Reviews by verityvirtue

You are standing at a crossroads. Wherever you go, you will end up at a crossroads.

The writing is memorable: evocative language, unsettling imagery. Visit a location twice, and it opens up. Enter. Participate. Maybe, finally, you'll discover where you are. Some locations recall childhood - a playground; a zoo - but all are deserted. There is a semblance of life, but you never get to see it for yourself.

Quiet piano music, links which set the pace and mutable text illustrate a place which changes only when you're not looking, which constantly keeps the ground uneven under your feet.

In the pattern of my father's long, long legs, Crossroads presents itself as an unsettling, low-interactivity twine. As dynamic fiction, one tends to ask, would this work as static fiction?

Perhaps not. Not without a way to set a reader's expectations, and let the reader discover how they might be broken.

You start out trapped in a dungeon - not an unfamiliar scenario - with a long list of possessions. Not all of them are tangible.

The basic idea behind this is simple enough: choose the right belonging, and you'll move on. The right object is not always obvious, however, and the error messages are unhelpful (probably due to the word count). The landscapes that this game traverses are often surreal non-sequiturs, leaving me to suspect that the inventory objects might have come before the story.

Inventory uses the aesthetic of old-school parser - monospace font, green words on black background, even a command prompt - but I think making it choice-based streamlined the actual process of using the objects.

(Spoiler - click to show)The heart of this game is escape, and it is elegantly brought out - yes, even in such a brief game as this. Escape is always in service of a goal, marks the start of a journey. But escape, here, demands a price: every time you escape from something new, you must give something up. (In this aspect it is tangentially reminiscent of Cat Manning's Invasion.) For what end? Is it worth it? For me, this made Inventory feel much more substantial than a 300-word game should be.

This game was one of the first few games written in the current incarnation of Texture, presumably meant to showcase Texture's strengths and capabilities. At the moment, these are very similar to that of a limited parser. Like a limited parser, Texture lends itself to focusing on a small collection of verbs while giving the reader some ability to interact with the environment (compared to, say, purely choice-based games), and it is used here to simulate making and redirecting conversation, to surprising effect.

There is an elegant twist in this, and it's pleasingly circular, topping off the whole game like the proverbial cherry on the ice cream. Predictions is brief and very largely linear, but hides a positively delightful surprise.

[Time to completion: 15-20 minutes]

You are a space knight. Earth has been laid to waste, and you are one of many setting out to discover new inhabitable planets. This planet on which your space pod has crashed seems ideal - if it weren't for the evil bees!!

This is a pastiche-y work by Hennessy similar to You Will Select a Decision by the same author, both featuring consciously imitated writing styles/speech patterns and a delight in subverting and lampshading tropes.

Conscious effort has been made with the styling. 8 bit fonts shout retro; typos and awkward sentence structures suggest a non-native English writer - a similar tactic used in You Will Select a Decision. (Spoiler - click to show)The plot twist is reflected in a major change in style - which is reflected even in details like the number of choices.

A bite-size game - ideal for a lunch break, maybe - in a cheerfully weird sci-fi setting.

In what is essentially a one-move game, you play the unfortunately-named Doctor Bonesaw, who has finally uncovered the names and locations of the four people who have ruined his life. Finally, vengeance is his! (or even !!)

The writing leans toward the absurd, but never gets a chance to be over-the-top. In the spirit of The Northnorth Passage, there is really only one thing you can do; the parser's illusion of choice is just that - an illusion. (Spoiler - click to show)Mostly. Even the illusion of space is an illusion. It would have been fun if more objects in the starting location were implemented. If you think simply and act simply, it feels just too short to make the final move, however inevitable, feel satisfying.

There are, however, hidden depths to this compact game.(Spoiler - click to show)It's pretty well-hinted textually, so if might be worth going back to it a few times to see if you can, in fact, stop the inevitable.

You have gone an ocean of souls and crossed the underworld all for this: the Metaphysician. Only the Metaphysician can help you ascend to your true form.

The subject matter - identity - gives the story an added sharpness. The story Elixir tells is beyond just parlaying with demons and dealing with paperwork. The PC can only fulfil their true form with the approval of a Metaphysician - a third party who knows nothing about the PC - and this comes only if the PC's behaviour must jibe with the Metaphysician's seemingly arbitrary criteria. Why? The Metaphysician is the only distributor of the titular elixir. What real-life parallels this has is left as an exercise for the reader.

One notable aspect of this game is the use of Infernal, a conlang (constructed language) with its own grammar. Its Latin-like construction and its heavy Gothic font set the tone for the setting. This Hell is gothic, ornate, yet detached, its horrors hidden more in paperwork than in demons. Goat-headed, hornèd beasts hold no more terror than unnecessarily complicated bureaucracy.

The use of the conlang creates an asymmetry in the reader's and the PC's knowledge. When choosing how the PC responds to NPCs, the reader can only guess at the meaning of each of the choices. You can't choose the 'right' answer; you can't plan ahead; all this makes the Metaphysician's unsaid, inscrutable criteria for dispensing the elixir frustratingly unreachable.

Definitely an underrated game about creating identity and throwing off the shackles of the system. It's short, maybe insubstantial in scope and length, but glances off some very real present-day issues.

You start as a single-celled organism, wriggling in primordial ooze, but by making decisions on your approach to other cells and what to eat, you slowly build up an organism, then a population, then a civilisation. A game with a similar premise is Epitaph, although that approaches the evolution of civilisations from an outsider's perspective, while this is very much an insider's view.

Systems-wise, it might be the most similar to Evolve; both use quality-gated choices. It's a good fit for the platform. While Evolve aims to be educational and brings the reader through the actual nuts and bolts of evolution and other concepts, The Little Lifeform takes a much looser view of the science, with a whimsical touch. Hats feature greatly.

A polished, simple game - could make a longish lunch break game.

[Content warnings: violence, especially gun violence; torture/dismemberment]

You are a trained assassin. The Boss has your sister, and you will bring him down, do whatever it takes, to get her back, even unto death.

This is a highly branching, very long game which keeps track of a number of stats - and it makes that quite obvious through notes in the prose itself. Like Choice of Games games, there are achievements and Easter eggs galore, evidence of the breadth and effort put into Seven Bullets.

Decision-making points are inserted only when there is a significant tactical decision to be made, which makes each branching point's significance clear, but which also produces large swathes of text.

The story itself is fairly standard fare: mob bosses, arms deals with unnamed Chinese and Russians, unemotional protagonist. The typecasting here is almost stereotypical. Goons and villains remain categorically bad. Regardless of realm, they are to be taunted, killed and/or used solely as a means to an end: little chance for empathy. Pretty much every female character I encountered needed to be rescued.

I got the overwhelming feeling that it was the PC's personality that shaped the whole game, not necessarily for the good. Its prose is terser than it needed to be. The PC's stubbornness forced fantastical landscapes into shapes the assassin protagonist can understand. This may be a common enough human endeavour, but it stole the opportunity for humour or humility.

Seven Bullets is polished, and what appears to be Twine Sugarcube's autosave system - much needed in this very long game. I found it hard to enjoy it, though, because of its protagonist - I wasn't sure I wanted to spend all that much time with them.

The serpent has eaten the sun. You are the last one who can get it back.

Based loosely on Aztec myths, this game presents a prime example of Groover's signature imagination. Down is dark and bloody - set, after all, in the maw of a monster - but unlikely metaphors abound. Gemstones in gullets. A sun in the stomach.

Contrasts abound in this game. You must relinquish control in the beginning to be able to participate, despite being a warrior - a person of action! The serpent is a broken, diseased creature, despite being undeniably powerful - having swallowed the sun and defeated all before you.

Though somewhat more ornate, and definitely more outspoken than some of Groover's other games, Down, the Serpent and the Sun is well worth playing.

Groover's works are dark and delicious, and this one especially so. You are Morgan the Magnificent, the esteemed magician. Last year, your two-card tricks granted you the favour and popularity from the most influential, wealthiest patrons.

Now, however, a rival has emerged: ostentatious, flashy Ivan, and his three-card trick. Now is your chance to regain your rightful title.

Despite a carnival-like setting - one often associated with summer and fun and play - there is an unsettling undertone (why would you need guards around a group of magicians?) which hints at higher stakes than are initially stated.

Highly polished both in style and substance, Three-Card Trick once again features several parser tricks which enhance its delivery. Text is doled out to control pacing; directions are highly simplified, similar to What Fuwa Bansaku Found.

It's a delicate balancing act Three-Card Trick does. It remains one step ahead of the reader, through to the end; yet, the required actions are hinted with sufficient contextual clues - one is unlikely to get stuck for too long - to give the sense of player agency. This is a game that is well deserving of its multiple XYZZY nominations.