Reviews by verityvirtue

You're a girl on her first day of high school, but you've got a problem greater than friends or horrible teachers on your hands: your reflection in the mirror is threatening mutiny.

The first thing that strikes me is that it's a very aesthetically pleasing game. Visual elements are used to great effect. The evil mirror-self is shown in the reflected text which changes, not very subtly, to insert negative thoughts about a situation; the text changes when you click through links to reflect what is presumably the PC's insecurity and anxiety about her new situation. There’s a whole lot of clicking through, though, not all of which I thought was strictly necessary.

The content - family life, high-school social minefields - is very much the stuff of many teen fiction novels, and what should have made it impactful would be the presentation of the evil mirror-self, but the goal of the game was probably nothing overtly spooky. Rather, it was more about the internal emotional conflict of the PC.

So far I've found two endings, (Spoiler - click to show)the triumphant and doppelganger one. I found the confrontation well-written and personally it struck a chord with me, though there was little to build up to this. The endgame could have been much stronger if the PC had been less generic. If we understood a bit more about her fears and personality, then it might have made the triumph feel more like one. That said, I enjoyed the sly ending (though really nothing surprising to one who reads horror fiction so often).

This game’s main gimmick is its extremely sparse prose, as if it had a strict word limit (300 words, anyone?). This extends to the parser responses (to things such as unrecognised verbs and so on), helping to set the mood.

However, the scarcity of prose also means there’s barely any feedback on the player’s actions (i.e. was I doing the right thing? Can I examine this thing?) grew frustrating after a while. I wouldn’t call it getting *stuck*, per se, since there’s so little to do that it’s pretty obvious how to get to the end of the story. But again it’s like those simple origami foxes or cats or whatever: it’s so stylised that it gives the *idea* of the thing,though it lacks many of the features that make the fox or cat or whatever it is.

Is it horror? Because of the prose, a lot of the content which would be considered horror is implicit, and depends on how you respond to certain situations.

As another reviewer has mentioned, the ‘epilogue’ feels rather rushed. The attempt to smoosh in some semblance of ‘story’ was a letdown, precisely because it felt so out of place. Still, it’s interesting for a one-time playthrough, as a writing experiment or a little piece of art.

The first thing in the blurb, and indeed the first thing the game mentions, is that it's set in the 14th centry. Why, then, does the author use such modern language? I mean, (Spoiler - click to show)was preserving evidence really a thing then?

There are some language issues which, again, take away from the mood of the game, especially what feels like an excessive use of ellipses.

This dovetails with a general lack of immersion. A 14th century setting should probably feel foreign to a 21st century reader, but this... this would come straight out of a rural police procedural. (Spoiler - click to show)There’s even mention of an autopsy (once generally frowned upon, would you know)! This game would do well with more investment into the 14th century setting, that being one of the features of the game.

(Spoiler - click to show)The interviews with the various characters felt very generic, and it was difficult to remember which character was which. Navigation in the room could also do with a bit of work to make it more intuitive. One main problem - main, because it makes up the bulk of the game - is that to leave the crime scene, you have to speak to Borin first.

Dead Deeds is exceedingly straightforward, with nary a red herring. On its own, this would not have been a problem, but coupled with the lack of thought to the language - not even faux-medieval language - that makes it a tiny bit disappointing.

This, the blurb states, is a story about growing up. Well, it isn’t wrong, not entirely, but one thing the blurb doesn’t state is that this isn’t a game. (Or IS it? The debate continues at 5…) Well, it's a game-poem.

So if you do have a look at it, know that there are no choices. As a poem, though, it does pack quite a punch.

Warning: mentions suicide and sex.

You are a component of the revolutionary new spellchecking programme, SpelRite. All you need to do is to suggest a correct spelling for the wrongly spelled word in the given sentence.

The direction where the game goes reminds me of (Spoiler - click to show)Inward Narrow Crooked Lanes - it has the same surreal, nonsense-language feel. Sadly, as with INCL, I also didn’t quite catch the finer points and didn’t really get where it was going.

That given, I liked how Hello Wordd created a little verisimilitude with the Bitbux and the 'store'; the attention given to make the endings make sense, in-universe, was also appreciated.

You and the general are the last ones left on the island of St Stellio, and she wants adrink. You’re the lower-ranking officer, so it’s up to you to get the drink done.

The game consists of find-the-object puzzles through descriptions which act like nested dolls (‘telescopic’ descriptions?). Examining one object reveals another, which reveals another, which reveals another… While the puzzle itself wasn't much, the joy of playing Lime Ergot was in the devices and scenery. The mechanic was ingenious, keeping the game’s scope small without feeling contrived. The writing is lush and evocative, and suited the mildly hallucinatory state of the PC. Lime Ergot is a well-thought-out, tidy piece for one written in three hours.

Similar to Castle of the Red Prince.

Approx playing time: 30 mins

I loved the blurb. Spy hands! Spy keys! It pretty much encapsulates what the game is about.

This Twine-style game is a silly, entertaining romp through the tropes of noir fiction and espionage stories. While it superficially channeled John le Carré, it grew tiresome after a while, precisely because the 'parody' aspect was laid on too thick. Any semblance of humanity in the NPCs or, indeed, in the PC, was quickly quashed by the lack of a sensible storyline. A lesson, perhaps, to us that genre-breaking and lampshading are nice to have, but without a good story, they are merely gimmicks.

Maybe this is just my inner curmudgeonly old man speaking, but while this short game is good for a quick laugh, it is, in the end, rather unmemorable.

You're on a dinner date with Caroline. She's mysterious, and just before you leave her for the night, she tells you to meet her at Hydra Park the next day.

Caroline has the looks of a Twine game but uses a streamlined parser. Despite this, though, the range of actions available to the PC was extremely limited - meaning instead of clicking links as in Twine, one has to type out the keywords… word for word.

The minimal presentation of the text, while pretty, made the game feel claustrophobic. Perhaps it was meant to heighten the uneasy atmosphere of later chapters. Perhaps it was to highlight the impact of the words, the terse questions. If it was, then this worked for me.

The lack of choices in what would ordinarily be extremely open-ended situations (sitting in a room with a stranger, for example) felt contrived sometimes. This made it hard for me to suspend disbelief, though this was at least somewhat addressed in the final chapter.

I had a little beef with this curious fact: in Caroline, no one has much of a background story and everyone is generic! The PC is just… a man. Caroline… is a woman. This all added to the claustrophobic feel of the game. In the end, Caroline scores neither on the quality of story, nor on use of game mechanics.

Magical Makeover is a self-styled parody of over-the-top Flash games 'for girls', namely those whose interactivity consists wholly of choosing outfits. It starts with floridly named makeup products and a rhyming, snarky mirror but delves into a touch of body horror, and into riffs off fairy tales.

This game is generous, in various senses of the word. The writer revels in description, evoking sparkly, colourful images. While the passages got lengthy at times, this was made up for by the wit: the game lampshades tropes from fairy tales and adventure stories. ‘Lampshades’ doesn’t even begin to describe it - much of the game felt more like an exuberant riff.

The level of story branching was certainly generous as well. As the author says, there are seven possible endings, but I was impressed by how distinct and well-developed each of them were, with their own backstories.

I really liked the blurb. It sounds snarky. It sounds like it could be a satire. It sounds like it could be fun. The game itself, though, was none of these, sorry to say. It was hard to understand- if there was something deeper than what I saw, then I missed it entirely.

The intake form of which the blurb speaks doesn't even give you a chance to make sense of things. It doesn't start off normal - it's garbled through and through, and finishing it takes you to a room. Rooms, as it turns out - the content of which changes with your earlier choices in the form. What happens in them... (Spoiler - click to show)also doesn't make much sense. Playing it, I got the persistent feeling that I was missing something somewhere. Should I be understanding this? Is there some textual hint? Read the first letters of each word or something? Apparently not. This made the game vaguely unsatisfying, like an itch your arms are too short to scratch. In short, interesting premise, I guess, but either badly executed or just not for me.

(Removed reference to Twine bugs.)