Ratings and Reviews by namekuseijin

Our kind host over at intfiction has provided a fine and fully working textbook example of an old-style fantasy text-adventure in Twine. It plays precisely like any other work in the genre, except it doesn't require a parser, relying solely on links and variable state. You have inventory management, an auto-map feature, score and more.

It avoids the usual problem with links in IF -- that it doesn't require much thought to mindlessly click your way through the story -- admirably: there simply are far more links than what really matters. Most of them are just scenery bits that help with characterization and setting, but are not essential to get through.

Hallowmoor is Halloween-themed and features a spirit protagonist trying to get back to the land of the living. You learn of a dark potion that should grant this wish if only drank in a particular date, which just happens to coincide with a battle between the skeleton army and the sisterhood of witches. You initially inhabit one of the skeletons thanks to the Specter Shift skill and it's up to you to go in and explore Hallowmoor Castle, the HQ's of the witches.

This is a honest interactive fiction, not some barely interactive experiment in reader depreciation or poetry. It proves that Twine is no excuse for plain hypertext.

Genuinely nice. Presentation is fine too.

I just question: why, why clicking links when I could just read it all in a single page? what gain is there in this clicking and short bursts of text obsession in this age?

it inspires me a haiku


corvidia
somewhere high up there
jays rule the moon


hope it's not too long to the twitter gen...

Seriously, can Porpentine write real prose for a change rather than submitting players to click away through hundreds of irrelevant small twitter posts depicting an essentialy linear plot? Are readers these days really these obsessive compulsive clickers/touchscreeners? Is it fear of paragraphs and pages of text? clicking to reveal more text doesn't make it *interactive* fiction.

at least this one got a small plot... it still doesn't feel like a game, even a repetitive arcade button-basher with all that nervous clicking...

This is a hypertext poetic experiment as far as I can tell. You click away through it until you feel the all the glitter pounding in your veins. yeah

summing up: a stinker trying to pass for IF