Ratings and Reviews by Matt W

Digression: I know there's a lot of discussion about the impact that IFComp has had on the kind of IF offerings available from the last decade or so, and I'm glad that the XYZZY Awards and Spring Fling and ParserComp and other contests are around as well, but I really like this size of game: 10-20 rooms, can be played through in an hour or two. It's easy to keep the geography in your head and you can play through it in one sitting after putting the kids to bed.

Taco Fiction seems like a trifle: it's comedic (and quite funny), and the plot is as light as it could be in a game where you can point your gun at anyone you meet. That seems like sort of the point though; this game could have been quite bleak; the PC is desperate and doing desperate things. There's nothing in the game that needs to be funny, but the comedic touch lightens the tone enough to make it consistently compelling.

The world of the game is quite detailed, and actually becomes more of a playground for the player than it seems at first. A straight walkthrough to the best ending would miss about 75% of the content, so it's worth your while to just wander around, talking to all the NPCs and trying out different activities. There are a couple scenes that I found particularly well done (Spoiler - click to show) -- the charades and the Star Wars story are delivered perfectly -- and your initial entry into the taco shop is one of the tensest and most unnerving scenes I've played in any IF. (Spoiler - click to show) Consider the clear uneasiness of the PC from the first moments of the game, the litany of actions that you're going to take, that disturbing painting which catches your eye as you walk in, then the masterful revelation about the bikers. It all functions exquisitely to ratchet up the tension. There are no really difficult puzzles here, just a lovely little game about crime.

This is an enjoyable little game, humorous and sweet, from an amusing but consistently executed perspective. The prose is excellent, the puzzles are interesting, but not too challenging and the small geography of the game is detailed and expertly realized. And it, perhaps surprisingly given its premise, has interesting things to say about religion and human character. Well worth an hour or so of your time.

(I know you're now imagining a one-room IF, playing as a walled in anchorite from the 13th century.) Anchorhead is a classic work of IF. You should absolutely play it. It's perhaps the work to study for creating a consistent atmosphere and a heavily detailed world. Every object in the game, whether a background object or one you can carry around, has a description. And every description in the game is in service to its bleak and disturbing setting. The game is enormous in both number of locations and in length of play, but presents a very cohesive geography and well-structured sequence of events.

That said, some of the puzzles in the game are somewhat unfair, and it is (I believe) still possible, even with the updated Special Edition, to choose an action (or fail to complete an action) that makes the game unwinnable; a situation that you don't discover until much later. Correct me if I'm wrong and I'll update the review, but (BIG SPOILERS HERE) (Spoiler - click to show) you can't get back into the church to retrieve the real estate office key if you've failed to get it, and you can't get back to the green door if you've crossed the rope bridge more than once. Other puzzles in the game sort of circumvent some IF conventions that seem to be more common in recent IF offerings, so I thought a list of (spoiler free) tips for prospective players might be helpful, particularly for those of us who are relatively new to the IF scene:

0) SAVE OFTEN USING A NEW SAVE EACH TIME! I generally would have a master save at the beginning of each chapter, then do a new save after each major puzzle solution. (And this still didn't prevent me from having to replay some chapters from the beginning several times.)

1) Take everything you find with you all the time. You must be a kleptomaniac, stealing everything that isn't nailed down. Your trenchcoat is a hold-all with infinite capacity, so there's no reason not to just have everything with you. That innocuous object you found in the first act may well save your skin in the final one.

2) This game has separate results for 'examine' and 'search'. Make a practice of examining every object in every room, including objects that are only mentioned in room descriptions. Then examine any new objects that turn up in the 'examine' descriptions. Then 'search' everything that you might consider searchable.

3) There are places where scenery objects (that is objects that appear only in room descriptions) can be manipulated. This felt to me like making a puzzle by hiding an object in the wallpaper. Read room descriptions carefully and don't be afraid to try using what you find there to create logical solutions to your predicament. The puzzles in Anchorhead are generally logical; they just are often well-hidden.

4) Ask every character you meet about themselves, e.g. "Ask the clown about the clown" This can help get a conversation thread going.

There's a sense in which some creators of Twine games understand how prose works in a visceral way and are able to wield it like a scalpel, which is a tool that is normally used to very precise effect, but can easily be co-opted for wholesale, bloodsoaked mayhem. Horse Master is an exemplar of this. There's sense of metaphor-without-being-metaphor that sidles up to its subject matter by both directly addressing it, but distracting the reader. Its primary purpose is to evoke an emotional response, which it does very effectively by inserting disturbing twists in a very recognizable mirror universe. And it's very deliberate in how it presents choice and progression to the reader, using repetition and restriction to dial up the creeping sense of doom. This is a terse, expertly drawn piece of work. The best game about sports (and other things) ever made.