Reviews by namekuseijin

A short but incredibly polished remake of Galatea featuring Snow White and you as the huntsman. This is the zeitgeist of parser conversation IF and it works marvels.

This is also Snow White retold, as we're presented to a very different Snow, grim like the Grimm Bros couldn't quite paint it. It's incredibly effective.

In conversation IF we don't set out to go walking to explore a region and conquer its secrets, no, we set out to walk down a conversation tree to explore characters' motives and secrets. When it's as engaging as here, it feels very rewarding.

While very original in its twisted plotting, once you know its secrets, replay value is a bit lowered. But getting a "good" ending can be tough, as it depends on both unveiling secrets and how well you steer the conversation. Besides quite a few actions you need to take. BTW, the conversation system works by regular expression pattern matching and thus is very easy to type out what you want. I also recommend typing CREDITS or ABOUT to see the options. And turning off tutorial mode.

I can't thank the authors enough for this.

I didn't know about this one until quite recently and was positively surprised to realize it's not just Zarf's easiest IF so far as it's also a good short story on its own: strong characterization and a puzzling narrative in the form of an unexplained ouroboros.

At the outset, it looks like a plain old-style text-adventure - despite the polished prose and implementation. It features a farmer going on an adventure after his lost axe. It's pretty straightforward and polite, the narrative voice of the protagonist giving hints of what to do next. Some actions may look like puzzles, but they don't demand much and I don't quite consider them as such. Compass directions in the game are pretty pointless except at one point.

See, our farmer is a bit of a superstitious guy given to bouts of imaginative speculation and often draws parallels between his deeds as he goes and past stories he's read on an old book of folk tales handed down to him by the Reverend Pearson. As his quest reaches the end when he finds an old axe-head, a subtle change of perspective takes place. Here the story shifts and meets its self-fulfilling ouroboros status that left some head-scratching. I enjoyed it.

As far as I can tell (Spoiler - click to show)the PC has always been the old reverend, wandering through the woods like a lost Dante, living his reveries as he pictures the simpler days of the past beforing commiting them to his tales book...

Very good twine IF about investigative journalism disguised as a detective game in search for The News. Lavish presentation in 50's style radio news, a compelling story and solid prose. Interactions are about delving deeper into the story and places, looking for clues of the missing news monster. In between, sarcastic commentary about the meaning of life and the deeds of our protagonist by the game narrator, the very news announcer back at the radio station...

It's very good to see once in a while a very bright and polished IF out of the dozens of halfsketched static fiction propaganda or short diary entries that seem to be the bread and butter of the twine community...

just as the title says, the author goes to a game jam and sees almost no woman and, to make it worse, all of them are colorless. What a bummer! I hope she never goes to a game convention in japan and only sees japanese otakus and cosplayer women in bare suits. At least they got a shade of color, yellow.

really, just get on line behind all the genderbender complainers that make up IF scene these days...

story is dumb and interaction is "flip paragraph", that's a 1 star to me

This game is a spoof of the raif community in the 90's. It draws from Curses, Jigsaw and the classic Roger Sorolla article Crimes Against Mimesis, as seen here:

http://pdf.textfiles.com/books/iftheorybook.pdf

despite building upon these sources, it's a whole short game on itself. Indeed the goal of the game is to commit some sins against mimesis, as observed by an ever watchful demon (or should it be a unix daemon?). Some fourth wall breaking jokes are at place and a few red herrings abound.

Not a difficult game, pretty straightforward fun for an IF beginner, even if unaware of all the context.

3 kids find some ancient ruins and one of them, you, is unwillingly set to explore it. Too bad it is pitch black and you might be eaten by a grue.

This is a Twine game paying homage to Zork and the Enchanter trilogy, that were incredibly popular text adventure games back in the 80's. Inurashii did a good job of emulating traditional parser-like gameplay in a hypertext setting - including moving around, and even featuring one puzzle!

The writing is very good and is able to stir a lot of tension in that constrained environment, where you're fighting to keep whatever light sources you may find lit until help arrives - or else that sinister zorkian presence in the dark might eat you right away. Worthy of note is that the author seems to set the Zork universe sometime in our future and magic is possibly technology.

too short, but (Spoiler - click to show)At least you got a souvenir (perhaps a zorkmid)

Or almost it, as the prose is pretty economic and the game very short.

I have mixed feelings about this one. The story and setting are as fascinating as any japanese youkai stories, the writing goes through pains to emulate that archaic japanese narrative style. Thumbs up.

However, I fear Inform was not the right tool here: this clearly is a fairly linear twine game in disguise. The action is simply typing in the "advance" link or typing the "examine thing" links. There're no puzzles but the puzzling short story. So, the interaction is pretty much just a glorified "next paragraph, please" link, like much interactive fiction these days.

I don't want to bash it because I see good will here and I liked the story. Go read it and have a blast...

This is a "game" about birthing a child, or many children, perhaps twins, perhaps lots of curbs. I'll never know, because this anti-cesarean piece of propaganda employs such generic prose that you're never too sure of anything - as far as I know, this could be about a transzombie bringing new baby transzombies into an apocalyptic future world. I'm fond of stories with well-delineated characters where you get to be somebody else rather than filling all the generic blanks lazy authors leave to you. This is supposedly autobiographical, but when it says you are at work, or sword playing or whatever, it's not really.

As for interaction, most of it consisting clicking "So..." and reading the next paragraph. There are a few choices, sure, but they seem to be irrelevant and lead into the same next plot point in an essentially linear narrative.

but, hey, if it's really autobiographical, be sure to lend a few pennies to the author's patreon. Baby needs are expensive.

This is just an opiniated and propaganda piece of shit trying to pass for a game in quiz format.

I did enjoy the name of the author trying to mimick that crazy japanese dev Suda.

btw, the correct answer for 4 should've been "ever since turning into a nation of whiny crackhead kids treating everything as a game"

I believe Lost Pig is the ultimate IF for beginners. When you're new to it, you could care less for story, setting, good prose or well rounded characters: all of that takes second place to just poking around and reading the fun responses to your inconsequential actions, even as senseless and puerile actions such as taking the moon. IF Beginners love to act like a dumbass of sorts and Grunk indeed is a spot-on character depicting just that level of caveman thinking intelligent people seem to resort to when first confronted with IF. As satire, Lost Pig works great. As a game, it's a highly polished short title, a zanny first foray into IF.

Some think it helps draw people into IF and kind of glorify it. I don't think the kind of people who immenselly enjoyed all of its well implemented whackyness around a simple goal would be willing to play a more serious IF title where you're required to behave and think as the protagonist would and, thus, being told that most of your senseless actions don't work as that first title promised. Thus, the one IF marvel for short-attention-span people who'll never come back for more.