Ratings and Reviews by verityvirtue

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.

Klara has fallen asleep in her parents' charmed garden - no, not asleep - but catatonic. This is surely the work of an enemy sorcerer! As one of the dolls enchanted to guard and protect Klara, it is your duty to find you what's wrong and reverse it.

Starry Seeksorrow is delightfully charming in its writing - the flora featured are given descriptive, sometimes whimsical names linked to their function (reminding me of Caelyn Sandel's Seeds and Solutions). Yet, there's a sinister overtone: a good number of the plants you encounter are harmful. I would have loved to explore the flowers' abilities further, and explored the different ways they could be used, but that is likely beyond the remit of this game.

The puzzles in Starry Seeksorrow are well-hinted, with the systems behind the puzzles behaving consistently. But the memories that the PC carries add a much greater emotional depth to the story, fleshing the story out to something that could be placed in a wider fictional world, as well as shaping the setting as a result of its creators' personalities and pasts, instead of being merely 'magical cute garden'.

Starry Seeksorrow doesn't play with the parser as much as in Wilson's other works (I'm thinking of The Northnorth Passage and Lime Ergot, specifically), but it's nonetheless a great piece of writing.

I can't give much context on this piece, because every word in this Twine is a link. Without scenery text - text to set the scene - you see the game world solely through the decisions available to you. It's like peeking through a pinhole. Even then, the author suggests a dream sequences and segments of real life, with eerie parallels. The same actions repeat themselves, but take on deeper meanings in different contexts.

The format really works for the story. Reading only the links keeps the rhythm of the writing going. Circuitous conversations are shown through cycling links; social interactions crescendo in a series of seemingly trivial choices.

When acting as a particle was created for the Fear of Twine exhibition, organised by Richard Goodness, a collation of Twine games featuring a broad variety of styles and ways of using words. It's fairly short - reminiscent of the party game where you have to guess the story by asking the storyteller only yes/no questions - and well worth a look to consider how Twine can be used differently.