Reviews by Kinetic Mouse Car

You are an Ensign on a ship called the Invisible Hand. Its mission is to ferry goods to different locations, but the last job ran into some issues. The cargo is a sentient gelatinous substance call Lumen Fish. It is extremely valuable which means the reward for delivering the cargo will be high. Unfortunately, a group called the Lex Evisceratum heard about this and now hunting the Invisible Hand. To make things worse the ship's FTL (faster than light) drive has been damaged, leaving the ship vulnerable in space.

Gameplay
The goal of the game is to fix the drive. The player can explore different rooms on the ship although the rooms themselves are usually minimal in interactivity. Most locations consist of a room redescription and a character although a few have objects you can interact with. Some characters have prerequisites for interacting with them, or for entering their spaces, which form most puzzles. A fun bonus is the achievements at the end of the game which is nice since it gives incentive to replay.

The weak point of the game is its premature endings. The first one that left me confused is (Spoiler - click to show) the Bio-Purification Unit in the infirmary. If you examine it the game ends without describing it or explaining its function. Is it a human-sized version of a garbage disposal? The protagonist just keels over in pain and that is that.

Similarly, the game (Spoiler - click to show) randomly ends if you examine the beast in the lab. There is not even an option to return to a checkpoint. Nor is there anything that says, "the end" or "game over." It gives the impression of a broken link. If it is meant to an official ending is extremely under clued. All you did was examine the beast. It escapes and causes chaos but there is no story structure behind its escape. It has absolutely nothing to do with repairing the drive or delivering the cargo and could have been implemented more smoothly.

Story
The story is a bit one-dimensional. It follows a familiar model of the genre: recognizable archetypes of crew members, a premise of transporting strange cargo, and a dispute between galactic powers, in this case being the Laissez-Faire Trade Federation vs the Lex Evisceratum. Then again, that model is also part of the allure. It may be familiar, but the author can always add a unique twist.

Escape from Cluster Zeta is light on background material. It does not weigh the player down with detail about planets, politics, and logistics. Such detail is desirable but for small games it can be overwhelming. This game balances length with background content. The immediate story could have been more fleshed out. There is not much content on the protagonist or any elaboration on the cargo's bounty and the Lex Evisceratum, but it is still enough to make the player curious enough to play. There are also Star Wars and interactive fiction references (plus other subjects) sprinkled about. If you enjoy these things, you may find humor in this game.

Visuals
This Twine game uses a black screen with simple white text. A notable feature is the awesome photos of characters. The editing for most of the alien species looks a bit corny and overedited but I appreciate the effort of making them more diverse than just having humans with secondary alien characteristics. The stylizing for the human characters, on the other hand, adds just enough flair without overdoing it. I am curious to know how the author produced the graphics.

Conclusion
Its strong points do not quite make up for its weaknesses but is still an interesting piece none the less. If the game focused more on story structure and the cause and effect of player choices the piece would much stronger. Though it is rough around the edges it is not a sloppy piece. The author clearly has clearly put much care into its creation and the eagerness shows. I would be curious to know if they ever produce a game in the future.

You are a housecat hungry- no, ravenous- for soft cat food. Usually, you turn to your owner for such things, but he has not been himself recently. It seems like everything annoys him and when he does feed you it is mostly boring dry food. Instead of waiting for him you decide to take initiative and acquire some soft food.

Gameplay
You start the day curled up on the windowsill inside a one-story cottage. Your Provider* is asleep but will move about independently as the day moves on. He is one of a handful of independent NPCs that you will encounter. The initial goal is to satisfy your immediate hunger before addressing your hankering for soft food. The gameplay consists of tiptoeing around the cottage and surrounding forest in search of ways to reach this goal.

The puzzles are not always intuitive. In fact, some of them left me scratching my head. (Spoiler - click to show) Rolling in ash to disguise yourself so you pounce on a bird makes sense. And I liked the puzzle where you wake up the Provider without him knowing that you are trying to do so. But (Spoiler - click to show) tying the shiny egg* to the balloon and releasing it from the roof of the cottage so it could float down to the little boy was something I needed the walkthrough for.

I like how there are (Spoiler - click to show) two solutions for removing the Rival when he comes back for revenge. You can lure him into the road where he gets hit by a car or, and I prefer this one, dump the sack of dry cat food on him so he leaves. Perhaps that way someone will find him and give him a home. But I must say that the author really replicates the finicky nature of cats squabbling over territory (and the preposterousness of sharing a food bowl). Similarly, (Spoiler - click to show) I am glad that it is possible to reach a peaceful resolution with the Provider. He goes from throwing the cat outside to cuddling the cat during excursions in the forest. Both cat and Provider reach a sense of contentedness which made for a satisfying ending.

Story/Writing
Though the puzzles can sometimes muddle up the pacing, the game makes up for it by capturing the player's attention with humor and descriptiveness. Take the description of the beast* in the garage as an example: "You've heard such beasts rumble, sigh, bleat, and stampede. This one is quiet, and perhaps ill. He appears to be bleeding from his underside." Through the cat's perspective it takes a cold and static piece of human technology and turns it into something living. A car leaking away in a garage is suddenly a wounded creature biding its time. This formed a more vivid image in my head than if the game simply said, "a human vehicle is in a garage. It is leaking fluid." It adds extra dimension.

This game really does give a cat's-eye-view of a hungry feline in a forest setting. There are so many scents and things to climb. The alarm of encountering a strange cat, the surprise of an unexpected human, and the enticing allure of capturing feathered wildlife. And yet the house is the focal point of your world with its heated rooms and Providers who give you food (Obviously this is not the case for all cats, but the protagonist seems to be a well-adjusted housecat). I think my favorite slice of writing is when (Spoiler - click to show) the cat finally gets to eat the soft food:

A blend of tuna and chicken livers, your entire consciousness swims in its taste, texture, and smell. You lap up its succulent juices, and slaver down every delectable mouthful. After a moment of complete rapture, you find yourself staring into an empty shell, grease dripping from your whiskers.

I can almost image chowing down in bliss the delicious food I waited forever to find. The obsession with soft food is a familiar one for me. I know what it is like to have a cat meowing at you for food and when you put down dry kibble, they look at you as if to say, "what is this garbage? I wanted the stuff from the can."

Final thoughts
If you are bored of playing as human protagonists A Day for Soft Food offers a refreshing change in perspective. I recommend it if you want to play a game with an animal protagonist or is you are just looking for something lighthearted and humorous.

...
Oh, and one last thing...
What is up with (Spoiler - click to show) riding down the river in the basket? Who is that saucy cat? The game describes her as "the most beautiful feline you've ever seen lies languorously on an unreachable limb." Is this a love interest? Apparently, this just earns you a bonus point, but it is certainly a memorable one.

Cat Glossary* (Spoiler - click to show)
-Beast: Car
-Beast's Cave: Garage
-Billowy wall: Window blinds
-Confusing box: TV
-Food Room: Kitchen
-Jangly ring: Keyring
-Lumpy mountain: Sofa
-Provider: Cat owner
-Shiny metal egg: Can of soft cat food
-Shiny stool: Wheelchair
-Silvery leaves: Keys
-Small white box: Garage opener

Dead Meat in the Pit is a game based off a Grimm fairy tale called "Going a-Traveling.”

Grimm story background
In the Grimm story a mother and her son live in a simple cottage. The son is becoming more independent and wants to journey out into the world. Because the family is poor his mother teaches him to say "not much" to strangers so they would understand his situation. The game follows the Grimm storyline quite closely. Note: The game does not clarify the gender of the protagonist. I am not sure of the author intended for the protagonist to be gender neutral or a son, like in the story.

Gameplay
The main gameplay mechanic is that the player learns sayings from each character and passes them on to the next character they encounter to advance the game. Right before the game begins the protagonist’s mother, as is the case in the Grimm story, instructs them to say, “Not much” to the first person on their journey.

To demonstrate this mechanic here is a sample of the gameplay: (Spoiler - click to show) The first character the player meets is a fisherman. When the player says, "Not much" the fisherman introduces them to the phrase "Get it full." The player repeats “Get it full” back to the fisherman who then gives them a boat ride to their next destination. When the player reaches the next character, a hangman, they say, “Get it full” and learn another new phrase that they repeat to the next character after that (in fact one of these sayings is connected to the game’s title). This is a simple but clever way of incorporating the structure of the original story into an interactive parser format. In that regard the game closely replicates the original. I was hoping that the game would last a little longer although it seems that the Grimm story itself is about the same length.

Story
There is only one ending but three ways of achieving it. The ending uses the same language as the Grimm story. It goes: (Spoiler - click to show)

*** And you never went travelling again. ***

The three variations are: (Spoiler - click to show) 1, you are chased by farmers who beat you up and leave you to crawl home. 2, the fisherman rescues you and takes you home. And 3, you uncover a shallow grave and are handsomely rewarded by the mayor, allowing you and your mother to live comfortably. This third ending was a nice surprise. In the Grimm story the protagonist is beaten, returns home, and decides to never go traveling again. Though this is the case for variation 1 (which is also the easiest ending to reach) at least the player can influence the circumstances behind the outcome of never travelling again.

Design
There are bugs that reduce the game’s quality. For instance, you can hear the mob even after the fisherman boats the protagonist away to escape safely. Later in the game the “Not much” phrase is no longer usable. If you try “talk” and the select it from the menu the game does not even acknowledge that the player is trying to use it.

The game is also poorly implemented. The description of Lake Shore is “A fisherman is standing in a poor boat not many paces from the shore, pulling in a net. Only a few fish are twitching in the net.” But if you try to examine the net or the fish the game says, “You can’t see any such thing.” Another case is when you come across the road where farmers are trying to move their cart. The game has no response if you try to examine the farmers which is surprising since (Spoiler - click to show) they are the ones that mob you. If the game were to fix these it would make a huge difference for the gameplay experience.

That said, the game’s listing explains that it was made in one hour for a jam so I will cut the game some slack. Even if it is rough around the edges it does strive to capture the Grimm version’s storyline.

Conclusion
After some light reading on the Grimm fairy tale, I can say that the game follows the story quite closely. Unfortunately, it is an interesting premise weakened by bugs and poor implementation. Nonetheless, if you like retellings of fairy tales than I recommend checking this one out, especially if you have never heard of “Going a-Traveling.” I certainty never heard of it until I played this game. If anything, it is a nice way of expanding your knowledge of Grimm stories.

The premise is a familiar one: You find yourself in an unfamiliar room with no clear exit. Using the resources in your surroundings you must puzzle your way out. And yet, this game has a refreshing take on the concept by focusing more on brain teaser type puzzles.

Gameplay
Rather than having the urgency of a desperate escape the gameplay feels more casual with its use of riddles, sudoku, and trivia-like activities. The objective is to find the combination to the door that will presumably allow you to escape. The formula (this part is not really a spoiler, but I will tag it anyway) (Spoiler - click to show) is scribbled on a tissue in the waste bin. It reads:

sudoku(5,5) * 1000 + sudoku(5,6)^2 + riddle(sara) - song(beatles)

This formula presents an enticing challenge but not one I managed to complete. The section of the formula that I DID solve (Spoiler - click to show) was for “riddle(sara).” The answer is 5.

Inside the (Spoiler - click to show) desk is an iPhone that allows you to call Crafty, the person who decided to stick you in the basement. This functions as an amazing hint system because you can ask for help with any of the puzzles. I do wish he had more graded assistance. With the sudoku puzzle I was expecting him to provide guidance on how to solve a sudoku puzzle, maybe providing an answer for a few of the squares. Instead, he only offers to give you (Spoiler - click to show) the solution which is "For the Sudoku solution, bring up the puzzle and then click just to the right of the help icon at the top." When you click on the icon if gives a brief overview of sudoku but not enough to be helpful (nor does it provide a solution).

When I finally managed to hack out a finished sudoku puzzle I was unable to incorporate it into the formula. I must admit, this is not my strongest area of expertise. Sudoku fiends out there can probably run laps around me. If you are one of them, I would love to hear your take on the puzzle. Eventually, this is where I ended. I had already (Spoiler - click to show) searched the room, found the Walkman and the cassette tape, but had no other points to work from.

A fun note is that you can ask Crafty about a LOT of things. Even things that have nothing to do with this game or interactive fiction. Dolphins, carrots, all sorts of topics. If I am being perfectly honest, I probably spent almost as much time trying out different queries than playing the game itself.

Visuals
The game is custom parser and has an extremely simple yet polished appearance. The screen space is a white rectangle with rounded corners, outlined in blue. The text is easy to read and is sometimes uses in game links to click on. This simple design is then punctuated with some nice visuals that incorporate a choice-based format. First there is a decryption puzzle with boxes and stylized buttons that you click on to input each letter. Solving this gives you instructions on how to unlock the iPhone. Then there is a spiffy sudoku puzzle that lets you “erase” and keep track of your answers as you play. Besides being aesthetically pleasing, these features make the “game inside a game” mechanic incredibly user friendly.

The visual design also shines through the game’s hint system. When you call Crafty, the game makes it look like you are having a text message conversation. You then “hang up” to return to the game.

Story
I only scraped the surface of the story. Crafty is not some villain keen on tormenting the player into solving his puzzles. When you first call him, he introduces himself as Crafty the Puzzle Master, and his reason for trapping you in the basement is because he thinks that you like puzzles. Playful fun. Then again, I never made it to the end. Perhaps there is a plot twist that I am not aware of.

Final thoughts
This is a new game and even though I did not complete the entire thing I just wanted to throw my thoughts out there. Normally single room games are not a huge draw for me, but this game made an impression. If there are any updates or new developments, I would be eager to replay it.

This is surreal Twine game about wandering a seaside landscape in quiet contemplation. The world is infused with cat motifs and underlying feelings of loneliness, serenity, and self-reflection. There are no puzzles or plot twists, and yet, there is plenty to see and do in this game’s world.

Gameplay
The game really captures the feel of wandering aimlessly in a seaside setting. Its design is simple: clicking on links to navigate your environment. But there is an underlying complexity. It heavily uses cycling links, just small ones within each location but also ones that are strung together across locations. It is how you find yourself slowing moving from the waterfront to the lighthouse to the open sea and onwards. You might click on a link that takes you to a previous direction, but you can easily retrace your progress. The writing and the way the links are imbedded in each other really create a smooth effect. It feels less linear and more adaptive to the player's choices. It also creates the excitement of stumbling across a new location that you overlooked.

There is a sense that you are the only person there- well, technically you are. You are not ambushed by cuddle piles of cats. In fact, there are no cats you can directly interact with. You only see hints of them here and there in the corner of your eye. But paying close attention to these details almost creates a meditative experience. One of my favorite details is (Spoiler - click to show) in the larger boat, The Flying Fish. It is empty, but you cannot help but notice that the furniture has traces of cat hair.

Story
The author has such vivid imagination that shines in this game. Rather than a broad story that encases the entire game, the story lies in bits and pieces throughout the setting. Different areas are infused with memories and small narratives that help you form your own idea of the history of the seaside setting and the locations connected to it. Besides, the world is just so fascinating to explore. At the waterfront there is a warehouse called "Feline Industries Recycling Center." It is not exactly clear as to what type of facility it is, only that when you explore it you catch hints of cats scampering about the rafters. You get a taste of the story’s world without really knowing what it is.

One of my favorite bits of writing is part of the location description for Feline Industries Waterfront:

Far to the north, beyond a barren expanse, pale light reveals a small town. The sign pointing that way says: “To Centaur Square”. It looks like a short trip.

When you click on “It looks like a short trip” it changes to:

Trying to follow its directions however makes the town appear more distant with every step. Only a solitary line of paw prints marks the way.

There is something about that writing that really resonated with me. Just think about it...

Is there an ending? I believe the answer is no. I certainly did not reach an ending, nor did I find one while digging through the source code that the author posted. But this feels like a game that needs no ending. It ends when you feel like ending the experience.

Visuals
I applaud the visual design. It is crisp and simple. Main appearance of the game is a white square against a second off-white background. The text is spaced within the square with black lines and accents. The text is well-organized and easy to read, and the name of each location is neatly printed at the top. Occasionally, the writing is augmented with basic but pretty artwork of the setting. All of this created a polished look.

In case you want to compare notes, I found (Spoiler - click to show) five pieces of artwork in the game. The locations are Engine room, Feline bedroom, Ground Floor, In a boat at sea, Round Chamber.

Final thoughts?
So, what is it like playing Kitty and the Sea? Imagine this: It is past noon, and you are playing a Twine game, one that lets you roam around, almost like a parser game, but also one that is heavily based on writing. You are groggy and tired. It is tempting to take a nap, but you convince yourself not to since you want to break the bad habit of sleeping late in the day. You are not really reading; you are just clicking. Whenever you try to focus on the writing, as if someone asked you to read it and then summarize it at the drop of a hat, you just feel so tired. But then slowly your brain starts to focus on the text on and suddenly it does not seem so vast. You go from being in a mid-afternoon dazed to suddenly super-focused on this game that you suddenly realize "wow, this game is actually quite captivating!" THAT was my experience (and this is not the only game where this has happened to me). That was my personal experience. Go see where it takes you.

You are a deputy summoned to investigate a murder in a casino. The game begins when you arrive at the casino. The manager tells you that a prominent guest has been murdered and that it would be appreciated if the investigation were conducted as quietly as possible. The FBI are planning to arrive the next day and would like you to narrow down a suspect.

Gameplay
The game is light on puzzles. They mostly involve traveling to different rooms to interview people and compare their statements. There was one puzzle about finding cheaters in the casino, but they were often found right in the lobby which made it easy to complete. This also seemed to be a bit of a side quest because you can ask the security guard if you could find more cheaters in exchange for chips. The game lets you play blackjack (and you do not even have to win) although (Spoiler - click to show) its only purpose is to attract the attention of Kat who simply gives you more information about the casino guests.

The game makes an effort at building atmosphere. There will be random characters wandering around to make it more like a busy casino. You have access to over a dozen locations including a poker table, blackjack table, bar, kitchen, private rooms, lobby, and other areas. This is roughly an hour-long game but can be completed in less time in replays.

Design
Redstone is a custom choice-based game that uses menus to create a parser-like effect. At first the point and click was slow, but you get used to it quickly. The game tries to streamline the gameplay by summarizing your findings with the “Think” command and marking off which discussion topics you have used with characters to avoid repetition. It is also cool how you can “undo” with this format.

For each location there are boxes that say "Examine," "Go to," "Talk to" (if there are people to talk to), "Think," "Inventory," "Look around," and other commands that may be unique to the situation. This all works together to create a parser-like experience. For instance, clicking on “Talk to” lets you choose which character in the room you want to interact with. On a slightly more complex level, if you use the “Examine” command and find something worth taking, then the game will implement the “Take” command. Play the game and you will get the hang of it.

The visuals are a bit rough-around-the-edges and yet they are consistent enough to create a solid appearance that carries it through. The art, though occasionally crude, I found to be oddly likable. And there is a lot of art to experience. (Spoiler - click to show) One little inconsistency that stood out to me is Kat’s dress. Kat is described as wearing a slinky red dress even though the drawing of her shows her in a dark navy dress. That kept bugging me. But that aside, I really did enjoy the art.

Story
It is an interesting story but none of it is particularly thrilling or exciting which is too bad since murder + casino tends to have no shortage of flair. The main issue is that it could have capitalized on some of the plot developments. The main one was when (Spoiler - click to show) Simon leaves his room and tries to sneak out. If the player goes to his room to find it empty the game has no reaction. No "Simon is no longer here" or "Simon is missing!" All we get is:

John Simon's room
You see a bed and a dresser.

No drama or suggestions to the player that this is a new plot development. There is not even a note under the “Think” command that acknowledges this. I was expecting a “Simon is nowhere to be seen! You should catch him while you can!” That would have been a great opportunity to turn up the heat. Instead, it just assumes that the player will notice that he isn't there and to respond accordingly. In other words, it is easy to put two and two together (Simon snuck out evade the investigation) to figure out what the game wants us to do (detain him in the garage) but there is no atmosphere to this development.

Final thoughts
I would summarize this one as a finished piece that offers some quality gameplay if you feel like playing a murder mystery game. I recommend anyone interested in the genre to play it especially if you are looking for parser-like gameplay in a choice-based format.

The game starts with an intro that explains the post-apocalyptic circumstances. In 2017 a short global war turned the planet into a wasteland. More than a century later in 2163 survivors have managed to pull together communities. However, controversy and strife remain. You live in a village called Mountain Mission which is under threat of being attacked by a clan called the Alpha Revolution. This section of the game has a cool map that shows the location of Mountain Mission in relation to its surrounding areas, giving it a survival-like edge. Your village is about to be attacked and how you respond is up to you.

The main gameplay begins in your shack in Mountain Mission. You have some money and some weaponry. Your only choice is to go out. Once outside you can go to the market, the barracks, or decide to leave the village. No matter what you choose you (Spoiler - click to show) always end up at a gate with attackers on the other side. You have two choices: defend or hide. The game immediately ends soon after. Here is an example of a sequence, starting outside of your shack: Go to the barracks > Hide > Stay hidden. Then the game suddenly says, "Thank you for playing Alpha 1.0!" Beneath it is a link saying to restart. It was the ultimately feeling of "that's it?" I feel that the author could have at least add more of a transition between the player choosing their final action and the game ending. Choosing to defend stretches out the gameplay because you can choose how you fight although it too ends in the same way.

Like the gameplay, the story has yet to develop beyond the intro. The game hints at letting the player dabble with moral choices. How do you respond to newly sprung conflict amid a post-apocalyptic setting where daily life is still fragile? Unfortunately, the game ends before these choices can be explored.

The game may be incomplete, but the author says that they plan to update it. I am not sure if that will happen, but I hope that happens since apocalyptic/post-apocalyptic themes in interactive fiction can be a draw for players. And if it does happen, I will definitely revisit this.

The game begins at the edge of a dead city called Chloe. Not much is described about the protagonist, only that you are determined to enter the city from one end and escape from the other side. Sadly, it is much harder to leave, and you are being hunted by a strange icy figure that moves closer with each passing day. Meanwhile, a tall spire attached to a mysterious egg loom in the distance.

Gameplay
The game uses several types of currency that are represented as colourful symbols on the screen which adds a neat visual flair. Along with coins the player collects manifestations of will, movement, and language. These currencies allow you to access different locations, acquire special objects, and engage with characters. The few characters you can meet are all ghosts of past inhabitants. They are summoned based on location and can assist the player.

The management part is balancing the amount of currency that you need for your objectives. For example, if you need coins, visiting (Spoiler - click to show) the rooftop in the labyrinth is a plentiful place to look. But it always costs you manifestation-of-will currency. Therefore, if the objective I am saving up for requires both coins and manifestation-of-will I end up having to make up the slack somewhere else. This tight inventory management is key attribute to the game. Management of time is also a major variable, and this is where my criticism starts.

Gameplay is marked by the passage of the moon cycles, starting on a new moon, and ending at the tail end of a full moon. This gives the player several days. However, this does not give the player enough time to gather resources needed to make progress, especially (Spoiler - click to show) with Ending 3. On one aspect this is where strategy comes into play. But it feels too tightly constrained to permit exploration of the game’s world. I found myself so focused on micro-managing currency that I felt like I was missing out on some of the world-building.

For instance, you can learn (Spoiler - click to show) more about the ghosts’ former lives by visiting the screeching room in the spire, but the effort and resources required to look up just one character entry would mean running out of time to make up those resources that I would otherwise need to win the game. My hope is that more people will try this game. Who knows? Maybe some player will prove me wrong and glide through the puzzles effortlessly. I would love to know if anyone had a different experience than I did.

Story
We do not know exactly why the protagonist is running or why Chloe is a dead husk. The events behind the city’s destruction or the purpose of the spire and the egg are never fully explained. Based on what (Spoiler - click to show) Ran, Lady of Stone says the spire was possibly as a punishment on the city by some unnamed entity. Ending 3 (SPOILERS), where you take the elevator to the top of the spire and climb into the egg, delves a little more into this but still leaves questions unanswered. (Spoiler - click to show) (Comment if you want my notes on the endings).

The game's surrealness and use of descriptive imagery carries itself through. A lot of it seems to be left up to interpretation. What exactly is the egg? Is it biological? A dormant organism? A weapon? The implications for any of those and the city's fate are interesting to think about. Regardless I would have liked to know more about this compelling story that the author portrays.

Final thoughts
This is a strong game with a few tradeoffs. It is tightly timed, a sometimes a bit too unfairly. But it also forces the player to use strategic thinking to keep them on their toes, so they do not waste resources. If you are interested in that type of gameplay, then definitely play this one.

Intro
Society is managed by A.I. created by corporations. But it has not been a seamless experience for society. Oneiri Global, creator of the ATHENA A.I., seems to be hiding something, prompting you to infiltrate their HYPNOS Labs to learn more about their projects.

Story context
The start of the game has some visuals that add atmosphere and world building, especially the news articles. And they really do look like a print-out from a website. One news article explains an event called "Dark-0" where the mainframe network went dark. The official claim was that a city mainframe was in the middle of a large update that caused the power grid to blow out from overuse. That constant networked reality that people depended on suddenly disappeared. Social unrest resulted. But even after everything was brought back online, people started to question corporations' claims about the resilience and reliability of ATHENA. Spray-painted signs on the building indicates that people feel like that the truth about the cause of the power-grid failure is being covered up.

Gameplay/Characters
The protagonist's background is not given much explanation. Their name is not mentioned. They seem to be an undercover agent but is unclear if they belong to an organization. For now, the game refers to them as an activist. An inside source has outlined a way to learn more about a man named Lucien Durante. The protagonist’s partner, Klein, communicates through comm lines, creating a suspenseful espionage vibe. He narrates the player's choices and shares instructions.

The gameplay consists of navigating the lab to reach the server room. The goal is to retrieve Durante’s files from the server. The player makes decisions based on information they receive from Klein or the personal data device they carry with them. The device is a creatively implemented feature that contains messages with information on your tasks. It even has a map of the facility. If the player fails to follow the instructions and is intercepted, the game sends them back to a checkpoint to try again.

When the player finds (Spoiler - click to show) Durante’s files they can choose a text file, audio file, or a video file. Once you click on one the game ends. The only file with content seems be the text file. In it, Durante says the development of high efficiency A.I. for day-to-day management has been honed to an art. The project has been a success. And yet, he is worried that society has become overly reliant on them. He once scoffed at people who opposed this new technology but now finds himself with second thoughts. Then the game ends. But by this point the game’s author has set a foundation for an interesting story into the ethics of automated technology in daily life. The (Spoiler - click to show) file may not explain why Durante is worried about ATHENA, but I suppose that will be explored in the next part of the series.

Visuals
Game maintains a basic yet trendy colour scheme. Uses a black background with white and orange accents for text and links. Other colours are occasionally used for colour-coding. I also liked lab logo that we see at the title page. Text is large and easy to read. I touched on this earlier, but the game makes use of photos. Awesome selection of images to “build” the facility, particularly the photo of the supercomputer. I like how there is an actual visual of the poppy paper with the username and password scrawled on it.

Klein’s dialog is shown as scrawling text on the screen as if he were right next to you speaking in your ear (and in fact, that is what he is doing with the protagonist). What I applaud is that with this dialog you do not need to wait for the text to load before proceeding to the next page. The links are there, and you can click them right away. This is nice if you are replaying the game and want to skip over rereading everything.

Not every design feature was seamless, however. Sometimes when I open the message section it will close before I have a chance to fully read it. You do not click on them but instead hover your mouse over them to open. When they open the whole page shifts, causing your mouse to move off the link, closing everything again. It also would have been helpful for the map to be displayed horizontally rather on its side where you must tilt your head to read it. None of this is impossible to manage but it does make it inconvenient.

Final thoughts
The meaning of the title is that everyone is always logged in to a network that manages their lives. In this case the network ATHENA A.I. system produced by the corporation Oneiri Global. The AI crisscrosses through networked computers to allow it to manage people's lives more effectively. But having a highly connected online presence 24/7 is bound to influence people's behavior. The game ends before it can dive deeper into these implications, but it does skim the surface.

Obviously if this were a stand-alone game it would get poor marks for being incomplete (it would still score for visual design). HOWEVER. The author made it clear that this is only the first part of the series. and in that case, I think the author ended the game on a nice cliff-hanger. The game was not as long as I expected but I was still impressed with it nonetheless given its paced espionage vibe. I highly encourage the author to keep producing the series because I am eager to see what happens next in this compelling dystopian sci-fi story.

The gameplay is extremely simple. Each turn, or "act," you choose two qualities from an action list and a manner list. For example, I could choose "fast" from the action list and "eagerly" from the manner list. The game then combines these two factors into a sonnet. The whole process repeats itself. You can make as many sonnets as you want and there is no ending. It ends when you no longer feel like playing.

The authors seem to take a reflective approach in the notes section of their game by explaining the process of cycling sonnets to tell a story. In this case, stories are produced gradually, and emerge through patient reiterations of sonnets formed by the player. According to the notes, an individual story cycle can easily involve the creation of a hundred sonnets (although less will work as well), and that the process of this would hopefully provide a centered and meditative experience. But from a practical standpoint, players are likely to only give this game a go for a few rounds, possibly not as much as the game intended. The sonnets are quite similar to each other at first glance. Carefully reading them reveals their differences, and within that, paints a story, but you have to feel compelled approach it slowly. I am not sure if players are going to stick with it. I tried for a bit, but it is easy to experiment with different word combinations without focusing on the sonnets that are produced from them.

The notes continue on and leave things open-ended. If you are curious to know more, read them and test the game out to see what you think.

Final thought: I liked the peach colour scheme with the pink links. It made things feel more stylized and complete.