Reviews by wolfbiter

A creative look at a different world in this vignette-based game where you play as a sentient mouse. The vignettes were well written and interesting, the worldbuilding and mouse culture were particular highlights. I would have liked it if your choices affected the rest of the game more, and if there were more choices of vignette (often you would be forced to take ones you didn’t want, which made exploring the larger plot threads cumbersome).

A delightfully adrenaline filled, pacey, chock-full-of-action ride. Fully delivers on the expected thrills of a game that involves exploring a creepy abandoned (??) station in a dive suit, cut off from your support team.

The game does an excellent job creating a pressure cooker atmosphere, while remaining relatively forgiving and playable. The puzzles were quite good. I did resort to the walkthrough at one point, and I'm always glad to see when a walkthrough is offered.

The prose is well-written and effective in conveying action and tension. The PC has a gallows-humor sensibility it's fun to spend time with. As the game progresses, there's a delicious unspooling of backstory and plot that makes the puzzles feel paid off.

This is a fun office-themed puzzler, elevated by clever writing and atmospheric art. Amusingly skewers the office environment (your boss's feedback on your report: “you confused our mission statement with our vision statement”). Relies on solving puzzles to advance, some of which were a bit friction-y, but the hints sorted that out. I enjoyed the atmosphere provided by the well-curated illustrations. A fairly surface level approach, though--the ending could have been more in line with the tone / provided deeper thoughts.

- The Pale King, David Foster Wallace

A mind bending and creative concept meets excellent writing (incredible voice for the main character) in this short hypertext game. This brief experience gave me some new thoughts about being human and left me scratching my head about a few things too.

There’s a lot to love in this game. It brings a fresh and unique puzzle concept, accompanied by delightful worldbuilding and a cute protagonist. There's also entertaining feelies that convincingly flesh out the bureaucratic fantasy setting.

However, I had a fair amount of friction points where I put a lot of time into an effort that was immediately revealed to be pointless. I think these could have been sanded out in the design phase, they didn't feel essential to the concept. Once that learning curve was over, it also felt like there wasn’t much else to do in the game.

But very much worth a play to see the central mechanic.

Fantasy academia meets office satire in this quick puzzler. The writing is clever and funny. The puzzles and plot were perfectly fine, and there's a pleasing absurdity to the proceedings. But it didn’t feel like a complete game—the end was abrupt and didn’t tie much up. While I understand the author plans to write more in the series, each entry should still feel internally complete.

If you are struggling to make pottage, (Spoiler - click to show)you may think you are softlocked because you picked up the wrong snack earlier, and there's no way to ditch the snacks. BUT which snack you are holding actually doesn't matter; when making the pottage, adding the snack is a free response text field--you can just type anything in the field whether or not it’s what you are currently holding.

This is a fun “how much loot can you take with you” optimization puzzle. The construction is tightly focused on that objective (not a lot of gilding the lily or providing backstory, etc.). I liked the barebones approach--it just sucked me into the puzzle faster.

All of the details are very clearly explained, and everything runs smoothly. There’s also a lot of helpful quality-of-life features. I really enjoyed my attempts to get a better load-out of saleables, and I had one VERY intense eureka moment. A fun time!

A very short, dialogue-heavy retelling of Bluebeard, with the accompanying high stakes and emotional intensity. Overall, successfully gripping but I wish it had given a few more words to flesh out some of the paths, some of which felt very crunched.

A high-stakes, short horror game set in an abandoned church.

The concept requires replays, but it’s written well enough that that’s no chore. I wouldn’t have minded a few more endings, or delving deeper into the religious horror elements (i.e., adding more elements of guilt or culpability).

This game presents the immersive opportunity to explore a simulated semi-derelict computer desktop, including its saved and deleted files, programs, internet browser history, etc.

The GUI is really beautifully done, as is the rest of the polish, and the sound design deserves a special shout-out. Poking through someone else's files delivers a voyeuristic thrill, and the backstory you find is appropriately tormented and dramatic. There are also well-integrated puzzles.

However, the game stops a bit short of really engaging with its themes (i.e., about the suitability of AI to run the justice system), and there’s a few infelicities of phrasing.