Ratings and Reviews by Teaspoon

The author credited "Pick Up the Phone Booth and Die" as an inspiration; the format overlap is evident, but this one's more lovingly described and also has a reassuring score system to let you know when you've discovered everything. Catnip to a multiple-endings-aficionado such as myself.

For a lark, I tried putting together the possible actions in a natural flow. There are a great many variations with which one could approach the game, of course, but some endings suggest other endings, so here's one list.

(Spoiler - click to show)Crash
I
exit
fly
wear sombrero
get tape
open glove box
X severed head
call 999 (or 911, if you prefer)
X windows
X forward
x rear
take guitar
sing
X side
turn off radio
listen harder
take pencil
wake up
push button
X odometer (mileometer does not work for this one)
wake up

The title about sums it up, actually.

(Spoiler - click to show)There are no spoilers.

This is going up front in the hopes of helping someone else - I managed to utterly, utterly miss the point of the game's central mechanic, in which the reader is invited to actively participate by drawing symbols onto their skin, thus dissolving the distinction between player and character. It's implicit in the text, but I'm so used to the experience of a game being purely virtual that I entirely overlooked this, and therefore missed out on an intriguing manner of interactivity. Someday, when the memories have faded, I intend to come back and experience this properly. (Spoiler - click to show) ... And maybe I'll be lucky and met this fabled slime kid, too.

With that said, the game I experienced on screen was so rich an experience that it seemed complete to me. The worldbuilding is deeply, richly apparent, better so than many SF stories I've seen. One is is imbued with the fascination, trauma, and frustration the protagonist finds in - carefully limited - explorations that make up the story's heart.

(Now I'm having a go at Twine myself - my first finished game will have a "makes reference to" credit to this one - and I'm finding that one doesn't appreciate all the subtleties of coloured links and backgrounds until attempting to code. That's the kind of art that works by not drawing attention to itself, and Porpentine is a master at it.)