Ratings and Reviews by verityvirtue

Women come to her when their husbands stray. She accepts not crude cash, but things of beauty. She will fix them- for as long as they live.

The Fixer is linear, but a delight to play through. Emelumadu paints a city where spirits and humans mingle; where believing in mysticism is common sense and practicality. She merges the absurd with the filthy; the beautiful with the pragmatic.

Emelumadu’s writing is rich with flavour and beautifully detailed, even when she goes into sordid detail of a certain character. Her writing moves from being initially subtle - from hinting at the narrator’s identity - to exulting in the narrator’s strange abilities.

The Fixer also uses graphics throughout the story, though I didn’t listen to the audio, and the story art is gorgeous and unobtrusive. A delight to read.

This game was written for the Twiny Jam, meaning this game was written within 300 words. In South America, the Water Wars are raging, but, for you, you're more concerned about your own building's water ration. It starts at midnight, and if you start early enough, maybe you'll have enough for a shower, to flush the toilet and wash your clothes today.

This game, given its brevity, uses the cyclinglink macro to economise on words and to great effect: Mason used it to implement steps of a routine, such as preparing for a shower. This, combined with timed text, created a sense of urgency appropriate to the situation.

The game is limited in scope, but there are hints to a mildly dystopic future - hints of a wider world, and that made it feel less like a short game per se, but rather a limited window into the author's world.

You are a junior diplomat, though not a very good one; you probably shouldn’t have gone to that party last night, amongst other things. And now you have an angry Glorpian in front of you. And Glorpians are sticklers for etiquette.

Tea Ceremony is a simple game, in prose and in mechanics. The writing is perhaps sparser than it could be, though it serves its purpose. This game, however, has puzzles at its heart, rather than story. Whether this harms or helps the story is another creature altogether. Logic puzzles abound, which will probably be familiar to even newbies. Mechanically, Tea Ceremony is well-done; the parser handles commands for the puzzles intuitively and everything the player needs to know to solve the puzzles and win the game is clearly stated in-game.

The game’s very simple prose gives the feeling of being unsubstantial, but there are, in fact, some gems, as suggested at the end of the game, to discover. Strong, technically, imbued with a sense of playfulness, even if it doesn’t give the impression of being highly polished.

You are a prisoner for a crime you don't remember committing, and your only chance of escape is to draw a square circle.

Kafkaesque is a word many have used to describe this game, and indeed a sense of claustrophobia pervades the entire escape attempt. The writing is solid and sometimes witty; most visible objects were implemented. It was, however, marred for me with imperfect line breaks and the occasional "infodump".

Balance between story and puzzles was probably a tough call here. There is plenty of both, which provides for a rich playing experience, but the delivery of major plot points was often delivered as an uninterrupted chunk of text. Reading the 'infodump' like that broke the flow of the story and, for me, lessened the impact of the most major twists. The puzzles were well-hinted with contextual hints, and there are multiple solutions to some of the puzzles. Despite this, the puzzles are not easy. For me, solutions weren't immediately obvious and I often referred to the hints. I found it hard to find that moment of enlightenment when solving the puzzles, partly because there wasn't enough material with which I could experiment. Also, it seems to be possible to put the game into an unwinnable state, probably meriting its Nasty rating on the Forgiveness scale.

Conversation in Square Circle also merits some mention, with most topics of conversation given an appropriate response. As with Blighted Isle, Eve also includes some natural-sounding responses to topics for which the NPCs do not have an answer - a thoughtful, and also playful, gesture.

Square Circle is technically strong, with a well-thought-out story and interesting puzzles. There is a good twist towards the end, and perhaps could adopt a more strongly consistent tone, but well worth playing.