Reviews by verityvirtue

Time to completion: 20-30 minutes

This game reminded me strongly of porpentine's Ruinness, with its multiple protagonists and deliberate strangeness. Like porpentine's worlds, institutions are mostly faceless, cruel, unsentimental; mystic symbolism is commonplace; place details are but sketched out.

Here, you attempt to stop the end of days. There's no narrative conflict more often thrown around: after all, what bigger stakes could there be besides the end of the world?

Heretic Pride's view of the apocalypse is intimate, gentle. There is less of dramatic world-saving, more conversation. Who do you miss, one character asks. How was your childhood. Heretic Pride is a phlegmatic/melancholic read, with a focus on building a spare, gentle mood.

Time to completion: 10-15 minutes (your mileage may vary)

Three cycles since fecundation. The pharates can taste our thoughts. Their pupal minds yearn for mothers' milk.

You are sending commands to a parasitic, insectile entity, and there are a number of steps it must complete before it can successfully parasitise the host. Your task, then, is to figure out the correct order for the steps.

The puzzle is aided by informative failure messages, but even then, I took many turns to figure out a vaguely correct sequence. There is no question of error.

The writing in this game is deliberately wielded as well: the language is florid, like that favoured by Lovecraft, but terse; a tally of the casualties (or the pharates you fail to guide to eclosion) reminds you of the consequences of your clumsiness. This is body horror the way I like it.

Content warning: this game contains sometimes unexpected descriptions of death and gore.

You wake up in a North London flat, unable to remember how you got there (sound familiar?). Tottenham is devoid of people. It's time to go.

The game is initially a lot about exploration. There isn't much of a clear goal, but as you explore, it's clear that something very bad has happened. The game never makes it clear what you're aiming for - perhaps a vague attempt at safety - even to the end.

Howwl is written with a vaguely Twine or Undum-like format, where you click links to progress.The links suggest what would be common actions in a typical parser game - taking inventory, inspecting objects and so on. The layout is attractive and neat, in which links add to a growing transcript which can be scrolled back. Header images mark changes in location. You can create an account to save your place in the story, but given that the scope of the game, as it stands (I played Beta 0.81), isn't too long, you might not need this.

Howwl aims for the gritty urban apocalyptic atmosphere in its abandoned buildings and filthy interiors, and does it quite well. You never get to see the source of ominous (and sometimes uncomfortably human) noises. You stumble over unexpectedly gruesome sights. The writing style is detached - is it resignation on the PC's part? Hopelessness?

I found the PC to be way too generic to give the reader a stake in how the story progressed- not that you get to make many significant choices, anyway; the author's method of removing options if they're not necessary makes it impossible, for example, to escape a certain place or to explore more buildings than the author intended you to.

Because the author removes links deemed unnecessary, it is possible to get impossibly stuck at some point(s?) in the game. So it's not that the game is unforgiving in its puzzles - there aren't really puzzles - it's more... a design fault, kind of. (I'll email them to let them know.)

I had some minor niggles about the writing. Brand names are mentioned, almost to the exclusion of actual description for some items. The PC is horribly generic; we know more about the PC's dressing and clothing than the PC themselves. (Spoiler - click to show)Also, when you start, the PC is somehow aware that you're on the eleventh floor despite not knowing where you are or how you got there.

(Spoiler - click to show)There are occasionally external links to illustrate what, for example, a minotaur or a Molotov cocktail is. Though I can see how they might be useful, I found them distracting.

Some things I liked, though: I liked the interface, though I found the scrollback style made it visually distracting since your gaze must constantly move from the new text to the links. (Spoiler - click to show)I also liked the unusual mix of classical monsters (there are minotaurs, for example) in a modern urban landscape, something I've not seen before.

Howwl is hugely promising, I think - I like the way it looks, the way it does atmosphere and its premise. (Urban fantasy. I dig urban fantasy.)

You are searching amongst the reeds for eggshells. If you believe the tailor, these are what you need to take back what is yours.

The Warbler's Nest doesn't immediately give up its story, but rather reveals it both through cutscenes and through environmental detail. This is aided by the mechanic, which is basically a treasure hunt. Given that this game is rather short, though, to reveal more about the story would spoil it. All I will say is that this game taps on faerie folklore and rituals related to them. It follows the interpretation of faerie folk as being intensely selfish yet bound by immoveable, arcane rules, which gives a quietly sinister air to the game as a whole.

Overall: understated horror is one of my favourite genres, and I really like how The Warbler's Nest handled that. This is a gem of a short story, well worth the 20 or so minutes it takes to play.

Time to completion: 20-30 minutes

The family curse has activated. If you do not go north, you will die.

The Northnorth Passage plays around with restricted actions, and this is what makes it so extraordinarily suited for the parser, because the parser gives the impression of freedom, yet you can only really do one thing. Obeying the parser, though, brings you through a series of self-contained scenes, colourful and detailed; Wilson's writing sparks with life, with the kind of evocativeness reminiscent of Sunless Sea.

Yet, in each scene, you must forever remain at arm's length. In this sense, it is similar to dynamic fiction, the term coined to describe linear games which nevertheless require the player's interaction and participation to reveal the story. The PC's travel north also seems to reflect the passing of time (the movement over swathes of space and time reminded me of Victor Ojuel's Pilgrimage).

There was a very, very clever move right at the end of the game - an invisible puzzle, if you'd like - which wrapped it up perfectly. If I were to mention a game with a similar move, it would be very spoilery, but there is one...

Originally published here: https://verityvirtue.wordpress.com/2016/01/30/the-northnorth-passage/