Ratings and Reviews by Wanderlust

Sometimes sweet, sometimes spooky, sometimes heartbreaking— I loved how each story revealed a little more about the world and the nature of our perfectly normal bear.

I was drawn to this game by its title and I'm really glad I played. As I write this review, I'm still waiting for a piece of me to return to my body. The game opens with the option to select how potentially triggering you would like it to be, on a scale of 1 to 5. As someone who has struggled with disordered eating habits, I selected 4, then changed my mind and selected 5. Knowing that the author is in recovery makes the game more personal, and the writing speaks with a voice that can only come from experience. The linear storytelling and delayed text really captures the same type of obsessive thinking behind a compulsion, and even now, my skin still has goosebumps.

In terms of plot, this reads a lot like the old school choose-your-own-adventure gamebooks. Y'know, the ones where you're in a jungle hunting for lost treasure, and you choose to shelter in a cave, and oops! suddenly you've discovered a secret society of mole-people. It's fun and silly, but also a bit jarring, because things just sort of happen without much build-up.

There's at least five different endings from multiple playthroughs, and each were as distinct as the last, with maybe two of the five containing minor puzzle elements whose solution you can kind of stumble on. Only one of the five endings I discovered seemed to have any narrative consistency within the larger framework of being a stowaway on a ship, and it was also the one I found most emotionally satisfying. Nonetheless, I wouldn't consider this to be a fault of the game itself, and more of an incompatibility between what the author is trying to do vs my preferences for interactive fiction.

Interesting premise, decent writing. By and large, the story is pretty linear, differing only in the artist's choice of demon and their decision on what to do with it. Our protagonist's familiar, Pixel, was a cute, snarky sidekick and behaved exactly like a cat— surprisingly loyal, but don't make too much of a fuss about it. For better or worse, the antagonists were annoying; a cartoonish, uninspired evil, though maybe that's also because I've had the misfortune of dealing with that type of personality in real life.

All in all, it's a fun game to play during your lunch break, and not bad at all for the author's first foray into Twine.