Reviews by verityvirtue
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[Time to completion: 45-60 mins]
Your Uncle Zebulon has died, and while you're sure you were his favourite nephew, he bequeathed you just one item - it can be any item from his house, but you can only take one out. Your relatives have been all over the house, though, so will there be anything left?
This game is one of the games I've played this year with longer parser puzzles. One of the reasons I have stayed so far from these is because I am very bad at visualising and manipulating machines in IF - I do better when I can actually move things with my hands, which is a bit of a feat in IF. The puzzles here, however, are well-hinted. As befits an old wizard's house, Uncle Zebulon's Will makes use of some simple mechanics which work once, but are consistently implemented.
The writing is enjoyable, and I know some have called it terse or economical. This was typical of the time, but it felt natural to me; also, as others have mentioned, the one NPC that you get to talk to feels convincingly bored, with in-character 'error' messages when the player breaks the game's rules (most notably being the one object restriction when exiting the house).
A very solid game with good implementation and enjoyable writing. Would safely withstand the so-called test of time.
[Time to completion: 10-15 minutes]
You're Amity, and you're out in the park to meet Li Anderson, your girlfriend, when somebody starts yelling for help. This starts as a cozy story about two girls, but abruptly turns into a story about fighting monsters.
The writing in the beginning is not as inspired, not as sharp as one might expect. There's some self-examination along the lines of "This is my average high school life", which is not entirely unwarranted. The conversation between the PC and Li touches on deeper issues, such as how sexuality is portrayed in media.
The later part moves faster, but I sensed that it was trying to hint at something greater through elements from mythology and metaphor and cultural references - as far as I could tell, anyway. It felt incongruous - perhaps because there was too little space, narrative-wise, to lead up to this.
I had strong vibes of Birdland and Astrid Dalmady's Yesterday, You Saved the World in this game, but the emotional impact didn't quite hit it for me. Birdland did it by establishing Bridget's and Bell's character and weaknesses earlier on, making their eventual triumph more satisfying. Here, there's a lot less tension from the start, which loosens the driving force for the resolution.
Some interesting elements in this one, and this game seems to have angled at invoking fuzzy good feelings, so it's probably good for a short diversion.
[Time to completion: 5-10 minutes]
Here, you are a husband to a grieving wife, and you have the curious power to rewind time. Each time you do this, it comes with a physical toll. Ever since the accident shattered your small family, you've been making more and more use of this skill.
This game is not always polished - in some places, the prose would have benefited from a rigorous editing. What this game does well, though, is give a sense of weariness as the narrator deals with what is now nothing more than routine - emotionally taxing and unusual it may be, but routine.
The in-game action of rewinding essentially gives a reason for undoing, but makes the reader think hard about the act. Do you want to risk hurting an already-unwell wife, or do you want to spare yourself an act you have been performing thousands of times? There are no happy endings in this game. It is not lighthearted playing.
The stage is prepared. The house is open. Now, you wait.
The author captures the inner landscapes of performance well here. There's the restlessness before the curtain rises. Reflecting this, there's a small number of things you can do in this game, which is randomised in parts. There aren't any obvious goals. You can do things for NPCs - tiny quests, if you will. Regardless of what you do, the curtains will eventually rise, and you will assume your role.
Another aspect of performance: the bleeding over of on-stage roles into how you see the actors themselves. NPCs are referred to by their roles - Chatillon, 1st Executioner - even before they get on stage.
I was attracted to this because I've had my share of performances, with very similar feelings. If you've ever been part of any kind of performance, you'll probably enjoy it.
[Time to completion: 5-10 minutes]
In this game, you are at the beach with your boyfriend, medicinal weed brownies and a lump in your breast. This game is not about the lump, not mainly. This game is about confronting your own mortality and anxieties.
The Ocean is surprisingly similar to Tapes: both have a female protagonist who has some kind of physical ailment; both are in a relationship with a man, but most of all both share the same introspective, melancholic mood.
The Ocean uses a stream-of-consciousness style, coloured with metaphors, to explore the protagonist's emotions. The tone is distant, as if recalling a long-ago event, but unexpectedly snarky in places. The reader, here, is the narrator's confidante and companion. The reader's role, here, is not to perform or do or solve problems: it is to listen. And in the act of listening - of clicking through the words and reading it - the narrator comes to a kind of peace.
In this mid-length work, you play as Wendy Little, secretary in Pickleby, Otis and Meyer, a position your father got you. You’re engaged to Derek, and, well, everything… is peachy.
Tough Beans is, on the surface, a going-to-work simulator – go to work, perform menial errands and so forth – but the story stands out. It highlights how women – especially those who fit the archetypes of femininity – are so often belittled and infantilised. The game opens with an extended musing on the names that people call you – in fact, barely anyone apart from the PC herself calls her by her given name:
Baby. Babe? Babe?
For as long as you can remember, you’ve never really had a name–never needed one. For 22 years people have swaddled you in epithets, letting you know that even though you’re not quite on the right track, the world is there to hold your hand. Your father, your friends, your boyfriend. Gas station attendants.
This game is heavily reliant on cutscenes (do I hear accusations of “not interactive enough!”?) to tell the PC’s account of a lifetime of being put down. Given that the game focuses on the story of an established character, I’d argue that it works, just that it can look daunting sometimes.
What would have made the game better would be work on the technical aspects and hinting actions that I needed to do to progress were not always obvious. The choice of verbs is not always intuitive (for me, anyway). If it were not for the walkthrough, I would have missed a puzzle altogether. Changes in location were not always clearly indicated in the text.
The story arc reminded me of Hedda Gabler’s play A Doll’s House, with the PC’s progress palpable through the story and contrasted clearly at the end. And I liked that (Spoiler - click to show)the asides, too, were written in a way that foreshadow troubles in the PC’s relationship (in response to examining the PC’s boyfriend’s books, you get “You’re trying to get moving, not put yourself to sleep.”
This entry in Twiny Jam uses the 300 word limit and a endlessly looping structure (similar to It is Not So Much a Story) to create a landscape. It's remarkably evocative, and in terms of content, it's similar in spirit to vale of singing metals.
Singular is well-conceptualised and, like The Tiniest Room, makes full use of the 300 word limit. For its size, there is progress, of a sort. There is a world to explore in little chunks. Take a little more time than you might and you might discover something unexpected.
[This game features graphic descriptions of violence. Please exercise discretion.]
A short horror IF about something you found in the woods. There is a body. There is blood.
This game uses a branch-and-bottleneck structure, lending it some of the dread-inducing momentum as False Mavis had. The descriptions are visceral; the pace, inexorable. Instead of focusing on verbs - how you interact with your environment - the game instead focuses on nouns - what you interact with, as alluded to in the title. This gave me a sense of the PC focusing on the trivial, filling their senses with the minutiae of one thing, to block out the horror of the whole. Perhaps making the protagonist a child enhanced this: for how can a child make sense of all this?
The ending is ambiguous and addresses the story indirectly, so one might fill the blanks with one's own imagination. wood leaves stream body blood is a bleak and desolate short story, well worth the 10 minutes it took to play.
He's been stalking you again. He knows where you live. Your only hope now is through this forum. Through the one person still on this forum.
Glass Jar is a short work of dynamic fiction. Its brevity serves it well, keeping it from becoming melodramatic, as well as setting up for the subsequent reveal. The twist was similar to the type of story one might find on /r/nosleep - gory, disturbing and plumbing familiar depths of depravity. It's put together well, although the premise might not be to everyone's tastes.
Time to completion: 15-20 minutes
Redactor is based on George Orwell's 1984, where you are a worker in the Ministry of Truth who is charged with changing written history to suit the party's needs. The task itself is simple; you simply click on what needs to be changed. The trouble is, it's all time-based, and you'll need a quick eye to find all the keywords - and it's not always easy.
The key mechanic is ingenious and well suited to Twine. Timing adds tension, interaction with NPCs adds tension; the subtlety of the job adds tension (when it goes from redacting all mentions of a certain name to changing bad news to good, it can get fiddly).
Ideal for those who enjoyed (or at least fascinated) by the world of 1984 and would like to explore it from an insider's perspective.
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