Reviews by verityvirtue

Corvidia is a short, branching Twine game-poem. The prose is sparse; the content, abstract. There are references to a daughter and a missing mother, but I found it hard to grasp what the underlying story was about. Despite its brevity, there is, in fact, branching. Choosing different words in the passages yields different passages, and playing it feels like exploring a strange environment blindfolded.

It uses some visual effects, though to no special effect (also, the sidebar gets in the way). Nonetheless, it’s an intriguing work, atmospheric and quiet, and as it lasts about a minute from start to finish, it’s worth clicking through just to have a look.

You are on the trail of Greggery Peccary, the star programmer of Trendly's Cyber Trends, who designed addictive games such as Cliikus... and now he's gone. Cyber Trends is worried, there is unrest, and it's up to you to search Guillermo City to find Greggery Peccary.

This game was submitted as part of Shufflecomp - based on Frank Zappa's The Myth of Greggery Peccary, which refers, in part, to the people who create trends... if I read the lyrics correctly. This explains the almost constant references to, well, trends and memes. You'll spot it when you see it, really.

The language is deliberately mangled - yes, it's difficult to read - which, if I read it correctly, it makes a nod to badly translated Japanese-to-English. The game touches on some ideas of using addictive media to anesthesise a population (a la Fahrenheit 451) and government-sponsored mind control, though they were never explored in detail.

One interesting feature is an adaptive map (i.e. map changes with your progress in the story). The way The Peccary Myth treats navigation is, as another reviewer has pointed out, similar to a point and click game. The story's geography is clearly set out, a helpful tool for the player, though this was not crucial to the game.

The Peccary Myth is a game which laughs at itself and is chock full of wit, but it's let down by a lack of focus on any one theme.

In this Ectocomp 2015 entry, the unnamed protagonist is robbed of her voice, and at each turn she has two options: to weep, or to seek.

The two options suggest a world of contrast: weep, and be resigned to your fate; seek, and be active in reclaiming your voice (or finding a new one).

B Minus Seven writes abstractly, hinting here and there at wisps of setting, but nothing really substantial ever features. The focus, rather, is on the PC's actions. I felt like this game could have touched on some deeper themes, but because of the abstract writing, it's like looking at something from the corner of your eye. Where is the metaphor? (Is there one?) It's never really clear.

The game is over in three moves, and I found it too short to get to the meat of the story. The protagonist remains inscrutable, a blank shell. It's hard to feel for a protagonist if you don't know much about her.

I do like concepts like this - the simplification of the choice mechanic reminded me of When acting as a particle / When acting as a wave - but it felt like a glimpse into a weird and intriguing world, rather than a chance to immerse myself and roam around.

You've heard that faerie, if you treat them right, will grant you any wish. That's why you've sought out a faerie ring, to step into the other world.

Like Dalmady's other work, BtFFYE is a beautifully designed Twine work, with stylistic (and judicious) use of rhyming. There aren't really outright puzzles, though there's a bit where Dalmady does some rather clever things with the text... 'nuff said.

Each scene plays on the tranquil image of elves and fairies playfully cavorting in the woods, combined with common stories: that cold iron will stave off the fae, that eating or drinking food in the faerie world will change you permanently, and so on. Another common theme in BtFFYE's fae world is the search for home. This is explicit in one of the choices you can make early on, but it's there in the other story branches, I think.

Despite the genre, this is not child's play. Dalmady includes multiple endings in BtFFYE, and none of them are happy endings. Some might say that as long as you meet the queen, you're pretty much set for disappointment, if you were ever expecting anything vaguely optimistic to come out of it. It made sense, though, because it was in line with the idea of faerie being duplicitous, of being all about glamour and trickery. Some of the endings are brutal, visceral; others are bittersweet.

A technical note: the link text jumps around every time I get to a new page when playing on Chrome, but this resolves when I put the browser on 90% view. Or switch browser.

You're alone in Harvey's apartment. It is raining. The news is on: the ‘Slicer Killer’, who has young women living alone as his prey, has claimed another victim. Harvey will be back soon.

Because of genre expectations (the genre is horror, few surprises there), I, the reader, was already conditioned to expect something bad to happen. The serial killer news is the most obvious hook that the threat to the PC's safety comes from outside, almost definitely the serial killer. That the PC is actually in danger, though, is implied. I played this once early last year, and I remarked then that because the danger was implied, it meant that there was little sense of urgency. Now that I'm playing it again, I think leaving this implicit made the player make a lot more assumptions. What's to say that the PC fits into the serial killer's demographic? All we know about the PC is that they're wearing Mickey Mouse pajamas, for goodness' sake.

There are some bright spots. Events outside the PC's control heighten the tension, including, like it or not, the news. Despite my misgivings about various cosmetic and storytelling approaches, All Alone does become quite foreboding in parts. The standard 'my dirty apartment' details are drawn up adequately to give the impression of squalour (I like "Piles of Harvey's dirty clothes crouch on the floor.").

But this is not the most polished of games. Ellipses are rendered strangely throughout (maybe it's my interpreter?). There are double spaces after full stops, which is Not A Thing we do nowadays. Also, I get (Spoiler - click to show)"The pick up the knife." when I pick up the knife from the sink.

Another major problem is that there is not nearly enough to know about the PC to make the player care about them. We know more about Harvey and even about the serial killer than we do about the PC - in this way, the PC automatically (and disturbingly) becomes the typical horror movie victim: nameless, generic and lacking almost all autonomy.

There are some events which you may or may not see, depending on what you do and in what order you do it. Some of the later events are satisfyingly foreboding. My grouse, though, is that the ending comes suddenly, and it felt a little out of the blue for me. It was ambiguous, and didn't quite link up with the implications from earlier in the game, but was perfunctorily effective (and I really liked the last sentence).

It's a sleepless night for you, and instead of laying in bed trying to go to sleep, you've started exploring the house. You can read books, listen to the radio, or do a million other little things; like Magical Makeover, there is a bit of combinatorial explosion, which lends a surprising but welcome depth to the game.

The breadth of the writing makes for entertaining reading. You can listen to a radio discussion between what we would probably call aliens, disputing the existence of parallel universes. You can catch the lunar moth which has been eating your books. Thankfully, the seemingly arbitrary worlds are unified with a few common themes, and things referred to in the beginning are remain consistent to the end, which stopped Beautiful Dreamer from being bogged down with beautiful but pointless detail.

It is stated in the ending text that this game was meant to be chiefly an exploration game. The order in which you explore partially determines what you experience, but otherwise there is a single ending. This is not meant as a criticism. Woodson creates gorgeously detailed worlds, awash with colour and light, as befits a world meant to belong in a dream - not your dream, but someone's dream.

This was part of Introcomp 2013, an IF competition whose entries are meant to be introductions of full-size games, so many entries are necessarily less well-implemented than the author might have liked them to be.

In Akkoteaque, you're being taken to an island to see your biological grandmother, which is kinda a bummer because you've not ever seen or heard of her all these years.

First impressions: this game is technically strong. Keywords and exits are highlighted, and the exits change to reflect the places they lead to. There's an inbuilt hint system, which I thought presented hints quite elegantly. All very nifty, and reflecting a good amount of polish. The writing is pretty good, and its occasional snarkiness helped to create the impression of a teenage PC who is growing into that age of sarcasm.

The problem is that there feels like very little content, for all the polish. The game is quite obviously unfinished, with areas you can't reach, and as it stands there isn't a post-comp release up on IFDB yet. A pity: I would very much like to play the finished game!

Some things I think are bugs: the suggested conversation topics unfortunately reveal puzzle clues in a way which I think is unintended. At least the way I read it, the PC shouldn't know of the topics suggested quite so soon. There are prompting sentences which appear if you wander around too much, but those don't seem to change with the game state.

Akkoteaque has some quite enjoyable writing and a PC interesting enough that I wanted to know more of their story. It's just a pity that it was so short, even for an introduction.

Content warning for explicit violence.

In this Ectocomp 2015 entry, you and the people you once called friends drive out into a cabin in the woods to fulfil the last wishes of Laurel, once part of your circle. What changed? How did you all drift apart like that? How did you know Laurel?

Ashes is particularly effective in delivering backstory, without ever being too wordy. Rather, Ashes uses gestures and off-hand remarks, succinct enough to give a sense of each friend's personality, and of the ever-present spectre of Laurel.

The characters in Ashes have a storied past with each other, rich with regrets and unspoken wrongs. The author cranks up the tension quickly, using both external events and conversation to create a risky space where each comment could spark off fury, and fury could so easily result in tragedy. As an Ectocomp entry - an entry in a competition for horror-themed games - this falls firmly in the 'man is the worst monster' genre of horror.

Play this if you like the kind of harrowing drama that hinges on dramatic tension and friction between friends. Play this if you want to read about friendships breaking apart, because this doesn't end well for anyone.

You are a king in this short little game, and your duties include listening to the cries of the people, giving advice and occasionally invading France. But before that, you have to find your crown and scepter.

True to the blurb, this game has self-deprecating, irreverent humour in buckets. For example:

>x cabinet
An intricately decorated wooden cabinet strengthened outside and in with a cage of the strongest steel in the world. This is where you keep the Royal Crown.

And, sometimes, also snacks.

This game brands itself as a one-puzzle, short game, and indeed, strictly speaking, only six actions are needed to complete the game itself. The author has, however, implemented little bonuses for those who poke a little more at the game, so it’s equally fun - if not more - to try and explore and uncover some of the game’s secrets, including the traditional references to other well-known IF games and pop culture

The humour sometimes backfires, though; the custom parser error messages start out cute at first but quickly become annoying. The parser could definitely be more comprehensive, especially for ambiguous references to nouns. Not a bad play- slightly silly and unsubstantial, but that’s completely excusable. Good for maybe 5 minutes' poking around.

Disclaimer: This game depicts violence (specifically, animal abuse) explicitly.

Taghairm is a dark Twine game with a brutal, sparse way of words, which I liked. The writing is purposeful and builds atmosphere well - it implies a lot from very little. It suggests the ghost of a storyline: something (or somebody) has been lost, and this… this that you go to your cousin’s field to do, is the only way.

What moved this game from linguistic beauty to visceral horror, though, was the emotional stake. The game punishes the player at first for wanting to disagree with what the NPC is doing by not allowing the story to progress, and by having an NPC who dismisses your misgivings, trapping you firmly in the horror storyline.

There is a key decision-making point at a certain repeating routine which essentially allows you to choose what outcome you want. The more brutal path ends up showing the toll of the ritual on the PC and the NPC. It never returns to the context in the beginning, the reason why the PC did this in the first place, which made the story weaker than it could have been. Perhaps, in the search for your heart’s desire, you lose everything else, and you lose everything that made that desire so worthwhile in the first place.

I have mixed feelings about this one. On one hand, I found the visceral horror truly upsetting. On the other hand, though, the feeling of dread was weakened by the (Spoiler - click to show)repetitive sounds which lost its impact after a while because they were so predictable and the vagueness as to why the PC was doing that. This is a game which stayed with me.