Reviews by Ruber Eaglenest
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Masterwork, but in Spanish, August 25, 2021This was a really impressive piece of Magical Realism at Rayuela Jam. Also, it has a mature theme, presented in a grim loop, so I understand that this is not the cup of tea of everybody, but... really, this is a masterpiece, at least in Spanish. So, it is 5 stars for me. Probably it needs some professional proof editing, but I don't think the author has in mind the importance of this piece of work to give it an editorial treatment.
So... let's dive into it:
The story presents us with a kind of groundhog day in the life of a middle-aged person who has lost the joy of living. Without a job to motivate him, divorced, a distant son, it seems that everything has conspired to turn his back on him.
The protagonist dies of starvation or loneliness, each day, and here comes the magical realism, resurrected to repeat that same day over and over again. One does not know if it is magic, a curse, or superpowers, or if what is happening is an ellipsis in the worst years of the life of a person without hope of living. The narrative and prose execution of the loop is amazing.
But what has surprised me the most has been the structure. The interactive work has an elegant implementation. I have not looked inside, but I guess it is a day of the real groundhog day (nodes that repeat in a loop) where the text varies and evolves, where going several times through the same node does not repeat the same text. This is wonderful and this is how interactive fiction based on hyperlinks should be: text and narration must always flow and evolve, even if the same nodes are repeated. The works must be aware of the flow and adapt to it.
Another example of the masterful narrative design is the prologue: a first non-interactive and linear sequence that serves as an introduction to the drama and then grants the power of agency in the hands of the reader. Very elegant.
There are some things I could improve ... I have found a couple of points where more interaction could be added, or where there are no options for my motivation as a reader/player. But those are me nit-picking.
And now is when I'm going full hyperbolic mode. I'll say more, this story, as it is implemented, could perfectly serve as an interactive story on Netflix. In other words, it is a perfect Interactive Drama that would fit the bill perfectly shot as an interactive movie.
The conclusion of the story perfectly closes the circle and the created loop, elegantly.
Delightful piece, August 9, 2021This has been delightful and fun, although a little tedious to navigate.
This is a common problem on hypertexts that tries to use model world and navigate locations. Just like in howling dogs, the feeling is: where I should go to advance the plot? What link or list of links should I press to advance the story?
This issue constantly gets in the way of the enjoyment of the story, being all the time micro-stuck.
It has the sense to leave the player agency of exploring the model world when the script is linear? Hmmm.
The execution and style are very fine, with a very beautiful choice of font and color. I had trouble with timed passages (as others players), but on the contrary: I felt they were well-timed most of the time (probably this was already fixed by the author) but, I missed one or two passages due to a very short timed fade out. I would prefer an ugly and common <--- back link instead of this commodities, that... as we have seen, could fail from time to time, or from circumstances of the reader.
Anyway, I think this is a really fine piece, so it is 4 out of 5 stars, just for *that* problem.
Return to the land of The People, July 29, 2021Excellent Interactive Science Fiction exquisitely developed and written (in Spanish).
It is hypertext (although it is not Twine). It amazes me the author's ability to satisfy the curiosity of the most, in terms of knowing and learning the textures, smells, and flavors of this new world. That is, you get a total immersion based on abundant options that allow you to deepen the experience.
I miss more interactivity in the sense that many of the protagonist's actions are automatic within the text (which is logical, and other types of players will appreciate it) but, I miss the movement of objects and actions carried out by my hand.
The story is absorbing and expands this science fiction universe developed by the author in two other games, this being the second in a trilogy.
This time, the game shows the same "People" as the first chapter "El protector" (both games are self-contained) but from the perspective of an outsider. The people are an alien tribe of sweet manners, mysterious ways who embrace and take care of the player, and it reflects quite nicely how we must learn to live in a new culture.
Highly recommended.
Estupenda mezcla entre la Guerra Civil Española y fantasía de leyenda., November 2, 2020Excelente mezcla de literatura sobre la Guerra Civil y fantasía. Recuerda a algunos cuentos clásicos,además, como las Leyendas de Bécquer.
Me ha impresionado lo bien escrito que está para haberse realizado en tan solo cuatro horas.
Como es de esperar, echo de menos algunas opciones de interacción para aumentar la expresividad como jugador. También, el punto de vista coral se me hace extraño porque no sé quién soy, ni a quién afecta la interacción que estoy realizando. Pero esto no es un problema de la obra, es más bien, que los aventureros estamos mal acostumbrados a un punto de vista fijo y cristalino (segunda persona, tú eres el protagonista), y en cuanto nos sacan a algo más complejo nos extraña un poco. Quizás se podría suavizar con otra aproximación a las opciones... no se, habría que experimentar. Pero, por otro lado, este efecto de "obra coral" la hace mucho más interesante.
Hacia el final se nota un poco la premura por terminar el relato dentro del plazo, y hay unas pocas erratas y tal, pero vamos, lo habitual en este tipo de concursos rápidos.
Espero que el autor lo mejore tras que termine la competición, porque es una muy digna obra de Ficción Interactiva. Y con una edición con mimo, revisada la literatura, con una portada de libro elaborada, sería una obra excelente tener en la comunidad y para recomendar. Sobe todo porque me parece muy original. Se ven pocas obras sobre esa temática (en este subgénero) como para encima estén mezcladas con fantasía.
¡Fantástico!
Excellent eco-environmental science fiction fable, August 13, 2020El protector is an excellent eco-environmental science fiction fable (in Spanish), of great literary quality that immerses yourself in an alien world packed with stimuli for the senses. You breeze the fragrance of the plain, the stems brush against the tips of the fingers, the deadly fire lake warms the skin.
It is an adventure built with care and detail. The author likes to indulge in actions by being generous in his responses, texts, and descriptions.
It presents a universe that is also a tribute to the greats of science fiction, but that has enough tangibility and its own personality to be one of the author's most loved works, and most missed!
But we are in luck because the author has continued the series after 15 years since the game that concerns us today was published: “El protector”, with the second part of the cycle: “Memoria”.
In terms of structure, it is an adventure with puzzles for building elements that allow you to move forward using materials found in nature to take advantage of them. It is a short game, which can be completed in half an hour to an hour, depending on how much it costs you to overcome the puzzles (although there are clues built-in, just type AYUDA). Its geographical extension is short, but with a lot of exuberance, so that it even contains several biomes: plain, grassland, moors, beach, a volcano ... It is not necessary to map and the geography is preserved in memory, but it is enough to transmit a whole new world.
The ending ... the ending visits a sci-fi commonplace, which I can't talk about as it would be a huge spoiler. This is why I can not stop recommending that you visit the world of "El protector". It's time to wake him up to protect your village and its People.
Special effort for bringing hypertext to e-readers, January 10, 2020
Virgin Space is a special effort to bring hypertext to several platforms at once, including e-readers. The format is superb, going beyond what gamebooks can achieve, all that beautifully rendered. The format is crafted with care and a nice visual design.
The story is brief. This is the length of a short tale but, personally, I liked it a lot. It even packs some puzzles!
Very recommended.
Now some notes on kindle ergonomics... There's a trend out there stating that interactive fiction didn't flourished in e-books and why. I have my own opinions: don't trust walled gardens. Old kindles are awful to navigate links, and Amazon never went to fix that.
Probably for modern, touchy e-readers this would work really fine. But if possess the good old Kindle, one has to navigate all those letters using the cursor, and then "double click" to fully proceed to the link destination. A Chorus! In the end I got accustomed to it (like we get accustomed to other elaborated interfaces, like the parser, or Killer 7 control scheme). In the end you are traversing the text to select the links, and that's just fine.
I'm eager to read more stories of this Textagames format.
Seminal modern narrative game, July 10, 2019The writer will do something is a seminal twine made by insiders of the game industry, writers Tom Bissell and Matthew S. Burns. Born, maybe from a joke, or as a testimonial of "how games are done", it has been very influential in the narrative/game writers scene.
It has some of the best words put down on a Twine (IMHO). And it provides a sneak peek in how our modern triple-A games are done. How the chaos is modeled, and how they are built from spare parts that rarely fit properly as a narrative (you know, narrative dissonance and such).
It's cleverly written with delicious words, and flavor and tricks that delight and surprise the reader. It is very funny, terrifing, at the same time. I wholeheartly recommend it.
Cruel but joyful gauntlet on twitter gamebook, June 27, 2019So, this is a gamebook done on twitter. We've seen several attempts of doing that with the limitations of the platform, but this one uses the natural way twitter manages threads and sub-threads. Hint: it works.
Better, it is not "another gamebook where the audience decides through polls", all the threads are there, implemented, for your enjoying.
The game is a very cruel gauntlet (a quite linear structure where each deviation just kills you) but very very funny.
This is a demonstration of how fallen into disuse gamebook structures are interesting. You know, the trends say that time caves and gauntles are not worth and such, but, how many time caves we are missing?
Also, killing the player a lot in gauntlets is considered bad design, but again, this game demonstrates when that is false: when it's a lot of fun! For this to work, you must do that the multiple endigns and killings are amusings, and so it is in this game.
About the cruelness rating, this games rates Cruel in the Zarfian scale because it has death threades within the sub-threads. That is, you can choose a sub-thread without knowing all options there are just deaths. Fantastic!
Click!, May 23, 2019This is the piece of IF by Liza Daly that made click! for me to understand the very nature of what her own engine, Windrift, does. Mutable stories where their output can be read like a proper paper document.
In the past, I found the works of Liza to be lacking more traditional choice based interaction and the agency of me as a reader. Thanks to The Ballroom finally I could fully understand that we are in a new paradigm here, those of "mutable stories".
This third instance for the engine shows a lot of capabilities in proving that you can have a deep agency a lot of choices to modify the story radically within the engine. So, in a sense, it is a showing of the capabilities of Windrift to provide further interaction... but what a show! The ballroom is crispy and funny and somewhat meta (something I like very much), where each interaction could radically change the universe of the story, changing from the time and place of the story, to the very nature of the characters.
It gets tangled easily, in the last phases of the game, I felt that the "winning move" was within my reach, but the multiples variables, change of times and possibilities just crowded in my head, and in the end, I was unable to achieve a proper ending. So, in a way, it is a puzzle game implemented using a very new paradigm like the stories that Windrift provides. Very impressing.
Maybe I will return to it with a walkthrough or something, but in the meanwhile, it was a hell of a time. Very recommeded.
Spanish classic fairy tale romp, April 23, 2019This is a modern classic of the Spanish scene. Created by Antonia Visieda (aka Jenesis). It is a mashup of classic fairy tales tropes reimagined as a funny lighthearted puzzler for all ages.
It is, also, one of the few works in Spanish done for a juvenile audience in mind is ideal for kids above 7. The story is just for the fun of it, with nothing like serious topics or deep meanings, and that's just great.
It has some original use of the parser, the narrator and the break of the fourth wall, with the main character or avatar as a shape-shifting entity. Those features are not heavily used in the adventure, but, there they are.
The game comes in two formats, Z Machine, and AGE system. The AGE version is a remake with graphics and maybe, sound? I dunno, anyway AGE is an obscure Spanish system optimized for MUDs and roleplaying games that requires JAVA, and even with that, it is somewhat dificult to run the game, so I would go for the vanilla, only text, Z machine version.
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