Ratings and Reviews by namekuseijin

no, it's not interactive when it demands a "page turn" for each new word in the text. text effects don't turn it more interactive either, nor does the parser-like text links

screw you, bear sonny

I don't play IF with sound on, so I wouldn't know. Presentation is terrible with horrible cyan fonts over a background the color of dry blood.

Not IF: you read (bad) prose and click a link in the bottom to "flip the page". The story is about some boy with bad haircut who wears a shirt reading "fight the system" and doing it by revolting at competent literature by writing shitty literature I didn't care enough to read.

but I did give one more star because I think it's done in good faith and the author is probably just unaware about what IF is about.

This is not interactive fiction. It is a humorous satire of an immensely shallow mobile game/spyware that took the world by storm a few months ago and that pretty much faded into oblivion ever since. And while I did enjoy the satire aspect and humor very much, it still plays out just as shallowly and repetitive as the game it took for inspiration, so I just couldn't bother to go on and catch'em all let alone go into the Nyantech HQs and do whatever it was supposed to happen.

Didn't like that excuse for a game, didn't dig this excuse for an IF. :)

perhaps I'm missing something extra, like in Cadre's Nameless, Endless? if so, I may well revise it, but I won't hold my breath...

OK, REVISION PENDING:

ok, almost a year ago it seems like I reviewed it before even entering the Nyantech HQ. Since I hate Pokemon, I ended up hating this one too just for its subject matter, but I should know better to expect sheer brilliance from the same duo from Rover's Day Out, Hoosegow and others. Game's well worth it, just laugh your way with the satire until you get more proper IF from inside the building.

sorry for the initial rant

As much as I hate to give this thoughtful piece of a fiction just 3-stars, I can't reason how it could be any different: it's not quite interactive, but its fine prose and imaginative setting deserves something. Actually, by the end it turns out to be pretty evident that some kind of metacommentary on the IF community is at the heart of it all and that kinda ruined it to me.

(Spoiler - click to show)A girl is outcast from her village. The eldars actually wanted her dead, but she flees and survives her pursuers, eventually settling on an abandoned hut in the forest. Day after day she lives the miserable life expected from freedom: hunting for food (actually, choosing this or that link), customizing her hut (choosing this or that irrelevant link) and surviving some random encounters with past acquaintances who want her dead and either killing them or fleeing. She also finds a pack of wolves who were supposed to eat her, but don't feel like it and learns not much from it. Then some inevitable day one such encounter with villagers get her nearly killed, but she's helped by some ancient being and cast as some kind of undead. She now can hear spirits and have her vengeance on the village, by destroying the token of their traditions. She's really shown them how not to mess with sacrificial women, bastard eldars. oh, I got end 1, but no achievements unlocked, too bad.

anyway, I really liked the beginning and I liked the prose. Good writing is always scant in IF these days all with twitter fiction fans and all. But I felt that second person singular did nothing to me here. I was never under the illusion I could actually do anything, it didn't engage me into it. And while prose is good, there's not enough of a story there. The prose goes all about into trying to set the mood, to set you in the shoes of the character by lots of sensations, smells, tactile feedback thrown at you. It was almost like text VR! unfortunately, did little to me. Which is weird to say because I took quite some time with this one, so in a way, I was pretty engaged.

But now I've seen most of it and felt like I accomplished little here. I did have 2 parallel playthroughs with it, so I know there's lots of text you only see one way or the other, if one enjoys multibranching hypertext.

BTW, I truly loved the visual style of it. gorgeous and mood setting typography. at least that twine gets right. or is it plain css? anyway...