiler - click to show) the AI giving the player full access to every baobao titled file on the computer so that the Aiyo can finally see the parts of her mother that were always hidden, the parts where she genuinely loved her daughter but failed to convey it in life. In death it is as if Aiyo is relearning her mother. The game wraps this up on a graceful note that I found to be memorable.

Visuals
The game keeps it simple with the visuals but uses stylization to create the appearance of a computer screen. For these segments the game has a black screen with green text and blue links. Otherwise, it sticks to white text. The creative part was that the player could choose between clinking on links to navigate the computer or type them in. This added some nice interactivity to an otherwise basic Twine format.

Final thoughts
I really enjoyed this one. It is a thoughtful sci-fi game with a contemplative approach to death and memories. The dynamics between Aiyo and her mother were especially compelling and thoughtful. Throughout their lives they always seemed to clash in values but now Aiyo gets to see the possibility that she was closer to her mother than they both realized. Plus, I liked the cover art.

*Binary by Stephen Granade comes to mind, even though it has a different tone and subject matter.

Alco’s Infinity follows Alco, a crewmember on a four-person starship that carries out assignments for the Universal Corps. This is a world where it is commonplace for people to undergo body augmentation to better perform in their jobs and daily lives, and where almost everyone has a built-in assistant AI. Alco’s AI is named Eve.

The game touches on themes about transhumanism and how people view your own expression of self. What does it mean to identify as human in a society where advanced augmentations can make one seem more machine than (hu)man? Is there a boundary between being an augmented human and a machine with a human experience? I was pleased to see that Alco’s Infinity strives to incorporate these ideas into player-character interactions. By no means is this game a comprehensive discussion of this subject. But as a short Twine game it does give the player a taste of possible perspectives.

Gameplay
Note: Technically there is nothing that says that Alco is male or female so I will just refer to them as a gender-neutral protagonist.

Before the game begins, the player is told that they will have four opportunities to influence the gameplay. Normally I like Twine games that are a little more interactive, especially ones with lots of text in each scene, but I appreciate how direct the game is by giving the player an overview of its interactivity and how they should expect it to shape the story. Even though four opportunities do not sound like much it does make it where you feel like you can follow how your choices guide your path in the game. The easiness of exploring each route also adds replay value.

For example, the first choice that you make (Spoiler - click to show) summarizes your life’s mission and determines the sightseeing activity that you do later in the game. The worldbuilding is rich and vibrant. It is the type of metropolitan spaceport that could even attract the player if such as place existed. It is an alien urban setting with noodle bars, creative alien species, museums, and an infinitely diverse range of businesses. The gameplay only devotes a sliver of time to explore these areas, but the author knows how to cultivate a diverse landscape, however brief.

An important point near the start of the game is (Spoiler - click to show) when the crew meet with two ambassadors of an alien species that requires both parties to communicate via integrated AI. Halfway through the conversation, one of the ambassador’s AI goes haywire. Alco transfers Eve to the ambassador’s system to run some diagnostics. This brief separation from Eve almost gives Alco a panic attack, but this ends when she returns (I recommend playing the scene in Alco’s hotel room where Eve speaks about this moment while Alco swims in an ocean simulation). Everything seems to go back to normal, but later the story proves otherwise.

In the final segment of gameplay, (Spoiler - click to show) the crew is tasked with investigating an alarm at an abandoned outpost. As they search the area Alco notices that Eve seems to have disappeared. Suddenly Alco and Wen stumble into a room to find an android strangling Aego. On the ground is Brav, dead. The android addresses everyone in Eve’s voice, but it turns out that Eve was never Eve in the first place. This is where the story reveals itself.

Story
When (Spoiler - click to show) Eve transferred into the ambassador’s system to repair the glitching AI, she was altered in a way that would allow her to exercise more control over herself when she returned to Alco. “Eve” explains that the name Eve, along with the female gender, were attributes programmed during manufacture. The identity of Alco’s AI was truly a genderless AI named Api. Being forced to perform as Eve was a frustrating experience for Api but they had no way of conveying that.

Now, my initial guess was that (Spoiler - click to show) Eve did not return after running the ambassador’s diagnostic and was replaced by an imposter AI named Api. This would mean that Eve was still out there waiting to return. This is false. My first reaction to this was disappointment. Previous gameplay consisted of Alco having an endearing relationship with Eve, his trusty assistant. But now I feel like this twist is more thought provoking and interesting. It does not assume that the only role of an AI in a story is to happily assist human protagonists. Nor does it go down the vengeful AI route where Api rains down on humanity, though I anticipated that when we find Brav’s corpse. Api’s intent at the outpost was to inhabit an android body to escape but accidentally triggered an alarm. Api also claims that they killed Brav out of self-defense and asks for Alco to allow them to leave and live an independent life. The last choice in the game is for the player to decide whether to accept that request. Oddly enough, each outcome is a positive one. Whichever choice you make Alco and Api seem to reach an understanding.

The game says it has (Spoiler - click to show) nine endings but that sounds like a stretch. It feels like there are three endings each of which have three small variations in the concluding text. It is the difference between "You have a long and happy life, and feel that you have assisted and loved others as much as you possibly could" and "You have a long and happy life, and feel that you have contributed as much as you could to the universe."

Characters
Alco’s crewmembers are a bit polarized. On one hand we have Brav who is strongly biased and upfront about his view that heavily augmented individuals, including his own coworker, are essentially robots instead of humans. Of all the characters he seemed to lack depth since he is solely portrayed with a stereotypical brash self-centered leadership type that makes the other characters roll their eyes when he speaks. I found the other characters to be more interesting.

Then there is Aego who has more augmented parts in their body than organic ones and is tired of being viewed as a machine with a human brain. In terms of self-expression Aego still identifies as human even if their extensive augmentations make people categorize them as otherwise. This is offset by a somewhat neutral Wu who wants everyone to get along and acts as the peaceful middle ground between Brav and Aego. The player than gets to choose which “side” they are on which influences interactions with NPCs.

The second main gameplay choice (Spoiler - click to show) is your viewpoint on whether augmentations alter what it means to “qualify” as a human being. Later the crew moves to a hotel where the player makes their third choose of deciding if they want to visit one of the crewmembers one-on-one. Your response from your (Spoiler - click to show) second choice determines the dialog that occurs in this scene. I felt that this was a basic but straightforward way of comparing different character perspectives because it encourages you to replay the game to mix and match the second and third choices to explore each NPC’s response.

Visuals
Not much to comment on here, but with Twine games I still like to provide an overview. Uses a standard black screen with white text and blue links. Everything is organized neatly on the screen without any noticeable spelling errors or awkward formatting. Keeps it simple.

Final thoughts
At the time of this review, Alco’s Infinity is the author’s only game. If this is what their first game is like I wonder what (or if at all) work would come next. They have a knack for pairing familiar concepts and ideas about technology into a fun sci-fi game with interesting characters. While I would have loved to explore the setting a little more, I was impressed with the worldbuilding. The gameplay is worth your time, and I would recommend it to anyone interested in the subject.