Ratings and Reviews by Dan Fabulich

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Take the Dog Out, by ell
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
A cute little game, April 4, 2021

There's not a lot to it, (the game is over before you know it) but the puzzles are fair, and there's some cute stuff. I look forward to the author's future work.

I didn't think it was fair that (Spoiler - click to show)the game docks you three points for turning on the TV.

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Baggage, by Katherine Farmar
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
Not sure if I found everything, April 4, 2021*

There's a lot of fun poetic imagery in this piece. It ends quite abruptly, and won't take more than a few minutes if you play it as I did.

(Spoiler - click to show)INVENTORY, then EXAMINE all of the stuff in the satchel. The game will suggest that you can CHANGE the stuff, so CHANGE all of the feelings, one at a time. Then you can trivially GO EAST and WAIT a turn to win that way, or CUT BRAMBLES and GO WEST and WAIT a turn to win that way.

EDIT: (Spoiler - click to show)You can also optionally help the traveler, who appears fifteen turns into the game. You can GET ODDMENTS (twice), GIVE ODDMENTS TO TRAVELER, and then TRAVELER, CHANGE MOMENTS.

Maybe there was another way to win? Maybe there's more to it? Or maybe that's all there is.

* This review was last edited on April 24, 2021
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The Secret of Nara, by Ralfe Rich
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
A nice little romp as a deer, April 4, 2021

You're a deer. You do deer things. It's pretty cute. The whole game is over in 10 to 15 minutes, maybe 30 if you decide to use the back button to explore all endings.

The language is strange, perhaps intentionally strange, but at some places it seems just accidentally ungrammatical.

(Spoiler - click to show)At one point, you meet a deer who's hurt, and you have the option to try to save the deer. You do, but the other deer then apparently walks away from the accident, apparently uninjured…? This seems like a bug.

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Picton Murder Whodunnit, by Sia See
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
Hazelden could have solved this, April 4, 2021

The game is pretty easy. The murderer and the alibis are selected at random. (Spoiler - click to show)Only the murderer has no alibi, falsely claiming "I was in place X; character Y saw me there" but when you ask character Y, Y will say that they didn't see the murderer. You go outside, accuse one person, and the game ends.

I would have liked the puzzle to include a little more depth, something that gave me a sense of surprise (while still being solvable in hindsight).

I don't know why, but in Chrome 89 for macOS 11.2.3, the sound effects were horribly choppy. I switched to Safari 14 and it worked much better. It appears that opening this game (or any Strand game?) pins a CPU in Chrome.

The voices sounded computer generated, which was weird, but sometimes they really worked. I'd be curious to learn more about how the author made these sounds.

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Miss No-Name, by Bellamy Briks
Needs one more thing, April 3, 2021

The premise of this game is pretty zany, and I enjoyed that. But I wanted a little something more after (Spoiler - click to show)getting the "true ending" and learning her name.

The About screen has a "Spoiler" section that explains the entire plot, to help make sense of it if you're still confused after seeing all of the endings.

(Spoiler - click to show)My feeling is that while the twist ending #5 is surprising, I feel like I wanted to do something more with the discovery. I randomly stumbled across ending #5 fairly early on and explored the rest of the endings using the back button. Some games give you one last "real ending" to discover after you've discovered all of the other endings; I think this game would really benefit from that. Maybe ending #2 could have a variant ending #8 if you've previously seen ending #5, where you ask for her help and she gives you a name, or something like that.

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Stay?, by E. Jade Lomax
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
An Epic Adventure, March 7, 2021

We played this game at the SF Bay Area IF Meetup, and we had a delightful time with it. It's *very* deep and *very* long, at least tens of thousands of words and a couple of hours of playthrough.

Time loops are a fantastic structure for puzzles, and the romanceable NPCs help keep the game from getting too repetitive.

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The Iron Hand in the Velvet Glove, by Emilie Reed
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
Let's-a Go!, February 3, 2021

A fascinating little Twine game based on real-world leaked documents.

A lot of the best Twine games use the form to reflect on its own structure and the feeling of making choices; this game does precisely that, using its "simulation" setting to allow you to decide not only how you'll approach the negotiation but how The Subject responds to your tactics.

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Ritus Sacri, by quackoquack
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
Charming, November 7, 2020

The core mechanic of this game is a latin translation mechanic. Once you get the hang of it, you can perform it by rote.

But (Spoiler - click to show)the game has a fitting twist ending for an Ectocomp game that makes the whole thing delightful. Surprising, but inevitable in hindsight.

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Congee, by Becci
2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
A lovely little Twine story, October 3, 2020

A small piece that tells a simple, heartwarming story.

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The Cave, by Neil Aitken
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
The start of something interesting, October 3, 2020

It's a very short piece. The walkthrough says that it's heavily randomized, which some people love, but I don't care for it. Everything I look at makes my character feel sad and existential. I'd have preferred if the game had more story, e.g. some characters with goals and conflicts, or even just a surprise or two (building up my expectations and then subverting them).

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