Ratings and Reviews by verityvirtue

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.

Time to completion: 15-20 minutes

This game is based on the English murder ballad Long Lankin and Burning Rope by Genesis. You are a servant in the Wearie household, and you need to secure the house, or Long Lankin will get in.

This game was based on and inspired by murder ballads, not just in the plot, but in the tone. It's probably worth listening to it after playing False Mavis. The author paints a decrepit mansion, filled with relics from a better time, filled with subtle dread. The reveal of the PC's true intentions was brilliantly done; the first time I read it, I did a double take. It's not immediately clear what you're supposed to do, but there's a lot in the setting to absorb the reader. This game apparently has multiple endings, but I haven't managed to reach a second.

False Mavis is a grim and brutal horror story about removing the traces of your past misdeeds. It has a great setting with lots of moving parts, and what the player has to do to progress in the story is thematically consistent.

[This game concerns a sadistic kidnapper. Please exercise discretion.]

First Person turns the relationship between the parser and the player on its head, making your interaction with the parser into a dialogue of sorts between a kidnapper and the victim. It's very brief. Details are kept to a minimum, to the point of underimplementation - it sometimes feels more like a proof of concept rather than a full-fledged game that one may be immersed into.

First Person is unsettling once you figure out what's going on, and be warned: there are no happy endings in this one. It's worth playing to figure out what's going on with the parser.

Time to completion: 5-10 minutes

[This game contains a large, unannounced picture of a certain animal - see image files included with the download]

Boogle riffs on Google default messages and online ads to create a creeping sense of dread. The eponymous search engine is an NPC in its own right, which directs your search results to serve its own purposes. It's a mood piece more than a game, really; the story is not particularly fleshed out, but the idea is so very creepy.

This game deserves a mention of multimedia, because it makes ingenious use of otherwise basic Twine functions to replicate familiar sights.

This game takes the form of a continual uprooting and moving. Circumstances - renovation, increasing cost of living, disruptive neighbours - constantly make it impossible for you to live there. Each passage lists what you missed from the last place, a sketch of the place you've moved to, and what eventually forces you to leave. At each turn, the direction from which you came is blocked off: you can never return where you came from.

The mechanics work well to illustrate the concept. It stabs at the insidious force of gentrification and also casts a glance at the impersonal nature of urban living, where it is possible to live months in a place without ever knowing anyone.

It would have been good if I, the reader, could have been more invested in the PC. The reasons why you move out are so varied that it can be hard to tell what the PC is like, and the descriptions are always more about the environment than about the PC. I imagine, though, that each play through shows the player a different set of circumstances which drive the PC out.

This game is otherwise technically sound: each passage appears procedurally generated, making it possible to wander through this city virtually forever.

[This game involves self-mutilation and violence.]

Time to completion: 5-10 minutes

You are a city girl, seeking thrills and spills out West. You gather your petticoats, get yourself a gun, and get on the next coach.

Turns out, though, that being out West isn't quite what you imagined...

This game makes extensive use of mouseover effects (this is replaced by the normal touch on mobile), which makes moving through the story very fast. Your only interaction with NPCs and objects is to shoot them, and (on PC at least) having mouseover replace clicks means that when you, the player, interact with anything by touching it, you destroy or maim it. There's a moment where this is especially brilliantly handled, where you can only ever destroy, regardless of your best intentions.

The writing is witty and self-aware. The PC swaggers into a bar, only to be snubbed by the bartender for ordering a bourbon on the rocks; the PC's bravado has her shooting everything in sight, but this gets her told off by the woman she's fixed her eyes on.

The story's surreal overtones are buoyed by the PC's initial idealism - there's something in shooting everything in sight which doesn't strike true for me - so your mileage may vary. I'm sure there's something deeper to it, but, for now, I really just see it as a strange riff on tropes in Westerns.