Ratings and Reviews by verityvirtue

[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.

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.

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.