Reviews by MathBrush

This was the second-most substantial game I've played this IFComp, and took me around 3.5 hours to play, with dinner in the middle, so about 2.5-3 hours of playtime.

This is a rich and complex game. Instead of focusing on a multitude of small choices, it has a small set of meaningful choices that shape the later narrative. There's a lot of branches here, leading to 500K words, though much of that is due to minor variations of text; with efficient variable use, it would probably be 200-300K, still very large, but that would also probably make it buggy, so I think the author made a smart move here.

The choices themselves manage to be some of the most difficult ones in my recent gameplaying history. Each one is a compromise, giving something you want and something you don't.

But I guess I should describe the story. For those who aren't aware DemonApologist is a talented author whose works almost exclusively focus on what I might describe as monsteryaoi, where a human engages in a romantic relationship with a being typically depicted as evil or malevolent by others. I've found their past works to be engaging and good with dialogue and emotion, so much so that I have tried to study them as I practice writing romance for commercial fiction.

This game is no exception to the monster-loving pattern; in fact, it's the most well-formed example of it I've played. It also, as I describe earlier, provides an enhanced sense of agency.

Our protagonist is a humble initiate who has been prevented from ascending in the ranks of magicdom due to a cruel and callous advisor who won't let him graduate due to his sympathy towards demons. The advisor even summons demons and has them fight each other to the death to demonstrate how unimportant their lives are. He then gives the initiate an impossible task: to light the Pharos Fidelis, an extremely cursed lighthouse at the center of a magical storm.

He is also explicitly asked not to summon demons, and, if he does, to expect them to kill him.

Our initiate, therefore, takes the most logical action in the moment, which is to summon the hottest demon he knows (the one who was defeated in the earlier duel) and to flirt with him awkwardly.

Fortunately, it works out! Or not. That's where the choices come into play. At critical moments, 'you', the viewpoint character (different form the protagonist), get to influence the demon towards one of two options. Each option comes with one benefit and one drawback. These critical moments stack, producing numerous branching timelines and a ton of different endings.

The game looks great. The UI has little gears that pop open side comments and commentary, and I especially loved the background color change when the big event occurred. That event itself was described quite beautifully.

Perhaps surprisingly, the romance in this game peaks in the middle, not the end, allowing us plenty of time to see what a fully formed relationship might look like. I am reticent to play explicit games, but the game is very tasteful in describing our interactions with the demon and I did not feel distressed.

The game left me with a question in my mind about demon love and the concept of demon apologism in general. What is the essential core and appeal of the demon? Is it to be evil, itself? Or is it to be called evil by others? Would a sainted angel who is angelic in nature but hated by a cruel world still feel like a demon, or is it more important that the demon be ruthless and aggressive in nature and only tamed by the touch of man? If a demon turns out to be a good guy, does that erase his demon nature? If to be a demon is to be evil incarnate, can a demon truly make someone happy, a decidedly non-evil act? If it is not evil incarnate, then what makes a demon? It is a paradox, and not just a fruitless one. A lot of romance and even stories in general pivot on the notion of a 'bad boy/girl' that ends up having a heart of gold and doesn't really do bad boy things at all. This isn't directed to the author, it's just something their game made me think about a lot, because I think it's core to a large swathe of storytelling.

Penny Nichols, Troubleshooter

This game consists of instructions to an AI on how to run a game for a human player.

I was excited to see this, because I've often thought when playing an AI-generated game: "I bet the prompt the author used would be so much more interesting than the output I have to read." And here I had the prompt itself!

So I tried playing it twice. In the first, I made myself both player and DM. Instead of AI, I used it as a writing prompt as I explored what might happen with these characters and this setting. I had a lot of fun; I usually struggle to write more than 300 words at a time and 1000 in a day, but I got up to 2270 words in less than an hour. I relied heavily on cliches and tropes but I liked the setting and concept.

I then plugged it into Copilot. Copilot made it look fancier and was much, much faster. Parts of it were interesting and fun to read. It was much more fast paced than my own transcript, and I had been trying to go fast myself. Amusingly, we used a lot of the same cliches and tropes. Where I was most disappointed is that, where I had tried hard to spool out the mysteries and fill in the backstories and characters, the AI just gave away half of the secrets in the first few paragraphs and mostly ignored my companion characters and almost all of the backstory. I felt like it wasn't really making use of the extensive mechanics sheet and was more just giving a series of climactic scenes without real buildup or denouement. It makes me feel like I couldn't personally rely on an LLM to follow my instructions if I were to make such a game myself.

Interesting concept, very glad I just got the prompt instead of having to suffer through pre-generated pages and pages of boring prose and instead got to write my own pages of boring prose.

A Conversation in a Dark Room

This is an author's first game, but is well-polished and has multiple endings and engaging dialogue.

You play as a man hired to be involved in a death. You meet a man in a dark bar late at night, and the two of you have an in-depth conversation. You are a reporter, but it's not clear that you'll be doing any reporting tonight. This seems more intimate. Your counterpart is old and wealthy, very wealthy in fact.

The story is split into three chapters, two of which are in the same location. Mechanically, you have three different stats that you can increase, which the game helpfully clarifies with some about text early on and popups when a stat goes up. Depending on your stats, you can get one of five different endings.

I think this is a promising start and that this author has hurdled over many of the mistakes new authors make.

There were a couple of things that would have enhanced or changed my experience.

While I just recently posted a review praising a different game for slow text, which I usually detest, my experience with this game was a return to form. On chapter titles and a few other select screens, text is spooled out painfully slowly. There are usually two reasons, I suspect, that people use slow text:

One, they want to control the experience of the reader by emphasizing important lines or moments. Many times I believe this is due to a lack of confidence in the power of static organization. Paragraph breaks, fonts, font size, and page breaks naturally provide a pacing for text that has been used effectively for thousands of years (like the elaborate capitals in illustrated manuscripts). At times, slowing down can provide drama by keeping the most interesting tidbits to the end, but in this case it was just regular text that was slowed down.

Second, some people slow down text for cinematic effect, to be like a movie. I think that can be used appropriately (Ryan Veeder uses a nice intro technique in some of his Little Match Girl games), but I personally appreciate it better when it's part of an overall audiovisual strategy and not the only movie-like element used.

So I downloaded the game and edited the code to speed it up. One good rule of thumb is that, if you have trouble sitting through slow text while playing your game (and everyone should play their game while writing it), the player won't enjoy it either.

The second thing is that I found it a little difficult to strategize the different paths of the game. The stats are genius, and they already provide branching and replay value, but I often found it hard to figure out what the effect of each choice would have on stats. I personally would have found it more fun to be more clear.

But these all are just my opinions; there's no one true way to write games, so I offer this as only my own account of my game experience.

As a final side note, I don't drink, but see it a lot in media, and I was pretty surprised by the drink count of my character by the end of the game. I took one drink early on, and after that they ended up pounding down seven drinks in the night, were then invited over for whiskey, and, in one ending, propose going to another bar. I checked and it looks like that amount of drinking can get a lot of people blackout drunk, and is pretty high above the bar for 'binge drinking', so I wonder if our character is a hardcore alcoholic or is going to have a really bad day tomorrow. Both are completely appropriate for this game, so this is not a criticism, it was just fascinating to learn more about drinking culture.

This is a long Twine game about a family of 19 that visits a theme park that (to me) seems clearly Disney-influenced (due to things like a water-based ride that takes a picture of 8 people at a time for a souvenir, or a hall of american history).

The overall structure of this game reminds me of nothing more than the Wikipedia summary of Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, which has been voted the best movie of all time. I haven't seen it, but it's described as a very long, slow movie about a single mother who has a dull daily routine (including daily prostitution). Her day is shown in slow stillness over and over for hours, but then flaws enter her routine, and in the end she becomes violent and breaks out.

This game is similar. The beginning part emphasizes the chaotic and frustrating nature of a Disney (or Universal Studios) trip with 19 people. There are constant little arguments and clamoring from children and adults wanting to take a break and get a drink or food, etc. Like Jeanne Dielman, this story is (intentionally) paced painfully slowly, with large pages filled with large paragraphs of very similar, repetitive material. To me, this seems intentional, so that when the strange flaws begin to creep in (which I first noticed in a scene involving a mole), it becomes more shocking and strange.

There are two main protagonists I saw more than any other, Lou and a name you chose yourself (I chose Evelyn from Incredibles 2). I had great trouble distinguishing between the two at first, as speakers and act-ors change frequently in the middle of paragraphs, and spoken text is often written without italics or quotations. Here is an early sample:

The combination of smells only intensifies inside the park. Added to it now is the smell of melting rubber-shoe-soles, engine exhaust, caramel, horse manure, artificial vanilla. grandma is dying for a cup of coffee, does anyone else want anything? Three hands go up, two adults and one child. The two adults want coffee also, the child wants an ice cream cone. This earns a rebuke from her father. Ice cream! It’s eight in the morning! But grandma is quick, this is vacation! Let’s have ice cream!

While the protagonist whose name we choose is interesting and has some experiences meeting up with other local college students, I followed Lou more. Lou is older, a gay woman in her 30s, and not out to her homophobic family. As she ventures through the park and navigates interactions with her family, she also encounters a mysterious voice on a walkie-talkie channel, as well as an attractive bartender. The ending of her story was long, complex and unexpected.

I think the overall concept of this game is well-thought out, and it's clear the author has great skill at writing. In this case, they obtained the effect they desired, but I found it dense and not fully enjoyable. The suffocating feel of the large paragraphs, the confusion of switching perspectives and speech, it effectively simulated the 'big stressful vacation', but one maxim I've had over the years is "a perfect simulation of a boring or annoying situation is boring or annoying". However, I'm torn, because this same frustration in the early sections is needed for the setup for the big changes in the end. So I don't have any advice for this author, other than to give my own personal subjective experience.

Playing the game did make me reminisce a lot. For the last five years or so, me and my son have been part of a big family vacation to the mountains in Utah, where we wander around as a group of 17. Many parts of this game felt familiar, like navigating different political climates (some of my family are ardent Trump supporters, while others are lifelong Democrats) and the chaos of big groups and tracking down missing kids. Others were less familiar; we don't drink or have blow-out arguments, and we pick completely chill vacations without structure where we mostly swim. We do have closeted gay family, but the 'support' side is large and there is no open hate. None of this affects the verisimilitude of the game, and is likely not relevant to the author or other readers, but it's interesting to see how other people perceive the same life events as us. I have also, conversely been on non-family trips that had this exact suffocating feeling, desire to flee from everything, and buying a flight early. So a lot of this story rang true to me.

Another factor tied in to the whole 'frustrating setup, satisfying payoff' is that there isn't much freedom early on, and we only get freedom in choice as the protagonists themselves do. I was particularly frustrated early on where I had the choice to expose a family member's cruelty or not. I chose not to, but the game said something like, 'Yeah right! No, you do the other choice.'. Similarly, at the very end, for Lou's path, I had to choose between two major options. I chose the more cowardly option, and the game ended very abruptly, leaving me wondering if this was a 'fake' or 'bad' option and that I'd need to replay to see the other.

I commend the author's intense efforts and strong writing skill. For me, I felt a strong dislike for the world in the first half, but that was a reflection of the author's ability, and not the lack thereof.

This is a genre of story I like: in a postapocalyptic world caused by unexplainable events that warp the very definition of life, an explorer is determined to discover the truth behind this new world.

While the game seems to be highly replayable (you can pick a wide variety of teammates and each day gives you different options), I only played to one ending, where I can become renowned as the discoverer of the truth.

The writing is descriptive, focused on the salt-covered world you live in and the strange creatures you begin to find in the wastes as you journey towards the center. Conversations with teammates reveal more about the worldbuilding and society in particular.

The atmosphere was moody, it felt scientific enough to provoke curiosity, and enjoyed my time with the game. I didn't feel compelled to try again, as I felt I had experienced a full story.

This was a fun game. You play as a rock on a wilderness path. You are a talking rock.

At first, all you can do is have random encounters with people, at least one of whom definitely does not like talking rocks. Eventually, you learn more about the people and their inter-connectedness, and you gain the ability to call them to make them come.

The game has 20 endings, and you can accept any of them. There is an 'ultimate' ending you unlock by getting the others and a 'true' ending that happens if you've played long enough.

I played twice, because I ran out of time in the first one and accepted an ending. The second time, I skipped a few things, and I think that made it impossible to collect all endings, because several endings seem to only be offered once (specifically one of the florist's endings).

I also had big trouble finding out what the Freak's need was and how to solve it. I ended up looking into the code to figure it out, where I also read the final ending.

Any ending is fine. If someone plays this and finds five or more endings, as well as an ending that reveals more about your nature, that's the bulk of the game and you could probably comfortably stop there.

The writing is whimsical and goofy. There is a lot of absurdism, but the setting is consistent enough to make the absurd parts stick out and be funny instead of being a jumbled mish-mash.

It didn't stir my soul or change my life, but I was entertained while playing and enjoyed looking for endings.

This game really spoke to me. It reminded me quite a bit of the last year of my marriage in an introspective, helpful way (outside of the creating an AI to help me work through things).

Like the blurb says, this game was written "On the making of your very own artificial general intelligence, and how to live — or not live — with it."

It is in three acts. The first has a portion mimicking a command-line interface and an AI that you are training. The second and third branch out into a more natural-looking interface as your program develops.

There are a lot of fancy styling techniques going on, from hover-over hints, slow typed-out text, the aforementioned interfaces, blacked out text that you have to hover over, images with different expressions.

The whole game (outside a bit of memories and intro) is a conversation between you and the AI you created as both of you try to figure out your place in the world. It is a romance, or, more accurately, the topics of conversation are about relationships.

I noticed that this is one of the last games to be reviewed. I think two possible reasons might be that the game mentions AI, perhaps giving the impression that generative AI was used (it might have been, but I don't think so; this is just a story about a fictional AI), and the game uses slow-typed text.

I usually hate slow-typed text and have gone on rants about it before, but I didn't mind it quite as much here, especially since I could often get the next line started before the first had finished typing, and I could read them in parallel, which was kind of fun. Also the small scope and lush nature of the game made it feel reasonable and even enjoyable.

Overall, I thought this was well done, and it resonated with me personally more than most games in the comp so far (which is completely subjective, and may not be everyone's experience).

Penthesilea

This is a short twine story about a near-future authoritarian regime where you are wife to one of the highest officials in the nation. And you are a perfectly obedient wife, your husband telling you what to say, what to eat, what to do.

But something's wrong in this strange world, and you find yourself with the capability to resist.

The setting is reminiscent of 1984 (it feels to me like an older time's vision of a dystopian future) and the setup of the regime vs the rebels reminded me of Hunger Games in the way the rich are portrayed. There are some references to Greek mythology for the names, but I didn't see a clear connection between the Greek figure and this game's story, so I think it's just for flavor.

There is interesting interaction in the game, enough that I played twice (once obedient, once rebellious) and there is some non-linearity in the scenes. I found the quality of the writing and the plot structure to be enjoyable, and so I look forward to the other two games by this author. There is some strong profanity.

This is one of several games entered into this competition translated from other languages, in this case Spanish, although I didn't see it entered in any Spanish competitions in the past year, so it is fresh to me.

This game consists of three vignettes set in Israel, America, and Palestine.

Before going into deeper spoilers, I'll mention the general idea of each section. In the first, you wake up in Tel Aviv where darkness has completely covered the sky. You can investigate by walking through different neighborhoods of Tel Aviv and hope to discover the truth.

In the second, you are Donald Trump, waking up in Mar-a-Lago after a night of excess.

In the third, you are a father in Gaza, and it is your daughter's birthday.

The game is explicitly political with some clear messages but parts are open to interpretation.

With more spoiler detail:

I received less than half of the possible points in the game, which are given for exploration, so I likely missed out on some interesting chunks.

One notable line that stood out to me:

While parts of it are clear wish fulfillment (literally) with fantasies shared by millions, the other parts are sad reflections of war. (Spoiler - click to show)The daughter, living in a world of starvation and death, caused by her enemies, now sees her enemies as inhuman and deserving of torture and death, perpetuating the endless cycle of hatred. It's a sad commentary.

I was surprised this one wasn't reviewed on the spreadsheet yet. Jacic has a history of doing small, well-polished creepy stories, so I was looking forward to playing this one, and I think it worked out well.

This story combines three effective horror tropes: a 'deal with the devil' (although who the deal is with here is up to interpretation), carnivorous plants, and a lottery/voting system in a small town for deciding which citizen to kill.

You play as a citizen in a small desert town that depends on its sustenance for red, bloody fruit. Unfortunately, the red, bloody fruit, gifted to the town by a stranger years ago, can only grow if fed upon the blood of the guilty. Thus it falls upon your community to determine the guilty among yourselves each year and to feed them to the tree.

The problem is that your wife was taken last year, and you and your son are among the top nominees this time. You have to navigate your way through these tumultuous times and find a way to save yourself and the remnants of your family.

I liked the creepy styling on this and though the writing was appropriately dread-filled. I had some real agency, as I took the option at the end to revisit the game from its most important decision points. Both endings were slightly 'off' for me in length; I feel like it could have done with either less denouement and just having an abrupt or implied ending or a longer denouement with more emphasis on the character, but that's just nitpicking since I didn't find any real flaws to talk about. Jacic produces consistently good work and I look forward to more games from this author.