Reviews by JJ McC

Adapted from an IFCOMP24 Review

Day 1. Dear Diary, I got a new job today! I found myself in a light fantasy world, stumbled across an apothecary that had a job opening, and thought, why not? I can use some pocket money. Or pocket acorns? I’m not clear on that part. I am assured this is local currency somehow, but surely I can just go pick some? Or is there an Acorn Mafia already exerting control over the best trees? Y’know what, maybe I’ll just work here and see how it goes. Not quite clear what my duties will be, but there are these random slips of paper everywhere. Probably need to clean those up a bit. They’ve got weird puzzles on them. You know me diary, if I’m not careful these are the kinds of puzzles I might fall into and not come out. Will resist.

Day 2. Dear Diary, ok, not off to a great start. I did something wrong I think, and when I showed up to work, there was nothing to do. I did leave my browser open all night, that might be confusing my boss. Will try again tomorrow.

Day 3. Dear Diary, geez, I hope I don’t get fired. Still no new assignment, I suspected I was being asked to RESTART the game, but toying with time loops rarely goes well for me. I don’t have to tell you that, Diary. Later in the day I got really worried, so I tried anyway and there was a pretty dire warning! I almost chickened out. I gritted my teeth and clicked and that turned out to be ok. I should have trusted the employee manual. Fortunately, my boss didn’t seem to notice my absenteeism. I did get to cook some stuff, which I wasn’t expecting, but they all trusted me! Did my best to recall my food safety training from last job. That was really the only thing all day though? I found more puzzles and did them at my desk. Kept glancing, but boss never checked on me.

Day 4. Dear Diary, the patrons of this place are a fun lot! I made a new friend today! I am so smitten, I hope we become fast pals! <3 Cankleie the Many-Cankled Ocelot <3 They are just awesome. After meeting them, spent most of the day hiding from the boss, working puzzles again. They keep paying me those acorns! I’m starting to suspect they can’t have real value, at this exchange rate. Also, will need to figure out a storage mechanism.

Day 5. Dear Diary, made some tea for a customer today. Shift was over before I knew it. Boss talked about the neighborhood a little today, sounds nice? Other than the occasional fetch-mission I don’t get out to see much of it. Maybe later? Cankleie probably lives nearby. What do I get up to in my off hours, anyway? That’s weird…

I do get to poke around at the local insect and plant population. That’s interesting, they are all so cute. Feels like my boss has me on training wheels, but fair enough I guess. Magic is probably pretty sensitive to this stuff. Can’t wait to learn!

Day 6. Dear Diary, did some inventory today. Finally, a job I can sink my teeth into! These fantasy stores, though, with their gravity defying shelves, it looked pretty daunting. Thankfully, another employee(?) helped out. How much is he getting paid, I wonder? Didn’t look like he could carry many acorns. Was I supposed to tip him or something? A pretty exhausting job, still went by pretty quick.

Day 7. Dear Diary, caught a fish today. Does that even qualify as work? My boss said to do it, but I know my uncle did this on his days off. Gotta say, I like the variety of things I get to do, nothing is really turning into drudgy. I do feel like they’re not really using all my talents though. The amount of time I spend on these puzzles is really overtaking my job time. [Note, make sure diary well hidden from boss!] Do you think this is some kind of competency test? They’re fun, but I hope not!

I did find a use for acorns! I can buy beads with them! Ok, yeah, that could be a real ‘trinkets-for-Manhattan’ kind of exploitation thing, but I think the bead represents a good cause? I went animals, I think someone would appreciate that. Hard to feel too exploited with my light work schedule.

Cankleie has not come back. Was it something I said? Oh god, I came off as super needy didn’t I??

Day 8. Dear Diary, I helped a customer with a tablecloth today. Given how slow sales have been, I am starting to wonder if they can afford my salary, even in acorns! The employee manual suggested something big would happen my first week on the job, but so far, nothing. If it’s my probationary review, I don’t have a lot to show for it. Worse, my boss will no longer even talk to me, so I can’t ask her. She pretty much leaves me to my puzzles. I guess I’d hoped for more of a mentorship/apprenticeship situation? Some magic skills would really pump up my CV.

Oh Cankleie, why didn’t I get your digits when you were here? Why are you ghosting me?

Day 9. Dear Diary, I fetched a clam today. Still no probationary review. They’ll never know how much workday I squander on puzzles. I saw a notice where the shop is going to be closed for renovations, so I guess I’m out a job now? It wasn’t the worst job I ever had, but put really low demands on me. The long gaps and relatively trivial things to do were warm, but didn’t really Engage what I’m capable of. I like the daily regular schedule, that was kind of novel. Could you imagine? Going to a job EVERY DAY? It’s exciting, but I think I’d feel better about it if it were building to a career of some kind. The variety of tasks was interesting but again not really challenging me. My boss seemed really well intentioned, and I am so happy with my bead.

All that’s left, I guess, is to PAINT THE TOWN RED with my lumpy pocket full of ACORNS!! I hope I run into Cankleie. Y’know what though, diary? If not, THEIR LOSS.

Though what if they had some family drama that kept them from reaching out? I would feel terrible about that. I can ask them tonight. They’re local, I can find them. <3

Played: 10/3-12/24
Playtime: 45m over 9 days
Artistic/Technical ratings: Sparks of Joy/Mostly Seamless
Would Play Again?: No, experience feels complete

Artistic scale: Bouncy, Mechanical, Sparks of Joy, Engaging, Transcendent
Technical scale: Unplayable, Intrusive, Notable (Bugginess), Mostly Seamless, Seamless

Adapted from an IFCOMP24 Review

CONTINUING (*cough*cough*) my review sub-series “Second Breakfast,” wherein I examine IFCOMP24 works of light fantasy and heavy puzzle play, we land on ML.

Usually my review sub-series are a humorous jab at categorizations - superficially grouping works together because I find that amusing but ultimately still treating works as unique things. With this grouping though I kind of outfoxed myself. By defining the category so broadly, I have kind of engaged those categorizations in other reviews and said pretty much what I needed to there. Quick recap: “Second Breakfast” games admirably echo early IF preoccupations and genre conceits. While that echo is at least partially the point of these works, for those of us who have consumed a LOT of these, they will live and die on how they distinguish themselves from the others in this category - usually via engaging puzzle play or narrative singularity.

Puzzle play can be undone by insufficient new puzzle mechanics and/or suffering technical implementation issues; narrative can be undone by lack of defining hook. Let me just say the ML narrative did not do it for me. Yes, there is always some fun in a venal protagonist (here opposing a skeevy antagonist(!)), and the prose was certainly bubbly. Acknowledging all that, the core story just didn’t extend beyond its clear function, setup for the deep puzzle play.

There was an interesting new puzzle mechanic introduced in ML, one I am going to keep in shadow in interest of spoilers. I WILL say it requires a singular, chokepoint object where most of the game is locked out of reach until it is secured. Unfortunately, if the importance and abilities of this object are clued, they are under-clued. Given the narrative setup, I talked myself into leaving it be while I tried to resolve the rest of the problem set. I figured it was going to be fine to get it at the end. It took some extended flailing, then consulting of hints to disabuse myself of that notion. I have in the past advocated for stronger cluing of objects that represent narrative chokepoints, and that applies here for sure.

But, once the hint system informed me of my misapprehension, the gameplay did take an interesting turn, with a new-feeling mechanism to add to the search-find-use staples. This MIGHT have pushed things up a bit, had there not been so many implementation issues. The game was rife with missing nouns, key items missing from room desciptions, plural nouns not responding to singulars, even some text translation misses in the hint system. These glitches were pretty common and frequent.

So let’s talk UI, the place where this game really comes into its own. The game implements a multi-tier parser->link select hybrid system. I chose to play on ‘full parser’ mode, though two other settings let players dial it harder to the hypertext side. That’s kinda cool. It also has a LOT of customizable gameplay hooks, MOST of which are adequately described at the beginning of the game. Those that aren’t become clearer as the game goes on.

What really tickled me about it though, was how the hybrid clicking was not DISABLED during parser play, it was just deemphasized. This choice acted as a first-level safety net for its own parser limitations. Any time I started to struggle with missing nouns, weird syntax gaps or picky command constructs, I could rely on the available links to provide the ‘right’ command. This UI fortified itself against its own parser bugs! This simple mechanism did SO much to smooth over the rough spots in gameplay that it kept me cooking along where other games might have increasingly infuriated me. It’s not that the UI was revolutionary, you’ve seen most of these hooks before, it was just how well integrated those hooks were and how well they played off each other. It was truly a “greater than sum of parts” situation and created a unique-feeling player experience, explicitly reducing internal frictions.

This story was more functional than engaging, an excuse for old-school puzzle play. It had some amount of verve and humor to its prose, but all fairly low key. The new puzzle mechanism was fun, though parser implementation issues eroded a lot of that away. If I’m honest, it was still a mostly Mechanical experience with lots of Notable implementation gaps. I definitely owe it a bonus point for the weird, pleasant alchemy of its UI though. I do look forward to future works with this engine!

Played: 10/11/24
Playtime: 2hr, score 610/2000, -1000 for leaving fridge open, lol
Artistic/Technical ratings: Mechanical/notable implementation gaps, bonus for friction-reducing parser/click hybrid
Would Play After Comp?: No, experience feels complete

Artistic scale: Bouncy, Mechanical, Sparks of Joy, Engaging, Transcendent
Technical scale: Unplayable, Intrusive, Notable (Bugginess), Mostly Seamless, Seamless

Adapted from an IFCOMP24 Review

This is a throwback game. No, not that. This is a PULL-FORWARD game, updating and modernizing a game from the Wild West days of parsers when there were no rules, no deep descriptions, no thought of player experience, just raw creativity and world building and throwing gameplay at the wall to see what sticks. I have seen a few of these now, and pretty uniformly I have had two reactions to all of them:

1. How cool is it that this can be resurrected? This author is doing vital work!
2. Wow, the old days were WAY LESS ROSE COLORED than I remember.

I infer, from my brief experience with this game, that the modern efforts amounted to window management, graphics, sound, and a help system. The underlying gameplay seems to be left as is. Let’s start with the modern elements. The sound design was a pleasant surprise for me. It was atmospheric but spare, pairing quite well with the spare text of its interface. The use of color in text to delineate different classes of feedback was also a nice touch I don’t often see. The graphic design I was less enamored of. The work popped up graphic windows in first-time locations to orient you. On my monitor, those windows were BIG, and crowded each other, including the play space. Occasionally, transition or cutscene text was ALSO presented in windows, so I inevitably had a few open at any given time, without much play value. This was not appealing, but the biggest thing I wished for was a consistent graphic palette. There were attractive cartoonish people, 8-bit pyramids, high-res threatening eyes and photo realistic fog. There didn’t seem to be much esthetic unity and it really presented a patchwork interface.

I’ll get back to the new HELP system at a dramatically appropriate time, let’s cycle to gameplay.

When I complain about my self-imposed scoring system, I am almost always complaining about the top of the scale: determining when a work is “Transcendent.” I actually have a bigger problem lurking in that rubric. When is a game “Unplayable?” “Bouncy” is easy to identify - I recoil at the artistic statement or conceits. That’s visceral. “Unplayable” though, who am I to determine that? Unplayable by ME certainly, but where is the line between my shortcomings and a work’s faults? Legal scholars have been gifted a phrase by US (Supreme Court) Justice Potter Stewart, who when ruling on obscenity said [para] “I can’t define it, but I know it when I see it.” This bon mot is kind of unhelpful when working with cases close to the boundary, but that is not where we are with The Curse.

Nevermind its spare descriptions. Nevermind its limited area populations. There are maybe 9 locations (it’s grey if you go south), and vanishingly little to do, and absoLUTELY no signposts on how to ungate progress. Plenty of ways to die though! No, not actually true. Three ways to die, but SO MANY INSTANCES OF THOSE! This is the deepest hell of “>search X” “you find nothing” “>move X” “You find something!” I knocked about those nine areas for a full hour, dying innumerable times. Worse, in one area, I found a scoring move that I could not recreate! After trying SO MANY TIMES.

I tried everything I could think of, many many times, and got nothing new. So naturally I turned to HELP, the modern addition, to smooth things over for me. Not only was the most common answer “no help here,” an uncommon answer was a flashed graphic that meant nothing to me! Actually not nothing, it appeared to be openly mocking me by offering a (Spoiler - click to show)‘helping hand’ that provided no help. Making matters worse, consulting help PENALIZED my score, deducting points for consulting it! Fair play if I was getting actionable information. But for points that were SO HARD to secure, in exchange for mocking unhelp?? Infuriating.

I can’t say I truly ragequit. The clear labor of love of it prevented that level of ire, and in fact provided Sparks of Joy that this would be anyone's White Whale. Even the patchwork graphics have a charm of authorship to them. And I’d be remiss if I didn’t call out its weird, fun fascination with classic Rock. But as a gameplay experience for sure I was left with “glad this was rewarding for you author! I’m done.” It does feel weird to flag as “Unplayable” a work that was clearly developed and released and presumably found players decades ago. Who am I to tell them they couldn’t play this thing? I can’t speak to any of that, but against my ingrained expectations, fully informed by today’s IF norms, that’s where this lands for me.

Played: 10/10/24
Playtime: 1hr, gave up, double digit deaths, score 7/40? with another 5 I could not reclaim after an unsaved death
Artistic/Technical ratings: Sparks of Joy/Unplayable
Would Play Again?: Oh my, no

Artistic scale: Bouncy, Mechanical, Sparks of Joy, Engaging, Transcendent
Technical scale: Unplayable, Intrusive, Notable (Bugginess), Mostly Seamless, Seamless

Adapted from an IFCOMP24 Review

So this review is part of the review sub-series “Second Breakfast,” a series of reviews that showcase light fantasy/heavy puzzle works that resonate off the early days of parser IF. Resonate so hard they are truly IF comfort food for those weaned on and appreciative of it. They are also, for those of us NOT so enamored, maybe one breakfast too many?

Here, you are a fantasy soldier charged with recovering a fantasy weapon from a church. Let the puzzles begin! My relationship with these kinds of works is very transactional. What newness do they bringing to the table? The general category is not really centered in my interests. Sure, I recognize their pedigree and anyone that watched IF invent itself will too. The impulse to nod to that history is not TERRIBLE, but for me, at this point, we’ve kinda seen a lot of them haven’t we? I need more than a nod to make an impression. There are two obvious ways to stand out: memorable puzzle play, or memorable storyline/characters. Both are challenging in their own way.

I kinda think innovative puzzle play may be the harder one at this point? Ok, that is an unverifiable assertion, but hear me out. At this point in development stability, the major parser toolkits are extremely flexible, but still fundamentally built around an object-in-world paradigm. Keyed doors are so convenient to regulate narrative, so easy to implement, it is no wonder they show up everywhere. Same for find-the-thing, put-the-thing-in-other-thing class of puzzles. Works that devise unique puzzle play really stand out against that background dynamic.

Conversely, realistic conversation remains HARD to implement, which often renders NPCs as clue-dispensers or permission-robots. This artificiality is certainly forgiven by the parser audience, it is practically in its DNA at this point, but also can’t help but bring up wishes of more robust interactions.

Both of these tropey traditions are not hard to create, rarely wow us, but also are paradoxically kind of easy to undermine. The magic of parsers is nominally opening the entire implemented language vocabulary to fair player use. When obvious synonyms are missing, especially plurals and singulars, it can actively deceive the player and almost always makes puzzles harder for silly reasons. A player might be forgiven not trying to “>search object” when “>look behind object” told him there was nothing there, or that it was fruitless. (Real example - object in question really only HAD a “behind” to search.)

Same phenomenon with NPCs. When required to ask or tell them specific things, but reasonable near-neighbor topics get stock “Knows nothing about…” answers, the player might assume there is nothing there. Parser players have some forgiveness on both these scores, it’s not like the old days didn’t have these kinds of artifacts. However, NEEDING to forgive these things requires some compensation in cleverness or storytelling. Triskelion definitely had enough issues in its traditional-style puzzle designs to need some compensation.

Ok, I kinda think storytelling may be the harder element to innovate at this point. What? I don’t know what I said four paragraphs ago, I’m focused on the future, reader. Art starts as a blank slate, with literally anything the author can think of as fair game. Characters, plot, tone, background lore, language, all of it infinitely flexible, just waiting some fill in! So much blank space… staring back at us… yessir, just start filling it any moment now… Our most beloved stories are singular in one or more dimensions, but singularity is hard! There are all kinds of things I ALREADY LOVE in this world, can’t I just love those? Why do I need to create a NEW ONE???

Honestly, the answer is, you don’t. You are not beholden to anyone but your own bliss. Making more of what you love is a totally worthwhile endeavor. MY bliss though, that’s a different story. Everything I love started as something I knew nothing about then won me over in its vision or execution. If you maybe get in first with your idea, hey, pole position! You get the Vision award! (Clive Barker, for me, was an early example.) If you don’t though, you really have to excel at execution and/or apply a twist of some sort to distinguish from that thing I ALREADY LOVE. (Fury Road was onesuch for me. I already enjoyed the Mad Max universe, but the raw execution of Fury Road was sublime.) (Early Alan Moore is kind of a cool example of both, somehow.)

It gives me no joy to report that the story here did not achieve those heights. It was a fairly low stakes, low NPC personality affair of unlock-and-fetch puzzle solving. Very much of a piece with its inspirations, admirably so. There is some wry humor in tombstone epitaphs, a well conceived cathedral setting, some capably integrated puzzles, but nothing that established a vibe of its own APART from its inspirations. For folks that really enjoyed First Breakfast and are hungry for more, this is a sturdy option. Yes, there are implementation issues to deal with, but you kind of expect that in breakfast at this point.

For me, I’m kinda full? I’ll leave my portions for others.

Played: 10/10/24
Playtime: 2hr, finished lose and win
Artistic/Technical ratings: Mechanical/Notable implementation gaps
Would Play After Comp?: No, experience feels complete

Artistic scale: Bouncy, Mechanical, Sparks of Joy, Engaging, Transcendent
Technical scale: Unplayable, Intrusive, Notable (Bugginess), Mostly Seamless, Seamless

Adapted from an IFCOMP24 Review

Two friends, separated by competing orthodoxies, now violently pitted against each other because somehow these orthodoxies are more important than interpersonal connections.

What a ridiculously unrealistic concept.

Completely unrelated and by the way, anyone watching US domestic politics?

This is a work where you bounce back and forth (helpfully and satisfyingly cued with color) between two perspectives of a tragic collision between former friends. The setup is a religious/sci-fi setting where young acolytes respond quite differently to forbidden knowledge, and it develops tragic consequences. I mean, it’s right there in the title. They are both awesome fighters, with anime powers, though that is the least interesting part of the work. Certainly the central tension, with some flashback time devoted to how it got here, is the primary narrative aim.

It is a pretty fraught subject, no? There’s two ways to go about this. One is to contrast each perspective and portray it as a tragedy of the universe. The two variations of this are ‘both are right’ and ‘both are wrong.’ The second way is to double down on the tragedy by showing one side is right, and the other wrong, and the tension still unavoidable. Kind of a ‘My Nazi Best Friend’ situation. The details of the ‘sides’ really matter a lot here, what their tenets are and what they demand of their adherents. Where do we fall on that spectrum?

Well, the work definitely paints the ‘blue’ side as wrong, both in its tenets and demands. We spend most of our time exploring this through the dual protagonists’ eyes. What the work is either less sure about, or does not convey clearly enough, is the ‘rightness’ of the pink side. There is of course the inevitable charge of ‘opposing bad = good,’ but this conclusion seems consistently undermined by the sparse, suspect details we are given. By story’s end, I was convinced both are wrong, largely on the strength of their shared sanctioning of righteous murder. The challenge to this kind of two-sides narrative is to give equal dignity and empathy to the ADHERENTS without necessarily transferring implicit approval to their DOCTRINES. Man does that take a deft hand, and probably quite a bit of table setting.

I found YCSH to be both too shallow and too short to accomplish this. I rejected both doctrines as presented, and could not figure out why the protagonists determinedly did not. I had no true understanding of either adherents’ motivations. That’s not exactly true actually. Indoctrinated intertia and fear v. self-important rebellion are clear enough motivators. Importantly, what they are NOT is a deeper relationship with their orthodoxies. How do these characters respond to the tenets of the faiths they are willing to kill for? We don’t know. Are those doctrines humanistic or self-perpetuating hate machines? We don’t know. What about the underlying doctrines appeals to these characters, and convinces them they are actually the ‘better way?’ Unexplained. Those details are CRUCIAL to aligning the reader on the proceedings and understanding the protagonists. The work is not concerned with those things though, only in setting up the dramatic confrontation. It’s just, short that understanding the tragedy of their opposition is hollow. A narrative manipulation with opaque justifications.

There is a read of course, a deeply cynical read, that not only are those tenets vague, and maybe not even UNDERSTOOD by the protagonists, they are completely unimportant to the conflict. Ideological conflict is its own self-perpetuating feature of human experience, and is its own force independent of the purported ideologies involved. This is a statement for sure, but one that I find unsatisfying and unappealingly fatalistic. Perhaps if the work spent more time convincing me of this thesis I could at least engage it as a disturbing but worthy observation. Here though, it is seemingly asserted too shallowly to convince me.

By story’s end, I’ve got a ‘both sides are bad’ conflict where the core conflict is earnest but superficial. Superficial ‘both sides’ narratives are kind of poison for me. “Both sides are equally bad” is a patently bad take when one side blatantly denies reality, commits sexual assault, treason and insurrection and still demands and gets abject fealty. Just to pick four inarguably bad examples out of a hat, completely at random and not related to reality at all. HA HA. Ha.

Ha.

So this work’s somewhat muddled thesis did not land for me. Like, at all. Without clarity there, the characters never sung for me either, so their conflict was unmoving. This made for a Mechanical (nearly Bouncy) experience with a seamless, kind of attractive implementation.

Played: 10/9/24
Playtime: 15m, finished
Artistic/Technical ratings: Mechanical/Seamless
Would Play Again?: No, experience feels complete

Artistic scale: Bouncy, Mechanical, Sparks of Joy, Engaging, Transcendent
Technical scale: Unplayable, Intrusive, Notable (Bugginess), Mostly Seamless, Seamless

Adapted from an IFCOMP24 Review

There are four words in this game (including the walkthrough). Providing effort reciprocity, I am going to review it in four words:

“HAHA, ok but no.”

Played: 10/9/24
Playtime: 1m, lost
Artistic/Technical ratings: Spark of Joy/Seamless
Would Play Again?: I mean, why?

Artistic scale: Bouncy, Mechanical, Sparks of Joy, Engaging, Transcendent
Technical scale: Unplayable, Intrusive, Notable (Bugginess), Mostly Seamless, Seamless

Adapted from an IFCOMP24 Review

RPG Maker is not my jam. Its throwback graphics are adorable for about the first two minutes, then the experience quickly becomes dominated by a maddeningly slow full traversal of every screen. Regardless of the inventiveness of the screens in question, they grow tiresome as I watch the protagonist… walk. When it doubles down on a Pokemon-ish combat of ‘select move, randomize damage, repeat’ I can hear my brain groaning.

Anime doesn’t have any particular hooks in me either - though I’m more agnostic to it. There are anime works I enjoy, almost always because of the storytelling, not the animation style or tropes per se. Certainly, I do not seek out works in that style UNLESS I am given to understand the story is something special.

All that said, I do love me a good puncturing of sacred cows, and who doesn’t? The title of this piece alone cues its subversive intent, and grabs my attention. Applying it to a platform and style that I am suspicious about… yeah, I’d check that out.

Thankfully, you the player do not need to manually navigate the world, the game does that for you. Combat is tedious but not cruel, and has a move that amusingly short-circuits things. The settings are pretty random and graphically interesting. Where the work comes alive is by making the most of its subversions, I think. Yes in gameplay, though that remains the most mixed of successes. Really, it’s the writing that brings the whole thing to life.

Our protagonist wants a cup of tea. In a very specific mug. The obstacles in her path are hilariously out of scope to her quest, of which I would INCLUDE RPG Maker gameplay. That juxtaposition alone is amusing but could not carry the weight of the work if not for the wonderfully wry humor that infuses every interaction. NPCs are laughably venal and unhelpful, but vividly so. You get to talk to neighbors (who are understandably concerned if you start rifling their house), wizards and genies and everyone’s favorite, (Spoiler - click to show)Actual, Literal Satan. As far as I can tell that is his full, given name. Just reading it still elicits snorts from me.

Our protagonist is indefatigable in her progress, taking one bananas development after another totally in stride. Her observations about the proceedings are subversive yet somehow optimistic and warm, even when fighting! The whole thing builds a fun vibe that mostly overcomes its gameplay challenges. Its brevity is a key element here. The game seems to have a supernatural sense of where the ‘wearing out its welcome’ line is, and pulls up short.

It never really breached into Engaging, I don’t think RPG Maker is engineered to provide that experience for me. For sure though, the thing Sparked every step of the way. Only two things kept it from being seamless: 1) it would not run on my linux box because of font dependencies. This was fine, online is a perfectly acceptable experience. 2) the ‘space bar select’ input was pretty hair trigger. It often interpreted a button press as multiple clicks, making selections I had no intent of making. Also not a HUGE deal, though I likely missed some great dialogue because of it. Well worth your time, ESPECIALLY if RPG Maker is not your thing.

Played: 10/9/24
Playtime: 20m, bailed, joined guard, in swamp, won
Artistic/Technical ratings: Sparks of Joy/Mostly Seamless
Would Play Again?: No, experience feels complete

Artistic scale: Bouncy, Mechanical, Sparks of Joy, Engaging, Transcendent
Technical scale: Unplayable, Intrusive, Notable (Bugginess), Mostly Seamless, Seamless

Adapted from an IFCOMP24 Review

In my relatively short reviewing lifespan I have thrown a LOT of words at this community. I have reviewed, what, 300 some odd games at this point? Not a lot against the titans of the field but feels like a lot to me. Sure a lot of it has been goofing. A lot of it has been misguided. Some of it has been unaccountably aggressive. Underpinning it all has been real thought and reflection, such as I am capable of, and attempts to not only capture my reflexive responses to games, but to explain them to you and myself.

There are a class of games I run into periodically that I just don’t vibe with - whose gameplay, implementation, conceit or prose collide with my particular chemical stew of a brain in awkward, off putting ways. Usually, on reflection, I can extract and isolate the elements that produce that response. As often as not, it devolves down to “it’s not you, it’s me.” What is relatively new ground for me is dissecting a work that ON PAPER should be a no-brainer hit, practically engineered specifically to my brain’s exacting specifications, yet still leaves me cold. Let’s first take a look at BOSH’s spec sheet:

-Punk Rock Protagonist
-Supernatural investigation (these two caused me to proclaim “I’m Bucaroo Bonzai!”)
-wry bureaucratic comedy (promptly followed by, “ooh, no. No I’m not.”)
-experimental gameplay elements (“maybe?”)

I love all these things! Fire up the blender and let’s GOOOooo!

I then proceeded to flail around for like 45 minutes before ‘solving’ the first puzzle. By which I mean bouncing between HINT and HELP for an unaccountably long time. Look, I’m not a noob in these things. I know you have to ‘examine all you can/take whatever the game lets you.’ I’m still human though! Every now and then, parser basics elude me. Usually (as here) because of a mix of randomly non-firing neurons, plot cues that tell me ‘that’s a weird thing to do here,’ and implementation issues that have trained me to avoid some levels of detail. And yeah, a lot of that is in play here, but I’ve powered through much worse.

I think what really got me about this first puzzle is that it introduced a FUNDAMENTAL gameplay element, required to navigate this game, yet was content to sit quietly on the shelf until I stumbled into it. This is a single item, no more or less attractive/weird than anything else in the world, that was so critical to the plot that it’s absence left a canyon before me, with progress smugly laughing on the other side. There was literally nothing to accomplish before I somehow stumbled across it. My advice would be: narrative chokepoint items deserve more deliberate, redundant in-game cluing. I have in the past advocated for a ‘rule of three’ clues in open world mystery games, maximizing the player’s chances of navigating solution chokepoints. That advice feels relevant here also.

Consulting the HELP/HINT system was insult on injury for me. The two are decidedly different experiences. HINTs are reasonably traditional, though with a command-line engagement paradigm it took a moment to orient on. HELP was another thing altogether. HELP transported you to another dimensional world to explore (with no narrative justification, which ehh ok…). This other world? Required exploration, object manipulation and NPC interaction to wring information out of. This seems to fundamentally misunderstand something about HELP/HINTS: when you engage them, you have resigned yourself to defeat. The objective is to get the nudge you need and return as quickly as possible to the source of your humiliation, never acknowledging your shortcomings again. A long, drawn out side quest, THE RESULT OF WHICH IS NO HELP WHATSOEVER, is exactly the WRONG thing to shunt that impatient player into. I am quite sure, btw, that this choice has a purpose, and that there are classes of blockage that HELP can resolve, and maybe even with some humor and aplomb. In particular, players new to parser gameplay might find this a sly training/orientation scenario. (Seriously though, are there any of those here? Enough to justify this level of mini-game?) Here’s the thing, as a player you have no way of knowing WHICH problems HELP is engineered around v standard HINTS, and boy is consulting it a chore when it’s not appropriate.

Once that particular problem (finding that keystone magic object) was ungated, it was back to a more traditional experience, but everything was just a bit more difficult than it needed to be. One NPC’s behavior seemed to change, such that what had happened once or twice on its own, now needed opaque actions from me to goose. (It is certainly possible that the first two times were NOT automatic, but the text cluing sure let me believe that.) There was a little more friction in discovering just how central the new mechanism was to proceedings, and then, only then, did things blossom into a real mission of sorts.

Oh wait, no, not just yet. First you had to navigate a 4-dimensional space! Ok, as a gameplay mechanism and conceit this was legitimately interesting. The MECHANICS of discovering and decoding it, however, were not. It involved reverse engineering a series of repeated moves 10s/100s of times, with a ‘clue’ that legitimately had multiple interpretations to test and reject. I probably spent another half hour or more fiddling with this because it took that long mechanically, not intellectually. Yeah, I did it, because that’s how my just-shy-of-OCD brain works, but the enjoyment ramp was a slowly descending one. I knew I was in trouble when, after believing I had decoded things sufficiently, I analyzed a remaining clue and said “that probably means X. Wait. There’s no way it means something that obvious, given the sisyphean task I just completed. Let me noodle for another 5-10 minutes… nothing. ok go to HINTs.” You have probably already sussed out it was in fact X.

Quick check: probably 3/4s of the judging time elapsed, and only now getting to the ‘true’ story to solve! While I deserve the lion’s share of the blame for this for sure, it is my nature to blame to others for my shortcomings. There is an argument that gameplay choices are partially to blame. Also partially to blame are implementation gaps. These are not overwhelming, as these things go, but were low key present throughout, blossoming to this exchange, right at the 2hr mark:
Extended game quote

> x obelisk
Which do you mean, the ladder or the obelisk?

> * wot? [note, ladder never mentioned before]
There’s nothing like that nearby.

> x ladder
There’s nothing like that nearby.

> read names
Which do you mean, the obelisk or the names?

> read obelisk names
Its faux Egyptian design is incongruous adjacent to the adamantly
traditional town hall. Faraji can just make out a small crystal adornment
rising from the top.

I think my frustration with this game was not only (or not specifically) that I struggled with its puzzle construction and hint system and implementation so much, but that because of my struggles it did not deliver on the promises its conceit made to me. Let’s review:

-Punk Rock Protagonist: never really factored into anything, narratively
-Supernatural investigation: got only a small flavor of this by the 2hr mark
-wry bureaucratic comedy: let me flounder here for waay too long, apparently only engageable AFTER the supernatural portion
-experimental gameplay elements: so fiddly as to mute their appreciation

Ok, in spite of what amounts to a VERY extended whine-fest about this work, I can for sure say it was never mechanical. Its setup fully engaged me. Even as I was cursing the particulars of its 4D navigation puzzles, I did very much like the fact of it. There is a consistent wry humor that, during moments I was not clawing at my eye sockets, did land for me. I went a LONG way into a DARK hole to just say “Sparks of Joy” but yeah, that’s where we top out. In deference to my own limitations, it even earned a generous “Notable” rather than “Intrusive” gameplay.

Played: 10/9/24
Playtime: 2hr, unfinished, captured by lizard folk
Artistic/Technical ratings: Sparks of Joy/Notable vocab/gameplay difficulties
Would Play Again?: There’s like a whole essay worth of thoughts here. A 2.0 version of this game, filed, sanded, buffed and polished… probably? I mean it is STILL engineered to my brain pan. But if I do, how do I shrug the weight of these two hours and give it a fair shot? If I encounter a remaining rough spot, how generous can I be? WHY AM I THE VILLAIN HERE???

Artistic scale: Bouncy, Mechanical, Sparks of Joy, Engaging, Transcendent
Technical scale: Unplayable, Intrusive, Notable (Bugginess), Mostly Seamless, Seamless

Adapted from an IFCOMP24 Review

There is nothing new in the world, and all art is built on art before it. We know this about the world. Yet year on year, things are still produced that surprise and delight us with novelty. How is this possible? It’s like music. There’s only 7 (12 if generous) notes but look at all the songs! It’s the ordering, pacing, orchestrated tonal qualities, volume, all these variations that bring uniqueness out of sameness. Man does FD deliver a symphony.

It’s like if you took every single decision an author might make – plot, character, background lore – and said “I want each of these things constructed of no fewer than 3 contradictory parts, and each of those parts should be BANANAS.” The protagonist/player is a third person space marine of some kind, but the game is narrated by a first person NPC of royal lineage. The world is under threat from an investment gone wrong(!) that is also apocalyptic and also challenged by ANOTHER apocalypse of some undetermined quality. Antagonists and bosses are simultaneously samey but each with unique details. It would be easy to mix all these things together and get only a muddy mess. FD proves itself an amazing conductor though - pacing things out really well (mostly) so that bonkers builds on bonkers and is not just dumped on you all at once. The fact that EVERY dimension of the story is so bananas helps here, I think. You never really have time to dwell on, say, some outlandish character reveal because HEY LOOK OVER THERE! now the plot has taken a turn! Ok, but would… HEY, SHINY BACKGROUND LORE!! I used orchestration earlier somewhat tongue in cheek, but its details are dispensed so regularly yet diversely it hits the exact sweet spot of increasing-engagement and no-time-to-poke-holes. Eventually, you just surrender and trust the wild ride you are on. I can’t say enough about the pacing of this thing, it is supremely well constructed to lob curves at you any time familiarity starts to settle in, right up to the end.

I haven’t spent much time specifically lauding the background lore here, so let me correct that oversight now. Like a fractal mirror of the entire work, its background is a chunky gazpacho of crazy - a Chex Mix where each part is satisfying to crunch, but whose saltiness begs for more, only instead of more corn chex, you now get a pretzel or cheese cracker or whatever. Ok, now I want more of that! Nossir, here come the peanuts! If you had nothing but peanuts, you would quickly start wondering “wait, some of these peanuts are undersalted or half-roasted.” Not here! It’s the variety that sums to more than its parts by so completely hiding its parts’ gaps. If you’re the type that picks MnMs out of Gorp, this is not your narrative. Grab a handful and start gulping, you get what you get.

If there is an anchoring aspect to the work, it is its gameplay. This is a well-established paradigm of explore, unlock areas, find and use items with light random-based combat. And save points! Yes, you are managing combat resources (bullets), but like video games, they seem to be stashed in a large variety of decreasingly likely places. In other works, this might rub against engagement, but here it is just a fine detail lost in the sauce, a nod to its inspirations more than mimesis defeating. This underpinning mechanical infrastructure ultimately acts as the player’s guide to the game, its familiarity a much needed asset to navigate the wild stuff happening in the world. It is a nifty trick, crucial to the game’s success.

I gotta say, this was a heady brew. Gameplay that elsewhere might leave me cold and unimpressed was so well seasoned with story and chaos, I bounded from one encounter to another fully Engaged. The puzzle was never really too difficult, the text cued the next beats clearly enough, and the ever-present antagonists were the perfect balance of not overwhelming, but too impactful to ignore. Their presence augmented what might otherwise be mechanical ‘find key use key explore new area’ gameplay.

Yeah, this one really worked for me.

Played: 10/8/24
Playtime: 2hr, finished, died many times
Artistic/Technical ratings: Engaged/Mostly Seamless
Would Play Again: I could see coming back to it in a few years

Artistic scale: Bouncy, Mechanical, Sparks of Joy, Engaging, Transcendent
Technical scale: Unplayable, Intrusive, Notable (Bugginess), Mostly Seamless, Seamless

Adapted from an IFCOMP24 Review

It is far too late for me to inaugurate a review sub-series, as I have done in Comps past. But if I were to, “Sleepyheads” seems like a good one for this year. This is another ‘wake in a sci-fi setting, figure out what’s happened’ joint. This one owes a bit more to Star Trek than Fallout, at least in references. The narrative is a bit more dire than anything Trek went after though. Like maybe Star Trek by Alan Moore.

“CPT Rorschach’s Log, USS GrimDark, Stardate circa 1983. Bodies orbiting ship’s gravity field, their sins and weaknesses swelling to burst into the cold void. Screams swallowed by the endless Dark of space. Dark as it gets. Flushed from airlocks like so much moral waste. Someone, somewhere has their hand on the flusher.”

There are quite a few contradictions built into its setup, implementation and tone. For one, there is an early insta-death that establishes stakes that aren’t really matched by the rest of the game, and does it with the old ‘player doesn’t know what character damn well should know’ trope. (Also, WHY WOULD YOU EVEN HAVE THAT LEVER???) For another, its implementation is gappy - many missing nouns and verbs. At several points, it is unclear whether the game is complaining about verb syntax or unimplemented nouns, which is a real barrier to making progress. You can JUMP on things, but not CLIMB on them, and so on. The tone bounces back and forth between low key atrocity and candy-colored Starfleet uniforms. Sometimes a tone war can produce some very affectingly contrasting moments, but here those moments are kind of firewalled from each other in time, more bouncing around than synthesizing into anything.

The gameplay is pretty standard parser - find/explore/use type of puzzles. They are a mixed bag of integration: some fairly well integrated as these things go, others kind of defying the reality of the setup. I needed the walkthrough a few times, more often to figure out how to accomplish what I wanted, but occasionally (for example the ‘shelf’ puzzle) to figure out a moon logic construct.

The story ends up being a low pressure ‘space corporation conspiracy’ with some adversaries mentioned but only really impacting your puzzle solving once. I couldn’t find a sparky hook among these pieces - the story felt familiar, the implementation fought me more often than not, and its tone never really coalesced. There is a choice to make at the ending, one outcome of which is WAY out of proportion to the actions you took during the game. I never got past a Mechanical engagement with this one.

“You don’t get it. I’m not trapped in here with you. You are trapped in here with me AND THESE TRIBBLES.”
– CPT Rorscahch’s Log, USS GrimDark

Played: 10/7/24
Playtime: 1hr, both endings
Artistic/Technical ratings: Mechanical/Notable implementation gaps
Would Play Again?: No, experience feels complete

Artistic scale: Bouncy, Mechanical, Sparks of Joy, Engaging, Transcendent
Technical scale: Unplayable, Intrusive, Notable (Bugginess), Mostly Seamless, Seamless