Reviews by JJ McC

Adapted from a SpringThing26 Review

Played: 4/6/26
Playtime: 3.5hrs (26 puzzles solved, 5 hints, 1 bonus)

At some point in my life, capitalism became GRABBY. Ok sure, there is an argument to be made that not only is this take a pretty myopic view of economic history, it is a fundamental mistake to think grabbiness is not capitalism’s most salient feature. For large swaths of my early life though, it didn’t FEEL grabby. Yeah, Coke had snappy jingles, but it was up to you to remember to buy some, and if you didn’t, eh, life goes on.

Today? Today, you have ads that follow you across platforms, algorithms that bend social science and behavioral psychology in service of increased spending, subscription models for all the things you used to be able to buy outright, and a grey market of you-as-data sold for money to other capitalists. Capitalism did all this without asking us what we wanted, if this was a model we embraced. They just… took our privacy, our data, our peace of mind. Intrusively badgering us so they could more aggressively take our money.

So THIS game, centering a shopping loyalty app as a puzzle-delivery mechanism, feels amiably subversive from the jump. Here, the app’s true function is to deliver puzzles. So many puzzles of wonderful variety! If we ignore the narrative component for a moment, the app is simply a clever conceit, a framework to hang word games and logic puzzles on. And what a collection it is! None repeated, all concise and clever, most sized pretty precisely for the challenge they present. 26 puzzles in about 3.5 hrs, less than 10 min each. I didn’t NEED the framing device here, I thoroughly enjoyed the diversion of this collection. It reminded me nothing so much as the grocery store puzzle books of old, with every page a different brain-poser. I loved those! Notwithstanding how many words I am going to burn on the conceit of this thing, the puzzles are absolutely the centerpiece of this game, and absolutely worth the price of admission. Are we agreed on that? Ok, so back to the framing device…

The intrusivity of the loyalty-app infrastructure is initially acknowledged, but quickly steered away from. Solve the puzzles, score the savings! This was a narrative headfake though. The work was well aware that by ACKNOWLEDGING capitalism’s grabbiness it would cast a pall, however slight, over the proceedings. A lesser work would have been content to hand waive this away, probably successfully given the frothy lightness of its aims. It seemed like Enigmart was going to do so, embodied by a comedically frazzled, superficially-coded young mother. Her introduction cast her as an object of derision, so when she begins spouting pro-privacy observations, it feels like we are invited to dismiss those concerns along with the woman herself. Not me though. “Hadleigh is RIGHT dammit!” That’s not me making an assertion in this review, those were my actual, out-loud words after her introductory scene!

AND THE WORK AGREED! As the game progresses, this poor, underestimated woman develops into the full-on hero of the work. Between puzzles, we periodically get short bursts of in-store scenes that confirm and underline her thesis. The early seeming-dismissal evolves into a full bore condemnation of the game’s own conceit, even as that conceit was delivering wonderful puzzles to distract us!

Did the work NEED to do this? Absolutely not! It was completely tangential to the main focus of the piece: delivering a strong suite of standalone puzzles. Which it did with pseudo-marketing humor and verve, and reinforced by graphical playfulness. But the fact that it DID ANYWAY just completely won me over. The narrative component was not dense, it would have been intrusive if it had been. This was no polemic. It was a light and witty diversion, that was unwilling to give its premise even the slightest bit of slack.

Look, I love puzzles. I love my tinfoil hat. This work let me celebrate BOTH.

Spaceship: Hermes
Vibe: Brain Teaser
Polish: Gleaming
Gimme the Wheel! : If this were my project, I’d have to lean HARDER into the invasive privacy violations of Loyalty Apps. I mean like, so hard I probably would have completely destroyed the sly amiability of the thing. There are some wheels I should not be trusted with.

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

Adapted from a SpringThing26 Review

Played: 4/6/26
Playtime: .75hr, 2 playthroughs (all characters)

There are WAY more past times and diversions in this world than any one lifetime could possibly consume. It’s cool, evolution and human nature got us covered. As individuals, our unique cranial chemical cocktails prune that jungle for us, categorizing pursuits on a spectrum from “THIS IS MY CALLING!” to “Seriously, no thank you.” Somewhere on that spectrum is a bucket for “I don’t think it’s for me, but.. that’s really kinda cool innit?” At some point in my life, Quilting got dumped into that bucket.

Hear me out.

There is a specific KIND of quilting that, despite nominally residing WELL outside the middle of my mental road, seizes my attention every time. These are the collaborative quilts, often commemorating some event, tragedy, accomplishment, or shared experience. Each square of these kinds of quilts are miniature artworks of their own, capturing its creator’s relationship to the common thematic inspiration. Whether crudely rendered or lavishly accomplished they all seem to tell a self-contained STORY - in evocative, suggestive shorthand. By unifying them, side by side in a grid, any overarching themes or narrative is purely accidental. The purpose is just to honor each of them, conveying the BREADTH of experience whether those experiences have anything to say to each other or not.

The House somehow summoned this from the deep recesses of my brain. Specifically its central conceit: four wildly divergent characters, trapped together through unspecified means, interacting to escape a house. You select one of the characters to inhabit, becoming privvy to their thoughts, then three more to share your trial. You get maybe two scenes of character exploration each (one an intro dialogue, another a thematic room) then shuttle to endgame. It’s kind of a wafer thin conceit whose whole purpose is to stitch these individual squares together. The narrative is not overarching, it is an excuse to get things stitched up.

I played twice, experiencing each square of fabric. First time I was a (presumably) collie, accompanied by a middle-age spinster, a (Spoiler - click to show)cyborg from the future with a mission in the past cabbie, and a ventriloquist. Next time, a vampire with a time/dimension lord, a totally normal (Spoiler - click to show)not-Alien Guy and a Creepy Doll.

In this short work, each had ABOUT the depth of a square of fabric, honestly in the best possible way. Their stories were tight, succinct, and suggestive of larger tales out of sight. Most were pretty funny. Some were surprisingly dark. Many played with their disparate communication paradigms in very fun ways - Lattie and Guy were particular standouts here. Each is shot through with its own playful, sly humor. I don’t think the phrase “like some kind of O+ pinata” will ever leave me. It is a pathology of my own that I envisioned them as fabric squares, ready for quilting.

I think this pathology was enabled by the self-acknowledged thinness of the scenario and gameplay, really just a substrate to knit these characters onto, then enable closer per-square inspection. The work acknowledges this by highlighting that replay is really about the central protag-selected character - diving deeper into an individual square. Which is really how I consume these quilts anyway?

Now, given how widely varied individual responses can be, I can certainly envision players who just DON’T GET QUILTING. It’s how I feel about Bird Watching. For those folks, the resolute lack of any overarching narrative thread or theme will be a dealbreaker. The fun, disparate nature of the cast might get lost, or if not lost just not feel complete. This is how chemical brains work, and they’re not wrong. Certainly the lack of deeper narrative glue is front and center, proudly announcing itself as NOT A PRIORITY HERE. For those not given to quilting this could prove unsatisfying.

For me? It reminded me there is this whole human endeavor I encounter infrequently, doesn’t really spur me get involved with, but tickles me just a little bit that it exists at all.

Spaceship: Heart of Gold
Vibe: Mosaic Narrative
Polish: Smooth
Gimme the Wheel! : Were this my project, I think I would give a little more energy to Sophie. She was really the only one that didn’t reward close inspection. Her story beats came across as both samey and less developed than Saargroff.

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