Reviews by MathBrush
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A compact fantasy game written in a custom engine, April 27, 2024This game was entered in the IF Grand Prix 2024, in German. In it, you play as someone determined to stop a sorceror from hatching a dragon egg and dooming the nearby community.
Gameplay revolves around looking around, exploring, and then using different items you find to open up new areas.
It's written in a custom engine which looks visually appealing but which I struggled with. A lot of objects weren't implemented that were mentioned in the text, and many synonyms I've become accustomed to from other German games didn't work here, so I had about 25 commands at the beginning that weren't understood. I finally got one to work by accident. Exploring around, some commands were hinted in the text and just didn't work; an example (not from the game) would be like 'it looks like you can pull it!' but 'pull' doesn't work.
Not being a native speaker compounded this problem, but I've seen on the German forums that others had the same problems. I ended up using the walkthrough helpfully provided, pausing here and there to explore some.
Other than that, the game is a good fantasy game. Some of the puzzle solutions were a bit confusing but the game is small enough that just trying everything should be fine.
A new IF engine takes a ton of work. This one is very promising but could use some more synonyms. For instance, in Inform I can type 'Oben' and 'Hoch' and both make me go up, or just 'schau' for looking around (maybe these are unusual commands and I've trained myself wrong by misplaying other German titles, a native speaker would have to correct me). I see now when writing that there was a Help page on the front page of the game, but I didn't see that when I first played, and typing Hilfe didn't bring anything up in game. The help page would have helped some, though, but it doesn't mention the up and down directions, which I struggled with.
A classic Western with a traveller helping solve a mystery, April 23, 2024This was a well-made Inform game in German with custom CSS. It uses the Hybrid Choices extension for Dialog.
You play as a traveller who comes to a small town looking for your love. In the meantime, though, you find a mystery, as a young man goes missing.
Gameplay revolves mostly around dialogue and exploration, with one puzzle involving several metal implements that I found confusing enough for me (a non-native speaker) to need to look at the walkthrough, but once I saw the commands it made sense.
Between conversations, there is often a lot of fetch-quests, where one person asks you to go find something and bring it back. I felt like it was a lot of fun most of the time, but one specific part felt a little repetitive, as there are three things in a row where you get an item, use it, realize you need another, get it, use it, etc.
Overall, I liked the writing and thought the flashbacks were neat. A very strong game. Near the end there were two weird things; the use of the word (Spoiler - click to show)drugs to refer to illegal things, when it was more (Spoiler - click to show)a reference to pharmaceuticals at the time</spoil>, and a somewhat derogatory term for Asians spoken by an uncultured man.
'Western' is definitely an underutilized IF category so it was nice playing a very polished game in this genre.
A complex Twine game about exploring an enormous library, April 20, 2024This game was in a poll for games that need more reviews.
In this game, you play as a lowly librarian who has been tasked by a mysterious stranger with finding the Babylon Book, which contains all stories that can ever be written.
This is meant to be the first in a three-part series. The bulk of the game takes place in a bizarre student cafeteria where history, magic, and collegiate life mingle.
The game uses a lot of styling, and has cycling links, background images, music, and a lot of text boxes where you can type what you want. I'm not sure how often the game checks what's in the type boxes; I had one puzzle where for sure it mattered, but others didn't.
The story is madcap and surreal, so it can be fun but also hard to follow at times. I wasn't quite sure how I ended up in the cafeteria, or why I couldn't leave it; and I encountered many things before I knew how to make use of them.
But, this is fairly compact, and it's not too hard to explore everything even though there's a lot. So I was able to figure out things in the end.
I definitely think I'd play the next few games. The one thing that I wish were a little different was the many times where I saw a cool feature (especially text boxes) and didn't know if it was 'cool feature just to have fun with that is only used for characterization' or 'essential puzzle component'.
A music-enhanced goofy night in a cemetery investigating aliens, April 9, 2024There have been a couple of polls over the years for 'games that need more reviews' and this has been on all of them. I loaded it up once a few years ago, but it seemed somewhat overwhelming.
But I'm glad I've finished it now!
This is a goofy, intentionally silly game in the vein of Escape from the Crazy Place. You are a police officer dressed as a Go Go dancer. Your partner is Donald McRonald: clown, pyromaniac, and overall goofy character.
The game map is split into about 9 main locations with a couple of extra ones. Gameplay revolves around bringing items from one area into another and getting Ronald to cooperate with you.
The plot is that something mysterious fell out the sky and crashed into the graveyard, and now so many of the dead and buried are rising up out their graves!
There is background music, which I thought was well-chosen; it felt like the soundtrack to one of those movies within a movie you see when people reference fake black and white horror films, like the werewolf movie in the Thriller music video. It has a lot more character than much of the music I've seen in other IF games.
However, I also found a lot of bugginess. The jelly doughnut was a major problem; I found it in a grave. I took it. Then I took something else in the grave, and it said I took the doughnut. I later gave the doughtnut to Donald, and it said he ate it, but then I still had it in my inventory. Similarly, the hints just went blank when first entered the (Spoiler - click to show)spacecraft. There were also a lot of interactions which may have been bugs and may have not; like when I opened my purse, and (Spoiler - click to show)tried to get something out and died, so I tried giving it to Ronald and told him to open it, then when I had it again I could take stuff out and not die, even though the boa was in there. Similarly, with the main nemesis, (Spoiler - click to show)I first tried doing nothing, and died; then breaking the machine, and died; then going through the light, and died; then talking, and that just gave a normal response. So I tried attacking the dog herself and got mind controlled away. So things were kind of chaotic. There are also several typos, mainly missing quotes when a sentence has a dialogue tag in the middle.
The characters and writing are funny and high quality, and the music really helps the ambiance. I enjoyed a lot of the puzzles, too. I wonder if that's why there are so few reviews; the game is good enough that no one would give it a 'this sucks, don't try this' review, but tricky enough to finish that people who like it often aren't able to see the end. However, I should note that as of writing this in April 2024, this game has a lot of 4-5 star ratings, while I'm giving it a 3-star rating, so my experience may be atypical.
Long, complex and creepy story about a private cinema showing, March 31, 2024This is a pretty substantial Moiki game with a creepy atmosphere, in French.
There is a book you love that is finally getting a movie adaptation! And your friend has a friend who knows someone who has an early bootleg copy!
The book is about a woman who reincarnates throughout history, including as various animals, but who can take control of some of the reincarnations given the right ritual.
Going to the movie takes you to a dark and frightening theatre where everyone behaves strangely...
The game gives the impression that there are many branches, although I only played through once. There are numerous quick-time events, which were difficult for me as a non-native speaker.
The use of background images, music and occasional voice were very effective, and I was impressed both by the technical skill and the storytelling.
I was left unsure of how the final events of the game where I learn more about myself were connected to either the book or the movie; perhaps if I had played more, I could have seen the truth.
A fantasy mystery traversed through a map , March 25, 2024This is my first time playing an OpenAdventure game, and it was interesting. I didn't get it at first, so I tried a tutorial game, and then it made more sense.
This game at first appears highly non-linear, but it becomes apparent that everything is laid out for you step by step. The way the game works is that you have a map, a list of places on it, a list of people, and rumors on the bottom. You can click on many of these things. Each time you do, you get a paragraph or two of information. Very occasionally, you can click within that paragraph to unlock more areas, or type in a password of sorts to get to a new area or even an entirely new map (there are 2 maps in this game).
At the end of each map there is a self-graded quiz where you type in the answer to various questions. Then, instead of checking your answer, it tells you the truth. I've seen this way of doing mysteries before and it works fairly well here, although it limits your opportunity to correct yourself when wrong or to work on improving a partial answer.
The storyline is that a goddess has a magic cauldron in your village that has an awful curse put on it against any villager who steals it. Yet, it has been stolen. You, a bard, have to figure out who did it and why!
There was a lot of text in this game. I try to avoid using google translate but leaned on it at some points. It seems well-written in french. Due to the quirks of language translation, I had to laugh at google's attempt at translating this (to no fault of the author):
Original: "Il semble que vous allez devoir mouiller vos braies pour continuer la traque..."
Translation: "It looks like you're going to have to wet your pants to continue the hunt..."
Overall, this format seems like it has some clear advantages for mystery games. I'd be interested in seeing how it would work for other genres.
Solve a splitting headache, March 25, 2024This brief Inform game has you waking up with temporary amnesia in a medical research facility with a door that has recently been welded shut.
It's a small game with about six rooms. There are two major tasks to take care of: getting some quiet and making things dark.
It is possible to lock yourself out of victory unwittingly, I believe. And one major puzzle requires some intuition that is not in the room description and which doesn't make sense based on earlier responses. In particular, (Spoiler - click to show)you have to turn off a radio, and TURN OFF RADIO says you can't turn it off and BREAK RADIO says you can't do anything to it, and it's too big to TAKE or PUSH. The solution is apparently to UNPLUG radio, despite the lack of a plug being mentioned.
Overall, it works as a small game to make to get used to Inform, but I prefer Sidewise by the same author.
A longish Moiki game about guarding a door that no one returns from, March 17, 2024This is one of the bigger complete games in the French Comp this year (2024).
You play in a fantasy world with two main races, one of which is white and in power and the other dark skinned and with less power. You are part of the latter group, and you have been called to be the guardian of a mysterious Door.
No one who goes through the door ever returns. As the guardian, you are given seven rules, including that you should try to dissuade anyone from entering, but can't physically prevent them.
The game has two main modes of interaction. One is recurring visits where you talk to a person and make decisions, some substantial. The other is exploration, which seems to stay roughly the same. There is a part where you need to solve a code; I made a guess based on my weak french and got it right on my first try (Spoiler - click to show)I thought 'ice, flower, sun, leaf' and put in 'hfsf'. I either got it right or it accepts anything.
I did get engaged over time seeing the evolution of the kingdom and the strange people entering the door. In the end, I chose to go through.
It said I only found 2 of 15 objects, and I only saw 300 or so of the 900 passages, so I assume it is very replayable.
A complex underwater salvage mission in a larger universe, December 28, 2023This game, as its name suggests, is part of the same universe as A1RL0CK.
It's set in an underwater wreck that is enormous and filled with strange biological material. You have a special suit designed both to let you interface with the technology around you and to keep you under control.
The gameplay is partly exploration and partly puzzly. I enjoyed searching out parts of the ship, interfacing with technology and so on. I had some trouble with the parser when trying to deal with wheel valves, but I realized I had been using the wrong verb (SET is right, TURN works sometimes but not as often).
There is frequent strong profanity in the game. It makes sense in context. The story is very violent, kind of like 80s sci fi action like Alien, Predator, or Terminator.
Overall, I found the story strong. At times I got stuck, like I said; this is not an easy game, and careful attention to detail is basically required to pass through. I had a good time with it overall.
Live a semester of a young woman's life, November 29, 2023Having played many recent Autumn Chen games in the last year or two, I saw a lot of references to Pageant, and thought, 'I don't really remember that game well'.
Turns out, I never played it! I mixed it up with another game and never even tried it.
Having tried it, it's pretty great. It's clearly influenced by Emily Short's Bee; both use the same system (one from when it was a semi-commercial system and another after it became Dendry). Both are based on quality-based narratives that play out over several weeks, both are about a certain type of rigorous, conservative upbringing, one by fundamentalist Christians and oene by Chinese diaspora parents.
However, this is certainly not just a retread of familiar material. Our main heroine, Karen (whom I recognize from several other games) has a unique and complex approach to life that makes choices not straightforward. Karen is thoughtful and compassionate but also is under enormous stress and has social anxiety at times that makes intended choices (like responding and so on) impossible to actually carry out.
One fundamental aspect is that Karen is extremely competent but does not see herself that way. She does 95% of what a human is capable of doing, but only sees that 5% gap. She works with adult research scientists but only sees her ineptness; she is told frequently she is beautiful but only sees awkwardness; she is loved by others but only fears rejection.
But the key is that she acts in spite of these fears; she just keeps on trucking.
Having played other 'pageantverse' games I immediately narrowed in on interacting with (Spoiler - click to show)Emily as much as possible. This game explores young trans interactions quite a bit: what does a trans relationship look like? Actually, that's not true; this game isn't about 'trans relationships' first; it's just about relationships, and what happens when someone being trans is thrown in the mix. Some of the tensest moments in the game for me were switching between private moments with my friend being able to express herself however she wanted and public moments with her family where the expectation was 'be normal or get punished'.
Overall, I'm glad that this wasn't a 'downer ending' game. I was able to succeed in my goals (being close to someone and doing good in pageant + research while being mediocre in science olympiad and basically ignoring family).
A strong game, and it's clear why it spawned several good followups.
A creepy night of programming, November 22, 2023This game is (hopefully partially) autobiographical, describing a long career in a game company. A lot of it was familiar to me; my father owned a video game company growing up and I spent a lot of time at work. The arcade games, chill out areas, lots of sketches and endless cubicles, mixed with frustrating bugs, all sounded about right.
The main point of the game is two-fold: fix a bug, and find a 'peep' to hide in someone else's office.
There is a lot of narrative momentum, with parts like fixing the bug being an effective story, and the strange happenings beyond the janitor's closet...
On the other hand, I often found myself fighting the parser, especially when dealing with a certain unreachable thing I found.
Overall, there is a good haunting story here.
Whip up some medicine to cure a cold, and do genealogy, November 22, 2023I beta tested this game.
The Alaric Blackmoon games have a long and storied history going back I think decades.
Most of the ones that I have played have been written in Adrift. They are written in traditional fantasy style; as books, they would have fit fine as a TSR series along with Forgotten Realms or Dragonlance.
The games are usually quite long, often with action sequences, and several of them use similar set pieces (like the castle in this game, which features in several other games).
This one is a stripped down and smaller version. There is just a simple goal: to explore the genealogy of the main characters.
I’ve seen others saying this game felt a little too small; I could see that, but I feel like it’s more polished than a lot of the other Blackmoon games. The only issue I found was with some leaves, where I had some both in my hand and in a cup, but that’s not necessarily bad, as I could have taken only part of it out.
Genealogy is a requirement in my religion and one I enjoy, so I liked this lower-stakes storyline. It can be very fun to track down an ancestor and find distant cousins.
Overall, this is a nice introduction to the series, and can get people use to the style of the other games (like magic, the way the Axe works, etc.)
Italian slasher film where you're the star, November 22, 2023This game is a game with multiple layers of storytelling. In it, you are an actress speaking with the police, telling a story about a film that is set within a film, all played by you, the player, as a game…but is all of that true? Layers shift and change.
This is a giallo story, but due to my inexperience with much of Italian cinema I took it to be a ‘slasher film’. As a meta slasher film, it shares a lot in common with movies like Scream or Wes Craven’s new nightmare, or to games like the recent IFComp game Blood Island. The only real difference between this genre and those is that this game has a lot more reference to nudity and sexuality, but that’s a common difference between American and European cinema. While I tend to avoid erotic games, the nudity and sexuality in this game never felt erotic; if anything, it was just a way to incite more fear and helplessness.
You play as an actress who leaves one movie set to go to another. Along the way, a mysterious figure stalks and harasses you, and can kill you. But is that just part of the film, too?
I received ending 1, which seemed like an apt ending for the game. Overall, just like another game that I mentioned to its author, this game reminds me quite a bit of opera. Its symbolism reminds me of things like Don Giovanni, with the statue dragging him to hell, or Duke Bluebeard’s Castle, where all actions are symbolic.
The game does have several implementation issues though, which I share a large part in, as I tested it. I’ll send specifics to the author, but there are a lot of places where things fire out of order or synonyms are missed. I certainly could have aided with that better!
But I suppose it’s a bit of a missed opportunity; due to the occasionally sketchy implementation, I had to religiously follow the walkthrough. This could have been presented as a ‘script’ feelie (similar to and mirroring the in-game script), adding another layer to the game. But I suppose a new release of the game could also bring the errors in line, which would raise the game to a 9 or 10 in my mind.
Choice-based museum heist game with complex map and goddesses , November 22, 2023This is a heist game, written in Twine.
It has a character selection screen, and then you’re given a problem to solve. In this case, an ancient Cat goddess desires her treasure back!
The game that ensues is almost entirely focused on mechanics, with the story broadly sketched out. You end up in a very large museum that you have to navigate, finding the clues and items necessary to grab the treasure.
I found myself wishing for an on-screen map early on, getting lost pretty easily. Eventually a found a map, right before I won, but it could have been nice to have it onscreen.
There are 16 or so locations in the museum, and each one has only a line or two of description, with perhaps one interesting item to interact with. This strips down the game to its core features, which are primarily movement and object gathering.
I’ve seen a lot of reviews of parser games saying ‘I wonder if this should have been choice based’. Here, I think, not ‘this should be parser based’ but ‘I wonder if the author would enjoy writing parser games’. There seems to be a true pleasure in gathering inventory and travelling that I think could make parser code appealing.
In any case, I solved it, but only with some hints and a little peeking at the code (I was dumb and couldn’t find the key combination on my own).
Overall, I would have liked a little more fleshed out detail in the museum, since it sounded cool, and would have liked an on screen map, but I did have fun. I scored 82/100!
Telegram-based game set in Whale's belly, November 22, 2023This game has a fun concept, using a messaging app to tell a story (in this case Telegram).
I don’t have Telegram, so I played the web version.
This idea has been played around with before; the Lifeline series of games has you texting with an astronaut, and I once was commissioned to write a game where you get a series of texts from someone using a Ouija board to communicate with you.
Anyway, I like the concept a lot. The timed text would fit in with the messaging thing, but I had an issue where every time the next message appeared it would change the focus of the screen, losing my place. So I could either have the text be really slow so I could finish before any interrupt (but then feel frustrated) or fast and constantly lose my place. I generally solved it by increasing the reading speed to 20x, letting it all appear, and then scrolling back. I think in the future it could be nice to have an option to have the messages not ‘bump’ the screen (unless there was such an option that I missed!)
The story is one that seems part symbolic or dreamlike and part lifelike. You are swallowed by an enormous whale, and discover a variety of things inside. I visited around 20 of 90 passages, so my experience was likely very different from others. I encountered and befriended a strange hermit, discovered my past, and attempted escape.
The graphics were really lovely. Sometimes they didn’t quite match what was being said (mentioning baleen but showing normal teeth, describing a bench with a watch and a hook but not showing them in the image), but the quality was high and they looked lovely.
Overall, I like the writing and art and would definitely try more such games.
Dark and heavy game about an abusive brother and a way to speak with the dead, November 22, 2023This is a Twine game with lovingly crafted visuals, using backgrounds, animations, and various techniques like mouseover links, cycling links, etc.
I did something with it that is likely bad for the experience, like people who use online recipes and complain ‘I substituted ground dates for the chocolate and it tasted terrible!’. In my case, I downloaded the file and changed all of the timed text links to have a 0 second timer. Some of the original timers were 6 seconds and it was just agonizing to play.
So my experience may not be the one intended.
The story imagines a world where a common parasite exists that can puppet a body’s nervous and muscular systems after death, allowing corpses to speak and to remember.
Your brother has been found, and you have been called in to talk to him.
The main content of the game is divided between the top layer (you talking directly with the player) and the bottom layer (your memories and feelings about your brother). This is not a happy relationship whatsoever. It implies that your brother was extremely abusive; at first I thought it was sexual abuse, and may be, but physical abuse seems much more likely.
The game is effective in its communication of both the bitter anger after abuse but also the self-doubt. Where the writing is most effective in my opinion is that it contrasts scenes of deep hatred and unhappiness with scenes of love and affection. The variation in emotion and tone gives a much stronger gravitas to the scenes of pain and violence.
Game within a game, with lives on the line, November 22, 2023Hmm, this game is really intriguing! I had a bad experience at one part and good experiences at the other.
The idea here is that you play as a guy who, together with his best friend, enters a high-stakes two-player video game competition.
Except, things are not as they seem…
The intro is generally a linear story, although there are definitely opportunities to add your own flavor to things. There are extensive images and some background music; it seems like your characters are designed to look like anime high school protagonists.
Once the game starts, you have a lot more freedom. I had fun playing a character playing a character (the ‘Gameception’) and felt like I had real options.
But then…the game changed. And man I got really frustrated!
It becomes a ‘gauntlet’ where you have two choices at a time. One is right, but the other makes you die.
I was worried I’d have to play the whole game over. But it just took me to the start of the gauntlet.
But that’s the only checkpoint! And the gauntlet is really long with some timed text!
I tried 9 times and got so frustrated I had to quit. I ended up opening up the code; I guess I was really close to the end. And also there’s an almost entirely complete other game in the code too, which is pretty wild.
So, mostly fun game, with one super frustrating part. If that part just added some more ‘checkpoints’ I could have done better. Literally everything else was fun though.
A gruescript walk through a forest with much to see, including dangers, November 22, 2023Pseudavid has been consistently putting out thought-provoking games that are near-historical or near-real with cool UI for a while, so I looked forward to this.
The engine for this game reminds me a lot of Gruescript, and has clickable buttons but otherwise operates similar to a parser, for a parser-choice hybrid.
The idea is that you are exploring the woods at a time you aren’t really supposed to, taking pictures and looking for things to bring to school to show others.
The game has enough nature to feel like a nice walk through the forest, like the game The Fire Tower. But it’s odd enough to feel unusual. Plastic is seen as something exotic and rare. An abandoned hut contains what seems to be evidence of torture…or dental care.
I liked the overall vibes, and thought the game looked great, especially the background changing over time.
The game implied I missed out on something at the end, or at least my character did. I didn’t see any opportunities to do more than I did (I crossed the bridge and, looking at the walkthrough after, I had done everything in it).
Sometimes it was a bit of a chore to have 4 different things to click on every thing (the original click to look, then photograph, then smell/touch, then collect).
At times I struggled to use items. I can’t tell if there were bugs or just my way of clicking was bad. At times I thought that clicking to use an item and then clicking on a scenery object would bring up an option on that scenery object to use the item. At other times I thought that clicking on the object itself would bring up the option to use it on the scenery item. I suspect the latter was the case most often.
Also, it seemed like the map kept getting bigger (which was awesome) but at some point the X got stuck in the upper right.
Overall, I enjoyed this a lot; the complaints above are minor things, while the core game itself was something good and interesting.
Intense and depressing but polished game about sniping and horrors of war, November 22, 2023I think I can summarize this game for me by saying that it very effectively told a story that I didn’t like.
It is a long twine game about a sniper fighting in Afghanistan, told in non-linear style through different points in his life. It uses a lot of interesting styling, has music, and uses images generated by OpenAI, according to the end credits. The images look almost like hallucinations, fitting for this grim and unpleasant story.
As the author has stated, this story includes scenes of torture and violence. The author writing this has talent, and has used that talent to effectively show the horror of torture. This is not something I enjoyed or wanted.
With multiple wars going on and massive disinformation campaigns causing me trouble in real life it was interesting to spend some time thinking about the game. It does show (and this is something I believe) that most people at the ‘bottom’ on both sides aren’t there out of hatred or desire to kill but because their government or other leaders have pushed them into it. It’s a terrible job where the better you are at it the more lives you ruin.
On the other hand, it depicts the Afghanistan enemies as being particularly despicable in terms of torture and murder. I’ve always thought that in the past, having grown up during the 20 yr-long war in Afghanistan, so I looked up ‘torture in Afghanistan’. The first thing that came up was the long-term torture and death of two Afghani citizens carried out by the US. The second was the torture of a British officer by the Taliban.
I don’t know, this isn’t the kind of stuff I want to read about or really even think about. I would like to help end war, for sure, and I think there are ways I can do that privately and publicly. But I don’t think even people who were captured and tortured want other people to learn to vicariously suffer for them. And I don’t need more convincing that war atrocities are a very bad thing.
So, the writing on the story was very effective, the use of media and nonlinear narrative was expert, and the math calculations were interesting. But I did not enjoy the game and certainly don’t want to play it again.
Egyptian god-themed choice-based murder mystery, November 22, 2023This is a longish Ink game where you are Osiris, recently deceased pharaoh and newly resurrected God.
Most of the game consists of travelling to different locations and interrogating different Gods. There is some freedom (in which Gods to visit first) and some saving of state (some topics only come up after you talk to others elsewhere).
There was one math puzzle which I both overthought (by getting tripped up by the mention of Base 12 beforehand, which turned out not to be important) and underthought (by just not getting it).
The characters were very diverse and interesting. Some gods were nice; Geb was a big loser who smoked weed and acted like a peeping tom.
I classified murder mysteries in an earlier post. This one was the kind (as far as I could tell) where you complete puzzles and the mystery solves itself in the process.
Overall, the setting and characters were the biggest strength to me. I didn’t derive enjoyment from the sex scenes. I did like the reimagination of the Egyptian mythological world, and thought the styling looked good.
Linear thriller about music-based witchcraft, November 22, 2023This parser game had a really strong storyline and distinct worldbuilding, with some pretty fleshed out characters and interesting UI.
You are a beat witch; you see, some adolescent girls wake up one day with the power to be hurt by music and to use music (and other things?) to affect others.
The entire city has been blasted by an EMP and thousands are dead, so everyone’s blaming you, and you have to set things straight.
Music is frequently mentioned in the game, and is included in the game itself through vorple. Color is also used, and there is frequently either timed text or text that scrolls when you hit a button (I think it’s mostly the latter).
The story is at times gruesome and at times cruel, with some kindness mixed in. There is a lot of control, whether through magic or force, and a lot of deception. The villain is a definite villain, and some of the lines are darkly effective, although some are a bit weird (I swear at one point they said (Spoiler - click to show)I’m gonna squeeze you like a fart.)
The gameplay seems entirely linear; at times there are choices you can make which are remembered and mentioned later on in the game, but mostly it seems like the game is designed for you to find the trigger for the next cutscene. Its generally smooth and I rarely had difficulty finding what to do.
So, overall I’d say this is pretty high quality. Something for me seemed slightly missing from the story; maybe more breathers from the intensity of the action? Something to add more contrast to make the dramatic moments pop out more. But the styling is excellent and the writing is very descriptive.
Twine based spoonerism wordplay game, November 22, 2023This is a game by Andrew Schultz, an author who excels at wordplay-based games.
But, instead of a parser game, it’s twine!
The conceit of this one is taking pairs of words in pairs (so 4 words total) so that if you switch the first letters or (or chunk of letters) of the first pair, you get the second pair. Just like the name: ‘Trail Stash’, if you switch the TR and ST, becomes 'Stale Trash".
I wondered how effective Twine could be in this format. After all, this is a similar concept to the parser games; would it be less effective here?
But as I played, I thought, ‘hmm, this is great!’. One of the difficulties I often have with the parser games by Andrew Schultz is that it is often uncertain how to interact when you have an item in a location; do you type the solution of the wordplay puzzle, or use a verb with the object?
Twine solves this problem by limiting possible interactions.
This doesn’t make things easy, though! I had difficulty near the end game where just nothing seemed to work. Then I realized that I had missed an important solution early on and missed out on three locations!
So overall, this worked well. The only caveats I had are below:
My one caveat is that there was no apparent connection between some of the items and the solutions. For instance, you have to detect losers, but the object is . Although, now that I think of it, I guess ’ has multiple meanings. So maybe it’s just my lack of imagination.
A psychological exploration game, based on song by Dar Williams, November 22, 2023I’ve liked Xavid’s parser games before, so this twine game looked interesting.
It reminded me of an extended version of Astrid Dalmady’s game You Are at a Crossroads, which is the first Twine game I really liked and the game that got me into choice-based games originally. Both of these games involving ritualistic revisiting of locations, unlocking more content by having net items in an inventory.
I like Astrid Dalmady’s game, but it’s pretty small. So this game is nice way to get that same kind of feel, although this game has quite a bit of its own structure and story that is unique to it.
You are packing up, ready to move out of a home, but every in your house are pictures of a man who is someone close to you, a boyfriend or spouse or lover. You have worries and fears and concerns, and you begin to explore those in a symbolic way.
Several helpful people guide you as you go along, exploring memories of the past in a symbolic format. At first there is much you can’t do, which can get frustrating, but eventually your new capabilities give you more strengths.
The feel is almost a parser/choice hybrid, with its extensive set of locations and inventory items. But it manages to tread the thin line between too many options and too few; I occasionally found myself trying to lawnmower all options, but in each case I realized that it would be easier to just step back and think.
So overall, a strong game. The psychology of it isn’t unusually insightful, but the symbolism employed was enjoyable and interesting to me and the descriptions were evocative.
This game was loosely based on 'The Blessings' by Dar Williams.
Unique game with single correct choices and clever mechanics, November 22, 2023This game is one whose development I have followed for some time.
This is a parser game set in a Conan The Barbarian-like world, with a muscular barbarian king who travels about fighting monsters and wizards and generally destroying things.
There is a cast of memorable NPCs and the writing has a strong voice, with complete customization of almost all messages and a rich setting.
This was originally developed in conjunction with the single choice jam; this game, instead of having exactly one action in the whole game, like most other entries, has exactly one correct action in each location (or, more appropriately, only one allowed action in each point in the game, since some rooms require consecutive correct actions).
There is also a limit on available verbs (customized to have clever names), so that means that at any point, to progress, you need to figure out which of the available verbs to use. Theoretically, this means that you could progress at any point just by trying all of the verbs on all of the nouns. The author works around this by frequently requiring unusual or surprising combinations.
Overall, it took me around 1.5 hours, and I found it clever and richly descriptive.
A museum display of a non-fictional mental health journey , November 22, 2023This game was good to read. I’ve known Bez for several years, and while I have not been able to be as helpful as some of his other friends, I’ve been able to watch his journey over time and follow along.
This is an interactive museum of Bez’s experiences through several different locations, with one exhibit per living location. There are photos, transcribed documents, and music from several indie musicians, which sounds good.
The museum is a well-written and fascinating look into the life of one individual. It is frank and open about challenges like debilitating illnesses (the pseudo-dementia, for instance), suicidal thoughts and impulses, homelessness, unsupportive staff and family, and so on. The fascinating part is how relatable it is; this is a very specific life with considerations that aren’t universally applicable, and yet for me the writing was relatable and approachable, and I could connect with it and consider similar challenges in my own life.
It’s not all challenges though. There are many successes and realizations and small happinesses mixed together with the hard times.
Bez has written solid games before with interesting mechanics, as well as interactive essays that are more limited in scope and linear. This game combines a lot of the best of both, with a non-fiction emphasis but with more ways to interact. There’s no need to make autobiographical fiction ‘fun’, since it’s just a story of life, but I think that the features like graphics, music, and navigation improve the reader experience and increase the connection between writer and reader.
Twine game about camp for magical children, addressing many social issues, November 22, 2023This game features a magical protagonist that goes away to camp for magic kids.
At first I thought the game had read my mind; I named my protagonist Eduardo, and I was shocked to see Eduardo raised in a Spanish family! But then I realized it was just part of the story, especially when I saw that Eduardo was chosen to be a girl (I had imagined a boy), although gender is explicitly stated to be somewhat flexible".
The game treats many social issues, with a heavy emphasis on climate change and corporations destroying the wilderness, which gave me fond flashbacks to movies like Ferngully and Ernest Goes to Camp from my youth. Many of the NPCs were black, indigenous and/or hispanic, with a wide variety of hair types, skin tones and backgrounds. Mention was made of differing family types, including having two moms or being orphaned. And there was a discussion on how magic had been stigmatized in women more than in men.
So it seemed like social issues were a heavy topic in the game, not as a side tangent but as the central focus.
There’s a lot of promising features in the game but it is incomplete. Only the first chapter or so are finished, and there are some typos here and there, not enough to be distracting but enough to be noticeable. So once things are fleshed out I could see it being pretty solid.
There’s a lot where it’s hard for me to say if it worked or not. The personalities of the NPCs, the voice in the player’s head. A lot of it depends on where this ends up going. So I think my rating might end up a little in the middle of the range, getting bumped up or down if a continuation is made in the future. But overall there’s a lot of promise here, both in the writing and the art.
Candy-based murder mystery, part II, November 22, 2023Last year’s game ‘Who Shot Gum E Bear?’ by the same author had a deeply amusing concept (hardboiled noir detective where everyone is candy) coupled with some solid writing but sketchy implementation.
This year’s game ups the notch a bit on the implementation but uses a more secluded setting.
You are called to an abandoned factory which is scheduled for demolition and tasked with finding out what happened to a missing husband. You get locked in, and have to use your wits to solve the case and to get out.
I’m going to quote my classification of (many but not all) interactive fiction mystery games:
1-Have a standard puzzle game that happens to be about murder mystery, with solving the puzzles leading to solving the mystery. This is like Ballyhoo.
2-Modelling evidence and clues in-game, which have to be combined to form a solution. This is how Erstwhile works, and most of my mysteries.
3-Collecting evidence through puzzles and conversation and then having a quiz at the end (where you have to accuse the right person). This is how Toby’s Nose works.
4-Collecting physical evidence and showing it to someone, being able to make an arrest when you have enough evidence.
This is the first type. Solving puzzles involves collecting evidence as well as escaping and once all puzzles are solved the game is over. Accusations, motive, etc. are all handled by the PC rather than the player, and I think that works well here.
The game has some suggestive/racy elements, enough that I wouldn’t want my middle-school age son to play it but mild enough that if he did I wouldn’t be especially upset, just have to explain the use of certain items.
The implementation is both really neat and kind of bad. The neat stuff is how the puzzles go beyond ‘one item one use’ in clever ways. The bad is that most of the standard responses aren’t changed. It might help for next time to use RESPONSES ALL while programming to get a list of responses and then changing a lot of them. But it’s not necessary; if the goal is just to have a snack-size fun game, that’s already being achieved here. The responses would only be if the author specifically wanted a more polished game. I think I mostly would want that because the writings so good everywhere else that seeing it in the standard responses would make the game even more fun.
Puzzly choice-based game about being someone weak helping those you love, November 22, 2023This is a game translated from Russian that has quite a bit of twists and turns in it. Most are discovered early on.
I’ll say that a game with a sleeping woman and ‘16+’ and referring to ‘your mistress’ turned out to be something very different than I was expecting. It turns out to be a grim tale about the effects of war but with a sweet perspective.
More on the setting:
(Spoiler - click to show)The gameplay style is Twine with inventory management and location state tracking. So you can move objects from room to room, and your constant inventory of things like hands and feet change in their function over time.
The puzzles are fairly tricky but logical. One thing I might have appreciated was automatically ‘looking’ after travelling to each new location, since what’s in each location often changes due to your actions. I also had a bit of trouble some times mentally picturing how all the different locations related to each other.
I think this is around a 1-2 hour game, although I used the walkthrough for part of it. I like the concept, and appreciated the dedication at the end. I think there are a lot of strong story elements here and puzzles. There are also some neat images, although playing online on the ifcomp website I didn’t see some of the images, and they were broken. You can still click on them to advance though.
Part of the game is designed to show the horrors of war and for me it was very effective, the way the protagonist just didn’t understand really helped drive home for me how scary it must all be.
Thoughtful interactive museum/psychological piece about artist Francis Bacon, November 22, 2023I have to preface this review by saying that I have always that that Francis Bacon, the renaissance guy, was the same as Francis Bacon, the scary pope painting guy. I thought it was just some kind of über-Protestant thing. This game really cleared that up!
I was excited while playing this game, although perhaps not for a reason the author would have foreseen. I’ve been making an area in my own game which is a puzzleless museum placed adjacent to conversation heavy areas, and I was wondering how many conversation topics would be appropriate, and how large of a museum would make sense, and whether players should be able to lawnmower all topics or have to pick and choose.
So when I saw this puzzleless museum conversation game, I was very intrigued to poke around at the mechanics and see my overall impression. So while the game seems far more focused on story than mechanics, this review will focus a bit more on the latter.
The setup is that you are in a museum with three main rooms, each with a triptych of paintings. The paintings are real paintings by Francis Bacon; I was able to look them all up and see what they looked like in real life.
Examining the paintings and walking around the museum gives you the opportunity to converse with various figures, each of which has their own opinion on Francis Bacon. The NPCs are also adaptable, and you can change their opinion of you and willingness to talk by various actions, in a way I haven’t seen much of since games like Galatea and Blue Lacuna (although on a smaller scale here).
Topics are listed, and as you talk they change, although the change isn’t notified. You can ask about some things not on the list (for instance, I asked an early character about Christ, since the topic of the painting was Golgotha).
There are also several achievements, allowing for some puzzle elements. Some of them are straightforward, while others might be difficult to think about. Several achievements involved exhausting conversation trees, which I honestly did not want to do; not because I didn’t want to see more text, but by picking only the topics I wanted, I felt I had agency, but exhausting the tree didn’t feel ‘agent-y’. ‘Agentic’?
This game has some very heavy themes: sexual abuse and rape, violent assaults, traumatic death, obsession, religion, broken relationships, and so on. But all of it is examined in a thoughtful way, from a distance. None of these things are glorified; instead, different observers comment on it, some finding it deeply repugnant, others finding beauty in pain.
There is a great deal of strong profanity, and some of the language around Christ made me feel uncomfortable (as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints), but I understand the author’s choices here and the effect they were going for. So while those parts weren’t for me, much of the game was, and I plan on rating this very highly. Beyond just appreciating the game’s messages, I also learned and grew as an author by reading this work, which is the highest compliment I am capable of giving.
A wild adventure trying to use the toilet at night, November 17, 2023This game is a sprawling and varied horror comedy twine game about trying to use the toilet at night.
The style is kind of like a gauntlet but with more branching. You can select between multiple paths, but along each path, there is often only 1 choice that lets you live, while others let you die. The deaths give you many, many different endings, with comedic names and which are listed on the main page of the game after you unlock them.
The story draws on a wide variety of horror tropes, from witches and imps to shadow-creatures and eldritch horrors. It's low on continuity and high on amusing moments and subverting expectations.
The writing is descriptive and funny.
Overall, this game has a lot to like; however, I think for my personal preferences (that do not reflect all players!) I would have preferred some more coherence in the storyline, or more unity in the themes.
Wordplay game with a branching structure, November 16, 2023This game was entered into Ectocomp 2023, in the Grand Guignol division.
It is a wordplay game, centered on the idea of rhyming pairs where you swap the first consonants.
I always enjoy this author's wordplay gameplay, but I often find the words used too abstract or obscure to fully enjoy, or have difficulty knowing what to do.
This game is much more concrete than usual, with vivid imagery: animals, mountains, machinery, buildings, ravines, etc. This made me more invested in the game.
I also liked the symmetrical structure, with a neat trick where paths diverge and converge and you have to approach each problem from both sides.
I got stuck on a few of the parts where you had to use an item elsewhere, and I think I ran into a bug where someone will pursue you once but seemingly (?) won't pursue you after that. But it was only a slight thing in an overall nice game.
The difficulty level was just right for me, with many easy things to do, some pretty easy things, and only a few really challenging problems (I used the treat chunk a couple of times and peeked at the walkthrough for one ending thing).
A clever sci-fi Twine game about shapeshifting creatures, September 18, 2023This is a nicely styled Twine game that is digestible in an hour or so. You play as a robot rover helping a damaged ai-driven (fictional AI, not chatgpt ai) spaceship to get repaired.
You discover a world with little slime creatures in it that can shapechange. You also have an inventory of items that can be used to alter the shapes of the creatures and things around you.
It's a fun concept, and the game is designed to be relatively mild and enjoyable. While some puzzles are tricky (I had to use the walkthrough because I got stuck), there's a lot of leeway to help you finish without having to solve everything. I stopped at 150 points.
I like the worldbuilding and inventory here. I didn't feel a need to revisit this game in the future, but I'm glad I played it. I came to try it because it showed up on the Interactive Fiction top 50 for 2023.
A chill search for the Lost Ark in a forest, July 15, 2023This game is an Inform/PunyInform game that centers around you, a young priest, receiving a charge to search for the Ark of the Covenant that had been entrusted to your local church for generations and hidden in times of war.
+Polish: Like most Garry Francis games, this is smooth and polished. Many interactions have been anticipated and coded for.
+Descriptiveness: The text is straightforward but detailed. Locations are described both by form and function, with nice little details thrown in about the history you have with things.
+Interactivity: Puzzles were set up in a way that I could form hypotheses and strategize and carry out my plans with just enough difficulty.
-Emotional impact: This game combines two very weighty topics ((Spoiler - click to show)the ark of the covenant and vampires) and treats them in a pretty matter-of-fact way. Dramatic actions like (Spoiler - click to show)unearthing the corpse of a beloved friend and (Spoiler - click to show)burning a vampire to ash are given the same treatment as unlocking doors and climbing ladders.
+Would I play again or recommend? Yes, I think people will like this.
A 'one letter' parser game with some tricky puzzles, July 14, 2023This game was kind of a rollercoaster experience for me.
I started it up, and it looked like a simple tutorial adventure, like a TALJ game intended to be succinct.
But I soon found that I couldn't type, as it looked like it was auto-completing everything I typed, and into weird things.
So I tried experimenting a while but just didn't get it. I saw that ? gave instructions, so I tried typing that.
It turns out that different keyboard keys are mapped to whole actions, and typing that key will give that action. It's not quadratic in complexity, it's linear (1 key 1 action, no nouns as they are context-dependent).
So overall it's an interesting effect, similar to Gruescript or other parser-choice hybrids. Some of the choices for commands were a bit odd, and some (like arrow keys) seem like they wouldn't translate to mobile well (which I didn't try).
Overall, the puzzles were clever and the game was polished. The interactivity definitely threw me for a loop and I'm pretty sure I'm not a fan, although it's hard to say if that's just because I'm not used to it or because it would be perennially awkward. I guess I could compare it to the text adventure equivalent of QWOP.
Overall the charming and complex puzzles are why I'm giving a higher score.
Short and sweet ADRIFT game about hunting bugs, July 10, 2023This is a fairly short ADRIFT game in which you command six different soldiers, switching between their viewpoints to find aliens to kill.
Each soldier has their own mini puzzle. Some of these are pretty short, requiring little effort, while others are fairly complex and may need some repeat tries.
I found the writing enjoyable and many of the interactions were clever and well thought-out.
I found a few small bugs. Ducking if nothing is around acts as if something is there; most interactions were bug free, though, and two things I was going to bring up as second examples were actually caused by own error (I kept typing 'pulse rifle' instead of 'laser rifle', for instance), so I guess there really weren't a lot of bugs (except the six you kill haha). I do wish that saving and UNDOing worked even if you had switched your player character though.
The interactions were generally pretty simple, but there is an (optional) hour long timer and a (non optional) 80 turn timer that significantly complicates things. I had to restart several times to figure out a good strategy. But I was invested to do so several times, ask for hints online and switch the version of Adrift I was using because I did want to finish the game.
Complex chess puzzle teaching classic endgame, July 3, 2023Unlike Andrew Schultz's other chess puzzles, this one has a ton of flexibility. You have two bishops and a king, and have to force the other king into check.
This is a famous setup, and there are several paths to victory. I admit that although I could get it penned up in the corner, I couldn't win, so I had to look up a tutorial. But I learned some real-life skills in the process, which was nice.
Compared to the other chess games it let me do a bit more thinking; before the game would prevent me from doing something and I had no idea why. This game let me get myself into a mess. It was harder because of that, but I enjoyed the exploration more.
There were a few minor typos; the opening text could be more easily readable, with indented paragraphs or paragraph breaks instead of line breaks between chunks, and one line of text said "The two bishos drum", so overall very minor issues for a fun game.
A polished, grungy time travelling adventure, July 2, 2023This is probably the best game I've played by this author.
It's a continuation of the older game Jesse Stavros' Compass, but I found that this game was mostly self-contained and explained the plot of the previous game fairly well.
The idea is that there is are several underground networks of talented individuals who are able to travel through space and/or time. Your friend, the young Jesse Stavros, has gone missing after visiting the Grateful Dead in concertin the 1970s.
The game hops between a variety of distinct and well-described locations, from a lonely motel to a squatter-infested theater to a refined steamboat.
The game has a lot of rooms and a lot of characters. This kind of complexity can lead to bugs or dull repetition if not done well, but this game is very polished for its size. Most people can respond to most topics; NPCs move independently. There were only a few minor errors for me here and there; a steamboat passenger's name wasn't printed in an ambient paragraph about him; a dead body was described as if it still had a gun I took. But in a game of this size and complexity, these are only minor errors.
Puzzles are well-clued. Two or three times I wasn't sure and peaked at the walkthrough, and it turned out I had had the right idea but in the wrong place or that I hadn't tried long enough. I had some trouble with one machine for a long time until I realized I hadn't examined it; once I did there were clear instructions.
Overall, I had fun. It reminds me of Cryptozoologist or other Robb Sherwinn games, although I'd say the overall level of polish is high. I was disappointed it (Spoiler - click to show)ended on a cliffhanger, but I'll definitely be interested in a future episode.
I also appreciated that, while the tone is mature and many of the characters are used to the seedy side of life, the game doesn't rely on any slurs or racist stereotypes or misogyny and instead uses dialogue and ambient objects to establish the atmosphere.
Cause havoc as an interplanetary courier, July 2, 2023This game is set in the Hinterlands, which I believe is a setting designed by the author (I've played another game from that setting). The setting reminds me a lot of the Max Blaster comics in Calvin and Hobbes: rayguns, oozy monsters, bizarre aliens, and a daring hero.
This game features a pretty large town with a wide variety of locations, like a farm, a temple, a distant shack, a nearby military base, an apartment building with many individual apartments you can enter, etc. However, everything is designed compactly to be easily traversible.
Your character is kind of a rogue or rascal. In the course of the game, you commit several heinous acts, but with the framing it comes of as more of an anti-hero than a pure villain, more like Rocket Raccoon than Darth Vader.
I didn't encounter any bugs. At one point there was a large rock I needed to interact with that didn't have any adjectives, while I also carried some rocks. So I had to go to another room to drop them; if the rock was 'large rock' or 'heavy rock' that could be avoided, but that's a minor quibble in a very polished game.
I had to use the hints three times, but they're organized pretty well, and each time the solution was fair, just involving more exploring and more talking.
Sometimes the logic isn't clear; you can get away with a lot of things that someone might reasonably stop you from doing. But I feel like it operates with the same kind of consistent logic as a Looney-Tunes cartoon (although darker!). It would make a pretty funny animated short.
Cool new system with a victorian detective thriller, May 16, 2023This game uses a custom Javascript system that is similar to Twine or Choicescript in that you click from a variety of buttons to progress the story. It is optimized for mobile, and worked great on Desktop for me. The delay between clicks was just a little too long for my taste, but that was my only complaint.
You are presented as Madame Soo, a Chinese woman who is also a detective. In a classic locked room mystery, you find a man who has been strangled and have to figure out how it happened.
Overall, the writing was descriptive and the characters were fairly vivid.
With interactivity, the main mechanism for progression is to type in the name of an address you want to visit. There doesn't seem to be any way to go back, so its vital that you write down all names and locations as you go.
The clues themselves and all the deductions outside of the names are done by the character in-story. I would have liked to have had more involvement in that deduction, although I know that's a tricky thing to do in a game.
Others have mentioned the presentation of racism in the game. For me, I found it contributed more to being obnoxious than to providing key historical context.
Overall, I'm impressed by the architecture and writing of this game. My quibbles are mainly with the interactivity level and being drawn out of the game emotionally by the depictions mentioned above.
A vorple exploration of greek mythology, May 15, 2023This is an experimental, somewhat unpolished game entered in the back garden of Spring Thing. As an experiment, I think it works, but it could use some touching up as a game/story itself.
The idea is that you, following the examples of Orpheus and Heracles, have descended into the underworld to follow after the woman you love.
Like other stories about the descent into Hades, you have a guide, Phos, a ball of light that follows you around, and who gives you a guided tour of the afterlife, showing you what happens to people there, etc.
This is written using Vorple, which allows multimedia and hyperlinks to be added to Inform. Most of the game, if not all, can be played by clicking links in the text, typing directional commands, and choosing menu options.
The art is Ai-generated, and looks very good; the model seems well-trained on the style used. Apparently some text is also AI, which makes sense; I had in my review notes that 'the text has strange errors at times, not like non-native English speakers, just strange placement of words'. So if it were AI-influenced, that would make sense.
The game doesn't outstay its welcome, and has some very nice moments. However, there are some stray typos, like double periods or the word 'sturggle' instead of struggle. Sometimes menu items for conversation still appeared even though I had left the area in question. But despite these rough edges, the core game is enjoyable.
Note that Vorple games such as this one don't currently work well if downloaded and played offline.
A brief exploration- and conspiracy-heavy parser game, May 14, 2023The first Marie game, Pre-Marie, was the first Adventuron game I ever played, and it gave me a good impression.
This one fleshes out the details significantly. It's in PunyInform, I think.
I'm giving it 5 stars, but not necessarily because I think most people will adore it. It simply had a nice combination of things I like: a vague conspiracy, a tense mystery setting, logical but kind of sticky parser puzzles and a lot of standard parser gameplay. And the in-game timer provided some tension. So for me that's exactly what I was looking for in a game.
The idea is that you are investigating a kind of conspiracy related to you and your town, but you've been kidnapped and stuffed somewhere. There's just a hint of the supernatural, possibly a fakeout or even unintentional. Most of the game involves escaping from your situation in progressively larger containers/rooms/locations.
Pretty fun, if you just want a brief chill parser game. I fought with the parser a couple of times, but it was overall pretty smooth.
Cat and mouse with varying level of difficulties, May 14, 2023This game has a lot more in common with roguelikes than standard IF gameplay (unless I've deeply misunderstood roguelikes). There is a fixed map with seven important items randomly generated in it, and an enemy that moves around the map and reacts to you; additionally, there are several difficulty levels that basically give you 'extra lives' or make the enemy a bit slower.
I beta tested an early version of this game.
Here are my overall thoughts:
+Polish: The game claims to be a beta, but I found the version I played (near the end of Spring Thing) to be fairly complete; I didn't find any bugs, and objects had a lot of detail.
+Descriptiveness: The map is both overflowing and sparse. Each room is detailed, but many of them overlap in the items they have (filing cabinets, screens, etc.). Items are utilitarian but hint at a greater cause. It's an interesting mix, and I found it fairly evocative. The map is very helpful.
+Interactivity: The frantic scrambling around to find the seven items isn't something I've seen a lot before, and it was a fun change from the usual staid, considered type of IF game I tend to play. There is a parkour element, but it never came into play for me, playing on the easiest non-tutorial setting. Its main effect seems to be to help with escaping, but I only ran into the Predator once, near the very end. Perhaps in harder difficulties it is more useful.
-Emotional impact: I think the writing overall is strong, but a lot of the pieces just didn't fall into place for me. The story has so many intro declarations and warnings and prefacing and guides that it almost felt bubblewrapped, designed to protect me from the game but simultaneously blunting its experience. The warnings on themselves are useful, as the game has frequent strong profanity, which isn't always in service to some overarching narrative goal. In the game itself, there are a couple of strong threads: (Spoiler - click to show)a capitalist society trying to make brainwashed slaves, (Spoiler - click to show)a fellow clone, or some other experiment, hunting you down, perhaps as a test to make you stronger?, (Spoiler - click to show)a siege wearing you down. They all tie together in game, but they feel disparate. Is your pursuer your comrade or your foe? Both are okay individually, but with both as possibilities there was less tension for me.
+Would I play again? The core gameplay loop isn't bad, and the overall polish makes for solid gameplay. I could see myself revisiting it.
Entertaining and thrilling art thefts with expanded cast of characters, May 13, 2023This is the third Lady Thalia game; the series in general focuses around a three-pronged conversation system where you take different attitudes, as well as physical preparation for thefts.
This game focuses on the introduction of a new nemesis detective, as well as a resolution of the overarching plotline of your former nemesis, and heavily involves your husband as well.
I had a rocky start with this one. The intro heavily emphasizes your open marriage/lavender marriage, and it brought into my mind a lot of real-world experiences that were quite a bit less glamorous than those implied in the game. In addition, I found myself constantly at odds with the conversation system, not picking up on the social cues that indicate which line of approach would be best; possibly I just have brain fog after just coming back from a trip.
But the quality of the writing and characters is always, to me, solid, and as the game went on I became invested in the string of characters and situations and actions. The involvement of the husband and his lover made the game more interesting, putting you in a teaching role, which is a natural extension of the overall character arc. And unlike some others who reviewed the game, I found Mel's change of heart (Spoiler - click to show)fairly understandable; if your enemy is consistently more encouraging and relatable than your employer, who wouldn't have second thoughts about their career?
I also preferred the later mechanical segments that focused more on varying your approach rather than having 'one true' approach, as well as the 'slow finesse vs brute force' options in the physical preparation.
Overall, this one isn't my favorite Lady Thalia game, but I'd consider it one of the headliners of Spring Thing, and am glad to have it.
Dense, rich imagery about escaping a space station, May 9, 2023This game revolves around a protagonist who wakes up in what feels like a wrong body, with wrong memories, and everything hurts.
The writing is very elaborate, dense, and elliptical. The game literally begins with an exposition on the universe, stars, Noether's theorem, conservation laws, and thermodynamics, before it really kicks in.
I kind of felt trapped under the weight of all the words. I was able to piece together something of a story; one of alarms and a space station where you have to escape. But the writing is so elliptical that I had difficulty knowing if anything was real or a metaphor. Is there (Spoiler - click to show)actually another person on the ship, or is it all just a form of self-reflection? Is the main computer room (Spoiler - click to show)really made of flesh and bones and eye sockets, or is it just a metaphor for your feelings about it?
I couldn't really tell. Overall, I found a couple of different possible endings, including one really early on and a few later ones. There is a lot of body horror in terms of dealing with progressively worse injuries.
Overall, the writing was carefully planned and chosen, and the interactivity and story structure were well-balanced, but the overall elaborateness was too much for me to handle.
Slumber party horror, May 4, 2023I was involved a bit with the creation of this game; it's part of Seed Comp, where people put game ideas out there and others make full games of it.
So I made the seed for this game, and I'm very glad things worked out the way they did. I had heard of the Red Door, Yellow Door game online before and even jokingly tried it with my son once but he got creeped out so we stopped right away.
My issue was I didn't know what kind of surreal dream imagery to put in; that's not my forte.
So I'm glad Charm Cochran picked this up, because it ended up as exactly the kind of game I had wanted to play when I came up with the idea: disturbing, creepy, and unpredictable.
The basic idea is that you're at a slumber party and your sister is put into a trance and instructed to visualize two doors, and then you and your friends tell her what actions to take in the dream world.
You soon find parallels between the dream world and your own, but also bizarre features like giant buildings or creatures. The part with Claire's different voices I found especially thrilling.
Literally the only drawback I see is that there are a couple of things that could be polished up. Most of the game is amazingly responsive, with a lot of dumb things I thought of trying having a custom response with an in-game voice, an effect difficult to achieve. But there were a few things like uncapitalized room names or objects that were difficult to pick out from surrounding scenery (like the (Spoiler - click to show)cabinets in the kitchen). I had a smooth experience because I relied on intfiction hint threads, though.
However, those few unpolished moments actually played up the dreamlike atmosphere to me, so I'm not even certain they need to be resolved. Dreams are often like that, enchanting, full of exploration, but with frustrations and occasional non-sequiturs.
My only regret is I don't have other game ideas I could see Charm Cochran's spin on, because this was great.
Just a night out as an eldritch god of horror, April 29, 2023This is a fine Gruescript game, similar to Robin Johnson's own. Gruescript is a parser/choice hybrid, where all actions are done by clicking links, but there are items, rooms, etc, and your actions can change depending on what items you have.
In this game, you are a Lovecraftian god who has been summoned. You go to find a party going on at a mansion, but a strange one at that. People have been locked in the basement all day, but you can't check on them until you fix things elsewhere.
There are a lot of classic puzzles: NPCs that want things, avoiding unwanted attention, codes, secrets.
Even though my German is poor, I found it easy to read (except one time I didn't pay attention and missed an important clue!) and the puzzles had good momentum, not so hard I felt frustrated but not too easy. I used the hints a couple of times, and they were very helpful.
Overall, a fun game that is just the right length for a relaxing afternoon.
A German Gruescript drama based on WWII and England, April 28, 2023This was an entertaining story with some good puzzles.
You play as a young German person who has received notice that your uncle, who had lived in England since WWII, had died, leaving you his estate. You must travel to his town and collect your inheritance.
With its small town and early puzzles about breaking into a real estate office, I wondered if this would be an Anchorhead clone, but it goes a completely different, more historical direction.
This is a gruescript game, using Robin Johnson's engine, and it's probably the best-coded gruescript game I've seen outside of Robin Johnson's own.
One thing though is that some of the puzzles didn't make much sense to me. Now, I don't speak German very well and some of the puzzles relied on deciphering handwriting and such, but that wasn't too bad because it had some alt text. No, the hard part was with the (major spoiler) (Spoiler - click to show)statues, since the hints say they can be differentiated one from another because one is Big and one is Small, but they all have the exact same description!
So, I liked this game, overall fun, just had some hangups with a couple of puzzles. I like Michael Baltes's game Mariel, too, so it was fun to play more of his work.
A Quest fantasy adventure with a snarky attitude, March 25, 2023I played this game years ago but somehow never reviewed it.
Luke Jones wrote several games in the mid-2010's that had a unique style of humor to them. The games tended to be implemented in kind of a sparse way but to have lots of characters and lots of dialogue. A typical example of the 'Luke Jones' style is the opening of this game, with words like:
You see an apple, a log, and Your Dog here.
But there's also a pigeon that drops a letter at your feet then flies away saying 'F*** you!!'
The goal of this game is to deliver a letter to a king in a fantasy world, although the actual events end up changing over time.
There's a glulx port of this as well, which I haven't tried. Overall, Luke Jones games are just a brand of their own, like halfway between Robb Sherwinn and Zork. If you like one of these games, you'll like his others.
GI Joe-style underwater action, March 11, 2023This game has you go undercover with two different characters in an exciting underwater adventure. First, you have to open an airlock door while floating underwater, and then you have to infiltrate a base using stealth!
There were some problems with implementation. Several actions had no response; I didn't see the control panel in the first room, so I tried stuff like 'turn handle with multitool' (which has a completely blank response) and 'turn handle with me' (which gives a really bizarre error with text from later in the game).
The game does have a couple of cool puzzles and fun descriptions, but overall it really herds you one way and doesn't encourage you to stray off the beaten path. There are a ton of useless rooms, a lot like Planetfall and other Meretzky games.
Overall, I feel like it lacked polish and the interactivity was frustrating, but it was descriptive with fun puzzles. I know this was made for a jam, so the author didn't have much time, but this could be an amazing 4 or 5 star game with enough expansion by the author.
Clever magical spells game...in a tomb...with a donkey, March 6, 2023This game was entered in Seedcomp, and is primarily based around the 'seed' of the same name, a text file by Rovarsson containing a vivid description of a game centered around getting stuck in a tomb with a donkey and a bowl of blood and a cat mummy.
This finished game dropped the altar/blood angle but added the rest nicely. You play as a spellcaster struck back in time during a duel. Your spells have scattered to the wind, and after trying to steal some raw materials from a palace you are forced to flee, eventually finding yourself at a tomb.
The pattern of this game is gentle gameplay, generally finding a spell and using it either immediately or in the next room. Some puzzles add in extra twists for more engagement. I got stuck once or twice and I did need a hint in the room with the platforms (I had tried (Spoiler - click to show)LEVITATE ME and received no strong feedback, so I assumed that levitate wasn't the solution.)
Overall, this was enjoyable. I didn't connect on an emotional level, but I found it soothing and sweet.
Fun amnesia sci fi thriller that needs just a bit more polish, March 5, 2023I always like Marco Innocenti games, they usually guarantee some fun exploration, tricky puzzles and lots of complex backstory.
I also like random games where you wake up on a broken ship with amnesia (like Babel, Trisgaea, etc.).
So overall I was primed to like this. You wake up on a ship as a child and find out that there has been major damage to your underwater base. Huge rocks have broken in parts of the walls and the whole thing is flooded.
Overall, the backstory is slowly revealed in gruesome and disturbing detail. It pulls on a lot of old sci-fi tropes but does so in a relatively smooth way.
The puzzles were fun, but some more coding I think could be useful. Especially I think there should be a more clear response to (major spoiler) (Spoiler - click to show)shoot can and put splinter in rock to show that those two are reasonable actions, and just need a little change to make them better.
A touching story of a ghost and his pack of young friends, March 1, 2023This is a choice-based entry where you play as the recently deceased ghost Victor who visits his friend Guillaume.
It's the day of Victor's funeral, and all his friends come over. You, as Victor, can only be seen by Guillaume, but can influence others. Your goal: to help your Guillaume win the heart of long-time friend Marie.
In the meantime, you discover a lot about your friends: one has come out recently, one has a new boyfriend from Senegal, some siblings are squabbling, one person gets a little too drunk, etc.
It's a little bit like Delightful Wallpaper (the second half), where you influence others subtly, and a bit like Blue Chairs, with its substance-using, young-people-talking parties.
It's a very long game, maybe too long, but the story it paints is beautiful. It does require (like another reviewer said) a lot of clicking, so I got in the habit of just clicking really fast until it stopped and going back to read over the text.
I really liked this world. It reminded me of the work of Katherine Morayati, of being in 'the scene'. This had more 'youth slang' than any of the other games; I learned a lot. It also has tons of cultural references; my search history has a lot of stuff like Science Po, Francoise Hollande, Knife Party, etc. now.
I like this culture because I was never a part of it. I've never drank, never tried marijuana. I had a lot of siblings and cousins and never hung out with other kids after school, so the idea of a big friend group you spend all your time with is something I saw my siblings do but never tried as a kid. As an adult, now I have a lot of nice friends, but there's not that same element of risk and danger that impressionable young people have when it comes to things like drugs or alcohol or unsafe sex.
Anyway, the story I found was well-crafted and overall it resonated with me. Interactivity felt great; out of all games in this comp, I felt like both choices were okay each time, that both would produce a meaningful story and that I could choose what I really wanted.
Play one person, then a ship, then a city, in Ancient Greece, February 28, 2023This game was pretty fun and fairly long, though it is unfinished.
In it, you play as the child of a king. Your father has been assassinated and you must flee the city. Once you do so, you join a boat and, if successful, start a city.
I enjoy city-building games like Civ VI and multi-stage games like Spore, so I found this game more fun as I went on. Early on, though, it felt a bit unfair at times, almost like random events happening.
There are some nice mechanics, like a prophetess guiding you with several messages for the future and a collection of what essentially are riddles or knowledge tests about Greek gods.
I liked my ending, with the city growing good. I felt like a lot of times the choice was between 'do something honorable and good that will make everyone like you or do something obviously bad', which made it feel like there was often a 'right choice' to click. But I also feel the game became more complex the longer it went on.
This was a big French Comp game, but worth playing.
A brief action-packed pony parser game, February 7, 2023This is a parser game where the characters are all four-legged hooved creatures. It of course reminded me of My Little Pony, similar to the Daring Do episodes.
This game is unusual in that instead of focusing on traditional puzzles, it consists of primarily action sequences, outside of an initial investigation sequence.
The author says in the notes that the only way they could think of to make the fights interesting was to have multiple opponents. I have to say, I think it does help. I've played a lot of parser games with combat in them, and some of them are pretty great (like Gun Mute) but others suffer. I think the multiple opponents here help since it allows for strategy, like taking out the strongest one first or the one attacking your ally.
The implementation was actually pretty good. Something about the game as whole, though, felt just a tad thin, and I can't put my finger on it. Maybe it feels like there just could have been more, like using your powers more, more detail about you and your backstory, etc.
Edit: Since I wrote this, the game was updated with a cool little backstory if you are doing well after the first fight. It uses a technique that's very rare in parser games, and which would be annoying if overused, but is actually really cool here and helps fill in some of the gaps.
Combination twine/parser game with simulated OS, December 25, 2022This is a fascinating Spanish Twine game that makes excellent use of both Inform 7 and Twine.
You are dying during a radioactive apocalyptic war. You are also a researcher at an advanced quantum computing simulation lab, and you have the capability of uploading your mind to the computer.
Most of the game is navigating a complex computer OS system with a variety of folders and subfolders and apps such as email and the internet.
Once you get through that large portion, there is also a small parser portion that represents setting up societal norms in a simulated society. There is also one Towers of Hanoi section, which I honestly don't generally enjoy, but at least there was significant tie-in with the game itself and it had backstory.
Overall, a very impressive work, one that I think deserves a larger audience. For at least the non-parser parts, I think this plays quite easily using google translate.
An optimization puzzle set on a derelict spacecraft, December 8, 2022I played this game during the testing period.
In this game, you run into an old, abandoned spacecraft. It's a large and confusing ship, but fortunately a clear map is provided. Your goal is to grab as much of the loot on the ship as you can before it is pulled into the black hole.
This game is similar to other optimization games like Captain Verdeterre's Plunder and Sugarlawn. The main differences are that this one has an adversary, and that there is much less 'easy money' in this game than those. You can wander for quite a while before getting anything really worth something; the good stuff is all locked behind puzzles.
The adversary is interesting, strategically. You both have to prepare weapons and also deal with the effects its acid has on the terrain; it can both destroy useful items and open areas or containers that were locked.
In my best run, I made 1,755 dollars, including (Spoiler - click to show)taking the ship AI and a gold drone.
As others have noticed, the game is heavily influenced by the hit movie (Spoiler - click to show)Alien, featuring characters and the same setting as that movie.
Excellent gothic horror choice game, currently a WIP, November 14, 2022I loved the part of this game that is currently complete. It's a well-style gothic horror game involving you and an old acquaintance, Edward Harcourt.
The idea is that you are one of the few people who are acquainted with Edward Harcourt, who has newly come into power and position. He has asked you to join him at his castle, where you have to deal with suspicious servants, dark dreams, and a town filled with unfriendly folk.
The demo has a lot of branches that seems to really affect the game, as I chose one of three backstories and ended up with some lengthy sequences regarding that backstory later.
So far, only the first two chapters are complete. It's still enjoyable, but I'm definitely interested in seeing the final product. One of my favorite Choicescript games was Heart of the House, which has similar vibes, but this one is taking some different directions that make it fresh.
A lovingly written short story about a ghost protecting a family over time, November 13, 2022This game is written with Twine and takes place in five acts, each of which is brief but meaningful.
You play as a ghost that finds itself in and out of existence, with the times in existence being important moments in the lives of your surviving family members. At first, there is very little you can do, but over time you develop more abilities. But it's not really a power-based or puzzle-based game; it's more about the story, about how your connection with the family deepens and grows over time.
The five acts vary between light hearted, dangerous, and sentimental. Gameplay mostly consists of navigating through the house, inspecting everything once, and then finding the one thing to return to to make things better. The pacing is excellent, as it does take some effort to finish each act but it never took long enough for me to feel frustrated.
The game does have some twists in it which, even though I saw it coming from some vibes in other reviews and though I've seen it done several times before, I did feel chills/lots of sentiment at the end, which to me means the author(s) executed the overall story with a lot of skill.
Overall, the best feature is the skill in plot and characterization.
A pleasant, methodical ghost-hunting parser game, November 12, 2022This game was made in 4 hours, but has about a dozen beta testers, and it makes sense, as it is very polished.
This is a game where you explore a dark mansion with a lightsource and a helpful notebook. You are trying to find a ghost, and have to navigate around, dealing with blocked passages and places your light can't get through.
The atmosphere is generally creepy, especially since someone died there in the past. The descriptions of the dark areas are especially evocative.
Overall, it's a clever game and has some heartwarming parts.
I think it could still do with a little more polish, even with the cadre of testers. That's to be expected for most speed-IF, but it would make sense for the author to add on to it, since I could see people liking it in the future. The commands I think would be useful to have responses to include(Spoiler - click to show)POINT POINTER or STACK BOOKS, or X ROD.
I liked this one quite a bit. I used hints 2 or 3 times.
An expansive city with sparse puzzles and creepy atmosphere, November 10, 2022This is an interesting game; there is a large city that is literally part of hell, with tons of streets and cross streets.
Each area either just connects to others or has 2 buildings in it, with each building usually having a single person in it and a sparse description.
Wandering around, your goal is to leave the city. There is a vague air of menace, with hints of a threatening Candy Man and a creepy emptiness around and uncanny valley of NPC interaction.
You can progress pretty far by grabbing everything and combining them. I ran into some difficulty because I didn't realize that some of the random scenery in each room was useful. I've found in the past that it's generally pretty frustrating for players to have a large group of similar rooms and hiding important objects in a small number of them with no special indications; the worst case of this I've seen is the Horror of Rylvania, where there are baseboards in every room and in exactly one room you have to exam them to find a mousehole. This game is much more generous than that, but still it was hard to find the needles in the haystack.
Overall, the big city was cool. It had a similar feel to Winchester's Nightmare, which is also a giant hellscape city with sparse rooms. But this game has it's own character and style and is, I think, worth playing, especially using the source code, which accompanies it and which is organized very neatly.
Rhyming pairs in a strange parser dream, November 5, 2022Andrew Schultz has made many wordplay and chess games which are a lot of fun. There is a series of games now (I think the first was Very Vile Fairy File), where you have to find rhyming pairs of words. This game is the 4th in the series, which is called the "Prime Pro-Rhyme Row".
For me, the quality of these wordplay games specifically (not all games) depends on a couple of things.
1. Is it fair?
2. Is it challenging?
3. Is it coherent?
My favorites in this category are probably Shuffling Around and Threediopolis. In this series of rhyming words, I like Low-Key Learny Jokey Journey in the current IFComp. They do a good job of tying everything together and offering several paths forward.
This one does #2 well but feels a bit weaker with #s 1 and 3. There are less options for progress, both in terms of the map and in terms of words. At least one required solution used a word I hadn't heard marked as 'archaic' by online dictionaries, and a few combos used a feature the game had actively hinted against previously (specifically (Spoiler - click to show) 1-word answers, where the game says that usually those won't be needed).
There are things to help you, like the machine that says if your rhymes are close, and the Jumping Jerk, which tells you the answer once you've tried enough. I used it 5 times in this game. And, of course, there is always the walkthrough.
The other thing I think I miss from the other games is a bigger tying-together of the story.
Overall, I enjoyed this game, but I would only recommend it to people who liked the other rhyming pair games and want to get more of that experience.
Horrific uncanny valley 3d-models with humorously extravagant characters, November 2, 2022This is the second entry in one of the weirdest series of IF games I've ever played.
Last year I played the first game, Fiesta Mortal, which was a bizarre kind of visual novel that used Sims-like 3d models with pre-Toy Story quality and a horrifying uncanny-valley look. There was a bunch of navigation and inventory trying to stop Steisy, the popular girl, from murdering everyone and you.
This game takes everything from the first game and amps it up. Steisy, now a psychiatric ward patient, looks horrifying with an immense grin and shaved head to support the Free Brittney moment (which she later finds out has already succeeded before she shaved her head).
Her brother, Marlon (I think, I can't remember), when he isn't busy spying on his 50-year old female neighbor with a telescope, wants to visit her to triumph over her. In the meantime, Steisy has to put up with rectal inspections by angry nurse Latoya and meetings with her cellmate and doctor.
Every Spanish swear word I ever learned is used a lot, as well as a few more I had to look up. The characters are oversized stereotypes and parodies, like the flat-earther who derails the game for an intense argument about how Nazis are building bases under the earth and made the south pole as a giant wall around the earth to hide the true mega-continent that lies on the edges.
Overall, the game is inappropriate or crass or over-stylized in many ways, but that is its style, and it kind of works, to be honest. It's like watching Trolls 2 or other B-movies. I think I would have backed out if it were in English due to weird content like severed PS1-style heads, but the language barrier helped provide a buffer between me and content. Wild experience.
Struggle to live in a future where you extract text from bacteria for cash, October 29, 2022This game was played at the Seattle IF Meet-up with the author narrating the game and adding her thoughts, and then I played again on my own.
You play as a future trans woman (now known as Lavernean) who has been let go and now has to do basically gig-work to make money. You also have a longterm fatigue-related illness and there's 'nanoplague' going around.
Each day you can decode more dna to make money. You also need to deal with your illness, find food, and deal with your impending eviction.
This game was hard to play because it is very realistic. I've had to do day jobs and night gig work to make food money and/or rent in the last few years, and it's pretty stressful. Three of my closest family members have fatigue-related illnesses, too, so there's a lot that hits home.
Things are pretty rough for our protagonist. It's sad but also accurate for some people I know that (Spoiler - click to show)hitting up and/or sleeping with your married ex-flame is the best way to make money.
There are a ton of endings; the writing is on-point and well-done, the characters distinct and vivid. I did find that the difficulty was (realistically) pretty high, and I kind of felt like I was slowly drowning. It takes a lot of work to be able to impart that feeling, but it was also stressful. The level of craft evident is very high, and I'm glad I played.
A comedic but heartfelt game about growing up and finding yourself, October 27, 2022It's hard to review this game objectively. I got into IF for parser games, and it wasn't until I tried You Are Standing at a Crossroads by Cat Manning that I realized I could like Twine games.
Once I got started into Twine games, the funniest games I found were by Brendan Hennessy. I was very excited when, in my first IFComp, he entered a game, Birdland, which is the most-rated game on IFDB since 2013 and the most-rated Twine game ever. I thought it was brilliant and have shared it with many students since. The couple of mini-sequels that came out since then were enjoyable.
So when I think of 'what should a good twine game be like', or, I guess, 'what do I like in a Twine game?', it's basically 'whatever Astrid Dalmady or Brendan Hennessy write'. Which is why this isn't an objective review.
Anyway, as for the game itself, you plays as Bell Park, one of the longest-recurring characters in his games. While in past games you were a teenager full of promise, you are now an adult with history. Unfortunately for you, your younger, 12-year old self has travelled to your present and wants to know all that history.
Meanwhile, the two of you team up to find the fiance of your old crush Cassidy. In the meantime, you encounter a wide cast of characters and use a nifty map screen to choose how to navigate around town.
This game is different from Birdland. Birdland had a very consistent day/night mechanic over a week, making it clear how the game was progressing and allowing for a sense of excitement and overall motion. While the mechanics in this game are also interesting, it lacks that overall drive. Instead, though, it has a lot of real poignancy and emotional depth. How would your teenage self view you now, with all of your hopes and dreams having been tested by time? (or, if you are a teen, what's your older self going to be like?) It's a mechanic seen before in other stories, but I like all those stories (thinking of 13 Going on 30 here). It is a less substantial story physically, but has more to say, I think.
The game has excellent artwork (I went through a phase where I wanted to copy Hennessy's design for my Twine works but it was too hard and didn't really go anywhere, but I ended up commissioning art more often and he does that so maybe it did go somewhere?). The backgrounds and fonts and colors are easily readable and unobtrusive.
This game does a lot good that is unnoticeable because it's just not doing what bad games do. It gives you a sense of agency without pushing but also lets you feel like you didn't miss out on branches you didn't click on.
To me the highlight is the humor, subtly leading your expectations and then defying them. I enjoyed (minor spoilers (Spoiler - click to show)the part with with the two crowns, as well as the taurine chewing gum, just the fact that it exists). The many bizarre worldwide events over the last decade made for a lot of potential jokes at the time traveller's expense, but were selected with good sense and care (could have made a lot of darker jokes, which I'm glad didn't happen).
I really like this game, glad it was made.
Surreal imagery, time loops, and visceral images, October 25, 2022This is an interesting game, and kind of intimidating at first.
Basically, you are in a surreal landscape, perhaps a dream. There are many, many options at first in this Twine game, so many I felt a bit overwhelmed. They are all bizarre, like someone with a singularly non-descript face or a host of voices telling you to avoid a specific thing.
As you explore, it becomes more clear how to navigate around the map. You will also die, or end, many times, resetting in a loop. Sometimes things can carry over.
I peeked at the walkthrough a bit at first to gain confidence. I really like how this played out; the surreal imagery was cohesive and coherent to me, and it really felt sinister.
I think I would have appreciated some way to have more guidance at first without using the walkthrough, and I was a little frustrated with the very last choice (Spoiler - click to show)going into the light resets the whole game so you can't try the other option without replaying everything. Great writing overall, fun game.
Beautiful game about finding someone who has lost herself, October 22, 2022Abigail Corfman has made many high-quality games in the past, so I was excited to play this one.
This is a richly-illustrated Twine game, with black-and-white chiaroscuro images on one side and options on another. The game has background music and sound effects. The screen was too low-positioned for me to click on at first, but going to full-screen made it work better.
This is a combination story-focused and puzzle game. The idea is that a man, Anthony Lane, suspects that he has a wife but can't find her. You have to investigate the house to find out what's missing. Like another game in this comp, A Long Way to the Nearest Star, you have an inventory of thoughts and items that you can select from in each room, providing two-factor puzzles that make for a richer game.
The first half of the game had a lot of narrative momentum for me, with the puzzles being fairly light and forgiving. It bogged down a lot in the second half as it is possible to make irreversibly bad decisions.
But that made me have to think a lot. I had to really stop and imagine this person, what their life might be like. I continued to do poorly, even restarting. But I worked at it more and more. It was compelling to try to really thing about what their life was like, instead of what I wanted it to be like or assumed it would be like. It was like an exercise in empathy.
Overall, I think this is really well done. Love the art, too.
A poetical and philosophical fantasy story about the coming and going of elves, October 22, 2022This is an IFComp entry that is entirely focused on story, understanding and self-thought rather than gameplay or mechanics.
The idea is that there were once elves who one day left. You meet (or met) a woman who was one of the last to live among the elves. She teaches you about their language, and about their 497 words for goodbye.
That description doesn't really do justice, though, because the real content of this game is its style rather than its story. More than anything else this story reminded me Borges and Calvino, both of whom I've read less than perhaps I ought to have. I looked up those authors after reading this game and enjoyed learning about them and their literary techniques.
One thing this game does that those writers do is to purposely jar the reader from their pleasant immersion in the story. Frequently the game will lead you to what seems like understanding only for the author to say 'but it wasn't like that at all'. Kind of like, for imaginary example, if you were telling a story about people lining up for miles in NYC to get cheesecake, and then the PoV character asking 'It must have been good then,' and then getting the response, 'Of course not, it was terrible. It was all tourists lining up.' I'd like to say this technique is an example of Verfremdung, but I just learned that word 10 minutes ago and am almost certainly misapplying it.
The language is lovely and complex, requiring a slower reading for understanding, similar to Chandler Groover's work. One runs a risk telling stories about storytellers like this; if you're writing about a group who is known for great poetry and expressiveness, you yourself must be expressive and poetic. But this game sidesteps this a bit neatly by having the main character him or herself be impressed by the secondary narrator.
There were a few minor typos (I found four, two of which were in this phrase: (Spoiler - click to show)the the City when I first arrived here; I lost myself within its imensity . Overall, it's fairly polished.
I first heard part of this game read by the author after the comp started in the Seattle IF group, and I could still hear his voice while playing it. I enjoyed it. I suppose the only negative to me was that I felt a bit at a distance from the narrative, both mechanically and narratively; it felt like someone else's story. But it was a beautiful one.
Choicescript version of a dating show/slasher flick, October 22, 2022This is, I believe, an adaptation of an award-winning screenplay by the author, and I think it shows in the quality of the writing.
In this game, you are invited to a reality show the season after someone got stabbed by a Barbie-masked attempted murderer. This season, everyone is back, so the would-be killer is among your group.
Gameplay is split between some classic-style romance gameplay (who do you talk with? who do you ask on a date? etc.) and running from or fighting with the killer.
The tone isn't always realistic, but it feels like a stylistic choice, making it more like a slasher flick. People get injuries that would be deadly in real life but continue to run or talk for a long time after; tv producers seem not worried about liability, etc. It makes for a slightly surreal game that puts you at a level removed from the experience, better able to contemplate bigger questions like gender roles in film and why audiences like terrible things.
Overall, I felt like the writing and agency worked well. I played a ton of Choicescript games last year and I would say this one is above-average in its use of the system.
This is a more mature game, with some profanity, a large amount of violence/blood and some mild/network-friendly sexuality.
While each individual part of this game is excellent, it didn't completely gel for me; a part of that was that I chose to be a cis het male and the game seemed to anticipate I'd be a woman, including people staring at my heaving chest and so on. That's probably intentional, given that the game is questioning these very assumptions, but making intelligent and thoughtful statements doesn't always translate to compelling gameplay. By and large though this is an excellent effort and one I believe most people would enjoy if they are not turned off by slasher flicks.
A future museum employee deals with desire for affair, October 21, 2022This game is a fusion of a couple of concepts/story threads. The first is a futuristic story where you are part of a VR museum curation team. This is a really interesting story that feels well-researched and describes things like how to crowdsource tagging videos with metadata and how perception of culture changes over time.
The other thread is where you are a burnt-out member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and mother and wife, and your older but handsome coworker Sean starts looking really attractive to you as a way to escape.
A lot of the game deals with the outlook of unhappy wife who somewhat believes in the Church but feels oppressed and dislikes several aspects. A lot of this part was hard to read as I was divorced primarily because my wife felt much of the same things that this protagonist feels with regards to the our church, and just like the protagonist, she wanted a way out.
I appreciated a fact I didn't discover until the end notes, which is that (Spoiler - click to show)there is no way to actually have an affair. It made me feel like the game really did a good job of representing player agency, since (Spoiler - click to show)just because you do everything can to make someone like you or want you, doesn't mean it will work.
Besides dredging up a lot of uncomfortable personal feelings (which I think is a sign of good writing), the one thing that didn't entirely click for me was the pacing; it was never clear just how close we were, or just what actions would have what results, if that makes any sense. Stylistically, it's a reasonable choice, since relationships are messy and confusing. But I felt like the gameplay was obfuscated (if that's the right word here).
Overall, I think this one will do well. Great research and touches on a lot of pertinent points in modern society.
A fantasy steampunk game about a mysterious package and strange things, October 11, 2022This game is very much a story, not in the sense that it's not a game, but that it has a strong central narrative, creative setting, and interesting characters.
It's an Ink game, with two main kinds of choices: role-playing ones that have temporary effects but let you get into character, and branching ones that affect big chunks of the storyline.
You play as a courier running around the rooftops of a desert city. There is a lot of worldbuilding here, between enemies, friends, and strange creatures.
The branching storylines are very different. In one, I spent a ton of time with two academics, eventually becoming one. In another, I spent much more time with my friend Karae and robots.
Overall, I found it polished and descriptive, and had some emotionally touching moments. It was interesting interactivity, but I feel satisfied with my playthroughs and don't plan on revisiting.
A chatbot game where you help a woman deal with a troubling figure, October 8, 2022This game has a fairly unusual format. Like parser games, you type in text and get a text response. Unlike parser games, it's not necessarily deterministic; instead, with a chatbot structure, it reacts to keywords. I tried to see if it was using GPT-3 or something similar, but it was hard to tell; it knew a bit about Harry Potter but not so much about Chemistry. Overall, it felt somewhat more like a hand-rolled chatbot and less like a standard AI bot.
There are several things to discover in this game, but it can be hard to know what to do first. Just messing around will eventually lead the game to guide you towards a solution. I was able to finish without hints, and it took me about an hour.
For content warnings, the game does contain a fairly gruesome realistic image later on (a (Spoiler - click to show)blue-lipped overdose victim).
Overall, the chatbot system was a bit hard to use but I felt like it guided me to where I wanted to go. The text has a fairly descript 'voice' and nice little details, although necessarily due to the technology it didn't respond directly to my questions, leading to some bland messages.
I like 'dream games' and surreal stuff. Overall, I think this worked fairly well, but I don't really see a ton of replay value and I think the chatbot structure could be refined over time (although I imagine that it's a real challenge to work on something like this).
A smallish, polished heist game using traditional puzzles, September 7, 2022This game has you explore a forest and a small house to rob an alchemist of his gold.
The motivations and storyline are lightly sketched, as is much of the scenery. The focus is on the core parser experience: taking items, using them, a maze (with a map), keys and doors. There's no real surprises here: the goal is to recreate the feeling of games past, not to innovate.
Overall, it succeeds at its intended goal, and is polished and functionally descriptive. I enjoyed the time I spent with it.
A touching and descriptive riddle game with beautiful text art, August 28, 2022This game was entered in the 2022 Parsercomp, and I helped beta test it. It came in second, but only by a fraction of some points, and is an excellent game.
This is a metaphorical story which, as told in the authors notes, is somewhat autobiographical, and touches on dementia. You are exploring some woods and a ravine to try to get firewood for your home while also recovering your mother's lost words. The writing and tone feels a lot like the 1800s gothic novels, like The Mystery of Udolpho.
The lost words take the form of riddle-poems. When solved (and playing in a graphics-compatible mode), they take the form of the solution to the puzzle.
The riddles are less of a purposely-frustrating-and-obfuscated description of something, and more of a description of something using highly figurative language. That doesn't necessarily make it easier, as I struggled with a couple of the notes for a few minutes, but in a good kind of struggle that made the game more engaging.
The writing is descriptive and evocative, similar to this author's other works. The real-life connection shines through, making it clear that the author cares about this subject and about the people in her life.
Overall, a satisfying game and one not to miss.
A supernatural experience at a menial job, August 28, 2022This was an interesting game, with a mix of features that I'm not really used to seeing.
It's an inform game, and it's written fairly matter-of-factly, spitting out objective descriptions without commenting on them, which serves as an intentionally amusing contrast when things start to go weird.
You play as a young woman at a storage facility all alone, and you have to find and fetch three boxes. Your boss is kind of weird and has a lot of psychic stuff laying around.
It has three main puzzles, one of which is very easy, one of which took me a few days to solve, and one which has multiple solutions (I found one, club floyd found another, decompiling shows maybe 1 or 2 more).
The middle puzzle I almost gave up on. It involves the elevator, and the main issue I had was that its special feature (Spoiler - click to show)having all items fall out when the elevator goes up felt like a bug, since there are a lot of buggy games in parsercomp and elevator implementation is rough. I was especially inclined to think it a bug since riding in the elevator makes you permanently stuck (something I think may get fixed in a later version, as the author has mentioned doing so after the comp). But once I was reassured it was solvable, it was actually a lot of fun to wrestle with, and was, for me, the main highlight of the game.
The ending was interesting, and overall I think the concept worked well. The author used special inline images for the checklist, which looked nice.
Monster hunter extraordinaire in haunted house, August 19, 2022This is a detailed Adrift game set in a haunted house.
You encounter many classic monsters (werewolf, ghost, vampire, mummy, etc.) and have to find ways to defeat them all.
The game is really quite detailed, with changing room descriptions and independent NPCS.
Playing it made me think a lot about Graham Nelson's Bill of Player Rights and how most of the games I play follow it while this one does not. And it provides a different feel that's fun but also one I struggle with. This one includes a lot of randomness (I never actually finished because one of the wandering monsters I just couldn't run into), some required guesswork, some learning by death. But that also provides a different kind of challenge.
So, overall, it was fun, not what I'm used to but overall enjoyable. I did have trouble with one puzzle since it requires you to (Spoiler - click to show)look at a door's hinge, but the door is visible from two rooms and the hinge is only implemented in one and I looked from the wrong side initially.
A custom-parser German space game about fixing a station, June 11, 2022This game is custom-written in C++, and has you wake up on a ship that is malfunctioning. You have to figure out what's wrong with the ship and repair it.
Pros: The game has lush and vivid descriptions, and has an interesting environment with generally logical and often physics-based puzzles.
Drawbacks: The implementation of some synonyms and nouns is lacking somewhat. As a non-native speaker, I often just put the wrong words in, but I frequently found commands that worked in other German games didn't work here (like 'hinab'). Furthermore, when I was super lost, I discovered the code was public, including some test walkthroughs, and in those test playthroughs the testers tried the exact same things I did, which means the author was aware of the problems and either could not or chose to fix them, leaving the implementation a bit choppy.
A problem for non-native speakers like me (not factored into the score) is that there are a ton of non-useful items cluttering up each room, with a single useful item in most rooms. So you might have an exercise room with a cardio machine, stationary bike, weights, etc. each with a long paragraph worth of description, but only one of them has anything useful on it. So I found this quite difficult to play, whereas a native speaker would have a much easier time. It made me think about how my English games could be improved for non-native speakers.
Three puzzle games of varying difficulty blended into one, May 16, 2022This game has the same storyline shown from multiple points of view. As you complete an easy one, a harder one unlocks. In an amusing twist, the 'help' system for each difficulty level is the PC of the next difficulty level. It's an adventuron game, and comes with a built-in map.
Each difficulty level is linear, solving one room at a time before unlocking the next room.
I found the puzzles pretty hard as the game went on. The first difficulty level wasn't too hard, but I couldn't figure out the wordplay puzzle in the second difficulty without the walkthrough (I had tried (Spoiler - click to show)GLASS and 4-letter words without success). I also had deep trouble with the wire problem, especially since the solution relied on a word not in the verb list, and the cake puzzle, well, I'm not sure how it worked even after the solution. This isn't bad, necessarily, since being stuck is a feature of puzzles, but I definitely did get stuck; other reviews say they had no problems in this game so it's probably just me.
Overall, the game was entertaining. I would have preferred some simultaneous puzzles so I could work on one while being stuck on another. I found the writing was clear and set the scene well in most problems.
A magic pirate puzzle adventure with sound, May 14, 2022This is an adventuron game with a two-word parser and tutorial designed for beginners.
While many games in this comp seem to lean towards younger children's interests, I feel like the pirate story is not really childish. Instead, the author provides an interesting backstory for an island with magical creatures and enemies.
Most of the gameplay, though, is centered around solo exploration. Some puzzles have multiple solutions, which is neat.
A lot of work went into worldbuilding and into a tutorial that is helpful at suggesting verbs and giving expectations for the parser.
Overall, I wonder if it could have been a bit more fleshed out. It's actually more substantial than many games in the comp, and being shorter is better for beginners, but it felt pulled in multiple directions by seeking to be simple and short but also to do epic storytelling, which would have benefited from a bigger buildup. I had fun, though!
Pleasant Adrift game set in space with economic system, May 10, 2022This game seems to be set in the universe of Grandpa's Ranch, another game by this author, but with a very different execution. In this game, you go to space!
Your grandma is not dead, as you thought, but rather was captured by interstellar smugglers. She just got free, and needs you to retrieve a diamond. This contrasts with the first game, which was mostly about exploring a small house and doing mundane tasks.
The city in this game is actually pretty sizable, enough that I was glad to have a directions-giving alien hologram (which came in useful in many ways). There's even an economy on the planet, with several steps for gaining money from getting a bank card all the way to buying an enormous treasure.
The biggest place I got stuck was with delivering packages. I kept trying ENTER BUILDING and DELIVER PACKAGE and KNOCK DOOR and OPEN DOOR before discovering what to really do (Spoiler - click to show)(which was touching the sign). Other than that, the game is generous and helpful in guiding the player towards verbs that work.
I played on the web runner, and sometimes you had to TALK TO someone repeatedly. I tried hitting the 'up' key to repeat the last verb, and tried typing G, but neither of those worked. If anyone knows a nice way to repeat the last command in adrift, let me know in the comments!
Robot has to escape a hotel/house. Adventuron with graphics, May 7, 2022This is an interesting game. It seems to mix 8-bit sci-fi with spiritual overtones and possibly a trans metaphor.
You are a robot about to be decommissioned. You were created female but pose as male. You have to escape a large building.
It feels a bit like a Scott Adams adventure, and its minimalism itself is not a detriment. However, some of the puzzles were kind of obscure to me, even with the hints (which require praying to access, actually a neat trick). So a lot of the time I felt like I was fumbling around.
The graphics added to the game, and when I struggled with verbs a little examination or exploration quickly resolved it, which was nice. I think Adventuron was a good choice of engine here, since the graphics added more than in-depth implementation would have to this minimalistic game.
A smoothly-integrated tool for playing D&D solo, April 30, 2022I've seen a few interactive fiction adaptations of RPG systems before (such as the Choicescript Vampire: the Masquerade games). The ones I usually see let you use your stats but generally have pre-written scenes and a constrained set of options to choose from.
This game, instead, provides you a framework to guide you while you set everything up on your own character-wise. For instance, in combat, you are provided with a little map to move your character around, and a way to take turns, and a monster manual entry for the monsters, but instead of rolling dice for you or giving you a set of options, it just asks you to keep track of your actions and the enemies and just let it know when someone is incapacitated, ending the fight.
So this is less a self-contained game than a tool for someone who wishes to try out the DnD experience and is willing to invest the time into making a character. Due to this framework nature, it fits with any kind of expansion or adaptation to the game, any character class.
In a way, it makes it like a virus, not that it's bad or infectious, but in that it can't live on its own and needs other substance to help it grow. Because of that, while I thought it was cool, it felt lacking in the criteria I generally use on this website. The next time I get on a D&D kick, though, and can't find a group, I could definitely see myself pulling this out.
A sort of cryptid sandbox game where you try to photograph bigfoot, April 27, 2022P.B. Parjeter is an author best known for complex twine works, usually long and intricate. This seems to be the first parser game by this author.
You play as Bigfoot's kid, a sasquatch on a mission to expose your father to the world by photographing him and other cryptids. You explore a park while working on your master plan.
It's quite a bit more solid than most first parser games by authors who already know twine. I didn't see many, if any, capitalization or punctuation errors. There were a couple of things I think could be polished (like using custom appearance text for items and a smoother introduction of some items in the initial scene).
What goes write is the creative and inventive puzzles, and the forgiving point system where you only have to get 60 points to win. That means that if you're beating your head against a particularly tricky puzzle or having trouble getting the parser to listen in one section, you can just skip it. So I skipped all the light puzzles and the ants.
The game lists several parser authors as beta testers, which may help explain why the game is so well put together for a first author. I can only expect that the remaining rough edges would be fixed up in a subsequent game as the author gained more experience. Overall, I had fun with this game.
A literal puzzlebox written in a custom engine, April 27, 2022I beta tested this game.
The Box is written in a new parser engine designed by Winters, which includes a hybrid form (like Dialog or Gruescript) allowing most of the game to be played by clicking links.
This is a literal puzzlebox. After a brief intro, you wake up in a cell with a mysterious box in front of you with 5 different puzzles or sets of puzzles belonging to each of the visible sides. Clues and aides are hidden throughout the rest of the room.
I found the puzzles generally fair and engaging. It includes a cryptogram which I generally find less engaging in IF, since they have standard solution algorithms that aren't directly integrated into game play, but I appreciated the smoothness of this one. I enjoyed the light-based puzzles and the numeric one the most, and perhaps the final puzzle.
The framing story is brief but well done. As a demonstration of language capabilities, it certainly seems like a strong parser engine, which is very difficult to do. It didn't capture my emotional fancy, but other than that it is a solid and well-done game.
Bad therapy from a computer 'friend' in a dystopia, April 27, 2022I have a bit of trouble writing a review for this game, as the first couple of times I started it I realized I hadn't retained any information after several screens worth of material. I kept retrying it to help it sink in but it was like water in a sieve.
Eventually, though, the game began to have a pseudo-computer interface in an older style (the year 1999 is mentioned). You have been assigned a computer therapist called 'Computerfriend' whose job is to analyse your mental state and help you make better choices.
I tended to go along with what the computer said, and ended up with ending 2/6.
This game is one for which trigger warnings are especially beneficial. It contains (Spoiler - click to show)messages urging you to suicide.
Overall, the game was polished and effective in communicating emotion. However, like I said, I had difficulty retaining anything I read; having played it is more like trying to remember a dream after waking up.
Lengthy tournament-based game with inspo from Rocky and Norse myths, April 16, 2022This is a quite long Twine game about preparing for and fighting in a cyborg boxing tournament.
It comes with custom images, styling and animations, mostly health bars moving up and down and some neater tricks near the end. It has music as well by a person called gigakoops which is pretty good.
The story is about a down-and-out boxer with a loved one needing medical attention. You, the boxer, get some aid from an old man in a run-down gym. Together you train for the big day when the tournament will begin.
Writing-wise, it's a competent and engaging blend of inspiration boxing movie and cyberpunk.
Choice-wise, I was a bit frustrated at first because so many choices were like 'yes', 'yes, but phrased differently', and 'yes, but even another way', with no 'no' in sight. I felt railroaded quite a bit at different times.
There is one major choice, which is which of three stats to focus on. This primarily comes into play late in the game, where high stats unlocking different paths.
The game has some nice narrative swerves, although one of the biggest ones was a double-swerve I didn't see coming. Also, norse mythology ties into the game more and more as the game continues.
Overall, here's what I think:
+Polish: The game is smooth and polished. There were a couple of bugs (my mom was referred to as 'he', and I almost clicked the 'restart' button because the menu moves up and down) but otherwise quite good for such a complex game.
+Descriptiveness: The descriptions were vivid.
-Interactivity: It pulled together at the end, but I felt confined for too much of the game.
+Emotional impact: I was into the story.
+Would I play again? Yeah, I'd like to see other paths.
A twisted mashup of fairy tales with light but engaging puzzles, April 12, 2022This game manages to strike a fine balance between puzzle and story, giving fairly easy puzzles with a lot of 'oh, I know where this goes but I can't use it yet' moments. It reminds me of Ryan Veeder's work in that way.
This game is a mashup of many fairytales, including the 'three brothers' theme, three challenges, and stories like Snow White, Rapunzel, the musicians of Bremen, and many of the lesser-known Grimm's Fairytales.
It decides to show the darker side of many of these, with the darkest presented as exactly in the books. One lean I felt uncomfortable with was (Spoiler - click to show)the option to marry a prepubescent girl, but after reading the notes and remembering the original tales there's a good chance that was in the original stories.
The game has an interesting relationship between the player, narrator and player character, with a lot of dramatic irony (in the original sense of the audience knowing what's going on without the character doing so). This thing has been done before, but rarely in such a polished and enjoyable game.
Overall, the game feels effortlessly fun, but a great deal of work must have happened underneath to make this happen. Puzzles give you increasingly strong hints if you are stuck, a feature found in games like Coloratura and part of my own philosophy.
Large text dumps are fairly common, but read easily and are mostly based on the fairy tales.
I can strongly recommend this game, and enjoyed it quite a bit, perhaps the most I've enjoyed an IF this year.
A sprawling Twine game about a sprawling house and alienation, April 6, 2022I always enjoy a good story about a strange house that changes over time; I haven't read House of Leaves, but I've seen many games and stories cite it as an inspiration. Others I've seen include Map by Ade McTavish, Aaron Reed's novel Subcutaneous and the Backrooms urban legend.
This novel focuses on the 'house grows larger' largely as a metaphor for relationships, shown in individual vignettes (I'm sorry for making constant comparisons, but the vignette system reminds me of Spoon River Anthology, a story told entirely through gravestones).
People come into the house and find themselves changed, some losing friends, some losing each other, some arguing, some finding friendship, but the house always grows.
Overall, I found it polished and satisfying. The only thing I had trouble with was occasionally not really knowing what to do next (especially around the orange juice), and not knowing when the game would end. The narrative arc kind of meanders around, like the house itself. Otherwise, I found this to be a solid and thoughtful story.
A claustrophobic exploration game about mystery, science and love , March 13, 2022This game is part of the Running out of Ink: Limited Spaces anthology recently released on itch.
The story is about you, a youth who discovers a mysterious door in the forest. You are barred from entering, but when you return as an adult, no one can hold you back.
Gameplay is centered on finding journal entries and tapes. The tapes have very nice voice acting, although I was playing around my kid and the first tape started with some loud profanity, so I ended up just reading the thoughtfully-provided transcripts instead lol.
The feel of the game is simultaneously full of terror but also calm. All of the damage is in or from the past. There are lots of spiders, claustrophobic situations, darkness, hints of obsession, etc.
There are some puzzles in play. The first puzzle completely stumped me. I was flabbergasted, not knowing if I had enough info. Then I realized (moderate-to-strong hint)(Spoiler - click to show)certain parts of the documents are highlighted.
Overall, I found the storytelling high-quality, professional tier; this reads like a sci-fi story in an anthology you'd see displayed at a Barnes and Noble table. The design and layout are custom Twine that look very nice, especially the tapes.
Overall, it's a strong game. I don't know if I'd replay it; while every piece was strong, games also some times need a je ne sais quoi that ties it all together, and for me I didn't get that overarching sense of completion that would make a game perfect. But it is a game I can recommend and praise.
A hard-hitting series of vignettes about androids and white male culture, February 22, 2022This 2022 French IFComp game really reminded me of 60s and 70s science fiction books of my dad's, which often had hard-hitting social issues not as an allegory but as the main feature of the story, with the science fiction only serving to shed light on the bigger issue.
This game is about androids but also about young white men, incel culture, etc.
In 5 short vignettes (and an epilogue), we encounter a growing number of young men who are convinced that they are not human, but are, in fact, androids.
But strangely it is only androids, and not gynoids. No minorities think they are androids either.
It's worth reading. For a non-native speaker, it felt long, but it was around 7K words total in my playthrough, so definitely doable. Gave me a lot of thoughts and taught me a lot about French slang and 'cuisine bretonne'.
Your choices in each story generally are about choosing between making a situation more volatile or making things more calm. The interactivity felt a little weak; occasionally it seemed clear my choices were doing something to the story but often it didn't feel that way. The excellent writing did a lot to mitigate that.
A game about divorce and loss told through shifting perspectives, February 16, 2022This is a well-coded TADS game about coming to grab your things from an empty house after a divorce.
Play primarily revolves around exploration and discovery of key items that advance the story in some way.
The theme is about divorce, loss, and 'what might have been?' I took these themes seriously, as I am recently divorced and could understand some of what the narrator was going through.
This is a pretty messy divorce, though. Unhealthy events and actions abound. The narrator is regretful, of course, but regret can only take you so far, and I think that's one of the main themes here.
Overall, the mechanics and story work for me, but there are a few sticking points here and there. I had a lot of difficulty getting started. The game provides no hints, and takes the position that players should take careful notes and that some info won't be repeated. I figured things out in the end but I was frustrated (spoiler for main mechanic: (Spoiler - click to show)more specifically, I noticed that some objects wouldn't go through the shadow, so I thought none could, and didn't try taking the soil through. I thought I had left the shards behind and the pot appeared, so it too me a while to realize what was going on).
For the story, I felt like things were perhaps spelled out a bit too much for my personal taste. This is a real, visceral story, but I feel like a lot of art that I find 'magnificent' has a sort of ambiguity to it that allows you to draw many interpretations from it. Having our feelings and reactions to everything and the 'meaning' of it all spelled out at the end felt somewhat restrictive.
Overall, I think people who play this will be pleased, especially for those looking for mild but non-trivial puzzles mixed with emotional storytelling.
An iteration adding a strength-based puzzle, February 4, 2022I think this will end my journey through the iterative puzzle games in this series. I hesitated last game due to some graphic material (a dwarf that was (Spoiler - click to show)hanging by a noose), and this game includes some drug-related activity; put together, it feels like a kind of humor I'm not into, kind of like the Unnkulia series from the early 90's.
This iteration is much more reserved than the last. It adds a few simple items to a previously empty area in the midgame. Again, it can be difficult to figure out which commands to use. I feel like the previous episode may be better overall.
Edit: I see the next one's tagline is 'can you polish a turd' so I feel justified in assuming this vein of humor will continue.
Much bigger game with dwarven subplot and some disturbing parts, February 4, 2022I suppose I should say that this game might need a warning for either suicide or lynching, depending on how you interpret it (there is a (Spoiler - click to show)dwarf hanging from a noose), which honestly felt unnecessary.
This update adds a very large area with interesting mechanics including scoopable items, an NPC with several requirements, timed actions, and flame. However, very precise commands are required. I had to decompile the game to discover that the necessary command for an important action was (Spoiler - click to show)BURN something WITH FLAME and not just BURN SOMETHING).
However, that whole dwarven area can be skipped. I didn't even know what the purpose of it was till I decompiled; apparently its final item (the (Spoiler - click to show)axe) is meant to solve the puzzle of the (Spoiler - click to show)nest with a doorknob in it, which you have to cut down, but you can just take that object directly.
That said, this is a pretty significantly large game now. It's pretty rough with implementation and needs polishing (several beta testers would have helped) but has come a long way from the original game, which was just two rooms with a locked door and a key.
An artist seeks for balance between light and dark, January 22, 2022This is an ink game in six chapters, each around 4 or 5 choices long. Each choice gives a page full of material.
You are an artist filled with self-doubt. You won a competition, earning you prize money and using that to get to Rome, but once there you have no inspiration for your painting.
Every where you go, two creatures follow you: one light, one dark. You have to choose who to feed.
There are 5 endings. One ending is the 'true path', containing almost 50% more material than the others; one is the worst path, containing much less content than any other. I reached all endings except for 'balanced'.
I enjoyed the vivid descriptions of art in Rome, and looked up a bunch of them (I especially enjoyed the garden of monsters). The self-doubt in a creative artist was familiar to me as a writer.
At times I found the long pages and rich text a bit wearying, so I took a couple of weeks to play the game, doing a couple of screens at a time. Once I played through once, though, playing again only took 30 minutes or so.
Lovely musings on art. For anyone seeking the 'best' ending, what worked for me was (Spoiler - click to show)feeding the dark creature on odd chapters and light creature on even chapters
Fistfights and martyrdom on the high seas, December 11, 2021This story, an Exceptional story for Fallen London (a bonus chunk of content for paid suscribers), takes place on the Zee, and in part feels like an exploration of that part of the game's content (which was recently expanded).
You are in search of the heir of a rich family. She was last seen with the Circumcelion Brotherhood, a group of brawling monks who hope to get murdered and have after-death experiences before being brought back by Fallen London's general resurrection mechanics.
The main character in this has a lot of personality, and is the main attraction of this story, but otherwise there's not a lot here to distinguish it from other tales of the Zee. If you're interested in brawling monks and tough women then it's worth checking out.
Follow Victoria's grandson as he searches for drugs and power, December 11, 2021One of the key features of Fallen London is prisoner's honey, as substance which transports its users to the world of dreams. It plays a role in society similar to opium dens from that time.
Something you can learn about in many of the stories (especially early on in the Nemesis ambition) is about (Spoiler - click to show)gaoler's honey, a stronger variant that is made by bees invading someone's brain and sucking out the memories. It lets you experience their memories but causes them terrible pain. Even further in the lore, you can find a connection between this and the Royal Family, as (fairly big spoilers for those who haven't read stories involving the royal family) (Spoiler - click to show)they all used tainted red honey and became hideous beasts, except for one who gained horrible mental powers).
This game follows a member of the royal family who stayed on the surface, a grandson of Victoria named Albert together with his mother. He wants to experience the honey drug dens and wants to be like the rest of the Royal Family. A lot of the game seems intent on portraying a weak and sad outsider trying to be part of a larger group.
It is a solid story, but pales in comparison to most other royal family stories, especially The Gift or the captivating princess storyline in Sunless Skies.
An expedition for bones and monsters at the Gant pole, December 11, 2021This is a Fallen London exceptional story, meaning it is a supplementary tale to the overall main game.
This story was meant to explore the bone market and its side characters more. When the bone market first came out, the Carpenter's Granddaughter was (and is) an important figure who can sell the largest bone frame and manage your market exhaustion.
In this story, you go on a journey with that character to the Gant Pole, a location first featured in the spinoff game Sunless Sea. The Gant Pole is an enormous decomposing heart of a sea creature that is lived in an attracts things that have lost all other desires or purposes in life. Gant is one of seven fictional colors in Fallen London, described as the color that exists when all else is gone.
As you search for giant bones and fossils in this story, it takes a darker turn into body horror, including a chance for you to alter yourself in disconcerting ways.
Overall, this story is an interesting character study of its main protagonist and antagonist. The interactivity aids the story but isn't memorable in and of itself. A good option for fans of the Zee and/or bones.
A very long multimedia Twine story about goblins, November 26, 2021This is the biggest game entered into the Spanish 2021 Ectocomp.
It's a Twine game using a lot of images and sounds. There is very little interactivity; the majority of the game is long pages filled with text and images with 'CONTINUAR' at the bottom. Occasionally there are choices, but they don't always remember what you do (for instance, (Spoiler - click to show)giving an item to a teacher early on doesn't get recorded, because you can give it to someone else later).
The main interactivity is thing of incense that you have that you can burn to stop the goblins. However, it isn't always clear when you can do this; frequently when the goblins were doing something bad I tried to use it, but just wasted my 'charges'. It seems reserved for moments when (Spoiler - click to show)the game is trapped in a loop.
There were a few typos here and there. The story often switches between second and third person, although that might just be me as a non-native speaker misunderstanding. As for the story itself, it was very descriptive with a wide variety of characters and a lot of imagination. Goblins were tied together with a high school that was once a military base, and both tied to another world. It was a complex and long story, and one I'm not sure I understood very well. But the story itself, with the images and the sounds, are a great accomplishment. I just wish I could have done more myself.
A high school party murder mystery with tons of 3d illustrations, November 18, 2021This is a pretty weird game. It's a horror game written for the Spanish division of Ectocomp, and it has tons of illustrations that are made by posing some 3d models whose quality is somewhere between roblox and Sims. It's intentionally garish and pretty funny.
In the game, one of your old friends who had been ghosting you invites you to a party hosted by the most popular girl in school, Steisy. Unfortunately, dastardly things are happening there.
I got a bad ending, but didn't feel like replaying, as I prefer text-only games (or at least games where the text is the primary source of interaction). There were several puzzles involving movement and collecting objects. There are some sexual references and a variety of profanity (I learned some new words!) Overall, a funny experiment.
An amusing and complex story about exploring a monster-filled castle, November 17, 2021This game was entered in the Spanish division of Ectocomp as a Grand Guignol game, meaning it took > 4 hours to complete.
It is an excellently written game, using amusing and complex writing to tell the tales of a haunted castle. It has the form of a CYOA book, with different 'page numbers' references (although they aren't actually numbered). Different branching paths let you experience different monsters.
As a non-native speaker, I found a lot of words I didn't know here, as the author uses very descriptive and colloquial language. I found two monsters in two different paths. One, (Spoiler - click to show)the succubus, included some sexual scenes that were detailed but not explicitly describe sexual acts.
Once you've completed a path, the game gives you links to interesting facts about the creatures you encountered and lets you 'warp back' to a convenient place to find other paths. Overall, this was very well written.
Random experimentation with one-word commands, October 24, 2021For the better part of a decade, Arthur DiBianca has been putting out limited parser games, where most commands are shut off and only a few work.
This game is kind of an opposite version of that. Instead of few commands, there are tons of commands, some of which you have to guess (for full completion) and most of which you don't know what they do.
This is a game that invites experimentation and discovery. Part of the fun is trying out a command and having it do something surprising but, in hindsight, reasonable.
There's not much storywise, but a lot of depth. Reaching the first winning situation isn't too hard, but getting all the points is very difficult (I admit I looked at the intfiction thread for most of the extra credit points).
Overall, I found the game enjoyable.
An account of a trial with extensive fake documentation, but few choices, October 23, 2021This is a pretty long game content-wise but pretty short choice-wise.
You are a new legal expert at a firm (I think?) and you're asked to look through evidence in an old case.
The case is described from beginning to end, primarily through PDF documentation that opens in another window. Your character can react to what they find, but opening and reading the documents is the main form of interaction, kind of like the more involved SCPs on the SCP wiki.
The game does touch an several important points in law like he said/she said and the balance between punishing the guilty and protecting the innocent.
I found the writing overall strong (with one caveat: I don't think the (Spoiler - click to show)child's writing is accurate. Children tend to use correct rules in the wrong places (like 'I goed to the store') instead of just having random misspellings (like 'I like stiks)). Characters were highly dramatized but were differentiated from each other.
The interaction style isn't what I usually go for in games, but it is what I like in SCPs and other collaborative static fiction sites. However, since I'm reviewing for an IF site, I'll stick with my usual rubric, for which I'd give this a 3.
Cat breeding, dating and disability simulator in Choicescript, October 21, 2021This game is a polished Choicescript cat breeding simulator.
You have $10,000 and a small monthly income, and have the opportunity to buy several different varieties of pedigree cats while buying different supplies and living areas for the cats.
Simultaneously, you have to deal with a new disability, which costs money and takes up your time.
I had remembered hearing before that buying pedigree cats was unethical, and you should get them from pounds. But looking it up, it seems like the main reason people say that its bad is because they have puppy mills or cat mills where animals are stored in unhealthy conditions. Even 'backyard sellers' can be problematic, with one website offering these red flags:
(Spoiler - click to show)
-The seller has many types of purebreds or “designer” hybrid breeds being sold at less than six weeks old.
-Breeders who are reluctant to show potential customers the entire premises on which animals are being bred and kept.
-Breeders who don’t ask a lot of questions of potential buyers.
-No guarantees-responsible breeders make a commitment to take back the pet at anytime during the animal’s life, no matter the reason.
Anyway, the point of the long digression is that my character did none of these things; quite the opposite in fact! So I was happy to do some ethical cat breeding.
The biggest strength of the game is, absolutely, its cute cat pictures. I like cats, but I spend very little time looking up pet pics online and don't really feel interested in such pictures in general. But the cats in this game are very cute, especially since you follow their story.
There are also several romantic options. It was actually a bit too easy to romance people; I thought I was picking a 'be nice' option but my character ended up asking the person out.
Overall:
+Polish: The game was smooth and looked good.
+Descriptiveness: The game had plenty of detail.
+Interactivity: It was clear what different options I had and how it could affect my strategy, without being too easy
+Emotional impact: It was pretty cute
+Would I play again? Sure
A fancy javascript parser game about a pirate race, October 21, 2021This game is, as far as I can tell, written in a custom javascript engine, since you can see how its constructed in the JS and I don't think Dialog does that (but it feels like Inform or Dialog).
This is a pirate racing game with a multitude of different puzzles, some optional, including a maze, a crossword puzzle, traditional parser puzzles, directing people, shopping and economy, logic puzzles, etc.
The idea is that you are entering a racing competition with pirate ships and have 1 day to get and spend money and time to prepare your ship for the race. Then you enter a choice-based segment where you race, encountering various threats and making choices you don't know the consequences of ahead of time, like classic CYOA books.
I found the game overall enjoyable, but I felt like it was missing some key direction at various points. In the beginning, it wasn't clear what was desired or what was possible. Similarly, during the parser interlude in the race, it was unclear what form commands should take, and it was somewhat fussy overall.
That's my only real complaint with the game. Otherwise, it has excellent polish and a fun setting.
Rob Nero blind: if you can!, October 21, 2021This is a choice game with some images and sound. In it, you play as a poor young thief whose father was the architect for Nero's palace. With the insight that gives to you, you decide to rob the place.
It seems that your choices matter quite a bit in this game. You can choose three different companions. My companion had a major effect on the story, so I can only imagine the other paths were very different. Also, the game referenced how I treated my companion and several other choices.
So there's a lot of replay value here, quality writing, good interactivity. There was some strong profanity and a few filthy-minded romans I met that put me off, so I don't plan on checking the other paths. I also learned some history from looking up things related to the game.
Friendship simulator based on a real story, October 21, 2021This game is meant to emulate an older teenager or young adult hopping on Discord and hanging out with friends by talking about a Japanese virtual idol group and making a wiki together.
The friendships in the game are uncomplicated and straightforwardly positive. All drama and tension come from the (Spoiler - click to show)abusive situation that the author finds themself in.
I feel like the representation of discord is accurate, and overall the writing was authentic.
The display was a bit puzzling; it's flat white text on a flat white background with no special styling or extra polish. The puzzling part is that one of the major focuses of the game is the protagonist's growth in the use of CSS, with the code listed in-game. Why not use CSS to make the game itself look fancier?
Finally, I feel a bit spoiled here, as one of my favorite games from last year (Lore Distance Relationship, which I voted for in several XYZZY awards) was also about fandoms and also treated the same real-life scenario (the authors are siblings). This game, while having emotional authenticity, doesn't have the same depth and polish of last year's game. But I am glad that both seem to be in a better situation.
Explore layers of reality with AI-generated art, October 20, 2021This is a long Twine game that uses distorted sounds and AI-generated art to tell a story about a being in a world where astral projection is real. You discover in the first half of the game that (Spoiler - click to show)you are in a simulation of a universe that is roughly 9 simulations deep.
Much of the game is about gaining different versions of ascended consciousness, mixed with what I'd call 'stoner-dude' conversations with a lot of profanity and 'woah man!' type of interjections.
I liked the storyline, but didn't really care for our character, who had a lot of jerky options.
Overall, there was a high level of polish and descriptiveness and the interactivity worked for me. However, due to the dialog style I didn't really connect with the protagonist and don't think I'd replay.
Dense allegory in a symbolic world, October 20, 2021This is a Twine game with multiple worlds that all seem to represent the same allegory. Each world contains 4 women, who travel with you, and the worlds have symbolic meaning.
Simultaneously, you're searching for a woman, with an inventory of items and a mental retreat called 'the void'. Your character's name is He, and her name is She.
The game is not too long, but it is quite dense allegorically. One gets the sense that everything has deep inner meaning. However, I had difficulty teasing it out. Given the names and the quotations, the game seems to have originally been in Italian, and while the translation is generally good, it can be difficult to get 'vague but powerful prose' to work right across language barriers, and in this game I wasn't drawn in emotionally by the prose.
Overall:
+Polish: It had a few cool systems. I was able to create a bug early on that I think exists in some of my own Twine games where clicking on the inventory when you're already in a sub-routine with its own 'return' link will trap you in a loop forever, but besides that it seemed generally smooth.
+Descriptiveness: While the characters are vague, the description of the strange smog and the computers was vivid.
-Interactivity: It was hard to grasp what to do or what mattered. I went to the void a lot, but did it matter? I bought three pills and took one, but did it change anything?
-Emotional impact: Like I said earlier, I wasn't really drawn into this game.
+Would I play again? There are a few key points I'd like to revisit and understand better.
A creepy but somewhat unpolished hospital horror story, October 19, 2021I recently mentioned in another review how I'm a big fan of genre fiction. This is exactly the kind of thing I'm talking about: a classic haunting story set in a hospital.
It's in standard Twine format (blue on black) and generally simple Twine branch-and-bottleneck, with some state tracking.
You play as a new CNA working at a nursing home where a dark secret stalks th halls.
I found the game genuinely frightening, playing late at night. The author makes good use of tropes; there's nothing really new here, it's just down well.
There is some use of text animation (including some flashing text). I feel like there were typos strewn throughout the text, mainly with quotation mark errors.
I'm giving this game 4 stars, due to its lack of polish but overall enjoyability. This is due to my personal enjoyment of this style of horror; for the general public, I'd say it's likely a 3-star game.
An underwater sci-fi game with deep worldbuilding, October 19, 2021Seth Paxton first entered IFComp last year as part of the writing team behind "Big Trouble in Little Dino Park", a fun dinosaur game that unfortunately suffered from bugs and a gauntlet-style structure that frustrated players, ending up in 82nd place.
This game is a significant improvement, incorporating numerous fixes requested in last year's game. It has far fewer bugs, excellent visuals and sounds, and a more free-form structure that encourages exploration and multiple playthroughs.
I think there is still room for improvement, but that's the best way to improve IFComp reception: try something out, tinker with it, see what people think, and adjust accordingly.
In this game, you play as a team of scientific researchers who crash on Ganymede and discover a mysterious underwater world.
It takes place in 5 different chapters, each with several variables saved that significantly changes later chapters. I can only describe my playthrough, though.
Each chapter has a different mechanic, from conversation to fetch quests to what felt a bit like a game of 'battleship'.
(commentary on chapters 2 and 4):(Spoiler - click to show)I felt like the Chapter 2 quest was hard to get started. I got started at the university but had trouble after that because no one else was interested in talking. I would have liked maybe one or 2 smaller successes along the way to keep me going until I got the big series of quests working. I felt like I saw variations of 'you can't go here yet' over and over. And in Chapter 4, it was similarly a bit hard to understand the mechanics without death, especially since I was told to find and return shark DNA, but every encounter with them ended in instant death! And that quest never came up again.
Overall:
+Polish: There were a few rough edges (like one uncapitalized sentence in the 4th chapter that stuck out), but overall I loved the smooth design and music and images.
+Descriptiveness: Lots of nice little details.
-Interactivity: I was frustrated on occasion, although this was definitely an improvement over last time. I considered making this a +.
-Emotional impact: Again, I went back and forth on this one. I liked the big reveal at the end, I enjoyed the dramatic dangers in chapter 4, but all of them felt like they could use a little more breathing room, a little time to contemplate and unpack what was going on.
+Would I play again? It'd be interesting to see other paths.
I think I'd give this a 3.5, but I'll round it up to 4 for IFDB.
A literary autobiography in parser form, October 18, 2021In this interactive fiction piece (which I played as part of a group and then again on my own), you play as the author, going through all the times in his life when he was (early spoiler) (Spoiler - click to show)stung by a bee. It also deals with his evolving relationship with his sister and others, and experiences in the 90s.
A lot of the nostalgia references hit home for me; I was about 4 years younger than the author, and remembered being fascinated with Dragonlance, and both entranced and off-put by the weird card-based Saga system (which got retconned pretty quickly!). I didn't play MM VI but I would have been playing Diablo or Chrono Trigger right around then.
The game bills itself as puzzleless, which is true, but it's puzzleless like Photopia, not puzzleless like Rameses. The difference is that in this game you have to actively investigate and think what would actually happen at that point. You can get through much of the game by hitting Z by you'll miss out on a lot.
I had mixed emotions while playing the game, and for me I'd describe it most as being about the literary quality of this game.
I devour fiction for its escapism. I like to see different views on what and how the world could be. I love it for its potential. Because of that, I love genre fiction. I prefer Poe over Hawthorne, Christie over de Maurier, Sanderson over Wallace.
This game has the same raw detail and undifferentiated take on life that great literary work has. This game shows the world as it is, through a certain perspective (that of the author). But the world it shows is an uncomfortable one, filled with many of the things I personally seek to escape through fiction. I prefer the ideal worlds that could be to the lonely and often dreary world we live in.
Quality-wise, there is a lot of polish. I think on the boat there were a few sentences with a double period at the end, but that's the extent of bugs I saw. There is occasional strong profanity and some sexual references from the perspective of a teen boy's thoughts.
A multi-character parser game about defeating soda zombies, October 17, 2021Every IFComp brings with it some unusual coincidences. I find it fun that this comp has 2 different games (both enjoyable) where you have to assemble a rock band to stop another group from mind controlling people, and you have to use the power of music (the other game being Codex Sadistica).
This game uses a menu-based conversation system and allows you to switch freely between 3 main characters for much of the game.
You play as 4 kids who have a rock band at a school. The school and the whole town have been consumed by Hype, a new drink that turns you into a zombie!
You have to go on a series of wacky escapades to get all the stuff you need to defeat the monsters. Quests can be done in any order story-wise, but there is a definite chronology of which one happens first (which can be used to give yourself hints).
I found the game funny and well-conceived, but it had several parser hiccups I usually associate with games that haven't been tested well. My only assumption is that the game is so complex that some things slipped through. Examples include the (Spoiler - click to show)hype can in the second quests, which can get stuck in a state where most actions with it return no text at all; an uncapitalized standard response; the game telling you to look at (Spoiler - click to show)the shelf but there is no in-game object called that, etc. Besides that, I enjoyed this game a lot.
A glimpse into the mind of a 'nice guy', October 17, 2021I know Stephen Bond entirely from his two earlier games:
-Rameses (from IFComp 2000), a popular and influential but controversial parser game about a young Irish teenager which was notable for not allowing the player any real agency, and
-The Cabal (from 2004) a joke game about how all of IF is run by a secret cabal that decides who's in and who's out.
I assume it's the same Stephen Bond, unless there are two Stephen Bonds writing interactive fiction stories about unappealing young Irish IF protagonists and agency.
This game combines a main storyline (from the viewpoint of Aiden, a young man) as well as numerous other snippets from the personal lives of bystanders, which kind of gave me a Spoon River Anthology vibe.
Aiden is consumed with love for for a girl named Laura, and has been for a long time as one of her friends. While they have an actual friendship, he spends most of his time imagining a happier future or a potential deeper love. Unfortunately, Laura is marrying another man. Today, in fact; and you've just been asked to be the best man at the wedding.
The gameplay feels pretty linear, although that's a bit belied by the complex web of Twine code you can see if you open it up in Twinery. There are numerous changes of viewpoint with corresponding changes in text color, a couple of images and some digital music sequenced from real songs.
This game falls in the category of 'very accurate representations of insufferable people', kind of like Savoir-Faire or the original Rameses. Aiden's mentality is that of a classic 'nice guy', and the ending suggests (Spoiler - click to show)that Aiden becomes involved in a bigger community, possibly incels or red-pilled stuff or MRAs.
I find Aiden understandable. I think Bond has done a good job of taking regular human weaknesses and amplifying them to a high level. Who hasn't had a crush in high school or on a distant celebrity that was unrealistic? But those come and go. This is a story about an enduring obsession, and that's what makes it more chilling.
I find this game polished, descriptive, and it had emotional impact for me. The level of interactivity worked for me for this specific story (with the different perspectives adding another layer of richness), but somehow the whole thing never completely gelled for me into a complete experience in a way that's hard to pin down.
A surreal exploration of history and the present, October 14, 2021I had trouble grasping this game as a whole, perhaps due to tiredness or picking unusual branches.
From what I can gather, it's a branching Twine game where you travel around the South, contemplating life in an almost dream-like way while also experiencing bits of the Civil War and the historical, experimntal university Black Mountain College.
In presentation, it is the standard blue-on-black Twine with no fancy features. It uses both text-replace links and normal, new-screen hyperlinks and doesn't distinguish between them, so it can be confusing at times. The Twine games of Hannah Powell-Smith are good examples of how to differentiate between different links effectively.
I'm always sympathetic to surreal, trippy games, like Harmonic Time Bind Ritual Symphony (recreating the author's real-life mental break) or drug trip games (like the excellent Blue Chairs), as it presents a view of life I'm not used to. This game was hard to pin down, though, and I feel like I definitly missed something important. Feel free to comment if you've found a deeper layer to the game.
Beautifully illustrated game about a goat considering a career change, October 12, 2021This is a Twine game which can be completed relatively quickly (around 30 minutes, much faster if clicking fast). It has 15 different endings depending on 3 different statistics that change throughout the game.
You play as a goat who works at a laboratory doing research on a mysterious substance. There is an accident, and you have to decide how you feel about work and what you want to do with your life.
I played through to all 15 endings, though the text of the middle game doesn't change much from playthrough to playthrough (there are about 2-3 variations for each section, so you'll see them all multiple times by the end).
The art is really lovely, it was the high point of the game for me.
Where Goat Game succeeds the most, to me, is in making a high-quality, smooth and bug free experience for the player where they can get absorbed into a story about an alternate world.
Where Goat Game falls short, to me, is in agency and plotting. The player character never really acts; everything is a reaction, except the final choice. Questions are all about how we feel, or how we respond to the actions of others. I would have wanted more chances to act independently of others.
Plotwise, there are many Checkhov's guns that never fire. There is a lot of worldbuilding here that just never goes anywhere. Like another reviewer said, the fact that these are goats is essentially immaterial; you could change a few details in the game and it would be the same. Similarly, you could change the dangerous magical substance to any kind of workplace safety issue and get the same feeling.
Finding all endings can be tough. I stalled out after 8, and ended up looking at the source for tips. The system is actually really clean and nice; if you want to see all endings and are really stuck, here is a complete breakdown (major spoilers:)(Spoiler - click to show) there are only 3 real choices in the midgame, each one raising one of the 3 main stats. The choices are the 'i like working/living/don't like living here', 'don't acquire secrets/sign petition/don't sign petition', and 'defend/criticize/decline'. Your final stats fall into one of 7 categories: tied stats, a value of 3 in a single stat, and any combination of 2 stats>0 and 1 stat=0. Each of these 7 cases has 2 endings depending on whether you leave or stay.
A science fiction twine game with unique puzzles, October 7, 2021This is a game originally written Spanish and translated for the competition.
You play as a kind of rebel against an all-powerful corporation called Faro.
Gameplay proceeds through several puzzles, including interrogation, reasoning puzzles, and at least one that I've never seen before (entering Hack's house, a puzzle that required me to (Spoiler - click to show)adjust my computer settings).
The puzzles are pretty tricky; I frequently looked at the answers in the code. One puzzle require clicking on a moving link; I ended up (Spoiler - click to show) highlighting with tab and then hitting enter.
The translation is not idiomatic. In addition, some words are not translated at all (Continuar for continue, for instanc, or the 3 meters for the Mind scan). The story has interesting characters, but I don't believe it has the backstory and/or continuity for us to care a lot about them. All of these are normal problems for writers that usually get easier with more and more practice, so I look forward to any future games.
Programming-wise the game is very sophisticated.
-Polish: The game text could be polished more.
+Descriptiveness: The writing is very descriptive
-Interactivity: I felt like some of the puzzles were unfair.
-Emotional Impact: I think if some of the other problems were fixed I would have a better connection with the game emotionally.
+Would I play it again? Yes, if it was updated!
A bunch of logic-type puzzles in one big Twine game, October 6, 2021This, like Retrocon 2021, another entry in this year's IFComp, is a collection of puzzles thrown into one big story.
However, this game has much more story, including a large overarching mystery in the 'wrapper' story around this game.
The puzzles are mostly traditional ones (like having 3 different-sized measuring cups and trying to get a specific value, or a slightly faster than usual Rings of Hanoi, a crossword, a wordsearch, etc.).
Each puzzle has a story associated to it. If you die by making wrong choices or running out of time (in Normal mode, there is sometimes a timer, while in Easy mode there is not), then you get the same puzzle but with a different story.
The very first puzzle is a bit weird (it is logical, but not a 'classic puzzle') like the others. Once you get past it the rest should be more familiar.
I thought that was pretty cool. I never became super invested in the ever-changing characters and the puzzles were mostly ones where the solutions are known, but I had fun doing it.
+Polish: Very polished.
+Descriptive: Yes, especially the changing settings
+Interactivity: At least there were no cryptograms or (at least for me) real Towers of Hanoi. What was there was frequently fun.
-Emotional Impact: Didn't get invested.
-Would I play again? It was fun, but I'm not sure how much replay value there is.
I really think this game is a 3.5, and would round up to 4 to be nice, but E. Joyce has already made many incredible games, so I'll point to those instead. Check out "Lady Thalia and the Seraskier Sapphires" (also co-written by N. Cormier) or "Social Lycanthropy Disorder", especially, because those are really fun!
A complex and vivid parser game with active NPCs but parser hangups, October 6, 2021This is a game with solid writing and design but shaky implementation, what one would expect from someone with a good writing background that is just now breaking into Inform 7. On Twitter I see that the author is an MFA student in game design, and the game's ABOUT text says it's a demonstration game, so that would all check out.
You play as a young would-be fortune teller in the house of a professional fortune teller. They dare you to tell the fortune of everyone in the house correctly.
There are 7 people in the house, and you can assign each of them 3 different fortunes.
Once you've done so, after a certain amount of time, they start interacting with each other, and after a certain time limit is reached, the game automatically ends and you are evaluated on how accurate your fortunes are.
Conversation works well in this game. But the complex scene-changing machinery is problematic. At one point I was in the closet and saw dramatic happenings in the room, with somebody storming out. Then I left the closet and the room, and saw the exact same scene, this time from outside the room.
More egregiously, on multiple playthroughs, after the first cutscene, I tried talking to Lux and then became stuck in the kitchen, with no way to leave. Any attempt to exit resulted in no text at all.
I wasn't able to determine if any actions you take besides fortune telling matter. It seems like it might; there are a few random objects scattered about. But with the bugs it's kind of hard to tell.
This game is far better than most projects made for MFA or BA degrees in game design (although there was a really nice Choicescript one recently). No testers are credited, and I think that having several more testers would have really pushed this to 'excellent' territory.
A heavy metal parser puzzler with colors and a couple rough patches, October 5, 2021This was a genuinely fun game. You are part of a heavy metal band whose set is being taken over by a glamrock band. You have to assemble your band together, but each is distracted and can't come help you.
After some initial exploration, you gain the power to JAM with the other members of your band, which lets you cause interesting effects. Jamming with 2 people at a time provides more effects, leading to about 10 jam powers all together.
The writing is snappy and fun, the colors are cool, and the mechanics are interesting.
The only real downsides are (for me), a lot of profanity (in line with metal fans, though) and a lot of missing synonyms and alternate solutions. I kept trying things like RIP SHIRT or SURF CROWD or UNPLUG SWITCH or TAKE SWITCH and getting error messages, when it seems like these things ought to have been implemented. The game is very smooth in other areas and had testers, so I guess I'd just recommend in the future piling on even more testers and implementing everything they try in a transcript. I think this game is already great, but I think it could be pushed to 'completely awesome' territory by such efforts. I definitely hope to see more games by this author in the future, because they have a real talent for writing and mechanics.
A bunch of mini games wrapped up in Twine, October 5, 2021This game is unapologetically just a bunch of mini games wrapped up in Twine with an ultrathin story applied.
The minigames include:
-A slot machine with fruit graphics and some animation
-A poker draw game
-Keno
-Horse Racing
-A football game
-A zombie-shooting card game
-A short custom-parser text adventure.
Each of the games worked pretty well, and some of them were pretty fun. All are based on RNG except the text adventure. The text adventure has a pretty basic parser (which has a tendency to insult you) and is of the classic 'my dead male relative's house' style, with each room lovingly recreated.
+Polish: Very smooth. The parser isn't awesome compared to dedicated parser languages but impressive for Twine
+Descriptiveness: It was easy to see what was going on usually
+Interactiviy: Most games worked well for me.
-Emotional impact: I felt distanced emotionally from my character and the games
-Would I play again? It was interesting, but I don't think I'll be revisiting.
A parser game about a magical fox-human, October 5, 2021This is a fantasy parser game where you play as a human/fox creature that can switch between forms at will. You are a guardian to a young human who has been captured and you have to rescue him.
Gameplay is centered on switching between forms to your advantage. This is done very well: your animal form can speak with other animals, has heightened senses and can fit into tight places, while your human form is stronger and can use tools.
The parser could use some work, and the opening scene is where it struggles the most. Going up or down gives a blank message, and trying to apply the bandages is really rough when it comes to guessing synonyms (things like PUT BANDAGES ON ____ don't work).
The cast of characters is described well, although the raiders stick out as weird (they use strong profanity, where the rest of the game is more at a YA level, and they seem fairly dumb). The animal characters are great.
Surreal horror game with religious themes in a compound, October 4, 2021This game features a hungry young protagonist in a wheelchair that explores a large world in Twine.
This game is very location-and-inventory based, with a large map (including an actual in-game map at one point) and several lock and key puzzles.
Gameplay consists of exploration, with special optional memories unlocked while a larger main storyline plays out.
Stylistically, it leaves many words uncapitalized and switches to different colors to signify different themes.
The story is a surreal religious horror where it's difficult to know what is real and what isn't. There is a large amount of imagery taken directly from the book of Revelations, and much of gameplay revolves around the fact that you are someone in a cult.
Overall, I found the surreal religious imagery to be effective. Many of the parts about wheelchair use seemed realistic based off of my experience with living with a wheelchair user for almost a decade (except getting through farmland!).
I appreciate the author leaving a lot up to imagination, using nuance and hiding behind symbolic imagery.
-Polish: There were noticeable typos. Everything else was great.
+Interactivity: The world map and the puzzles felt good.
+Descriptiveness: Very vivid writing, some of the most descriptive I've seen this comp.
+Emotional impact: I'm really into this stuff. It doesn't represent my worldview (I have a more hopeful interpretation of Revelations) but it lies in the intersection of my interests.
-Would I play again? It was pretty dark and I felt like I understood the message I was going to get, so I'm not sure I'll revisit.
A classic-style Twine game about creating and detecting robots, October 4, 2021This game feels like it would fit well in the early era of Twine. It's standard white text on black with blue hyperlinks, uses a couple text animations and has a standard branch and bottleneck structure with a sci fi or fantasy genre.
I like a lot of games like that (like Hunting Unicorn, for instance). This one turned out pretty well.
You play as a participant in creating sentient robots. You undergo questioning similar to a Turing test with your answers fed into the programming for a field of robots.
Later on, you encounter those robots, and must at a crucial moment conduct a Turing test.
I felt engaged with the story, and thought that the characters were vividly described. I felt like my choices mattered. I do think the game could use a little more polish, like a title screen or custom CSS or even some more callbacks to earlier choices. And while I liked it I don't think I'd replay it.
A post-apocalyptic game about helping a baby's birth, October 3, 2021I enjoyed Matthew Warner's last IFComp game, Tombs and Mummies, but I think this represents a substantial upgrade. The author makes excellent use of the Adventuron engine here and I had little trouble with the parser itself.
You play as a man in a shelter that survivors of two apocalypses have constructed. Outside roam the infected weremen. Inside, your wife is about to have a baby, but she needs a c-section, and the only person who can help you is someone not likely to want to do so.
This game is Cruel on the Zarfian scale. It is very easy to unknowingly lock yourself out of victory. It also includes some randomized combat, although there are ways to fix anything that goes wrong.
There is a timer going on, so you can't dilly-dally too long.
A lot of puzzles have a riddle-like or crowssword-puzzle-like quality, like unscrambling words, remembering famous pop-culture numbers, or navigating a maze.
I beat about 60% of the game, but I had missed a major component early on and couldn't figure out why I always ran out of time. The walkthrough helped me through that.
Once you know the codes replay is faster, so it's not too bad to retry if you die.
Overall:
+Polish: Very smooth. This is Adventuron at its best implementation-wise, I think.
+Descriptiveness: It was very descriptive.
-Interactivity: I like the game, but fiddling with the doors and equipment and doing the unscrambling puzzle weren't really my cup of tea (although the unscrambled messages were funny!)
+Emotional impact: I think the game may overreach at times in the emotional effect it's going for, by relying on a selfless choice as the main thrust but requiring that selfless choice to proceed. Still, I found the story interesting.
+Would I play again? Yes, after I've had some time to forget the puzzles.
A custom executable game about pedophilia and violence, October 3, 2021I'll be frank and say that I don't enjoy playing games about pedophilia in any way; I don't find them fun, and I have yet to play one I find enlightening. I think that games can and should treat difficult and heavy topics, but for me playing game about pedophilia is like reading a coffee-table book full of high-quality illustrations of feces. My apologies to authors who have attempted to treat this topic in a sincere and thoughtful way.
Anyway, this is a custom parser game where you explore a house and try to recover your memories. You wake up weak and bleeding, with a health counter that slowly decreases until you die.
The storyline centers around pedophilia, with texts by de Sade and inappropriate photos (described in vague text terms only) to be found. There are also several weapons to find.
The game isn't too big. I wandered around for a while before trying the walkthrough, and found that I had seen about 50% of the game already. The walkthrough itself contains many unnecessary but interesting commands, such as looking at every wall in every room and trying to go in wrong directions in most rooms. These commands are in the walkthrough because the author has implemented custom text for much of them.
The parser is pretty good, but I miss being able to use pronouns, since you must take an object before looking at it and it would be easier to type "take paper; x it" instead of "take paper; x paper". Some synonyms would be appreciated, like 'turn on car' instead of 'turn on engine'.
Overall, this game is solidly in the simulated realism camp of parser implementation, with a wound/hunger timer, lots of red herrings and random scenery, randomized combat, etc. There are multiple endings, of which I found 3 (although 1 of them just ended the game immediately, so I don't think it was a real ending. This was (Spoiler - click to show)driving away before discovering the truth.).
My overall rating:
-Polish: more synonyms would work well, I think. There are very few typos, but some of them are noticeable.
+Descriptiveness: The game is very vividly described.
-Interactivity: Finding the objects of importance often meant looking at things that are not described, such as walls or floor.
+Emotional impact: The impact was negative, but it did provoke strong emotion.
-Would I play again? I tried a couple of endings, but I don't plan on looking again.
I would have given 3/5 if the subject had been different.
A Facebook messenger game about a cyborg spy thriller, October 2, 2021This game is played on Facebook messenger, and requires you to be logged into Facebook to play it.
This is a choice-based comedy spy thriller. Most choices are out of three options.
The story is set in a future where everyone is controlled by a PLUS chip, especially you, an Enhanced cyborg, the first of your kind and the number one assassin for the United States government. You are asked to assassinate a man and his 2 young children to preserve the current regime.
This heavy story contrasts with the goofy and often mean-spirited writing. Your choices are often reactions like 'OMG?' or 'This is nuts', etc. Your character frequently insults each other and seems to have problems with women. There are several errors (such as a character whose name changes from Roosk to Roost and back), and characters often seem to change motivation or personality without warning.
Overall:
-Polish: The new system is very impressive, but the game itself could use some more editing.
+Descriptiveness: The author is good at vivid descriptions.
+Interactivity: At first I felt like almost all choices were meaningless, but some later on seemed definitely to matter. Whether or not it's true it was good at making me feel like it was true.
-Emotional impact: I tried to get invested in the story but the stakes and goals frequently change. Our character is a jerk, and I've realized that, while many people like playing as a villain, few like jerks, and the difference is that well-written villains have strong motivations for their evil actions, while jerks go out of their way to cause harm for no benefit to themselves.
-Would I play again? The somewhat slow performance of facebook messenger and the difficulty with backtracking or saving, combined with the length of the game means that I don't plan on replaying.
A science fiction prison break game, August 2, 2021This game is the author's first game, which is surprising considering the level of detail and programming in the game, although there are a few bugs.
This game features a prison break from an alien base. For some reason (never explained in-game), your captors disappear and you have to shut everything down.
The puzzles are a mixed bag. A lot make sense, a lot are fun, sometimes the two groups aren't the same (I enjoyed a language code puzzle that had simple, nearby hints involving interaction, but later everything was in English). Occasionally solutions seemed really obscure.
The coding needed a bit more synonyms. For instance, late in the game there are buttons that have names, but saying PUSH [Button name] doesn't work. Instead, you have to say the action that they perform (this example isn't in the game, but it would be like having a button saying lights where 'push lights button' doesn't work but 'turn on lights' does). A couple of other inconsistencies with synonyms was probably the major fault of the game.
Story-wise, I feel like it omitted some major features, but what's here is okay. It has some pretty strong gore at one point.
As a game, it's okay. As an author's first game, it's much better than most, and I'd expect the now-experienced author to be capable of making very good games in the future.
A windows parser Lovecraftian game with compact story, August 1, 2021This game is an interesting mix of skill and rough edges. I'm going to review it on my five-criteria scale:
-Polish: The game could use a bit more polish, especially in the area of synonyms and responses. A lot of art is in error responses, to guide you towards the correct phrasing. I was told repeatedly I couldn't (Spoiler - click to show)tie a vine to different things, only later to find that I had to call it (Spoiler - click to show)a creeper, not a vine. That's not so odd, but the error messages all implied that the problem was the action, not the noun. There are similar issues later on, with a lot of people having trouble with the final actions of the game.
+Descriptiveness: The game is lushly descriptive. I could quite clearly picture everything in the game outside of the mazes.
-Interactivity: The frustrations of the parser took this one down for me. Otherwise it's honestly not bad. There are mazes and combinations but they're all solved easily for you. The better parts of the interactivity are all the little hidden details that reward your actions. The worse parts are instant deaths with no undo :(
+Emotional impact: Despite the many frustrations, I'm a fan of Lovecraftian horror, and I thought the core of this was well done.
-Would I play again? Not until it's souped up a bit more.
A fastidious timed puzzle about assembling electrical components, August 1, 2021This game has you stuck at the side of the road with a dead battery in the middle of some deadly acid rain. You'll end up searching a mansion with a timed light puzzle and inventory limits to assemble a door opener.
The game is polished, but descriptions are fairly sparse.
The timed light puzzle, many empty rooms and inventory limits, as well as frequent responses where the game knows what you are asking but wants you to do it in more steps (like turning on the car) reminded me of different advice I've seen over the last few decades.
I'll share some of that here:
From a list of rules for games in IFComp by Jessica Knoch, with additional commentary by Andrew Plotkin from 2003:
"> Rule Three: Do not impose an inventory limit for its own sake.
> Rule Four: Do not include hunger or sleep puzzles.
> Rule Five: Check your spelling. Check it again.
All just as true outside the IFComp.
> Rule Nine: Do not include lots of empty locations.
Important for everybody."
Jan Thorsby's list of 'things that cause automatic playing' from 2005:
"List of things that causes automatic playing
By automatic playing I mean when a player types in commands more or less
automatically without thinking much. None of the things listed is necessary
always bad, and there are probably instances when they don't really lead to
automatic playing.
[...]
2. Many rooms
Traveling between rooms doesn't take much thinking, and the more rooms the
more traveling.
[...]
7. Time limits/eating puzzle
If a game has a time limit and the player is unable to keep it, the player
is likely to play the game again and just type in all the commands over
again minus the useless ones. A time limit that last through a large part of
the game is more likely to be annoying than a time limit for just for one
scene of the game. An eating puzzle is when the player dies if he does not
eat after a certain amount of turns. It is in effect a time limit.
[...]
11. Limited carrying capacity
Some games have a limit on how mange objects a player can carry. This often
leads to the player going back and forth a lot to pick up things he had
previously left behind. In many games it also leads to the game potentially
being made unwinnable, because the player may not have a vital object when
needed.
12. Having to type more commands than should be required to show ones
intention
For instance say there is a closed door to the north. If the player types
"north" it is fairly clear that he intends to open the door and go north.
But the game may not let him go north until he has first typed "open door".
Machinery is often needlessly complicated to operate.
[...]
14. Very easy puzzles
A very easy puzzle can be things like: unlock a locked door, buy something
in a store or give an object to a person who has asked for such an object.
These easy puzzles can be important to a story but are arguably useless from
a gaming point of view. If they are not important to the story one might
consider eliminating them.
[...]"
An intfiction thread including this quote from Michael Roberts from 2010:
"A word of caution on these is in order. Many authors worry that it’s unrealistic if the player character can carry too much at one time, so they’ll fiddle with these properties to impose a carrying limit that seems realistic. Be advised that authors love this sort of “realism” a whole lot more than players do. […] Don’t fool yourself about this -the thoughts in the mind of a player who’s tediously carting objects back and forth three at a time will not include admiration of your prowess at simulational realism. In contrast, if you set the carrying limit to infinity, it’s a rare player who will even notice, and a much rarer player who’ll complain about it."
A detailed Twine game capturing an exact scene in High School, June 13, 2021One of the biggest reasons I enjoy amateur fiction online is that when someone writes it's like they share a piece of their soul with you, the reader, and I definitely felt that in this game.
In 5 chapters of varying lengths, you play a young woman who is texting her friends near the end of senior year, arranging an event.
The game makes copious use of styling and external links, most of which are to different songs. I actually like a lot of them; like the main character, I am into cringy melodramatic teen pop songs and movie/musical music (as a kid, I loved Total Eclipse of the Heart and Don't Cry for Me Argentina). Some I might listen to again.
The game has a definite sense of place, person and presence. It treats a heavy topic, so definitely check the warnings if you think there could be problems. Overall it was a sweet experience that resonated with my inner teen, led me to some enjoyable music and impressed me with its visual appeal.
A compact pirate puzzle game, May 9, 2021This game is part of the PunyInform competition. It's fairly polished, and features an quest to go looking for pirate treasure.
In the tradition of classic adventure games, the puzzles don't really make much sense, but they're fun. One involves a 2d block pushing puzzle (easier than the infamous Royal Puzzle from Zork III, but generally similar), and there are some math and logic puzzles.
The game has two endings, one easy to achieve and another harder. The game eschews walkthroughs and hints, but I decompiled the game to find the 'good' ending, which is significantly harder.
The largest negative in the game is the pedantry. Very frequently the game knows exactly what you want to do but forces you to phrase yourself a different way.
Examples include:
">UNLOCK BOX
I think you wanted to say “unlock wooden box with something”. Please try again."
and
">ROW
I think you wanted to say “row something”. Please try again."
A particularly egregious example (spoilers for the 'good ending'):
(Spoiler - click to show)
> lock chest
I think you wanted to say “lock treasure chest with something”. Please try again
> lock chest with golden key
Sorry, I don’t understand what “golden” means.
> lock chest with gold key
First you’d have to close the treasure chest.
> close chest
You close the treasure chest.
This is the equivalent of eating at a restaurant but the chef occasionally grabs your hands to make you move your knife to the other side or to drop your salad fork and take your regular one, to ensure that you are eating the meal in the proper way.
Overall, I think this will please people who primarily look for IF to have fun scenarios and puzzles that aren't immediately solvable but are fair.
A humorous mummy game with some repetitiveness, May 9, 2021I purchased this game on my own recently because I wanted to explore the less-played games on the Hosted Games app on my iPhone. This game was the least-rated one on there, with 3 ratings since 2018.
I was expecting something much worse, to be honest, but it looks like Hosted Games' requirement for a public beta test ironed out a lot of problems that you might see in, for instance, the least-played IFComp games. I found no bugs and only one grammatical error ('would of' instead of 'would have').
Storywise, you are a host for an antique appraisal show when someone comes in with a mummy to get appraised. A horde of people come in chasing the mummy, including someone with a scroll that brings it to life. The majority of the game involves trying to stop the mummy with the scroll.
+Polish: No problems with the game.
-Descriptiveness: A lot of it feels bland. I have trouble picturing any of the characters.
-Interactivity: A lot of the choices are the same.
-Emotional impact: The jokes mostly didn't land for me.
+Would I play again? Honestly, yes, it was a pleasant way to pass a short amount of time.
For me, the game felt pretty flat. Characters are generally indistinguishable, with everyone's personality being 'kind of selfish and likes to make witty remarks'. Most scenes are the same: you try to take the scroll and someone stops you. Most of your choices are the same throughout the game, either 'pick one of these punchlines for the author's jokes' or 'keep filming/help someone off-camera'. I think this kind of general ambiguity is the main thing that decreased my overall enjoyment.
I still finished and it definitely wasn't terrible, and took me around an hour (would have been 30 minutes if I read quicker). Overall, I'm definitely pleased by the quality of the least-played Hosted Games, especially since my own game is one of the least-played Choice of Games.
A dungeon crawl with randomized loot and monsters, May 2, 2021This game was pretty fun, although I think it could use a bit more hints or subtle nudges for incorrect actions.
It's made using pre-existing 3d RPG assets, including chests, goblins, skeletons and spiders. These form static background images for an adventuron game.
This is like a little AD&D 1st edition dungeon as a warrior, with randomized loot. You explore different areas, find hidden traps, etc.
I thought this game was too hard for me, but I found that carefully noting all items and examining things helped quite a bit.
The game suggests there are non-violent solutions to some encounters, but I fought through most of them, including the werewolf, where I had to restart the game a few times until I found both helmet and armor. Apparently I missed one secret room (probably the one hinted in the note), but otherwise did okay.
I would have been a bit less frustrated if the game had hinted more when I was doing things the wrong way. Otherwise, pretty fun if you like TTRPG fantasy modules.
A prototype for a summer fun game about dogs and divorce, April 17, 2021In this game, you play as a corgi who comforts a girl on a summer vacation with one parent soon after a divorce.
There are many minigames you play over 8 days, building up seashells to upgrade your shanty.
Each day you sleep you get more story, with one interaction per story segment.
There are a lot of games implemented, but most of them are somewhat confusing for now or simple, and I think that's what's going to be tweaked later on.
The story is sweet but doesn't have real emotional stakes, in a way. Tension only builds during the 'sleep' scenes but could benefit more from significant changes in the game world over time. As a reader, we know the girl will be sad, then come to accept the divorce, so it would be interesting to have some extra tension as well through a side story, maybe one the parallels the main story.
An alien puzzle game with codes and racial dynamics, April 16, 2021This game is about you, recently immigrated to an alien planet, learning to handle the customs since everyone speaks in 'puzzlespeak'.
In reality, this means the game has three different threads: one about your emotional life, one about the political and racial situation on the world, and one where you solve puzzles.
I like puzzles, crosswords, cryptograms, etc. but I wasn't feeling some of these puzzles. Like a beta tester recently said about a game of mine, some of the puzzles are obviously telegraphed and some aren't communicated very much at all. I left 3 or 4 of the puzzles unsolved, such as the ascii one and one that seemed cryptographic but had some kind of twist that I couldn't figure out. Others may have more success than I did!
Storywise, I liked the friends subplot. I thought the racism subplot was a mystery story, not realizing it was just straight-up racism. And the mom plot seemed kind of disconnected from everything.
The game has a couple of built-in failures, which I think is tricky in a game like this. Specifically, there are times when solving the puzzles prevents social embarassment, but there are times when you experience it no matter what due to your character's (not the player's) failures, and I think that's not a good design strategy. That only occurs rarely, though.
Fantasy worldbuilding and surreal occurrences, April 15, 2021This game has some great ideas but needs some polish.
In it, you play a tavernkeep in an inn inside a city built inside of a giant hill of ice that is the lair of a now-dead ice dragon. The game opens with a big chunk of encyclopedia-style worldbuilding that is optional. Amusingly, the links you click comment on how exciting and cool the worldbuilding is.
In the game itself, you repeatedly explore a tavern and talk to NPCs with varying results every time. As you do so, you uncover more and more of a mystery.
I love mysteries, fantasy, and surreal things, so this game has a lot going for it. But there are quite a few typos, occasionally raw twine code (I saw 'if(0>0' somewhere), and there was never a real payoff for all the random things. Some of it paid off, but most of the interesting parts of the game seemed to just have no meaning by the end. I wonder if multiple endings could have been better.
Overall, though, I love the concepts, but I think the execution needs work.
A murder mystery in a fantasy dimension, April 12, 2021This game seems to have been completed as part of a university program, possibly at University of Central Florida. The game list mentors but not beta testers, which would make sense.
If this game was made for a university program, it would probably be at the senior project or thesis/part-of-thesis level. It is a large game, with custom art and a UI designed from the ground up.
There is a lengthy, mostly-linear opening sequence that allows you to customize yourself. This part is an interesting story about how you, a deceased god, have been temporarily reanimated as a statue (a nod to Galatea, which is referenced in both the credits and in the name of the game itself). You go to a house occupied by the president of the 4th dimension in order to investigate your murder.
There is then a much longer segment where you can explore several different locations, some of which have worldbuilding and some have suspects. Some state is tracked in interesting ways.
The game ends with an accusation. You can accuse anyone; the game calls these 'fake endings' but doesn't list any 'true' ending. That, with some other comments in code, leads me to believe that this game doesn't have the full scope the author intended, and it may possibly be expanded in the future.
Overall, I had a very positive experiment. There were only a few flies in the ointment. Perhaps the most obtrusive one was the the '>' symbol used as a 'next' prompt. While keyboard presses can be used to move the game forward, you can also click that symbol, which is pretty small and hard to hit. Then, when you have choices, that symbol appears in front of each choice, but it is no longer clickable; instead, you must click the choice next to it. This led to me 'misclicking' a lot, and could probably be solved by just adding the word 'next' after the clickable '>' symbols and then making that the thing you click instead of the '>'.
The other issues were a missing image (studying the portraits led to a missing link) and maybe some scattered typos (I had the impression, but would have to go back again to check). I think this is a good game, the author seems talented, and whatever program is assisting the production of games like these seems to be doing great.
A graphical game packed with tons of endings, April 11, 2021This game is an unusual format for IF, so it makes sense it was put in Spring Thing, a competition known for its interesting experiments.
In this game you control a 2d sprite walking around a game that has been unexpectedly paused right before the big fight. You can talk to people, asking them about each other, and swap items with them.
Then, you can unpause the game through various means (the easiest being (Spoiler - click to show)giving the Crown of Agency to someone). This gives you a 'what happened to everyone'? ending.
Overall, I found the game charming and some of the interactions pretty funny.
Where I had a bit of trouble is the 'flatness' of the game. Essentially every important choice is available all at once right from the beginning, so if you want to see everything, you have to click through 8 or so people to ask each of the 8 about themselves and each other. If you just want to focus on the other mechanic (swapping things), every swap is available from the beginning, and only 1 or 2 swaps are important in the game itself (not counting the ending).
So for me, there was a very, very long period of just trying everything and not getting any plot advancement or mechanical changes. It was almost like browsing a 'behind the scenes' book for an MMORPG.
There are an enormous number of endings. I found 5 or 6, then got help to find a couple more, but the state space is so big that I felt too exhausted to find every ending. I did enjoy the ones I found, though.
I guess one thing is that, even though all the characters have very different backgrounds and personalities to me, all the text started to kind of run together eventually. I think that's because, like I mentioned earlier, everything's open at once so there's not really a narrative arc to the overall game (except for the one thread involving (Spoiler - click to show)Jimmy). That's okay and it seems intentional, but I was less engaged than I otherwise would have been.
I'm glad this game exists and think this kind of experimentation and fun is great.
A long choice game about life as a home-schooled child, April 4, 2021I had mixed reactions to Bee by Emily Short, most of which were favorable. I compared this game in my mind to Bigger Than You Think by Plotkin, which is another choice game by a famous parser author.
The game is in a completely real-life setting. You play a homeschooled child over three years or more as they prepare for the national spelling bee. Time is organized in months. Each month, you can choose from a variety of activities usually three), and within each activity, you can control your reactions to events and sometimes some big choices.
The game allows quite a variety of choices; the first time I played, I practiced my butt off for the finals. The second time I played, I goofed off as much as possible.
The game was enjoyable; as someone who entered competitions like this as a kid, it was fun to study for the test and get competitive. The interactions with neighbors were fun, too.
But the game got pretty monotonous, perhaps because I tried to be so focused each time. 36 months, with multiple actions a month, makes for a long game, and there was not enough material to fill it all up. Instead, many scenarios were repeated five times or more.
The simple pleasures of pirating, March 19, 2021Alana Joli Abbott is a prolific Choice of Games author, having written Choice of Kung Fu (a very good game), Showdown at Willow Creek (very short but fun), and Blackstone Academy for the Magical Arts, which I felt had good ideas but less exciting execution.
Also, I had previously played another pirate game (by a different author) from choice of games, "7th Sea: A Pirate's Pact", which I thought was fun but that didn't highlight the exciting parts.
This game, for me, improves on Abbott's other games and on the other pirate game, because it's fun. It highlights all the best parts about the pirate life. We get ghost ships, flamboyant and treacherous captains, refined but insidious Crown operatives, sea monsters, owning a fleet, getting a hook for a hand, etc. Very little time is spent on the trivial or boring.
The stats are great, too. They're clear to understand, you have many opportunities to increase them, and they're clearly differentiated early on.
There are some things I didn't like too much. I tried to get a haunted ship at the beginning, but failed too many checks in a row and lost miserably. But the game handled it with optimism and reassured me as the player that things would be okay despite my setback, and that gave me the confidence to keep playing without retrying.
I'm not sure exactly how much branching there is; the way it's written and the wordcount given makes me think you largely experience the same set of events each playthrough, but the game offers you a lot of freedom in your intent. And there is definitely some branching; I completed the entire game without finding the identity of one of the people in the relationship bars (probably because I refused to work with the Crown at all).
Overall, lots of fun, can recommend.
A grab-bag of investigation, outlaws, Ute indians and science, March 18, 2021This is one of the shortest choicescript games sold by Choice of Games. Coincidentally, at 72,000 words, it's longer than any parser game I've written. But in the world of choicescript games, it's fairly slight.
But it uses that time better than most short games. You have a variety of stats that are clearly differentiated from each other during the first chapter, different factions to support against each other, a resource (money) that can be used for many things, etc. There also is a play between supporting science and supporting the wild countryside.
But each thread is somewhat underdeveloped. You play as a sort of private investigator with a single case: finding a missing young woman. This case will take you to the houses of the rich and poor and to the Ute indians, which seem to have been researched fairly well (at least, the relationship between them and the settlers is similar to what I've seen in histories from that time and area).
There's only one case, and romance options only have a few opportunities to interact with them. Your overarching goal evolves a lot in a few short chapters, making the game lose focus.
Of all the < 100K games, though, I'd put this down as one of the best, along with Choice of the Dragon and Choice of Broadsides. I just think that a length between about 200K-400K would have allowed more space to to develop the core ideas.
The one other thing that keeps me from completely recommending it is that the game frequently puts you in spots where you have to pick between using stat A, using stat B, and running away; since there are several stats, this means you often just have no luck.
A brief and fragmented journey to discover mermaids, March 17, 2021This game is well-written on the line-by-line level or even scene-by-scene but doesn't know what it wants to be. It starts out seeming like a promising kid's fantasy, then changes to a bit older (you're told that all the patrons at the science society are hot and get divorced all the time because of it), then into more slapstick comedy, with some magical adventure thrown in.
The main thrust of the game is that you saw mermaids as a child and want to join the Marinological Society to study them when you are grown. You need to pick a patron to support you (and the game informs you that patrons are often romantic partners), then you go to the island to look for evidence of mermaids.
Parts of it were actually pretty great and/or funny, while other parts were a bit more weird. Instead of skills you have only opposed stats, and once you pick a patron if you want to please them it determines a lot of the choices you have to make.
There were some big choices to make near the end, and I ended up alone and sad, but at least I kept my promises.
On the shorter end for Choicescript, , March 17, 2021This one was hard to review: didn't like it at first, liked it a lot more near the end, but not sure about it overall. So I'm going over my 5 point scale in hope it helps me.
+Polished: I didn't find any bugs or typos, which is normal for Choice of Games.
+Descriptive: The game was certainly descriptive and vibrant.
+Interactivity: There were a lot of options to fiddle around with: your sound, your relationship with your frequently-annoying brother, whether to sign with a record label or not, going solo. The ending was somewhat abrupt but fit in with the rest of the story.
Some people have pointed out that a few key points are forced on you. In one very late game move (involving relationships) (Spoiler - click to show)you find yourself in a relationship with a famous artsy person. This wasn't a problem for me, as I was pretending to be Paul MCcartney the whole game, playing bass etc., so I was fine dating 'Yoko' and splitting up the band by going solo. I suspect that a lot of the choices I made worked out for me because it was the 'ordained path'. A lot of the reports I had heard from other people seem to confirm that (for instance, the game seems to favor your brother).
+Emotional impact: I had fun. I disliked it at first but grew to like it.
-Would I play again? I feel content with my choices, and it doesn't seem like there's a lot of wiggle room, so I'm not sure I'll revisit this one.
A brief nugget of nautical military history retold, March 16, 2021This game has a little bit of history, much of which I don't know. It's a sequel to the original Choice of Broadsides, a navy battle game, but by a different author, Paul Wang, author of some games I enjoy quite a bit (mostly fighting games).
The original game was low in wordcount but long in feeling, spanning an entire career in the navy by having quick narration and choices that could affect months or years at a time.
This game is longer than the original but feels shorter. It is a 3-chapter game that essentially retells a specific part of history of the War of 1812, as described by the author at the end.
I believe it is related to the free games Zip! Speedster of Valiant City and Sky Pirates of Actorius as being commisioned by Choice of Games as shorter games to offer free on the omnibus app. I may be wrong there.
I think that the reason this game feels shorter is that it reads much like the intro to a longer game. Like I said in my review of Zip! Speedster, both games feel like instead of being constructed small from the get-go, it took a larger setup and shrunk it. There are very few possible changes to stats, and the plot arc seems to start slow and never really take off.
I saw a comment on Twitter by Dan Fabulich that suggested the timespan in-game can contribute to a feeling of length in a game, and I think that's true. This game takes place over a couple of months and covers the lead-up, action, and denouement of a single action.
In any case, the historicity was fascinating, but I don't feel this game succeeded in its 'small package' design. I do enjoy the author's writing quite a bit, though, and as a game free on the omnibus app and relatively short I feel that any fan of history should try this out.
A charming and well-written episodic kid detective game, March 16, 2021This game placed highly recently on an 'underrated choicescript game poll'. It's pretty easy to see why it placed highly and why it's underrated.
The strikes against it are it's size (it's in the bottom 20% in terms of size) and the fact that it is centered on younger kids (Choicescript games that appear to be for kids tend to sell less, including my own).
The good things are the writing, the stats, and the strategies.
Writing-wise, the game has an episodic structure (about 5 mystery cases) and a lot of freedom in how your character can approach them: greedy, secretive, friendly, etc. Each of the main characters seemed fully-fleshed out to me by the end. The finale seemed fairly abrupt, but it makes sense for a game that is more a string of episodes than anything else.
The stats were great. It was generally very clear which stats applied to what, how to raise them, and where you stood.
The game kept it interesting by strategizing. Staying secretive sometimes benefits everyone but sometimes keeps you from getting money or making certain friends. Similarly, having integrity locks you out of many options but feels good.
Some events had risks you could take with rewards or failures that were logical but unknown ahead of time. I like this better than randomness (from playing a random game earlier today), but it still provides some tension like randomness does.
A career-spanning major league baseball game with randomization, March 16, 2021One nice thing I've noticed through playing Choice of Games entries is that they're willing to take chances with games, leading to some nice results like Nebula-nominated games or niche works that appeal very strongly to specific people (like Cannonfire Concerto, for me).
This game, I think, is an example of an experiment that didn't work out too well. Specifically, it relies heavily on randomization. You can train in 5-6 different kinds of pitches like curveballs and fastballs, and then a big chunk of the game is you facing different hitters with you pitches. It lists the chance for each pitch of getting a strike, a 'ball', or them hitting it, and using the same pitch several times in a row makes the batter more likely to hit it.
I appreciate the idea but both gameplay and roleplay-wise I wasn't really feeling it. In general, I just chose the best strike option, although I realized near the end that choose the lowest 'in-play' option was a different strategy. But then much of the story ended up as a result of these randomized choices.
I don't think randomization is horrible, but most games that use randomization well are games that have frequent save points and involve repeating the same tasks over and over (like gambling mini-games, RPG combat grinding, etc.). In this game, with no save points and no second chances, it's rough, and that's playing as a 'power player' (the game's easy mode).
Outside of that, the game has a lot of threads towards interesting ideas but doesn't really pursue them in depth. I did enjoy the freedom to go to a completely different country for a chapter and playing on the moon was cool. The last few chapters have a focus on preparing for your life after baseball and that was by far my favorite part, as you strategize things that might hurt you in one area (like your friendships or future income) but help you in another. Very cool part.
I can't help but compare it to Slammed!, which for me did a better job with making a story about humans. Ironically, my character in Fielder's Choice was very analytical, and when I first tried out sports broadcasting I was told to back away from the stats and focus more on the human element, and I think that this game itself could probably benefit from that advice.
I received a review copy of this game.
Determine the fate of animalistic deities, March 15, 2021This is a shorter Choicescript game from 2017. In it, you play as the avatar of the recently-dead god Wolf, in a pantheon shared with Spider, Gazelle, Eel, and Bear.
The game draws on mythology from several different cultures. It is fairly quick, but has several replay options.
Most of the game feels like a spiritual journey, like an ancient Odyssey. You constantly run into the avatars of the other gods, and you are essentially judged on which God you become the most like.
Simultaneously, you can choose to ally with a group of anti-God soldiers.
There are actually quite a few Choicescript games where you play as a powerful champion of the Gods and must decide whether serve them or destroy them (the most well-known being the aptly-named Champion of the Gods). I have to admit, it's a genre I'm a big fan of.
The stats in this game are communicated fairly well, although it can be hard to know when a stat is tested vs changed. There were some story threads I feel could have been deeper, but I feel that Avatar of the Wolf succeeded for me both as a story and as a game. It has the single-mindedness and simplicity that made me like Sword of the Slayer.
Anthropomorphic animal game about a dystopian city, March 6, 2021This was a fun game, and I thought about giving it a 5, but it has a few issues. But it's not that bad, and if the subject matter interests you, I'd go for it.
In this game, there are 20,000,000 or more 'moreaus', or sentient creatures resembling mammals which are the result of genetic experimentation. They are second-class citizens.
You, an ordinary citizen, have a rude awakening when your building is bombed. You have to navigate between two gangs, the cops, the press, and a ton of people (both human and moreau) who are very attracted to you.
I enjoyed the game overall, but it does have its problems. Pacing is one of them. In the beginning of the game, a bomb goes off so you stand outside of your apartment. That event takes up 3 of the 10 chapters just by itself. There's just not a lot of meat to the chapters, with only 1 or 2 significant things happening in each (but with each event having a lot of detail).
The characters are both expressive and generic in a weird way. They were memorable and distinct in my mind, but don't really express themselves strongly about things and don't have much backstory.
The stat gains and checks are reasonable (although there seemed to be a lot of 'cunning' checks which isn't a listed stats) up until the end, where as others have said it gets really hard. I died, but the epilogue was just long enough to be satisfying, especially as my death fixed essentially every problem.
This game contains explicit sexual scenes, strong profanity, animal-type violence (all of those in moderation) and many mentions of both drug use and suicide.
This gryphon is pleasing but a little toothless, March 5, 2021In this game, you play as a 'thrall' (a member of a servant caste) in a community where gryphon riders are trained for war against wrym riders.
One day, a gryphon mom rejects a small egg. You hatch it and raise it, which is against society rules.
Most of the game is about hiding and raising the gryphon, with a slightly smaller chunk involving the aftermath of being discovered.
The game has a very small number of stats for yourself (with several more once you get a gryphon), but manages to be fairly confusing with the stats. It's pretty hard to know which stats are being tested when.
The game itself is oddly toothless. It sets up some worldbuilding but doesn't do much with it. There is tension between 'thralls' and 'keepers', there is a war, but what is actually going on? Everything is so vague. Are you 12, or 16, or 24? (That may have been answered somewhere, but it's hard to tell). One second you can be what seems like a highschool kid, and another you can scare a guard by saying you've killed people. The wyrm riders are different from you, but how? Do they speak another language? Wear weird armor? You are in the wilderness for months. What does that do to you, mentally and physically?
Nothing really gets answered. And like other reviewers here and elsewhere have noted, there's not really a climax; you kind of wander around until the end, with the ending final scenes very similar to scenes from the middle of the game in terms of tension and result.
All that said, the best parts for me were the ones interacting with the griffin and training it. In that respect, this game reminded of The Last Monster Master, but with less systematic training and more individual personality.
A CS game based on real New York history with slow start but stronger finish, March 4, 2021This game was pretty good overall, but had some sticking points.
You play as a Broadway theatre owner in 1849. You mingle with many historical figures such as Horace Greeley and Herman Melville.
The main challenges are to balance the demands of the people with the demands of the elite; to work with the mayor and the real government or the Know-Nothing gang; to befriend or destroy Hamblin, the rival theatre owner; discovering a supernatural mystery; deciding what kinds of plays to run; and handling romances.
I thought the opening chapter was fairly boring, but by the middle I was invested in the story and found it entertaining.
Stats were a mixed bag. It was very confusing telling the difference between acting and showmanship, between authority/negotiation/producing, between streetwise and notoriety.
The game very frequently forces you to make choices then pick why or how you do it; I was writing down every time it happened but it was too frequent. It's especially jarring since these forced choices can directly contradict your play method. For instance, (Spoiler - click to show)I worked with Ned Buntline and the gangs from the start, with no interest in the 'fancy' part of town. But the game forced me twice to confront Ned about things, and forced him once to attack me, despite us doing everything together and me keeping his secret. Similarly, you are forced to accept a possible spy into your midst, you are forced to rescue an attacked news person, etc. The effect of all of this was to feel a lot less in control of the story. Of course, it makes the overall narrative tighter since the author is in control of most things you do, but it was frustrating.
The stats are very meagre, as well. After the first chapter, I had only 3 skills which were above baseline, each by only a single boost for a total of 3 boosts. If I had chosen differently, I could have boosted only 2 skills with the other boost going to an opposed stat (which could later be erased by other choices). The author solved that by making essentially every choice in the game winnable if you have even a single boost in a stat, but made it more difficult by obfuscating which stat helps with what.
Overall, though, it was a positive story experience, and made me interested in early New York.
A mini version of an outsized hero story, March 1, 2021I enjoyed playing the Heroes Rise trilogy by Eric Moser before [edit: it's been pointed out to me that Zachary Sergi, not Eric Moser, is the author of Heroes Rise; I would never have noticed without someone pointing it out!], so I was interested in seeing this game. I knew ahead of time that it's a 'mini' game, free on the omnibus apps. designed to be a bonus to whoever downloads those apps (together with another 'mini' story, Sky Pirates of Arctorus by Kyle Marquis).
Overall, I think this game is quick-paced, charming and fun. You play a super-fast hero who is getting old (sadly, their 'old age' is pretty much the age I am now) against an enemy called 'The Sloth'. You're married, but to a person who cheated on you, and there is another romantic option (but not one you are required to pursue). The other main things you can do are getting a shoe sponsor deal, running for mayor, or training your sidekick.
This game was good, but it felt like a regular 100K-200K story that had parts removed instead of being built for a smaller game. For instance, it has well-defined, clear stats and clever use of resources, but the opportunities to build and use those stats are limited, and there are quite a few (I think 6 major skills). Contrast this to the even-smaller Choice of the Dragon, with 2 major stats (although Choice of the Broadsides has 12, so it's not hard and fast).
Another 'big game made small' feature is the numerous story threads that aren't given much treatment: your relationships with spouse, sidekick, romantic option/rival, and the CEO of a company; your background with the Sloth; handling the outbreak of other minor villains; etc. I feel like if each theme got twice the screen time it could have been stronger.
I don't have any suggestions on how to write shorter games (I know a lot of great authors have tried it over the years to varying success). This game wasn't bad, and is free with the app, so if you're thinking of getting into Choicescript games, it's one of the better free options on the omnibus app.
A french parser game with a compact dungeon filled with traps, January 23, 2021This is a polished parser game entered in the French IF Competition. It comes with nice feelies and runs on retro devices as well as in-browser.
You wake up in a dungeon with four exits, wearing an empty scabbard and some armor. In each direction, there is some kind of threat: a trap, a monster, a guardian, etc. and you have to defeat them all in turn.
I thought this was fun, but also very hard. It includes some forms of interactions which I consider unfair, like having to die to progress. I was very happy the author provided a solution! (although one line of it provokes an error, but it's okay and doesn't affect the end result).
The author seems to enjoy IF a lot and I look forward to any future games.
Short, branching zombie survival game with lots of replayability, January 16, 2021This is another game from near the very beginning of Choice of Games, and I think this one works well.
It's different from more 'modern' games in that each playthrough is short and there are a lot of ways to mess up or die early. So if you screw up everything your game can be significantly less than an hour, with a 'successful' game being a lot longer.
But the shortness of the dead-ends go well together, since it encourages replay and (more importantly) this game has a lot of different paths to success. You can meet completely different characters in different playthroughs. I'd say about 30% of my two playthroughs was repeated material.
I enjoyed how the stats were clearly differentiated from each other. Although, the game kept relationship stats hidden. There doesn't seem to be any romance in this game (though sex is mentioned). Each stat gets used in a variety of ways.
The characters all have different interactions with each other, some of them detesting each other.
All in all, it was short and fun.
An early choicescript game with a dissolute archaeologist MC, January 15, 2021Well, if you enjoy games where you can play as a hard-drinking, cheating professor, stealing artifacts, snorting lines of coke and hitting on students, this is definitely the game for you.
That's not really my style. This is an early choicescript game. In the beginning, they had 3-4 pretty great games in a row, but they didn't really know what worked, and that resulted in a string of very short games with weak use of stats, unfulfilling scenes and hit-or-miss humor that was often miss. After that, they hit their stride with some games that are still awesome to this day (Slammed! and Choice of Kung Fu, for instance).
That said, this game is still well-polished, with few, if any errors, and the interactivity generally worked for me. I had to sweat over a few choices, and they had actual consequences.
At 68,000 words, this game is a tenth of their most recent game (Luminous Underground) and a little less than half of the average game.
The story is about you, an archaeologist, hearing rumors of an ancient Incan city, the 'City Lost in the Clouds'. You have to dodge Columbian militia and ancient spirits to explore the city, and then safely make it back.
This game was recently in the 'Most underrated Choicescript games' poll, and was second to last (before Treasure Seekers of Lady Luck, which I actually like). If you play even 1 or 2 choices of the demo, you'll instantly know if you like it or not.
A spy game with many different branches, endings and items, January 13, 2021This chooseyourstory game has a setup that's a lot more complex than most. You have an inventory, stats you can train, etc.
You are an ordinary man in an ordinary job when a mysterious package changes your life. You're taken to a spy agency and given a dangerous mission.
The opening segments have an inventory with clickable links, but later on that seemed to disappear in favor of choice-based inventory (like when choosing what to take out of your trunk).
The pacing is good, with a strong overall narrative arc. Some of the endings happen a lot sooner than others (I think there are at least a couple dozen endings), so it can be worth backing out and trying again, even if you get a good ending on the first try.
Here's my five-point scale:
+Polish: This is a pretty complex game and I didn't run into any bugs/spelling errors.
+Interactivity: I really felt like I could dig in and strategize and try different things. Even with unlimited undo's, you can get so far into some branches that it's hard to cheat the system, which is nice.
+Descriptiveness: Most of the characters are just spy stereotypes, but the level of action was good.
+Emotional impact: I felt interested in the game and enjoyed seeing what came next.
-Would I play again? On the one hand, the game has a lot of endings and different replayable parts. On the other hand, I feel like the whole thing could use just a little bit more 'something' to be completely compelling, like a really cool opponent or a love interest (or someone who's both!). I know that's not very specific, and maybe that already exists in one of the other branches, so this is totally subjective.
Like a classic CYOA book. Get sucked into a fantasy world, January 3, 2021This game probably recreates my childhood experiences of reading CYOA books more than any other.
The chooseyourstory format is adapted more to CYOA books. Most Twine and Choicescript games have shorter text and more frequent choices that frequently meet back up later because it allows you to reuse a lot of text and code. Making a game where every branch goes somewhere different is usually too tedious to code, although some people have done it (like the game Animalia or Porpentine's Myriad).
But a lot of chooseyourstory games seem to get over the problem of needing to write a lot of text by just writing a lot of text, ending up with games with hundreds of thousands of words.
This game is meant for kids, I'd say between 10 and 13 or 14. You are sucked into a fantasy world where you meet strange wizards and adventurers.
There are few choices in this game but a ton of text in each one, and each choice branches a lot. Some are dead ends, but the engine lets you go back and retrace your steps quickly, which the game seems to encourage. This makes the small number of choices make sense, since each replay goes quickly, like paging through an old CYOA book.
I enjoyed it overall, and it gave me some ideas for my own writing.
A fun and tricky puzzlefest in Santa's workshop, December 27, 2020This is an Adventuron Christmas game that is quite large. You have to find out what 9 kids want for Christmas and make their toys after finding all the ingredients necessary. There is a large system of free shops and recipes for toys.
There are many locations and as of this writing all but one of them has art.
The puzzles range from fairly easy to the very obscure. The hardest puzzles were those involving guessing-the-verb or lack of in-game responses to incorrect actions.
This is large and complicated and I enjoyed it overall.
A verbose Adventuron game about Wodehousian antics, December 26, 2020This Adventuron game has more words than any other I've seen. It's firmly in the Wodehousian vein, with a butler named Gieves and hijinks caused by upper-class British misunderstandings.
It was quite clever and parts of it were very funny (including the ending). It suffered from a certain problem that many humorous games have, which is that the author clearly had some very funny solutions in mind, but that requires several leaps of intuition that aren't always fair.
Overall, though, this is a hefty game with good writing and clever puzzles. I think this would have done fairly well in IFComp, placing in the top half.
A complex Adventuron puzzle in Northpole, December 26, 2020This is perhaps the most complex Adventuron game I've seen.
You play as a falsely-accused elf who has to find 7 missing presents. There are two main areas (an outside one and an inside one) as well as an endgame area. There are numerous NPCs, as well.
This game has its own share of Sierra-type-logic (such as there being 4 different sharp-bladed instruments, each of which can only be used on one thing) and adventuron implementation issues (the biggest being error messages not disambiguating between default statements for correct commands on non-interesting present items and correct commands with non-present items).
Fortunately, there are helpful hints in every room. Even with that, though, I had to comb through the itch pages (I found three different ones: the regular page, the submission page, and some comments in the community page for the jam) to finish off the game. Art's very good, and fortunately no puzzles require the art, for people who are visually impaired.
Clever puzzle concepts with plenty of implementation issues, December 26, 2020This Adventuron game has you using a teleporter to access three different areas with interlocking puzzles.
The story idea is clever: Bigfoot has been implicated in 3 different acts of mischief and is on the naughty list. He asks you to clear his name.
In a world of perfect implementation, this would be a fairly fun puzzle game. It relies on some visual puzzles included in the graphics.
Unfortunately, there are numerous errors. Adventuron doesn't let you know if an object is undescribed or you typed it wrong, so that caused a few issues with things like a vital but undescribed rock show ad. The main verbs necessary for solving two key puzzles are implemented weird (for one, (Spoiler - click to show)PUT something INTO something doesn't work but INSERT something INTO something does, and for the other (Spoiler - click to show)you have to UNSCREW something instead of TURNing or RATCHETing when you have a ratchet).
A few other things added up to make it a frustrating experience. If the game were polished a bit more, it would be more enjoyable. Still, it had many charming moments.
A fractured tale in the style of Photopia, December 2, 2020This game seems strongly influenced by Adam Cadre's work, specifically Photopia (for its fragmented story, multiple viewpoints and use of color) and Narcolepsy (which is specifically referenced in the text)..
This game switches back and forth between multiple points of view, including real-life people and fantasy stories. The game is themed around three lights: red, green and yellow.
It uses fancy techniques such as color and even upside down text.
Unlike Photopia, the overall story didn't congeal for me. I see themes; for instance, (Spoiler - click to show)all of the three 'colored' passages involve an option to help yourself or to help someone else and die right before you achieve your major goals.
Similarly, I couldn't really see the connections between the real-life stories. (Spoiler - click to show)While writing this, I realize that Diane went from scared kid helped by Ben to teenager missing Ben to woman on a train getting a call from (or calling?) Ben. But how are George and co. connected?
There are some typos (like a double period somewhere, and some missing letters in the upside down text. If I play through again I'll record it!) More importantly, on my first playthrough, I was (Spoiler - click to show)selfish in yellow and green scenarios and kind in red, and that led to the game crashing (Spoiler - click to show)immediately after getting my POV after the white door where Diane is in the train. The game just stopped and ended with 'press any key to close the interpreter'. I then replayed trying to be as nice as possible, and got an ending.
So, for me, this is technically and narratively impressive, but the storyline remained inscrutable to me.
This game contains segments with frequent strong profanity.
-Polish: Several bugs, including game-ending bug
+Descriptiveness: The fantasy sub stories were especially vivid
+Emotional impact: Again, the fantasy segments carry this for me, especially yellow and green.
-Interactivity: The conversation system required both typing a topic number and retyping TALK TO instead of letting you continue in menu format. This and a few other such things were frustrating.
+Would I play again? Yes, especially if it gets a post-comp release.
A surprisingly rich and complex but difficult optimization games, November 7, 2020I beta tested this game briefly.
I usually think of Ectocomp games as being quick and simple, but the Grand Guignol games have been pretty intense the last few years.
This game has several innovative/amazing features:
1. It's in a custom parser that's brand new but so good that it felt like Dialog or Inform for me
2. It has excellent javascript integration with smooth scrolling image sidebars
3. It has an optimization puzzle that requires in-depth strategy and a lot of spatial thinking.
So it's pretty cool. You're breaking into a tomb (like Infidel) and need to grab a scarab amulet as well as as much treasure as you can carry (which is rough, given you can only carry 4 things at a time in your hands).
The puzzles are harder than most optimization games I've seen. Just getting a successful ending at all will likely take several tries. There's enough complexity here that I probably saw <1/2 of the game when I beta tested it and still there are things I don't understand (like the purpose of the (Spoiler - click to show)map and cursed disk).
The only drawback I found is, like the other optimization games, the puzzle itself detracted somewhat from the emotional impact of the story, as the story is mostly a frame for the puzzles and is repeated over and over each time. Otherwise, for fans of optimised treasure runs, this is a great game.
A grab bag of four Halloween games, November 6, 2020Ryan Veeder's playing a completely different ball game than most authors. It's almost like he just has fun making up things with weird ideas and then polishing them intensely before releasing them. Who does that?
There are four mini-games that I encountered, like the other Balderstone games (with each game serving just fine as a release on their own). They are:
-A complex combat game (Spoiler - click to show)This one reminded me of Kerkerkruip. You have a large map filled to the brim with weapons. You have to fight a lot of different people, but each weapon is destroyed upon use. This was fun but difficult, it took me a while to solve some of the cool sub-puzzles.
-A small game that is more interactive than most interactive fiction. (Spoiler - click to show)This is a mad-lib game where you are asked for a series of words, then you play a game involving that series of words, and it's implemented very well.
-A story told by children.(Spoiler - click to show)This has some surprises in design. Like usual. Ryan seems to think 'What if the players tried something weird and I just ran with it?
-A more traditional game at an abandoned gas station with some narrative surprises.
I thought as I played these games is that one thing Ryan does well is making sure the player encounters every story beat on every playthrough. It's so easy, due to the non-linear nature of games, for players to miss important backstory or details, but all of these games incorporate that into the gameplay itself, which is wonderful.
An immersive text experience with a satisfying conclusion, October 29, 2020This game is an ancient relic discovered and remade by Ryan Veeder, who has found all the documentation relating to it. By pure luck, the style of the gameplay has the whimsical charm and quality implementation characteristic of Ryan's own writing style (probably why he was attracted to it in the first place).
This game has a fairly hefty map, with a city of about 12 locations, many with an interior, and another chunk from extra side rooms and a couple of (not at all bad) maze-like locations. (maybe maze-lite locations).
The game has a built-in hint system where you ask your friends for help (which I accessed many times), and Dan Fabulich has made comprehensive invisiclues.
The story is basically what you would get if you had the Hobbit, but instead of the background of the Silmarillion you had a custom story that was a mashup of Captain Planet, Gargoyles and TMNT, and instead of Bilbo wandering around the very edges of the backstory you had a girl wandering around doing random stuff.
And the main theme of the game is (Spoiler - click to show)trading. If you every played the original game boy Zelda game, there was a long, involved trading quest involving everyone. That's basically what's going on here. You wander around town, slowly realizing what everyone wants or needs. Then all at once you find the starting point and it falls like dominoes. Until you get stuck.
The 17 digit key wasn't as hard as I expected it to be, but was computationally satisfying, especially the dichotomy chart, which reminded me of the tree dichotomy chart in the kids' encylopedia I had growing up, where if you identify the tree wrong, you get devoured by monsters on the next page.
I enjoyed the game, and also when I saw the Help text, I felt overcome and rested my head on the table in gratitude. I had fun with this game.
Comma use and Christianity in a puzzle-filled house, October 20, 2020This is the final game I’m playing for IFComp, and was pretty good to leave off on.
In this game, you play as the inheritor (with the rest of your family) to the estate of your Great Uncle. This uncle cared a great deal about commas and had feelings about them that were entangled with Christian religion and Greek mythology.
The game has several puzzles (accessed more or less in order) and all are based on commas. It’s hard to write this review without overthinking my comma use. I’ve already removed two, and now I’m scared.
The idea is clever, the puzzles aren’t too bad, but the implementation is very thin. A lot of empty rooms are implemented, most descriptions aren’t written in. There is conversation, which is good, and some complicated things have been implemented. But overall this would benefit a great deal from custom responses (you can see all possible responses you can change when in the IDE by typing RESPONSES ALL). The locations could also be cut down or made more vibrant and interesting.
Overall, though, this was a fun game to end up on. Thanks for making it!
-Polish: Could use a lot more custom responses and descriptions.
-Descriptiveness: Most of the writing is bare-bones.
+Interactivity: I enjoyed the puzzles.
+Emotional impact: Fun from puzzles.
+Would I play again? Yes, maybe next time I'm going to be working on long-form fiction.
Experience a sidewalk chalk contest through multiple viewpoints, October 19, 2020Ryan Veeder has been one of my biggest influences in game design. His games are generally the model I use for quality and ease of play.
One thing I’ve always admired about his work is how he makes the most trivial parts of his games as elaborate as possible and simplifies the important parts. In the first review I ever wrote of one of his games, I said:
"The game gives you explicit directions on what to do at first. I love ignoring directions in parser games; in some games, like Bronze, the game just doesn’t move forward at all if you ignore the directions. In this game, ignoring the directions gives you a lot of different, fun results.
[…]
The conversation system seemed at first incredible, and then very annoying, especially with the main favorable NPC. You have a lot to say, but 95% of it is completely irrelevant."
I no longer really see that as annoying, because now it’s something I look forward to. And those two quotes above could easily describe this game as well.
This game is a multi-perspective look at a sidewalk chalk contest in 2011. Given Ryan’s predilection for going whole-hog into fictional backstories for his game, I think it’s likely this is entirely fictional, but there is a great deal of worldbuilding behind the scenes included in an epilogue. It’s especially interesting that the intent of the epilogue is to construct in the player an image of Ryan and his personal life, giving the game a pseudo-autobiographical nature.
The actual gameplay is walking through a sidewalk chalk contest multiple times as different people, together with some flashbacks and some flashweirds where things go bizarre. The game is abstract enough at times that you could put any personal interpretation on it, and I enjoy the interpretation where the sidewalk chalk contest represents IFComp. Funnily enough, it represents this comp very well, with games with heavy worldbuilding, a game that is entirely a political statement/slogan, games that are mostly decorative, games based almost entirely on other media by other creators, and sexy games that some judges feel are too sexy (guess that judge is me!).
So I enjoyed the game, it had exactly the kind of things I look for in a Ryan Veeder game. It’s always a pleasure to see the directions his mind takes him. If you liked this game, I could recommend Winter Storm Draco for a generally similar style. If you want more puzzles, I’d recommend Taco Fiction, The Lurking Horror II: The Lurkening, the Crocodracula games or Captain Verdeterre’s Plunder.
+++++Polish, Descriptiveness, Interactivity, Emotional Impact, Would I play again?: All 5 categories are satisfied here.
A modern-day Jinn story in Twine, October 18, 2020So this game has you play as an ancient jinn trying to get back some cash from a hustler.
This is a pretty long Twine game, with interesting styling and good sentence-by-sentence writing and also excellent worldbuilding. It also features romance of several kinds and stories within stories.
I found the story and the interactivity fairly good, but I feel like they could go further. There are different layers to games: if they're buggy or full of typos, nothing else really matters, the game's just too weird to play. If it's not buggy but the interactivity is really frustrating or the text is boring, then it just makes you want to stop.
This game clears all of those hurdles (which is a real feat in and of itself), but I think it misses the last one, which consists of things like emotional depth and compelling gameplay.
The characterization of the player and NPCs are all over the place. Sometimes we want to murder everyone, sometimes we're lonely. Sometimes we want things for years, and then a second later we don't. Our main ally goes from assertive to passive to aggressive to loving.
And the interactivity often seems like 'Do things this way or do things the same way but with different phrasing'. I feel like it missed some chances to let you consistently characterize yourself or provide long-lasting effects. There are some choices to do such things though (I especially enjoyed [spoiler]the effects of buying a leopard-print shirt.[/spoiler] )
I think this is a good game, but I think this author is capable of making an entirely awesome game, and that's why I pointed out those specific things. Your mileage may vary!
+Polish: No bugs in my playthrough, nice styling
+Descriptiveness: Writing was vivid and funny.
-Interactivity: I felt like the choices weren't very effective.
-Emotional impact: I couldn't get a read on people's motivations and characteristics.
+Would I play again? Yes, this game was pretty fun!
A game about unpacking your office, with some mysterious secrets, October 17, 2020This game falls in the middle of the comp’s parser games for me. It’s reasonably well-polished, has a nice slow trickle of information, and has a well-defined progression. On the other hand, it’s fairly linear and could use some more emotional impact. So it was better than many other comp games for me, but it could use more to rise to the top.
In this game, you play as an academic moving into an office. You have a bunch of boxes stacked on top of each other. As you open them one at a time, you have to find a place to put everything. But there’s only a finite amount of room in the office, and a lot has to go into the trash and storage.
The idea of taking things out of boxes one by one and thinking about them while you decorate an office isn’t all that bad, but it’s not exactly action-packed (I say this as someone who wrote a game where you put things -into- a box while thinking about them while moving -out- of an office). The best parts are where you slowly learn more about the character’s background. In that sense, it becomes a mystery puzzle, and that’s completely up my alley.
The one thing that I think could be improved with the parser is near the end when you’re trying to wrap up. The game frequently told me I wasn’t done unpacking when I tried to leave, but all the boxes were gone (when I tried to leave the room). LOOKing usually gave me a hint, so I think if I could ask for anything it’s that the message for going WEST would change after the boxes are gone to give you more hints.
I was happy to play this, overall, and the name makes a lot of sense by the end of the game!
+Polish: The game was generally well-polished.
+Descriptiveness: The writing had a distinctive voice.
+Interactivity: I was able to make plans and execute them, which is nice.
-Emotional impact: The game's big moments didn't land for me.
+Would I play again? Yeah, it's pretty fun!
A talking sword and a hero get out of troubles through conversation, October 15, 2020This game uses Unity (and possibly Ink?) to give you a series of choices as you progress on a journey to avenge your master who has died. His spirit now inhabits a sword.
You pass through many interesting situations such as a pirate ship, a minotaur battle, etc.
I found the writing interesting and the concept charming. The text is typed out but fairly quickly, although that still hampered play somewhat The occasional use of graphics worked well.
In structure, this game reminds me of nothing more than Chandler Groover’s game Left/Right. In that game, you can either choose left or right over and over. One direction will kill you or end the game, and you never know which. It’s partially (I think?) a lesson in the inscrutability of that choice structure.
And it’s that way in this game, too. You have to guess the author’s mind on each choice. It’s possible to see the logic in each choice, but usually only after you’ve attempted to go through and die. I think it stems from a desire to make interesting decisions with only binary (or occasionally trinary) choices. But I don’t think having frequent deaths is the best option; it’s much more interesting to have old decisions affect future decisions several turns later and then to add some hinting to the game so that people have a general idea of what’s expected of them. Even better is adding multiple conflicting goals.
Overall, I had to stop at the cat-woman’s den because I was dying too often. But I found this fun.
+Polish: The game runs well and seems generally bug-free.
+Descriptiveness: The use of dialog made the game more interesting to me.
-Interactivity: Not a fan of 'guess which path is life and which one is death'
-Emotional impact: The characters didn't sink into my soul, so to speak.
-Would I play again? Not unless there were a faster way to replay.
A Quest murder mystery with interesting narrative tricks, October 15, 2020This game is written in Quest, and I engage with Quest games differently from Inform and TADS games.
Quest games tend not to come from the culture of ‘implement everything smoothly’ that other systems have, which is both bad and good. Bad because there’s less immersion, but good because you’re less likely to miss important things.
This game uses a lot of fancy features, like the parser voice and the player being separate entities; different worlds; timed text (used sparingly); and some clever writing tricks.
The style of the gameplay was difficult for me, so I went to the walkthrough and followed it all the way through. Overall, the writing is fairly solid; I don’t think I could do better myself; but it could be improved. I didn’t get a lot of the hints behind the big reveals, and the gradual reveals about the narrator flew over my head. I know that’s on me as a reader, but I wonder if we could improve narrative flow.
I do think the whole key thing is pretty neat, and I’d love to work something like that into a game into the future.
+Polish: For a Quest game, this is pretty smooth.
+Descriptiveness: The writing was creative and interesting.
-Interactivity: I struggled to engage with the game as intended.
-Emotional impact: The big reveals didn't land with me.
+Would I play again? I could see me trying another time.
An unfortunately bugged KPop reality show Twine, October 14, 2020This is a KPop simulation game. You have several stats (such as physical appearance, singing ability, dancing) and different challenges you can meet with your stats.
The game is pretty rough, and needs a lot more testing. The overall storyline seems interesting (reality show + mystery subplot). But this is a good reminder that authors should run through their games right before submitting to check if its completable!
-Polish: Too buggy, several typos
+Descriptiveness: The author has interesting descriptions
-Interactivity: Too many options are 'Do the right thing' vs 'Do the wrong thing'.
-Emotional impact: The choppy writing style and bugs made it hard to enjoy.
-Would I play again? Not until it gets some bug fixes.
If you're interested in seeing more of it, you can get past the first place the game becomes impassable by opening the file in Twinery and going to the passage Song A and deleting the first time it says to display untitled passage 12.
A very polished Vorple cyberpunk game, October 14, 2020I beta tested this game.
This is a really technically impressive game that uses Vorple for a cool layout, a single graphic and some fun music.
It’s a cyberpunk world where people jack into cyberspace (presenting Wild West/Fantasy and Ancient Japanese settings in this game). You’re asked to infiltrate a base, but chaos ensues.
The game is exceptionally well-polished, with very few bugs. It’s also fairly linear. Most conversations end up with you saying all available options, and most settings are constrained, with the most freedom being late in the game.
This makes the puzzles simpler, aided by the nice keywords, but comes at the expense of freedom. I’ve realized as I study the comp that players value both polish and freedom, so I’m really interested in seeing where this places!
+Polish: Looks great
+Descriptiveness: I liked quite a bit of the worldbuilding
+Interactivity: I found the puzzles enjoyable
-Emotional impact: I found myself at an emotional distance from this game, and don't know why.
+Would I play it again? I've played this game twice, and enjoyed it both times.
A complex parser game about trying to shave your chest hair, October 14, 2020Joey Acrimonious has been posting great reviews of other games so I was interested in seeing how this one plays out.
This is an enormously ambitious and complicated game. I thought it would be a relatively mild real-world game, but it includes a ton of worldbuilding and even two different protagonists!
Your goal is to shave some chest hair before a date. There are many things to try, almost all of them ending badly.
Your house is absolutely full of stuff. Stuff in the bathroom, stuff in the bedroom, stuff in the closet, stuff in drawers.
So all of this has the hallmarks of a first (or early) game by a talented author: it models an apartment, has lots of extra things, and has a lot of implementation into tricky things while neglecting a few of the smaller things.
What are the smaller things? Well, the game mentions that you can see the exits by LOOKing, but some rooms have no exits listed at all (like the bathroom as Marigold). Room names are all lowercase, which is a common mistake in Inform (you have to capitalize them the first time they appear in the code, wherever that is). When you use the special device, it doesn't indicate a change in location (by LOOKing), which may be intentional but is kind of confusing.
The game indicates several beta testers, and it is more polished than many games in the comp, but I think that having some more people beta test next year that have comp experience could help, and of course the feedback from this year will be very helpful. This game is well-written, funny, complex, and generally polished; but there are some things that I think would be better left off the next game, especially the large groups of unnecessary but well-implemented items. I definitely think there should be a next game, as I would expect this author to be capable of coming up with several interesting stories and some very fun game mechanics, if this game is any indication.
-Polish: The game could use some touchup for sure.
+Descriptiveness: It can be confusing at times, but this game is definitely descriptive.
-Interactivity: I often felt at a loss what to do, and beat my head on the wall a lot as I got lost moving around (probably because the device mechanic didn't make sense to me early on).
+Emotional impact: I definitely experience a lot of interesting feelings while playing this game.
-Would I play again? Not until there were an update.
An Ink game where you are a doppelganger with business needs, October 13, 2020This is a weird game but I'm into it. You play as a doppelganger in a bizarre magical world powered by technology and fantasy. I suspect there are deeper secrets to the game, but I enjoyed my ending (1/4, Humanologist).
Gameplay consists of getting several cases in a row. In each case, you can choose what to talk to your client about, then you become them, then you have several choices on how to carry out your tasks. You get paid different amounts of money depending on your performance. You can then invest that in various things.
I liked this quite a bit, although it's different from most games I like. Every year, I come up with theories on what does well in the comp and what doesn't, and this year my theory is that choice games that give you a lot of freedom of action (like a world model you can move in or completely different paths of characterization with tradeoffs like choice of games) do better than those without. On the other hand, longer games tend to do better, and while this is long, it's not huge like some of the games in the comp. So I predict this will do well, probably in the teens. But my predictions are always really wrong each year, so who knows?
+Polish: The game worked smoothly.
+Descriptiveness: I liked the worldbuilding.
+Interactivity: I felt like I could choose my characterization.
+Emotional impact: I really immersed myself in the character.
+Would I play again? I plan on it!
A bizarre world of constrained paper-people with moral messages, October 12, 2020I beta tested this game.
I've played a lot of the Wobbles games by the Marino Family (although apparently there's a Parrot the Pirate episode I never read?) and this one is definitely my favorite.
The Wobbles series are all written in Undum, a system that was like Twine before Twine and is very powerful but requires advanced technical knowledge to use.
Each game in the Wobbles series deals with a magical house full of foster kids where kids with various disabilities or uncomfortable real-life situations or other things that make them marginalized come to groups with themselves.
It's written at a kid or teen level, and written by younger people, too. I have a son with muscular dystrophy, so I'm glad to see representation in these games of various types of disability.
This particular game has the hero go into a world where everyone is transformed into paper on rails. The world is described with startling specificity that provides a lot of the enjoyment of this game. How would paper people eat? Sleep? Go to school? It's all laid out in excellent detail.
The other main feature I appreciate for this game is the overall. I have to say, I think this has some of the best choice structure in this competition. When I first played this game as a tester, I thought it was somewhat on rails (haha) but on my playthrough today I was able to take significantly different actions and still have it seem like the 'intended story'. That's really hard to pull off, and increases my admiration for this game.
For the detailed worldbuilding and intricate choice structure, this is my favorite of the Wobbles games. If you're going to play, make sure you realize that it is designed with specific morals (although you can go against them), a specific audience, and a distinct narrative voice (that of a talking book). Since most of the games ever entered in IFComp are either adult-targeted genre fiction or avant-garde exercises, this good-natured and marginalization-conscious series is definitely unique.
+Polish: These games are always smooth.
+Descriptiveness: Love the worldbuilding.
+Interactivity: Feels like choices matter
+Emotional impact: The parts with the King and the Queen struck home after my recent divorce.
+Would I play again? Yeah, would like to see different paths.
A detailed implementation of an old house with independent NPC, October 11, 2020**Last House on the Block by Jason Olson**
This game seems like a classic first-attempt at parser programming by a reasonably talented individual.
It has a house implemented in minute detail, including multiple bathrooms, several empty closets, a tackle box with many different kinds of tackle in it, etc.
The most complex part of the game is an NPC that follows you everywhere, interacting with you and doing independent actions, very much like Floyd the robot in the ways you interact with it.
The main puzzles require some very specific actions that I'm not sure are easy to discover on your own, and the language is fairly plain. While a solid game for a first-time author, I think the next game could use less extra objects and more of the fun NPCs, as well as a more vibrant setting.
-Polish: The game could use some more work, especially in talking with your friend.
-Descriptiveness: The setting and objects are plain and plainly described.
-Interactivity: There are so many objects that the state space of possible actions is just too big.
+Emotional impact: I liked the whole 'view of an older man's life' story.
-Would I play again? I don't think so.
An escape-the-tower game with spirit protagonist, October 11, 2020This is a medium-length Twine game with one overarching, fairly difficult puzzle.
You are a spirit, and have been imprisoned in a mage's tower. Your goal is to possess one of two people and escape. But the tower you're in is protected in several ways, and your quest will be difficult.
The writer of this game is a freelance author, and I found the game as a story fairly satisfying. The characters were interesting and there were several subplots.
Mechanically, it's a little bit rougher. There are usually two choices at a time, and it's usually 'guess the right action', although thankfully you can usually back out of a wrong course the first time. There are clues to the right actions, so it's better in that regards than some of the other games, but I believe it could have been improved by going beyond binary choices more often.
The writing was interesting enough for me to look up his website and see some other work. He's done a lot of advertising copy, and it reads really well. Happy to see more work from this author.
+Polish: The game is smooth and bug free
+Descriptiveness: Lovely writing, great characters.
-Interactivity: The puzzle structure didn't appeal to me as much as it could.
+Emotional impact: I was shocked when one of the guards (Spoiler - click to show)ripped up my permission slip.
-Would I play again? The story was satisfying on its first run, but I wasn't invested enough to go through and try another round.
A lengthy Lovecraftian game based on The Shadow over Innsmouth, October 11, 2020I'm a big fan of 'Lovecraftian' horror, (although I generally like the genre referred to that more than Lovecraft's work himself; I especially like The Willows, which I think was before him).
Lovecraftian horror is a major genre for parser games, including XYZZY- and IFComp-winning games: Anchorhead, Coloratura, Hunger Daemon, The King of Shreds and Patches, Cragne Manor, Theatre, Strange Geometries, The Lurking Horror, Slouching Towards Bedlam, Lydia's Heart. Outside of parser it still does well; I especially like Heart of the House and Fhtagn! - Tales of the Creeping Madness, Anya DeNiros' Feu de Joie series, and the Failbetter oeuvre.
So I approached this Lovecraftian Twine game with eager interest, especially given the extended length.
In this game, you are commissioned as a private detective to investigate the disappearance of her son. The missing young man has been spending too much time at Innsmouth, a city inhabited by strangely fishy people.
As I write this review, I looked up Innsmouth, and realized that most of the story elements of this game are borrowed from the story The Shadow Over Innsmouth (and I now see that was mentioned in the blurb). This actually relieves me, because I felt like parts of the game were echoing the worst part of Lovecraft. The man whom the adjective Lovecraftian was named after is not the best author in his own genre.
This game has a lot of great elements in it; it's smooth, looks good, the writing flows well line by line. But I have problems with the pacing and the interactivity.
First, the pacing. As the opening quote of the game makes clear, fear of the unknown is one of humanity's most primal fears. That's why Lovecraftian games thrive off of slow burn. Outside of maybe one initial bizarre event, most great Lovecraftian stories start with mundane but disturbing situations. Slowly, over time, more frightening (but still plausible) events occur until by the end you are confronted with horrifying unknowing realities.
This game spills the beans really early on, though. An intelligent, sane man explains all of the game's mysteries very early on, with no skepticism, and shows you an impossible artifact. There are no major revelations after that; everything in the game follows directly from his pronouncements.
Despite this, the game follows the usual tropes of the protagonist refusing to believe in the supernatural. Here's some text soon after those revelations:
(Spoiler - click to show)When this case began, you had no idea it would lead you to the old, decaying port town of Innsmouth. You didn’t even know the place existed. Now, the more you hear about it, the more you are filled with a sense of foreboding. It’s not that you believe the wild stories you’ve heard. People living on a razor’s edge of disaster are apt to fill the world with all kinds of fantastical tales and superstitions. But Professor Armitage’s words and seeing the Innsmouth tiara in person give you pause. Still, the world is filled with enough man-made nightmares; the supernatural needs not apply.
Despite the professor explicitly saying [spoiler]the townspeople breed with fish demons[/spoiler], the protagonist is stymied by a genealogy chart:
(Spoiler - click to show)His wife’s name is listed as Pht’thya-l’y, an odd name who’s ethnic origin you can’t place.
My second issue is the narrative structure. It's what Sam Kabo Ashwell calls the Gauntlet is his very good article on shapes of narrative games. Every optional choice is either wrong and leads to death (with an undo, thankfully) or right and progresses the story. There are usually few clues as to which one is the right answer, making it somewhat an exercise in frustration.
I think both of these issues come from adhering to closely to the original story. By having a plot that 'must happen' to match the story, it forces the gauntlet structure. To make sure the stories are connected, the author doles out information at weird times. I had the exact same issues when I adapted some Sherlock Holmes stories.
The very best parts are when the author goes out on his own. I would love to see a game that has a lot more of the author in it and a lot less Lovecraft. The whole story revolves around a sub-species of human that is less than human and is characterized by bulging eyes and flat noses, which definitely stems from Lovecraft's obsession with racial panic; and Lovecraft's treatment of the homeless man and his thick accent isn't my favorite.
So I definitely think this is an amazing author and programmer who made this, I just would prefer an original story and structure next time (and I hope there is a next time)!
+Polish: The game looks great, no bugs that I saw.
+Descriptiveness: The game goes into significant detail about objects and people.
-Interactivity: The gauntlet structure didn't really work for me.
-Emotional impact: The early reveals spoiled a lot of the emotional oomph for me.
-Would I play again? Since there's only one main path, I don't think there's a lot of replay value.
A story about four family members in 1920's catalan, October 10, 2020This is a game about horrible people. It reminds me of a lot of depressing literature, like Six Characters in Search of an Author or Ethan Frome or other books about a collection of bad people gone wrong.
This game is about a family of four, all of which you take turn controlling, and their house and its environs, a map that stays static throughout the game. Each of you has your vices: the father likes lusty young boys, the mother as well; the son spends time with violent anarchists, while the daughter is a haunted by a ghost from the past.
I like hope in my reading, and that’s one reason why Verdi was never my favorite composer. He once said that he wrote operas to convince others of the impossibility of human happiness.
Narratively, this game is strong. The storylines weave together well and the writing is coherent and vivid. Visually, I found the game pretty hard to look at, like tomato soup with basil floating in it.
The game reminds me quite a bit of Pseudavid’s popular The Master of the Land.
In any case, this is an impressive piece of work and good writing. It was interesting to meet Marcel Proust, even if it was in rather indecent circumstances.
+Polish: Very smooth.
+Descriptiveness: The writing was very clear and descriptive.
+Interactivity: I felt like my choices had strong consequences.
+Emotional impact: It was good at making me feel bad, I suppose.
-Would I play again? Not my cup of tea.
A classic-style RPG made in Twine, October 10, 2020This game is a classic RPG scenario. You arrive in a town cursed by darkness, get a quest at a tavern, level up by killing some mobs and getting gear, then take on the big bad.
There have been a lot of attempts at putting quality RPGs in IFComp (and there are several good ones this year, too). This one’s pretty good: lots of non-combat exploration and puzzles, some fun text effects and an interesting backstory.
On the other hand, it could use some spellchecking. One thing you can do in Twine is go to the menu where you can ‘publish to file’ and right above that is ‘view proofing copy’. That gives you an easy-to-read version you can put into grammarly to correct most errors.
Overall, this was pretty fun, but I feel like it could have used something to set it apart from other RPGs more.
-Polish: Could use some fixes to spelling and grammar
+Descriptiveness: The jokes are pretty good in this game.
+Interactivity: It's not groundbreaking, but it doesn't have to be for me to have a good time.
-Emotional Impact: I didn't feel very invested in the storyline.
+Would I play again? I might seek it out later on.
A charming and polished about the village idiot doing quests, October 9, 2020I beta tested this game several times.
First Inform games tend to have a lot of issues from authors not realizing Inform's quirks (like forgetting to describe things or making them portable). Lance Campbell manages to avoid those problems here and make a smooth and interesting parser game.
You play as the village idiot who's out of a job. You head back to the farm you live at and try to find useful things to do around the farm, including dealing with the mutated squirrels you accidentally unleashed earlier.
The writing is pleasant and funny, with what I think of as 'dad humor'. The puzzles are well-constructed, with some animal-based conversation puzzles and some construction problems. While testing, I had some difficulty at times knowing what to do, but the game has numerous hints and a walkthrough that makes it pretty accessible. I had fun testing this.
+Polish: The game is pretty smooth.
+Descriptiveness: It has a definite writing voice.
+Interactivity: The animal puzzles are pretty fun.
+Emotional impact: The game is funny.
-Would I play again? After extensive testing, I think I'm done with this. But if I revisit this in future years I'll change this point!
A well-written longish Twine game about two enemies collaborating, October 8, 2020So the author of this game (I had wondered if there were several, but there seems to be one main author with some help from Norbez) has been advertising this on Twine for quite some Twine, and I was interested to see how it would come it.
Story-wise, this is one of the stronger games in the competition. There’s a delightful tension between the two protagonists (you get to play both): a hero named Lightbearer, middle-aged and with the ability to control energy; and Promethium, a villain who creates synthetic humanoids.
The story takes you through a strange situation where the two of you must work together for each other’s good. I found the writing and storytelling to be witty. Lightbearer is fairly generic as a hero, but interesting as a person. I wondered if Promethium was coded as autistic (reacts poorly to sensory stimuli, has a specific soothing sensory experience, and, as we later discover, ).
The graphics and styling are very nice.
Interactivity-wise, I went back and forth on my feelings. It’s the same kind of model as the successful game Dull Grey from last year, where you make the same choice over and over again leading to a final ending (although I don’t think there are any Dull Grey-style secret endings here). I think that works fairly good here, but I think there’s not very much reason in-game to pursue the ‘be mean’ options.
That’s something I’ve thought a lot about while playing Choice of Games titles this summer. Several of them offer ‘mean paths’, but it’s best when they’re strongly motivated. For instance, in Champion of the Gods, it’s okay if you are wild and kill everyone on site because the Gods commend you and the people around you are glad to be protected. It’s also okay to spare the enemies because the Gods are cruel.
But in this game it just seems set up to always pick the same choice. I’ll go back and try another run. Overall though, the story was great, and I’d definitely be eager to see a new Storysinger Presents game in the future.
+Polish: Very smooth and nice
+Descriptiveness: Loved the writing in this one.
-Interactivity: I felt like my choices could have used a little more oomph.
+Emotional Impact: Yeah, I was definitely curious about the big mysteries.
+Would I play again? I could see me coming back to this in the future.
A short jungle-raiding classic-style adventure, October 8, 2020This game is another parser game (like Elsegar I) that is simple and spare in writing, with a small number of locations, each with one task to do, and generally written in an older-school style. If anything, it reminds me of the older adventures JCompton has been putting on IFDB recently. I will say that it has less empty rooms and significantly more complex puzzles and interactions than Elsegar I.
In this game, you play an Indiana Jones-like adventurer (complete with bullwhip and fedora) that must find the Golden Egg of Man-Toomba, Along the way, you meet a jungle tribe, consult your journal, and interact with several animals.
The puzzles were interesting, but I had some trouble with guessing the verb (for instance, figuring out what to do (Spoiler - click to show)when climbing up the tree or interacting with the sun stone in the temple).
There are several beta testers listed, which is likely why this game runs smoothly in general. The hint system makes winning a lot easier, too. I guess that (like my own game) I feel like this game could be significantly expanded in scope, and maybe give a bit more direction. Otherwise, it was a smooth play.
As a final note, raiding jungle tombs doesn’t feel quite as fun anymore since someone pointed out to me online that ‘jungle tribes’ are just people of a different culture and we’re just taking our stuff. It’s kind of like playing a game where you’re a Nepali breaking into Notre Dame to steal a gilded crucifix. But I was happy that you have to pay the tribe for their skilled services in this game.
+Polish: In what it does, it does pretty well. I'll leave the synonyms to my Interactivity criterion.
-Descriptiveness: The writing seemed a little flat to me.
-Emotional impact: I didn't feel invested emotionally in the game.
-Interactivity: It was hard to know what commands to type even when I knew how to solve the puzzle.
+Would I play again? It's short enough and responsive enough that I wouldn't mind taking it for another spin.
A Unity game with good graphics and UI about a threat in space, October 8, 2020This game is written in unity, and, unlike most IF games written in unity in past years, it actually makes good use of the processor-intensive engine.
It’s a very slick design with hover-over links and a sidebar of choices. The art on this game is great; my son kept popping up by my computer to look at it.
It uses slow text, which is fine in a short game but really not that fine in a long game. Fortunately, you can click to speed it up at least a little faster.
In this game, you are a famous governmental figure in a space coalition between various races. You are known for having caused the death of a cat-like alien years ago, and now you are threatened by the repercussions of that. The different alien cultures are distinct and well-drawn.
It’s hard to know how your choices affect the story. The game never really settled down into a rhythm or gave hints about its length, or provided saves, so I was just kind of flying blind. In the ending I received, there were several loose threads, which makes me believe that the game has multiple paths and significant branching.
The art and UI programming were excellent, and the actual story were excellent, but I wonder if they worked at cross purposes at times. I guess it was the slow text that really inhibited this for me; I think the intent is to get people to read slow, but I have a reading pattern where I look over the whole page, planning which segments to focus on and then moving in. I read non-linearly, I guess I’m trying to say, and slow text really messes that up for me. And what’s the purpose of it? To make sure people don’t miss your text? The best way to do that is just to write only what’s essential. Clicking helped but was still fairly slow.
This is a great team, though. I could definitely see all 3 of them working for AAA if that’s something they were interested in.
+Polish: Very polished.
+Descriptive: Writing was great, not gonna lie.
-Interactivity: I couldn't figure out how to strategize or immerse myself in character, and either would have been fine.
-Emotional Impact: I felt an emotional distance from the character, and the stakes felt low emotionally, due to my issues with interactivity.
+Would I play again? I'd like to see more endings.
Two teenagers trying to connect through an old digital game, October 5, 2020So I tested this game for the competition.
Like Accelerate earlier, this choice-based game has a lot of visual and audio detail.
When I first tested it, I was struck by the cute neopets-esque game graphics that it contains. But playing the full version, I was blown away by the voice acting. Great audio quality, believable voice, better than most podcasts I’ve listened to. Very impressive, and helps make the animations more cinematic.
I had a bit of trouble with my eagerness causing me to scroll quickly, while many of the animations reload the page. But that was minor.
The story is a long-term (as in 10 year) relationship with a friend on Neopets. You both experience marginalization by your classmates and you struggle with your relationship with your parents. There are hints throughout the game, but it’s later revealed that a major theme of this game is .
The writing is sharp and on-point; the chat feels real to me, and the pacing is good. Bez has put a lot of work into improving games and pushing boundaries over the last few years and it’s really paid off.
Check the content warnings for the game ahead of time.
+Polish: The animations could be smoother, but that's a small thing when the voice and art are so good.
+Interactivity: I've played it several different ways and it feels fairly responsive.
+Descriptiveness: I feel like I'm there when I read it.
+Emotional impact: Definitely feel it. On my 'be mean to stairs but not so much the game ends early' run I felt sick in my stomach when being mean.
+Would I play again? I've played it three times, so yeah.
A smooth and polished game exploring an odd medieval city, October 5, 2020Josh Labelle is a fairly well-known professional narrative designer, so I was interested to see how this game turned out. Skills developed working in a team on graphical projects don't always translate to solo text works and vice versa, so I figured it could go either way.
For me, I find this very successful. I have a soft spot for dungeon crawls and western RPGs (I enjoyed the parser game Heroes and the Choicescript series Hero of Kendrickstone better than most reviewers on average), and this game satisfies that.
It's very polished, with slick menus and nice highlighting and color use. I wasn't even sure it was Twine until I opened the file.
You play as one member of a team of three who has been assigned to kill a dragon then return to town. But once you get back, you have trouble finding where to claim your reward.
There are some complicated stats. It does fall a little bit into the Choicescript meme where you pick one of 3-4 skills and just max it out the whole time, and there's no reason not to accept most side quests; both these options make strategy a little less well-developed. On the other hand, the relationships with your partners and your decisions with the enemies (like the dragon and your employer) have more long term consequences (and many side quests have meaningful ending decisions that last even until the end credits).
Writing, setting and story are all high quality, with huge variety between the taverns in the game and several plot twists. Overall, I think this will do pretty good in the comp; if anything limits its appeal, it might be that traditional RPGs have been considered overplayed in IFComp in the past. It'll be interesting to see where this places. I consider it one of the better games I've played so far.
+Polish: Very polished, smooth, well-designed.
+Interactivity: Even lets you pick how much of the game you want to interact with, by making a lot optional.
+Descriptiveness: The variety in the bars was strong.
+Emotional impact: Suspenseful and funny.
+Would I play again? Yes.
A puzzle-based choice game with interesting mechanic, October 3, 2020This game was interesting, and I think it shows a lot of promise for the future.
In this game, you wake up in an office building that seems fairly destroyed and embark on a search and rescue mission. It was quite a surprise when I discovered that (Spoiler - click to show) someone had taken all my fingers!
The map consists of two floors (for most of the game) with several rooms, each room containing various objects. As you explore the map, you find more of your (Spoiler - click to show)fingers, which gives you greater access to other things.
The UI was smooth and the writing was good. The puzzle structure was a little constrained, though. At most points in the game, it seemed like there was only one course of action possible at a time, so I spent most of the game 'lawnmowering' through choices (trying every possible action over and over). I think that allowing a bit more nonlinearity would make this an awesome puzzle game, and so I'd definitely look forward to anything else the author puts out.
+Polish: Smooth and perfect.
+Descriptiveness: The writing had some pretty clever moments for me.
-Interactivity: The linearity of the puzzles felt constrained to me.
-Emotional impact: Because I was repeating options so often, they lost a bit of their impact.
+Would I play again? I think I would, yeah.
A funny TADS game about summoning a demon for your boss, October 3, 2020This game is related to or part of a school project, which kind of setup hasn't made super successful games in the past (I've run some game camps, and long games take a ton of time; a polished IFComp game is about the same work as a Master's thesis and less like a semester project).
This one manages to be better than most, although it still has some rough edges.
Each of the people who worked on the game had successes. The art for the cover is done well; the writing has very funny moments; and the programming handles some pretty tricky material and multiple solutions to most puzzles.
In this game you play as a young member of a cult who has a very funny reaction to being a parser game PC. Your cult leader wants you to summon a demon, who turns out to be a real mild fellow. Shenanigans ensue.
The weak spots are evident in the game, too. The only file available in the download is a compiled executable for 3 platforms with no t3 file. Some of the conversation feels off (in general, reading your dialogue out loud can help make it stronger). You can't leave your leader's room early on until you ask him certain topics, but there is no TOPICS command or other way I found to remember what you need to do.
All of this can be fixed by general experience and maybe getting a few more beta testers that have experience testing comp games. But I think this is the best school-related IFComp game that I can remember playing, and I'd be pleased to see more from these authors.
-Polish: Could use more polish.
-Descriptiveness: Pretty good, but overall could use some more variety and colorful details.
+Emotional Impact: I found this funny
+Would I play again? Has plenty of replay value.
+Interactivity: Outside of the polish issues, the stuff you had to do made sense. The summoning ritual was very good.
Compact Quest game about exploring a tomb, with timed events, October 2, 2020**Tombs and Mummies by Matthew Warner**
People named Matt W have been doing good work in the math world for a while, including Matt Weiner (mod for this website) and Matt Wigdahl (author of IFComp-winning Aotearoa); so I was looking forward to this game.
This is a quest game and is online-only (you might be able to download an offline copy from textadventures.co.uk, but the download button on the ifcomp page just links to the website). It does not allow undo, has timed events, and if you leave it alone for 5 minutes, it will kick you out and lose your progress.
Fortunately, the game map is compact and the actual solution requires about 20 moves (mostly directions), so if you lose everything you're not set too far behind.
About half of the things you see in the games are traps, and unhelpful, and the rest are useful. Some are both (like the hint machine that hurts you while hinting).
The images, taken from ancient Egyptian art, were lovely, and the puzzles weren't unfairly difficult. I'm glad I'm played it.
+Polish: Nice images, well-thought out design and item placement and responses
+Descriptiveness: The game was very vivid to me.
-Interactivity: The above mentioned troubles with timing out and active events weren't too bad but enough that it impacted my enjoyablity
+Emotional impact: I felt a sense of adventure
+Would I play again: Maybe I would.
A science experiment in the wasteland, September 23, 2020This one is an interesting game that shows a lot of promise, but has a lot of little details that can make for a frustrating experience. With a few tweaks, it could work pretty well. I'd love to see a longer game from this author with a long period of testing entered into IFComp or Spring Thing one year.
You play as a plant geneticist who has survived an apocalypse. You must keep your little garden of food safe, feed yourself and create hybrid plants. There are 4-5 days of gameplay with time tracked.
The programming here is impressive, from the time tracking to the puzzles involving three nouns at once. But a lot of ground level work is missing, the kind of thing that generally comes with experience or exhaustive beta testing.
Here are my scoring criteria:
+Polish. The game is technologically impressive, with complicated puzzles, active animals, a time system, etc.
-Interactivity. The game lacked exit descriptions in important areas, and some interactions were 'fiddly'. (For instance, to drink water, you must 'drink canteen'. DRINK WATER instead results in 'The Canteen is not open.', since the water is modeled as an object inside the closed canteen.'
+Descriptiveness. The writing is spare at times, but so is the setting. And the author put a lot of effort into backstory and thoughts in 'the wilderness'. I think the writing is good for a parser game, and will only improve with time.
-Emotional impact. The fiddliness of the interactions kept me at a distance from the game. Had the background actions been smoother, I think the feelings would be stronger.
-Would I play again? It was fun to see everything possible, but the difficulties made me loathe to return and tinker around.
The author's other game (The Gateway of the Ferrets) has the same kind of complicated game techniques but adds some cute ferrets that amplify my enjoyment of the game. It's worth checking out!
Edit: The interactivity and polish have increased since I wrote this, so I've revised my score accordingly!
Emily Short's first public game, September 21, 2020This game was announced as uploaded to the IF Archive on February 15, 2000, before Galatea. You play as a pilgrim who falls through some leaves into an ancient shrine. There are three rooms.
It was a proof of concept game. As such, it has some details implemented amazingly well, and others not implemented at all.
For instance, every object is marked as flammable or not; as cuttable or not; etc. but many objects listed in room descriptions are not implemented and reasonable synonyms (such as 'cookies' for 'packet of cookies') are not implemented.
Things this game models include:
-breakability
-flammability
-visibility/lighting and taking pictures
-shaking
-wearing a variety of things
I've played this game a few times over the years, and never got as far as I did today. For posterity, here are a few things that are interesting to do (spoils everything I found):
(Spoiler - click to show)
-SHOOT something (takes a pictures)
-BURN something WITH LIGHTER
-TURN ON LIGHTER before going into other rooms
-WEAR SKULL
-BREAK DEMIJOHN WITH METAL BOX
-CUT CHEST WITH SAW
-BREAK JAR (and look at your inventory!)
-CUT things WITH SHEARS (and repeating it)
-LOOK UNDER ALTAR
-X PANELS in altar room
-BREAK PANEL WITH METAL BOX
-ENTER PANEL or HOLE (can't remember which)
Things I haven't done:
-unlocked the metal box
-found the crayon
As for a rating:
-Polish: Half polished perfectly, half terribly.
+Descriptiveness: Lots of nice extra details. Very vivid, similar to later work.
-Interactivity: Very janky. This was created to demonstrate simulations of various physical attributes, and not to be a smooth game.
+Emotional impact: Despite its numerous frustrations, or perhaps because of it, the game has always held a certain mystery for me. There's just so much to find, and its rewarding. Kind of like So Far, which had a similar impression of there always being one more thing to find.
+Would I play again? I've visited this game several times over a few years' span.
I honestly have no clue what I just played. Gangster horror?, September 19, 2020This game is completely off the rails. It started out as weird, segued to somewhat offensive, and then just took off into a bizarre void that somehow improved it.
The main character in this game is perhaps the most despicable MC in any Choice of Games entry I've played. You are a 'headcrusher', a violent enforcer for a local mob boss, and you're famous for torturing and killing people with a jagged, rusty knife. You are in love with your boss's wife and have been given a suicide mission to rescue her within 6 hours.
Now, I have no problem with aggressive protagonists. I've enjoyed taking over Alaska with a robot horde in Choice of Robots and being a slaughtering warrior hero for the Gods in Champion of the Gods.
But both of those games motivated the evil or violence. Before I played NOLA is Burning, I started compiling a list of what I think works and doesn't in Choicescript games, and having a motive for violence is one of them.
This game just kind of throws you out there. I don't know, it didn't really work for me.
Each chapter is a different step on your way to your final confrontation. You pass through an area with friends who practice Vodou, the turf of an Asian gang led by 'The Dragon', the local police precinct, and a strip club.
The game heavily uses slang, such as 'juice' for money and 'large' for (I think?) lump sums of $10,000 each. It uses phrases like 'Let's blow this popsicle stand' and 'hip to my jive'.
No other Choicescript game treats its main character so bad. You're constantly being betrayed or degraded or having body parts deeply injured or removed or having weird stuff shoved down your throat.
It's last few chapters took all this bizarre confusion and made it almost sublimely ridiculous. I had the honor of (Spoiler - click to show)losing my right arm, being possess by a Vodou loa and gaining a bionic bone-shooting arm, confronting the mob boss who was naked and wearing a baby's bonnet in a bathtub full of money before being lured by him into a room filled with robotic spiders.
The only game I've ever seen that can compare with the circus this puts on is Bolivia By Night, which has a memorable segment where you drive an armored hottub that is powered by a DVD from a South American knockoff of the Olsen Twins.
Ooh, boy. I told myself I'd never rate a Choice of Games article below four stars because 1. I love choice of games titles, 2. I wrote one and know how it feels to spend months or years of your life on these things, and 3. they've all gone through a lengthy review process and are generally polished.
So I'm just going to go through my rating system blindly and see where I end up.
+Polish. This game felt completely smooth mechanics-wise. No problems here, no typos.
+Descriptiveness. It had it in spades, often to my regret.
+Emotional impact. Yes, again by the above.
-Interactivity. I felt like the stats were confusing and didn't add up quite right.
+Would I play again? From seeing some others' comments, there's parts I definitely would want to see.
So 4 stars. You know, I almost gave it a point for interactivity anyway because I felt like I had real agency, but I honestly can't recommend this game to people in general, which is what I believe a 5 star review represents. I did not enjoy this game in the sense that its scenes filled me with delight. But as a critic I find it fascinating. I would recommend it to people who are into seeing the weird corners of company back catalogs and other obscure things.
The writer is definitely talented, they just use that talent in ways that give me discomfort, much like the opening scene of this game where I had to chug a bottle of Pepto Bismol after waking up in a dumpster.
I received a review copy of this game.
Gorgeous graphics in an examine-centered game, September 18, 2020Text-based games are so interesting because they get reinvented and renewed and spring up in different communities over time. Some groups have been making Inform-like games ever since Inform went out of business, while some have recently reconstructed and reimagined Magnetic Scrolls and Level 9 style games for nostalgia's sakes, and others still have made text adventures based off of popular culture's depiction of text adventures in TV, webcomics and film.
So this Adventuron game seems firmly in the retro/nostalgia camp, with chunk text and old-style cursor together with beautiful pixel art. Unlike the Inform 5/6/7 stream of games, the emphasis here is less on exhaustive smoothness or synonyms and more on having a small set of commands to work with.
In particular, the main commands you use are LOOK and GET. While there aren't traditional puzzles, there are puzzles similar to those in Lime Ergot and other games where you have to examine something then a detail of something. It also tracks state from room to room, so LOOKing in one room can affect a LOOK in another room.
The story is about gathering mushrooms for a stew of differing amounts of lethality. There are 10 mushrooms to find. Before getting hints, I had only found 4 mushrooms and had no clue how to get more.
Here's my rating:
+Polish: For what it's trying to be (a speed-jam retro adventure) it is very well polished, with perfectly-fitting graphics and a lot of hidden nuggets.
+Descriptiveness: The mental images the game gives are very vivid, especially of the mushrooms, which aren't pictured in the art. The smells were described very well, too.
-Interactivity. The play style didn't gel well with me. Most of my experience involved error messages, and the central puzzle for unlocking more content (finding (Spoiler - click to show)the shears) was a puzzle where I definitely knew what I had to do but didn't know how to type it/bring it about.
+Would I play it again? I've already played it several times.
+Emotional impact: I've gone back and forth on this. I can confidently say, though, that it is charming, and that's a good emotion.
This game has been nominated in the XYZZY awards for Best Use of Multimedia.
A fun little game with a complicated device and two NPCs to control, September 15, 2020This parser game was made as part of last year's advent calendar.
It centers around a mysterious sort of room, inspired by Planescape and Land of the Lost but also reminiscent of Myst-like games and machines.
You have a pedestal with all sorts of doodads and contraptions. To get them to work, you need the help of two ferrets of varying talents.
The overall puzzle took me a while to puzzle out, and I was very happy to get the solution in a flash, but I was stumped before that.
The ferrets are cute and have nice little narrative touches, one of the highlights of the game.
The game only needs polishing to be great. A few things that could use improvement:
-The game starts with a wide open state space but only one thing advances the puzzle. I didn't notice that thing because (Spoiler - click to show)it requires examining the gateway and I had spent my first minutes exploring the device and trying to play with ferrets.
-Some actions can be difficult to phrase. In particular, instructing the ferrets to go to specific platforms was quite tricky for me to get (I tried climb to platform, go to platform, go up, etc. before hitting on the correct (Spoiler - click to show)climb mesh and (Spoiler - click to show)jump to w/e commands)
Those frustrations are mostly what made me feel the interactivity and polish could use some tweaking. But as a 'figure out this device puzzle', which I enjoy and I know quite a few others do, I would recommend this.
Congressional campaign manager sim/werewolf rights, September 13, 2020So this game is better, I think, than its steam reviews would suggest. A few people seemed to have bombed its reviews over there. But its not perfect.
The writing in this game is descriptive, and I could picture all the characters clearly. You play as an aid to one of 4 different congressional candidates. Unlike other games that play it a bit safer, this one uses real life US parties (Republican and Democrat). It doesn't seem extremely biased one way or another; someone mentioned the game as treating Republicans as 'evil' but I chose a Republican millionaire and the game seemed just fine with that choice.
In this game, similar to Werewolves: Haven Rising, werewolves have been around for a while and are subject to harsh restrictions on their freedom.
The main threads of the game are:
-Deciding to do a dirty or fair campaign fight
-Making a decision about how you feel about werewolves
-Dealing with the aftereffects of a grisly murder
-Running a monthly budget
Someone said on Steam that the game seemed to assume a female protagonist. You can choose your gender, but some scenes in the game do feel written for a female protagonist in mind. For instance, there is a frightening scene where the protagonist (major spoilers for the middle of the game) (Spoiler - click to show)is being followed on a dark street alone at night, and is attacked in an alley by a werewolf, and is worried for about a month afterwards so it can see if they turn into a werewolf at the next full moon. Its easy to see this as an analogy for (Spoiler - click to show)rape and possible pregnancy, and that's not a theme that's very common in other media (except for the (Spoiler - click to show)Alien series). But it worked for me, and I don't see it as a drawback.
The biggest drawback I do see is that the narrative arc is relatively flat. I didn't feel a real build-up in tension in any of the main plotlines, although there was some there. The overall writing level was great, though, and I felt like my decisions definitely mattered. I wouldn't hesitate to recommend this to fans of werewolves, political games, or simulation text games.
I received a review copy of this game.
A deep dive into the worldbuilding of Tekumel that is cut short, September 4, 2020This game is based on the world of Tekumel, a world setting almost as complex (or more) than Middle Earth and created starting in the 40's by M. A. R. Barker.
This game uses this setting well, but relies on prior knowledge of it or the desire to read several pages of backstory in the stats screen. I had that desire, so it was okay.
It's a lush world that incentivizes you to act violent, proud, sensual, etc. It's very interesting, and it leads to an exciting underground adventure.
And then, it stops. I thought I'd have quite a bit left to play, but it ends at what I thought would be the midpoint of the game. There are several pages of epilogue, but I felt like the overall narrative arc wasn't satisfying. It doesn't have to be longer, but the plot threads that are given prominence should, I feel, occupy more time.
I enjoyed it, regardless, and would recommend it to people who want to see if Tekumel and its novels and RPG settings are worth reading. It's made me think about reading them.
A great medieval/fairy game sandwiched between two disappointing chapters, August 25, 2020I had trouble starting this game. It begins with a story about you, a squire, helping your lady chase down a rogue baron who may have kidnapped the prince. I found this chapter very lacking, for my tastes one of the most difficult opening chapters of a Choicescript game to get through. Choices were confusing, there were a lot of stats but very few points to go around (my largest stat was a 29 at the beginning, which in most Choicescript games represents dismal failure), and the story seemed fairly dry.
But the middle part of the game was very good for my personal tastes. I love games about the Fae or the fairy world, and much of the game revolves around attending a fair and a tournament. The fair has plausible deniablity with magical involvement, such as a tent that looks suspiciously like a giant flower.
In the path I chose, I ended up in a faery land, and found that part very enjoyable. I left with a strong assurance that I would somehow return.
But the last chapter all built up to a final choice, and I failed that final choice. I didn't die, but apparently I lived a sad life and never had any connection to the faery world again, which seemed a direct contradiction to the earlier paths.
I may need to play again, but I found the last chapter a bit lacking. And as for the first one, I wonder more and more as I play through the Choice of Games catalog whether authors should write the first chapter last, using a small set of 'preset' stats and names for a placeholder for placetesting until the very end. So many Choice of Games titles (pretty much all the ones I've given 4 stars) have mediocre opening chapters but satisfying mid-games. I think that you really get to know your characters and world as you write a game like this, and that you tend to grow as an author as you write. This game has the second-lowest rating on the Apple omnibus app, and I think its opening has a great deal to do with that.
I received a review copy of this game.
A (purposely) ridiculous game about commanding a horde of zombies, August 23, 2020This is a game I went back and forth on for a score (between 4 and 5) for a while.
It's different than most other Choicescript games, but, in common with Gavin's other game, For Rent: Haunted House, it has a very, very small number of stats. There seems to be very few ways to tell what, if anything, your stats are used for and what effects them. There is one point in the game where you can actually ask a banshee what the stats do, but that is only one option out of many, and I didn't try it as I had others I was more interested in.
Most of this game involves you commanding a group of zombies and skeletons (the numbers of which are tracked and change), and basically creating a ton of gore. A lot of intestines and decapitations and devouring.
The game is completely self-aware, and includes outrageous characters (like an romantic option who urges you to complete destruction, or a vampire). The opening is very different from the rest of the game and I would definitely recommend pushing past it.
'Winning' is hard; my run (and most people's I saw online) ended in arrest. Strategizing is difficult in a way that's not entirely fun, and that's probably the biggest reason I'm going for a 4 instead of 5.
Strongly recommended for people that like parodies of horror movies, and there may be some overlap with fans of this game and fans of Robb Sherwinn games.
I received a review copy of this game.
A purely strategic Choicescript game set in space, August 11, 2020This is a Choicescript game which feels like a streamlined, story-fied text version of some war game like Alpha Centauri or one of those boxed set tabletop games with hex maps (but only in spirit; it's shorter and more linear than those games).
You have stats like energy reserves, fighter pilot strength and fighter pilot numbers, etc. There is no romance at all, and all of your decisions are on how to manage your fleet, its strengths and its political positions.
I enjoy simulation games, but this one had a few flaws that prevented total enjoyment. I had trouble deciphering why some of my actions led to some of my skill changes. One complaint I've had with a few Choicescript games is that it can be difficult to tell when your stats are being tested vs when they are being changed.
Another issue is the lack of narrative surprises. For me at least, everything was telegraphed from very early on and never really changed. I read something about tips for writing heist movies and novels once that I think applies here. Paraphrased, it said, "Either the audience knows the plan ahead of time or the plan works perfectly, but never both at once." There just wasn't enough dramatic tension.
Fortunately, the strategic elements were engaging and well-thought out. Overall, worth playing if you know what kind of game you're getting into and enjoy that genre.
I received a review copy of this game.
A Choicescript game that really gels together. Lots of action, power fantasy, August 10, 2020This is the 'old school' Choicescript at its best, like Choice of the Dragon. This is a power fantasy stretching over decades from your time as a student to (in my game) your final question to the legendary Dragon Sage.
The game is set in a fantasy version of China. The author is a blackbelt in Shaolin Kempo Karate. I wondered about cultural appropriation a bit, but the game turned that on its head near the end in an enjoyable way.
You have quite a few stats, and you can get them very high. Following your stats lets you win several fights. There are other challenges where you need to play to your strengths, but I found that consistent roleplaying let me solve these challenges the 'right' way every time, as opposed to a lot of other games I've seen where you have to just guess what the author's thinking.
There were several romantic options in this game, but I didn't have spend much time with them, as I chose an arranged marriage and devoted most of my time to monkly things.
The game isn't super long but it felt like a complete story arc with a significant investment in the overall story. I look forward to reading the other games by the same author.
I received a review copy of this game.
An amusing shorter sarcastic haunted house game, August 9, 2020Choice of Games started with Choice of the Dragon, which was a great game but pretty short at 30K words. From there, it's grown to where there are now games over 1 million words long. In the last year or two, though, they've commissioned two shorter games as a sort of free sample for their omnibus app (those games are Sky Pirates of Actorius and Zip! Speedster of Valiant City).
Besides those three games, this is the shortest among all Choice of Games titles at 56K words. It's also one of the earliest, the 6th game ever made.
I think it suffers a bit from early experimentation, which produced some amazing games and some that were more lessons for the future.
This is a very funny game, don't get me wrong. I enjoyed trying to keep my tenants from demonic rituals or getting possessed. But some parts really show their age.
For instance, there are only three main stats in the game: one relationship stat (with your boss, non-romantic), your Ruthlessness, and your Activity level. These, along with your income and work-life balance, are the only things visibly tracked by the game.
This hampered the classic Choice of Games scenario where you can strategize your statistics, making difficult choices between them. Instead, it felt more like a branch-and-bottleneck twine game, with exploration and trying to find 'the right option' in each case. Those things aren't bad, but it's not what I was hoping for here.
Also, the story kind of puts a snarky and competitive viewpoint on you, and I wish I had an option to choose not to be like that. But those kinds of options are the things that make games longer, and again, this is one of the shortest.
Gavin makes great games in general, though. He's written several Exceptional Stories for Fallen London and Hana Feels is one of my favorite hyperlink games, and one that's touched a lot of people.
I received a review copy of this game.
A space-based pirate game with odd logic and math puzzles, August 8, 2020This game has some very unusual features for a Choicescript game. But I'll get to those in a second.
Like Treasure Seekers of the Lady Luck, this is a Choice of Games title where you find yourself abducted by alien pirates, met with a few friendly faces and others out to get you, inducted into the party, and sent on a heist. Both are named after the ship you find yourself on.
This one is a bit shorter, with 6 chapters to play through that go by relatively quickly. There is one romance, as far as I can determine, and one major mission you go on.
As opposed to Treasure Seekers of Lady Luck, which had a crew of very diverse aliens, this game has humans (mostly), making it a bit harder to differentiate between the crew members.
As for the odd features, I had a feeling when I was playing at first that the game was intended as some kind of intelligent test. It had a lot of pass/fail logic and math puzzles at the beginning, and it included math conversations that (as a math professor) I felt were worded in intentionally confusing ways.
To my surprise, in a later chapter, you actually do take an intelligence test, quite a long one as well. It was pretty frustrating to work through and get every question right only to be stymied by a low relationship check later on with the person I'd spent the most time with.
There were a few stray coding oddities (I received an achievment twice, and the Choicescript code for your significant other was left as {so} instead of ${so} at one point, so it displayed incorrectly). But the intelligence puzzles were technically impressive, and I could see several people purposely seeking out this game as perhaps the most puzzle-heavy 'official' Choicescript game I've played. (The Race is a Hosted Game, meaning it wasn't vetted through the long Choicescript process, but it also contains numerous puzzles).
A Celtic-centered retelling of the legend of King Arthur, August 7, 2020This story had me in the beginning and slowly lost me over time. I was pleased with the overall result, but it didn't have staying power for me.
To begin with, this game was all the Arthurian characters, but with Welsh names, like Bedwyr for Bedivere and Emrys for Merlin.
Also, for the first half of the game, it seems like a non-fantasy, more realistic version of King Arthur, with Merlin being basically just a Roman-educated scholar and troublemaker and the Sword in the Stone just being a symbolic trophy laid on a table.
It offers you romance early on, and has some good stat variability (I put all my stats in Violence, Bravado, and Christianity/Rome).
But all of that changes in the later part of the game. I encountered only a few romance options, and the realism took a sharp left turn into (Spoiler - click to show)wolf-demons and spirits, and somehow all of my stats got cancelled out into one big neutral mess, all almost exactly in the middle. I've never had that happen in a Choicescript game before; I'm certain it was from my own actions, but it was very odd.
The game has a lot of good features, such as the distinctive Celtic feel and a habit of doing omniscient narrator sections in italics.
I received a review copy of this game.
A choicescript game heavy on history and consequences, August 6, 2020I've been approaching this game and review with some trepidation. I've known Joey Jones for quite some time and admired his work (including the excellent Sub Rosa and the short but sweet Andromeda Dreaming). I was also aware that this game, like my own, was shorter and less-discussed in the forums and reviews than many recent Choicescript games. I was worried about writing a negative review for a game that took a great deal of effort from someone I respect.
I was pleasantly surprised by this game, though. I think I understand why it's less talked of by the fanbase. The best-selling Choicescript games are decadent games where there are no wrong choices and no consequences, power is yours to grab, a half-dozen people are interested in you romantically, and ultimately you have power over everything. These games aren't bad, but they have common themes.
This game goes against almost all of those things. You are essentially a bounty hunter in a grim London. You have very little money (or a lot of debt). You are frequently powerless. Romance is scarce. Each attempt at solving (or committing) a crime has a high chance of failure, and often there is only one right path to victory in a given situation. Your actions often lead to brutal deaths, and there are grim reminders of the harsh conditions of 18th century London everywhere.
But I found those same features intriguing, especially after playing a few silly-hijinks games in a row. The writing is historical and ornate, like water from an oaken bucket. The setting and language are meticulously researched, as is the money system and the kinds of people involved.
It's a fast-paced game. There are 11 chapters, I believe, but they went by quickly for me. However, this game has more replay value than most, due to its difficult puzzles. The fairness of these puzzles is a bit in question; could someone solve them without any prior knowledge? Some of them I did, but not others.
The most enjoyable part of my playthrough was freeing ten people from prison to join my gang, and learning their backstories. The most disturbing part of my playthrough was trying to decide whether to help the family of a condemned man to kill him faster or not to end his suffering.
I received a review copy of this game.
The second Choicescript game ever: grand adventure on the high seas, August 1, 2020Now that I've played several of the very early Choicescript games, I can see a bit more of a pattern. They are all very adventurous, leaning heavily into the TTRPG/gamebook style of one encounter after another. They tend to have the narrator comment on your actions, are quite a bit shorter than later choicescript games.
That can work well; I really enjoy the fast-paced dramatic action in Choice of the Dragon, and the first third of Choice of Romance (which was the only part initially available) is likewise a quick fun play.
This game didn't do it as much for me. But I've never really liked seafaring stories, besides Moby Dick (which was more of a whale encylopedia, which I am into). For some into Horatio Hornblower or the like, I think this would be amazing.
It has a fairly satisfying rival set up, providing the best moments of the game, and lot of action. There are 3 romances (you can't romance your rival, but there is quite a bit of underlying tension there).
Again, this is a great game, but it pales (to me) in comparison to some of the other great Choicescript games out there, many of them inspired by this one. It's kind of like Ditch Day Drifter, a game which kicked off the whole TADS movement but which was surpassed by its followups.
This game is also notable for letting you genderswap the entire world, making women the fierce and soldiery types of the world and men the gentle beaus at the ball.
I received a review copy of this game.
A straightforward heist game written in Choicescript, July 28, 2020This is the third Choicescript heist game I've played in the last week (the other two being The Martian Job and The Treasure Seekers of Lady Luck), so I can't help but compare them.
The Martian Job had the most memorable writing and setting of the bunch, with more emotional choices, while Lady Luck had more memorable characters and a zany atmosphere.
This game was just pure heist. You learn about the heist, you recruit your crew, you conduct the heist, you leave. There are a few twists, but they are mostly telegraphed, making them pleasant but not anxiety-inducing.
I'm a big fan of mysteries and crime, so I enjoyed this game, and found it polished. Most of the choices made sense, with a recurring choice of 'Sneaky, Brutal or Flashy' showing up, despite not mapping directly onto the choices. I think this helped in characterization.
I guess I didn't really connect with this game emotionally. My enjoyment was at arm's length. I am interested in playing it again, though, to get some of the more unusual acheivments.
A dreamlike and mystical game about music, rivalry, and land wars , July 27, 2020Rarely has a game given me more to think about. For the first time I can remember, I had to keep open a notebook on my thoughts for this review as I was writing, because there was so much I wanted to comment on.
This game felt surreal to me. Caleb Wilson is well-known for his haunting or magical games like Lime Ergot and Starry Seeksorrow. I was definitely looking forward to playing this, and it was one of the games IFDB had most suggested to me over the last few years.
The dreamlike quality pervades this piece. The other works of film or literature I compared it to as I played were Pilgrim's Progress, Dante's Inferno, the film The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, Amadeus, and the works of Baz Luhrmann. If it were produced as a film I'd expect it to look like The Cabinet of Dr. Calegari, and I wonder if the whole Choicescript game couldn't be reinterpreted as a mental exploration of the subconscious. A major feature of the game is numerous bright stages where you sit alone before a dark and murmuring audience in a towering theatre which features bizarre architecture.
As to the game itself, you are a famed composer and musician. This world is an alternate version of Europe, set after the exile of its version of Napoleon and on the eve of a war between Napoleon and Russia.
In this world, many people are possessed with a parasitic intelligence known as a Genius, which may or may not just be a feature of their subconscious. Your genius has various opposed qualities it can lean towards.
Each chapter is played in a different town, each of which is characterized by an abundance of one thing (and here I think of the works of Kafka [but more cheerful] and Michael Ende, although neither one exactly applies).
There are a cast of distinct characters who shadow you everywhere you go, including a rival, a journalist, several love interests, and quite a few spies.
The text of the game is so interesting. I have a whole file of the most dreamlike and surreal bits, but here is a taste:
(Spoiler - click to show)"You approach a glowing rectangle: the strangely small doorway that must open onto the concert stage. Perhaps it is just the peculiar atmosphere of the castle, but you feel oddly nervous. The room is awash in bright light and for a moment you can't see a thing. When your eyes adjust you find yourself standing at the back of the curiously small stage. The hall stretches away farther than the stage lights allow you to see. There is no applause to greet your appearance: half of the audience is staring at you in silence, while the others—clerks, to judge by appearance—are hard at work, pens scratching at ledgers. It seems that for much of the audience, this is a working lunch. There is a blurry square, lit by dim lights, to the side and high up the wall, which is concave like the inside of a spoon. King Ferenc's box, perhaps?"
and another one:
"An elegant woman dressed in black and purple is standing before a marble mantel. There is no fire, just a hint of ashes; instead she—"May I present," says Peruz, "Countess Zerov, an esteemed visitor from the court of Sclavia!"—is the flame. A dark and liquid flame, like that which smolders unseen, sending up barely a hint of smoke and devouring a building from within."
Why, then, would I give 4 stars to a game that affected me so dramatically instead of 5?
I had some troubles. The enormous multitude of names was overwhelming, and I found the game had no almanac or list of names of places and people. Some kind of accompaniment to remind us might be nice.
I had difficulty knowing when my genius was being changed and when it was being tested. I had spent a great deal of time cultivating a mathematical genius, but then realized I couldn't change it more. A chapter or two later, it had suddenly reversed itself to be as unmathematical as possible. One of my choices must have changed it, but when, and where? Many other challenges were similarly opaque.
Overall, this game is a masterpiece of writing and setting, and I feel it will linger in my mind for many years to come. I had a long, long dream last night and this morning, and when I woke up there was a short time where the dream world felt more real than this one. This game parallels that same feeling, and it was surreal and haunting to play it so soon after that experience.
I received a review copy of this game.
An older Choicescript sci-fi game about joining a crew of criminals, July 26, 2020It's interesting playing two criminal Choicescript games in a row, one from years ago and the other recent (The Martian Job).
This game comes from a time before Choice of Games' had firmly established their game philosophy, it seems, because it breaks it in many ways. There are a lot of binary options. There are a lot of choices where there is an obvious 'right answer' (like an early choice where there is only one escape pod and either you can save a little girl or yourself. Knowing that you're in chapter 1 and the chance of you dying is low, and the chance of a future reward is high, there's really no reason for you not to save her).
Perhaps most unusually, every relationship is an 'opposed stat', which in Choicescript is a pair of stats that sum up to 100%, so raising one lowers the other.
This puts some of the odder choices of the game in perspective. There are many, many options which are just 'be a jerk'. But in this opposed system, being a jerk to one crew member is the very best way to befriend their 'opposite'.
I found this bizarre. Another early facet really put me off. Your first encounter with the crew is with a blue-skinned alien from a 'race of slaves'. When meeting him, he asks you about slavery and three options are how you think it's fine and only one is against it. It's really odd.
As a representative for house-style Choice of Games stories, this is pretty poor. But if I had randomly found this game (such as in IFComp), I would have rated it fairly well. I can compare it the recent '4x4 Galaxy', with which it shares some similarities. This game has a fairly robust money and inventory system. It invites numerous strategies on replay, and despite its small word count, manages to feel pretty large.
I think I'd give this a 4. In a way, though, I'd be more likely to recommend this to people who don't like the Choice of Games housestyle and less likely to recommend it to fans of their other games.
I received a review copy of this game.
An often witty but difficult Shakespeare game in the vein of Scott Adams, July 25, 2020This Scott Adams game was designed with the retro format in mind. The download includes source code with design notes, and it's fascinating to see the discussion of how many lines of text will fit where and what needs to be removed.
This game is a shortish text adventure using the Scott Adams format (short in the sense of 7 treasures and about 16 rooms; it takes a good hour or more to finish without hints, longer if you get stuck like I did). It's based off of Hamlet and contains many joking references to it.
This is a hard game. Much of the ease of modern parser games comes from adaptive hints or helpful responses to incorrect actions. This game has some of that, but only so much can fit into the constrained format. I had to request help and then discovered the (well-commented and organized) source code provided in the download.
While I appreciate the craftsmanship in the game, it definitely is the type to be solved by careful exploration of the state space and deliberative thinking, as opposed to my general play style of 'charge ahead recklessly and see where the story takes me'.
I will say that I think this is much more successful as a game than Graham Nelson's adaptation of The Tempest or my own Sherlock Holmes adaptations.
A gritty crime story about dark virtual technology, July 22, 2020This is the one of the darker Choicescript games I have played. In a world where virtual reality can hijack another's senses, people use the technology to live through others: cliff diving, gorging on food, and darker things.
This game includes references to drug use, self-harm, suicide, and more. I didn't experience sexual content on my run-throughs. Each chapter has optional content warnings.
As a detective story, this is top-notch. It was nominated for a Nebula award, and its easy to see why. I've replayed it a few times and it's always fresh.
A long Twine game with illustrations and music about Trump's election, June 23, 2020This game is one of the most difficult to rate that I've had in a long time. Not to play, but to rate adequately.
What does a good rating mean? Is it an endorsement? Is it a message that says, 'Hey, I'm sure you'll like this game?" Is it an objective measure of technical skill?
This game is very long, 11 chapters of text that took me over an hour to play. In it, you play one of Trump's campaign staff as you aid him (with an in-game alias of Truman Glass) in getting elected, and the aftermath.
There's been a lot of talk on Twitter in the last weeks about authors appropriating others' stories. As a white able-bodied man, I have written protagonists as female, or disabled, or hispanic, without really thinking about it.
This game goes a bit further, in that the author writes the experience of a queer woman in America with a minority second-generation immigrant background. And these facets are essential to the story. I see in the credits that others were consulted, so it's possible that this is what they were consulted on.
The minority you are is an option, and Polish ancestry is oddly listed along with Hispanic, Black and Indian ancestry. Is this saying that Polish people have similar experiences with POC? Or is it saying that it's immaterial which one you pick? Other details are off; the twin towers attack is described as happening at sunset, when I remember it happening during early hours at school in the West.
What is the story? It portrays the protagonist as divided against herself, constantly experiencing ill effects that are contrary to the ideals of the campaign she works for. It's not a straight-up retelling of Trump, but it's close enough. It veers between painting Trump as a hideous cartoon and glamorizing him as a tough-guy mob boss.
Politics have belonged in Interactive Fiction for decades, almost since the beginning. Infocom even had a game that was just a big anti-Reagan message (A Mind Forever Voyaging). It's a medium especially well suited to political messages.
I don't know if I felt comfortable with this game's messages. Like Trump itself, it stated controversial things (like saying being anti-vaxx and pro-choice have to go together) and then played it off as satire.
I don't endorse this game, except for players who are interested in seeing a take on American politics. I do give it a 4 star rating on my scale, knowing that this will be effectively seen as an endorsement, as it will be fed into the overall average.
My scale:
-Polish. The game is thoroughly polished, with text transitions, styling, illustrations, and music.
-Interactivity. I am definitely anti-slow text but this was better than most, with fast-forwarding enabled by clicking and a fairly fast speed to begin with. Choices were sometimes clearly not important/not offering real choice, but in general I felt like my choices mattered and they were brought up again in the future.
-Emotion. Well, I felt a large range of emotions playing.
-Descriptiveness. The writing made me feel like I was there.
-Would I play again? This is the star I'm not awarding. I don't really agree with this game, and don't feel like playing again.
A heist game with a limited parser--but watch out for the owner!, May 13, 2020I helped beta test this Spring Thing 2020 game.
In it, you play as a someone trying to rob a house for an organization of thieves.
Like DiBianca's other games, you have limited parser options here. All interactions are performed by typing the name of the object you are interacting with.
The puzzles are interesting, with puzzles involving far-flung parts of the house, searching puzzles, combination locks, etc.
The owner can come back at any time, and discerning the patterns of his visits is one of the biggest puzzles of the game, one which I didn't see for a long time and which really surprised me. I'm not sure it worked for me completely, but I enjoyed this game well. If you're a parser fan, this is one of the best parser games released this year, and definitely worth checking out!
An unusual historical parser game, April 11, 2020I beta tested this game.
Napier's Cache is in an unusual niche of historical fiction, and is based on a family story of the author.
It is fairly linear in story with nonlinear interactions in each 'phase'. You first have a small treasure hunt, followed by a dinner scene, then another treasure hunt and a simple maze.
In design it reminds me quite a bit of Christminster, an early (pre-IFComp) inform game that was well-regarded at the time, that also had you doing things like eating at a dinner with scholars and discovering the history of old alchemists.
Overall, the quality is well-done, and most reasonable interactions are coded for. I enjoyed each iteration of this better than the previous, and I believe this is something to be proud of.
A long, obscurely written French Twine game with minimal choices, February 28, 2020This is game that is hard for me to review, in many ways.
First, it was difficult to play. It is in French, not my native language, but it also is written in a very allegorical and elusive style. It is very long, with at least four chapters each with a dozen or more pieces. I encountered a bug while looking at my objects list at the very end of Ch. 3 where the link to return to the main story disappeared.
Also, it's hard to say what score to assign. According to my rubric, I give 1 point for being polished (it is), 1 point for being descriptive (which it also is), and 1 point for interactivity (despite the fact it's linear, giving me a choice to see the objects page or not was in fact useful). But I didn't feel an emotional impact as the scenes were too disconnected, and I was too exhausted by it to play again. I believe that many of these problems would be mitigated for a Francophone.
A pleasant little murder mystery in 1950's England, November 30, 2019This game is a fine addition to the long tradition of murder mystery interactive fiction games.
This is a one-room game. You, Celia Swift, are aiding Inspector Land in researching the mystery of an orchestra member's death.
There are two phases: a puzzle-based investigative phase, and a deduction phase.
The investigative phase requires patience, and the deduction phase doesn't give too much away if you guess wrong.
The one thing that mars this game is the large number of unhelpful responses. If a second edition were released, or a similar game released in the future, I would wish for more custom responses.
A challenging Twine game about dystopia and intrigue, November 19, 2019I beta tested this game.
Visually, this game is nice and polished, and the text is free from typos and bugs.
You play as a man blinded by the government and sent to work. While at work, you encounter a cast of characters entangled in a web of intrigue, and must make your own decisions and what to investigate and who to help. There are 6 different endings, some of which can happen unexpectedly, which makes this game pretty difficult (especially with no undo feature I saw.)
The first chapter's text is incredibly dense, with a lot of big words and long sentences. Once other characters are thrown into the mix, the pace picks up, and the dialogue especially is fresh and well-written.
I would love to see a dialogue-only game by this author (like the very popular games Birdland and Hana Feels). As for this game, I was interested enough to play to several different endings, and felt satisfaction at reaching a good one.
A loving tribute to/light parody of Andy Phillips in a single room, November 19, 2019Andy Phillips is a figure in the IF community known for occasionally releasing massive IF games that generally feature science fiction of some sort, large maps with a few puzzles available at a time, and deadly women.
In this game, you're a super-fan of Andy Phillips who has been locked in by his roommates. You're wearing a jumpsuit from an Andy Phillips game and you have tons of memorabilia around the rooms, all of which is directly based off of the games.
There are a few start puzzles and then one main one, getting out of the room. I found the starter puzzles not too hard, but the main puzzle requires few leaps of intuition. Given the constrained size of the game, however, it's possible to suss out the solution after time, and there is a great help system.
Short horror parser games connected with a backstory, November 19, 2019Like the original Balderstone (which you don't have to play to understand this), you are at a gathering of horror writers who tell 'stories' which are minigames. The order of the stories is randomised.
The games are coded well, and the tone varies a lot, sometimes dramatic, sometimes silly, sometimes frightening, all sort of tongue in cheek. Many of them have twists, whether geographical or as a meta-narrative etc.
I came, I saw, I had fun, the stories aren't really related, so why don't you just go try it out and see for yourself?
A polished Twine game with music and philosophy, October 9, 2019I'm a fan of 'two-world' type games, and this one fits the bill.
This game starts out with you in a sort of Plato's Cave. Soon you find yourself in Faerethia, and then there is a flashback to (Spoiler - click to show)the real world.
While there is an overarching story (one that has been done by several people, even up to Dr. Who and MLP fan fiction), the real thrust of this IFComp entry is its philosophy. It tries to tackle identity and the idea of continuity of self.
Does it work? It might have been hard once to imagine getting any kind of deep discussion out of interactive fiction games, but there's been quite a lot of work in IF that tackles big issues in a professional and educational way (like the excellent game Hana Feels).
Does this game reach that level? I'm not really sure, but it has a lot of polish, and it's not quite so heavy-handed as many other 'deep' games. I felt my playtime was well-spent.
A participatory space western comedy, October 9, 2019Robb Sherwin is legendary for a certain kind of game, one with many creative NPCs, imaginative and creative language, and blood, sex, and profanity.
I love his style, but frequently it gets too much for me. But Enceladus has the wittiness and imagination without as much of the blood, sex and profanity. This IFComp game is like Respectable Robb Sherwin, as if Sherwin's writing were a teenager seeing a cop drive by, doing their best to walk normal and not look like they're high.
So this is a Robb Sherwin game I can genuinely recommend for most audiences. It's not meant for kids, though (there's some gore and it could get pretty scary for them). This is a great chance for more people to discover Sherwin's clever humor (or stupid humor? or both?).
You play as a character on the HMS Plagoo. A werewolf is loose in space, and you soon crash on the moon Enceladus. You have to defeat your enemies while simultaneously taking care mentally and physically of your friends while they do the same for you.
The game is completely linear; the interactivity is "do the next thing we tell you too". There's a few smatterings of puzzle elements, a little bit less than Photopia, for instance, but more than 0.
This style of interactivity made me feel like I was an actor in a play, giving lines at the appropriate part. And since Sherwin's writing has always reminded me of Shakespeare (focusing on witty turns of phrase and a mixture of lowbrow and highbrow), it works well.
(P.S. It may seem hyperbole to compare anyone to Shakespeare, but I'm not saying that quality of writing is exactly equal. I'm just talking about the sense of humor)
A troll game (?) portrayed as test prep, October 8, 2019Carter Sande is just trolling us all at this point, I believe.
Last year, his game Let's Explore Geography! Canadian Commodities Trader Simulation Exercise was a tongue-in-cheek take on edutainment game. He spent a long time in the forums going back and forth on whether his game was actually edutainment or not, and it's still a little hard to tell.
This game has you clicking on a jpg island map to get help in different areas, in addition to taking small mini-tests of three questions at a time.
The tests are a bit hard (and I swear the compound interest one is wrong!). The little story segments between are more story-based and more clearly Interactive Fiction, but they honestly wouldn't be out of place in a real edutainment game.
The only place I found anything odd was (Spoiler - click to show)the very end, where there was no 'end game' link, and I scrolled down and found I 'missed something'. I noticed the replay this time was different, but not significantly so.
I then followed the walkthrough, the game went all (Spoiler - click to show)Zalgo, and the end result convinced me more than ever that Carter is trolling us all. I did reach a final The End after (Spoiler - click to show)destroying the obelisk.
Why 4 stars, not 5? Because, and this is written in my heart:
"Simulated Boredom is Still Boredom"
Otherwise, I had a good time.
Great programming, terrible idea, October 7, 2019It's a real shame. This game has a sandbox environment, reasonable puzzles with multiple solutions, several endings that require completely different strategies and have distinct results, no bugs or typos that I found. Basically, everything you'd want a comp game to me.
The problem is that it's super offensive. You play a morbidly obese teen that is so fat they can eat anything and smash things with their fists. Your eyes and ears are so full of cholesterol that you have to type 'WUOOO' for echolocation every few turns.
There are other instances of, as the game calls it, 'crass humor and worse'. I didn't like that, not at all.
A pleasant, mid-length witch-based parser game, October 7, 2019'Wizard/Witch's Apprentice' games are very common, from old ones like "The Wizard's Apprentice" and "Berrost's Challenge" to more recent ones like "Charming" and "Oppositely Opal" (one of my favorites!).
This game avoids many of the problems of the genre. It restricts its state space nicely both with regards to books (there are only a few, and only a few topics to look up), locations (only about 7), and ingredients (about 4). Most of these witch/wizard games just open up too quickly.
I found the puzzles very satisfying. My most negative experience was right at the beginning with the crystal ball. (Spoiler - click to show)I couldn't reach the ball, but there were length-enhancing things around (like the duster). It was not intuitive to me that you could climb up).
I felt like the ending could have used a bit more build up or that there could be more details here and there. But that's more of a design preference, and not a bug. This is a solid game that will please parser fans.
A FMV game tribute to an old FMV game, October 7, 2019This game is essentially a home-made remake of the obscure old CD game Bad Milk.
In both games, there is no text, only videos or audio. You pass out after consuming something bad and must go through puzzles.
The interactivity baffled me here, with spinning icons and bizarre link options.
I don't decide what's interactive fiction and what's not, and I think this is fine to have in IFComp. But I really don't know how to play and find the whole thing pretty opaque.
An erotic self-aware retelling of Turandot, October 6, 2019Reviews serve many purposes. Helping authors feel noticed; providing feedback for future games; monologuing; and helping players decide what to play and not.
In the interest of the latter, this game is overtly sexual in a crass way. I abandoned it once, and only persevered when told that the large middle portion contains very little of that nature.
Aside from that, Gijsbers has used all of his excellent storytelling powers in crafting this game.
It takes Puccini's Turandot, a story that is very problematic in and of itself. I'm in the camp that believes that Puccini had built up something he couldn't finish: there was no reasonable way to finish the story or the music that could mesh well with what went before. There's no realistic resolution whatsoever.
This game takes that on head-first. The player traverses death and destruction in pursuit of the princess, but there's a sort of in-game fourth-wall-breaking (third-wall breaking?) where everyone comments on the ridiculousness of it. It's all just a joke.
But is it? (Spoiler - click to show)The player's obsession is never really explained. And the neat wrapping up of 'none of the people' actually died ignores the friend. The murder of the guard is glossed over. These huge plot holes are explained away by the overall self-critical nature of the game.
I've noticed that every writing community has it's own views on what is 'great'. I made a chart once displaying where each community lies on the scale of 'earnestness' vs and 'originality' vs 'canon' in their judging. Creepypasta and Battle for Wesnoth both have extreme earnestness in their writing, while IFComp tends to value self-awareness. This game is far in the self-awareness area, almost a parody of self-awareness.
The choice structure is essentially all fake choices. There may be some actual state tracked, but I don't think it necessarily improves the game if that's true. For instance, I chose to (Spoiler - click to show)let the crocodile kill me and the game explained it away, again, in a very self-aware manner.
This game achieves everything it set out to do. I would say it was one of my favorites except that the feelings of shame I get reading erotic works doesn't go well with the pure enjoyment I have from text games. I believe it will do very well in the competition, possibly the top three, unless other voters have concerns about the content as well.
All in all, Victor Gijsbers started out as a good author, and its clear he's only improving with time. I can't wait to see what he comes up with next!
Zombie dolls, October 6, 2019You play as a doll who was once brought to life by a child's magic, but awakes now when the child is long gone.
You explore a dark two-story house filled with death, decay, and dark magic.
I loved the cast of characters, and found many of the puzzles satisfying. I think I had more fun with this game than I did with anything else in the comp so far.
Quest is just not as powerful as Inform or Tads or Dialog, though. Quest's worst feature is synonym handling. Synonyms apparently must be typed in for each verb combination.
For instance, if something is called ADJECTIVE NOUN, then one puzzle might be solvable by typing VERB1 NOUN, but another puzzle might only except VERB2 ADJECTIVE NOUN. And due to Quest's weaker engine, it won't tell you you're close or detect if you've almost typed the right thing.
Bitter Karella usually does much better than other Quest authors in this regard, but some slipped through this time. For instance, (Spoiler - click to show)TAKE CLAWS or GET CLAWS produced no text, incorrect text, or just baffling text at different points in the game.
Overall though, I love this game. Fun!
Graduate school and scouting: a series of memories and choices, October 4, 2019Hmmm.... this game hit home in several areas. You play as a young man entering graduate school to satisfy his father's wishes. You reflect on your past life scouting as you deal with the drudgery of graduate school.
It wasn't my parents who pushed me, but I did graduate school and also had been a scout. Both parts rang true: boys discussing the forbidden parts of life in tents on trips, graduate school largely consisting of a series of failures aggregating very slowly into a dissertation.
The problem is, and this comes up in so many games: can a simulation of a boring event be fun? And my answer is no. Sure, Farmville and Universal Paperclips simulated boring things, and yet were popular. But they added a social aspect and/or increasing complexity. Just showing the drudgery of graduate school is accurate, but it's just not fun to me.
In fact, the overall structure of the game is pretty dull. Flashbacks are linear, with scattered 'expand' links that sometimes give extra text in-line and sometimes link to another page.
So why do I give it 4 stars? Well, it was just all so relatable. The prose didn't jump out and bite me, but it wormed its way inside of me. The narrator feels like a real person, even though this is a work of fiction. There's just a kind of raw honesty to it all that appeals to my sense of self and my own history.
A cyberpunk mystery about robots, religion and identity, October 4, 2019Writing a mystery IF game is hard, but rewarding. The hardest thing to handle is the deductive process: will the PC find clues before solving the case, or can the player can deduce the answer on their own? Does the player need to link clues themselves, or do they automatically process them?
This is a good game, but I'm not quite sure it nails that deductive process. In this Twine game, you play as a young woman in a sci-fi future renting out an old detective's office for the night. Your father has died, your sister is missing, and you have to search for her.
You have numerous locations you can go to. You have an NPC companion who can examine things for you. You have an inventory where any item can be used with any background link, giving quadratic complexity. You also can deduce things with your companion, linking concepts with, again, quadratic complexity. Dying alters the game subtly.
All in all, it makes for a rich game. But the state space is so large that it's difficult to know where to proceed next. Do you need to deduce in the middle of the game? Is dying essential? Do items need to be examined by your companion, used on NPCs, or ignored? I found myself frequently turning to the walkthrough.
Storywise, it uses some classic sci-fi tropes (techno-cult, do robots have feelings, etc.), but it executes it well. I felt comfortable with this game. The author says 'hire me' at the end, and I would feel comfortable hiring them for a writing project.
Truck-based government, October 3, 2019Okay, this is a great game in many ways. Pixel art is on point, characters are compelling, the atmosphere at Dan's shady truck dealership is just perfect, and the storyline comes to a great point.
But I found the day by day gameplay a little less compelling. My choice of which job to pick up didn't seem to matter too much, and neither did my driving strategy. It's possible they mattered, but I didn't see it in in-game, unlike my choice of 'side hustle', which strongly affected the game.
So, I liked it, but found parts a bit tedious. This is a trucking simulator where you make money doing increasingly shady jobs, while individuals begin approaching you for help. Your choices of who to help affect the politics not only locally but eventually globally.
A fantasy/horror game with deep worldbuilding and impressive UI, October 3, 2019This author has become well known for Twine UI work. with many people interested in learning how to make games look the way, for instance, Devotionalia did.
This game has that same rich UI. Buttons instead of hyperlinks, character portraits, rich backdrops, multiple save files in a button in a collapsible menu.
Story-wise, this is heavy stuff, epic fantasy mixed with horror. You are a lone human burying their mother, living on an island filled with huge, sentient insects. You have been offered a controversial position on the island in the religious hierarchy, and life is complicated.
Most choices are about your attitude and response to others (agreeing, disagreeing, deflecting). Others have agency affecting the story. The real replayability factor is in the characters, not all of which you can talk to in one go through.
It's polished, descriptive, interactive, creepiness-inducing, and I would replay, so I'm giving it 5 stars!
A fun little treasure hunt in the Amazon with some parser issues and colonialism, October 3, 2019This game is a remake of a 1985 Danish game (which explains the two authors).
The game warns you that it comes with randomization, hunger timers, etc. and has a really clever idea: allowing you to turn all of those off. I tried playing with them on at first, and it was actually fun, since the map wasn't too confusing (especially with the automap. And Adrift online makes playing a lot better!). The music and images worked well with the text.
Some parts of the interactivity just seem too farfetched to guess on your own, though. I knew I needed to (Spoiler - click to show)find the key in the jaguar, and I knew that (Spoiler - click to show)I had to eat in the game, but I never thought the two would be combined to solve a puzzle. And some tools seem like they could have many uses (such as the (Spoiler - click to show)dynamite). But a lot of this stems from older game design where it was expected the player would only have a few games available and play each of them off and on for multiple days or weeks.
More concerning is the inherent colonialism in the game. I ran into this when adapting Sherlock Holmes in to a game; I left in negative references to gypsies, and the feedback I received taught me a lot more about the negative experiences gypsies have had over the years (including in the Holocaust!) This game does something similar, where the natives are portrayed as more or less dumb and associated with alcohol, and there are no moral qualms about entering sacred spaces and stealing artifacts to take back to Europe. This wasn't exactly unusual in 1985 (just look at Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom from the year before!), but sticks out now, to me, especially since I've also adapted older works with colonialist views. I don't really have any advice, these are just my thoughts.
A rollicking pirate adventure game in Johnon's signature parser hybrid style, October 2, 2019Robin Johnson is one of the best IF authors of the last few years, putting out games like Detectiveland and Zeppelin Adventure. These games, and Pirateship, use a parser-hybrid engine based off of Johnson's Versificator parser (used in games like the Xylophoniad).
This game doesn't reach the heights that Detectiveland did (which had 4 separate cases to work on), but it's a solid entry that will please fans of his previous games, and of puzzles in general.
You play as a pirate on an island that has a surprising number of inhabitants. There is a lot of conversation, and several complex mechanics (including a diving apparatus and a kind of pirate prosthetics lab). I used a walkthrough for a few of the trickier puzzles.
This game is polished, descriptive, has good interactivity, and I would definitely replay. It didn't draw me in emotionally, as I didn't really feel any kind of connection to the NPCs, or find an overarching story like Zeppelin Adventure. But this isn't a game looking to be deep; it's looking to entertain, and its succeeding. I debated on whether to give a 4 or a 5, but the primary purpose of my ratings on IFDB is to indicate the quality of a game compared to all other IF, and so I think a 5 is appropriate here. Compared to Johnson's other games alone, I would give this a 4.
A long, ghostly mystery parser game with some cleanup issues, October 2, 2019I give stars based on five criteria: being polished, being descriptive, emotional impact, interactivity, and if I would play again.
Polish: This game is severely lacking in this area. There are numerous typos (such as 'wet' for 'west' in one room), synonyms aren't implemented, disambiguation needs work (like trying to look at the books in the library while holding the textbooks).
Descriptiveness: This certainly isn't a lushly described game, but some of the images were vivid, especially the doll room. The author did a great job of ambiance, in my opinion.
Emotional impact: I felt the eeriness of the house a bit, and the sadness of the story, but I think both needed more work.
Interactivity: The differences in functionality between trowel, pliers, and mallet were hard for me to grasp. Alternate solutions often didn't work (for instance, why don't (Spoiler - click to show)the shears work for cutting after you weaken the vines?).
Playing again: This game doesn't draw me back in for replay.
So that's a 2/5. I think that all of my concerns could have been resolved by having several playtesters, including ones experienced in playtesting games. I'd love to see a more polished game by this author, and would volunteer for playtesting it!
A thoughtful parser game with timed text and a peaceful, symbolic setting, October 2, 2019This game is meant to be contemplated slowly. You wander along a beach, looking at symbolic locations, waiting for the end of day.
The walkthrough is especially entertaining. (It only says (Spoiler - click to show)Don't worry about the puzzles., and I listened). Overall I found it peaceful, if a bit slight.
The timed text, though, was rather aggravating. Other readers may not have the same reaction, but timed text goes against everything I like and find distinctive about parser games, and this game contains sections with timed text that takes over a minute to get out a page's worth of text.
The writing and design is otherwise excellent. The portrayal of a beggar seemed a bit classist at first, but the beggar's home shows that perhaps things are not as they seem at first. A lot to think about here.
An artistic Twine game with images and mythological-based story, October 1, 2019This game grew on me over time.
Like Pseudavid's previous work, this game is a highly-polished Twine game that focuses on time, place, and interpersonal relationships.
In The Good People, you play as a person descended from the inhabitants of an ancient village which was covered by a reservoir, and which has now only recently emerged. The exact setting escapes me; it seems like Native Americans in the Southwest due to the reservoir setting, but could also be Irish perhaps (?) or South American.
You've started a relationship with a travel writer who is of a different race from you, and you feel alienated from your past and your people.
This slice-of-life opening is pretty good but a little too 'high art' for me. It takes a sharp turn in the middle, though, that resonated strongly with me.
Uses unusual text placements, graphic images, occasional slow text and text animations.
High school ghost investigation with teen romance, September 22, 2019I had this game mixed up with the short Birdland sequel Open Up, and so I never got around to playing this until after the XYZZY Nominations. Then I had to see what it was all about.
Brendan’s writing is what I wish I could write like. Characters are so vivid, and the text takes startling turns of phrase that you can’t help from laughing at. The characters felt alive to me.
Part of that left me with a bad aftertaste in a way that a lesser artist couldn’t do. The events in the game are the kind of thing I was terrified of growing up. My area had a lot of teen pregnancies and deaths from alcohol and drugs that affected people I knew. The idea of going to parties where all the highschoolers are getting drunk, watching each other have sexual experiences, using drugs, and having young men who won’t listen to ‘no’ (like Jayden) wander around seems like a reminder of personal nightmares.
But I don’t believe that’s what the author intended. Games are a Rohrschach test that brings out whatever the reader is thinking. I wouldn’t have had such a strong reaction to the game if Brendan hadn’t written such strong characters.
The rest of the game is wonderful. The use of emoji is like a comedy version of 10pm, and the overall mystery and romance were well done. I liked the use of red options to distinguish paths that were very different from the others. It made choices feel more significant.
I also found the structure really interesting, with conversations like multi lane highways and exploration segments like city streets.
This game’s craft level is very high, and I’ve found myself thinking of it frequently in the last few days as I’ve been working on my own games.
A difficult 4-room parser game set at a cocktail party, August 24, 2019This game took 4th in the Jay is Games Casual Gameplay Competition #7, a competition which produced more good games than just about any other competition I've seen outside of IFComp.
You play as a woman who has been stuck talking to a bore at a cocktail party for two hours. Once he's out of the way, you have an explicit list of 3 things you have to do to escape.
Conversation plays a vital role in this game, making the characters more fun. Puzzle solutions are off the beaten track. Logical in hindsight, but difficult to come up with. It does, however, have an extensive hint system.
Long choice-based Quest game with a Holmes feel, August 22, 2019You are not, in fact, Sherlock Holmes in this game, but you are pretty similar.
In this game, you read several paragraphs of text, then make a deduction based off of it. You have to read carefully, and may require occasional google searches, but most of the choices are deducible through logic. Some, though, just seem like guesswork, which I suppose increases the replay value of the game.
You are investigating the murder of a man after being pulled off of a big bombing investigation.
I played online, and it became slower and slower until it crashed near the end.
A goofy German game about Perry Mason in a resort, August 21, 2019This game is in German, and it's not just regular German, it's very joke-y German with many allusions and in-jokes. My German was not up to the task, and I only completed with google translate and the built-in walkthrough.
Still, I could see how funny this game was. It's presented as a TV show with intermittent ads and other such artifices. You start the game in a hot tub or something and have to find your clothes while investigating a murder at the resort. There are some entertaining characters and a few tricky puzzles. The game isn't quite as big as it seems at first, as many potential areas are closed off.
I enjoyed it, but I often enjoy games not in my native language, as it adds another layer to the gameplay.
A creepy, surreal Quest game with music, August 19, 2019This game feels fresh despite being a surreal game with deeper-meaning imagery, an amnesiac protagonist, and a lab/medical setting, all of which are overused tropes.
But this game seems like something new anyway. It uses Quest and only requires the verbs USE, TAKE, LOOK, and directional commands. The parser is extremely fidgety if you try and do anything else. Even if you think you ought to do something else, you should not do something else.
Basically, you are alone in a symbolic hospital with a lot of dolls and blood and spiders, and you try to enter new areas. Near the end, there is an extended sequence of strong profanity. The whole game is pretty gory and/or disturbing.
This is one of those games that breaks all of the rules for 'good games' but gets an effect anyway. Worth trying if you like horror.
A frustrating game about frustration, June 27, 2019I usually take a star off of most annoying games precisely because they are annoying. But this is a game about a man where anything at all can set him off.
The game makes UNDO act differently, and tricks people who thought of other solutions to puzzles. Its puzzle solutions become increasingly unfair, although some of the most unfair ones are optional.
Sort of like 9:05 played straight, you wake up before work, worried about getting their on time, and have to go through your daily tasks before work starts.
I found it more frustrating than enjoyable. But isn't that the point?
A Quest game with graphics and sound about meditation, June 26, 2019This game, in Quest, has you navigating a mostly-symmetric area apparently seeking for wisdom.
You have a book depicting the 7 deadly sins, which you can slowly fill out by various actions. In addition, there are many religious figures here, including a monk, a fakir, a buddah, etc.
Each room has an image, and many have sound.
However, the implementation is odd, cumbersome, and often interferes with the player. The pictures vary widely in quality, and the game is frankly frustrating.
I didn't finish it, but I did appreciate the symbolic quest.
A graphical windows game about exploring space, June 26, 2019This is a graphical game where you click on text buttons to control a spaceship. You find planets and see if they support life.
I've rated the game on the following 5 criteria:
-Polish. The game relies heavily on a graphical interface, but I feel that interface could be tuned up, especially with faster transitions and back buttons that only go back one step in a menu.
-Descriptiveness. Most of the descriptions are fairly plain.
-Interactivity. The slowness is frustrating, and the game's overall pace drags out.
-Emotional Impact. The pace lessened any impact I would have felt.
-Would I replay? No.
I'd love to see a new game from this author, though.
A fancy windows game about chinese martial arts, June 26, 2019This game has an overly-cluttered windows GUI that is very reminiscent of the time period it is from. The top row is cluttered with a row of icons that whose meaning is opaque and whose use is questionable.
The game has side bars, command prediction, and other such features, but they often end up hindering more than anything else. There is a time feature and changing background colors.
The story itself is interesting, but could be better. I think this game is a good example that reinventing the wheel isn't always the best.
An adaptation of a famous sci-fi story with a lovely soundtrack, June 26, 2019This game is an adaptation of A Martian Odyssey, the short story, and one which I liked quite a bit before starting this game.
This game takes a long time to download (and can't be played online) because it's 50 mb, most of which is a truly lovely space soundtrack. I really liked it, and it's context-sensitive.
The game itself suffers terribly from adaptation-syndrome: content not from the actual story is not as good as the original, and you have to guess the correct action to advance the story.
A poorly implemented vampire hunt, June 26, 2019This game has a vote for it on the 'worst IF ever' poll, but I don't think it's there. It's just problematic. I evaluate games on the following five categories:
Polish: Not here. The game's bugs are numerous.
Descriptiveness: Well, it succeeds pretty well here, to be honest.
Interactivity: Problematic. It's very hard to guess what actions you are supposed to do.
Emotional impact: Dampened by the obnoxious jerk professor and the overly objectified Eva.
A touching love story and tale about wolves, June 26, 2019I played this game last year, maybe two years ago, but couldn't pass the first scene. There are so many finicky steps, and its buggy (6 kinds of pill bottles cause a nightmare).
But, following the walkthrough, you find a touching and compelling story. I quite enjoyed it. Many of the surprises you can guess ahead of time, but there are enough surprises that I'd rather not reveal any of them.
The interactivity is really messed up, and its not super polished, but it's otherwise great.
An unfinished occult Quest game with some issues, June 26, 2019This is a game planned on an epic scale. Only 3 chapters were entered into the competition, and the author clearly promised greatness in those missing six chapters. There was to be an entire other complex (or multiple ones), many rooms, etc.
But even these chapters are unfinished in some ways. Many things are unimplemented. Trying to guess the right verbs can be hard even with the walkthrough.
It's also a bit offputting. Woman are all nude and described like meat. Murder is casual. I'm just not that into it.
A sandbox time travel game that just need a little more love and better hinting, June 26, 2019This is another game that would be better off with extensive beta testing.
You have access to three time periods, and items in one period affect items in another, even in reverse form (so changing the future affects the past). There are no NPCs. This general effect can make an incredible game (look at Dual Transform by Plotkin), but this game doesn't help the player narrow down the solution space enough. There are so many actions that could be useful, but only a few are recognized.
Also, the game could be a bit more peppy. Many of the locations are the most generic thing possible in their timeframe.
An older windows game with custom interface and battle system, June 26, 2019This game's main features are a fancy window with directional compass, list of actions to take, items, etc.
I found it difficult to run. I got it part way there, but not quite. From the guides, though, it's clear to see that the game mostly revolves around attacking enemies to gain experience with a few puzzles thrown in.
Games like this show the great wisdom in creating virtual machines with backwards compatibility, like Inform or TADS. Inform games have remained playable for decades (except for those using graphics and sound), as have TADS games.
UNDO simulator disguised as a battle against mages, June 26, 2019This game is like a mix between Kerkerkruip and Varicella without the balanced mechanics of the first or the interleaving puzzles of the latter. You are in what is essentially a battle royale with several other wizards. You have a spellbook. Killing a wizard gives you access to some of their spells. They also fight each other, so you can just wait around for a while then go loot corpses. There are some puzzles, most of which are fairly complex.
Due to the nature of the randomized combat in this game, and the unbalance of it all, it mostly devolves into an UNDO-fest. The hints even suggest this in certain scenarios. It was, though, shorter and more fun than expected. But the interactivity, polish, and replay value just weren't there for me.
A somewhat faulty pirate adventure á la Scott Adams, June 26, 2019Scott Adams wrote minimalistic games to run on small computers. They’re free, and I recommend playing them. They use two word parsers, scanty descriptions, and so on.
This game is not as good as a Scott Adams game. There are less synonyms, somewhat weird implementation, and an overall sense of frustration I didn’t experience when playing Scott’s own games. One of the most popular of all of Scott’s games was his own Pirate Adventure.
Robin Johnson and Arthur Di’Bianca both have a very successful series of games with a Scott Adams sensibility.
A fun clown/circus game that suffers from walkthrough-itis, June 22, 2019This game from IFComp 2005 was a pleasant surprise. You play as a retired clown trying to find his kids on a circus island.
It's simple and innocent fun, with varied locations and an honestly unique setting. The only other circus game I know well is Ballyhoo, and this is quite different from Ballyhoo.
However, it suffers a bit from 'walkthrough-itis'. It's pretty clear that the author had some awesome actions scenes and clever puzzles in mind, but the game doesn't really clue you into the required actions all that well.
I still enjoyed this game quite a bit.
A very precise medical simulator, June 21, 2019This game summarizes itself pretty well with this disambiguation text:
"Which do you mean, lymph nodes generally, the inguinal lymph nodes, the supraclavicular lymph nodes or the cervical lymph nodes?"
This is a game written by two medical students for the 2005 IFComp. They wanted to show exactly what it was like being a medical student, and they succeeded (as far as I know!) The game comes with both images and sound.
It's polished and descriptive, but there's no emotion and it's too confusing to be as interactive as I'd like. I played it quite some time ago, but for some reason I never reviewed it.
A pro-proletariat space story with some puzzles, June 12, 2019I played this game a year ago but somehow didn't review it.
This Parser Comp game has two facets: first, it's a space game where you wander an abandoned station. Second, unlike most such games, instead of amnesia you have access to many memories, most about unionized labor.
At the time this game was released, and the first time I played it, many people (including me) thought the puzzles were a bit fussy. But on this second playthrough, I found it pretty enjoyable. It does require a kind of relative positioning command that's not typical in parser games due to its complexity, but this is good for puzzle fiends, space buddies, or those concerned for social welfare and the plight of the masses.
A smooth puzzle game with compelling backstory built with new language, April 21, 2019This is the author's showpiece for a new language, Dialogue, that compiles to the Z-machine format.
Showpieces for new languages are a varied lot. Curses!, the showpiece for Inform, is one of the best games I've ever played: huge, puzzly, with deep connections to literature, religion, mythology and history. Ditch Day Drifter is sparser and smaller, but still pretty fun. Bronze and Floatpoint, showpieces for Inform 7, are both intensely detailed games.
This game takes a different tack. Instead of a massive adventure, it's a compact puzzle game in the snow. You play as a couple out climbing a snowy mountain, and must solve puzzles involving classic adventuring situations/items like darkness, ropes, and large pushable items.
I found the story in this compelling, as well as the puzzles. One of my favorite IFComp 2018 games.
A complex sci-fi choicescript game that ponders the nature of writing, April 21, 2019This is a complex game, which makes sense as it is part of a thesis. Unlike many IFComp games, it's less of a short story and more of a novella that should be played slowly, perhaps overall multiple days. It's not as long as a full-length Choicescript game, but it's still very hefty.
Such longterm playing is facilitated by the excellent save feature, one of many advanced design features. This game has been heavily modified from baseline Choicescript.
The main conceit of the game is that you are asked at several points to evaluate the quality of writing, and the game looks deeply into the relationship between reader and writer. The first few short stories are takes on famous writers, and some of these are just fantastic (I especially enjoyed the riff on Metamorphosis).
It also includes science fiction elements and some post-modernism.
A pleasing monthly story involving 'astrology', April 20, 2019This was an excellent addition to the Fallen London mythology. I played it several months ago, but forgot to write the review at the time, so pardon me if there are errors.
I strongly remember the 'astrological signs' in this story. Of course Fallen London is under the ground in a giant cavern, so the existence of stars and astrological signs is a somewhat contentious subject.
The story takes you into a strange world with insects and caverns. Very fun.
A gorgeously illustrated Rabbit game with puzzles, April 20, 2019This game is really breaking new ground. Among Twine games, it's remarkable for both using extensive beautiful graphics, animations, etc., but for also being long and puzzle-y.
You play as a rabbit in a warren of other rabbits, but something truly odd is happening. As you explore more, you uncover an entirely new setting.
A few of the puzzles seemed fussy, and I wasn't completely emotionally invested in the story, but this is a Twine game I can strongly recommend to those new to Twine and those experienced in IF.
Great twine mystery in an old house, April 19, 2019I really enjoyed this game in Introcomp, and the finished version is even better.
This isn't a grandiose or intense game. This game is just like an Agatha Christie story, with great attention to psychology and detail.
It manages to have a lot of material you have to plow through without feeling too much like lawnmowering. The author has a lot of context-sensitive programming with inventory-based puzzles, and that's what gives this game a good 'choice feel', if that's even a phrase.
You are at a hectic Christmas Eve dinner and Grandma's ring turns up stolen. It's your job to track down the culprit before the police have to be called.
Overall, this was my favorite Spring Thing game. Well done.
A pleasing little puzzle game, April 19, 2019I helped beta test this game.
This game is pretty simple. It's a series of locations (28, I think), many of which are connecting rooms like hallways. It has one NPC. The rooms are fairly plainly described. The puzzles are contrived a bit.
But it all works. The puzzles are supposed to be contrived; you are literally exploring a 'demo game' within the game that is unfinished, and you must take advantage of errors in the code to win (like IAG Alpha).
The puzzles are fun, including a modular arithmetic/Chinese remainder theorem type puzzle.
This is a game that fills its own niche of small puzzle-fest exactly well.
A solid and enjoyable Twine mystery game with a fantasy noir setting, March 13, 2019I love this game. I'm a big fan of mystery games in general, but they tend to have a common problem: how do you model the investigative process?
Some games have you collect physical evidence until you have enough to convict (the Infocom mysteries, for instance). Other games represent knowledge as individual clues that can be combined or traded (like some of my games and the excellent Erstwhile). Some games have you just guess who did it after you collect enough information (like Toby's Nose).
This game follows the latter path, and does it well. You're given quite a few cases (this is a big Twine game), and in each one, you read information about a monster causing trouble. You have a big encyclopedia listing different monsters' characteristics. Your job, as the player, is to read the encyclopedia, compare it to the monster's characteristics, and guess which monster it is, as well as its motivations.
This game wouldn't be nearly as good without its slick presentation. Beautiful intro, nice transitions and classy color use.
I beta tested this game, but it got a lot of work done after I did so. Very pleased with the outcome here.
A quirky Twine game about self-reflection and death, March 12, 2019This is an IFComp game that had some standout moments. Overall, it's a quirky game about death. A car you receive turns out to be haunted, and dealing with the issue requires you to think about your life and the life of the ghosts.
I enjoyed one particular moment of this game a lot, when it discussed how the human fondness for randomness is associated with us trying to prepare for the unfairness and randomness of death.
I had some weird formatting issues both times I played, even with full screen, and the story as a whole was a bit uneven. But for people trying to find quality Twine games I'd give this a go.
Smash vicious vegetables in a high fantasy setting, February 24, 2019This is an interesting game; I had a ton of fun, but felt a bit deflated by my own ending (in hindsight, I should have saved!)
It's a homey game. You are on the run, but taken in by a sweet couple who run a tavern. They have odd chores for you...this game primarily consists of beating animate vegetables to death with a hammer. I found this very satisfying, and it even had an RPG-like element.
I got the ending faster than I thought I would, and I was specifically told I had picked the dullest ending, so I wish I had saved right before that or had an undo button.
Overall, it was an innovative concept and a game I enjoyed playing.
A brilliant choice game with a meta narrative and text input, February 3, 2019This is a well-done IFComp 2018 game.
It runs in ITCH and is primarily choice-based. The conceit is that the author wanted to develop a big, fun sci-fi fi puzzle game, but didn't succeed.
Instead, he leaves the frame of his unfinished game alone, and adds author commentary. As the game progresses, the protagonist has more and more power to affect the game itself.
The styling is excellent, with several beautiful images and switches between different interfaces. The music is lovely and appropriate.
This is a game made with love, and it shows.
A parody of educational/trucking sim games set in Canada, February 3, 2019This game uses the Desmos online educational software to make a game about leaving your humdrum job to take on a trucking gig in Canada. Each city has things you can buy and things you can sell.
There are several endings you can reach, including giving up and one really interesting one that takes you all over, which I never quite completed. A guide is included on the IFDB page.
I say it's a parody because the author called it that, but the parody element isn't too strong. It mostly seems like a serviceable trucking game.
An innovative game using the Scratch programming language and classic puzzles, February 2, 2019Unfortunately, this game seems to no longer work in the current version of Scratch.
Scratch is a programming language originally designed to help children make simple games. Jared Jackson and his daughter used (or abused) the system to make a parser game with animations and puzzles.
This game is based off of conceptual, educational-style puzzles: manipulating amounts of water, moving around mazes, etc.
The overall storyline is brief but illustrated. It has a different feel than almost all other IF games out there, and I hope that one day it can be recreated in Scratch 3 or a stable language.
A few dozen trolley dilemmas all put together, February 1, 2019This game is a custom web parser built from UnityGl. It seems to work based on searching for one or more keywords in your text, ignoring extra words.
It's built around the trolley dilemma, which is an ethics puzzle: if you know someone is about to die (due to, say, a trolley crash) and you could stop it by having other people die, what would you do?
In this game, your choice on one trolley puzzle may lead to another and another and another. You have 51 possible outcomes to search for.
It was interesting, but hard to interact with.
A homebrew small fantasy parser game, February 1, 2019This game is a homebrew parser game. It seems expansive at first, intimidatingly so, but it soon settles down to a fairly small, nice-sized map.
Unfortunately, the possibility space of commands is fairly high. In most modern parser games, Inform or TADS take care of common synonyms (LOOK AT vs. X vs. EXAMINE, TAKE vs. GET, etc.), and new verbs are generally hinted at in the text or provided by using items where only one word works (a shovel leads to DIG, for instance), and extensive beta-testing finds all synonyms a general player might use. This fails at times, frequently even, but it is a standard that is widespread among Inform/TADS authors.
Games written in other engines tend not to have this flexibility (with Robin Johnson's Versificator parser games being a notable exception). The standard synonyms in Inform and TADS are the results of hundreds of hours of work and playtesting, and even well-established rival engines like Quest and Adrift fail to come close to their standards. And personally written parsers tend to have even more trouble.
This is a long-winded way of saying that there are a lot of commands I wouldn't have guessed on my own without the walkthrough. Besides that, I adored this game. Crossing the chasm reminded me of The Neverending Story for some reason, finding the island reminded me of the first Zelda game. A fun slice of enjoyment.
An extensive free-form poem in Texture with styling and graphics, February 1, 2019Tohu wa Bohu is intentionally poetic, utilizing allegorical language, stream-of-consciousness, and unusual punctuation and capitalization.
It's developed in texture, with a short, skippable intro followed by a 19-part quiz, with each quiz question actually a link to another poem segment, some with images or other enhancements.
I found it well-done and beautiful. The reason for my low score is my scale. I found it:
-polished, and
-descriptive,
but somehow I felt an emotional distance that kept me from fully enjoying the piece. And, occasionally, the sheer length of the piece made the dragging and dropping tedious, leading me to be unlikely to play again.
If you're interested in poetic IF, I'd check this out.
Psychology in a metaphorical parser game, December 19, 2018This parser game has an intriguing concept: provide psychological therapy while playing a game.
You play in a metaphorical and dreamlike world, with trolls in houses and random cookware scattered everywhere.
The therapy occurs in the gameplay: you are told relaxation techniques and other tips, asked to exercise them in-game, and generally work on laughter, dance, happiness and fixing things.
This game has a lot of implementation trouble, both with guess-the-verb and unclear instructions. This gets in the way of the relaxation experience, and makes me less likely to play again in the future.
A homebrew web parser game with minimalistic old-school dino style!, December 19, 2018This game was entered in IFComp 2018.
Escape from Dinosaur Island is a homebrew parser game that features nice coloring and styling.
The parser has most of the weaknesses of homebrew parsers in general, mostly a lack of synonyms or responses for things like 'get up' or 'push basket'. However, this is alleviated by generous in-game hinting of the correct verbs.
The plot and gameplay are Scott-Adams-esque: each room has an item or two, the plot is mostly scenery for the fun setting and puzzles, and most of the gameplay is bringing the right item to the right place.
If you like that style of gameplay (like I do), then this will be a fun little nugget of gameplay.
A masterful fantasy game with a unique interaction style, December 13, 2018Twine games often fall into two traps: branching too much (so that playthroughs are short and miss almost all content) or branching too little (so that players feel frustrated, as if their choices don't matter). Games with strong writing can make up for this (like Myriad or Polish the Glass), but it's definitely a big problem for this system.
Pseudavid sidesteps this problem neatly by using a unique form of interaction. The player is put into a physical space and allowed to navigate while multiple storylines unfold simultaneously.
The game, then, becomes about being in the right place at the right time. It gives you a real sense of a bigger world, of life and vitality.
I suggest playing this game multiple times to see the different storylines.
The one thing that I had trouble with was, even when I knew exactly what I wanted to do and had some ideas about how to do it, I had trouble carrying it out.
(Note: I helped beta test this game.)
A smooth Twine murder mystery with complex puzzles, November 30, 2018This was one of of my favorite games of the competition. It’s a smooth Twine game that plays well both on desktop and mobile.
You play as a ghost who died, or was murdered, during Thanksgiving. You have to simultaneously learn (as a player) about the neighborhood while gathering (as a ghost) mental clues to find out what happened.
The game is divided into two chunks: exploration and linking. Exploration has you looking through the thoughts of others to gain clues, and linking has you pick two related clues to produce a new one in a complex multi-layered system. I’ve seen mysteries use this technique (and written one), but this is the best implementation of the idea I’ve seen so far, and very satisfying. I got stuck near the end, but I feel like a puzzle game is perfect difficulty if I do well until the end and need a hint then.
Great for mystery fans, and fun for everyone.
A richly responsive game about animals occupying a human body, November 19, 2018This was one of the best and most-talked-about games form IFComp 2018.
I played through this one once during the comp and about 6 or 7 times afterwards.
This game has some of the greatest responsivity I've ever seen in a choice game. You make a choice between several different characters to inhabit 4 regions of a robot-child's body. Each area of the body has 3 choices.
Throughout the game, the character inside a given area will talk, and there are 3 variants every time this happens. In addition, there is a point where any two characters can talk to each other, which gives (I believe) around 90 combinations, some of which are merged but still very impressive. There are multiple pathways through everything.
Basically, this is a combinatorial explosion game, which are usually very short because it's impossible to make them long. This is a long game, though, so that means the author worked incredibly hard.
It also made me laugh a lot at different points, literally laughing out loud (for instance when (Spoiler - click to show)Charlie the robot is standing in the toilet flushing his feet over and over until mom comes in).
I'm giving it 4 stars just because I felt that, although my choices mattered a lot, it was hard for me to make and execute plans. I tried so many times just to get to Martin's house, even with the author's help, and I wish I could have known better how to do that. But this is an incredible achievement of a game.
A classic CYOA-style online game book about a haunted mansion, November 15, 2018This IFComp 2018 game features a professional thief protagonist who is exploring an old, haunted mansion with the intent of finding treasure.
The style is unique to the company, Intudia, with numerical choices listed in the text and buttons with numbers on them lined up below.
The game itself has an intricate backstory, with the mansion having many levels and many ghosts and villains.
There are numerous problems, however. The text is overly long at times, with scattered grammatical errors (like 'to' instead of 'too). The numbers on the bottom are often in a strange pattern with one number far to the side of the others. Instead of tracking state, it seems as if the game relies on you to remember what actions you took in the past.
Still, the story is compelling, and a fun read for fans of horror.
A murder mystery set in Old Scotland, November 15, 2018I helped to beta test this game.
This is a fairly big conversational game set in medieval Scotland. The player must converse with over a dozen characters to figure out who is planning a murder.
The ambitious game design makes this feel epic, and it's exciting to get tangled up in the web of deceit. However, the large number of characters and the many topics makes for a combinatorial explosion, and it becomes easy to get lost in a forest of information.
The author has an Introcomp game that is also set in medieval times that is worth checking out.
A big, fairly serious horror game by bitterkarella, November 9, 2018bitterkarella is known for making horror-themed games in Quest, both serious and humorous.
This game has more styling than most, with hand-chosen fonts and neon colors.
The storyline seems well thought-out, and the setting is evocative. It all feels like an intense and overwhelming dream, the kind you wake from gasping for air. It starts out light-hearted but gets more intense.
This game has the usual problems Quest does, which I think are inevitable given the platform. Of all bitterkarella's games, this is the one I'd most like to see polished up in Inform or TADS 3.
A novella-length game about a crew of teenagers and a haunted town, November 5, 2018This game combines dating game-type choices with complex static storytelling to form a rich interactive game.
You go to a Halloween party, and a lot of people are there. A supernatural event puts the whole town in danger, and you have a group of 8 people you can interact with, including multiple romantic partners.
Most of the choices relate to how you treat people. It doesn't track perfectly, though...I picked constantly to have favorable interactions with one character (Zachary) and twice with another (Ione) and received romantic possibilities only with Ione.
Very impressive. The title and cover art led me to believe it would be a short and under-implemented parser game. Instead, it was a rich and polished novella.
The font was a light grey that was a bit difficult to read, as a warning to the visually impaired.
An entertaining fusion of Lovecraftian horror with the roaring twenties, July 19, 2018I received a review copy of this game, and played through a couple of games.
This is a single- or multi-player board game that goes through 6 rounds. In each of the six rounds, you are trying to increase your 7 stats. These stats allow you to pass challenges. In the end, you see if your stats will qualify you for a 'role', determining if you win or not. The roles have 2 hidden stat requirements which you must guess from their descriptions.
I've played many commercial IF games in the last couple of years, and I would put this one in the top tier in terms of polish. The music, graphics, animations, and overall presentation are professional and engaging.
Writing-wise, I was strongly reminded of Fallen London in its more humorous sidequests. You are playing as a cultist each time. A good amount of text was repeated on two playthroughs, more repetition than is typical for a pure text game, but less repetition than I'm used to in a board game. It allows for mods (several of which are already developed), which increases the replay value.
The game was charming and funny. I found myself excited by the game map with its bouncy art of classic locations like an old town hall, an asylum, a speakeasy, etc.
The interaction was a little fiddly. It took me two playthroughs and two readings of the tutorial to fully understand what was going on, and I'm not really convinced of the 'elder sign' mechanic. The game doesn't tell you how to pass certain tests, including the test to see if you win, but you can spend elder signs to see what tests include. Replay also helps you know what tests require.
However, I enjoyed both of my playthroughs. Because I hadn't paid for the game, I considered what price I'd pay for the game. I thought, "Is this $20 range like Sunless Skies? Because that would be pretty steep." When I saw it was $4.99, I thought, "That's more than fair for the price you're paying."
So if you're a fan of Lovecraftian references, gothic humor, Ruby Gloom-style art, or complex board games like Arkham Asylum, this is a good game for you.
A homebrew parser game that leans on classic tropes, May 2, 2018This is a parser game written in C++. I played it on my own at first, but after I found it had trouble responding to several commands (and crashed after a few unexpected commands) I resorted to the walkthrough.
This game leans heavily on old text adventure cliches, especially making homages to Curses! and, perhaps, Scott Adams games.
Several scenes from Curses! are exactly reproduced, such as the delicately balanced key and the spade joke.
The worldbuilding was fairly well done, but I can't recommend this one due to the difficulties of the parser.
An ambitious and sprawling collection of games, April 29, 2018This is unique among IF; the closest thing to it I've seen is the current Spring Thing game Life in This Northern Town.
This is an anthology of five games: one inform game and four heavily modified Twine games.
I'll discuss each game in a minute. First, an overview: the folder from itch.io contains six images, one of each of the main protagonists together with a cover photo. The art is very well-done.
The general idea is that five heroes banded together, and then something occurred to them in the long run. The games focus on the beginning and the aftermath, skipping the traditional climax. It's contemplative.
Each game is named after a main character. Looking at the photos before playing is advised.
Alemayehu is the Inform game, and perhaps this should not be the game to start with when you're playing through. It is a constrained parser game, with a few actions primarily relating to other characters. It is a one-room game.that last a couple dozen actions or so.
Apollinariya is a textual labyrinth in Twine. The screen is split in two, with a table of contents on the left and text on the right. Your goal, if there can be said to be one, is to fill out the table of contents on the left, after which you can read the story as a whole. Links are unusual, as clicking on them reveals arrows going left or right, occasionally crossed out. To me, this was the weakest Twine game, as I ended up lawnmowering every link to get the last bits of story. But I enjoyed the final story.
Arzan is a heavily styled letter with a number of binary choices. in tone and styling it is reminiscent of First Draft of the Revolution. While the story is fairly linear, it offers some significant choices in terms of tone and emotion.
Cevahir was perhaps my favorite Twine subgame. Based on a taciturn character, it is minimalistic in writing but uses evocative visual imagery.
The final Twine game, Renatum An Amurum, uses retro styling, similar to text boxes in SNES RPG's. Similar to the Texture writing system, hovering over links provides additional context, but links are still clicked instead of dragged. This game requires replays to get the full story.
On the negative side, I found the new names and the obscure writing hard to get into at first, and I was surprised that the Twine and Inform games had been bundled up into applications.
I felt like I knew the characters by the end, which is a good sign.
An ambitious amnesia horror RPG with some rough edges, April 21, 2018This game was not what I expected. With warnings about graphic violence and explicit language, the title 'American Angst', and the logo of an American flag-colored smily face, I expected something like a mix between 'The Purge' and 'Saw' and anti-Donald Trump revenge horror.
I got something else instead, and was pleasantly surprised. This game is an amnesia-based horror game that tells the story passively through set pieces, until the end when all is revealed.
It uses extensive styling, with special 'emphasis' boxes, an 8-bit looking battle interface, and special designs for links and devices. Profanity occurs about once or twice a screen, but my chrome extension blocked it easily.
The game saves automatically, and takes you back to checkpoints if you die.
I found the story compelling, and was surprised by the ending(s).
The game has rough patches, though. The credits don't list a single tester, and it shows. There are several mis-spellings (such as the word 'matrace' for mattress) and small grammatical errors (like 'the flashlight doubles for a nighstick' instead of 'doubles as').
Similarly, there are many game elements which should improve interactivity but end up not doing much. There is a panic stat which doesn't seem to do much besides letting you choose between having a panic attack or not. The battles are more random than strategy based. And choices aren't informed, some literally being 'left or right?' with no other information, making it feel like you don't have control.
Having had this game tested would have caught some of these issues. As it is, though, this is a well-done game and one of the best Twine games of 2017.
A visual novel with combat elements set underwater, April 18, 2018This was a first for me: a visual novel with RPG elements. I know visual novels are a big field, but I've generally played text-only games.
The art seemed high-quality, but characters would switch positions on the screen at odd times, which was kind of distracting. It was hard for me to distinguish the two male protagonists, who changed expression sometimes when they were talking and sometimes when others were talking.
The overall storyline was interesting, and seemed like part of a larger and well-developed world.
The RPG combat was fun, I don't see that a lot. I was allowed to go into negative MP with the main character, making winning easy.
Overall, I found some of the graphical elements unpolished, but the story very descriptive. The interactivity worked for me, and the combat and some of the decisions made me feel anxious for the characters. Overall, I feel satisfied with my playthrough and don't plan on revisiting the game. So I'm assigning it a score of 3/5.
A pleasant mid-length minimalist puzzle game that is kid-friendly, April 11, 2018This is a game in the vein of DiBianca's other games, with an emphasis on a minimal verb set and getching puzzles.
You have to help sixteen animals in a gridlike town. Each asks for various things, and you have to help them. Some give hints, and others just add flavor.
I beta tested this game, and I enjoyed it then and now. Highly recommended for a pure puzzle experience.
A puzzle game with intentional and unintentional insights to game industry, April 3, 2018This game is a puzzle game with three difficulties (corresponding to more or less turns) and gender options.
You have to cram through a packed day of tasks to get a game produced.
I worked in the game industry in the early 2000's, and all of this was very familiar. The caffeine-fueled late nights testing bugs, the feuds, the wheeling and dealing, and the shiny, beautiful golden master CD. I was on the outside of it, but it was intense.
This game is really tricky, and not all solutions are coded for, even fairly reasonable ones.
This game also offers unintentional glimpses into game culture, which also ring true in an unpleasant way. The main puzzle involving a woman executive has her being embarrassed to ask you to open a box that she's struggling with. All women are assumed to have long hair, etc. The penknife you have is a Mexican penknife, about which the game says the following:
"* What's up with the "Mexican army knife"?
Again, no politics, I just needed something that could cut twine but still be flimsy enough to break off after one use. Given the comparatively small size and budget of the Mexican army, it seemed like an easy gag. Plus I got to put in a funny line about a hazy trip to Tijuana."
All of these things that I mentioned were fairly innocuous in the game culture when this is written, but don't hold up to modern scrutiny.
An amusing game with a unique PC, April 1, 2018This game was influential on my own writing. In this game, you play as a disembodied eyeball which must solve various puzzles on a desk and on a fireplace mantel.
It's creative and its fun. However, I found the interactivity frustrating, and so I never completely engaged with the writing and the concept.
An Adrift robot murder mystery, March 30, 2018This was a charming game, and in a genre I haven't seen too much of: a murder mystery set completely in a world of robots. Bad Machine and Suspended both give off the same vibe of this game, that of a purely mechanical society, but this game achieves a remarkable contrast between the impassiveness of the robots and the emotion of the investigation.
It suffers from ADRIFT's standard problems, but to a much smaller degree than usual. I did have some trouble guessing the later actions, but overall I found myself pleased by this game. I've been lucky enough to find a string of good games in a row this week.
A short murder mystery game with a mid-level of polish, March 30, 2018This game was entered in IFComp 2004. It has two PCs, one featured in the prologue, and one who is a main character detective.
The opening scene was clever, but I soon find myself frustrated by small bugs and a lack of implementation. Without proper feedback, it was hard to know if I was on the right track or not.
The game has several puzzles which are fairly hard to guess on your own, and which seemed somewhat unfair to me.
Overall, it was interesting, and had a nice cat character.
A wonderful one-room puzzle box with tons of items and layers of clues, March 27, 2018This is a great one-room puzzle game in the same vein as The Wand or Lord Bellwater's Secret.
You are placed in a room and tasked with finding a certain word. This is quite a difficult task. The room is split up into 9 different sub-locations, each with puzzles, usually several puzzles. There are experimentation puzzles, intuition puzzles, red herrings, crossword-style puzzles, math puzzles, etc.
I was able to solve it without hints, but I think I played it once 8 years ago, and it gave me a hint on a particularly tricky problem.
About half of my playtime was just going to each of the 9 sections of the room and examining everything. The other half was putting the clues together.
An intriguing horror mystery with humor, January 20, 2018I beta tested this game, so it's hard to be objective about it. I think I would give it a 4.5/5, so I rounded up.
Faute De Servo combines several game ideas that I love, including waking up in a lab-like environment with no clue what's going on (like Babel) and gaining powers by devouring random things (like the under-played Mangiasaur).
Much of the game consists of figuring out the action system, as well as the backstory of your location. I found this somewhat confusing (which is why I gave 4.5/5) but the presentation is so slick that it makes up for it.
There's also a good deal of humorous banter in the game, which I enjoyed. It is derivved from a cast of characters with distinct personalities and varying levels of intelligence.
This is definitely worth playing, both for the overall game concept and for the nifty implementation.
A fairly long fantasy CYOA game in Inform 6 with vivid characters, January 15, 2018This French game is in a CYOA format. It’s an adventure story, almost novella length, set on a fantasy world. It has a tone that is lighter and appropriate for young adult and middle school readers. In fact, it reminded me of Norbez’s IFComp game If You Squint it Looks Like Christmas in its tone, genre, length, and choice structure (as a point of reference for ifcomp players).
I liked the story overall, even sharing parts of it with my wife. It’s a heartwarming and cheerful story, with vivid characters and moments of excitement.
The choice structure wasn’t what I’m used to; many of the choices were “do something awesome or leave”. I never tried leaving, because I wanted to see what would happen. Eventually, I become somewhat paranoid that the leaving choices were important, so it gave more weight to my decisions.
I would give it 4 stars if it had a save system. I couldn’t find one, and this is very lengthy.
An educational esperanto adventure in 5 chapters of Twine, January 12, 2018This game is, it seems, written in Esperanto. I thought it was Portuguese at first, but the game itself corrected me.
You are Alice, and, I believe, you are headed to an Esperanto-speaking conference, where you meet someone who tells you about Esperanto. I learned that Esperanto has between 100,000 and 1,000,000 speakers. Given that the number of Twine fans is probably somewhere in that range, too, and the intersection is fairly low, I don't think many people will be able to complete this game.
I only got through the first third of the first chapter. Looking through the code, it seems like there is a compelling fantasy element in the middle.
This is an intriguing game, and a great amount of work.
A creepy but buggy tale about a state park , December 3, 2017This quest game has refreshingly original storybuilding. It includes a big pamphlet you can read which does a good job of displaying a 'descent into madness', although I think it could have done better if it left a bit more mystery in the last few pages.
The game has a layout (story-wise) similar to Karella's earlier Night House. You are alone in a building, and something is outside, and you have to figure out what it wants.
I was unable to complete this during Ectocomp. Afterwards, some people commented on intfiction with the solution.
Overall, this was a positive experience once I knew what to do.
A fairly good ghost story in Adrift with some bugs, November 17, 2017This story is actually pretty fun, given how little this is done in IF.
It's a traditional ghost/creepy story with an old abandoned house to search through.
It has numerous bugs, and a huge number of 'guess the verb' problems, but I was glad I played it and enjoyed it overall. I used the walkthrough.
A mishmash of DnD tropes with Christianity and roman history, November 17, 2017This has to be a troll game; Panks admitted before that some of his IFComp games are troll games (such as Ninja II). But if not...
You play as a weakened mythological god, except that that never gets mentioned after the first screen. You can find and kill Jesus. Most of the game is fighting DnD characters. There is a village with a tavern, like most Panks games.
It was interesting, but not his best offering.
An ambitious puzzly club game with implementation issues, November 17, 2017This game attempts quite a bit. You are trying to get into a mysterious club. The game is full of puzzles and many, many red herrings.
There was obviously a lot of thought and effort put in, but it could have used more testing. Fun with a walkthrough.
Awesome transformation witch game, November 17, 2017I beta tested this game.
This game has a utilitarian interface, but don't let that fool you: this is a seriously great game.
Your magical witch house is broken, and you need to fix it. You have an inventory (even though it's web based), and you have the power to alter the elements of various inventory elements.
It has a cheerful backstory. Different items you carry interact with each other.
The various interactions are fiddly sometimes, and perhaps even unfair; but somehow everything gelled for me in a great way. Not everyone may feel the same.
A three-act fantasy game with a big cast of characters, November 17, 2017I beta tested this game.
This game casts you as a translator of ancient languages in a fantasy world. It's split up into three acts: a tense moment on a boat, a fight in a town, and a climactic finale in an archaelogical dig.
The overall story, the characters, etc. are all well-drawn. But the game is so big that more needs to be filled-in; more responses to synonyms and commands, more conversational topics, more alternate puzzle solutions.
Basically a children's novella with some interactivity, November 17, 2017I could see myself picking this book up and reading it in the library. You play as an orphan who gets sucked into another world by a mysterious stranger.
This other world is an Oz-like fantasy world that is creatively engineered. A long story plays out.
There's not much interactivity to speak of, though there are options scattered throughout. But I liked this; it reminded me of 'pulpy' kids books that I read when I was a teenager, like Deltora quest.
A dancing-based historical game in a magnificent setting, November 17, 2017Ojuel is a master of setting, and this is a great game. You play as an former dancer in 1958 in a communist Carribean country. You have to extricate something from a house party, but you don't know what it is.
The game has great storytelling, using flashbacks and conversation to good effect. I see it getting nominated for several XYZZYs.
There were several implementation difficulties, though, because it was sometimes hard to know what verbs to use. A post-comp release that implemented every command response contained in judges' reviews would not take much time, and would add the finishing touches to this already great game.
A powerful Twine game about dementia, November 16, 2017I beta tested this game.
Stephen Granade has written a wonderful game here about an old man coping with dementia.
It makes magnificent use of unreliable narrator to depict the disorientation that dementia causes.
It is a fairly long Twine game, but autosaves, and has a nice feature that tells you how long the game has been playing.
Highly recommended.
A polished and well-designed story framed as a simulation, November 16, 2017I beta tested this IFComp 2017 game.
This is a Twine game framed as a situation (specifically of feeding sea-monkeys), which the actual story is fitted into.
I found the colors and presentation very nice, and the game overall very polished. I did find it frustrating how long it took to reach the final ending, but that was mostly due to time crunch around IFComp. If you have time to play, this is a relaxing and enjoyable experience.
Contains infrequent strong profanity.
A tight puzzle fest in a color coded escape-room game, November 16, 2017This game has you going to a live escape room in a mall or building somewhere.
Inside are a series of color-coded rooms with a variety of puzzles. They include a variety using slightly-less-standard-but-still standard verbs like 'search' or 'look under', etc.
I enjoyed this game. It didn't really inspire any emotion in me, but as a small puzzle snack, it does what it is intended to do.
I feel like this is an improvement over the author's previous game, Questor's Quest, and I'd like to see more from this author.
An imaginative graphical game with few choicepoints, November 16, 2017This game plays out like a branching graphical novel. It has quite a few beautiful hand-drawn backgrounds and images.
You are a space traveler who has left the earth with her young daughter. You are separated, and must travel to five different planets, seeking your daughter.
Choices are few, but you get some major ones. For me, the biggest attraction is the interesting characters and depicted societies in each world.
A great mid-sized Twine space exploration/trading game, November 16, 2017I beta-tested this game, and I deeply enjoyed it.
It's a twine game with some really nice use of color and a cool title screen.
You venture from world to world, doing some grinding of resources, and buying different equipment.
Other parts of the game include more room-to-room travel and taking and using items. There are story interludes, and so on.
It was a little shorter than I hoped for, but I'm still giving it 5 stars.
A buggy but intense psychological symbolism game, November 16, 2017This game reminds me of Pilgrimage by Victor Ojuel. Both are symbolic games with female protagonists based on the 4 humors: sanguine, phlegmatic, bilious, and melancholic.
Beyond that, though, they diverge significantly. Temperamentum has a 'real world' and 4 different worlds themed on the idea of hot/cold, wet/dry associated to the 4 humors.
The game is heavy, about loss. I enjoyed it, but parts of it are almost impossible without the walkthrough, and the walkthrough itself is unreliable in parts (for instance, west and east are switched at one point, and in another, it uses the word 'woman' when only 'her' works).
A well-done parser hybrid mystery with graphics, November 16, 2017This game has you explore a reservation-based casino to try and uncover the truth behind a murder.
It implements a blackjack game, and uses graphics and a hand-made parser hybrid engine.
The primary portion of the game is investigating a few suspects by interviewing them, examining their items, and talking to those who have seen them.
However, I never felt strongly emotionally invested in the game. I did feel interested while playing, though.
The meek shall inherit...something, November 16, 2017This is a fairly long and polished Twine game with multiple branches, more or less in the Gauntlet style under Ashwell's classification system.
The game is centered around meekness. You are a milquetoast character on a train dealing with family issues and personal anxiety.
If you choose to, you can be sent on a small adventure, where you learn more about the possibilities in yourself.
The writing was engaging, but I felt like my choices didn't really matter (outside of Do you want to continue or Not), and I feel like they didn't drive the text forward. The concept was creative, though.
A tech-savvy game about the end of a young girl's life, November 16, 2017This game is about a girl named Mikayla, whose phone you find. The game consists of digging though all the apps in the phone to see what her life was like.
I enjoyed the photos (of random things like dogs and writing) and the poetry. There were text notes and voice memos that were, I think, too long for me. They seemed to be there mainly to provide a feeling of reality and background; however, in a storytelling environment, being 'true to life' often makes things too unwieldly. I feel that the purpose of stories is to condense and crystallize reality, and those two parts of the game could have used significant condensing and crystallization.
Overall, it left a good impression on me, especially the ending (which I found by poring through the code).
An excellent and well-illustrated academic time travel game, November 16, 2017This is probably the slickest of all the games entered this year.
This is a short mystery tale set in a women's college in (I think) the northeast. You are replacing a professor who has mysteriously disappeared.
The main narrative is about time-hoppers (which feels more like a temporal Gulliver's Travels than H.G. Wells), but there is a sub-narrative about the place of adjunct/temporary/visiting faculty and the various roles of women in academia.
The game beautifully divides between 'asides'-links and 'moving forward'-links by having the first show up as notes in the margin and the latter extending the text.
It's well-illustrated and well-written. One of the best web games available.
A squirrel game with some tricky puzzles, November 16, 2017I enjoyed the puzzles of Goodbye Cruel Squirrel with a walkthrough. I enjoyed the writing in general, but not the mean-spiritedness.
You play as a squirrel raiding another tribe. You have to progress through a series of locations, each with its own puzzle.
I got stuck early on and used a walkthrough the whole time.
A hidden-object like game involving visions of the future, November 16, 2017This is a game with a brilliant premise; you are some sort of alien being charged with protecting a young girl.
You have visions of the future, showing you that seven enemies will come and attack her.
You can do various things to improve her chances of survival, with each thing you do providing you with a new vision.
This was very successful in general, but I found it fiddly in two areas. First, some things weren't implemented; for instance, the first thing you learn about Kayla is that she has pulled-back hair and a simple dress. But if you try to examine either one, there is an error.
Second, the game essentially becomes a hidden-object puzzle. You have to scour descriptions for nouns, examine each noun, and hope that you find the right thing. Some solutions that seem like they should work, don't; like finding alternate things for burning/clogging, etc.
But I still enjoyed this game a lot. It has a nice map.
A grotesque limited parser game about consumption, November 16, 2017I beta tested this game, and it was my personal choice for winner of IFComp 2017.
It is a grotesque game; you are a child granted a bottomless pit by a magical character in a fairy tale. You are imprisoned in a dungeon where countless other children have met gruesome deaths.
The game revolves completely around eating, with eating the only real action. Like DiBianca's Grandma Bethlinda's Variety Box, where USE was the only verb, the puzzles in this game revolves around timing and sequence.
I found this game satisfying, and have played it 6 or 7 times.
Same as all the other Panks games, October 27, 2017I had just played Fetter's Grim and Westfall (or Westport or whatever it is), as well as a few other Panks games.
This game has all the usual suspects: a village, a tavern, a cathedral on the west side of town with a nook to the north, jokes about the author being drunk or not being drunk, a hellhound that is in the first dark forest area south of town, etc. exactly what's in all the other games.
It doesn't understand 'X' or 'TAKE' even though other Panks games in the same year do. It's just bizarre.
A parody of Sleeping Beauty and IF, September 28, 2017This game casts you as The Packrat, and adventurer who is trying to fight their urges to take anything and everything they can get a hold of.
This is played up for laughs early on, but not so much later.
This game centers around 'guess the author's thoughts'-type puzzles, and as such is very difficult to finish unaided.
A ton of work went into this, but it could have used more polishing.
An augmented story book with graphics, animation and sound, September 28, 2017This is a small chapter book with a story about a cat.
It is well-written, with no typos that I saw. It incorporates animations that respond to screen touches and (I think) accelerometers. It also includes sound.
This type of augmented story is not something that has traditionally been entered into the IFComp, although I could see a day when things become more common. For me, though, I found it uncomplying emotionally, and the interactivity that was available was not exciting.
A porpentine-esque surreal bio-cyber Twine game, September 28, 2017This game is strongly (by the author's admission) influenced by porpentine.
It mimics Porpentine's uses of multi-colored links and cycling back to one location, and background music, as well as visceral/gooey scenes and identity horror.
However, it lacks a great deal of porpentine's pacing. Frequently, new text is delayed for several seconds before appearing. There are no consistent 'rules' for how scenes proceed; many threads are introduced that are not resolved.
I found that the game was stronger the longer it went.
A reality tv show parody with some guess-the-verb problems, September 28, 2017In this game, you use a remote control to interact with various tv shows. These include a game show, a survivor-like show, and one I'll leave unmentioned for surprises.
The concept is fun, but the execution combines under-implementation, heavy-handedness, and lampshaded 4th wall breaking that is never resolved as to why it should occur.
A short, fun werewolf romp that could use some more cluing, September 28, 2017This game casts you as a werewolf agent for a large group of werewolves. You have to travel to a snow-covered Chinese village to investigate its destruction.
The story and setting are actually pretty good, and I liked this game. Where it falls down is in presenting information to the player; nowhere, even in the extensive menu system, are you told how to transform between human and wolf. Conversation topics have to be guessed to proceed with little in-game explanation.
Fun mid-length game to take for a spin. Nice use of different senses in descriptions.
A mid-length sci-fi game with multiple viewpoints and a vintage Sci-fi feel, September 28, 2017This game feels just like all of the 60's scifi stories I read growing up, in a good way.
You play as a young child on a lonely outpost in the sea during a war between Earth and Mars. Alone for the day, you get to use your imagination around the island, until events take a sudden turn.
The multiple viewpoints reminded me favorably of Rover's Day Out and Delphina's House.
There were a few parts where the interactivity just didn't do it for me, which is why I deducted one star.
Very, very big game about a robotic conspiracy at a factory, September 28, 2017This game has numerous issues, and is best played with a walkthrough.
With a walkthrough, it can be pretty fun. It does include steps like waiting 19 times in a row, with each Z producing a text dump.
The reason it can be fun is that its story, which has early hints about employees not being all the way there and oddly intelligent robotic devices, is compelling in the large scale.
Worth trying if you like to skim read and don't mind walkthroughs.
A mid-sized fantasy game about foreign the perfect weapon, September 28, 2017This game has you sent on a quest to collect parts to make a magic item, escape from a jail cell, search a dungeon, and has both a classic logic puzzle and a collection of riddles.
I didn't really like it at first, and played through with the walkthrough the whole way. Along the way, though, I began to like it more. The descriptions can be fun and interesting, though unpolished. The story has some fairly large plotholes, but I feel like the game was close to being complete, fun, and bug free, if the author had had more time.
A game about playing inside of classic arcade games, September 28, 2017This game by a good author (see 'Delusions') reminds me a bit of Gris et Jaune by Jason Devlin, another talented author. Both games have very strong openings that hint at a great game full of polish.
However, both were not completely finished/polished in time for the competitions they were entered in. This game, in particular, falls flat in the most exciting part: the actual game simulation. You play as Mario, and you have to jump with timed Glulx effects, but it just doesn't work out, and later levels are, I believe, unfinished.
A heartfelt but choppy gangster game, September 28, 2017This game seems to almost certainly have been written by a talented but inexperienced teenager who had a great idea for a game but fell down in the execution.
This is a mobster story, with gunfights, methlabs, explosions, burning buildings, etc. But everything is disjointed; creative scenes are established, but not connected to each other. No one seemed to notice horrible deaths or accidents that had occurred minutes earlier, and massive plotholes come and go without comment.
It was an entertaining read, though, with the walkthrough.
Reworkings of several old arcade games into IF, tied by a plot, September 15, 2017This game, similar to Sylenius Mysterium, has you entering an arcade at night and playing a variety of arcade games in IF form.
Some of the games work out really well (I like the way that Pong was presented). Others are just bizarre (what game corresponds to the politics scene?).
Overall, fun with a walkthrough.
An origami-based 'fetch items for wizard' game, September 15, 2017This game is part of the incomprehensibly large subset of 'a wizard asks you to collect items' games.
It's also part of the 'parser likes to insult your character' genre.
It also begins with 'my lame apartment', including waking up with a hangover in just your underwear, which is also a surprisingly large genre.
However, it also lets you make about 15 different objects with origami, which is pretty cool.
A mid length sci fi game with complicated wiring puzzle, September 15, 2017This game has you wake up with amnesia in a space wreck.
Eventually, your world opens up a bit more, and you get to explore an alien world.
It's a fairly interesting game setup, but the story doesn't have much 'bite'. Concepts are introduced but then never explored.
It has a pretty complicated electrical wiring puzzle that requires experimentation at the end.
A murder mystery set at an airplane field, September 15, 2017This game was an IFComp game. It has you as a detective investigating murder at an airplane field.
You collect clues by searching scenery and by talking to people. It has a lot of elements of a good detective story, but it's really easy to get stuck and throw off the timing. There's also some goofy oddball elements that don't really fit in.
An interesting puzzle game marred by implementation issues, August 15, 2017This game has you trying out various products in a puzzly environment. It has a snarky parser that jokes about a corporate environment, uses text pauses extensively, and has you assemble a complicated system.
It's actually pretty interesting, but the implementation has increasingly greater issues, making the latter half impossible to complete.
A unique game based on a Lord Dunsany story, August 15, 2017This game is perhaps best left undescribed, as its core mechanic is so unusual. It helps to type ABOUT or (I think) COMMANDS.
The story is based off an old Dunsany Story, just like Nepstad's The Journey of the King. But this game is much more constrained than that one.
I would have rated the game higher if I hadn't been stuck so many times, trying to search for the correct commands to advance the game.
A dark/light themed game with earnest and bizarre writing, August 1, 2017This game has you enter a series of parallel worlds where darkness is everywhere, and you must attack it with the light.
It seems intentionally to parody things at several points, with gophers as the bad guys and a random plant called Gorarry that is the key to the universe.
I don't see anyone beating this without the walkthrough, but with the walkthrough it has some fun narrative points about player/parser relations.
A big, mostly empty game about investigating fraud, August 1, 2017This game has you wandering around a large map until you reach a manor, where you have to complete several puzzles to convict a rich man of fraud.
Most of the locations are empty, and when they are not empty, they often have strange disambiguation problems. The one NPC is very odd, to say the least.
This game needed a lot more polish.
A buggy game about changing your name after a hangover, August 1, 2017This game combines an unfortunately too common theme in IF (waking up in an apartment after drinking and/or romantic affairs) with another too common theme (office bureaucracy) and another (wacky weirdness), but somehow without fully committing to any of them.
The ADRIFT parser is really poor here. "Two dollar bill" is recognized, but not 'two' or 'bill' or so on.
There was a bug partway through that kept the walkthrough from working for me.
A game about discovering an invisibility potion, August 1, 2017This game has you find the secret of invisibility.
The base concept is really good; you have to remove clothes and not carry stuff to avoid being caught. You can find bandages, etc.
Unfortunately, the game is a bit too fiddly to work with. It's difficult to know what to do, due to undercluing.
A short zork-esque game with key-like combat, August 1, 2017This game has you exploring a small area with a Zorkian feel (a living room, a cave, transportation items, gemstones, etc.)
The puzzles are a bit underclued. Several of the puzzles involve a monster running at you. You have to be holding the correct weapon and use it to defeat the creature.
A silly power rangers spoof with giant opening maze, August 1, 2017This game is split into two parts. The second part is pretty cool; you are a power-ranger sort of person who gets a robot and can form a Zord type of thing.
The first part, however, is incredibly dull, having you trudge through swamps requiring 15 or 20 movement commands in a single direction (like n.n.n.n.n.n.n....)
If the first half were shorter, this would be pretty fun.
A homebrew RPG game with crafting system , August 1, 2017This game has an interesting setup where you wake up, with amnesia, in a forest, wearing a tunic with a skull embroidered on it.
You have to fight your way past beetles to get upgrades to fight more beetles to leave a tutorial area which ends the game.
The problem with the combat system here is that small steps take a lot of effort. Typing takes much more effort than clicks; either typing needs to be reduced to superfast shortcuts, or each command typed needs to have significant effect. This game strugles to find that balance.
An old homebrew parser game about infiltrating a party, August 1, 2017This is an old game that was released in IFComp purporting to be from 1981, complete with an old manual.
It was, rather, a new (for 2000) homebrew parser game about being a spy. I found the parser difficult to wrangle with and the story hard to piece together.
Play as a lone janitor in a science facility, August 1, 2017This TADS game has you play as a janitor in a lab where all the scientists are gone for the day. It's up to you to stop the terrorists.
The setting is pretty bland for a lab, and the room descriptions are minimal, but I didn't find any bugs.
There is an independent NPC and an animal that are fairly fun.
A strange game from the fake Santoonie Corp, August 1, 2017This game has you play an autistic elf in the US called Delvyn, who eats pancakes and adventures into a spooky house.
I found this game fairly entertaining though buggy at first, but then I got stuck in the second pit, and reading on RGIF made me uncertain whether the game was even finishable, as Santoonie are notable trolls.
A short, buggy game about riding a go kart to a fantasy land, August 1, 2017This is an AGT game, a sort of parser used before TADS and Inform.
AGT games can be very good; however, this one has many issues, including grammar and spelling. Random text prints at the beginning of every verb, often instead of error messages.
I followed the walkthrough, but eventually found myself unable to complete it.
A mid-length exploration game with some tricky puzzles, July 16, 2017This game has you exploring a mid-sized map with a music building, a post office, and a Hardee's knockoff.
The game is well-coded and funny at many times, but many of the puzzles are of the absurd variety that only makes sense in retrospect. Puzzles include 'look behind the one scenery item in the one room that has something', 'try something that has no chance of working in real life', and 'make sure you're carrying a completely random item that will save your life'.
I wasn't a fun of the puzzles, but a large segment of people are. If you like methodically working through a game, drawing a map, and checking every item, you will probably really like this game quite a bit.
A medieval jailbreak game, July 16, 2017This game starts with a long cinematic-type sequence where you are thrown in jail for dressing like a boy.
It's notable for changing location descriptions. However, everyone I've seen that beat it used the walkthrough. It contains several unintuitive puzzles, and is one of those games best experienced via walkthru, in my opinion.
A bug-ridden but fun 3rd person supervillain game, July 16, 2017You are a third-person observer in a ship as Captain Chaos, a relatively benign supervillain, is crashing to the earth.
The writing is good, and funny, but the game is super buggy, with events firing at the wrong time, repeating actions sending your score up over and over, and a whole slew of bad interfaced design problems and missing synonyms.
It's a shame, because the writing is so fun.
A great game plagued with many bugs, about Indian folklore, July 16, 2017This large game tells a wonderful native american tale. Set in a large village, and in the world of the dead, you have to hunt food for a village while the warriors prepare for the arrival of a deadly giant.
Big and ambitious, this game was massively buggy during the competition and placed in the bottom 10. It was updated later, fixing many but not all problems. I recommend playing with the walkthrough to see the great story.
An adrift game exploring a deserted island, July 16, 2017In this game, you are marooned on a small island, and you have to get off.
Like most adrift games, the parser is poor and has disambiguation trouble.
The game has a lot of under-described locations. And there is really no hint on what you are supposed to be doing. Also the walkthrough says to take tires, but the game says they are too heavy.
Overall, this seems like a really ambitious game with moving NPCs and fire simulation, but it was probably too big to polish up in time for the comp.
A fun but under-implemented AGT cyberpunk spy game, July 16, 2017In this AGT game (a parser that I find better than ADRIFT but not as good as Inform or TADS), you have to navigate an enemy stronghold using different cubes of software and slabs and pills.
It's not very polished at all, and the parser has some troubles, and the story has gaping plotholes (it's super easy to walk into enemy barracks and take things from soldiers). But it has a charm to it, and the story seems really deeply thought out; the author says they invented the world in their youth.
A murder mystery wrapped up in a long faery-poem driven gala, July 16, 2017This is an interesting game, with many elements reminiscent of Infocom's Suspect, but much simpler.
You are attending a Faerie masque that a neighbor has thrown; in this masque, everyone has a costume and a role to say.
About half of the game consists of listening to the gala instructions (basically a big cosplay or LARP, all in rhyme), and solving easy riddles. Then it gets harder, and weird.
I liked it, though. It has some layers of mystery that are never unveiled, and which you are left to deduce for yourself, which I was unable to do.
A game about finding a safety deposit box with nonsensical puzzles, July 16, 2017In this game, you have to pass four or fives puzzles to open a safety deposit box.
These puzzles are based in reality, but have little basis in reality. Just taking a ticket from the machine involves deciphering a complex sequence of button presses.
These puzzles are exceedingly illogical. But the game is otherwise competently written and bugless.
A gruesome medieval game about memorializing the dead, July 16, 2017This game starts with several puzzles involving climbing out from a pile of corpses.
After that, you need to memorialize the dead.
This is certainly an unusual game. It could have been far better if the various puzzles had been better clued, and synonyms for verbs and nouns implemented.
A jumbled IFComp game that was a late Walkthrough Comp entry, July 16, 2017WalkthroughComp was done by Emily Short, where she wrote out a telegram of a bizarre walkthrough for a nonexistent game, and then you were to write that game.
This game is one of the biggest responses to that; however, it's too big. The game is full of text dumps, and the environment (inside a VR machine) just veers wildly from genre to genre and location to location.
It must have taken a lot of effort, but it needed more coherence, I think.
An interesting cruise ship that devolves into a find-crystal-beat-wizard game, July 16, 2017This game had a really promising opening. You board a cruise ship, and you are unguided; you wander into a gift shop, and can buy many things, there is a 4-day schedule, meals are offered throughout the day, etc.
And then BAM, it becomes a completely unoriginal text adventure where you have to solve unmotivated puzzles to find crystals to defeat a wizard. Why? It was so promising...
A competently programmed but hard 'hard sci fi' game, July 16, 2017This game has you visiting a lost world where the builders, an ancient people of great power, had disappeared, and where your supervisor has disappeared.
It has a fairly small map, allowing you to explore much of it in 30 minutes or so, but it has a tricky maze and a propensity for hiding things in scenery objects.
Overall, I found it a mostly interesting story, reminiscent of a Star Trek movie.
A buggy take on the crusades and a parody of Jesus' death, July 16, 2017This game puts you in the place of a general during the crusades.
You have to break into a city and talk to the king. There's a lot of guess-the-verb happening here.
Then you end up telling the story of Christ's death, with some parody elements. You have to reconstruct it into a more 'exciting' story to convert the king.
A somewhat buggy and underclued fantasy adventure that grew on me, July 16, 2017This game has a lot of bad signs; typos/grammar errors, the plot is literally 'destroy the evil sorcerer', random text dumps happen.
But it actually seems pretty original later on; there are several NPCs, a house with an unusual layout, an island to wander around, and an unexpected story.
I had to read the accompanying transcript, but I liked this in the end.
A wacky factory with death timers and randomization, July 16, 2017This was one of the hardest games for me to try to finish. You are in a factory with room names like "218 IMO" and "PUR PLE", with characters like "TIND-R-FUT" and "YES-R-KNO".
There is a timer that kills you randomly, over and over (you are a band of six robots, so you have six lives). The solution to the game is randomized, but there are also many irrelevant puzzles.
A game based on a play about a MUD, July 16, 2017In this game, you are in a MUD (like a text version of World of Warcraft). You have to join a beginner quest and complete it.
The game has several entertaining characters. It contains an in-game hint system that makes sense.
I found some bugs related to attempting to do things twice (like after dying).
The game seems to hint at some risque business, but there's nothing really like that (at least not explicitly).
A fun surreal game with some tricky puzzles, July 16, 2017This game has you wandering an enormous mansion, exploring room after room, with hidden passages and a strange woman in the library.
I enjoyed it, but only because I used hints. The game has the sort of thing where you have 20 similar rooms and one of them has a scenery item that can be used.
The author is a little too smarmy; if you type nothing, you get "Let me explain something here; you're playing a text adventure...no text, no adventure, get it?". That kind of 'oh silly player' attitude is prevalent. It has a lot of poetry and some physical simulation (freezing and melting in an optional puzzle, flushing toilet, etc.)
An old-school game with changing colors about collecting treasures, July 16, 2017This game is kind of a mish-mash of things, with a seedy individual like the thief in Zork, and a plot about collecting treasures.
I knew I was in trouble when I found myself in Maze Room 1. It was even worse when I discovered that the walkthrough didn't help here due to the maze being randomized.
There were some fun action sequences later on, but the game was too underclued to be easily completable.
A fairly competent adrift game about murder, July 16, 2017In this game, you play someone exploring a house during a party, trying to find paperwork on a lien on your house.
There is a death. You want to learn more about it.
The game has some odd touches (some strong profanity from a goth, for intance), especially the fact that you go through every area of the house in front of the unhappy occupants and they don't stop you.
Otherwise, though, this is one of the best Adrift implementations I've seen.
A dumb but funny game about prison, July 16, 2017In this game, you commit a series of unwitting (or sometimes witting) crimes, ending in worse and worse prison-related situations.
The story-telling uses really effective techniques, but the writing and puzzles aren't up to the challenge. By techniques, I mean cuts between scenes, timed events, actions with delayed effects, etc.
A sort of cute house game with magic and fun red herrings, July 16, 2017This game has a good mix of red herrings and regular puzzle items.
You are wandering around a house, looking for your auntie. Magic intervenes.
This game has a fairly large map, but because it's organized so well, it feels compact.
A couple of the puzzle solutions surprised me, and I feel they could have been clued better.
A game about dinosaurs that I suspect was purposely bad, July 16, 2017This game placed near the bottom of the 2002 comp, and it's not hard to see why.
The game opens with an error message; typing 'walkthru' says 'insert walkthru here'. it says it was written for a 7 year old later, which could make sense, but it seems like the authors knew it wasn't anywhere near done, and gave up.
It has a huge, mazelike map with empty rooms all over. You are given goals, but the winning walkthru ignores all of those goals.
A truly bizarre game.
A game about being a complete jerk, July 16, 2017This game is just terrible. In it, you are a misognyistic, sadistic, horrible man, whose goal is to make everyone's life worse.
The game jumps from genre to genre, and in my version, was unfinishable due to a bug near the end, but I wasn't interested in finishing it anyway.
A game involving getting high over and over again, July 10, 2017In this TADS game, you spend much of the time smoking marijuana and passing it around, before later taking peyote.
The author's note claims the game isn't about getting enlightened for drugs, but it's hard to know what it is about if not that. It definitely seems like a good anti-drug advertisement, given that following the drugs leads you to being a dirty, unwashed bum that children run away from.
Scattered strong profanity, extensive drug use.
A game about being transformed into a dog, July 10, 2017In this game, you are a 9 yr old turned into a dog.
Much of the game revolves around acquiring coupons for a dog salon, to transform yourself. It uses graphics extensively.
The game would generally be fun, with a tight map and interesting puzzles, but it has so many puzzles requiring waiting for a long time, and it has a lot of underground bad feelings for women, non-white american peoples, and the aged. It also has a direct attack on a former IF author which is essentially vicious.
In the school of the future, enter VR to print paper, July 7, 2017This game has you as a student of the future in a little pod who has to print a paper. This is one of 6 virtual reality games in IFComp 1997, probably as a response to Delusions from IFComp 1996.
This game also reminds me a lot of The Legend Lives, which has a very similar opening setup.
I actually liked this game; it was overwhelming, getting started, but I liked the well-thought out means of transferring information between the physical and virtual realms.
An intriguing science fiction apocalyptic game with guess-the-verb problems, July 5, 2017This is a really creative and original game, with a nuclear apocalypse and a sort of dual-world situation.
Despite its many plot innovations, the implementation itself is sub-par, making it difficult to play without the hints (which are split up into 5 sub-files, and seem intimidating, but which are fairly simple).
Definitely a good play (with hints) for fans of apocalyptic things.
An archaeology/fantasy game, July 5, 2017This game seems somehow unfinished; you are called in as an expert to an old abbey to investigate some pottery. You travel around the house and grounds, gathering various items, and then are thrown into a different kind of story.
The game then ends soon thereafter.
There are some implementation errors. Overall, its fun with a walkthrough if you are a fan of archaeology games.
A darkly atmospheric game choosing between doors and the room inside, July 1, 2017This game is like a DnD or serious Munchkin game: door, challenge, reward. You select some attributes about yourself (like luck, strength, etc.).
Then you are shown two doors, and you have to pick one. Behind each door is a text scene with some sort of dnd-like encounter, like a feast of food you can eat or not, or a chest that is obviously trapped.
The font, colors, and atmosphere were very good, and the writing was good.
I had to download the entire ifcomp 2016 file to get all the files for this game.
A game about eating breakfast by collecting items, July 1, 2017This is a shortish game mostly involving complicated puzzles (like the lights puzzle where pushing off one light turns on all those around it, or counting to 255 in quaternary).
Some of the puzzles are gross or a bit mean-spirited, and it could all use some more cluing. Beyond that, it's pretty competently programmed.
Mostly interesting for fans of convoluted puzzles.
A dark combat/exploration game with spotty implementation, July 1, 2017This is a creative horror game, focused on ghoulish/crypt horror and exploring some tombs/labs.
The game is creative, with various NPCs that are active. But the implementation is no good, with even the walkthrough's commands being unrecognized at times.
Still, it is interesting for fans of non-Lovecraftian horror.
A interconnected web of short, apocalyptic stories, July 1, 2017This game was really talked about a lot in the 2016 IFComp. It is unusual; it consists of many (< 500) short stories about apocalypses, many of them grim or with body horror, but with good writing. The player was invited to add to the total number of apocalypses.
I found a lot of the apocalypses very enjoyable. The format was hard for me to navigate, though; I couldn't find new stories at the pace that I wanted to. They are linked by keywords, sometimes, and sometimes not (i.e. there are dead-end links).
I enjoyed it.
A longish hyperlink horror game with replay value, June 28, 2017Well, I guess marketing works. After seeing months of promotional materials for Strayed, I decided to try it while it was on sale out of curiosity.
This is a longish hyperlink game. Although the ads seemed to show graphics for the pc version, the android version was, as advertised, pure text.
The game has a strong central horror narrative, with several detours allowed on the way, with many of the choices being flavor choices.
Just before this game, I had played Abyss, which is a similar game (twinelike without stats, on the play store). This game has better writing, less typos, and is more mature than Abyss, but is of comparable size. Those differences, though, make the difference for me between a free game (Abyss) and a commercial game (Strayed).
On replaying Strayed, I found quite a few new areas I had not previously explored, and the grand finale was different in a way that ties into the nature of the horror.
However, I did not find the horror gripping. It reminded me the most of some creepy pasta stories, where some reactions of the participants don't reflect reality (an example not from the game: "You see an airplane that morphs into a fluttering leaf. You shrug it off.")
I guess I was hoping more for emotional investment (like Hana Feels) or persistent consequences of actions (like Choice of Games), both of which the authors had written for. But $1-$2 is an appropriate amount for this game.
Edit: I added another star when I found out the underlined text showed you what your choices had affected; I really like this in a game.
A short survival game about a blind woman in a basement, June 11, 2017You are a blind woman kidnapped by a sort of serial killer. The writing is pulp-y.
The big idea here is that you FEEL, SMELL, and LISTEN instead of LOOKING.
This concept is actually implemented pretty well, but the puzzles themselves are mostly of the search-everything and perform-uncued-action variety, which makes the game less exciting.
A heavily location-based long Twine with excellent styling, May 23, 2017It took me 209 choices to complete this game on my third playthrough.
This game took third in IfComp 2016, but as of this writing, it has the highest rating and number of ratings on IFDB.
In this game, you arrive at and explore a mysterious old motel with a supernatural flair. The game uses two main types of links: mostly-static location-based links for movement, and then conversation/emotion links for small scenes that play out as you move.
The two kinds of links are very consistent, making for some great gameplay. The styling is also good, with some nice animations and fonts and colors.
A linear, thrilling parser game about a futuristic cowboy , May 10, 2017In this game, you face a series of combat challenges, one after another.
Each challenge is in one location, and you use a variety of methods to attack your opponents.
Before Superluminal Vagrant Twin, this was probably Pacian's best known game. It has some violent and suggestive elements. It features a romance and several friendships, often with the people you are battling. The setting is rich and evocative.
A largely linear but powerful story about a psychic-turned-detective, May 10, 2017This was my favorite game of the comp, on the strength of its writing and its use of kinetic links.
In this game, you play a fake psychic who discovers their true powers after being roped into a murder investigation.
The gameplay resolves around big chunks of text with little choices that change some flavor text. I usually don't like this style, but the concept of a psychic\detective trying to prove himself is great for this style; it makes you hunt the text for clues, trying to figure out what angle to approach a person, to guess what item to use next. It reminds me of Arthur Conan Doyle's stories, with a strong attention to gathering clues from clothing, appearance, and clues.
The styling is gorgeous, the machinery runs smooth, the graphics are good. Does this mean Parser is dead? No, it just means that there's twice as many games to enjoy.
A highly-branching action game with achievements, June 26, 2016This game has over 280,000 words, and is written in the 'time cave' style, where different choices lead to wildly different stories (80 different endings, in fact). Most time caves end up having each branch be fairly weak and underdeveloped, but this game does a great job on each branch.
The action is fast paced, and takes you through spy thrillers and possibly hell.
The feel is that of an old-time CYOA book, with sudden changes in genre and situation.
Recommended for fans of fast paced twine.
A long, well-developed 'dramedy' about summer camp and dreams, June 26, 2016This game from IFComp 2015 is, in my opinion, one of the best Twine games of all time, and certainly the best outside of the well-developed horror/darkness segment.
In this game, gameplay is split up between a summer camp with a slice-of-life scenario and dreams with an absurdist take on talking birds. As the game progresses, the two halves become more related.
The game takes a stats-based approach, with a twist. You develop statistics at night during your dreams; in the day, it affects what options you have for various activities. At first, I felt like the stats didn't matter, because scene follows scene in the same order regardless of your actions. However, on replay, I found that some of the best material is contained in stats-enabled actions.
This story is long and has several surprising turns. It's split into several days, each of which can be accessed independently in case you can't finish in one sitting. Because stats seem to be reset each night, I don't think you lose anything just skipping ahead.
The game includes some mild summer-camp-normal sexual references near the beginning, and one branch of one scene contains strong profanity.
Recommended for everyone.
Edit: When I played through again, I counted the distinct pages I viewed, and I took 234 choices/pages to complete the game.
An intricate mid-length AI-training game with proc gen content, June 5, 2016This game was created by Emily Short as a prize for IFComp, resulting in a game set in Steph Cherrywell's world of Canyonville from Brain Guzzlers From Beyond.
You are Mary Jane, creating a robot for your friend Jenny. You have to train your robot to become just like Jenny. You train it by having it read books in your lab on different topics. However, some books have negative side effects, so it becomes quite the puzzle to figure out what books to read and when.
The major innovation in this game is the use of procedural generation for your conversations with the robot. The robots conversation is affected by numerous variables affecting its emotion, tone, and knowledge. A large corpus is included in the source code, allowing for huge variety. This represents an immense accomplishment, and provides proc gen that is actually fun to read.
This game took me about 45 minutes to finish without hints. I restarted several times, but I don't think you ever need to.
A post-apocalyptic world of bizarre fantasy and many PCs, May 16, 2016In this game by Porpentine, an author known for creating bio-mechanical worlds that are almost hallucinatory. This game is a great example of her world building power.
You play in a dust-covered world of raiders and scavengers. You can create yourself, but also destroy yourself, and both are necessary.
This game is unusual for Twine in that you have to enter city names in text when traveling. This gives more of a riddle aspect to the game. However, you have a map storing names you've met. There are less than 10 total cities.
The game ends in a sort of transformation that is best experience rather than described. Overall, it has a feeling of exploration and of 'just living'. One of the least disgusting porpentine games, and one of my favorites of hers.
Outstanding fantasy/sci fi blend. Lengthy illustrated twine game., May 16, 2016This game plays out over the course of several days in-game, perhaps a week. It is quite large, on the order of size of Twine games like Birdland, but feels a bit smaller than Spy Intrigue. I have played it once, but it seems to have high replay value.
The visuals on this game are gorgeous, especially when sleeping. The font, letter spacing, and color choices give a DOS type feel. The game is sprinkled with occasional images and animation.
You play a living firewall, an elemental charged with protecting a magic/tech network with 4 locations.
You are presented with a sequence of mysteries, one a day, which you use clues to solve. You can then deal with the mystery in many ways, raising and lowering various stats a la choice of games.
The game includes several times sequences, some violence and some sexual activity.
My only quibble is about one image, and it's a tiny issue: (Spoiler - click to show)I didn't like the illustration of the main antagonist, I thought it was cheesy.<\spoiler>
An effective short mirror world game about an evil twin, February 15, 2016This my second Muckenhoupt game after Gostak, and I found it compelling. You have an evil twin who is always out to get you, and you him. You go out to try and stop him from hurting others.
There is another world out there, his world, a mirror world of evil. The main mechanic of the game is travelling between the worlds and using their transformative properties.
The plot has a few surprises to pull out, and their are some tricky (but no too tricky) puzzles.
I love this game, but I'm a big fan of dual-world games.
A beautifully gorgeous text game with excellent combat/magic systems, February 4, 2016These games are an adaptation of a series of gamebooks, i.e. paper CYOA books. They must have been absolutely incredible, because this game is rich in detail and options. The game is played on a large 3d-map which you place a DND miniature-type figure on, moving it around to indicate your choice of route (between 2 or 3 options at a time).
You have stamina, gold, rations, spells, etc. The spells are cast by using up some stamina and selecting 3-letter words out of a cloud of letters. The available words differ quite a bit from situation to situation.
The combat system involves guessing a number at the same time as your opponent, trying to beat them without using up too much of your strength. It ends up being a sort of dance between attack and defend.
There are numerous side quests; the main quest can be finished extremely quickly, while one side quest took up an hour of gameplay by itself.
Highly, highly recommended.
Fun, shortish German game about stopping a rascally child., February 4, 2016This is the first IF game I've played in another language, and it was actually very enjoyable. I had to dust off my german and use google translate to get most of the commands (I didn't know 'look under', 'turn on the lights', 'extinguish' etc.) I got one hint from ifwizz.de
The game is set in a 6-room apartment. The girl you're interested in has to leave for 30 minutes, and has asked you to watch her 4-year old Kai. Unfortunately, as soon as she leaves, Kai steals your lighter and sets fire to a trashcan!
No matter what you do, Tanja comes home after a half hour, and she talks it out with you. The talks range from very bad to very good. Fortunately, the talks give you hints on replay.
As indicated on ifwizz.de, there is a bit of 'guess the noun' going on here. Occasionally, if you are looking for something, you have to use the exactly correct adjective-noun combination.
I'm grateful to have tried IF in a new language, and I recommend this game. Maybe the authors should translate it for next years IFComp.
A mid-length puzzle-less parser game about choices with a cool map, February 3, 2016This was my absolute favorite IFComp 2015 game. In Map, you play a woman with a troubled relationship with her family members. You spend most of the day alone in your house, and as you immediately learn, the house is slowly growing new rooms, which is reflected in a map you carry.
During the course of a week, you have the opportunity to (Spoiler - click to show)go back and make changes in your life, which affects your current life greatly. This allows for a lot of flexibility in gameplay, and many endings.
The feeling of the game is poignant and thoughtful, and mildly creepy, especially when strange things happen and noone, least of all YOU, seems to care.
Love this game.
Edit: Before I posted this review, I went through and played again. It was a slow start, but I teared up during the last few days of gameplay. This game really gets me in an emotional place. It had an emotional impact on me that rivals games like Photopia or the Warbler's Nest. It affected me a lot because many decisions revolved around family and relationships.
A grungy look at superhero origins in Undum, February 3, 2016Cape is, in my opinion, one of the best web-based interactive fiction games of all time. It is an engrossing story about a young petty criminal who has 'greatness thrust upon them' as a result of their crimes.
The most influential choice you make in this long Undum game is the choice of your super powers. I've heard some people say that the powers end up seeming the same, but I felt that all three big options were very different from each other. I think what people are talking about is a fact that the actual story is the same; just the details of it change from choice to choice.
Your superhero comes to grips with their powers and their crime-fighting. They are simultaneously uncomfortable and thrilled by their powers. There is an interesting mystery leading to a thrilling climactic confrontation.
The feel is grungy, dark; I lived in Manhattan for a while, and this really reminds me of the feel of the Lower East Side at night. I just loved this game. Loved it loved it loved it. (Note: whenever someone hypes up a game to me, I am always disappointed in it, so you might not like it as much as I did. I just happen to really like grungy superhero stories).
Beautiful, short game about loss and Greek mythology, February 3, 2016Eurydice is one of those games that felt intimidatingly large, but after playing through it, I was relieved to see it is actually short, sweet, and simple. A huge number of NPC's lie in an early room, but only require minimal interaction. It seems at two different points that there are many different directions to go in, but in both cases the different directions lead to small areas.
The game is a modern retelling of Orpheus and Eurydice. It has a beautiful and haunting atmosphere, and excellent writing.
I won't spoil the plot too much, but this short game has 4 possible endings. The main NPC is painted vividly, while you yourself are left vague and nebulous. The whole feeling is that of a dark afternoon on a November day when the snow hasn't fallen but the world is already dead and gray.
Recommended for everyone. Incredible game.
My favorite Gijsbers game; easy to get an ending, hard to get the best, February 3, 2016As soon as I read the premise of Fate, I found it exciting. As you immediately learn, you are a pregnant queen about to give birth; you also have the capacity to see your child's future. Your goal is to change that future.
Gijsbers' game has excellent writing, reminding me of the best parts of Ian Finley's Kaged and Adam Cadre's Varicella. But what I appreciated most was something else; no matter how many IF games I play, I still seem to need walkthroughs for everything. But I didn't have this issue for this game, because:
1. You can always reach some sort of ending in the game, and your endings improve as you go on. So if you can't get more than halfway in the game, you get a halfway-decent ending.
2. Almost all of the puzzles seem to have multiple solutions.
The game has a dark theme, and includes violence. But your character is clearly motivated by a positive goal, and the game rewards you whether you choose violence or not. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that you can reach what I consider the best ending without (Spoiler - click to show)injuring the pixie. However, I didn't find a way to avoid (Spoiler - click to show)killing the gardener; but as I said, the game doesn't force you to do anything you don't want to.
The moral choices seemed a bit easier to me as well, since your character is (Spoiler - click to show)a prisoner, and (Spoiler - click to show)her family is at war with her husband, who stole her away and won't promise to stop her child from being killed.
The best murder mystery I have played. You are Sherlock Holmes' dog., February 3, 2016In this game, you play as Sherlock Holmes' dog as you investigate a murder. The game features an innovative movement system based on Pacian's Castle of the Red Prince.
You explore a huge variety of locales with what seems like a hundred or more objects, but due to the system, it can be done quickly.
The one aspect of the game that initially turned me off is that it requires exhaustive search of all such objects. You have a single command to search them, but you have to repeat it over, and over, and over. It becomes like Where's Waldo.
However, as the story unfolded (using hints occasionally because I hurried through it in an hour), I became enthralled. This is a good mystery. As the author states, it is intended to be solved in your head, and not through gameplay mechanics (contrast this with the wonderful Infocom mystery Ballyhoo, where the focus is on solving puzzles to obtain more evidence, but a psychological element is still present).
I found the solution to be very logical and satisfying. I had two false accusations I was convinced of in the middle of the game before I realized I had missed crucial evidence.
Strongly recommended.
P.S. I was stuck at the very beginning because I did not understand the mechanic. You need to (Spoiler - click to show)smell nouns that appear in the descriptions of people, even if they are not present. So if someone smells like they went to a party, type SMELL PARTY, etc..
Short and sweet scifi shipwreck story with some user constraints, February 3, 2016I played this Hugo game on Gargoyle. This game was nominated for a Best Game XYZZY award in 2005. You play a woman who just crashed on a strange planet and must survive. It feels like a shipwreck story, in a good way.
The game is very constrained. WAIT is disabled as a command! There are only ten locations, and only 4 of them have anything interesting; out of those four, two have exactly one item and one action you need to do.
I didn't like this game at first, for those reasons, but after I played it, the story stuck in my mind. The writing is descriptive and evocative, the items are well-described and creative. It is a game much better than the sum of its parts.
A massive fantasy/dreamlike Twine game reminiscent of Howl's Moving Castle, February 3, 2016Beautiful Dreamer is one of the best Twine games to come out so far this year. In this fantasy game, you try to sleep at night during a windstorm.
You slowly realize that the game's world is not the same as your own. The world has a strong internal consistency, and you begin to learn more of its rules and nature.
The game is quite large. I was quite thrilled to discover (Spoiler - click to show)a classic CYOA gamebook near the beginning of the game. I thought the game was quite big already, but when I finished it and read the credits, I discovered that I had missed thousands of words' worth of text, which I went back and read.
The tone is a lot like Howl's Moving Castle (both the book and the movie), with archetypal characters, much talk of dreams, surreal magic, etc.
I also felt there were many similarities with Eidolon: (Spoiler - click to show)exploring a dark and shadowy bedroom, dream-type worlds, and a moth motif.
I strongly recommend this game.
A comedy game with intense chase scenes and romance, February 3, 2016I have never seen Being John Malkovich, but this game is loosely based on it. In this game, you gain access to Andrew Plotkin (a.k.a. Zarf), author of games such as Shade, So Far, Spider and Web, and a million others. You play several characters, including Zarf and a couple of young lovebirds.
The game is relatively short, taking less than an hour. The humor is mostly absurd humor, with numerous references to Zarf's fiction. I had only played a few games at the time; it is probably worth it to work through a lot of Plotkin's games (like So Far and A Change in the Weather) before playing this game, or afterwards. Unfortunately, these games are extremely hard, so if you're not a puzzle fiend, consider a walkthrough.
Great writing, mostly good puzzles, and a fun setting. I recommend it for everyone.
Great supernatural, thoughtful fiction. Twine with haunting graphics., February 3, 2016Solarium gives Twine a good name. This well-crafted game is adult ficion, not as in sexuality, but as in dealing with thoughtful and meaningful concepts. It involves alchemy and an alternative ending to the cold war, decades ago.
The narrative has a branching structure, with each branch requiring a key in the form of an alchemical substance. By obtaining more substances, you unlock more areas.
The game includes several striking images, including scans of real government documents.
I strongly recommend this game.
A comical nothing-is-what-you expect story about a petty criminal, February 3, 2016Taco Fiction is fun. It is a bit shorter than I would like; I paused the game partway through, expecting that half of the game was left, and when I came back, there was only about 30 turns left in the game.
You play a petty criminal who needs cash. The game gives you explicit directions on what to do at first. I love ignoring directions in parser games; in some games, like Bronze, the game just doesn't move forward at all if you ignore the directions. In this game, ignoring the directions gives you a lot of different, fun results.
I admit, I enjoyed the first part of the game, before the reveal, because it wasn't like anything else I had seen before. In this sense, it was a lot like Afflicted, although the actual reveal was wildly different in the two games.
The conversation system seemed at first incredible, and then very annoying, especially with the main favorable NPC. You have a lot to say, but 95% of it is completely irrelevant.
A good, short game. Is it one of the best games of all time? It certainly has one of the best openings of all time. So play it for ten minutes, and then decide if you want to keep going or not.
A detective/sci fi/romance game by the author of Gun Mute, February 3, 2016This is a short, fun thriller-type detective game by the author of Gun Mute and Rogue of the Multiverse.
Like those games, this game has a delightful romance. The game is linear, with only a few different decisions at different times. You can play as multiple characters, but which character you play is dictated by the scene.
There are a few scenarios where it is easy to miss a clue on what to do. If you just want to move forward, type 'hint' to get a fairly easy hint on what to do.
If you liked this game, check out Pacian's other excellent games.
One of the first great conversation games, February 3, 2016Galatea is set in an artificial intelligence exhibit. Galatea, a stone woman brought to life, has mistakenly (or purposefully) been placed here.
You are a journalist, interviewing her to determine how good her "artificial intelligence" is. The answers can lead to anger, romance, supernatural effects, and a host of other possibilities.
It is a fun game to play through a few times. The conversation system is just asking her about more and more things, but the variety is endless.
This game was groundbreaking when it was first released, although later innovations have improved on it (such as the major NPC in Blue Lacuna). This game remains an enjoyable classic, because it isn't just technically impressive, it's enjoyable.
A sci-fi imprisonment game showing the power of Twine, February 3, 2016Porpentine is currently the best writer of Twine fiction out there. Howling dogs is perhaps her best work. This branching, non-linear long game is a far cry from most twine games, and in fact better than most parser games.
In howling dogs, you are imprisoned in some sort of futuristic cell. You alternate between boring, daily life and brief trips in a VR machine. The trips become more and more complex, and have deep underriding themes about inevitability and restraint.
I only got the bad ending at first; I didn't realize there was a good ending until I read the reviews. To get the ending:(Spoiler - click to show)On the page with tons of links, one link will give you the good ending. It isn't random, but plot related.
I recommend this game for everyone.
A humorous pair of CYOA games that lets you back up at any point, February 3, 2016This is a pair of hilarious games which claim to be translations of old Russian CYOA games. This leads to some of the funniest writing I have ever seen in an Interactive Fiction game. The game is enormous, with a large number of branches, some of which converge again later.
What really makes this game stand out to me is the option to undo any number of your choices and explore more branches. So many Twine games have interesting options that you cannot explore without redoing large portions of the game. This alone made You Will Select a Decision stand out.
There was strong profanity at one point, but as you are penalized for using it, it wasn't especially disruptive.
A steampunk multiplayer game with a rich interface, February 3, 2016This is a Seltani game. Seltani is a hyperlink-based multiplayer format. While I was not able to try the multiplayer options (due to lack of multiple players), the single player mode was enjoyable to explore.
There are three sources of information: a dynamic room description with hyperlinks, in-game pop-up windows with information and choices, and a sort of running commentary on the bottom.
The game allows the choice of three different steampunk characters with customizable motivations. Each character sees and understands the world differently. As far as I played, the world was a 3x3x3 grid navigated by an airship. Every item was well-implemented.
Characters are in the service of an unusual queen, and are tasked with "taking care of" ancient ruins. I enjoyed the ability to interact with a large number of animals.
Worth checking out, especially if you are interested in multiplayer IF.
Excellent longish fantasy choicescript game about being a ferocious dragon, December 14, 2015This choicescript game was recommended to me, and I really enjoyed it. It is free, unlike many "Choice of" games, and well-developed. You are a dragon, and like other Choice of games, you have a variety of stats (honor/cunning, finesse/brutality, etc.)
The story was written well, with a good swords and sorcery vibe that I've really missed among IF games. Dragons, wizards, paladins, demons, goblins, all behaving like a D&D game instead of the usual introspective deconstructions popular in IF.
I really enjoyed crafting a cunning finesse dragon, although I died once and got my butt kicked another time. The delayed effect of the choices makes the puzzles significant. I had heard it was hard to get a mate, and indeed I was not able to.
I enjoyed the goblin NPC. If Choice of Games had been more well-known in the IF community in 2010, I feel this would have been nominated for some awards.
An amusing one-room food game, August 6, 2015In this short one-room game, you reverse the roles of Pavlov and his dogs by being the subject of experiments by dogs.
Your goal is to correctly find all of the food in the room. This requires varying amounts of ingenuity. Some of the puzzles are 'leap of intuition' puzzles.
As others have noted, the writing is the strongest point of the game. The strange mix of obedience and resentment makes for a funny game with a sad undertone.
The game has enough easy puzzles mixed in with the hard to let beginners get pretty far without consulting a guide.
A funny one-room game with an intense situation and comedic tension, August 6, 2015In the TADS game To Hell in a Hamper, you play a man in a hot-air balloon headed for immediate danger. Your only hope is to lighten your load, but you are hindered by your companion, Mr. Booby, who is a skillful hoarder.
The puzzles in this game are creative and enjoyable. I laughed out loud several times and showed it to my family. The humor works because it plays off the urgency and the tension between you and Booby.
I do believe it's impossible to get to an unwinning state without dying, but it can make the puzzles much much harder. It can be worth it to restart if you realize you need something, as the game is relatively short.
The only well-polished number-based RPG I've seen on IFDB, August 6, 2015Kerkerkruip is a randomized dungeon RPG game. You fight through a crowd of enemies using different tactics and absorbing the powers of the defeated. You pick up treasure and magic spells along the way.
The randomization allows for immense replay value. Also, the game has an adaptive difficulty setting, so the better you do, the harder each replay is.
You have many options, like attacking, 'focusing', dodging, etc. This is the only IF game with such a well-developed system as of now (2015), as far as I can tell.
The game is relatively squick-less (no gross blood or other similar things). You face a variety of human and monster enemies. Each session can be completed relatively quickly (less than an hour).
Cute, short sci-fi game with great NPC and setting, July 2, 2015This game was very enjoyable, chiefly because it took a very different direction than I thought it would. It is a short sci-fi puzzle with some moderately difficult puzzles. It took less than 45 minutes to complete.
As others describe in their reviews, I had some guess-the-verb trouble and got stuck on one puzzle because I was too impatient.
This game has an NPC that I found much more emotionally interesting than just about any other NPC in a game. I found that the Club Floyd transcript had a few helpful comments from the game's author that clarified the ending. Wonderful game.
Surprisingly heartwarming Twine game with a message (and graphics), May 7, 2015I was skeptical of this game at first, as I am not into games that push a particular viewpoint. But the conversation style, graphics, and options really spoke to me. To try and get the best ending, I put myself in Hana's shoes, thinking, "What would I need to hear right now"? I especially enjoyed trying to think like Ernie.
I got what I assume is the best ending, but I have no desire to try and find the worst ending, because the author really helped me empathize with the character.
For those who know what the topic of the game is: (Spoiler - click to show) I am usually wary of people writing about cutting, as so many people glorify it, saying for instance that all cutters are heros and their scars are from struggling with demons. I was taken aback by this games approach, which emphasizedthat cutters are just ordinary people with an unhealthy habit, just like drinking or gambling. I've overcome some unhealthy habits in my life, and this game was very close to my real-life experience. It really touched me.
A joke game that is well-put together, April 19, 2015This is essentially a good, though short, "creepy" game with purposefully silly descriptions. The puzzles are hard enough to be fun and easy enough to not ruin the goofy atmosphere. Puzzles are essentially "collect everything and try it all one by one in each room".
I supposed the reason I most enjoyed the game was the pacing. There is always something to do to move the game forward. I used hints on the very last puzzle, but I didn't really need to.
Game can be finished in under a hour. One or two simple mazes with no tricks (people who hate mazes might even like these mazes).
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