Reviews by verityvirtue

[This game concerns a sadistic kidnapper. Please exercise discretion.]

First Person turns the relationship between the parser and the player on its head, making your interaction with the parser into a dialogue of sorts between a kidnapper and the victim. It's very brief. Details are kept to a minimum, to the point of underimplementation - it sometimes feels more like a proof of concept rather than a full-fledged game that one may be immersed into.

First Person is unsettling once you figure out what's going on, and be warned: there are no happy endings in this one. It's worth playing to figure out what's going on with the parser.

This game takes the form of a continual uprooting and moving. Circumstances - renovation, increasing cost of living, disruptive neighbours - constantly make it impossible for you to live there. Each passage lists what you missed from the last place, a sketch of the place you've moved to, and what eventually forces you to leave. At each turn, the direction from which you came is blocked off: you can never return where you came from.

The mechanics work well to illustrate the concept. It stabs at the insidious force of gentrification and also casts a glance at the impersonal nature of urban living, where it is possible to live months in a place without ever knowing anyone.

It would have been good if I, the reader, could have been more invested in the PC. The reasons why you move out are so varied that it can be hard to tell what the PC is like, and the descriptions are always more about the environment than about the PC. I imagine, though, that each play through shows the player a different set of circumstances which drive the PC out.

This game is otherwise technically sound: each passage appears procedurally generated, making it possible to wander through this city virtually forever.

stone is a love (?) letter to a close friend, who is an aromantic student. Their incapability of infatuation and romantic love is viewed, in this world, as a sign of illness - of a stone heart, so to speak.

This is a work of interactive poetry, and in many respects is highly atypical. The kerning is uneven; the tone, conversational. The relationship between the two main characters is clothed in a magical setting where students build bestiaries and have to pass evoking exams. It is fitting, then, that the NPC's inability to feel romantic love is compared to a pathological calcification of the soul.

stone is affectionate, intimate, reassuring. The world building reminded me of Michael Swanwick's The Iron Dragon's Daughter, with its mix of sci-fi and high fantasy. stone, however, is almost its opposite. While Swanwick's novel heavily features sexual energy as a source of power, stone's magicians need not experience sexual attraction. The Iron Dragon's Daughter features an unforgiving, gritty world; stone depicts a tender, intimate moment between two friends. Recommended.

You've heard that faerie, if you treat them right, will grant you any wish. That's why you've sought out a faerie ring, to step into the other world.

Like Dalmady's other work, BtFFYE is a beautifully designed Twine work, with stylistic (and judicious) use of rhyming. There aren't really outright puzzles, though there's a bit where Dalmady does some rather clever things with the text... 'nuff said.

Each scene plays on the tranquil image of elves and fairies playfully cavorting in the woods, combined with common stories: that cold iron will stave off the fae, that eating or drinking food in the faerie world will change you permanently, and so on. Another common theme in BtFFYE's fae world is the search for home. This is explicit in one of the choices you can make early on, but it's there in the other story branches, I think.

Despite the genre, this is not child's play. Dalmady includes multiple endings in BtFFYE, and none of them are happy endings. Some might say that as long as you meet the queen, you're pretty much set for disappointment, if you were ever expecting anything vaguely optimistic to come out of it. It made sense, though, because it was in line with the idea of faerie being duplicitous, of being all about glamour and trickery. Some of the endings are brutal, visceral; others are bittersweet.

A technical note: the link text jumps around every time I get to a new page when playing on Chrome, but this resolves when I put the browser on 90% view. Or switch browser.

Light My Way Home is a contemplative Shufflecomp entry set by a hydro corridor, and the landscape is unlikely: metal towers, scrabbly grass, abandoned barns. But in the midst of this comes a simple, lovely story of longing and loss.

Light My Way Home is a lovely sensory experience. The location descriptions are evocative; it features a quiet soundtrack punctuated by the chirping of crickets. This game revolves around a special command, >POWER OBJECT, which allows you to change the environment around you to guide the one NPC and, in so doing, find out more about yourself.

Time to completion: 20-30 minutes

In Tangaroa Deep, you are a marine biologist going down to document creatures of the deep in SS Tangaroa. The deeper you go, the stranger these creatures become. After all, there is so much we don't know about the deep sea.

The PC's only link with the outside world is their connection with Jackie, their research partner, and their banter is a delightful foil to the creatures living down below, which get weirder and weirder. Like parser IF, the world model is location-based, which means story branching is dependent on where you move, meshing wonderfully with the overall story.

Several visual features illustrate atmospheric changes as the PC goes further and further down. The air meter ticks down. The background deepens from aqua to black. The description of creatures gets weirder and weirder. Where Dalmady's writing shines, I think, is in the late game, if you choose to go as deep as you can, and then some.

Recommended.

Time to completion: 30-40 minutes

You are a traveller - whether you be scavenger or dustrunner - and, on your steed, you traverse the hostile lands.

Ruiness is set in what I term 'dystopian wilderness': not quite post-apocalyptic, but barren, harsh, downright caustic environments. The prose is purple and abstract; the story typically abstruse. The florid prose thrums with purpose, though: each place has a distinct climate and role, and the different races or roles you can assume remain thematically consistent.

This game has all the hallmarks of a Porpentine game, but what I found the most interesting was the map/travel system. You travel by typing in your destination in a text field. Whilst in new locations, you discover new names, and the cities you have discovered are mapped out on a chart you carry. This allows for Easter eggs, for openness, for a sense of discovery.

Ruiness is a mid-length confection of a game which affords slightly different perspectives with different characters. The travel system is definitely worth having a look at.