Ratings and Reviews by JJ McC

Adapted from a SpringThing25 Review

Played: 4/13/25
Playtime: 20m, 2 endings, 9/10 on quiz

For a change of pace, let me ignore my own angsts and instead plumb the angsts of a first time author! There is something heady about the raw, unfiltered creativity of engaging a new communication medium. The thrill of learning new skills, and putting them in service of a creative vision, it is a boiling, bubbling, embarrassment of riches, a swirling soup of enthusiasm that latches on to the prose, the construction, and carries to the reader. This was my overwhelming sense of this piece - an enthusiasm to pack if full of graphics, external educational links, meaningful choice points and classically-informed mini puzzles. Stir it all together into a wonderful, asymmetric stew of an experience.

I particularly liked how it simultaneously functioned as an education vehicle (on the myth of Atlantis and a primer on ecological responsibility), and an unsentimental view of human history. As we navigate the events via our time-lost bottle, two options loom large. To view the last days of Atlantis (whose parallels to modernity seem very deliberate), or to pen a missive of warning hoping to avert that end.

That latter effort received with a resolutely cold “Time is a great wall, and my message is only a stone thrown against it.” The work acknowledges the limits of communication when communication is rebuffed, but somehow nevertheless infuses a stubborn optimism IN THE VERY ACT OF IT. And makes LEARNING an act of defiance.

Yes, the work carried artifacts of an author engaging new tools but was considered and complete nevertheless. And its cautionary, defiant enthusiasm more than compensated any rookie missteps.

Horror Icon: Regan/Pazuzu
Vibe: Stealth Education
Polish: Textured
Gimme the Wheel! : I would not deign to seize the wheel of anyone’s first effort. The joy of completing a project, of capturing messages you feel compelled to share in a medium that continually offers new mechanisms for it.. everyone should experience that without me grabbing the wheel!

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

Adapted from a SpringThing25 Review

Cat protagonist. This is what we’ve come to. If my credentials as a reviewer of superhuman dedication are ever in question, I call your attention to this review.

This is a light work whose overriding atmosphere is welcoming. From its friendly, warm wordsmithing, to its forgiving and increasingly nudgy gameplay; its limited vocabulary (meant as a design choice, not a criticism), to its stated purpose, as a feature showcase to budding Inform authors… all of it just conveys “C’mon in the waters fine, and not nearly as scary as you think.”

While I am clearly not the primary audience for any of these things, least of all its protagonist, the nature of its amiability is that it is impossible to begrudge the time spent. The presentation goes a long way to this feeling. From its care paid to Scene change formatting cues, its ascii cat ‘pause for more,’ its scorecard rendition, it is all very deliberate and polished, conveying we are in strong, gentle hands for the duration of this modest puzzle fest. Against a backdrop of parsers often characterized by an intimidating, minimalist and cold greater-than prompt, this work goes out of its way to make every part of the experience less vexing.

I could talk about what it sacrifices in service of that, but… why? I mean, it would be wild if I criticized Smokey the Bear for his inability to explain the difference between colon and semi-colon. Meet the big guy where he lives, yeah? This is a work that has a specific goal, and is SO successful at it other things don’t matter. Its creative tradeoffs are uniformly successful in service of that goal. Were I a blank slate at the beginning of my artistic journey, filled with unspecific ambitions and preoccupations and completely asea on how to even start, this work would be a godsend - both a reassurance, a first step, and a glimpse of what success could like.

It would feel outright inspirational, if not for the nagging feeling that its protagonist choice is a subtle and portentous warning. That the only cost the aspiring artist might pay is THEIR ENTIRE SOUL.

Horror Icon: Pinhead
Vibe: Welcoming
Polish: Smooth
Gimme the Wheel! : If this were my project, it would be focused on TADS, not Inform. Just that one small change. Well, maybe just one more.

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

Adapted from a SpringThing25 Review

Played: 4/11/25
Playtime: 1.5hr dying all the time, even in Easy mode?

Is there less invigorating an experience than to dive deep into the rules and setting of a game, tentatively conclude it is probably not going to be for you, then see that borne out exactly as you foresaw? Oh, I know! It would definitely be less invigorating to read a ‘review’ that only had that to say!

Chronicles codifies a very maximalist TTRPG-kind of experience. Deep world lore, informed by a bespoke magic system that translate to specific game mechanics. Evolving powers, abilities and capabilities that unfold as you progress. Learning the strengths and weaknesses of all those abilities as a kind of problem-solving toolkit to apply to continually varying challenges. An ethos of progression through conflict, where most interactions are framed as mortal combat-focused encounters. Young me would have fallen head over heels for this kind of thing.

And one presented so slickly: its uniform artistic esthetic (described a AI assisted? pushing my boundaries here!) and card-reminiscent stat-catalog graphical design underscore its RPG bones. It is also boldly attractive in its own right.

Older me is not so easily won over. Or, probably closer to the truth, less open to it. I struggled mightily with the magic/combat system. I never really tumbled onto an HP-recovery mechanic, meaning I would go from encounter to encounter being worn down by enemy steel AND MY OWN SPELLS, until numbers went to 0. Some encounters did provide a healing goose, but in a way that seemed to underscore its exceptional and scarce nature. I just did not have it in me to explore the interplay of spell/weapon values and combat sequence to discover optimal, effective strategies.

The NPCs I encountered, even the central mystery were all quite interesting and engaging. For me, it just continually ran aground on seemingly unavoidable combat that I never mastered the subtleties of, gatekeeping all that stuff I really wanted. I died and restarted (on ‘middle’ setting) so many times I finally just capitulated to Easy/Story mode.. and still died in combat? I did not detect the promised ‘encounter bypass’ mechanism, so much so I question whether I was actually in easy mode at all? Is there a bug there? Or just a player missing an obvious out?

I guess my conclusion is I liked everything about it EXCEPT the combat, but found the combat inescapable, and ultimately pushed me away, unfinished. So in an effort to provide any value at all to this abortive review, let me say: if you like dense lore translating to complex, subtle fighting mechanics, this will likely thrill you. The supporting story and graphical elements are dynamite draws to that central suite of mechanics you could just d20 with all day. Certainly I could see younger me doing that!

Horror Icon: Jigsaw
Vibe: Lore Heavy RPG
Polish: Gleaming
Gimme the Wheel! : If it were my project, I would repair the Easy mode. Who’m I kidding, what I’d really do is ignore the other two modes! This is why so many projects are NOT mine to fiddle with.

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

Adapted from a SpringThing25 Review

Played: 4/11/25
Playtime: 30m, two endings

There is a fundamental problem with “good vampire” narratives. It is all that gosh-darn subtext. In some ways that subtext is helpful - the exotic ‘other’ both feared and desired, a tailor-made receptacle for bigotry and bias. The problem is, in the text of vampire lore, that bigotry and bias turn out to be COMPLETELY CORRECT. They SHOULD be feared. They ARE a menace to the living.

“Some good, some bad” have it worse. If we posit an “all good” vampire tale, we might at least subvert cultural expectations with story-specific lore refuting the mythic presuppositions, expose them as true prejudices. With the “some” narrative we are into much greyer, much more human space. Yes, some illegal immigrants commit crimes. Does this give us permission to villify them all, as a monolith? Does that fact cancel all imperatives for empathy? That’s rich soil to work. I don’t feel that was really RI’s aim, however, to its tonal detriment.

The antagonists of this story, a religious order of vampire hunters, are positioned as cruel and implacable. But, they are not obviously WRONG to be so. Yes, we want our hero to live, but we come from a starting position closer to the bad guys than good. Worse, by our glimpse into the protagonist, we have seen that he is (and presumably all of his kind are) prey to dark vectors pushing them in murderous directions. Resisting, so far, but forever? All of this dilutes the inciting conflict, I think, muddies it in ways that detract from the drama. Immigrants deserve empathy because they are just as human as we are. Vampires are, textually, ACTUALLY BIOLOGICALLY PREDISPOSED TO MURDER.

Fortunately, this is NOT a good vamp v bad religion story. Well, it is, but it’s not PRIMARILY that. This is a character study of a vampire coming to grips with his undead afterlife, the sacrifices it demands, and the pressures it presents. Ultimately asking questions about the value of free will when a decision’s stakes are not and cannot be really understood. This tension I found much better realized than world lore. The details of his turn were nicely grounded, the tactile struggle to escape his trap visceral, and oh that encounter with the transition Demon(?). This last was the showpiece scene of the work. Kembrael (said demon) was delightfully witty, wry and charismatic. That scene alone is worth the price of admission. All these pieces fed a much more personal story of change (only vaguely understood at first) and ongoing struggle.

Before I could embrace the character study though, there was another aspect of the work that pushed at me. The language is formal and flowery, hearkening to a Victorian or Gothic setting in its sentence construction. Any work that uses this much ‘twixt’ and ‘yet’ instead of ‘between’ and ‘still’ is trying my patience, making me think of the dreaded ‘P’ word. And it did for sure, but it also had some real bangers in there:

“Paladins and fiend-flayers and their growing hordes of frothing zealots punished ever more obscure sins.”
“enough of his blood still lingered brainward”
“To consign that much silver to a vampire death trap required hatred with extravagant funding.”

In the end, these were the phrases I grabbed to remember, not that other stuff, so bullet dodged!

I played through twice. There was a weird artifact where one playthrough skipped part 6? Jumped straight from 5 to 7? I think? That was weird, but undamaging to the narrative. The varied endings did have something to say about the value of trust in a climate that discourages it which, while heartening, didn’t really coalesce with other elements in any kind of thematic unity.

And maybe that is the biggest danger vampires pose to a narrative. Their archetypal status, encapsulating so many themes and subtexts, immediately cue certain readers to madly scramble for messages and metaphor. Certain maybe-trying-too-hard readers like me. Maybe I should just settle down, stop trying so hard, and enjoy a more personal, character-based story?

Horror Icon: Babadook
Vibe: Vampires But Good
Polish: Gleaming
Gimme the Wheel!: If it were my project, I would be unable to resist taking an editing knife the more flowery passages. Sharpen those up just a little to really let the strong lines shine.

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

Adapted from a SpringThing25 Review

Played: 4/11/25
Playtime: 20m 3 playthroughs

Synaptix is a work that posits a present/future where economic opportunity is so limited, human workforce so underserved by machines-are-cheaper capitalism, that the protagonist seeks out medical experimentation as a viable way forward. Ridiculous, right?

The scenario is painted clearly enough, with some endearingly detailed specifics on the protagonist’s living situation. Any reservations we have are repeatedly buried under a ‘guess there’s no choice’ shrug of compliance. There follows a series of dosages where the drug’s effects ramp up, modestly impact our protagonist’s daily life, give him some hallucinogenic visions, then (Spoiler - click to show)just settle into the background of ‘something I guess I did.’

It seems to present a dispiriting tale of no real choices. Even when presented with choices, they were quickly revealed as dead ends of wasted time. The real impactful choice seems to be your initial motivation for seeking the money in the first place. The side effect hallucinations cluster around that motivation, though seeing things through doesn’t really resolve uniquely.

There is one additional impactful choice: do you violate your non-disclosure to score some side money above and beyond your initial contract? It is an interesting problem to posit. While the terms of the experiment you sign on to and people conducting it are relatively benign, there is always the chance the side effects could be really bad. And the corp doesn’t care, not really, about that outcome, just needs the data. Arguably, the whole scenario is part of the system that led to rolling dice with your health to get money. Yet, pushing back against that system (Spoiler - click to show)is not better. You get rich but make the world demonstrably worse. Underlining that ‘success’ in this social system is still optimized and incentivized to personal gain over public good. By trying to break with a single available path, you are shown to be doubling down on that path after all.

All this is interesting to reflect on, but very light and underplayed in the work itself. The work is no-frills, ‘here’s what you want to do, you do it, (Spoiler - click to show)temporary win.’ That underplayed narrative tone does as much as anything to sell the impotence of choice when following the script of this post-capitalist dystopia. I appreciate the soft-sell approach to its dark premise, but the selling is SO soft it also kind of shrugs your engagement away. I see what happened to the protag. What choice did he have? What impact did he expect? Fiction doesn’t HAVE to inspire or terrify, but it could do… more than this?

Horror Icon: Carrie
Vibe: Big Pharma
Polish: Smooth
Gimme the Wheel!: If this were my work, I would feel compelled to use the purported function of the drug to enhance the themes of the piece directly, stitch another linkage into the story’s fabric. As it stands, while the drug in question is intended to confer useful abilities, it rarely seems to do more than generate some scenario-specific hallucinations. You could squint and see how the drug maybe enabled THOSE hallucinations, but I would take the squint out of it in 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 SpringThing25 Review

Played: 4/11/25
Playtime: 20m, two playthroughs, Marco stepped in both times

This is a work in direct, confrontive conversation with its predecessor, with community response to its predecessor. I was one of those respondents, having a truly whiny litany of complaints with the former work. “I don’t like AI art.” “Why is it so hard to do simple things?” “Why is the game haranguing me for not knowing things it hasn’t told me yet?” I believe I called it an “All Thumbs Simulator.”

EM is a sequel to that work, using its familiar characters with full memory of both the previous work AND ITS RESPONSES to usher through another low stakes morning ritual as gameplay. Buy and make some coffee. Buuut is that really the work’s aim? Or is it to taunt and double down, not trolling exactly, more like playfully tweaking self-important blowhards like me? Yeah, it’s definitely the latter.

Here’s one of innumerable examples:

- In the first game I complained about having to search pockets for something the protagonist knew, player did not, and game refused to acknowledge.
- Remembering that experience, the FIRST thing I did this time was a painstakingly thorough search of my pockets.
- To be followed by this:

"Hey look!" Monica claims your attention "There are the shorts
you love, the ones that drove so many people crazy with their
pockets in your last game."

"It's better not to mention it," you suggest "I don't want players
to run away thinking they have to search all the pockets for the
wallet."

I honestly laughed out loud at that. I mean that’s pretty unambiguous, yeah? Game’s having a go at us. This meta-teasing is the overriding vibe of the piece, from photos of the previous game’s aftermath that critics (just assume I mean ‘me’ when I try these lame misdirections) bemoaned weren’t part of the game, to some in-your-face fourth wall breaking. Even to interrogating the word ‘shrew’ which drew comment in the last game.

All of it coming to a head with the game’s dramatic climax of… pouring coffee. At that point, the setting becomes explicitly fourth-wall compromised with characters and narrator coming onstage to address the player directly. The impetus for that… it’s got to be deliberate. The game’s NPCs berate you for not reading instructions, where earlier gameplay provided

>get sheet
You take the written paper sheet.

>read sheet
A folded sheet of paper with the words "READ ME FIRST!"
clearly visible.

That response alone is kind of hilarious, I mean I was TRYING to read it and reading just told me to read it! The trick I did not tumble to, which I expect the game EXPECTED me not to tumble to, was to first (Spoiler - click to show)unfold it. Because in this world of micro-detail, implicit actions are for losers! All the better to later berate me for not accomplishing.

I did find there to be an excess of bugs and implementation issues which clouded the water a bit. Manipulating my credit card eventually just led to me unable to pick it up off the counter where I could see it. Many physical rituals had exactly one bespoke way to accomplish it, rather than any number of reasonable synonyms. Just try running water in the sink, or doing any damn thing with the moka. Even buying strong coffee seemed bizarrely out of reach. These implementation gaps made it as much a chore as its predecessor, and cast uncertainty on the ‘bug or creative choice?’ boundary.

But by directly engaging these artifacts in the text of EM, basically carrying the throughline from last game forward, it kind of takes on a hilariously confrontive tone. “Yo dawg, I heard you didn’t like some stuff so I TRIPLED DOWN ON IT FOR YOU.”

There is no better sum of this than the extensive, almost pathological use of AI art in its instruction and quick start manuals. I am in the camp of rejecting this ‘art’ as uncanny valley plundering of real, human accomplishment. “I hear you,” says EM, “how 'bout you drown in it?” I mean look at those dead eyes and faces. THEY KNOW WHAT THEY ARE DOING TO ME, AND ARE DEFYING ME TO DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT. They are absolutely SMUG about this!! Check the accompanying docs if you don't believe me!

That is absolutely hilarious. I can’t help but wonder how something like this can possibly play outside its critical context. Without the first game and some critics (my) reservations as part of the text, how does this land for new players? Does it matter? It is so clearly FOR US, why not enjoy it that way?

If you can under the relentless gaze of that shark-eyed couple.

Horror Icon: Freddie
Vibe: Trolling
Polish: Rough
Gimme the Wheel! : If this were my project, I would need to seek professional therapy, as clearly development would have devolved into an extended, schizophrenic shouting match with myself.

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

Adapted from a SpringThing25 Review

Played: 4/11/25
Playtime: 30m, 2 fire dies, finished

This was a tight, light puzzle fest, exploring the interactions of waking and dream realities. As a relatively compact link-select work, it enabled ‘lawn mowering’ through its variations as a near default gameplay style. This is not necessarily a negative thing, especially if the aim was not ‘punishing logical challenges.’ Which it is not. Rather, the centerpiece of the work is its really wild dream scenarios, so ushering us through them all is the goal. Lawn mowering is a legitimate way to accomplish that.

This is a work that glories in the randomness of dream logic. Embracing that is to embrace a very specific challenge. True randomness is both hard and unsatisfying. A True random generator in your music player would occasionally deliver the same song, back to back, perhaps more than once. Despite it being ABSOLUTELY random, it FEELS less random to us because… pattern! No, the trick to satisfying-feeling randomness is to absolutely inform subsequent selections with prior ones, if only to DISTANCE from them.

This is also hard! It is not enough that you come up with an amusing random scenario, it must also explicitly NOT resonate with any prior scenarios. The more you create, the harder that gets. Here is where, I thought, ATFD succeeded most unambiguously. The scenarios were delightfully whimsical, hilariously specific, and admirably broad both in setup and solution. They didn’t quite flow together in a dreamy stream of subconscious, but were successfully random FEELING.

Stitching through this dream journey was a ‘real world’ need to keep a fire burning so you don’t freeze to death. This part was.. less compelling? The campfire setup was kind of light in tone, noting you want to keep warm but refraining from any dire admonitions. When the worst does happen, it is reported pretty impersonally as well, not really providing tension, uniting the work, or providing any thematic utility. It’s fine, try again! I don’t think I would be looking for ‘super realistic, tragic death’ in this work, that would feel just as out of place. Just some stronger linkage between the two gamestates.

That said, there is one sequence of dream scenarios that ABSOLUTELY play off the waking state in a neat twist on the formula. Definitely needed, as otherwise the waking state quickly becomes drudgery that must be endured, away from the dreamstate showpieces, to keep the game going.

Overall, I found this to be a light, pleasant affair, not too challenging, delivering an amusingly large array of nifty mini-scenes. Geez tho, I wish I could fall back asleep as readily as this protagonist does. I get up to pee, I struggle, nevermind playing with fire!

Horror Icon: Pinhead
Vibe: Slumberland
Polish: Smooth
Gimme the Wheel! : This dreamy, multi-scenario conceit is crying for graphical playfulness. If this were my work, I would spend some time pulling the work away from Twine Sugarcube (I think?) default esthetic. It kind of flattens the technicolor dream worlds being presented, and even simple changes in font and color would emphasize the waking/sleeping differences much more impactfully.

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

Adapted from a SpringThing25 Review

Played: 4/11/25
Playtime: 1.5hr, 4 endings

There are some tropes in IF that are pretty well established. Expectations that are common enough that they exert a pull on gameplay and frame expectations while simultaneously represent a subversion opportunity to the author. Things like ‘explore everywhere,’ ‘collect all the things,’ ‘lying will be punished,’ ‘lore will become personal,’ all these represent opportunity to streamline gameplay with unspoken guidance and/or to create dramatic moments when subverted. There is one expectation I didn’t list due to its spoilery nature, one so ingrained a player may not even notice its presence. It’s going to be a challenge to dance around though, because its subversion is among the most noteworthy accomplishments of this piece.

This is a work unabashedly occupying the well-trodden ground of ‘lost sci-fi setting of historical secrets needing explored by faceless PC.’ It wears this tropey setup on its sleeve, leveraging its familiarity to smooth player expectations and gameplay. This turns out to be necessary, because it implements a timer of sorts, a looming danger that every move brings you one step closer to. It knows what it’s doing balancing tension and fair play into a very engaging scenario. If I had a quibble, it is that because I wanted to provide a transcript, I did not use the author’s interpreter of choice. This choice made guidance like ‘the timer is visible in the right corner’ an outright lie. If there was a way to access it, I never found it. Not a deal breaker by any means, but feels like a missing element of the author’s intent.

You poke around 3 small to modest sized areas, conducting your collect-use-ungate parser gameplay, all the while finding artifacts and documents that fill in historical gaps. As these things can be, the revelations are staged into a nice series of context shifts: "Yes, And.."ing itself as the lore builds and twists what it already told you. While the plot beats are not necessarily revelatory in and of themselves, you’ve probably seen most of these elements before, they do capably build on each other in satisfying ways. All the way up to the final closure.

Aaand here is where I dive into that final expectation in the most spoilery way possible. If you have not played it yet here is the takeaway: Go ahead and play it. It’s fun. Read no further.

If you HAVE played it, you full well know the expectation I am alluding to. That successful parser play means (Spoiler - click to show)‘player lives and/or triumphant when game beaten because finish = success.’ SubVERTED!!! The ending was the most noteworthy thing about the work, evoking (indirectly) two different pop culture properties for me: (Spoiler - click to show)Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series and (Spoiler - click to show)The Twilight Zone. I’ve been blurring, but that’s about to stop so if you still haven’t played, GET THE HELL OUT OF THESE PARAGRAPHS.

That second of those two resonances is the one that worked the best for me. The work is very peppily paced: between the ever present timer, the tight location space, the crisp descriptions cuing areas of interest naturally, the thing zips along with little drag. This as much as anything matches the tempo and discipline of the best of that second IP. It sells its twists through momentum, each subsequent twist just that much more impactful, culminating in a monster subversion that I really liked. I am prepared to hear that others might find that subversion a step too far, and somehow deflating, but that was not my experience of it. To the contrary, I admired it all the more for the bold (Spoiler - click to show)Serling of it.

The resonances of that FIRST property though, really the engine behind the plot twists, those I found less compelling. I find critiques of that first IP (which I will shorthand to F for the remainder of the review) more compelling than F’s canonical text. F is an interesting intellectual experiment, well suited to storytelling, but posits a technological determinism that undersells both random happenstance and human perversity. Do I need to explain the thesis of F? I’m going to assume I don’t. I find F great as a conversation starter, unconvincing as a conversation closer. So basing the twists so heavily on that premise kind of undermined it a bit for me.

Only a bit though. Because the resonances to that SECOND PROPERTY do a lot to redeem it. The pacing and sometimes shorthand allusions play directly to that tradition of ‘this is a clockwork of plot manipulation. The CLOCKWORK is the fun part, we can hand wave the individual gears.’ Agreed! Especially as it built to a rare, fun subversion of form.

Horror Icon: Jigsaw
Vibe: Just As Planned
Polish: Smooth
Gimme the Wheel! : The easiest little tweak I would make, were it my project to tweak, would be to add a timecheck in text mode. Either in the banner, or as a standalone command. Just something to focus up the ticking clock a bit.

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

Adapted from a SpringThing25 Review

Played: 4/10/25
Playtime: 1hr 10m, finished

If there is a word for this series, it is ‘inventive.’ Hey, there all millions of words! We could ALL get one! I think I want to dibs ‘maladroit.’ Match Girl gets ‘inventive.’ This deep into the series, it doesn’t seem like there should be a strong need for summary, but keeping to review discipline: Hans Christian Anderson’s nameless Little Match Girl gets Daddy Warbucks’d by Ebeneezer Scrooge (and takes his name) while having cross-time adventures because fire is a time portal for her. And gradually assembles an entire portfolio of wildly disparate weapons, skills and allies while doing so.

There is a bit of a Dr. Who vibe to things, with most every stop in time being either an idiosyncratic historical pull (death of Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens!), a completely fanciful distant period of time, or a quick revisit of characters past. As often as not, the puzzle solving involves a clockwork of cross-time dependencies including how to find the flames needed for continued travel.

This episode does not disappoint in any of those dimensions, most especially the far future techno-religion that is this work’s main antagonist. This iteration compounds its formula with two specific new elements that work (and work together) like gangbusters: real-time dialogue and a countdown timer.

The real-time dialogue is essentially snooping on the antagonist radio frequency, getting to hear their (often amusing) back and forth as the plot progresses. I heeded the work’s guidance to play in an interpreter with html-like formatting support and was glad I did. This choice gave me font and color cues to help differentiate the different timelines, but also was used to great effect in incidental dialogue. The illusion of realtime responses by active NPCs was very strong, not the least of which because the conversations were so DEEP we never got into ‘mimesis death via robotic repetition.’

That last was itself partially due to the realtime countdown timer addition. Yup, from the jump, an uncomfortably tight and graphically centered countdown timer hangs over you like a Damoclean Sword. How relevant is a realtime timer to a time-hopper? How relevant is: 'shut up'? What a great dramatic device this was. Timers have a focusing effect on the player. This will be no leisurely saunter through the author’s implementation space, casually and belligerently poking into every crack until you find the implementation threshold then harumphing superciliously. We all do that, right?

No, the timer focuses you relentlessly on the immediate task at hand. In tension with and reinforcing the realtime dialogue, it represents a disincentive to test the author’s limits. You want to listen in more but HAVE NO TIME. It really is a wonderful mechanical synergy that sells the conflict and setting.

The timer ALSO really focuses the parser gameplay. A lot of parser games are characterized by experimentally fiddling with bizarre artifacts to find the complete left field way it needs to be manipulated to make progress. No time for that here! Every unsuccessful puzzle attempt drains away your remaining time making things sweeter when solved and tenser when not. It almost goes unnoticed that the DIFFICULTY of those puzzles is finely tuned here too, giving the player a fair chance at success and letting the timer inflict the tension, not the puzzle itself.

The prose is similarly tuned to the pressures of the game. No extended descriptions, elaborate joke setups and payoffs. No, everything is streamlined to the accelerated playstyle. Most especially the wry humor of the piece.

All in all, I found this a hugely successful iteration and tweaking of the franchise, even if it might hide a TERRIBLE SECRET, spoil-blurred: (Spoiler - click to show)I don’t think the timer is real! Not as real as it presents. There are enough relief valves to provide moments of build and release around accomplishment, themselves very well distributed into dramatic mini-crescendos. These releases felt both earned but also subverting of the conceit. Now, I did not test this, even though it would be trivial to do so. This is also due to the effectiveness of the conceit - even with my suspicions I completely embraced the work on its own terms because that delivered the best experience.

I know I dibbed ‘maladroit’ earlier, but is ‘satiated’ taken yet?

Horror Icon: Jigsaw /Freddie
Vibe: Bonkers Adventure
Polish: Smooth
Gimme the Wheel! : Honestly, I’m kind of at a loss here. I think if it were my project I would be satisfied with the precisely engineered experience on display. Perhaps smugly so.

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

Adapted from a SpringThing25 Review

Played: 4/10/25
Playtime: 5m, 2 endings

This is a tight little work about strangers on a train, cresting into family dramas with a hint of the supernatural. It knows exactly what it is about, sets up a really nice early twist, and builds confidently to its emotional climax. It is SO short, if I give you anything more concrete than that it will end up spoiling a mathematically significant chunk of it.

Pacing wise it is pretty breathless, which is about right for a work like this. It dispenses background lore quickly, economically and clearly, building to a climax of some emotional complexity, though what is left UNsaid still looms large over it all. It also makes a nice decision to background the mechanics of its conceit in favor of the emotional tale. On the one hand, this leaves the player a little asea as to what appropriate responses might be, but that seems like a fair trade when the story’s aims are so wide of “Who can beat up who?” Its brevity makes restarting with new knowledge not really a hurdle at all.

It purports to be a first effort, which, I admire the discipline of it. Especially early in an endeavor it can be irresistible to bite off more than we can chew. Here things are focused tightly, to the story’s credit. There are some typos that creep into the work, some dissonances (like a teddy bear charm that is described more as an actual full-sized teddy bear) that could use a bit of polish. There are also some nice lines. I particularly liked

“offer what little empathy your undead heart can squeeze out.”

All in all a very worthy first effort. Look forward to seeing where this author goes next!

Horror Icon: Leatherface
Vibe: Spiraling Violence
Polish: Textured
Gimme the Wheel! : If this were my project, I would do a pass on those typos and tighten down dissonant descriptions. With a work this focused, it could be polished to a SHINE!

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