Ratings and Reviews by JJ McC

Adapted from a SpringThing24 Review

Played: 4/15/24
Playtime: 1.75hrs, current ending

‘Product Misuse’ is a squirrelly legal tactic, used to limit financial liability when injuries result from products being used in ways not intended or sanctioned by manufacturers. It is squirrelly because the law specifically allows for liability when products are used in ways ‘foreseeable to the manufacturer’ even if unintended. You see the problem. What is a reasonable test for ‘foreseeable’? It is further complicated by a patchwork of US state laws, some of which put the burden on the manufacturer to show it is not foreseeable, while others put the burden on the plaintiff to prove it was not misuse!

This review engages a 3-chapter preview of a longer work (ooh! smashcut from seemingly disconnected review intro… that could be… FORESHADOWING!) , a medieval fantasy work set in a world of magic and man-mythical creature bonding and horny young(?) adults. It’s Dragonriders of Porn! If you think I went way out of my way to unfairly make that crack, which is almost certainly NOT the first time it’s ever been coined, you are a longtime reader that has a firm grasp on the cut of my jib. It is ChoiceScript, and adheres to the idiosyncrasies of that platform, not the least of which is a tiresome eye color/hair color/gender detail selection sequence. Notwithstanding that ChoiceScript fealty, I found the work itself to be both well and inadequately written.

I found the broad strokes world building pretty competent and engaging. The socio-political conflicts were vibrant and interesting. The details of magic, multi-versal worlds, and mythical creatures were familiar with enough unique spin to engage. Certainly, I felt invested in the proceedings, and ate up each new piece of the background in my quest to understand more. It was most accomplished, I thought, when describing physical environs, showing a nice eye for composition and detail and providing some really fantastical settings including alien worlds, natural wonders, and magic-informed architectures. The overall sense of place and setting was really top notch. Kudos for that! It was so well done, it formed a perfect background for… ah, not yet, I’ll get to it.

I did not resonate with the characters that inhabited this world so well. The NPCs were certainly pleasant enough: some roguish, some noble, some tortured and mysterious, none of them super vivid or escaping their archetype but yeah, certainly pleasant. The protagonist though is where the true break happened. Despite head feinting at player autonomy, the work had a very specific idea about the protagonists’ arc. It provided choices that let you steer, but the surrounding text attributed thoughts, emotions and subsequent actions that really only made sense if you were on one path: (Spoiler - click to show)breaking with your past and getting on board with your new warrior-mage life.

So here’s the thing, ladies and gentlemen of the jury. The setup is, you are an accomplished spy, in service of your king, on a very specific diplomatic mission. “Got it!” sez I, “I’m Fantasy James Bond.” Or in my case, JACE Bond, and yes, name chosen deliberately. Once that thought flashed in my head, it struck me as such a powerful premise I could not let go of it. No matter how hard the narrative pushed me to do so. (I also named my raptor-pet Claudia Schiffer. If I had fully baked my approach just a few screens sooner it would have been Moneypenny.)

Every subsequent action I took was me fighting the work to implement that compelling vision. Cartoonish (figuratively) cat-petting villain? Check! Love interests? More like (super explicit) Fantasy Bond Girls! Injustices around me? Excellent levers to pull against the villainous mastermind! A helpful familiar? More like a combination Q-gadget and Mish Moneypenny! Choice of wardrobe and drinks? Fantasy Tuxedos and Fantasy Martinis! Leave my employer for a new life of magic and wonder? More like deep undercover for His Majesty’s Secret Service! Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I commit to the bit HARD.

I commit to it so hard, I had to start ignoring text, particularly the text that tried to dictate my thoughts and reactions, and instead head-canon'd my own. I only reluctantly accepted a magical animal bond, my first thought being “Why can’t I just bond with Claudia Schiffer?” (Which, not the first time in my life I’ve had that thought, amirite former adolescent cis boys??) I mentally translated “I would like a relationship with X” to “I seduce X for information or advantage.” I rejected any text that tried to pretend this new life held any attraction for me. Here’s the weird thing - THE WORK CONTINUED TO LET ME DO THIS! Time after time, choice after choice, I thought “surely my road runs out here…” No! Right up to the end, actions remained available that lent themselves to a Bond Movie re-interpretation, and all it required was liberally ignoring and rewriting some mental descriptions which the work had no right to in the first place!

Members of the jury, If I was “misusing” the work, WHY DID IT CONTINUE TO CONSISTENTLY FEED ME OPENINGS??? This leaves me in a weird place, review wise. Hands down, I had the most fun with this entry over anything in SpringThing24. I took PAGES of notes, several times more than any other work. I have written more about this work than any other (if this review looks long to you, know that I have re-edited myself multiple times trying to get this just right, leaving many moments of pure joy on the cutting room floor). I ACTIVELY CONSIDERED CREATING THREADS OF ALTERNATE CHOICE TEXT TO SUBMIT TO THE AUTHOR IN SERVICE OF THIS CONCEIT, LIKE SOME FPS FAN MOD/SKIN.

But. I cannot deny that the headiest joy came from my subversive reinterpretation, and the dizzying realization that the author’s choice architecture improbably continued to let me play. It seems obvious that I was not actually embracing the author’s full vision here. So we are back to ‘foreseeable use.’ And is it on me to prove I was not misusing the work, or on the author to prove this was not foreseeable when it played along SO, SO WELL? You gave me the interactivity, don’t be mad that I used it! This could take years of litigating JJMcC V INK AND INTRIGUE to decide. Thank you Judge, members of the jury, this concludes my opening statement.

Mystery, Inc: Animal Best Friends? Shaggy.
Vibe: under pending litigation
Polish: Gleaming
Gimme the Wheel! : So if it were MY work, I would excise all text that attributed or editorialized the protagonist’s thoughts, feelings and desires. Instead, I would render their choices as ACTIONS TAKEN, with event consequences, but leave the motivations and other soft stuff in the player’s head. This is really, really hard to do, but I’d do it by crumb. Having said that, the author is under no obligation to tell any story other than the one they want to, including a definitive protagonists’ arc. I’m just saying what I would do. If the author chooses not to, I call dibs on the Fantasy James Bond conceit.

Polish scale: Gleaming, Smooth, Textured, Rough, Distressed
Gimme the Wheel: What I would do next, if it were my project.

Adapted from a SpringThing24 Review

Played: 4/13/24
Playtime: 40min, 4 plays, 3/3 endings

There is something inspirational about the human mind when it commits to the bit beyond all reason, FOR no reason. The bigger the bit, the bigger the charge. That commitment itself becomes a thing of beauty, the more dear for its rarity. There’s a reason Andy Kaufmann and Sasha Baron Cohen are such towering comedic figures. Also divisive for sure, but towering. In fairness, those figures commit to something so socially transgressive that the parallels are not quite aligned with NC, which is a much sweeter, more amiable commitment. Still plenty bonkers though.

The setup is a bit tortured. You get to a place where VERBS don’t exist, so yeah, you ‘got some ‘splainin’ ta do Lucy.’ This is not a problem, by the way, the tortured setup is very much part of the gag. It can also be read as a sly elbow to the ribs of the IF player - what are parser fans if not WORD WIZARDS??? As a word wizard, you have fortunately created a series of objects that auto-activate when you noun. But they ALL activate, and in a specific order. Use them to save yourself from a DRAGON, because, why not?

Since I’ve already unfairly compared this work to two towering figures in comedy, let me compound it by invoking an analogous figure in IF. This piece could be easily imagined in the ouvre of Andrew Shultz - a small, playful wordplay puzzle of specific and twisted setup. At this point I kind of want to take it all back, because these endless comparisons imply it only lives in the shadow of others, and NC very much does not. It is its own weird, wonderful thing that exists independent of those worthies.

It takes a while to get on its vibe, and that disconnect may be the best part of the game - figuring out the new syntax rules to this world and bending them to your will. But ‘best’ is not the same as ‘only fun.’ The puzzles themselves have nuance in world rules that need managing. Between the arcane and restrictive-but-arbitrary rules (again, not a complaint. How arbitrary are the rules to Sudoku? Chess? And NC is so much more entertaining than both of them!) it is a fully engaging puzzle.

It also has the insight to know EXACTLY what size to be. Its short length and tight geography are textboook “not a jot bigger than needed” and drive home its virtues with a hammer. I should also mention that the prose style through all of this is bubbly and light, and every bit a partner in the success of the piece. In particular, when you (Spoiler - click to show)destroy nouns you catch a fleeting glimpse of verbs, whose descriptions just made my heart happy.

If it has a fault, it’s that the piece does not heal ideological fractures in America. Are you kidding me? It also can’t make the perfect souffle’ WHY WOULD YOU ASK IT TO?? It is a lovely, well-written, hilarious yet-tightly-tuned bonkers experiment, perfectly sized to deliver its punch. Those other things can wait.

Mystery, Inc: Fred
Vibe: Experimental
Polish: Smooth
Gimme the Wheel! : There is one state-glitch I noticed, I’d fix that if it were my project.

Polish scale: Gleaming, Smooth, Textured, Rough, Distressed
Gimme the Wheel: What I would do next, if it were my project.

Adapted from a SpringThing24 Review

Played: 4/10/24
Playtime: 1.5hr, 4 endings of at least 5

I really like what this game is doing, and I’m working out if the frictions I felt ended up being completely necessary and justified.

The piece opens on an adult woman adjusting to her first night in a new apartment. At one point I cynically wrote down “Moving In Simulator” in my notes. I stand by the accuracy, if not dickish tone, of that note. For the first forty minutes I explored a small studio-ish apartment of fairly deep implementation, doing some last few chores before going to bed. In the course of that, I learned some background about my situation - it was not a desired relocation - and most especially the geography and layout of the place. It took me forty minutes to get to the title screen! I’d be lying if I said I was enraptured by the proceedings to that point.

Turns out I needed that intro, as I was awakened by a potential intruder and… from there it was off to the races where that intro knowledge was CRUCIAL. The work also shifted at that point to future conditional tense (WHAT???) and mental gears clashed for a moment but I quickly adjusted. Now we’re playing cat and mouse with a hostile intruder in a small, dark apartment, in an awkward syntax. This section of the game is just as deeply implemented as the first half, with many different possibilities and outcomes in this tight feint and counter-feint. The genius thing is, by using future conditional tense, after one finish (which you are allowed to accept or reject), (Spoiler - click to show)the whole thing is recast and revealed to be a lightning fast mental excercise by the protagonist, deciding how to react by playing things out in her mind! What an elegant, satisfying and unique replay/‘RESTART’ conceit! The final words of the game on finding an acceptable run (which you, not the game, gets to decide on) are just PERFECT.

The other thing gameplay did quite well is align player and protagonist. We’ve only had a single evenings’ introduction to the surroundings, but SO HAS SHE. Any fumbling we do with the environment is very much in-game and resonates with her perfectly. Couple that with its reasonably deep implementation and it has a lot going for it.

I don’t even think I want to talk about ‘flaws,’ maybe ‘compromises?’ For one, as a percentage of time, fully half my playtime was spent on setup. On reflection, I concluded this was appropriate, but in the moment it was not compelling. I also found the intruder to be less terrifying than the game wanted me to think. I am not sure whether it was the language, the discernible pattern of movements, the restart conceit, or the sometimes unfairness of his actions ((Spoiler - click to show)I would have expected more reprieve from a locked bathroom door) that put me into ‘game’ mode rather than ‘hunted’ mode. Again, I think it might have been NECESSARY to do that, so the game didn’t become a long fight against a randomizer, but it did undermine the tension a bit. In one notable case, I could not bend the parser to my will (Spoiler - click to show)trying to push the chair to wedge the front door to buy some time. Ok, that last I won’t forgive, but the rest ultimately is necessary to let those final words ring so nicely.

So yeah, in game I had reservations and frictions, but it all felt completely and satisfyingly justified by the ending. I especially liked the 4 different endings I found - all very varied but earned dramatic closures to the scenario, deeply respecting but also not coddling player choice. Yr in a tough spot, girl, you make the call on what success looks like! I will take a moment-by-moment confounding work that sticks the landing this well over an absorbing work that fumbles on the goal line 7 out of 10 times. Y’know, in my Gymnastic Football metaphor.

Mystery, Inc: Daphne
Vibe: The Strangers
Polish: Smooth
Gimme the Wheel! : Ok, it’s not my project and good thing. I’d be afraid anything I did to try and ‘fix’ it would disturb the ending and I can’t justify that.

Polish scale: Gleaming, Smooth, Textured, Rough, Distressed
Gimme the Wheel: What I would do next, if it were my project.

Adapted from a SpringThing24 Review

Played: 4/10-12/24
Playtime: 4.25hrs

Well, this was just delightful. I’ve not had cause to reference “Twinesformers: Parsers in Disguise” in a while, apparently saving it for now. This is a Twine work, repurposed to support a parser-like gameplay style. There are inventories, spell lists, maps to navigate, items to search out and use or combine. I don’t know that I have seen a better implementation of this. The UI was deeply intuitive and natural, including navigating among multiple POV characters and even body parts! I was rarely lost in narrative flow or paths forward (just three times, actually, of course I’ll get to those).

The case against link-based parser play is that it enables ‘lawn mowering,’ exhaustively clicking all links in all combinations, until something works. ToR is not immune to this, but it resists it better than anything I’ve seen. I think it is a combination of the permutations available and the lovely prose of its story. Most object links can be clicked by any number of characters or sub-characters, and AGAIN in conjunction with any number of inventory items and spells. It can mushroom into an untenable amount of permutations, which encourages a more thoughtful approach to the puzzles.

The prose though, hoo. The prose is the beating heart of this thing. The tone is light, a deeply optimistic, just barely-short-of-naive positivity. This is conveyed economically, matter-of-factly, and so consistently that you can’t help but be swept along by it. Yeah, even me, the guy that hates poetry! The prose is ALSO soft cluing paths forward. And of course carrying the plot. Oh, and setting geographies and settings. Character too, it’s also providing voices and agency to a wealth of characters. SO MUCH TO ACCOMPLISH, ISN’T THAT INSANE?!?!?!

Okay. I hear your snorts of derision. “Reviewer,” you snootily say, “literally EVERY WRITTEN WORK does all those things. Its kinda written-narrative’s thing.” Yeah, well do they do it so EFFORTLESSLY? So CRISPLY? So gosh-darn SWEETLY??? We are talking mostly terse paragraphs of description and dialogue that do ALL that, plus provide soft cues to keep you progressing, PLUS warm your cold cynical hearts, you ivory tower bastards. I cannot overstate what a delight the prose style was in this work, how it carried me through some tough times and created a world it sucked to leave. I don’t know why, but this line just exemplifies what I’m talking about so perfectly:

"The upper ruins were not held together by magic, but, apparently, they were supported by the lower parts."

That wry, matter-of-fact voice, ah, I’m smitten. The other thing the above blurb captures is just how well-thought out the world and plot is. Despite being a fantasy of heroic undead, magic spells and artifacts, light geopolitics, everything works together in such a satisfying way. Most especially in puzzle construction. The ability for Rosalind to disassemble to solve puzzles was endlessly varied and invariably fun. Spell usage was a little more straightforward, but no less fun. Setups and payoffs abound every step of the way but especially in endgame. This is a work where SOMEONE IS TALKED OUT OF PREJUDICE and somehow my response was NOT ‘oh c’mon.’ Would it work that way in the real world? YOU DON’T KNOW, ROSALINDA AND TEAM HAVE NOT TRIED YET.

It gives me no joy to report there are some frictions, but I’ll try to dispense with them quickly. For one, the UI had an unfortunate scroll length where some options went unnoticed below the window’s edge. This caused me to spam/lawnmower the insanely large space, made more painful than normal for its breadth. Check your scrollbar first is my advice for those stuck.

There are some unanticipated solutions I wish had been addressed in game, most notably (Spoiler - click to show)not being allowed to feed a Tinctured Piecrust to a catfish and being unable to (Spoiler - click to show)get Ormund to help with crystal grabbing or plate-standing. I didn’t need those to work, just explained. Minor quibbles to be sure.

There was one puzzle I considered unfair, which is code for hard but not in a SATISFYING way, a (Spoiler - click to show)search only one character can complete, in one specific location, with no hints I spotted that that might be necessary. There was another that was SUPER fair, and I just missed it, but chuckled in glee when I tapped the progressive hint that clicked it into place.

…aaaand I’m done with the negative. This was not a mind-blowing game changer of deep human insight. This was a frothy, pulpy fantasy lark of unremitting positivity and cleverness, buoyed by text it was a treat to read. And not for nothing, an elegantly architected Twinesformer experience that will forward be my gold standard for these kinds of things. Kudos author, I enjoyed every minute. Most minutes. All the minutes worth talking about.

Mystery, Inc: Daphne
Vibe: Plucky Fantasy
Polish: Smooth
Gimme the Wheel! : If it were my project, most folks in my life would question who I really was, how I deceived them so long, but could they keep this new guy anyway? For me though, I think I would plumb some of those alternate solutions into text, either with playful rejections or as alternate solutions. This is probably not a simple ask, given the large permuted space already accommodated, but since the work makes it LOOK so easy, it must BE easy, yeah?

Polish scale: Gleaming, Smooth, Textured, Rough, Distressed
Gimme the Wheel: What I would do next, if it were my project.

Adapted from a SpringThing24 Review, English version

Played: 4/9/24
Playtime: 1.75hrs, all but 1st on FF, 3.5 endings

Epistolary works - fictions composed of purported real world text artifacts - are a compelling conceit. They allow for indirect world and character building where the reader is assembling an oblique narrative in their head. Part of the joy of these kinds of work is watching it evolve and click into place. The other part is the charge ‘real world documents’ give to the proceedings. A lot hinges on the form of those documents - they need to be a fine balance of plausible and informative. In particular, any sense that the documents are aimed at a third party reader (us!) instead of their in-world targets can undermine everything it wants to achieve.

I am delighted to report Jeangille just crushes the form of it. From its graphical presentation, its font use, to the measured content of the faux-missives we are drip-fed a tale of forbidden love and forbidden… other stuff. I found it unimpeachable in its conceit, almost never cracking to the pressures of info-dump to uninformed third party. Rather, it was deliberate in alluding to events the correspondents clearly understood in a way to slowly and naturally bring us up to speed. In particular, the mercurial tone of the author was nicely observed - they are not in the same monotone mood throughout their notes. Longing, anger, depression, new fascinations, petty jealousy, all are on display underscoring the fullness of the protagonist and the emotional passage of time. The crucial element here is the correspondents’ fascination with ‘gossip,’ allowing for plot-relevant events to be conveyed without artifice.

The language of the letters equally does some heavy lifting here. Its Romantic formality is the right balance of omnipresent but conceding to modern sensibilities in a way that allows us to acknowledge but not be distracted.

The interactiveness of the piece leverages its strengths in a dynamite way - periodically we are given opportunity to shade emotions, events and attitudes by selecting among alternatives. When done well, it has the precise flavor of composing a letter! Toying with a variety of subjects and phrasings to convey exactly what we want and putting us firmly in the protagonist’s chair. If I had any notes here, it would be that it was more powerfully realized when the page was blank below the choice, and filled in after, rather than embedded in otherwise unchangeable text. That underscored the ‘composing a letter’ dynamic that was so cool.

Through these interactive choices, the plot proceeds to a climax of which, depending on how your choices landed throughout the correspondence, I found 3.5 possible endings. And here’s where I can’t keep being coy about the plot, will try to spoiler my way through it.

We all know what is arguably the most famous epistolary novel, right? (LINK IS A SPOILER) It’s so foundational, it becomes a trope of that genre in other works. (LINKS ALSO SPOILERS) Ok, fine. (Spoiler - click to show)Vampires. The prior art is Vampires. Those resonances are so pronounced that even the slightest supporting event, alluded to most obliquely, immediately sets off alarm bells in the head and everything forward is contorted through that lens. We are ahead of the narrator, biting our nails for the inevitable escalation. Or better, awaiting the knowing twist from the author that crushes our expectations most delightfully.

The latter does not happen here and in another format that might be a slight let down. I mean it is here too, but it is more than compensated by the interactivity. As a player, we can low-key steer things into various endings in a VERY satisfying way so what we lose in meta-surprise we more than gain in the narrative collaboration. There is still a slight issue here, so slight I hesitate to bring it up, but I’m in this far. At the climactic decision we are meta-empowered to drive to a conclusion, clearly conveyed by the choice wordings. On a single playthrough, it is not clear how deeply our prior choices inform things, and we might be tempted to metagame it in an unsatisfying way. I didn’t, but I dwelt on the choice enough to recognize the peril. That musing itself pulled me out of the narrative flow at least a little bit. In one sense it might be more powerful if those final choices were less broad, instead informed by prior selections. (Turns out there are other options that ARE so constrained.) In another sense though, that might backpressure replayability, burying its strengths under opaque gameplay that the wordiness could not sustain. After much reflection, I think the right choice was made. What a relief for the author!

Because even this minor quibble faded on repeat plays. My admiration only increased for the work in the sense that the 3.5 endings I got were all different, yet satisfying conclusions to a choice architecture that allowed me to build naturally to each one. Ok, not the 1/2 ending, that one made me play-mad, but the rest for sure.

So that’s my conclusion. A well-realized, graphically compelling, tightly controlled work with satisfying plot arcs under player control. Who knew tampering with post could be so fun?

Mystery, Inc: Daphne
Vibe: Snail Mail
Polish: Gleaming
Gimme the Wheel! : I think, were it my project, I would double down on the ‘composing a letter’ paradigm and stage the text rather than provide inline options. Now I SAY that, but there is every possibility the reality of that would not be as satisfying as I think, and I’d end up reverting it anyway.

Polish scale: Gleaming, Smooth, Textured, Rough, Distressed
Gimme the Wheel: What I would do next, if it were my project.

Adapted from a SpringThing24 Review

Played: 4/9/24
Playtime: 2hrs

It is rare for me to see the ‘Interactive’ and ‘Fiction’ aspects of a work as truly separate things. Sure, I sometimes lean on those aspects when writing about IF works because its honestly pretty convenient, but the alchemy is how they come together to form a new, more interesting thing. I mean, isn’t that why we’re here? Fiction without interactivity is a story. Interactivity without fiction is a parlor game. There is always an implicit question about the combo, ‘what does interactivity bring to the table v like, just reading a book?’ (That is somehow a more interesting question than ‘what if bingo had a character arc???’)

I’m not an academic, and there’s probably much better thought out constructs than whatever I’m about to type next but let me try to call out some explicit things interactivity can bring to a narrative.

- collaborative character building through choice architecture and prioritization, more strongly investing the reader in a protagonist
- narrative pacing for dramatic effect
- dynamic graphical flourishes to enhance specific moments
- collaborative plot development, letting reader input influence events; at its most pronounced resulting in multiple, orthogonal stories (all of which provisioned by the author in some way)

There is a temptation to categorize based on the latter. Is it a linear story enhanced by Interactivity? A pass/fail narrative of puzzle solving? A full branching narrative of ever-richer complexity and text volume only the minority of which is presented in any one playthrough? None of these are inherently better than any other, just different aims.

I’ve spent a lot of time on this explication, while nominally discussing Alltarach (seems I gotta get there sooner or later). I’ve done that because this is the first work I concluded the interactivity might have detracted (though not completely!) from the experience. So, let’s surgeon scalpel this thing and talk story first.

This is a deeply accomplished story with a compelling central conceit: that Irish Myth and Christianity (specifically its lore) coexist on equal footing with each other. That Cu Chulainn and Saint Patrick are basically peers, and exist and influence mortal affairs in qualitatively similar pro-active ways. What an amazingly subversive and challenging premise! I honestly gasped when I realized what it was about. It takes the trappings of Mythic lore and applies them to a time of growing Christian influence in a Battle of the Gods. CHRISTIANITY IS EXACTLY AS TRUE AS MYTH. Whooo, swinging for the bleachers! I love the unrestrained chutzpah of it! It does make for some really shocking and strange juxtapositions, like when Christianity (as the newcomer) is positioned as the more liberal, accepting strain of belief. I didn’t read that as a fault though, more as a bold-faced CHALLENGE. It is a gutsy, supercharged take of pure audacity and I love it for that.

And it is EARNED. Thanks to a detailed bibliography, its mythic trappings are comprehensive and well thought out, employed progressively through a story of escalating scope. The text veritably oozes with Irish authenticity. Literally so, if you read the copious footnote bubbles as pushing through the story, so dense that the story cannot keep them contained. Between the richness of the tone, its authentic patina and pure audacity, it is easy to be swept along by this tale and I was.

So let’s talk about that tale: a sister searching for a lost brother and uncovering mythic truths and family secrets. The brother is portrayed as a stoic but compelling mystery, the protagonist as detached and a bit helpless, and both grow and change throughout the story. They are mostly up to the task of navigating this deeply compelling world, but for different reasons can’t help but pale a bit next to it. The WAY they pale though, almost always devolves to the way interactivity is employed.

Let’s start with the protagonist. She is our main interactive avatar for most of the story. We set her priorities in how we pursue the investigation. We set her character in how we choose to interact with other characters. We collaboratively build and invest in her… to a point. The story is often good at integrating our input, but significantly also often whiffs on it. In my play, there was a local boy of repellent ego who I rejected at every turn. Nevertheless, the story insisted on a path I had avoided. Similarly, another boy I flirted with amounted to nothing. Choices I had intended to be mild reproach turned into bitter, over-emotive outbursts. Discussion topics I prioritized according to an inner character priority read out of order, emotionally. It all had a distancing effect where my Brid was at war with the piece’s Brid.

Similarly the brother. While I liked the graphical cues when the narrative shifted to his perspective, his interactions struck me as distinctly different than his early characterization. I could rationalize early scenes, where he was alone and presumably we were seeing an inner life he shields from others. But when reunited, if anything, he gets MORE emo and expressive, as presented in dialogue choices I might select. Okay, that was a bit glib. Admittedly he was going through some stuff. Even so, the contrast to his early characterization (unremarked upon by our protagonist!) was jarring. The cumulative effect of both of those things was characters at war with the narrative because of interactivity.

Perhaps its biggest deflation was in plot influence. The climax is structured as a conversation between the siblings to decide the results of the quest. Interestingly, the player gets to cycle between them, taking both sides of the dialogue. I liked this in concept. On the sister’s side I felt this was reasonably well implemented, and fit a dialogue-based game paradigm of ‘can I convince him through topic selection?’ The other side though, felt kind of all over the place - inconsistent characterization, uncanny and incomplete response availability and ultimately a BIG DECISION. My problem was, until the end none of it felt strictly under my control despite my nominal driving, to the point the final real choice felt untethered. Because I could form no coherent character in my head, I actually had no idea what me-as-brother would do, or even why those choices were available at that specific point. So I cheated, and chose what the sister wanted (she earned it!). And didn’t feel great about it.

To walk back some negativity, let me say other aspects of interactivity - graphic flourishes and text pacing - were done very well, and to advantage. In particular the POV cues in color and font were really nicely rendered.

So where does that leave me? A piece whose setup and background are top tier that I can’t express enough admiration for. Whose employment of Irish Myth was entrancing. Whose take on Christianity was confrontive and challenging. Whose language and narrative are superb. And that only fell down when it let ME get involved. So, who’s the problem here?

Mystery, Inc: Daphne
Vibe: Mythic
Polish: Gleaming
Gimme the Wheel! : If it were my project, I would marvel that I had anything this transgressive and marvelous in me. Then I would, with great regret, excise the brother’s side of interactivity and focus on sharpening the sister’s choices, responses and climactic gameplay. Because y’know, SAYING I’d do that is just super easy.

Polish scale: Gleaming, Smooth, Textured, Rough, Distressed
Gimme the Wheel: What I would do next, if it were my project.

Adapted from a SpringThing24 Review

Played: 4/8/24
Playtime: 25min, Master of Politics, 4/7 deaths

If there is a more fraught topic to mine for slapstick comedy at the moment than US politics, I’d like to know what it is. Biting Satire? Caricature? Anarchic Absurdism? Absolutely. Anything with a point of view and an edge, the sharper the better. But slapstick requires a much lighter devil-may-care tone, especially if you’re going to have the player engage in cartoon violence with actual fatalities. Due to an accident of birth coinciding with narrative cues, I can only interpret this work through the lens of US politics. I apologize to anyone looking for different.

The work seems to understand its comedic challenge, and opens by positioning itself atop three super-exaggerated supports. 1) Ossified Bureaucracy cynicism. 2) Both-sides-equivalence-ism. 3) Narrative Simplification to the point of abstraction. The latter, I think, is the one that gives this piece its fighting chance of working. The unsung hero of support #3 is the illustration style. There is no better clue that nuance and accuracy are not welcome here than its visual palette and artwork style. I do not intend it backhanded when I say it is reminiscent of childlike doodlings. In fact, it is quite crucial that it is. The visual/artistic shorthand gives permission in a sense for the other two legs to stand unashamedly.

Absent the graphical cues, legs one and two seem hopelessly misguided against the last decade. We are not pretending to distort and mock actual politics here, we are exaggerating inadequate cliches about politics as a backdrop for madcap antics. The player intro drives this home superbly - our goal is to pass the most hilariously inoffensive law imaginable. Just the one. These low-seeming stakes in this alternate-reality West Wing divorces us from having to parse real-world parallels, or suss out layered meanings. So when bizarre character turns, hidden labs, Looney Tunes violence happen, we are not bound to decode them, we can just roll and play in the space. Even the ending that provided the most hope was a funny bit of cynicism that would be actively appalling played against a more real backdrop.

I was game to do my best to go along for the ride. I committed to and suffered cartoon violence. I found all the non-death endings. I freely sampled the actual death endings. I don’t think I ever fully escaped the spectre of its inadequacies in reflecting its purported subject matter but I got pretty close. There was a detail that troubled me about this more than any other - that the unnamed opposing parties were colored red and blue. For me, I needed to be pulled OUT of that space, and those colors were a counter-productive reminder. Literally any other colors, I dunno, pink and teal?

Ultimately, it didn’t quite succeed for me in replacing our dire reality with its own. But there were sequences that absolutely did pull me into its mad orbit for a few moments of subversive glee. At its best, it kind of made me long for ITS version of toxic politics over what we are actually living with.

Mystery, Inc: Scooby
Vibe: Slapstick
Polish: Smooth
Gimme the Wheel! : For sure I would change those colors, if this were my project. I would also try to infuse other touches to further distance from current reality, and sell the Bizzarro Congress. The zanier the better.

Polish scale: Gleaming, Smooth, Textured, Rough, Distressed
Gimme the Wheel: What I would do next, if it were my project.

Adapted from a SpringThing24 Review

Played: 4/8/24
Playtime: 2hrs, unwinnable at 1.5. Restarted, 1.25hrs later ANOTHER unwinnable state? score 260/300, Read spoilers, done

An old school lightly-horror-themed parser? Seems like this entry would be talking my love language. Thing is, my intro to the hobby decades ago is definitely seen through rose colored glasses. There are aspects to parsers that I enjoyed when we didn’t know any better but DEFINITELY don’t want to revisit forty years on.

Let’s start with the good callbacks. I have referred to something I call the “Implementation Horizon” in parsers - the level of implemented detail that acts as a soft signal to the player where to stop poking. Zomburbia integrates this horizon deftly into its gameplay by leaning to VERY SHALLOW. This is not a problem, in fact it is very much a strength. Because the implementation is shallow, area descriptions are terse, punchy, and signal interesting items clearly and crisply. There is no futzing about with smothering detail, hunting out the one interesting noun in a sea of them. You don’t need to be TOLD you need the brooch. Its simple presence indicates that quite clearly. This should not be underestimated as a creative choice, it really smooths out player frictions and drag in a seemingly broad space.

The shallow implementation also dovetails nicely with old-school brevity. Descriptions are not flowery and dense, they convey their imagery and importance economically and crisply. The net effect is to make this mid-sized game kind of zippy. Couple that with a good-natured, quirky setup and cast, light humor (especially in death scenes) and it enables a very amiable old school experience. One of my favorite touches was (Spoiler - click to show)the protagonist slowly turning into a zombie. A great little goose to the proceedings. Kevin was also just delightful.

It definitely has gaps though. It is one thing to have a shallow implementation horizon, it is another to not fully plumb that horizon. There are a LOT of unimplemented synonyms, inadequate disambiguation prompts, and bugs (in one instance, dropped items were not listed in room location, and needed me to reread my transcript to figure out what needed picking up.) Some papers were coldly listed as ‘not flammable’ as I sparred with a particular puzzle. It did not fully recognize game state, in one instance telling me "You can’t find anything wrong with the broken hedge trimmers." Those broken ones you mean? Nothing notable comes to mind?

All of that could definitely have been forgiven had the game not also leaned into my two LEAST favorite old school tropes: inventory management and unwinnable states. The former was never really entertaining as a puzzle, it was a misguided attempt at ‘realism’ in works that didn’t need or want it. Its effect is book-keeping drudgery of the least entertaining kind. And this from a guy that plays with spreadsheets. Unfun wastes of my time grate here, particularly when the overall vibe is otherwise so fleet.

Which brings me to the unforgivable sin (according to Monsignor McC) of this game: quietly unwinnable states. My first playthrough, after two hours I stumbled into two of them. One of them was at least clued by in-game warnings, another… just happened? I was on the edge here: was the game enjoyable enough for a replay, two hours in? Its attitude was so friendly, I wanted to give it the benefit of the doubt, so I plowed back in. Took me ~40 minutes to retrace my steps which was longer than I wanted at skim-speed, but then got back in the flow. Thirty-five minutes later I had racked up 260 points and was firmly into endgame… when I think I hit another one. I say ‘think’ because I had a flash of something I should have done, but at that point was beyond my UNDO window to revisit. It is possible that the game could have provided NPC business to reopen that window, but nothing in my experience so far indicated that was likely.

Ok, yes, not having a savepoint is on me. I knew what I was in for at this point, I’m an adult with some level of object permanence and cause-effect understanding. What can I say, I let the breezy environment lull me. So here I am, maybe two steps from end, do I go back AGAIN, maybe another hour’s worth of replay? I do not. Old school parsers didn’t have a wealth of alternatives vying for our time. They were what they were, was up to us to meet them on their own flawed terms. Today? I got choices, man. I chose to read the Hint sheet to see what I missed and yeah, I was on the right path. Yay? *sigh* I woulda really liked that, had I not needed to rewind so far.

Mystery, Inc: “Z-z-z-ZOMBIES?!?!” Shaggy
Vibe: weirdly enough, Scooby-Doo Horror
Polish: Rough
Gimme the Wheel! : If it were my project, I would eliminate any and all possibility of unwinnable states. Just kill them with fire. If that doesn’t sate my blinding rage, then nuke the inventory management too.

Polish scale: Gleaming, Smooth, Textured, Rough, Distressed
Gimme the Wheel: What I would do next, if it were my project.

Adapted from a SpringThing24 Review

Played: 4/8/24
Playtime: 45min

How smart are Octopi? One list had them #8 in ranked sub-human IQ, below Orangutan/Chimps, Dolphins, Elephants, Crows (wow, you go crows!), Pigs and Dogs. Other fun facts: Chimps and pigs have played video games. Smarter dogs have learned basic Parser vocabulary and Verb-Noun syntax. I mean, none of my dogs for sure, but some.

What drove me into that divergence was concern that I might not be as smart as an Octopus.

This is a one-room parser game. As a pet octopus (probably a thing, right? Some folks keep tigers and alligators, so sure), your goal is to change the view from your aquarium, and not get in trouble doing it. It is a wry, tight little game - maybe a three step puzzle with some red herrings to sort past. The nature of the puzzles were clever enough, yet because I declined to (Spoiler - click to show)>X ME still required a hint. Followed by a headslap.

The humor here is gentle, mostly of the baffled-Octopus-take-on-weird-humans variety (I particularly liked the ‘For Neptune’s Sake’ expletive). If nothing else, the image of a baseball-cap wearing mischievous Octopus is a gift to all of us. If you imagine a balance-scale, with gameplay frictions on one side and puzzle challenge/raw entertainment on the other, a great IF experience would tilt noticeably to the latter. The greater the goods, the more frictions can be shrugged off. Here, the challenge/humor was lighter, and correspondingly, minor frictions suddenly became impactful to the balance.

There were quite a few: vocabulary was notably lacking in synonyms. Pillows but no pillow. Cap but no hat. Bathtub but no bath, and on. You were able to put items on the dresser before knowing how to retrieve them. Missing verb/nouns previously referenced in the prompt text. A continual need to resubmerge, but no shortcuts (that I found) to long form >GET IN AQUARIUM. (Spoiler - click to show)Inability to >JUMP past an open drawer. None of these are fatal, but do accumulate against its lighter charms.

The final puzzle solution itself is probably the funniest part of it, and even that is a LITTLE weird because I-the-player landed on it super fast, but I-an-OCTOPUS would never have any idea to do that, nevermind what the outcome of my actions would be. There was a bit of a subversive charge to that dissonance that made for a high note ending. So, maybe I am smarter? Maybe it’s not a competition though, maybe the real competition is who is less delicious? Which I win HANDS DOWN! Hopefully unverifiably so.

Mystery, Inc: Scooby
Vibe: Playful
Polish: Textured
Gimme the Wheel! : Ironing out the vocabulary frictions for sure would be my priority if this were my project. This is a clever, wry little game. Getting the parser out the way would let it land without caveat.

Polish scale: Gleaming, Smooth, Textured, Rough, Distressed
Gimme the Wheel: What I would do next, if it were my project.

Adapted from a SpringThing24 Review

Played: 4/4/24
Playtime: 1.75hrs, (Spoiler - click to show)Stayed in city, joined a faction

For as big a horror fan as I am, vampire-fetishism has never been my bag. To the extent that I have any tabletop RPG history it would be more Call of Chtulhu than V: Masquerade. Despite leading with its inspiration (the latter), I was very pleased with the smoothness Loose Ends got me up to speed on the deep background of factions, norms and abilities. Trickle feeding lore as it was needed was so much more engaging than a massive infodump would have been.

I was positively delighted that gameplay and story owed a lot more to Noir Detective than RPG sourcebook. Like a lot of great Noir, it uses a very specific political and social backdrop to inform a more-than-appears mystery, with a hard-boiled, out-of-their-depth outsider player-detective. It also seems to be a pretty deep implementation, supporting a variety of play styles. A handful of selectable skills and abilities seem to permute the player space in a nicely customized way.

It is a choice select mystery. This is a challenging paradigm for mysteries, as without careful curation, even simple absence/presence of options can provide unearned or mimesis threatening cluing. Loose Ends is not perfect here, but it is pretty darn good at it. Its biggest compromise on this front is marking options that may hold information with icons. It acts as a stealth hint system, that often wasn’t needed due to well-connected chains of clues. In one case though it did generate a repeat visit I might not have otherwise bothered with. I think on balance its value as a soft ‘director’ outweighs its downsides.

In addition to enabling a variety of player capabilities, the work also seems to enable a variety of player motivations and story paths. With diligence you can solve the (pretty cool) mystery, but what you DO with that solution seems to be up to you! That’s just nifty. It leverages Telltales’ ‘X WILL REMEMBER THAT’ mechanism to great effect, rewarding player choices with faction alignment that potentially changes the levers of power in the city. (Sidebar: Is there a more important narrative-game innovation in our lifetime than that pregnant phrase? I guess barring folks old enough to have seen the genre invented in the first place.)

My biggest quibble with the game is its lack of state awareness. Many times throughout the game, stock location descriptions include objects that have been removed, refer to dialogue that is no longer relevant, or concatenate game state text in jarring ways. In its most egregious artifact, it allows recovery of clues that have been destroyed. Below is an intrusive example:

(Spoiler - click to show)"[...] Lucille freezes—then a spasm runs through her body as her control of her own nerves is severed, muscles and tendons moving as Varkonyi directs. With another gesture he shuts down a bundle of nerves, sending her sprawling to the floor. For a moment she can do nothing but twitch, but with effort she staggers back to her feet.

"Lucille stays close to your side, watching and waiting for the right moment to strike—and then she finds it. In a split second she’s right in the middle of everything, laughing wildly as she whirls around in a flurry of steel. Another split second and she’s thirty feet back, covering your advance."

I have some forgiveness for these kinds of artifacts and even so, the work had enough to push itself past my ‘just ignore it’ threshold.

The only other off note for me was the denouement. As these things do, it kind of summarized the net effect of your choices on the ultimate outcome. I was unpleasantly surprised to see my choices showed me aligning with a faction I had no intent of aligning with. In fact, I had deliberately attempted to preserve faction-free independence throughout the game. I suppose some combination of my final actions and who I chose to ally with swung the algorithm on me, but I was not expecting it.

So yeah, slightly sour ending but engaging through its runtime for sure. Here's the big twist though: the authors have since updated the game, seemingly addressing many of these issues! I can only report my own experience, but assuming they did as good a job on the updates as the base game, they likely turned a 4-star experience to a 5-star one!

Mystery, Inc: Shaggy, though a strong argument for Velma too
Vibe: Vampy Noir
Polish: Textured -> Smooth?
Gimme the Wheel! : Absolutely my version of this project would try to polish its state awareness as a first priority. I think I would also try to soft hint faction alignment implications to give a little more player information and influence on the outcome. To the extent this was done... backseat driving works ya'll!

Polish scale: Gleaming, Smooth, Textured, Rough, Distressed
Gimme the Wheel: What I would do next, if it were my project.