Reviews by verityvirtue

In this retelling of Little Red Riding Hood. You are Rosalind, the girl with the red cape, tasked to deliver food to your grandmother, who has been ill of late.

All is really not as it seems, though, and this is no walk in the, well, woods. What I liked about this were the refreshing twists on the story we’re so used to. The idea behind the game was creative enough, and, after playing, still remains ingenious. The story is mostly linear, though it contains several alternative endings, all determined by the endgame.

However, several things detracted from enjoyment of the game. There are alarmingly long stretches of text in the form of ‘visions’, which seems, above all, to be a rather lame attempt to force a lot of backstory into a few actions. This, unfortunately, occurred several times, especially toward the end of the story. Part of the moral of the story feels very heavily laid on in the beginning of the game, to the effect that it sounded very artificial. Yet nothing was said about this moral in the endgame.

The game also felt slightly glitchy at times. Some descriptions did not change even after performing actions which should have changed the object; some actions must be performed at specific locations to be able to progress with the game. The game could have been more robust if it were more flexible for the player, but this is really a small matter.

Don’t get me wrong: Moon-shaped is enjoyable in parts and does have an interesting story, but it was let down by the textwalls of backstory.

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'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.

The Ritual is a game about summoning a tentacled god with the blood of a pesky inspector and a bunch of loyal but none too bright followers.

Tone-wise, it feels similar to Hunger Daemon or Pratchett, with its irreverence for cult-like events and its matter-of-fact treatment of the eldritch. The Ritual is quite wordy, with paragraphs of text at each decision point, but it is redeemed by Turner’s strong and snappy writing. There are also hints of a more fleshed-out backstory. There is some ambiguity, though, about the PC’s true feelings about this B'tek Mer character - it's not always clear what the PC thinks about this god and why the PC might be summoning it/him - and a smattering of typos.

In terms of structure, The Ritual has only one decision point, and then minimal clicking through. This made it easier to replay the game to tinker with the possible outcomes - and Turner is generous with each of these. It's a bit like a simpler, pruned-down version of Magical Makeover.

So... play if you like parodies of Lovecraftian horror, tentacles and all, and if you want a mildly entertaining twenty minutes!

This Twine game plays on the oft-repeated phrase ‘friend zone’, using it as a literal prison for Nice Guys. It brands itself as a horror-parody 'in the tradition of Franz Kafka’, but I’m not sure Kafka could have topped this level of bizarre imagery.

What is by far the most distinctive thing about this game is its writing and mythos, really. There are apocalyptic scenes galore, and Lovecraft inches his way into each scene. It feels like the game Neka Psaria. It feels like a slimy version of Stross’s Rule 34. It feels like some kind of regional gothic, made interactive. This game reads like Porpentine… kind of, with more effigies and less cyberpunk.

The story appears to be set in an elaborate mythos with Priapus (in its original form, a Greek god of fertility and protector of male genitalia) worshipped as a kind of malevolent deity.

It’s no surprise that there’s sexual imagery throughout, though the imagery seems less erotic than violent. There is also quite a fair bit of violence, though at that point it felt more abstract than visceral. This was partly because the targets of the violence were nameless and, for all purposes, not distinct.

Apart from that, I found it hard to get my bearings. The way to progress through the game isn’t really clear - you start off naming a person you’re looking for, but exactly what has happened to that person is very unclear. It made it frustrating for me, half because I kept 'walking’ in circles, half because I didn’t know how to advance the story.

Nevertheless, Vance’s writing is sound. It never veers into Lovecraftian purple prose, despite its influence, and putting aside my misgivings, this is an able piece of genre writing.