Reviews by Dan Fabulich
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I quite enjoyed this game. The writing is cute, and the puzzles are fun.
I have some spoilerific feedback for the author.
(Spoiler - click to show)I got stuck pretty hard on the oojamaflip puzzle. The game repeatedly pointed out with a parenthetical that the oojamaflip was relevant, but the encouraging words from Trala made it seem like a victorious status effect, rather than a puzzle to actively solve. And the solution, to use the gizmo, felt unclued. For most of the other inventory items, there's at least one other way to use it that gives you some clue about what it's for, but not the gizmo. The gizmo only works on the oojamaflip; only the gizmo does anything with the oojamaflip. Even after replaying, I have no clear idea how I was supposed to guess that. The gizmo and the oojamaflip seem to have nothing in particular in common; neither of them have any defined shape. I had to pray to get the hint to use the gizmo, which I then lawnmowered to solve the oojamaflip puzzle. I think the gizmo should do something somewhere else, to give me some kind of hint on what it could be good for, and/or one of the other items should do something with the oojamaflip, pointing me in the direction of the gizmo.
I also got stuck on the very last puzzle in the treasure room. I didn't realize that the "gold and jewels" were "gold" and "jewels," separably examinable. I'm not at all sure that this was a puzzle worth having. Making "treasure," "gold," and "jewels" synonymous would have let me just pick a treasure and move on.
More broadly, I think this game would benefit from bolding stuff that you can fly towards, and it would benefit from an HTML version that you could click on or tap on on mobile phones. (Dialog is great for that sort of thing!) For example, if the treasure description had said, "The platform is heaped with gold and jewels," I would have understood what to do.
This game does actually contain a hidden Nazi mode. (Apparently it took quite a few years to figure this out.) You can follow David Welbourn's walkthrough to find how to unlock it.
None of the reviews here explicitly mentioned that, so I wanted to make sure someone did.
The game is sort of a practical joke. FormerlyHiddenNaziMode.zip contains a deceptive PDF, Hidden Nazi Mode: Anatomy of a Failure, falsely claiming that the author has removed the Nazi stuff, and providing an incorrect command to activate Nazi mode. The zip also contains deceptive source code, which does not contain a hidden mode. (That source code is not the real source code used to build the zblorb file in the zip.)
You visit some locations, spin some text options to your preferred option, then "seal" your choices to commit to them. I think the order of locations and the spin text has effect on the poetry.
Everything was so surreal and metaphorical that I don't think I really got a message from this game. But the language was lovely enough that I could enjoy the feeling of the poetry washing over me, uncomprehended.
The game includes a lot of wise, well-regarded remarks on how to get through a breakup, and attempts to simulate the effect of a friend or therapist to help a you to feel seen and heard. It didn't do much for me, but it could help someone else.
I think the achievements were mostly distracting. They cluttered up the screen, forcing me to click on all of them to dismiss them and continue. There are so many, it felt like a parody of achievements, but, if it was a joke, I didn't find it funny, and if not, I'm not sure what the point of them was.
(One thing the game didn't consider: I'm still friends with the person I imagined for the purposes of this game.)
If you dally too long in this game, a seagull poops on your jacket, and you lose. Why?
Eventually, you walk. You move an average of 100 steps per walk. You start with around 7,000 steps in your score, and you have to get to 10,000 steps. After you walk five times, you have to do something besides walking (breathe or just wait) or you'll immediately lose.
You might find this game more efficient to play using periods to run multiple commands in one step: walk. walk. walk. walk. walk. breathe. Then use up arrow to do it again.
At the end, there's a trivial puzzle. (Spoiler - click to show)A red object on the beach, which you have to take in order to examine it. If you don't take it, you'll lose. When you go west, you meet a crying child. You win if you give the child the car, and you lose immediately if you leave without doing so.
What was the point of this story? The walking is boring. Is that the point? That exercise in old age is tedious? The puzzle is trivial, and the auto-lose feature of the game is frustrating. Is it the point that old age is pretty frustrating?
The game even has the cruelty to forbid undo, even when it'll kill you dead just for walking the wrong way at the ending, forcing you to redo the entire hike if you didn't think to save. Why??
Solid, September 6, 2025Interactivity makes this short story more powerful.
Online, I've heard some commenters ask, mostly in bad faith, why Palestinians who had the option to move wouldn't simply move. These commenters seem not to be able to imagine what could be worth staying for. Playing the role of something worth staying for makes this point elegantly.
You can probably get to the end just guessing water/leaves until you reach your current season's goal, but there's also an interesting randomized optimization puzzle here, too. (I got lucky once and generated more than 30 lbs of olives.)
A bug report: At the end, it gives you a standard menu, "Would you like to RESTART, RESTORE a saved game, QUIT or UNDO the last command?" But if you try to undo, it says that "undo" is forbidden. But save/restore work, so I'm not sure it's meaningful to forbid undo. Might as well just allow undo, IMO, or block save/restore also, if you insist.
There's not a lot to this game as yet. I think it would have been a decent entry into IntroComp.
You click around, escape your bedroom, meet a mysterious NPC, and… that's the end of part 1, five minutes later.
Still, the dystopian setting is decently depicted. If this were an IntroComp entry, I would have voted for it to win. As an IFComp entry, well, there's just not enough here to get excited about.
Last time, I gave Uninteractive Fiction 4 stars. It was a joke game, funny, worth the ten seconds it took to play.
Jokes have to be surprising but inevitable in hindsight to be funny. Last time, UF pleasantly surprised me (especially the sound track).
This time, it wasn't surprising. I don't think it'll be funny at all if there's a next time.
You and an appointed "dark-skinned" English crew member are appointed to explore the Island of Rhynin. (Spoiler - click to show)At the end, you get to decide whether to kill him or not.
It's pretty easy to get to the ending. Despite the blurb's claim, none of the choices I made seemed to have any effect on the plot. My choices just increased/decreased my stats, which had no effect on the game.
And then, the ending, which is where the colonialism really kicks in.
(Spoiler - click to show)At the end, the King explains, "You may also be surprised that we speak your language. This is because unbeknownst to you, an old group of explorers had once found this island's tribe in desperate need, and by the fruits of their generosity, they came to be their leaders. And I, who stands before you, am the last inheritor of those brave people."
I can only hope the author simply didn't consider the implications of this. The author imagined an island tribe simply couldn't lead themselves—they needed someone who spoke English to lead them. And they can't/won't lead themselves now, either; they'll obey whichever English-speaking stranger shows up and wins a duel.
The indigenous people have no agency, autonomy, or voice. The only indigenous person who speaks is a guard, leading you to the King.
And then, at the end, you get to decide whether to kill your dark-skinned crewmate (as far as I can tell, you automatically succeed if you try to kill him, regardless of whether you duel him or betray him), at which point, you become King.
You can also sacrifice yourself, in which case you automatically die, making your crewmate King. You can also try to escape, or murder the King, but both of those options automatically fail, and you die.
What was the point of this story? None of my earlier choices had any effect. The ending choice means nothing to me. The plot is nothing but a regurgitation of colonialist propaganda.
I think this would be a two-star game if it weren't for the dehumanizing colonialism. Instead, I'm giving it one star.
As the description explains, this is a game about a growing addiction to asking AI for assistance. The horror begins as you (Spoiler - click to show)try to delete the AI, but it refuses to allow you to delete it.
But, just as soon as that conflict arises, the game ends. It left me wanting more, but, in a bad way.
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