Reviews by verityvirtue

This is a short, cosy Twine set on the back of a wagon, in which the PC and their partner discuss their future. It's been a while since the apocalypse happened, but you're alive, and the town up ahead is a new opportunity...

The setting borrows elements from Westerns, though it is not unique to them: travellers on the road, never knowing what lies ahead, being separated from human company for prolonged periods at a time.

There is something comforting about discussing what seems so trivial, so individual despite the world crumbling all around you. There is something comforting in planning for the future at the end of the world, and even more so in the NPC, Sam, who responds to even the most cynical of conversational options with good grace. Emphasising that is a gentle soundtrack, partly guitar, partly sounds of nature.

Design-wise, this game features the thoughtful use of colour schemes - with different colours for each speaker - and cycling links to present conversational options.

A peaceful, intimate diversion, not unlike laika's Heretic Pride.

[Time to completion: 20-30 minutes]

This cyberpunk-styled Twine is based on the Shufflecomp release. I could not access version 1.5.

You are a space baker in a galaxy where everyone's voice is surgically removed at birth. For entertainment and relaxation, people watch ASMR videos; in fact, people have implants to enhance the effect of such videos.

This game is broadly branching, with a few major decision-making points leading to different and distinct endings. The author has really thought about the setting, here, and merges the incongruous (Viennese pastries, ASMR) with the typically dystopian (a great plague, a disfigured people) to create something wonderful.

Three Dragons was designed as a micro-RPG, and is a technically polished Twine with slick text effects. This game has several of the hallmarks of a usual RPG: there's an inventory system, combat, and a completely characterless PC.

Two things of note: stats are presented qualitatively, not quantitatively, meaning you see "You are in good health" or "The dragon is stable" instead of numerical values for health, or any other stat. This, for me, kept it from being a numbers game - it signalled that trying to keep track of health lost and damage dealt was not the point. What you have are tactics: do you feint, or swipe with your weapon, or retreat?

Second, combat is in realtime. This lends a sense of urgency to the fight: if you delay, your options dwindle. In IF and text-based combat games, this is a rare thing indeed.

So far, I haven't found any way to get anything resembling a 'successful' ending, though it's not actually clear why. Three Dragons feels like an introduction more than anything, but it introduces some interesting system which I wouldn't mind seeing in future works.

[Time to completion: 10-15 minutes]

In this small, exploration-based Twine, you are apprentice to root-mother Manya, and in exchange for story, you must help fetch herbs. The challenge here is in interpreting the indirect clues to match the description of the plants you find.

This game is relatively simple, and certainly has few frills. Nonetheless, I enjoyed this; I've found precious little IF about botany and plants (apart from Starry Seeksorrow; recommendations would be welcome), even though the act of collecting plants suits itself well to the traditional treasure hunt mechanic.

[Time to completion: 45-60 mins]

Your Uncle Zebulon has died, and while you're sure you were his favourite nephew, he bequeathed you just one item - it can be any item from his house, but you can only take one out. Your relatives have been all over the house, though, so will there be anything left?

This game is one of the games I've played this year with longer parser puzzles. One of the reasons I have stayed so far from these is because I am very bad at visualising and manipulating machines in IF - I do better when I can actually move things with my hands, which is a bit of a feat in IF. The puzzles here, however, are well-hinted. As befits an old wizard's house, Uncle Zebulon's Will makes use of some simple mechanics which work once, but are consistently implemented.

The writing is enjoyable, and I know some have called it terse or economical. This was typical of the time, but it felt natural to me; also, as others have mentioned, the one NPC that you get to talk to feels convincingly bored, with in-character 'error' messages when the player breaks the game's rules (most notably being the one object restriction when exiting the house).

A very solid game with good implementation and enjoyable writing. Would safely withstand the so-called test of time.

[Time to completion: 10-15 minutes]

You're Amity, and you're out in the park to meet Li Anderson, your girlfriend, when somebody starts yelling for help. This starts as a cozy story about two girls, but abruptly turns into a story about fighting monsters.

The writing in the beginning is not as inspired, not as sharp as one might expect. There's some self-examination along the lines of "This is my average high school life", which is not entirely unwarranted. The conversation between the PC and Li touches on deeper issues, such as how sexuality is portrayed in media.

The later part moves faster, but I sensed that it was trying to hint at something greater through elements from mythology and metaphor and cultural references - as far as I could tell, anyway. It felt incongruous - perhaps because there was too little space, narrative-wise, to lead up to this.

I had strong vibes of Birdland and Astrid Dalmady's Yesterday, You Saved the World in this game, but the emotional impact didn't quite hit it for me. Birdland did it by establishing Bridget's and Bell's character and weaknesses earlier on, making their eventual triumph more satisfying. Here, there's a lot less tension from the start, which loosens the driving force for the resolution.

Some interesting elements in this one, and this game seems to have angled at invoking fuzzy good feelings, so it's probably good for a short diversion.

Time to completion: 45 mins - 1 hour

One of the top-rated games on textadventures.co.uk, Victorian Detective has you take on the persona of a distinctly Sherlockian police detective to solve a murder.

The structure of the game is, intentionally or not, very similar to the Conan Doyle stories, in that the titular detective makes an impressive but slightly far-fetched inference about some tiny observation, which determines the entire course of the investigation. Victorian Detective rewards detailed reading by carefully firing Chekhov's guns, even if the clues given are sometimes frankly esoteric (Spoiler - click to show)(I don't know, but can you identify the smell of haddock compared to other fish? This isn't Toby's Nose!).

Although this game predates Toby's Nose, the way both games get the reader to come to their own conclusions is quite similar, and indeed constructing a web of clues for the reader to pick apart is no mean feat.

This game is relatively well thought out. Occasional illustrations add a whimsical tone to the story, and in at least one point serves as a plot point. Not the most solid mystery, but mildly entertaining.

Time to completion: 20-30 minutes

You play Jack, whose girlfriend Elizabeth has left for Mars for a position teaching anthropology. Constrained by cost, the only means of communication you have with her are the letters, and each takes three months to arrive. Three months is a long time...

The gameplay reminded me of First Draft of the Revolution, with the epistolary format and the way branching is achieved. 13 Minutes of Light introduces a wider story arc of political unrest and social inequality to contextualise the relationship, contrasting the content of the letters with snippets from a mockup of Reddit's /r/mars.

I particularly liked Elizabeth's development from anthropology graduate to (Spoiler - click to show)political leader. This game also plays on the uncertainty and tension that comes with such a restricted form of communication as letters: how do you know what the other party really means?

There are some bits which could have been improved to make 13 Minutes of Light more enjoyable, one of which was a feedback system I didn't understand. The game tells you which parts of the letter go off well, which don't and which are mysteriously relevant to the story. This felt out of place with the theme, given that we are told (repeatedly) how long letters take to be delivered - and whose point of view are these from, anyway?

13 Minutes of Light could maybe stand to be aesthetically more pleasing, but it still represents a solid example of epistolary branching IF.

In Rough Draft, you’re helping Denise, a writer suffering from writer’s block, decide the course of her story, a fairly generic fantasy-type story. At some points, though, the narrator decides that the story can go no further; you, as invisible editor, can go back and get her to rewrite at a certain decision-making point. It takes the concept of the meta-writing game and really runs with it.

What makes this game unusual is being able to visualise the story structure. I liked how information from one rejected branch unlocked decisions in other branches – a reflection, perhaps, of how brainstorming sparks off ideas, even if the original ideas never do make it into the final product.

Story branches are quickly pruned off, which means that players must do a bit of lawn-mowering (this is not necessarily meant as a harsh critique, goodness knows I’m guilty of that myself) to find the ‘right’ story branch that allows progress. It would have been great to be able to complete the story using a variety of ways – that, after all, is the power of the imagination.

It’s a pity that the meta-story (the fantasy story the player helps to write) is relatively bland. The fantasy story seems to follow stock tropes and template-like encounters; dialogue sometimes feels stilted. Nonetheless, it is evident that the author has spent much effort on this – the screens which show the story in progress are in reality separate images, as is the story map – and its implementation of this idea, which has so often been talked about, is laudable.

Time to completion: 30-40 minutes

You are 10-year-old Allison. When you were very young you were in a horrible accident, and since then you've used a cyborg body. But today, your parents have prepared a surprise for you... your own spaceship body!

The game is set in a space colony, in which AIs make up a major part of society. Despite that, there is still a distinct division between AIs and 'true' humans, leaving cyborgs like Allison in a grey area. The author takes full advantage of the world building by focusing more on exploration rather than plot - its approach felt a little like some of the moon scenes in Creatures Such as We. The writing is rightly described as charming.

Allison is, on the surface, about a girl's adventures, but the story world has enough detail to allow it to touch on more contentious subjects like discrimination, about identity, about growing up. It feels like a gentler version of Birdland, with its focus on relationships at school (even if those in Allison are entirely platonic), its child protagonist and its themes. Allison is a thoughtful, charming game with a nicely fleshed-out world - recommended.