Reviews by JJ McC

Adapted from an IFCOMP24 Review

There are classes of activities that do not need to justify themselves. Solo board gaming. Herb gardening. Geocaching. Live scoring baseball games. I’m not going to provide an exhaustive list, there probably isn’t one. These are activities that provide ineffable joy to the participant, and earn outsider responses that range from baffled to humoring to (hopefully) indulgent mocking. That latter response is wholly and completely unwarranted and will not be discussed further. Gatekeeping others’ joy is a distasteful and unworthy human response. It is enough that the PARTICIPANT enjoys it, no?

Obviously I mean to include Bird Watching in this club. The thing about this class of activity is that others’ approval or enjoyment of the work is completely tangential to its successes. In a game of kickball, it is crucial that everyone is invested, or unearned runs will undermine the activity for everyone (or at least HALF of everyone). Here, others’ derision or approval has NO IMPACT on the activity at hand. It is wholly successful on its own terms.

There is an old saw “Write what you know.” The wisdom of this saw is not ONLY that having a full command of the details lends an authority to your writing, but also that your engagement with the topic is almost certain to be deeper than cold retelling. Writing that tells a story is of course great. Writing that tells a story, WITH A POINT OF VIEW is transformational, connecting readers to the writer in a deeply intimate way. This is a work, possibly a first time work?, that connects the player to the author’s passions in a personal, winning way. It does not attempt to belabor the JOY of the activity, that might not find purchase in an unsympathetic player. It presents a probably optimistic portrayal of that activity, tied to a location the author seems to have intimate familiarity with, and lets the detailed engagement convey that joy.

Technically, I wish it had paid a little more attention to screen layout. I found the link paradigm of adding inline content (including large pictures) to continually require page-down tabbing. I think I paged more than I clicked links here. A more deliberate photo-pane/nav text pane paradigm might make for a smoother gameplay experience. At least, that’s what I kept thinking as I continually paged down. Whatever theoretical-alternate interface might or might not exist, it absolutely needs to accommodate the photographs though. Their inclusion was the beating heart of this thing. More than anything else, the crisp, evocative photographs carried the author’s love for the subject matter. And not for nothing, were very well executed in their own right.

So, as a game rating? The nature of this class of activity is that external ratings are kind of immaterial, so understand I am serving the COMP here, not the work itself by conferring one. For me, this raw activity is outside my sphere of engagement, and was always going to be a mechanical experience. I rate the UI as notably page-down forward. But for sure, the author’s obvious underlying love for this activity and its wonderful photographic inserts earn a bonus point.

Played: 10/7/24
Playtime: 20m, 23 species/56 birds
Artistic/Technical ratings: Mechanical/Notable formatting, bonus point for loving use of photography
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

'Awake in sci-fi base, then escape while learning lore' is a tried and true staple of IF, carrying momentum even into the console gaming era. Here it is spun as a two-piece conceit, where two protagonists must work in concert to solve puzzles and help each other, first to suss out the truth of where they live, then to decide what to do with that knowledge.

This is as assured an implementation of this old saw as I’ve seen in a while, and it has everything to do with the design of its alternating, interlocking protagonist puzzles. Some areas being only available to one, some only to the other, controls in those areas having effects in the opposite area - it is a natural progression that feels a bit like a peloton as you alternate leads to make tandem progress. There are subtle gameplay flourishes (like graphically highlighting areas that are finished and lock icons on ones that are still gated) that help wrangle and keep things on track. The central mechanism of hacking computers is an amusing puzzle, and savvy enough to exit gracefully before it becomes a chore. The 'search/secure' and 'use item/explore more area' is all paced and varied very well, never getting into tiresome routine and continually presenting just one more twist on the formula. As a raw puzzle fest, this was well designed and completely Engaging.

The story this is in service of flirted with – no, it flirted, traded digits, then blossomed into a regular hookup with – too-familiar beats. The lore, the antagonist, the overarching challenge, you’ve seen all these things before, and the main narrative here is not going to astonish you. The work still has some tricks up its sleeve though. Every time you start to feel jaded by the plot, there are flourishes that tweak just enough to elicit a smile or nod of appreciation. A mid-point scene where one character encounters the antagonist had a true frisson of ‘oh crap, did I just lose this game?’ followed by, ‘ooh, clever moment, narrative.’ The allusionary linkages are so in-your-face as to circle around from ‘oh c’mon, this?’ all the way around to ‘lol, ok, you’ve won me over with your confidence.’ It’s been a while since I’ve seen a work sell its unsubtlety this thoroughly on little more than the strength of its commitment to the bit. I mean, the (Spoiler - click to show)protagonists’ names, the final (Spoiler - click to show)vessel for the cure… and then the PLAYFULNESS WITH THE TITLE GRAPHICS??? Fair enough work, you earned it. I would say the narrative didn’t wow me, but it did ultimately sell itself. (Caveat. There was one narrative choice that felt a shade off. Given the work’s final, heavy-handed-but-loveable-for-it conceit, it is odd that for most of the work, the protagonists were characterized as (Spoiler - click to show)siblings. I get the misdirect value it serves to the narrative, but that’s gonna make the epilogue WEIRD.)

Here is the deeply unfair portion of the program. This author’s previous works really raised the bar on graphical integration. Their skill in this arena is top tier, and among the things I most look forward to in their work. The Den flouted this established strength by incorporating almost no graphics into the proceedings. Look, this author doesn’t OWE that to any of us, but I couldn’t help but imagine a version of the game graced with epic graphics WHILE I WAS PLAYING. My brain is a dick, but there it is. Really, really Engaging puzzle play, a narrative that should have been Mechanical but Sparked nevertheless, and the whole time, thinking of graphics that could have been.

Played: 10/7/24
Playtime: 1.75hr, 93/97 survival chance, also fail end
Artistic/Technical ratings: Engaging/Seamless, penalty point for shortchanging that patented BJaxn Graphix!
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

I feel like the American West is an underserved sub-genre in IF. We get HIGH FANTASY and Puzzly Light Fantasy out the wazoo. We get a healthy dose of sci fi, mystery and horror. Much like modern cinema, the Old West seems novel whenever it shows up, purely as an exercise in numbers. Yeah, I’m aware this is the second this Comp, but compared to other genres, still rarified.

One aspect of the American West is its sparity. Humans imposing frail infrastructure on a hostile, dry environment where there is more nothing than something. I found the prose in Dust to reflect that vibe better than any I can think of. It is mostly spare, under-adjectived and dry. The IF convention of not listing every damn thing in the room (because, who has time for all that trivia?) here becomes a textual representation of the setting. I’m not mentioning a drawer full of paperclips and stapler refills because THIS IS A DESERT. I think the work captured a Wild West feel on the strength of its prose alone, and that is noteworthy.

This is a reasonably capable puzzle parser, its puzzles better integrated into the story and setting than a lot of them. The geography was tight, enough to keep solution space reasonably contained and tractable. Where it lost some luster for me was in its story, specifically its NPCs, and in its implementation.

Implementation first - there are a lot of missing verbs and nouns in this story, and quite a bit of either deceptive messaging, ignored alternate solutions, or mind reading puzzle solutions. I had to go to the walkthrough often, almost always because I knew what I WANTED to do, but could not figure out how to communicate that to the game. A prime example is the getting of lantern from a high place. This ‘puzzle’ that in real life would be solved in seconds took forever because: 1) feedback when I tried to climb or get chairs let me know this was fruitless so I never tried the actual (Spoiler - click to show)>push chair; and 2) it could not be reached, maneuvered or remotely manipulated despite having many long objects! Elsewhere, I used IF puzzle habits to uncover an object’s hiding place, but because I had not had the magical NPC conversation, the object was hidden from me. I could (and did) just take it though. The distract-the-guard puzzle I never had a hope of solving without walkthrough, my brain just wouldn’t have tumbled onto it.

Beyond the technical implementation, a wild west story like this, with such spartan motivations and moving parts, was always going to live and die on its NPCs. Unfortunately, the game treated them as puzzle elements, not characters. Yes, the barber was kind of a standout in weird background, but all of them had almost nothing to say except for whatever might be needed for the current puzzle. This rendered them transactional clue machines, not characters to interact with. Without a surge of interest from them, the plot itself was also just a little too mechanical to capture the imagination.

I respect its writing, and the vibe it captured, but it just needed a little more zhuzh, either technical in the puzzles, or dynamism in its plot and NPCs to push me beyond a mechanical playthrough.

Played: 10/5/24
Playtime: 1.5hr, finished with walkthrough help
Artistic/Technical ratings: Mechanical/Notable puzzle block
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

I do love me a multi-leveled work. A work that plays on multiple levels creates opportunity for all kind of cross-level linkages and inferences, and opportunity to examine things from multiple points of view and scope. I think I counted 4 different levels this piece operates at, which is just crazy ambitious. I’m going to need to number them for clarity.

There are two levels that are cued by graphical formatting. The first (L1) is kind of an academic summary of an… academic. It presents as a publication overview of a (presumably fictional) Dr. Balamer, a psychologist or philosopher who fascinates himself and his work with commonalities of human existence, up to the point of collective unconscious. Our game experience is periodically interrupted to present some more of this fictional background and context, building to a point where this thread (inevitably) twines with…

The OTHER graphically cued level. (L2) is a pixelated font videogame, cuing a 90’s(?) provenance that ALSO fascinates itself with life’s common experiences. The game is a series of scenarios the player is invited to briefly explore before rendering a verdict about themselves based on this exploration. The scenarios themselves are pretty quickly revealed to be (Spoiler - click to show)isolated snapshots of a life, leapfrogging in stages from birth to death.

There is a third level (L3), actually revealed even before the second level, of meta- playfulness. The opening sequence, where an erudite discussion of Moslow’s heirarchy of needs recasts LIFE CHANGING VIDEO GAMES as a core human need is hilarious in context and a breath-takingly hubristic way to introduce the game’s title screen. Thing is, this meta-playfulness stands outside both the other levels, not really of a piece with them, but slyly undercutting or tweaking them both. Honestly, this is kind of the best level of the game. It is this periodic cold dose of humor that keeps you on your toes, challenging whatever connection you are forging with the material as well as challenging the first two levels' hubristic ambitions.

The last level (L4) is the player themself. I mean to distinguish this from much of IF where this level is fully subsumed in L2. Here, you are playing a player of videogame (L4)… by playing a videogame (L2)! The game itself is kind of a character in this thing, and as player, your journey with it is very much part of the narrative. I don’t know if I’m saying this clearly. What I mean is the gameplay is a narrative distinct and separate from the game itself. The game exists both as ITSELF, an artifact in the fictional world, AND as the player’s main entry into that world. You are not a space hero, an angsty teen WITHASECRET, or a grizzled detective solving a mystery. You are a game player playing the real game in front of you that IS ALSO IN THE FICTION. I’ve thrown a lot of words at this, I hope it’s clear enough. If it’s not, just play it, I guess? The chutzpah of all this is just so delightfully joyous and sparkly.

So here you are making fiction by playing a fictional game that also happens to be real. You are choosing dimensions of human experience across a series of vignettes that aim to coalesce around the fictional Dr. Balamer’s observations of human commonality. And this is where I just couldn’t make that final jump from fireworks-display level sparking to true engagement. There is sometimes notable flair in the scenarios (a subversive favorite is opening with ‘you are behind bars’ to be revealed as (Spoiler - click to show)the crib of a baby. Just as often though, there is not. In a quest to describe common human weighpoints, the work falls a bit too much on generic scenarios that don’t feel specific enough to be real, but whose choices ALSO don’t feel justified due to that ephemerality. At one point you are meant to weigh in on having children after a single shopping incident. Not only was the incident itself a bit too pale to generate any real heat, the choice being asked was laughably grandiose! This was the most egregious example of this narrative/choice mismatch but it felt present in some capacity most of the time. This is the L4 experience, possibly the most unique aspect of this crazy Sunday stew.

So what I found as the game progressed was that I loved everything about it EXCEPT THE PLAYING OF IT, meaning navigating the scenarios themselves. There was a midpoint survey that hilariously broke things up. Periodic meta clashes like one leading text: “This is placeholder text for an unfinished story section that will be added in a future update. Please make a selection on the next screen, imagining the scenario that lead to these options:” This feels deliberate tweaking of the overall experience, not a coding oversight. The contrast between the extremely tight-laced academic analyses and background (L1), the much looser gameplay (L4), then the meta piss-taking (L3) always brought sparks of fun.

That core game though (L2), what was built up throughout the piece to be some sort of insightful distillation of human existence, was kind of revealed to be (Spoiler - click to show)a regurgitation of choices made throughout the length. Just that. And choices that had a lot more weight put on them than justified by the scenarios in the moment. There is a read on this mismatch that I like, that this is one final coup d’gras from L3 - that all the academic gushing and egghead philosophizing was ultimately so underwhelming and inadequate to its own goals. That is also a super sparky interpretation for me. It is not CLEAR that is intentional on the piece’s part, but the possibility that it might be is super, super fun to think about.

So yeah, a constant shower of sparks from its levels scraping against each other in thrilling ways, with a core gameplay conceit that deliberately or accidentally refused to become engaging. That’s where I finish. And a bonus point for smashing all these levels together so gleefully.

Played: 10/4/24
Playtime: 35m
Artistic/Technical ratings: Sparks of joy/Seamless bonus point for multi-level madness
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

Am I a Dr. Who fan? Kind of. I devoured the modern run through Capaldi, and have been bursty ever since. Am I a fan of classic Dr. Who? What even is that? This is a 60 year old property, what even is the classic Dr.? Ok, am I a fan of Dr. Who runs prior to the modern renaissance? Sure, my introduction to the property was through PBS replays of Tom Baker Dr, which was appointment TV back when we just called that 'tv'. Am I amenable to fan fiction Dr. Who works?

Hey, what’s with all the questions, is there a Dr. Who-based murder I’m implicated in, Lt. Columbo?

Fine, here’s my testimony. This is a fan work paying homage to 80’s Dr. Who. Yes, I knew the work of interest. From the start, something seemed just a little off about the implementation though. The immediate issue was its appearance. 80’s Dr Who had a very limited budget. Lots of indirectly lit sound stages, lots of special effects and set dressings straight from the craft store to screen. It was a transformational art-from-limitations example, the low-fi of its effects a chummy compact with the audience: ignore the pipe cleaners and spray paint, this is the story. More often than not the writing was strong enough, and unique enough on broadcast TV, to make that compact worthwhile. So much so, that the cheesy effects became a warm element of the experience.

In addition to really strong speculative storytelling, Baker set the mold with awkward, idiosyncratic, charismatic performances that conferred power of personality to the Dr. I am not Who scholar enough to know whether he was the FIRST oddball, but he certainly was among the most MEMORABLE, and it is his work that modern Dr’s so frequently riff on.

So if I were to identify the top three qualities of classic Dr it would be: embraceable yet laughable special effects; well constructed stories; and dynamic characters, particularly its central figure. This work fell short in all three dimensions for me.

Visually, it strikes a fairly generic cgi figure. So much sharper, so much brighter, yet with so much less personality than the Dr I knew. I don’t mean to open the ‘procedural art’ box here, because I suspect this is NOT that, but I can’t help but observe that it carries the same cold vibe as generated art. It certainly feels more of a piece to modern Dr., and even then carries more gloss. I will say the decision to smash-zoom into NPC faces when dialoguing with them was a novel, if deeply unsettling graphic choice. Woah Bex, personal space!!

The character of the Dr was probably the biggest miss for me. As a Twinesformer, with the player inhabiting the Dr, we spend our entire time with him, but at no point did I think he was anything other than a faceless IF protagonist, solving puzzles. Now I fully understand that doing a recognizable Baker pastiche is a truly Herculean task, but the ABSENCE of that attempt is no less noticeable against the goals of the work.

Which leaves story. The basic setup of Dalek machinations and time travel is pretty center of the road for classic Who, no notes on central conceit. Its application though, and mapping to very limited parser-style gameplay, felt more like a sketch than a completed narrative. In particular the decision to put the Dr under duress, (Spoiler - click to show)and fold, early in the game belied a lot of the protagonist’s legendary cleverness and really undermined his presence. The subsequent puzzle based developments were by contrast pretty simple, with the game basically ushering you along a path, and end-gaming you if you divert. Its fine, you just undo back, but its limited choice space really drives home how pre-defined the success path is. The MECHANICS of that path are very transactional - find/use/explore. None of it requires the Dr’s patented cleverness to accomplish. It was just too railed and shorthanded to really ring of its inspiration for me, and required too little of me (and the Dr!) to navigate it.

For me, I have enough connection to the work’s inspiration to have some forgiveness here. Even so, those three big things kind of kept me at arms length and never let it breach Mechanical. So you see, Lt Columbo, I couldn’t be the murderer… Was I bitter the work let me down so hard? That’s not what I said, Lieutenant… Where was I when this review was published?

I think this interview has taken a turn, Detective. Please refer future questions to my lawyer.

No! No ‘One More Thing…’! I’m locking the door!

Played: 10/4/24
Playtime: 20m, 3 fails undone, success
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

Sometimes there are tales that hinge directly on one monster twist - they carefully build and sculpt and craft a narrative full of intriguing detail and then WHAM sucker punch the reader/viewer with a revelation that so expertly recontextualizes everything that has come before it is an electric shock of transformation. These twists are SO hard to do well - they must balance ‘fair play’ events and dialogue with in-context red herrings, neither too obvious nor tripping on their own deceptions. Against an audience trained to look for the twist they are even harder. Works that accomplish this like the legendary Sixth Sense or Usual Suspects are rightly lauded for pulling off what so few works can.

For these works, that one moment is the entire point of the piece, an instantaneous justification of the entire runtime, delivering a moment of crystal shock. Suppose a work instead decided, “what happens if you take that one bullet-sharp moment, and stretch it out over time, nearly the entire breadth of the work?” Instead of a blinding reversal, give us a slow, steady dawning of what must be true over what could be. Its rewards are not going to be as flashy. Instead there is a slow heating as we acclimate ourselves to the point of the piece. Obviously, I mean to imply Civil Service is one such work.

What’s so sparky about this approach here, is that this creeping realization mirrors the slow progression of the protagonist, slaving away in the confines of her unrewarding job, amidst uncaring associates, traversing the same journey we are. Maybe she’s ahead of us? Maybe behind? It is deliciously unclear and this uncertainty does an excellent job of aligning us with the protagonist. I definitely appreciated the somber, depressing mood, interspersed with the work periodically asking us to rate things on a depression-hope scale. If there was a narrative impact to these ratings, I did not detect it. Rather, it seemed to be asking US how the slow ramp was going, and helping frame our thoughts on the proceedings. That was a pretty unique and interesting use of interactivity.

You can see I’m dancing around this more than usual, because this is a true slow burn of a work. To the extent that there are spoilers to navigate, I cannot cherry pick a moment or two to blur and discuss the rest. The entire work is a slow, inexorable ramp of understanding and confirmation and any moment in isolation carries a full mix of its conceit and buildup. That is kind of a really clever trick, especially how clearly it mirrors the protagonist’s journey.

For me, it presented a tough reality though. The details of this journey are varied, as they would need to be to hold attention for this slow ascent. Flashbacks, a maybe-romance angle, exploring the space, NPC interactions. The details are varied but more of a piece than not in terms of mood. The mood of most of these is sad isolation, barring a few sparks of hope or anticipation. Those sparks do shine brighter against that backdrop, but boy that backdrop was dour.

One of the defining things about slow burns are that they are slow. While many of the day to day interactions were sparky, they were also a bit TOO relaxed, TOO low tension to erupt into true Engagment. The lack of surprise was kind of the point of the work, but that point also lacks a charge. It is more a resignation, a coming to peace. I never thought of myself as an adrenaline junky, and this conclusion may be more damning of me than the work. It pulled at me, swayed me in its rhythms, but did not pull me IN. Folks that can lose themselves better in the ride, this might land harder for them.

Played: 10/4/24
Playtime: 30m, finished
Artistic/Technical ratings: Sparks of joy/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

It’s always a bit of a risk to draw a throughline in Comp Zeitgeist. A risk, and an inevitability, given our evolution-granted pattern recognition brains. It feels to me like I’ve seen a lot of Twinesformers (link-select UI married to parser style gameplay) this Comp. And a lot of them seem to truck in IF fantasy tropes. Neither of those are automatic hits for me, but hey, I’m game.

DoSM didn’t really cut any new ground in either dimension for me. Its UI was serviceable, definitely aided by its tight scope - it was uncommon to have more than a few objects to juggle at any moment, and navigation was as clear as these things get. That simplicity of design should not be overlooked in its facilitating of player experience. The setup: a magic-user pressed into service to rescue mine workers and deal with a creature infestation, was similarly economical and serviceable. It had all the makings of a Mechanical exercise - not too challenging, not too fiddly, not too engrossing but certainly competent enough.

Where it sparked, for me, was in the writing. The work did not take itself too seriously, but neither did it undermine itself. It marveled at unlikely turns of events with just the right sly tone, letting the player know yes it was in on the joke but no, the joke was not on the player. Every time I could feel myself pulling a little bit away, at a mechanical bit of object manipulation or goal-oriented NPC interaction, some wry bit of writing twisted things just enough to keep things peppy. I think the moment that drove this home for me was a wonderful twist on the “What goes on four legs in the morning…?” riddle that I laughed right out loud at. Ok, the work was not aiming to revolutionize the genre or medium. I don’t think I ever breached into outright Engagement in the proceedings. But it was willing to playfully and warmly josh around a bit, and that was enough to maintain the Sparks to the end.

Not everything need be revolutionary transformations of form. That would be exhausting! Sometimes, a short encounter with an amiable friend is just what the doctor ordered.

Played: 10/3/24
Playtime: 30m, finished
Artistic/Technical ratings: Sparks of Joy/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

What is more appealing, a hot mess or a cold clockwork? Ok, I’m a former engineer so it kind of depends on the heat of the mess, and the majesty of the clockwork. I don’t have a strawman clockwork to put up on that side of the equation, but for its part, Unreal People is just blazing, rock-melting lava. In the words of Eddie Murphy as James Brown: “Can’t stand the HEAT, oooh, gebback hunh in the hottub, OW!”

At its opening words, this work had my full attention: “You piddle into being” I WHAT, NOW?? That opening shot across my bow introduced a psychedelic ‘coming into existence sequence’ that paced itself from “Uh WOT?” to “Oh I see!” pretty effectively. From there, the gameplay is to link-select hop from host to host, all in the service of a gossip-hungry master. Why not? The setup is a medieval Indian kingdom and you work your way up from rocks and leaves to cows and people. If you get too greedy too fast, you might be somewhat arbitrarily discovered and dispatched. It’s fine, you can UNDO out of it.

The bananas writing is far and away the hottest part of this mess. It is wryly humorous and surprising in the best way possible. Some examples, among a wealth of possible choices:

“That revelation has shattered my knee caps.”
"You have become bag. "

The non-drunk princess’ internal monologues versus response choices are always fun, but occasionally the turns of phrase hit a lot higher:
"The last man saw of god was man unseen by god. "

At every turn, NPCs surprised and delighted with off-kilter voices, viewpoints and motivations. Unfortunately, gameplay was a lot messier. For one, while your mission is clear - collect gossip - you don’t have much control over how. You just jump around, basically at random, until you accumulate enough. There is nominally a timer, but as far as I can tell the game is more event driven. Its pacing is also a bit weird. The midgame went on for so long, it felt like the entire game, but no, there was a more abbreviated final section still left to navigate, then a truly surprising and well-conceived final FINAL bit. All these artifacts prevented me from truly engaging the work, but wow, the fun writing brought white hot Sparks of Joy to this mess.

Even messier was its technical implementation. Over and over, coding artifacts showed up in the work, from seeming placeholder comments, internal code artifacts and in one case an entire page of resource text displayed for FUTURE choices the player had not made yet (this last in the cat and Gaury scene). Elsewhere, a link to investigate Mazboot led to a completely blank page that needed UNDO to escape. In its endgame showpiece, you have finally taken (Spoiler - click to show)everything(!) as a host, but the input handling is jumbled, repeated, or confused, ultimately defusing that really nifty conceit.

So yeah, a notably messy gameplay with messier implementation issues married to white hot Sparks of Joyful writing. It would take quite a towering clockwork to eclipse that.

Played: 10/3/24
Playtime: 1hr, captured x6, became [blank]
Artistic/Technical ratings: Sparks of Joy/Notable bugs/text artifacts
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

So, I spent a good amount of COVID’s duration, like many of us, spinning in my own brain, grasping at any lifeline I could think of. One of my outlets was to create and share cocktails weekly, with fancy names like ‘Science Schmience,’ ‘A-B-CDC-Ya,’ and eventually, ‘Orange Slapdown.’ As the weeks dragged on, the obvious complementary flavors (and what was available readily in stores!) grew rarer, so I periodically tried combining things I loved individually to see if they played together. So very, very often they did not. Usually, it was obvious going in that they would not, but hey, science right? With enough time and energy, like a one-man infinite monkey with infinite cocktail shakers, I eventually tumbled onto a sublime discovery: the ‘Internal Sunshine of the Stable Genius Mind’ (and its candy-ass partner, the 'Internal Bleach of the Stable Genius Mind) – ISOSGM/IBOSGM for short. This improbable combination of citrus-forward gin, eldeflower liquer, kumquat simple syrup and egg combined to become so much more than the sum of its conflictory parts. (‘Bleach’ omits the egg in deference to my wife’s extreme physiological objections.)

The Bat performs similar alchemy in a less alcoholic medium. Take parts I love in isolation: servant-soire’-farce, superhero spoof, limited vocabulary parser, and light parlor mystery and you have the makings of a muddled mess. Or, in this case, something that improbably combines these elements into something greater even than their very pleasing individual parts.

Initially, I found the light vocabulary to be chafing - using the catch-all manipulation verb ‘attend to’ is intuitive when interacting with high society guests, but less so when fumbling with objects. It is in fact the only manipulation verb in the game, so eventually the shorthand ‘>a [object]’ alchemically becomes ‘whatever I currently want to do with [object]’ in my brainpan. Occasionally there are glitches where it is unclear which object should be attended to when you require two to interact, but again the brain quickly pastes ‘well, try the other one’ over the gap.

The early game is a pretty great ramp from acclimating the player to the syntax of the game and the geography of the mansion, then slowly but inexorably building guest on calamity on random events until the poor butler protagonist is flailing around the mansion like an electrified butterfly. Things are always just outside manageable and that masterful balance is where the humor continually keeps frustration at bay. There is a player score of sorts, charitable donations guests are willing to make based on how well they are attended to, and the ups and downs of this provide a very amusing tension to the proceedings.

As soon as that gameplay becomes familiar, the game shifts gears to a light parlor mystery whose culprit is not really in doubt, but the mechanics of catching them are interwoven into business and romantic trysts that test the protagonist’s inflappable discretion in various, hilarious ways. It also introduces some next level puzzling that is as funny as it is fun to play with, that ALSO builds on player knowledge in a very satisfying way.

Ultimately, the game crests to foreground the light superhero spoof it has been nodding at the entire game, a thoroughly ANTI grim’n’gritty take on a Dark Knight that could really stand to lighten up a bit. The final battle puzzle is a little clumsier than the leadup ones, but it does leverage the best mechanic in the game, so even flailing a bit is not unpleasant. Then, the FINAL employment of that mechanism turns into a double entendre’ so crisply tying the whole thing together that all is forgiven.

I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge the role the writing has in tying the whole thing together. The protagonist’s dry, beleaguered but indefatigable voice, committed to his role despite all its indignities, is the perfect counterpoint to the chaos around him. The narration is similarly matter-of-fact and minimal, letting the chaos speak for itself, and admirably gesturing at interesting details without clouding the vibe. This is a case study in ‘less is more,’ both for humor, and parser cluing.

It is clear I hope that I was thoroughly Engaged with this work. Like others of its scope, the 2hr timer provided an additional charge of tension at the end, as I had no intention of leaving the game unfinished. It was tight, but yay me. The limited vocabulary implementation ended up being a true strength, limiting opportunity for gaps while settling into a gameplay paradigm that was intuitive and transparent. I didn’t make an ISOSGM to celebrate its accomplishments as my kumquats* are not in season, but next time I enjoy one I will retroactively toast this game’s success.

*There is a whole different story around my wondrous discovery, so late in life, of the majesty of the humble kumquat. I will save that for a more appropriate time.

Played: 10/3/24
Playtime: 2hr, finished $100,000,000 in donation
Artistic/Technical ratings: Engaging/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

Military works can be quite divisive. Historically, media has lionized our fighting forces, not without some valid kernel of a reason. As a volunteer force, people making the choice to serve something larger than themselves, at potentially great personal physical risk, is a laudable choice. In an imperfect world, when outside forces have few qualms about inflicting death and destruction, a response in kind is a basic need of a nation. (Just ask Ukraine.) Where we get into trouble is that ‘volunteer’ is a loaded term when economic opportunity is not truly equal, and when the choice to employ force is, by design, outside the volunteers’ hands. You might as easily be asked to liberate people from death camps, as slaughter civilians in the name of lower gas prices. It is fair to say only one of those things is an appealing cause to volunteer for. It is rendered even more complex with the stunning lethality of modern weapons, and only half-assed attempts to increase precision through the fog of war. Even the most noble of causes can be tainted if retaliation is indiscriminate.

It is against this very fraught backdrop that Deserter introduces us to a future mech-based war, and a soldier bent on quitting the fight. It is a choice-select work, and the player is given no options to stay and fight. I mean, fair enough, the title kind of unambiguously points that way. But it does so with NO table setting, no background in the conflict. Early on, it is not clear whether this is a noble or craven act. The work clearly WANTS us to perceive it as the former, but absent context it is far too charged and unclear to be a given, and that doubt drives a wedge between player and protagonist.

In particular, the work seems to have only an action-movie understanding of soldier dynamics. One of the oldest tools militaries use to secure loyalty is religious fervor. The SECOND oldest (probably, I didn’t do the math) is to ensure every soldier’s highest allegiance is to his fellow soldiers. You are not fighting for God here. You are not fighting for political leaders. You may be fighting for ideals, though that pull is uncertain if those ideals are removed from your own turf. No, you are fighting for the soldier next to you on either side, so you all come home together. This coopting of humanity's social impulses is a fundamental aspect of human warfare and is the strongest counterweight against desertion. It is also completely missing in this work. It is not that it HAS to be present here, but its absence certainly should be addressed. It is precisely this lack of dynamic that raises the spectre of cravenness in the protagonist.

But desert he does! As the escape progresses, we are treated to a not-great use of interactivity: choices to make with nothing to analyze to inform the choice. Go left or right? Only the vaguest of context. In heat of battle, this is not a bad design in and of itself. The fact that the work later makes those choices irrelevant begs the question, why bother creating an unfair choice the player will angst over? Other interactive opportunities run afoul of the scenario itself. Because the protagonist’s motives are so cloudy, subsequent available choices: to explore a cave rather than continue an escape make little story sense, but turn out to be the only way to get character context! Too, events seem overly contrived - despite being minutes from an active war zone, the protagonist not only can (Spoiler - click to show)run across refugees, those refugees can include (Spoiler - click to show)HIS OWN FAMILY. For a topic as loaded as modern warfare, combatant culpability, and the price paid by non-combatants, I found the work too shallow for its setting. It relied on motivations without justifying them, and contrived unconvincing events to drive its message home. The unconvincing nature of its plotting and interactivity actually undermine what it is driving at by putting the player in a skeptical frame of mind.

Its heart is in the right place, I’ll give the work that. This prevents this from being truly Bouncy, but its shaky narrative did not engage me. The gyrations needed to uncover its deepest context were both unrealistic and convoluted so it wasn’t even until third playthrough that the protagonist’s motivations approached clarity. At that point, the charge of discovery was so well and truly muted that it was too little, too late.

Played: 10/3/24
Playtime: 25m, three endings: (Spoiler - click to show)escape, save boy, escape with stuffed bear
Artistic/Technical ratings: Mechanical/Notable text artifacts
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