Reviews by Ruber Eaglenest
IF Comp 2016
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Amazing premise in an amazing custom hypertext system, August 3, 2017Disclaimer: (Spoiler - click to show)Hi, this are the reviews I did in the the IFComp 2016. I’m Ruber Eaglenest. Co-author of The skyscraper and the scar, and entry of that year. The review is posted without edition, and need some context about how I reviewed and rated the games. So, apart of my bad English I hope to be constructive. I will point to the things I don't like of the game, but I hope to be helpful. The structure I follow is this: Title, one line review, two to five word; Mobile friendliness, overall, score phrased based on IF comp guidelines. I had back ache and so that’s why I played most games in Android mobile, I looked closely at how games behave on mobile and review and vote based on that.
Mobile friendly: Completely! Very well done! It is custom system that just nails it. it is comfortable to play. It has even a link to switch between day mode and night reading mode. It autosaves. The system fills the scroll with text with no end, and when you resume the game you must go down all the way. It could benefit of separate chapters that clean the scroll. And maybe a dynamic link to the actual reading point (that is, all the way down) could be great. But I’m just nit-picking.
General: Great start for a game about spiritualism. The initial scene is really really great creating the mood, presenting the main characters and the main mechanic of interaction. I just loved it. However it is just not real interactive (insert my subjectivity on the matter here). If you drop the game in a book, it would work the same. It is a pity, because the story, the writing, the custom hypertext system, all have a LOT of potential.
There are some problems in the perspective of PC and the narrator in some scenes. Mainly in the scene of the doll. We don’t know who we are, if the doll, the girl, the player. Maybe it is on purpose but it just don’t work. The point of view should be more homogenise, but in this concrete scene it seems it is jumping from one view to another.
The writing is superb, however I find one lacking in the interpretation of the PC. At the beginning, when he just get out of the trance, he is quite cold about it
This was the first actual psychic experience of your life.
Come on! it should be as this, for example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=du_wQIga3Uc
It should "I feel my skin like crawl" to the PC, or to the reader.
I missed a LOT of interaction, I miss free exploration, free interaction, I miss agency. It is a pity. However, I take a lot of joy of what I were reading, it is just, it wasn't interactive.
Score: Recommended with reservations. And it is a pity, this could be better just adding more interactivity in EVERY scene, for example, even in dialogues with traditional branching dialogues a-la graphic adventure or modern CYOAs.
Interesting concept that doesn’t live to its premise., January 6, 2017Disclaimer: (Spoiler - click to show)Hi, this are the reviews I did in the the IFComp 2016. I’m Ruber Eaglenest. Co-author of The skyscraper and the scar, and entry of that year. The review is posted without edition, and need some context about how I reviewed and rated the games. So, apart of my bad English I hope to be constructive. I will point to the things I don't like of the game, but I hope to be helpful. The structure I follow is this: Title, one line review, two to five word; Mobile friendliness, overall, score phrased based on IF comp guidelines. I had back ache and so that’s why I played most games in Android mobile, I looked closely at how games behave on mobile and review and vote based on that.
Mobile friendly: almost, but comfortable to play.
General: Interesting premise. At first it feels another game of consulting a Database to learn a whole story from pieces and scraps. You are in a desk with a lot of previously undelivered letters of someone who seems have passed away. However, instead of having a semi random interesting interface where we could parse all letters bit by bit, the game has a traditional twine structure, and this just don’t fit the topic and theme and story. Eventually you reach the end of the tree and you find an irritating Start over link, to begin from the start. It is irritating the fifth time you find that. I think a premise like this requieres a somewhat simulation of the space (like in Her Story or 500 apocalypses), a way of pick always random letters, a way to sort them, a way to not to read the already read letters. That is a way to not repeat the same texts again and again, or the same loops again and again.
The content is mildy interesting. Yes it describes the life, the way, and the death of a beautiful girl. But it is somewhat on the nose. There’s nothing much to discover because the death is just there, almost at the beginning. And the contents are not so interesting.
Apart of the structure problems, there’s a big problem with the voice of the game. At first, it seems that it is just that, the letters, in the writing and voice of her, but later there are passages that has flashbacks, or sequences where the protagonist is me, I mean you, the player. It just don’t feel right, because there’s no homogeneity in the use of it. It feels random. Or improvised.
Score: In the end I didn’t like it very much, and the start over mechanic irritated me. Not recommended.
Really nice world building. Even with an enciclopedia inside!, January 6, 2017Disclaimer: (Spoiler - click to show)Hi, this are the reviews I did in the the IFComp 2016. I’m Ruber Eaglenest. Co-author of The skyscraper and the scar, and entry of that year. The review is posted without edition, and need some context about how I reviewed and rated the games. So, apart of my bad English I hope to be constructive. I will point to the things I don't like of the game, but I hope to be helpful. The structure I follow is this: Title, one line review, two to five word; Mobile friendliness, overall, score phrased based on IF comp guidelines. I had back ache and so that’s why I played most games in Android mobile, I looked closely at how games behave on mobile and review and vote based on that.
Mobile friendly: Not at all. Playable, but it is not ideal. It has not autosave, nor proper way to save the game. It has a bookmark system, common in some Twine 1 games, that I found it unusable, at least in mobile. I don't understand it, and I don't know how to use it. So I could not finish the game, although I tried several times.
General: I will approach this base on the common criticism that the game has received. That is: the art style and the little ponies.
At first I didn't like the art style. I feel it is too much sketchy to pass for proper game art, but then the PC reveals that he is constantly sketching while travelling in his notebook... so this just made clic. It work, because it works in context. Sadly I feel that the first sketches doesn't do justice for what the author could accomplish... because later the sketches about the encyclopedia of fauna and flora of the planet are really great (great inside the context of what I said: the PC sketching in a notebook). So, I ended loving the art style soooo much, just because of that.
The second common criticism is the graphical representations of the horses. You know, the are like fan art of My Little Pony. And I think that criticism has a point. When you read about the culture of the horses you think more in... yeah, talking powerful horses, so the revelation of the art could be striking. But this is just plain prejudice. People has a lot of prejudice against children stuff, more if it is soooo popular as My Little Pony. But I am father of two daughters, and so, I know better, and it is my obligation to let the world know that My Little Pony is good stuff. In the first place, it is great artistic design. You just could cast an eye to any galery of art of wannabees artists here and there to see that the ponies are just one of the main inspirations for them. THERE ARE JUST A HELL TONS of fan art of them. And second, My Little Pony is great storytelling. I know this because I surprise myself getting catch by the narrative of the chapters when my little daughter is watching the show. But this is common. Some children show has bad literature in it, but a LOT of children show has really great literature on them because they are run by really great professionals. Maybe you don't like those because you are not their targeted audience, but as I said, fathers know, and fathers knows better. So... My Little Pony as main inspiration for the world-building and aesthetic design of the game: WHY THE HELL NOT?
Said that, Let's continue what's really great of the game: the world-building. It is just amazing. As some reviewers said, the intro and blurb are heavily dosed on lore and world-building, but it just worked really great for me. This is supported on the encyclopedia, a literally encyclopedia comprising lore and world-building. So... this is neat feat. This is the author showing off that he has built a proper world-building for a new extraterrestrial race, and its corresponden lore. Look here! it is all in the encyclopedia! Well done, Sir. Best of it, the encyclopedia is integrated in the gameplay, with proper links that points to the proper animal or plant that the PC is seen in each location.
This leads me to some criticism of what I think the game does not do very well, or more, it lacks. Ok, the worldbuilding is there, the lore, the fauna, the flora, and such... but: you can't interact with it. You can traverse the scenery, but it is just that: scenery: I miss to interact with the animals, with the highlights of the landscape. To smell the flora, to collect some herbs. Etc. I think this game would have benefited a lot with a parser implementation, because the lacking would be evident while programming the game. But as a player, a lot of my motivations to interact with the world were not supplied or allowed by the game and implementation.
There are more great stuff in this game: for example the characterisation of the PC's companion, or her dialog and conversation system, but I've talked more of those things that stands out more, good or bad. And I could not finish the game, so I could not comment on that.
Score: Great world-building that is not enough interactive and too static. But I love all the love (sic) poured into it, even the ponies and the sketches. Good game that I recommend.
Very funny “slice of life” in the miserable life of a self-publishing writer., January 6, 2017Disclaimer: (Spoiler - click to show)Hi, this are the reviews I did in the the IFComp 2016. I’m Ruber Eaglenest. Co-author of The skyscraper and the scar, and entry of that year. The review is posted without edition, and need some context about how I reviewed and rated the games. So, apart of my bad English I hope to be constructive. I will point to the things I don't like of the game, but I hope to be helpful. The structure I follow is this: Title, one line review, two to five word; Mobile friendliness, overall, score phrased based on IF comp guidelines. I had back ache and so that’s why I played most games in Android mobile, I looked closely at how games behave on mobile and review and vote based on that.
Mobile friendly: almost, it is parser through Quixe. Quixe is great. It works. Some minor glitches with the virtual keyboard appearing and hiding itself, but playable.
Overall: This is great fun. Well developed parser game where the player takes the role of a science fiction writer thrown in a school science fair to choose the winner of the fair.
It has three main activities: try to sell enough copies of the book to pay the rent, cast an eye to the fair expositions to select the winner, and the act of going up the podium to announce the winner. And all of them are just very funny, well developed, well implemented and with crispy prose. It make me laugh.
In my first play-though I tried to maximise my sales, so I dedicated to the labour of selling books (and had a lot of fun doing it) For this part of the game, it has a very clever CYOA system by entering the number of each option to make the repetitive actions of self-book-selling. The game always have a procedural generated potential customers selected from the traits of the people who usually passed by that kind of ambiences. This works! This is the demonstration that a parser and model world game made in Inform 7 could work with a CYOA interface. But of course this was done for just this concrete activity. However I don’t understand why it doesn’t have hyperlinks, it would ease the interaction in mobile, because, you know, entering numbers is not optimal in modern smart phones (weird). And I detect another minor oddity. When the CYOA interface is on, the normal parser interface is deactivated. This means that you can’t interact with the environment when you are in the selling activity and viceversa, you can’t sell books or show them in the “normal parser way”. The selling activity soon became repetitive, because the pool of traits from the potential customers it is very limited, in my opinion, for the scope of the amount of money to be gained. But… kudos to the author because it is very funny.
When you get your nose out of your own stand and books, there’s a full wild world out there to explore and enjoy. Kids, visitors, some fathers, and even the director, a very conservative person that contrast with the ruthless jungle that is the school . Everything is crispy characterised. It seems like the author knows well the ambience or that he has documented very well for this work.
The game has the kind of agency and freedom that I like. You can approach the fair whatever you want, you can just keep selling books (or trying) all the time and pass completely of the proper Fair so when you get to the podium you can just choose one at random (so unfair, but cruel and funny thing to do), or you can try to cheat the selling stuff with a quite un-moral thing to do that I would not spoil further, or just get out and get a cigarette with the smokers, in the cold. There’s no better winning condition, just several bittersweet endings, and that is fine.
I got some problems with the layout of the fair, so I had a hard time until I found that the fair projects must be explored going further to the west (five times). But I think this is a feature of the game difficult to lay out properly. And the fair space felt very crowded and noisy, with the video of one of the expositions invading the others kids spaces. But of course that could be perfectly intended by the author.
In the end, it is the kind of work that enhances the experience when replaying it obsessively. It is a somewhat simulation of a social space, so the more you explore the more you get, it could be resources to pay the rent, or hints of the relationships of the people around the fair, and some other hidden nasty secrets.
Score: Definitively worth it. It is a 9 because I don’t pretend to put a 10 to nobody, and because the procedural generated potential customers need more variety, but this game is just awesome.
Superb fracture on Snow White., January 6, 2017Disclaimer: (Spoiler - click to show)Hi, this are the reviews I did in the the IFComp 2016. I’m Ruber Eaglenest. Co-author of The skyscraper and the scar, and entry of that year. The review is posted without edition, and need some context about how I reviewed and rated the games. So, apart of my bad English I hope to be constructive. I will point to the things I don't like of the game, but I hope to be helpful. The structure I follow is this: Title, one line review, two to five word; Mobile friendliness, overall, score phrased based on IF comp guidelines. I had back ache and so that’s why I played most games in Android mobile, I looked closely at how games behave on mobile and review and vote based on that.
Mobile friendly: not at all. The CSS has some problems yet and the frame eats the whole space in Android mobile. I think the author is working on that.
Overall: Amazing work that let me pretty excited about in my very first turns. The very concept of it. That marvellous cover. That the play is inside the mirror. The striking beautiful prose of Chandler Groover. I was imagining this as a pretty app for desktop, mobiles and tables alike where the responses of the mirror would fade-in in a pretty rendered calligraphic font as if they were emerging from the mirror as as if it was the surface of a lake of calm dark waters. I think Chandler could do that, with the help of some friends, and sell this for money. (ow! ow! imagine it, with permanent voice recognition: “Mirror, mirror, tell me about…”)
I think any game about consulting a magic mirror, or that has magic mirrors in it, is a winner. I loved the mirror in The wolf among us, and I loved this too.
After too much excitement I was a little disappointed when I learned that it is a retelling of Snow White. I would prefer that the story was about a new Queen, and not that is about THAT Queen and Princess AGAIN, that has been retold thousands of times. However I quickly left that negativity aside and just enjoyed the work. That was worth it because the ending would not be so powerful if it would be for another queen and another princess. It is a great idea and sometimes great ideas must float above the used tropes.
I hope Chandler releases a postmortem, postcomp, because I would like to know how the innards work. How it was made. The mirror is not just a simple input-output information machine. It reflects intelligence (or fakes it, but whatever it does, it works).
I’ve seen that there are has been some criticism about the lack of agency. And that the author says that it is a game that last from 15 to 40 minutes. On the contrary I think it has a too long play for the kind of work. But that is alleviated because the save system works so well. You can consult the mirror, leave it and coming back to it for more (oh! an autosave feature for quiting the game would be awesome, like in roguelikes). So, that’s fine. Respect interactivity and agency, it is the kind of work about database consultation, as in 500 apocalypses, or some works of fiction proposed by Borges and Cortazar, so in that respect Mirror and Queen is just perfect as is. It needs not to go “out of the mirror”.
However some last sentences in the very last turns suggest that maybe there is some zntvp jbeq jub jbhyq punatr gur bhgpbzrf, but maybe I'm misreading or loosing in translation. And that’s why I would like to know more about, in a postmortem.
Final fun fact. I was playing the very last turns while listening to Dark Souls III, song Prologue, and the crescendo fitted so well with the matter at hand that it was a tremendous climax. Keep in mind that when you make the commercial version, Chandler, you'll need an audio engineer who could built a dynamic soundtrack that adapts itself to the countdown of the story.
Score: Excellent. I would give it a 10 if it were not for the trope story.
Greeky pulp with heavy structure problems, January 6, 2017Disclaimer: (Spoiler - click to show)Hi, this are the reviews I did in the the IFComp 2016. I’m Ruber Eaglenest. Co-author of The skyscraper and the scar, and entry of that year. The review is posted without edition, and need some context about how I reviewed and rated the games. So, apart of my bad English I hope to be constructive. I will point to the things I don't like of the game, but I hope to be helpful. The structure I follow is this: Title, one line review, two to five word; Mobile friendliness, overall, score phrased based on IF comp guidelines. I had back ache and so that’s why I played most games in Android mobile, I looked closely at how games behave on mobile and review and vote based on that.
Mobile friendly: not optimal, but pretty playable.
Overall: I liked the prose and lore of the game. In both aspects is a heavy piece, full of names of a developed lore based on the Greek myths. But at the same time, the prose it is deep in style with punchy phrases, humor and scenes that feel very pulpy, as if someone would make a superheroes stories based on the Greek gods, heroes and titans, with superlative details.
However, in the end, I didn’t like the game at all. It has a somewhat puzzle structure where the player must find the way to pass each scene. I don’t know how to name this problem, is like reading the mind author and getting the right branch. I think some branches act like actions that set a flag to win the puzzle of each scene or what. But it just don’t work. A lot of twines that I’ve played and I’ll review has the same problem: they make loops with not enough variable text and knowledge of the actions and state of the world upon the player actions. So again, in Aether Aperion, the player repeats the same passages again and again, that repeats the same bunch of text. But in this game the problem is aggravated because they are a somewhat puzzle on them, so in the end, the player is lost in the tangle of nodes and connections, clicking links at random in the hope that some branch get you out that scene.
If this game will become in a series, this needs fixing, because this a bad way of doing puzzles in Twine. And that problem makes the story not enjoyable.
Score: Recommended with reservations. Is interesting and it is funny, as it has severe problems but maybe some people would overlook them and take some joy of it.
Somewhat funny tongue in cheek game, January 6, 2017Disclaimer: (Spoiler - click to show)Hi, this are the reviews I did in the the IFComp 2016. I’m Ruber Eaglenest. Co-author of The skyscraper and the scar, and entry of that year. The review is posted without edition, and need some context about how I reviewed and rated the games. So, apart of my bad English I hope to be constructive. I will point to the things I don't like of the game, but I hope to be helpful. The structure I follow is this: Title, one line review, two to five word; Mobile friendliness, overall, score phrased based on IF comp guidelines. I had back ache and so that’s why I played most games in Android mobile, I looked closely at how games behave on mobile and review and vote based on that.
Mobile friendly: almost there. It is playable but the view must be panned to enjoy the images.
Overall: This is a virtual tour for some places of Cleveland. It is well written in a light tone that is slightly funny. The game is a branchy “try to get the hidden winning branch” combining the resources at your disposal. In the end that’s feels somewhat to random luck, or “read the author’s mind”, but because each branch fell on the short side, you can replay easily.
My main caveat about this game is some dissonance in the loops. Just, the game doesn’t track the state of the game and adapt itself properly for a looping passage, instead it just repeats the same text again and again, and that is not narratively correct.
It is ok, but it is not of my tastes.
Score: Recommended, because maybe someone could enjoy this more than I.
Trope diversion, but a sweet one, although flawed., January 6, 2017Disclaimer: (Spoiler - click to show)Hi, this are the reviews I did in the the IFComp 2016. I’m Ruber Eaglenest. Co-author of The skyscraper and the scar, and entry of that year. The review is posted without edition, and need some context about how I reviewed and rated the games. So, apart of my bad English I hope to be constructive. I will point to the things I don't like of the game, but I hope to be helpful. The structure I follow is this: Title, one line review, two to five word; Mobile friendliness, overall, score phrased based on IF comp guidelines. I had back ache and so that’s why I played most games in Android mobile, I looked closely at how games behave on mobile and review and vote based on that.
Mobile friendly. Not too much, but playable. Save system, but no autosave.
Overall: The game grow on me. Half world modelling, half hypertext, with ellipsis and such. But in the end is not consistent enough, and has lacking for it.
The start of the game and the first chapter are more consistent, the last chapters and ending could benefit of a better structure and developing. I found some actions to be problematic against my motivations as a player. I think the game could benefit a lot from an editor or a confiable tester who could said what works and what not works in the game. And then rewrite. But for a future work. What’s done it’s done.
I like the trying to make a consistent world in twine, but the authors has done some loops, and those loops are not variable enough. Take the example when you arrive at the cottage. The scene describes you arriving, but if you enter, and go out, the scene is describe again as if you were arriving for the first time. That is a huge problem for me, it just breaks the immersion.
Some scenes are rushed and make a poor work on building the narrative of surviving day to day on the forest. For example, in day two where you must take care of feeding yourself, you go out, get some food, and when you return, the day is over and you go to sleep. Too rushed.
This repeats in later chapters, overall, all the plot feels a little rushed, I would like a more modelled implementation of the forest, more tangible and less abstract. Definitively this game would benefit of being a parser one. So I could enjoy, explore and know the environment as my home. But in the end that sensation was only in the very first chapter.
There’s a growing relationship with the wolves in the game, but again, it is rushed, there is no room for really building that relationship with the mother wolf, so it is not succeed in that either. This is not like in Princess Mononoke where all the implicit existence together is evident, or like the relationship in Dancing with wolves or just the play with the fox in A change in the weather. So in the end the game doesn’t nails the story, topic and setting.
However I liked the writing and tone. I think the author is someone to look for in the future.
Score: Recommended with reservations
Great fun, January 6, 2017Disclaimer: Hi, this are the reviews I did in the the IFComp 2016. I’m Ruber Eaglenest. Co-author of The skyscraper and the scar, and entry of that year. The review is posted without edition, and need some context about how I reviewed and rated the games. So, apart of my bad English I hope to be constructive. I will point to the things I don't like of the game, but I hope to be helpful. The structure I follow is this: Title, one line review, two to five word; Mobile friendliness, overall, score phrased based on IF comp guidelines. I had back ache and so that’s why I played most games in Android mobile, I looked closely at how games behave on mobile and review and vote based on that.
Mobile friendly: almost there, it just needs autosave, some optimisations on intelligent focus when hitting a button (that it gets you the proper section by context), and some bug fixes. The sounds breaks in android mobile. I miss a more large buttons, or an option to size them up. However it was pleasant to play and very funny.
Overall: I love the world model. I LOVE UI design. I love the style. I love the implementation. I know Robin is very proud of his landscape design for the game, but It works better for me in portrait, in mobile. It just need a further iteration in the UI to be just a perfect responsive IF system. And in landscape my eye jump too much from the left panel to the right panel, so I prefer to resize the window on desktop. Again, for me, portrait with this IF system, is perfect.
The game, as Draculaland, falls on the humor pastiche sub-genre genre (sic). I’m not very fond on detective stories, and definitively I’m not into pastiche humor pieces, but Robin is soooooo fun, he is so smart doing it, that I laugh out loud several times. Just take attention to the office of the Player Character (PC) and later read the Detective book 1001… so funny.
I like that the just plain silliness of Draculaland goes here to another level, and that it works so well. It seems as if Draculaland were the first draft of what is coming, because the pastiche silliness is there, the UI is there, both games has the same CSS visual design, but in Detectiveland it simply all makes click! together. Thanks to the improvements in multimedia, the music, the portraits, and of course the magnificent cover, everything works towards the goal, that is to have great fun with a solid modelled puzzle game.
The better of it is that the model system works. This system remembers us why modelled worlds are so funny to play, and in a world that goes towards hypertext and CYOA domination, this feels as fresh air: the old made new again.
Returning to the use of multimedia, however, the music felt repetitive. It seems the author is not comfortable yet with the silence, and the space around it. I think the game would benefit a lot from a more discrete use of the music, doing only a 2 or three times loop, and then stopping until another change in the ambience of the scenery. With that, short bursts of music, would serve as a perfect cue to the new ambience instead of fill every space with an eternal repetition.
On to the structure, it is somewhat open: you have three cases to work, but you have to choose one. The world organises itself for the case at hand. Once the player has solved the three first cases, the games gift us with a fourth case. The initial puzzles for each case are very easy and straightforward, but I found some of the final ones too difficult without learning curve or a progressive difficult curve in the middle. Probably that’s because the nature of the comp, but for a future releases of this kind of games could benefit a lot of a more expanded play time, and a smooth difficult curve.
In one of the final puzzles for one case, the solution was … almost "read the mind of the author", but I think it was very well implemented, with an exemplary design on trial and error. But as I'm not accustomed to this nowadays I made the decision to go to the police station; I had the motivation to do that, but, of course the location was not prepared for me for that concrete case finale, so I got stuck. I think for those occasions the game could benefit of a little more railroading or adding dynamic clues when the player has the motivation to look for in other places when he has failed the puzzle and failed to notice that he has to return to the problem at hand in the same place. But… this is nick picking. We don’t need perfectly round games to enjoy them, isn’t it? Because this is a game of 9. Ooops, I said that... agh, forget it.
Score: Excellent.
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