Reviews by verityvirtue

Two wolves go out for a night on the town. Neon. Cobblestones.

Written for Porpentine's Twiny Jam, in which one creates a Twine game within 300 words, the author eschews spartan sentences, instead using single words, linked with timed appearances.

The combination of music, macros and the individual words makes Wolfgirls in Love incredibly evocative, and evokes loss and love and relief with the briefest of brushstrokes.

This game relies as much on graphics and music as it does on the text; the timed appearances give a rhythm to the text that the words alone do not. Wolfgirls in Love is a fascinating illustration of what 300 words in Twine can do, but equally also a gripping, bite-size story in itself.

(This review was originally published with modifications at https://verityvirtue.wordpress.com/2015/12/26/wolfgirls-in-love/)

Here's a game set in another cyberpunkish, dystopian world, where biotechnology is so advanced that all you need to clone an organism - and indeed a human being - is a bit of their tissue and a special reagent. This is what you've resorted to, in an attempt to bring back your fiancée.

But nothing's ever as easy as that, and you may not always get what you expected...

Her Pound of Flesh had a theme familiar to that in many of this year's IFComp games, with the theme of sacrificing something to get your heart's desire, yet ending up with less than you started with. Because the author establishes the PC's motivations and dreams so well, the PC's helplessness in the face of events taking a rather squicky turn evokes sympathy: it's clear that thoughts about her are consuming the PC's life, even to the point of appearing in the PC's dreams.

The game progresses in 'days', with each day comprising about three to four choices. In dealing with her, there's often the choice to treat her as the human you remember her to be, or as something... less. Each day reveals new and terrifying things about what she has become.

In some ways, Her Pound of Flesh wonders what the limit of humanity is. Is it worth it, to have the physical form but nothing else? But more than that, this game is a story about longing. Despite there being less and less of her humanity day by day, the PC keeps turning back to what reminds him of her: things like her scent and her hair.

Overall, it may involve quite a lot of body horror and gore, but ultimately this game is heartfelt... and tugs at the heartstrings. Read that how you will.

(This review was originally published with modifications at https://verityvirtue.wordpress.com/2015/12/19/her-pound-of-flesh/)

You wake up in an unfamiliar spaceship. Something is wrong with the ship's mainframe and it needs help.

Developed for ProcJam 2015, this game features procedurally generated locations and objects, the writing of which nonetheless felt natural. Indeed, the writing is one of the high points of Mainframe. It went in a similar direction to Her Pound of Flesh, in that what was inanimate takes on life and flesh, and your treatment of it must change accordingly.

Mainframe progresses through a series of repeated scenes which often have wildly differing endings. Because of the structure of the game, lawn-mowering is inevitable, but at least the locations are bizarre enough to make this varied.

Mainframe has a solid story at its backbone and excellent writing; it's certainly a good look at the kinds of things procedural generation can produce.

(This review was originally published with modifications on https://verityvirtue.wordpress.com/2015/12/22/mainframe/)

Pale starts with what was, for me, an off-putting technical note. Okay, I can choose to play from Tobias's (whoever that is) point of view... and I can't play from Klaudia's (whoever that is)? Perhaps this is/was a work in progress.

Anyway.

You're Tobias, the handyman around these parts. These parts, for you, is a small town in Germany, called Bree. Things are quiet; the people are a peaceable sort... until you find Stefan dead and don't tell anyone. As you try and deflect suspicion, you can only mire yourself deeper into trouble. There are some violent scenes.

The writing is a little dry, but I'm not sure how to explain this, because it's not for lack of details. The author has made the effort to include things which would be part of the daily landscape for a person living in a small community, things like grouses and small jealousies. The writing feels like it lacks emotion, though. Tobias speaks rather formally, which comes across as being emotionally flat about what would usually be emotive subjects.

I also had a grouse with the pacing, somewhat. Pale started with a halfway-promising hook - that you, the PC, had been accused to murder - but, in one branch, built up the setup rather slowly, and in another, never gave any payoff. That made one branch feel very unbalanced. The other lacked the suspense that one might find in similar 'suspicion in a small town' storylines such as in Broadchurch or Jagten.

As a side note: unless I am mistaken, the author was a little careless in releasing this... did you really leave a blank passage there?

(Originally posted here: https://verityvirtue.wordpress.com/2015/12/29/pale/)

You are Tara Sue and, simply put, you lead a pretty boring life. However, things are about to get more interesting...

MNiTS follows a kind of time cave structure, which allows it to be highly branching despite it being so short; of course, the length of the story and early branching allows for easy replay. The scenarios are slightly outlandish, especially towards the end - a whim of the author's? - but veer towards the grim.

The joy in such 'boring work life' games is discovering the secret whims and fancies of the PC which lie behind their urbane exterior, but MNiTS didn't establish much specifics.

Worth mentioning is the rather attractive layout and scrollback formatting, which made the final story readable as a conventional short story.

Ultimately, MNiTS made use of a mundane concept which, ironically, could stand to be more interesting.

Weird City Interloper is a short conversation-based romp through a fantastical city in the vein of Porpentine’s works - peopled with fascinating and fantastical characters.

For a game with no location descriptions to speak of, it was surprisingly atmospheric in its descriptions of the slums and the stenchworks, and spoke of a society more well thought-out than one might expect from such a short game. The hints of detail suggested a city like Miéville's New Crobuzon: highly stratified, with each social strata having elaborate rituals and norms; and highly industrialised, with the cogs of machinery merging with the eldritch.

All we know of the NPCs are their replies in conversation, and Pacian makes full use of this by giving each character a distinct voice and take on common topics. The game also comes with a very friendly hint system, in the form of a streetwise city guide. It took a bit of a leap of logic to figure out how to progress, I must admit, but the logic in the rest of the story is consistent.

Weird City Interloper was similar to Walker and Silhouette or Castle of the Red Prince in its unusual navigation, and the game lives up to its description as being shallow but broad, and makes for short (less than an hour) but colourful play.

On a hundred florin wager, you spend the night in Count Ruggino's house. No, you are definitely not afraid of ghosts. Definitely not.

There was deeper story than I'd expected, delivered in an unexpected way. I certainly liked how the memories telescoped out and were treated as an inventory object, a la Lime Ergot. The writing is half jocular, half dignified and retains the air of quiet amusement through the game.

The one puzzle in the game is made out of very many small moving parts; I found myself picking up and dropping a lot of things. In itself, this isn't necessarily a bad thing, especially since the puzzle itself was relatively straightforward. It was just that, without implicit actions, the game became repetitive.

Six Gray Rats has a simple enough story with an uncomplicated puzzle. Despite my little grouse, it was still entertaining, even if not absolutely memorable.

You've lost your axe. Despite everything the Reverend might say about you being a lunkhead, you know where it is: the dark forests behind your cottage.

Cold Iron has a relatively limited scope for one of Plotkin's games, both in size and implementation. Even with my limited puzzle-solving skills, Cold Iron took me about 5 minutes to finish. The puzzles, however simple, are pleasingly quirky: the things you find are linked to stories in your book of tales. The items needed to solve the puzzles are highlighted by the writing effectively, so it should not take too much effort to figure out what's going on.

There is also a pleasing, if ambiguous, twist, which made the small puzzles that much more satisfying, even adding a bit of emotional depth to the otherwise straightforward story.

You are 'Casey', an anxious college student with lots to hide, and you're going to your boyfriend's house for Thanksgiving. Can you keep it together?

Thanksgiving is designed with an eye towards those who unfamiliar with IF, with a preliminary explanation on how to progress in the story and colour-coded links (red is for eavesdropping; green is to progress).

The story largely involves navigating your way through social interactions with relatives: do you act cheerful, or distant? Help out, or try and remain invisible? The player took on the PC's responsibility to keep the PC's story straight. NPCs will remember your story, not least your boyfriend. What exactly was 'true' is not always clear.

The story also benefits from the PC's 'eavesdropping', adding texture and details to the boyfriend's family. It was suited to the close proximity that comes with family gatherings on occasions such as this.

I thought the idea of concealing one's identity was well done. We only ever see the bits of her past that she's actively trying to hide from her boyfriend's family, while other incidental details - her real name, details about her family - are irrelevant and thus omitted. Yet, the PC's past emerges in so many ways: not just in her new name, but also in her uncanny ability to spot scammers, perhaps even in the game's key mechanic of choosing the approach to social interactions. I would not know how factually accurate any of this is, but Thanksgiving feels like a very nuanced account of the minefield that is social interaction.

Written for Porpentine's Twiny Jam, Jetbike Gang is a branching story about being in a jetbike gang, written within 300 words. It has a similar vibe to Kitty Horrorshow's Wolfgirls in Love, with the PC living on the edge of the law in a buzzing cyberpunk-like city and being on the run. But while Wolfgirls focuses more on a particular relationship and hinting at things, Jetbike Gang uses more concrete imagery and more clearly described actions.

This game slants toward the gritty and grim, but even then there's space for some (very indirect) wordplay and a surprising amount of branching.