Ratings and Reviews by verityvirtue

You've been on this quest for so long, you can hardly figure out what's going on. All you know is that if you remain in this snow any longer, you'll die.

I enjoyed playing this game, mainly because it is more than it seems. The writing is descriptive and clear; the sense of pacing faultless. Snowquest is very much a story-based game, rather than character-based or even puzzle-based; establishing a distinctive PC voice isn't an emphasis here.

My playthrough was almost entirely free of mechanical issues, by which I mean problems with guessing verbs, not knowing what to do and so on. The puzzles are largely well-designed, with what you need to solve them usually pretty clear. I found navigation a bit of a chore sometimes, especially in the larger initial world, because the exit lister seemed to disappear without explanation - I suspect this is a technical/interpreter issue, but it disrupted the flow of the game. There is also a guess-the-verb puzzle, through which I bulldozed with the hints.

Overall, Snowquest is a linear, mildly puzzle-y game, making up a little less than an hour's play.

Time to completion: 40-45 minutes

Groover presents a game in the best tradition of the locked-room murder mystery, featuring a canine protagonist. As with other games featuring canine protagonists, the sense of smell is tremendously important. In fact, in Toby's Nose, >SMELL acts like how >EXAMINE does in Lime Ergot. In fact, the author's note acknowledges the contribution of Lime Ergot and Pacian's Castle of the Red Prince in his coming up with the game's core mechanic.

Toby's Nose is generously and lavishly written; almost everything is implemented and written in vivid, eye-catching detail. As with other games using 'telescopic' observations, the parser remains a uniquely flexible tool to shift the PC's focus from objects distant both geographically and conceptually.

There are generous hints provided, but the writing gave clear enough hints to allow the reader to figure out what's going on. That brings us to another thing unique about this game: the reader has the responsibility to make the observations and deductions. Unlike many other mystery games, the game reveals nothing of the correct answer (i.e. whodunit), not in the form of a notebook, not in the form of a list of clues, leaving any explanation of the crime to the end. Shifting the responsibility to the reader to figure out what's going on invests the reader much more in the game.

As with other dog-PC games, this game remains lighthearted, even when the PC is recalling other characters' sordid details, and maintains a gentle sense of humour throughout. A comment about the ending is below, but overall, I found Toby's Nose a very charming and highly polished game, featuring excellent writing and a good use of the core mechanic.

(Spoiler - click to show)One might complain that the ending of Toby's Nose is a bit of a wall of text. One would not be wrong! However, this echoes the structure of the original Holmes stories - Doyle's idea of a resolution was quite often to have Holmes explain what he had been doing right under the reader's nose - so Groover is perhaps justified in this aspect.

This was made in the newly released platform Texture, created by Juhana Leinonen and Jim Munroe. This system enables players to drag and drop verbs, creating hypertext games which are uniquely suited for mobile devices. The system is still in alpha/beta, having been released late last year, but is available for tinkering (http://texturewriter.com/alpha/) (caution: the site stores stories within your browser's local memory - there doesn't yet seem to be a way to download the story format, only the resulting HTML.)

Here, Zed uses the different verbs as a means for creating story branches. You are a commissary of Mother, gathering data from within your host. You can sense your host's vital signs, but, likewise, your every movement is detectible to your host. The more data you collect, the more you risk detection... and expulsion.

A Gift for Mother uses an elegant dichotomy to create branching, though I felt it didn't quite bring out the full possibilities of Texture. It would have been great if the same verb could have applied to multiple objects, but as it stands, A Gift for Mother is a striking story written from a parasite's point of view.

In a cyberpunk world where you are inextricably linked to implants, where your memories aren't just in your brain, someone's meddled with your implanted hardware, and the doctors had to do a soft reset. In the process, they damaged quite a lot of hardware and took away a big part of your 'dry' memory. You are a blank slate now.

[This game is about a D/S relationship - no overt sexual content]

I'm not entirely sure what to say about this. Reset is an exploration of relationships in a world where you can surrender all control, physically and mentally. Underlining the inseparability of the PC's implants and the PC, Reset uses the second person cleverly - there is a 'metal-you', a 'you-you' and a 'body-you' - bringing into question what identity means, in this universe. What does it mean when 'body-you', your physical self, remembers things which 'you-you' doesn't? Are your feelings just as valid when only one aspect of your identity derives pleasure from them?

Bradley delivers the story brilliantly. One bit which was particularly excellent was the description of the PC surrendering their control to Alison - the author brought out the interactions between the different aspects of the PC's personality very well. The story was also extraordinarily well-constructed. Recommended.

You're a hardened bounty hunter, the toughest this side of town, and you're riding in the sunset when you see a figure. And that rarely means good news.

The writing in Out West is elegant and spare, which suited the setting. I thought there was a little too much reflection- thoughts which could be

This game was oddly coy with the action. Every time action is promised, there are numerous little pacing devices to distance the player from the shoot-enemy-and-move-on action that one might expect from a Western. No, instead of letting you blast enemies, it takes a more reflective pace, reminding you of Ma's sayings. The contemplative air felt at odds with the sense of urgency that the game was trying to create, though it worked in the later half.

Out West features lovely pixel art and adds to the tone of the story. The game is well-thought out and I enjoyed the writing. It certainly gives a nice dark slant to the classic Western setting, but there were things that irked me, which I can't discuss without spoilers. (Warning: long spoilers)

(Spoiler - click to show)Out West works in a cyclical fashion, where you 'die' after running from the stranger or standing him down, then are given instructions. Given the nature of what we might call the antagonist, this actually made a lot of sense. What was a bit more infuriating was the game's unwillingness to let the player know if we had made any progress towards the goal. This style was done in Bigger than You Think, or Endless, Nameless, and in those games, it was clear what you were meant to do differently in each iteration. Here, there seem to be only trivial differences in the outcome of each iteration, no matter what you do. There's also no indication whether you're come anywhere closer to the goal. The PC is told that they're supposed to harvest souls for the entity, but the actual harvesting is never shown - only the aftermath (at least, that's what I thought it was) - and the entity never seems to acknowledge what you're done.

Also, an even more spoilery thing, but one which niggled at me: jul vf gur CP nqqerffrq nf Orrymroho? Vs gur CP vf nqqerffrq nf fhpu, gura jub vf nqqerffvat gur CP?

You wake up. Something in your room is different. You could sleep, yes, or you could try and find out what it is.

At once a riff on the theme of 'sleepless in your bedroom' and an exploration of dream-spaces, Hypnagogue presumably derives its name from 'hypnagogic' - the fugue state between sleep and wakefulness. The spaces you explore and look in on are likewise the spaces between sleep and wakefulness, as you catch glimpses of people's bedrooms. The author provides tantalising details of these spaces, but these are only ever glimpses. The author delights in giving strange bits of story, but the writing overall felt unfocused. Hypnagogue felt like it was trying to make a point, but I couldn't figure out what it might be referring to. Maybe there is no real-life analogue and I'm overthinking it.

That said, Hypnagogue is generally a well-written expedition through some very strange spaces. This is a game in which the setting is more of a character than the PC: you are merely the means to explore it.

mer is a very short, broadly branching game about drowning your sorrows in lousy whiskey. You've been disillusioned. The tone is markedly different depending on which branch you go down, so I'll stop here.

What deserves mention, I think, is the use of visuals in this game to set the mood. The background is a kind of muted mix of colours, perhaps evocative of the flashing lights in a club; the sidebar is set askew. The writing is good, as well - there are some striking images, some particularly attractive turns of phrase. mer is a small, pleasing confection which touches on some very relevant issues.

Time to completion: 10-20 minutes

Written for Porpentine's Twiny Jam, vale of singing metals presents a dream-like maze in a strange landscape. Landmarks like boiling streams and oil lakes give the impression of a volcanic landscape, life creeping in fields of grass and flowers. And, yes, it is that now-rare thing in IF, a maze. Yet, it feels less of a hassle than an exploration through an empty space.

vale of singing metals is a lovely little piece, scenic in the way that Kitty Horrorshow's work is, and an interesting take on how mazes can be implemented in very little space.

weird tape in the mail was highlighted by Porpentine in her interview with Emily Short as featuring lots of art and 'piss ethos', so of course I had to check it out. This game features .gifs and animations with flashing effects.

You found a tape at your door last night. Your uncle is the only one who has a tape machine.

One of the most striking features about this game is the all-lowercase, no-punctuation, almost conversational or stream-of-consciousness writing style, similar to some of Porpentine's work, which could be dubbed 'flattened affect'. It suggests the weariness that comes with routine and less-than-pleasant living conditions. The writing sometimes feels rough - it wasn't written necessarily to be pleasing on the ear - but definitely not without thought. The art adds to the sense of tiredness with the same hand-drawn (or mouse-drawn, perhaps), scribbly quality of Nekra Psaria.

The game hints at consumerism and the idea of worth vs. value as a theme, but this was never explored beyond allusions and exaggerated statements. I found this a pity! It could have served as a backbone to the ideas floating around in the game.

weird tape in the mail is a strange, strange game, verging on hallucinatory, but it never really delved into any one idea far enough to use the strangeness to its advantage.

A Bucket Filled with Sand is a short adventure in building a city. In a hundred years a dragon will come, but for now, you start with the simplest of building materials: a bucket filled with sand.

This game presents simple binary choices, each of which build up your sand-kingdom. You can choose between war or negotiation; between building trust and pre-empting treachery. I found it interesting how the writing maintained the tone of detached resignation throughout - even the expansion of your empire is never truly counted as a victory, but rather an opportunity for more problems to arise.

What really makes the game is its illustrations. They give a visual portrayal of your budding kingdom, as it grows from just one castle to a veritable empire. The arrival of the dragon also served as a rather effective pacing device, giving the story a sure structure, and tying the story up at the end rather neatly.

One grouse - and my main one - is that there are lots of typos. Given that some thought appears to have been put into this, it just feels so out of place. Otherwise, though, A Bucket Filled with Sand is a melancholic, highly branching game which touches on the impermanence of human endeavours.