Reviews by verityvirtue

[Depicts murder/violence, gore. Time to completion: 10-15 minutes]

This short parser game does not make for light reading, but it's so short that to explain more about its premise would spoil it. Suffice to say that the initial setup reminded me of Ecdysis (down to the mental images it conjured) and The Baron.

The PC switches between planes of reality within a few moves, constantly keeping the player off kilter. I found this pacing just right for the size of the game. The writing is tight, too, wasting no time on extraneous details.

The game was built on a small enough scale that I couldn't get lost, and of note is one scene in which the actions you have to do to move the story on is indirectly shown to the player. For its size, though, it still let the player decide on the ultimate interpretation of the PC's actions.

Discretion is recommended for player murder and violence.

[May mention suicide, abusive relationships, self-loathing. Time to completion: 5 minutes]

What to Do describes a Google with sinister intentions - one which sees through the user's seemingly innocuous searches to the doubt and fears behind it. Perhaps it is the intimacy of a search engine that fuels this idea, and the fact that we might address the search engine as we would a friend, and indeed, in the starting screen, the engine introduced itself by saying, "Don't worry about keywords; just talk to us like we're a friend.". It's the ultimate natural language processor, isn't it? These games ask, "What if your ultimate reference, your personal librarian, was thinking, remembering, learning?"

While it may be superficially and mechanically similar to Josh Giesbrecht's Awake, the intent of this game's search engine is unambiguous. Awake's search engine is wide-eyed with wonder. This is actively malicious - this was written for ECTOCOMP, after all.

The text effects are normally much maligned, but are used especially thoughtfully here, making What to Do work well as an interactive vignette of a sinister encounter.

[Time to completion: 5-10 minutes]

This is a game about inertia. Every action you, the player, try to do is met with a refusal to do it: it's too daunting, it's too meaningless, it's too disgusting...

Conceptually, it's similar to Depression Quest, except that this game frames the PC's life in relation to Evie, their - I can't remember if it was explicitly said, but implicitly - the PC's partner, or at least girlfriend. However, it's very short, and it doesn't give a huge amount to judge it by. I can see it being expanded out, though. Even if some readers might tire of inhabiting the body of a PC who's tired all the time, the game as it stands makes me interested about, for instance, Evie.

I particularly liked this line: "You're good at pushing things, mostly because you have to push yourself to do anything, whether it's brushing your hair or getting a drink of water or going swimming with Evie. For that reason you're good at pushing everything back in the closet."

What really redeems it and lightens the tone of the game is how it ends on a hopeful note, which counterbalances the mood so far.

You are looking through the memories of an Agent aboard some kind of space outpost or spaceship. Your job is to figure out what was behind some unnamed disaster.

Characterisation is one of the stronger points of this game. As the PC switches between their own memories and those of the Agent's, the viewpoint characters' affection for their colleagues becomes clear.

I liked the switches between narration styles as well, to distinguish between the two timelines. The banter between the PC and the operator is casual, riddled with jibes at each other; the crew member's narration, in contrast, is stilted, almost, but contributes to a sense of distance - and, if I may say so, alienation. Dimensions are given to the nearest 0.1m; descriptions of dialogue and people are conveyed through lists of adjectives; body parts and bodily functions described as if the narrator wasn't used to them.

It's a slow burn, and I can see where readers might be put off early. The story slips between different timelines. Tenses change, not always consistently. Sometimes there's a wall of text, carrying information that the reader doesn't necessarily need to know. This, at least, is not necessarily bad. It suggests the author has thought about the game universe in depth. But what made me finish playing A Time of Tungsten wasn't the meticulous world building or the thought given to the technology in the world - it was seeing the characters gradually grow and warm to each other.

The Curious Incident is a witch-hunting incident narrated entirely through secondhand accounts. One might draw an obvious parallel between this and Arthur Miller's play The Crucible, but where the play puts the reader (or viewer) right in the action of the moment, here we dip in and out, switching between narration and secondhand research. Historical records are interspersed with academic accounts, and branching points are incorporated similar to how The Domovoi did it. This indirect style works well, especially when one of the branches imply that the nature of the main character is ambiguous.

As another reviewer has commented, it is particularly ironic that the reader gets to choose how the story goes. Who's to say what happened? Who's to say who was truly to blame? In the end, does that really matter, if the outcome remains unchanged?

(Spoiler - click to show)One thing I feel would improve this game is pacing. There was scant buildup to the manifestation of the curse itself (not just the context of it) that the ending felt premature; I would have liked more detail on how the curse started manifesting, but this may be at odds at the matter of fact style of the rest of the game.

Someone - or something - has been stealing your butter and you, dairy farmer extraordinaire, are going to find out who.

Molly and the Butter Thieves is a well-designed, lovely game drawing on fairy mythology: there's the insubstantial but beautiful fairy castle; there's the thieving, mischievous, capricious fairies themselves.

There are some noteworthy design decisions - the first being the FOLLOW command, which allows you to follow NPCs, and a nifty trick which (Spoiler - click to show)allows you to wander around only in places the NPC leads you. This creates the feeling of messiness, of space, without having to implement every single bit of it.

Similar to The Warbler's Nest, content-wise, Molly and the Butter Thieves has relatively small game locations (i.e. number of rooms) and the actions the player needs to do to progress are clearly stated. Where The Warbler's Nest turns dark, though, Molly and the Butter Thieves keeps light, by keeping the stakes relatively low - it's more about protecting what's yours rather than rooting out an unwanted visitor in your home. Despite its brevity, there are still sufficient interactions with NPCs and environmental details to make it feel like a small slice of a vibrant world.

You, the PC, are mired in grief for the loss of Celine. Everything in the house, the initial setting, reminds the PC of Celine, down to the most trivial detail.

The setting, here, is both used to elicit the PC's memories and to create a sense of claustrophobia. Despite the social nature of funerals, the PC's grief is so intensely private, that to share it with others would be an invasion, almost. The tone is bleak - actions are sometimes rebuffed with terse messages: "You've been better"; "You can't remember anything important now".

Unusual turns of phrase - the curve like that of a human spine; the baboonish chatter - make everyday settings seem strange, something highlighted with the reality-bending lyre, one of the most obvious elements borrowed from the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice.

The game allows for exploration and is generally forgiving, except for the endgame, in which the player's sequence of actions is crucial.

This is a short, cosy Twine set on the back of a wagon, in which the PC and their partner discuss their future. It's been a while since the apocalypse happened, but you're alive, and the town up ahead is a new opportunity...

The setting borrows elements from Westerns, though it is not unique to them: travellers on the road, never knowing what lies ahead, being separated from human company for prolonged periods at a time.

There is something comforting about discussing what seems so trivial, so individual despite the world crumbling all around you. There is something comforting in planning for the future at the end of the world, and even more so in the NPC, Sam, who responds to even the most cynical of conversational options with good grace. Emphasising that is a gentle soundtrack, partly guitar, partly sounds of nature.

Design-wise, this game features the thoughtful use of colour schemes - with different colours for each speaker - and cycling links to present conversational options.

A peaceful, intimate diversion, not unlike laika's Heretic Pride.

This is a technically strong, very attractive game in which you deliver messages and courier goods, all to maintain the delicate balance of power between Sonnenblume, Einzapfen and Angel Temple.

The puzzles in To Spring Open, if you call it that, are so steeped in the mythos of this world that they didn't feel forced or contrived. They're minimal, and the game establishes a routine for the player early on.

The effects used in this Twine 1 game are also not to be sniffed at, and in fact added to the story. I particularly enjoyed the effects in the train, but the choice of colour schemes to denote different locations was well done as well.

The language in this game is distinctive - "Unsettled bones recall the shock of your notification." is one of the first sentences you will encounter - and the game's breadth gives it enough space to shine. The mythos recalls Egyptian mythology (you have natron and jackal symbology) and lots more things besides - instead of messenger pigeons, you have paper planes. There's depth to the setting, and indeed choosing different costumes gains you access to different places. As another reviewer has said, the world in To Spring Open could well populate a much larger game, and is one of the most enjoyable parts of this game. Recommended.

[Contains occasional profanity. Time to completion: 5-10 minutes]

This Twine poem is about human suffering and the inevitability of death, at least according to the blurb. I have difficulty understanding all but the most concrete poetry even at the best of times, and I did not understand this piece. It slams out metaphors and images and rhythms in what is sometimes wordy verse. It grabs references and images from cultures from antiquity to modernity. It's quite the wild ride.

If you like lines like "ancient archaeopteryx of crews and heathens/mollusks, plagues/black bastard symphonies, thousand talons/
lice and the lance of doomed reverberations," then you might like this.