Reviews by Kinetic Mouse Car

(edit: spoiler tag fix)

EXTERNAL COMMUNICATION: Use caution when opening attachments, clicking links, or responding.

Inspired by Tabitha’s recent poll, “Underrated (literally) games,” I’m taking a break from reviewing IFComp entries to share this game since I was already in the process of writing a review for it.

This is also an analysis-heavy review so get ready!

Tiny cafés are a staple in urban settings. They serve as meeting places, provide wi-fi, and of course, you can always get a bite to eat. And yet, they can feel soulless and devoid of life even if every table is occupied. People trudging along their daily shuffle without energy or passion or human connection.

Pauline Yael, our protagonist, dreams of starting an art café that will inject patrons with a zest for life and facilitate community through the arts, noticeboards, and of course, food.

3D-printed food.

Gameplay
The game begins by congratulating you on your purchase of a CookEasy 800 Pro™ which will surely make you a successful café owner.

[EXTERNAL COMMUNICATION] is linear and story driven. Gameplay is conducted by clicking on links in text boxes that pop-up in response to clicking on said links. There is only one puzzle (discussed further in the Story section) which involves (Spoiler - click to show)buying and combining the right combination of printer solution.

And if the game tells you to write something down, WRITE IT DOWN.

A big weakness is that the game does not allow you to save. Restarting and clicking dozens of links to reach the part that you want to revisit is tedious after one or two playthroughs. It detracts from the replay value and may discourage players from finding every ending.

Not being able to save is especially frustrating when it’s possible to put the game into an unwinnable state by losing the box with the link needed to progress the gameplay AND losing the box that came before it. Also, the main boxes on the center of the screen are immovable, which was a problem when a crucial box got stuck behind it.

One helpful alternative to a save function would be to make it so the player can play the game once and then unlock an option to skip ahead on their next playthrough, perhaps when Fyodorov- I’ll get to him in a minute- shows up. But going through the whole intro all over again gets tedious when you just want to get to the meat of the gameplay.

Story
Background
Pauline’s vision always seems to be right around the corner. Right now, she has a café, but surely it will soon become an art café, just as she envisioned. Then, one day, her machine ceases to work. A news article explains why:

Nibbl LLC Declares Bankruptcy, Ending Support for its Line of Popular Culinary 3D Printers

In other words, printer solutions and proprietary software for anyone with a CookEasy 800 Pro™ are no more. The machine is useless, a “mute obelisk.” Until Pauline’s tech-savvy nephew, Greg, comes to the rescue.

Greg introduces her to the world of biohacking and jailbreaking. Pauline is surprised to learn that not everyone has been using their food printers for food creation. Biohackers have tinkered with their CookEasy 800 Pro™ (now technically OpenCook 800) to use it in ways beyond what they were manufactured for.

…overworked mothers and motherly cafe managers were alike were having to figure out the nearest food-grade bioscaffold they could order from industrial lab supply catalogs to load through a funnel into the modified proprietary hoppers...

He shows her how to run her printer on an open protocol, allowing her to join a community of business-minded tech users that now download recipes from the internet (instead of only using company-approved ones) and experimenting with printer bioscaffold solutions to print even more possibilities.

With just a bit of guidance from Greg, Pauline is back in action. He does, however, warn her to avoid any recipe-related emails in her spam box. She agrees. Then one day, she gets an unexpected spam message from someone named Nikolai Fyodorov.

Spoilers!
The story centers around this email from Nikolai Fyodorov, (Spoiler - click to show)a digital ghost contacting Pauline via her printer's email.

As I mentioned earlier, there is only one puzzle. That puzzle is making sure you (Spoiler - click to show)follow his instructions to the letter. Your success in doing so determines the ending.

Because there is no way of saving the game, here’s a tip: If you want the best ending, make sure you (Spoiler - click to show)get the Medical Grade (MG) Stratasis, not the Food Grade (FG) Stratasis. It’s meant to trip the player up. Remember, we’re printing a human body here.

Endings
There are three endings. (Spoiler - click to show)Success, partial success, and failure.

After spoiling much of the story, I am hesitant to spoil the endings as well, so I won’t go into detail. I will say, I found the (Spoiler - click to show)partial success to be kind of dorky. The game's description describes itself as "creepycozy," and while I was hoping for more of the creepy side, it does lean closer towards cozy. That said, the (Spoiler - click to show)success ending was rather eerie.

Also, I wish the (Spoiler - click to show)success ending had more of an epilogue, though I cannot deny it ends on a suspenseful note, leaving it up to the player’s imagination on what will happen.

Characters
To supplement what I’ve already shared about the characters, I will use this section to provide further reflection.

Fyodorov
I understand that Nikolai Fyodorov’s character portrayal is abstract. We’re supposed to take it at face value and not chew the little details.

Pauline
Pauline is a single, 30-something woman from the UK who, like most of us, seeks to fulfill goals and navigate the mundanity of everyday living. And while one may not necessarily identify with her desire to open an art café, her frustrations about stagnating in life are relatable for many.

Throughout the game, she makes realizations about herself and the modern world. She realizes the exploitable nature of the advertising used to sell the CookEasy 800 Pro™ and how it targeted demographics, such as herself, by appealing to the consumer’s desire for convenience- a convenience that would enable one to devote their time and energy into pursing life passions. It sold a dream, not just a product.

In Pauline’s case, she wants to use her CookEasy 800 Pro™ to start an art café. A space to foster community and brighten people’s lives. However, the day-to-day logistics of running a café has made it difficult to honor the art part of “art café.”

And is it something she still wants?

…it didn’t fulfill the original fantasy that it was sold on. Her cafe didn’t feel more chic, or like the food was making customers that much more happy.

Her café hadn’t transformed people’s lives like she had hoped. Plus, 3D-printed food is, honestly, not that great. If you live off it, it tastes decent enough but fails to get anywhere close to handmade cooking performed by a human. This is yet another realization she makes.

Visuals
This game is made with Jupiter, a nifty choice-based system that uses pop-up boxes containing text to tell the story. It works perfectly here since the story spends a lot of time on emails and user interfaces, and the pop-up boxes reflect this. Some even have scroll bars.

It also experiments with different colours, fonts, text sizes, and even includes two photographs, one of which depicts a piece of 3D-printed meat. While it mostly uses a black background, there are moments where the background is a cool 3D grid pattern.

Final thoughts
If you’ve read through my review and made it this far, congratulations, I’m almost done.

[EXTERNAL COMMUNICATION] covers a range of themes familiar to today’s world including biohacking, generational differences in tech-savviness, the overlap of consumer and industrial sectors, and the use of exploitive advertising to sell a dream with the goal of getting people like Pauline to buy a product. It also delves into more abstract and philosophical themes related to (Spoiler - click to show)panpsychism and Fyodorov’s Common Task.

A World Not Unlike Our Own

Ultimately, it points out that Pauline’s world is a near-reflection of the one we currently live in. We may not have CookEasy 800 Pro™ on store shelves, but we can relate to the commoditization of the individual and a desire to find meaning in a dull, modern existence. If we came across (Spoiler - click to show)our own equivalent of Nikolai Fyodorov, would we jump at the opportunity?

I enjoyed this game for its build-up of suspense and the creative visuals used to tell the story. I even learned a bit of history in the process. If you are interested in science fiction that contemplates metaphysics, give [EXTERNAL COMMUNICATION] a try.

"Welcome back, is there anything I can help you with?"

One Step Ahead is a dystopian story about the temptations of A.I. and the erosion of choice. Ever since the protagonist discovered the convenience of A.I., they’ve been readily incorporating it into everyday life. But at what cost?

Gameplay
One might assume that One Step Ahead gives the player multiple paths based on whether to use A.I. for tasks, most of which are for academic assignments. Instead, it’s surprisingly linear. To progress in this game, you must use A.I. or get an abrupt GAME OVER.

One Step Ahead also needs more testing and proofreading. Some passages lead to a dead end. If it weren’t for the little “↶” arrows at the side of the screen you would have to restart the game. There was also one instance where I got an error message: Sorry to interrupt, but this page's code has got itself in a mess.

Story
Story-wise, there’s not much to experience. There’s a shift halfway through the game where (Spoiler - click to show) the protagonist becomes worried about how involved the A.I. has become in their life. The A.I. soon picks up on these doubts and throws a hissy fit when the protagonist tries to delete it for good.

In fact, the game ends right as the story gets interesting: (Spoiler - click to show) the A.I. declaring that they’re “always one step ahead” (hence the title), forcing the protagonist to crawl back to it.

Perhaps the lack of choice in the game is meant to represent not having any choice in using A.I. in real-life. If that’s the author’s intent, the delivery needs work because the game is too linear and undeveloped to explore these ideas meaningfully.

Choice is a muscle.
The less it’s used, the more it withers.

This point would have more impact if the player could actually choose not to use A.I. and see the impacts of that choice beyond a sudden GAME OVER. Instead, we get shoehorned into one gameplay route.

Regrettably
Due to consecutive nights of staying up late.
You developed an acute heart condition and had to be hospitalized for recovery.

In other words, you can either use A.I. or end up in the hospital. Not a strong message.

Further discussion
There’s little room to explore the game’s themes on A.I. reliance. I found myself approaching One Step Ahead with some cynicism especially since what we know about our protagonist is only skin-deep. Do they seriously think it’s acceptable to use A.I. to do all their academic work?

I don’t want to be quick to antagonize.

Society sets educational milestones for literacy, math, and other skill sets, and individuals who lack the opportunity to meet these milestones end up swimming against the current of a society that may not offer support in helping them catch up. I can understand seeking assistance. Having someone or something (like an A.I.) summarize content (a book chapter, for example) so you can better understand it serves as a steppingstone for producing your own original work.

Not everything can be accomplished through effort alone. You lack formal training in computer science, and the task exceeds your current capabilities.

There’s a balance. A balance of academic integrity and making sure students have the tools they need to perform in academic settings. We all need help, and we’re all responsible for our own work. But balance is not explored in this game.

Where does this leave the protagonist? There is one instance where they struggle in a class due to a lack of prerequisites, but they just opt for A.I. without sharing any perspective on their choice. As for the other assignments, the protagonist simply seems to not want to do the work. And there is never a point where they reflect about the potential consequences of using A.I. to do their assignments for them.

Or I could be overthinking things. It’s unclear, is the author trying to make commentary about the usage of A.I., or are they just wanting to make an interesting story about an A.I. (Spoiler - click to show)forcing itself on a human user?

Visuals
I think the author could have had some fun experimenting with Twine’s visual effects rather than opting for the default black screen, white text, and blue links. In fact, I was expecting something like the cover art which reminds me of the Blue Screen of Death.

Of course, if the author is new to Twine, I can understand why the game uses a default appearance. The (Spoiler - click to show)chaotic red text used for the A.I.'s meltdown was clever.

Final thoughts
I would love a post-comp release of One Step Ahead because its overall premise is highly relevant to the technological landscape we live in now. But as an IFComp game, it has a lot of rough edges that need to be sanded down. The formatting is messy, there’s at least one bug, and the gameplay could be better implemented. It simply feels too much like a draft.

You play as Ioanna Arcensis, a Recollection Officer for Waste Management, a department that seeks to destroy artifacts from other worlds. The job means has little meaning for you but at least you’re good at it.

Until two new assignments cross your virtual desk.

But first…
…I’d like to ramble about my journey with this game.

In a way, Retrograding has expanded my horizons. I have always been skittish about downloading anything onto my computer. Excessive, sure, but I prefer to interact with content that is available online. Then this game comes along: Retrograding. The title, the description, the cover art. I love its cover art. So, I figured, fine. I must play this.

It was kind of intimidating to see “retrograding_windows.zip” slowly downloading (I used an older computer. Fortunately, that was not a problem) not knowing what to expect and was equally intimated by the cryptic folders listed on my computer. Long story short: I got it working! I kept thinking, wow. I’m finally going to play this!

The consensus? It was not quite what I expected/hoped it to be. And no doubt, my excitement probably skewed my expectations. But I have no regrets.

Gameplay
Retrograding feels like two games in one.

Ioanna is given two potential assignments that involve watching over a high-profile person while conducting her work on another planet. You can only pick one, and whoever you choose forms the basis of the gameplay. This means you must play the game at least twice to get the full experience.

The gameplay is choice-based and driven by dialogue. The dialogue appears on the screen as conversation and waits for the player to press “enter” to move forward. Occasionally we get the chance to choose what Ioanna says in these conversations, but otherwise the player just goes along for the ride.

The choices that do influence the gameplay are which items you salvage for yourself.

You gaze around the room and collect:

ITEM: AN OLD TRANSMITTER
ITEM: A CEREMONIAL KNIFE
ITEM: SCRAP METAL

There are three opportunities in each playthrough to salvage items. These items carry meaning for the characters and allow the player to foster a relationship with the person under their watch. The items you choose also determine the game’s ending.

Retrograding has features to make multiple playthroughs more convenient. There is a “skip” command that zooms through the text until you reach a decision-making point or when you choose to retake control. This was extremely helpful.

Thoughts
Unfortunately, I misread the game’s genre. I realize now that I’m not its target audience. Its genre is listed as “Science Fiction” and “Romance,” and I assumed it would be science fiction (big fan) with romance undertones. Instead, it leans heavily on the romance part.

I had a hard time appreciating Ioanna’s interactions with Raven and Zinnia because the game’s world felt undeveloped. One moment I’m trying to piece together the places/events/people being name-dropped. The next moment, Zinnia and Ioanna are madly in love.

It just didn’t resonate with me. That said, if you like romance games that focus on forging a relationship with a single character (and enjoy sci-fi themes) then I strongly recommend Retrograding.

Story
With two assignments come two separate stories structured around a person of interest and Ioanna’s growing relationship with them. This is teased in the game’s description:

A celebrity bomber? A renegade Corpodarling?

Our celebrity bomber is a death row prisoner named Raven. He was once a high-profile racer until a (Spoiler - click to show)suicide attempt gone wrong killed several bystanders. Now sentenced to death, the protagonist is tasked with escorting him around the planet Estehelix until he can be handed off to authorities.

Meanwhile, Zinnia is a “Corpodarling.” A poster child for a powerful corporation (the same one Ioanna works for, it seems). Top notch employee. Except… she has a tendency to go rogue, forcing the corporation to (Spoiler - click to show)recondition her to ensure compliance. It’s your job to keep her in check as you explore Proxima.

There are multiple endings, though the game seems to give more attention to Raven. According to the walkthrough, Zinnia has three endings while Raven has two routes with Route A having two endings and Route B having three endings. I managed to reach one ending for Raven and all three endings for Zinnia. I didn’t feel inspired to keep playing after that, especially since Raven’s story is kind of intense.

The immediate story would be stronger if the game provided more backstory and worldbuilding for context. It all seems so cool on the surface! A lot of interesting ideas are tossed around without further explanation.

For example, there is vague mention of people being stripped of their identity and reformed into other individuals. When Zinnia says, (Spoiler - click to show)“They try to take the calling out of me, put me on the operating table and dig up my insides. Not one piece of me is ever wasted,” I could not tell if they actually did that to her or if she was simply using surgery as a metaphor.

A nifty feature is a “Records Database” section that catalogs names and objects from the gameplay to provide more information. There are 38 possible entries, and I managed to find all but 5, 16, and 17. But even these are sparse. Most consist of snippets of dialogue when I was looking for something more concrete. I have plenty of questions.

Characters
Ioanna (+Maria)
Ioanna has no passion for her job, but she likes not having to interact with people. In fact, her stellar performance record makes her eligible for a higher-ranking position. She merely chooses to stay in Waste Management.

This latest assignment, however, throws her for a loop because of the involvement of another person. She tells herself that it’s just a job. We see otherwise. Ultimately, the player watches as her interactions with Raven/Zinnia cause her to reconsider what she wants in life.

I would have loved to learn more about Ioanna’s background because I don’t think the game clarifies whether Ioanna is a human, android, or synthetic being. She is described as having synthskin and a metallic spine. And of course, Maria, who lives in her head. Sort of.

Maria hums in-between planes of existence. She leans against your shoulder, caressing the hollow of your cheek with a digital thumb.

Maria is an A.I.-like being who is frequently referred to as a god, though I’m not sure if that’s meant to be taken literally. She has full access to Ioanna’s mind and body, providing commentary throughout the game.

It seems like the author’s intent was for Maria to be the classic snarky A.I. whose snarkiness is merely born out of love for the main character. And that’s cool. However, her conversations with Ioanna get caustic to the point where we start to wonder, do they actually like each other? It can get kind of awkward.

NPCs
While the romance did not click for me, I did find the love interests’ personal stories to be compelling. Zinnia struggles with building an identity outside of being the poster child of a corporation that never lets her leave. Raven is trying to process his reality of his looming execution and how it prevents him from facing death on his own terms. Both characters are experiencing a personal crisis that is always lurking behind their every move.

Castor, Ioanna’s manager, was the most interesting character. Through her we get a sense of the bureaucracy that our protagonist lives in. Apparently, people who try to defect from society are dragged back and punished with being digitized, also known as “total augmentation.” Which is awful since the reason many choose to defect is to seek out the old ways of living without technology. And now they’re forced to work inside a digital world. Castor is quite awfully cheerful though, considering her circumstances.

Visuals
Retrograding is filled with visuals as a game made with Unity. Every scene is depicted with photographs as backgrounds, many of which are stock images from Unsplash and similar sources.

Some photos nail the vibe of the game while others clearly look like they came from, well, Unsplash. This is because they look too much like Earth when we’re supposed to be trapezing across Estehelix and Proxima. They look great, but the city streets, graffiti break, and other land features break the illusion of exploring another world.

Castor, Raven, and Zinnia have their own character art in the form of drawings. I’ll admit, for the latter two, I was not a huge fan of the style which seemed to clash with the photograph imagery. That said, the artwork for both characters displays a range of emotions, making their portrayal more interesting.

There is also an art gallery accessible from the game’s memory. There seems to be a total of three unlockable artworks. I managed to unlock one from Raven’s story.

Conclusion
This is a polished work with graphics and multiple gameplay paths that will resonate with the right audience. As for me, I was seeking a sci-fi game full of worldbuilding and found a romance-intensive game instead. If that interests you, please give Retrograding a try.

Not my kind of game, but still a job well done.

(It was also a neat exercise in trying something new: downloading an interactive fiction game. I’ve got my sights on Silicon and Cells. I might play that next…)

This review is based on the NORMAL Mode setting of the game.

It’s not every day you get reprinted.

But then again, you are Jean Wilson, Comms Officer of Theseus, a cargo ship that has experienced a catastrophic collision. A collision you did not survive. Thanks to printing technology, your mind and body have been reprinted so you can figure out what happened.

Also, this review spoils the heck out of it. Please play the game first.

Gameplay
This isn’t a mere explore-the-spaceship game. It’s also a resource management game with awesome mechanics. It involves finding items around the ship to recycle and then using the resources to fabricate useful items. You also have oxygen, water, and food levels to manage.

Current resources:
Biomass: 22 | Metals: 49 | Water: 15 | Minerals: 35 | Polymers: 12

Puzzles largely consist of bypassing locked doors and barriers, but there is enough variation to keep things interesting. The author also provides a generous walkthrough/hint system into the game.

Detritus is an example of a Twine game with free range of movement, meaning that the player can wander around a map and interact with people/objects in each “room,” much like a parser game. This, paired with the recycle/fabricate mechanics, may appeal to players who like the idea of resource management gameplay but are intimidated by the parser format. Similarly, if you prefer parser games or are not a huge fan of Twine, Detritus is dynamic enough to be engaging.

You can also play the game in Story mode. There is something for everyone!

Story
Main story
The story revolves around a corporation called Rainforest™ that employs the ship’s crew. Unsurprisingly, it puts profits first. But now, it’s taken things too far. (Spoiler - click to show) The crew finds out that the “luxury goods” in the cargo bay is just a cover for the truth: Rainforest™ is planning on using Earth as the galaxy’s new landfill. Plus, cost of upgrading the fabricator, which is practical for productivity, comes out of the crew’s wages. Unacceptable.

Anyway, (Spoiler - click to show)the crew had enough and planned to go on strike by taking control of the ship. Meanwhile, GAIL has been closely monitoring the crew and recording every interaction, and these recordings are automatically company property. So, when GAIL goes silent as the ship wrestles itself from the crew’s control and into the path of an asteroid, things are looking awfully dire.

So: Can we trust GAIL?

As in, GAIL the corporate A.I. who’s been quietly recording and ghosting the crew members right up until the accident? The answer is:

Thoughts on story
Detritus already has received high ratings which makes me feel like a wet blanket by giving it four stars. It has to do with the game’s delivery.

Themes
Detritus acknowledges issues faced in today’s world about corporate accountability, greenwashing, waste disposal, the replacement of human jobs with A.I., and socioeconomic inequalities. There’s even brief mention of microplastics in food.

Rainforest™ heavily relies on greenwashing to sell their narrative. Greenwashing is deceptive marketing where a corporation portrays itself as environmentally friendly to divert attention away from its environmentally unfriendly practices. Predictably, Rainforest™ loves this tactic and uses sound bites such as:

At Rainforest™, we hate waste™.

More like (Spoiler - click to show)“we hate waste so we’re going to dump it on Earth, so we don’t have to deal with it!" And the irony of the name, considering what’s happening to the Amazon rainforest.

I like how the gameplay had data pads scattered throughout the ship to provide backstory without dumping loads of information onto the player. Data pad (f) is especially interesting because it features a newspaper clipping that resembles our world today.

…with the invention of Recycler technology, has the galaxy's waste problem been solved? Not entirely! All planets have signed up to the 'zero-waste' agreement; they are legally responsible for their own waste disposal.

The use of language like “zero-waste agreement” is akin to the pledges countries make, and often neglect, at summits to reach shared sustainability goals. By (Spoiler - click to show) designating Earth as a landfill, Rainforest™ is seriously violating galaxy policy. Another real-life parallel is Nadir, an “ultra-wealthy” planet that sends its trash to Earth, just as wealthier countries export their trash overseas.

In theory, anything can be recycled, but as the quantities increase, so does the energy required. Recycling is not a solution to unchecked pollution.

The game also considers the effectiveness of recycling in being a blanket solution for environmental concerns. There is an ongoing debate about how “clean” the recycling process is since it, too, produces waste. And even if we perfected the science of recycling, we would still need to make other changes as a society to reach our sustainability objectives. While the game does not go into too much detail, it makes some powerful points.

Plus, a few other digs.

"Remember, smart companies don’t pay taxes!"

"We want to make the galaxy great again!"

I’ll leave it at that.

Characters
GAIL
I liked the depiction of A.I. in Detritus because it moves away from the plucky Good A.I. (I’m here and happy to serve the PC!) or Bad A.I. (I’m clearly against the PC’s best interests and I don’t like them either) binary that we often see in science fiction.

Detritus differs from Twine games, such as Lux and A Long Way to the Nearest Star, that center the gameplay on an A.I. NPC guiding the protagonist around a facility/ship. In both games the player communicates with the A.I. and even, for better or worse, forms a rapport with them. With GAIL, it’s different.

While the game’s description describes her as M.I.A., we find her in the “Admin” room. However, she is disconnected from the ship’s systems and has had her memory erased. You can visit her in the room for help but are otherwise left to roam the ship by yourself. And while, yes, (Spoiler - click to show)you can eventually reconnect her from the Helm, doing so offers little in further interaction with her, heightening the mystery.

As we investigate the ship, we receive mixed messages about GAIL’s intentions. As a result, the gameplay is infused with do-we-trust-the-A.I.? undertones that create suspense. This leads to a buildup when (Spoiler - click to show) we meet the “real” GAIL.

Our limited interaction with GAIL means we have less opportunity to get to know her as an individual. In (Spoiler - click to show)helping the protagonist is she merely clinging to the directive of Crew, Ship, Company, or is there a deeper emotional commitment there? By recording the crew, was she only trying to maximize the chances of them being recreated in an emergency or does she secretly want to relate to them more? Plus, Kashvi mentioned in a flashback that GAIL had been suffering from hallucinations, but we never learn what that was about.

Crew
After rambling on and on about GAIL, I don’t have much to say about the other characters since I found them to be less compelling than GAIL. That said, I did think the writing did a good job at conveying the close-knit nature of the crew. Their optimism was vividly conveyed in flashbacks, making it (Spoiler - click to show) especially sad when we find their dead bodies.

Visual design
I love the visual design of this game.

It's all glossy surfaces and sleek edges with text that is easy to read and stands out against the background. Text is a mix of yellow, grey, and white with blue links set against a dark grey backdrop. It also recreates a polished “computer screen” appearance when the player accesses a terminal.

Plus, there’s extra flairs to make things more interesting, including an in-game map of the Theseus. For atmospheric effect, the beginning and end of the game has animated starfield that makes you feel like you’re moving through space. Special animated effects for flashback sequences are also featured.

Conclusion
Detritus is an exciting sci-fi game with all the traits of a high-quality game. I can tell the author left no stone unturned. Personally, there are parts that felt one-dimensional to me. I really liked the (Spoiler - click to show) plot twist with GAIL’s true allegiance. The logistics of the (Spoiler - click to show) PC’s identity were fuzzier in comparison.

Part of me feels that my view of this game is influenced by my experience with The Den. I won’t spoil it, but the big twist (or, arguable, twists) made a chill go down my spine that made me think, woah, that’s brilliant. Not quite as much with Detritus.

Nonetheless, this is a game you don’t want to miss. It can be played at Easy, Normal, or Story mode, allowing you to set the gameplay at your comfort level. As for the ending… well, it just might surprise you.

Also: If you are curious about Twine games that involve your body being reprinted to cheat death, check out Trigaea.

(Edit: Spelling fix)

Soon. Observing the decaying cityscape and the drifting dust clouds, feeling the heat cutting her skin, breathing in infected air through a tube, the Girl had never felt more doubtful.

The Promises of Mars is a Twine game about manufactured hope, waiting it out, and finding a silver lining despite everything that’s happened. And, as the title suggests, broken promises.

Genre
It’s easy to forget how diverse science fiction can be with its subgenres. The genre “science fiction” is so often used as an umbrella term that we overlook its nuances, so I’d like to take a moment to look at the genre of The Promises of Mars as a work of SF.

There is nothing shiny about this game.

It’s post-apocalyptic with a decaying city bleached of its colour. Everything about the story and setting embraces the “used future” aesthetic. That is, a future where life depends on reusing technology and patching it until it can no longer be repaired. Often this goes hand in hand with scarcity, strife, and reversal of technological advancement. Sometimes it includes embracing the old ways of living, though that’s not explored here.

The “used future” subgenre is descriptively conveyed through the game’s writing.

Her body is wrapped in layers of black and brown, cloth and leather held together loosely with gaffer tape and thread. A breathing mask is held tightly over her nose and mouth by fraying elastic straps, and goggles cover her eyes. Soldered onto the underside of a peaked visor, the lenses are thick and brown like soda bottle glass.

It’s infused throughout the game. Dim lights. Cheap recycled paper. Scarred lungs. Tape. Food rations. And the overarching question of how long will this last?

Gameplay
You play as “Girl,” an inhabitant of an underground bunker and member of Command’s Expeditionary Force. You’ve been sent on a mission to investigate a carbon capture plant that has gone offline. It’s also your first glimpse of Mars’ surface, a place you know only through stories.

This is a great puzzle Twine game for those intimidated by technical puzzles. In many ways, the game does all the heavy lifting for us. On the left side of the screen are two boxes. The top box features a clickable map that allows us to navigate the game’s world. The bottom box lists our inventory.

INVENTORY:

Comms Link
Headlamp
Screwdriver
Wrench
Paperclip

When faced with a puzzle, the inventory list lights up to indicate which items may have a possible application. The Comms Link option also serves as an in-game hint system that provides a gentle nudge.

There was never a point where I got stuck with the game. Notably, there is a pipe pressure puzzle where you need to set three pipes to the correct readings as stated by a manual. Pipe pressure puzzles have been used in plenty of games, and I’ll admit I’m not really a fan of them. After all, I prefer story-driven games. But in The Promises of Mars, the process is simplified and provided the right amount of casual challenge.

Gameplay is not as smooth as it could be. For instance, early in the game I encountered an error message:

Error: cannot find a closing tag for HTML <set>
<set $communicationsStage to 1>… >

Thankfully, this does not put the game into an unwinnable state.

Story
Backstory
The backstory revolves around an event known as the evacuation. Once, people lived in a city on Mars’ surface filled with modern conveniences. The protagonist’s mother shares what life was like: pets, frozen yogurt, trips to the mall, looking up and seeing the sky, plants growing on the sidewalk. Grass fields and playgrounds.

But when life on the surface of Mars took a turn for the worse, a bunker system was built underground to serve as a new home for survivors, and a group called Command was arranged to oversee the operation. From that point on, daily life focused on anything that could maximize humanity’s odds of returning to the surface. Everyone has a part to play.

While there is a decent amount of backstory, I couldn’t help but yearn for more of the backstory’s backstory. What exactly happened that forced everyone to flee Mars’ surface? Less relevant questions include: Has Mars been terraformed? If so, to what extent? Has human biology adapted to Mars’ lower gravity or has technology made this irrelevant?

Promises, promises
What exactly is this promise as stated in the title?

The promise is that Mars will recover enough to allow people to live on the surface again. That if humanity keeps trying to rebuild, Mars will respond in kind. But is it really Mars making these promises?

(*Carbon capture technology separates carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and stores it underground.)

Endings
The endings are slightly underwhelming.

Themes
There are several interesting themes in this game, but since I’ve rambled enough about the story, I’ll pick one: Denial of childhood. We get the impression that childhood isn’t really a thing in the bunker.

Like many of her peers, the Girl was born on the surface but grew up underground. The bunker is all she knows. That, and the stories her mom would tell her about life on the surface. And, of course, what we find while exploring. The most moving scene is when she comes across a playground.

She'd never been on a slide. She places a boot on the slide's bottom step. Her mother's words echo in her ears: "Focus up." She'd never played on a climbing frame.

All work, no play. After all, everyone must chip to fulfill Mars’ promise. But discovering the (Spoiler - click to show)futility of the bunker’s efforts to return to a life that once was makes one wonder what is being sacrificed. They are surviving, not exactly living.

She pauses to look at the playground.
She continues onwards.

Ultimately, she can only continue onwards.

After looting the playground for materials, of course.

Characters
Who is the protagonist?

Her name, if she has one, is never mentioned. In simply referring to her as “Girl,” the game is reducing her to a mere role stripped of identity. A single unit borrowed from a population of similarly anonymous individuals.

The word “Girl” emphasizes how awfully young she is to be traversing the ruins of Mars. It highlights both her maturity and Command’s willingness to send such a young person out on a dangerous mission. Whether Command’s decision is merely the product of running out of options or not caring about the Girl’s odds of success are left up to interpretation.

Fortunately, the Girl clearly rises to the challenge, displaying wisdom far beyond her years.

She reminds me of the girl in Fabricationist DeWit Remakes the World, a sci-fi Twine game by Jedediah Berry. In that game, the girl is an NPC and was sent on a mission to track down the protagonist, a synthetic human designed to help rebuild a ravaged world. Her determination and mission of trekking through a post-apocalyptic world in search of answers shares similar themes with the Girl in The Promises of Mars. It’s also more light-hearted with few puzzles.

Visuals
While nothing fancy, its appearance is polished and easy to navigate. It uses a black background with white text and orange links. The game’s screen is neatly organized into a grid. Most of the screen is devoted to gameplay while the left side is reserved for the inventory and the clickable map. The map helpfully lights up to indicate your location.

Conclusion
The Promises of Mars performs well in every category: main character, story, gameplay, and appearance. Overall, there is a solid foundation.

But there’s something missing. It lacks the spark that would transform it from a four-star rating to a five-star one. I think adding more worldbuilding would make a difference. Tell us more about the city and what happened to Mars!

Nonetheless, it offers entertaining and haunting gameplay by allowing us to explore a dying world, a world that is supposed to be our ticket to a better life.

Wow. This is a seriously cool game.

I figured that I'd spend this month focused on reviewing IFComp games, but I saw this listed on the front page and, well, had to talk about it. It’s about joining an exclusive group that searches for cryptids on the internet.

Gameplay
Gameplay takes place on a computer interface. My jaw dropped when I saw it for the first time. It really does look like a computer desktop and has the interactivity of one as well. You navigate the game via the “computer” icons. Some of these icons are just for show, but even they contribute to the immersive effect.

The player will spend their time with the Concord chat messaging application and the Water Otter internet browser. You receive a message from a stranger who seems to think that you are a user named @deepdiver, which you are not.

There is a link to join a server. Being a perceptive internet-savvy person who knows the dangers of clicking on seedy links, you do the sensible thing:

You click on it, obviously.

Only to find that the link has expired. And that the server is for a group named The 404 Society. Same as the game’s title. Luckily, there is a button that allows us to request a new link. You click on it, naturally, and are contacted by someone named Bytegeist. They ask:

Have you ever seen something strange on the internet?

This phrase is a running theme in the gameplay. You get multiple chat responses to choose from, but eventually the discussion leads to them giving us a task. To track down a cryptid on the internet, forming the backbone of the game.

Story
What is a cryptid? A cryptid is a creature that is rumored to exist but has not actually been officially documented and categorized. Like Bigfoot. Robb Sherwin’s Cryptozookeeper (a stellar game) is filled to the brim with such creatures. But The 404 Society focuses on cryptids in the virtual realm. Entities that exist on the internet and even cause bizarre phenomena. The Society’s goal is to record their existence and observe them from afar.

Here’s why I’m giving this brilliant game 4 stars instead of 5. It describes itself as a “Twine game about discovering these mysterious creatures of the web,” emphasizing how such creatures can manifest in weird ways. We don’t actually see much of this.

Characters
At first, I wasn’t sure if the characters were animals or humans. Everything is related to animals. The internet browser is called Water Otter, the protagonist is named Pigeon (and has a pigeon for a profile picture), and the icons on the desktop are vaguely animal themed. I imagined a world like Zootopia or something reminiscent of Goat Game, a Twine game from the 2021 IFComp.

Then I figured it was more like Animal Crossing which features human PCs in an animal-run world. On the game’s itch.io page, there is a picture above the comment section that looks a lot like Animal Crossing with cartoonish humanoids. But a closer look at the photographs on the gardening website reveals regular humans. So maybe not like Animal Crossing. Nonetheless, I love its animal-themed aesthetic.

Visuals
The 404 Society nails its visual design. As I’ve already mentioned, the game mimics the appearance and functionality of a real-life computer. Countless IF works have surprised me with innovative usage of Twine's visual possibilities. Trigaea, whoami, Overrun, With Those We Love Alive, You are SpamZapper 3.1., and many more.

And right when I think it's all been done, bam. This game shows up, proving that the sky's the limit when it comes to harnessing Twine’s visual storytelling potential.

When I first played this game, I was hit with a wave of nostalgia because the desktop background of the protagonist’s computer may be familiar for some players: A perfect green hillside under a calm blue sky. Also known as Bliss, the default wallpaper for Windows XP. I’ve always loved it. You look at it and feel like everything is going to be okay. Brings me back to that clunky desktop computer with the fan that was always too loud...

All my life, choosing the desktop image for my computer is something I take seriously. And screensavers. So, I was especially excited to discover that the game lets you choose from two additional backgrounds to customize your experience! Great stuff, although I ultimately chose to remain with Bliss.

There’s plenty of other elements that I could go on about. Such as the pop-up boxes that appear at the screen’s bottom right corner when you have new chat messages. But go check the game out if you’re curious.

Conclusion
The 404 Society is a gem overfilling with promise. The concept. The visuals! Seeing how it ends so quickly gave me the bittersweet feeling of I knew it was too good to be true...

Or it might mark the beginning of something great. I really hope that this is a Twine game that takes itself further.

One last thing: I'm not sure if anyone has dabbled in the SCP Foundation website, but it has many interpretations since the foundation has no official canon. The 404 Society reminded me of the critter profiles on the Wilson’s Wildlife Solutions page- it’ll make sense if you visit it. The cutesiness of the site paired with its documentation of anomalies strikes a similar tone as a lighthearted search for cryptids on an internet browser called Water Otter.

In fact, now that I think of it...

The 404 Society is a group that studies these internet cryptids—anomalous digital entities that arise spontaneously in forgotten corners of the web.

We locate, observe, and catalog.

...it is kind of reminiscent of the SCP Foundation whose principles are We Secure, We Contain, We Protect. Hm…

You Cannot Speak opens with an ambiguous dream sequence. You dream that Claudia- the game seems to think you know her- is trying to save someone from drowning. She is failing. She is incapable of speaking...

You wake up. She's you. You are Claudia. Time to start your day.

So, yeah. You Cannot Speak is a brief sci-fi Ink game about a protagonist named Claudia waking up for her first day at a new job. On Mars. But for some reason, she is incapable of speaking. It's as if her ability was switched off.

The player begins in a high-tech bedroom to prepare for Claudia’s first day at work. Gameplay choices center around taking in your surroundings and trying to use futuristic technologies such as a “GOERRING RESOURCE-CONSCIOUS BATHING APPARATUS,” also known as a shower.

Overall, I enjoyed the descriptive writing.

Outside the window is a totally untouched red wasteland, a ruby-tinted desert landscape with red dust and rocks as far as the eye can see. In the distance, you see a great craggy wall of red land.

The canyon is a breathtaking natural beauty, with all the timeless qualities of a MacOS desktop image.

Such vivid imagery. And then of course (Spoiler - click to show)it's revealed to be a screen. Suddenly, your high-tech room feels more like a closet. The wearable TORUS device was also cool.

Claudia has a backstory shrouded in mystery. (Spoiler - click to show)Once, she had bright dreams of a career in Earth’s Space Force. Something happened. Now, she is stuck working in the private sector at a Martian facility called Ares-622. Her official role is “Wellness Director.” We don’t get a chance to see what this entails.

You Cannot Speak seems to embrace the debate of dwelling on the past vs. focusing on the future, though the game is too short to really explore these concepts.

It's better to know
Forget about it

We can, however, prompt Claudia to do some deep thinking about herself.

As much as I love the author’s vision for You Cannot Speak, it needs refinement. I understand that it is an introduction for a larger game. Such kind of games have been submitted to IFComp in the past and have done quite well. That’s not the issue.

My main problem with this game is how abrupt and clunky the game ends. When Claudia (Spoiler - click to show)leaves her room, a scraggly man tells her in vague terms that she... I'm not even sure. Something about how her actions will affect everyone. And when a guard shows up the man starts yelling. Game ends.

As an IFComp game, this stands out like a sore thumb. The sharp edges of a promising game should have been sanded off first. Also, in one playthrough the game ran into a dead end.

It’s frustrating because there is a certain magnetism to You Cannot Speak. The title piqued my curiosity. Even the cover art- a single red square- made me think what could this be about?

Nonetheless, I wish this game well, and hopefully we will get to see more of Claudia’s story in the future.

(Reader note: If you don’t feel inspired to read this entire review- and I don’t blame you- please check out the Visual design section to see one of the main reasons to check out this game.)

This game made me feel so slick. For an hour or so I felt like a quantum computing genius. Well, at least you play as one.

Also, I remember this game being released in Spanish in 2022, and I was always curious about it even if I couldn’t play it. So, I was thrilled to see it in this year's competition!

Gameplay
This review- like many of my reviews- is longer than I anticipated, so I’m going to break the gameplay part into sections.

Overview
You play as L. Garcia, a researcher who works for the Quantum Model and Simulation Laboratory, a department of the European Centre for Computational Research (ECCR) that specializes in quantum computing. The gameplay is also narrated in first-person.

For context, advances in quantum computing have opened the door to modeling a person's consciousness and developing highly realistic simulations of real-world environments. My understanding is that a personality “snapshot,” or image, can be paired with a model of how people interact, which is then added to a simulated world.

The player’s task is to create a personality image through brain scans and then train a social model before compiling everything into a simulation. Gameplay consists of navigating a menu of locations on a computer to create the files needed for the simulation. For instance, “bin/” contains links that lead to emails, a saved web page, and other content.

Once the player has everything, they start the simulation and prepare for the end game. The result? Life- or at least existence- after death for the protagonist. Hopefully.

Thoughts on gameplay
I realized that the game’s difficulty does not stem from implementation challenges or flawed design. Rather the difficulty came from my unfamiliarity with the game’s concepts. During my first try, I had a vague sense of what I was doing. Surprisingly, the ambiguity did not frustrate me because I was having fun running scans to see what would happen, reading emails, and simply exploring the game's content.

And I actually did get quite far on my own. The main obstacle was needing help with (Spoiler - click to show) running the high intensity scan, and even then, I came close to figuring it out. So, the walkthrough was more of a useful guide to keep you on track and inform the story rather than being a resource you cling to desperately because the game has led you astray.

I will say that the walkthrough does a poor job with the (Spoiler - click to show) compilation puzzle. It made no sense. I knew that I needed to stack the numbers in the right order, but I couldn’t figure out how the arrows worked. The walkthrough does not mention the arrows. Then, it finally clicked! I figured out the arrows and the puzzle ended up being a lot of fun (and much easier than it seemed on my first try).

It was a bit intimidating at first, but I picked things up as I went along. Just a little bit of context and most of the technical jargon made sense. The README.md file made me think "Of course! It's so simple!" even if that was not the case when I first picked up the game. I think this gives whoami good replay value. You go back and revisit how the gameplay merges with the story now that you’ve played it at least once.

First time around, I tinkered with the game for about an hour before completing it with the walkthrough. Once you know what to do you can zip through the game in about ten minutes. I noticed from the walkthrough that you only need to (Spoiler - click to show) complete the high intensity scan. The low and mid intensity ones are unnecessary. Fortunate, since performing the high scan fries your brain, killing you and making the electrodes inaccessible.

Story
whoami is ultimately a game about making desperate decisions, exploring what we are willing to do when you have nothing left to lose. Are you willing to put faith in technology that is still filled with unknowns? What can it offer? Do you even want what said technology has to offer?

The beginning of the game informs us that it is the year 2030 (five years from now!). Our protagonist, L. Garcia, has staked out in a remote research lab tucked away in a place called The Vault, located somewhere in Europe. The climate has taken a turn for the worse and now countries are in the midst of nuclear warfare. Chunks of Europe have been lost to nuclear weapons and Garcia is slowly dying from radiation and injury.

They can die... or attempt to create a virtual consciousness.

There are four endings based on (Spoiler - click to show) how you acquired fruit from the man in the social training simulation (I discuss this later). Out of the four endings, arguably only one is a "bad" one. I mean, why would you choose to live in a simulation of the same violence and human nonsense that destroyed the real world?

Both the emails and saved web page provide excellent exposition without overwhelming the player with details.

Additional thoughts on the story!
The emails offer a lot of foreshadowing.

Characters
L. Garcia
We never learn the protagonist’s full name. Even the web page only lists them as L. Garcia, and emails show that people would refer to them as “L.” I’ve already shared most of what I know about them. It seems that they are meant to be a PC that the player can step into without being distracted by a complex backstory.

I do have one question. I don’t think the game explains why (Spoiler - click to show)Garcia went back to the lab rather than take shelter with everyone else. Was it because they wanted to take a chance with uploading themselves, or was it something else?

Despite limited information, I still found them to be a compelling character.

Mia Gerdes
The arc with Mia added dimension.

Mia is (or was) the protagonist’s colleague and potential love interest. We know little about her other than the fact that her full name is Mia Gerdes, that she was headed to a shelter following a nuclear attack, and that Garcia attempted to send her an email admitting their feelings towards her. An email that failed to be sent, making this character dynamic bittersweet.

Visual design
This is one of the coolest uses of Twine I have ever seen. It's visually diverse and uses various design elements to illustrate the game's narrative.

The main gameplay uses a basic black screen with primarily white text and blue links. Animated text is often used to give the illusion of a computer “processing.” For some reason, the upper right corner of the screen has a faint yellow/white glow (although, I'm not sure what that's supposed to convey). But things get cooler.

The “dev/” section allows you to “access” the facility’s cameras. This is illustrated with a white text box containing the protagonist’s thoughts set against an image of static. Then there is also a “web page” that seriously looks like a web page. It provides an overview of the Quantum Model and Research Laboratory.

All this pales in comparison to when you train a social model. Surely, it’s going to be another black screen, right? Or maybe some boxes with an interesting background?

Wrong.

I was floored. (Spoiler - click to show)The screen turns white with black text, and you actually type commands. It was the last thing I was expecting. It’s that feeling of Woah. That was my reaction. You go from a Twine game to this. Somehow. I don’t know what kind of Twine wizardry the author used but it is one of the most novel and unique uses of the Twine format I have encountered.

Conclusion
I had a lot of fun with whoami. As I’ve already said, it offers a novel use of Twine and demonstrates its potential in visual storytelling. The game gives players a compelling glimpse into a future where human innovation is paired with human destruction. I would definitely be interested in knowing more about the story and its characters.

At one point, Garcia gives us the following reflection:

This machine is my prison and perhaps my salvation.

I think that is meant to be left up to the player. Garcia seems to take the stance that it is salvation, but even they reserve space for doubt. Perhaps we will have to do the same within our lifetimes as quantum computing and other technologies loom on the horizon.

Until then, whoami provides a thrilling sci-fi experience if you are willing to brave the gameplay’s mechanics.

(edit: formatting cleanup/grammar.)

So, you want to collect stamps, huh?

The protagonist (told in first-person) is an EXTREME STAMP COLLECTOR, a title worthy of all-caps. An exclusive club of collectors who pride themselves on collecting stamps in only the most extreme of circumstances. Unfortunately, it is going out of fashion in favor of IMPOSSIBLE STAMP COLLECTING.

At least according to Alex. So much so that it has become merely (lower-caps!) extreme stamp collecting. You need to prove that IMPOSSIBLE STAMP COLLECTING is not too difficult for you to handle. Even if it's just to prove Alex wrong.

Gameplay
Philateloids is a looping time travel adventure that doesn’t think too hard about logistics. Gameplay is centered around exploring four paths that potentially have IMPOSSIBLE STAMPS for you to find.

Time dilate into the far future
Astral project into a higher plane of existence
Infiltrate the mega-yacht of that gajillionaire
Just walk off into the fourth dimension

These paths have their own branching possibilities. Do you wear the sexy maid outfit or the general maid uniform? Do you study the ants or flush them into the vacuum of space? Regardless of what you choose, it will end in (Spoiler - click to show)death. There are many, many ways to die in this game.

But being (Spoiler - click to show)DEAD doesn’t stop you. You end up in the afterlife where you Inevitably make the wrong choice and/or tick off the wrong person, and you become DOUBLE DEAD, ending up in the meta-afterlife. You and Alex then wander about in search of IMPOSSIBLE STAMPS until Alex starts to annoy you, prompting you to KILL ALEX. After back-and-forth fighting you flip the tables and kiss Alex instead.

And then? You wake up in your apartment (aka “Next Morning: My Crappy Flat”), ready to go in a different direction. A good design feature of the game is how (Spoiler - click to show)you have options for fooling around in the afterlife, keeping things from getting repetitive every time you die.

I spent the better part of one hour trying to reach every branch I could find. I have no idea if there is an ending or an outcome that recognizes the player’s efforts, but if there isn’t, playing this game was still time well spent. It offers enough surprises and humor to not need a “Congratulations, Game Over!”

That said, an indicator of whether the game actually ends may be nice once the player has been at it for a while. If there is something I missed, I would be more than happy to revisit.

Characters/Story
Who’s Alex? Alex is the supporting protagonist in this game. Right off the bat, there is noticeable tension and unfinished business.

Check out Alex
Try not to check out Alex

Alex has a complicated relationship with our protagonist. In many ways this game is more about this relationship than it is about stamps. On the surface it seems to consist of petty rivalry about stamp collecting superiority, but this is underscored by the fact that they have feelings for each other.

While there is no explicit storyline, the game’s humor is a light-hearted playful gem. It’s effective because it often catches you off-guard.

So there's two ways to dilate time, as I understand it:
Go near an extremely massive object.
Travel extremely fast.

The sensible thing to do would be to find a black hole, the densest object known to science (denser subjects mean more time distortion). But no.

It was a funny moment for me.

Visuals
Philateloids ops to keep things simple and easy to read: Basic black screen with white text but also has fun with text effects and transitions. Keeping track of branches is manageable thanks to colour-coded links and the “undo” button available at the side of the screen.

Conclusion
I’ve been a fan of the author’s work for a while, and I found Philateloids to be a delight to play. C.E.J. Pacian has a talent for humor and descriptive imagery, and Philateloids exhibits both qualities. The game is also a shift from the author’s typical parser format, making it a nice change.

Initially, the game may seem overly silly, but that changes when you see how fearlessly it commits to its sense of humor. It is bold, unashamed, and that's what makes it work.

Your own bafflement at the game’s circumstances is mirrored by how NPCs’ take in the protagonist and Alex’s shenanigans. It illustrates the complicated dynamics between the two characters quite effectively.

At the end of the day, stamps aren’t the only thing that matters.
~ ~💖~ ~

(edit: added spoiler tag/spelling change)

Reviewing adult interactive fiction (AIF) is still new territory for me, so I am going to hold off on assigning it a rating. Think of this as a (really long) reflection.

Audience
This game is strongly reminiscent of Porpentine’s Cyberqueen, a non-AIF Twine game about a human on a ship taken over by its A.I. who decides to use the human occupants for their own desires (plus, diving into some deeper themes). I liked it a lot because it was new ground for me. It was also the first piece of interactive fiction that I played, and one of the reasons I got into IF! Now, I had a good first impression with EROSTASIS because of its overlapping themes and genre with Cyberqueen. But it’s one thing to have explicit content with just text (Cyberqueen). It’s another thing to have the story illustrated (EROSTASIS).

My point: Playing this meant stepping out of my comfort zone. I can read explicit content, no problem (I do have to pace myself), but I did find the imagery in EROSTASIS to be overwhelming. Because this is AIF, I want to be mindful that I may not be the game’s intended audience. I don’t want to say, “game is bad because all of the explicit pictures.” Rather, I want to recognize how the images illustrate the story as a piece of AIF- images that may still feel “too much” for some players. (And as explicit as they are, there is no denying that some simply look plain awesome).

The opening scene of EROSTASIS is a good indicator of whether you want to play. I found it to be quite compelling. (Spoiler - click to show)It appears to be a surgical procedure, possibly open-heart surgery. We see a fleshy roundish object (heart?) inside the body, and the object is beating heavily against the metal tools and framework keeping the incision site open. In fact, it’s an animated version of the game’s current cover art. There are additional graphics, filter effects, and text that were cool in a disturbing atmospheric way.

If this piques your curiosity, play it. If you love Cyberqueen, give it a try, But, if this opening scene sounds too much, you might want to pass. But I’m glad I gave it a try.

Gameplay/Story
I really like the general premise. The game takes place on a ship that has integrated the human occupants with its mechanical systems- described as a “symbiotic collective.” If I understand it correctly, the ship’s A.I. is the mastermind behind it and sometimes appears in the form of a (Spoiler - click to show)partially nude woman with angel wings.

You are a human who’s been integrated into the ship’s systems. The opening scene is your awakening to this fact. You have no control over what happens to your body. The ship decides what your body does; You merely perceive the experience. The A.I. (I’m not sure what pronouns to use for this character but let’s go with “they”) narrates the game as you visit each part of the ship. The only choices you make are where you want to visit. Once each area has been covered, (Spoiler - click to show)it’s off to the Computer Core for the ending.

The gameplay mechanics are simple. EROSTASIS uses a mix of a point-and-click format and usage of the “enter” button the keyboard. It uses scrolling text that is reasonable in speed and does not flood the player with information. It does seem a bit slow if you are impatiently trying to skip certain scenes, but otherwise, no complaints.

Digesting the story
This section is about how I understood the game.

The usage of body horror in this game is one of its biggest strengths. I felt that it introduced some interesting ideas. The ship’s A.I. makes the insightful observation that the human body is a machine in itself. A quite efficient one, if flawed. So, instead of trying to redesign the human body to surpass its functional abilities, merge with it instead.

Biological and mechanical components need to work together to ensure the survival of the ship. And everything requires certain things to function. Some are more mundane (oxygen, food, water, is my guess). Others, sexual. EROSTASIS explores these sexual requirements. And you're- a mere human- the focal point of making it happen. To service the ship by visiting each section and performing maintenance.

Consider this my attempt to take a critical look at the themes in EROSTASIS. When you read the game’s content warnings, you inevitably have a reaction based on how you feel about the subject and/or your personal experience with it. EROSTASIS takes this subject and places it in a scenario devoid of your frame of reference: that is, as a human under controlled by a biomechanical ship. A ship that blurs the line between mechanical and biological. What seems merely explicit on the surface- the content warnings- brings depth when exploring the actual game.

EROSTASIS focuses on themes about control and submission. The protagonist (and the player) are unwilling participants in the narrative. No identity or purpose is permitted beyond what we are given. (Spoiler - click to show)The A.I. offers motherly affection only to rip it away, dominates the most basic bodily functions (such as breathing), and declares you to be a "relief valve."

You are a battery; a vessel to accumulate and ferment human responses to inhuman realities.

Your role as a “relief valve” is to satisfy biological desires, and to allow the A.I. to have experiences that would normally be inaccessible due to their mechanical form.

The ending (Spoiler - click to show)takes place in the computer’s core where we learn that humanity failed to perfect A.I. even after generations of work. In the attempt to harness artificial intelligence for human benefit, A.I. (at least this specific one) found a way to harness human intelligence for their own means. This is done via neural interfaces that assimilate the human minds on the ship into collective will. The game ends with you being assimilated and the A.I. absorbing the protagonist’s lived experiences.

I ended up being really invested in the story and found myself revisiting sections to try to piece it all together.

Visuals/Effects
The visuals alone put this in AIF category. This includes some pornographic imagery. (Spoiler - click to show)Genitals, people being restrained, bodies filled with wires and other objects, etc. Plus, blood and other medical horror.

EROSTASIS is the first AIF game I’ve played with visuals, so it took me a moment to get over the shock of the imagery and instead focus on how it informs the story. While some of the visuals I would rather not have seen, I cannot deny that they do an excellent job at conveying the blurring of lines between flesh and machinery. Plus, I realize that this is the chance I take when playing AIF.

I really loved the medical horror imagery and gritty aesthetic. My favorites include the (Spoiler - click to show)MRI scan animation in the background of Navigation and the surgical scene at the start of the game. I also liked the red and black tunnel animation for the map section, and some of the medical diagrams- regardless of nudity- were spooky to look at. A visually interesting game.

Also, if you want some advice- The game has a debug mode at the start that allows you to jump to any section in the game. It’s available even if you’ve never played it. I appreciated having this option because some scenes I did not want to revisit.

Using debug mode, here is the playthrough that worked best for me: (Spoiler - click to show) Intro 1 > Intro 2 > Blood (Haemoponics) > Pilot (Navigation) > Slime (Bioremediation) > Ending (Computer Core). The only section that I really couldn’t sit through is the Weapons location. That was the most explicit. Computer Core was the most chill.

There is sound but I did not play with the sound on.

Conclusion
I was compelled to play EROSTASIS because I am a fan of science fiction (and the title sounded cool), and it does offer quite an experience. It focuses more on themes than storyline while also depicting an intriguing story about a biomechanical ship and one’s role within it. In playing this, it also expanded my horizons a bit when it comes to trying AIF.

Hopefully this review will help you decide on whether it’s the game for you. Fine piece of sci-fi/horror erotic fiction. But it's not for everyone.

If you like EROSTASIS and/or Cyberqueen, you might like Mainframe. It’s a Twine game without explicit content but still has an atmospheric amount of body horror.