Reviews by JJ McC

Played : 7/19/24
Playtime: 10min, 1hr of setup/source code reading

There are games, in IF a LOT of games, that hearken back to the golden age, dawn of IF. Successful examples can match the tone, humor and idiosyncratic fussiness to make for a warm experience. Thanks to the dynamite efforts of heroic fans across the years, a lot of original games are still available to modern audiences either through emulators or explicit porting and of course the legendary Z-machine legacy.

History has crowned some classics in the field, some games that even in their own time rose above their peers in gameplay, drama or humor, that delighted legions of fans and are rightly revered to this day. What we might forget is that for those games to rise, there was a veritable deluge of games from which they rose. Games that didn’t capture the imagination, whose opaque puzzles didn’t generate the mass-mind engagement, maybe whose limited platforms never got the market purchase to showcase their offerings. Thanks to computer literacy and pioneering efforts of motivated fans, we still have access to some of those today, too.

Sunburst Contamination is one such afterlife-gifted game, from the ranks of the lesser-knowns. Originally a Commodore 64 game, it was ported to ZMachine for its own stab at immortality. For me, it was the wrong kind of nostalgia. Nevermind I needed to install Frotz just to play it (which, honestly, why didn’t I do that sooner?), because modern interpreters like Gargoyle, Lectrote and Parchment can’t run it. Once I did fire it up in Frotz, it just kind of lay there. The game itself didn’t give me any clues what it wanted me to do, though thankfully the IFDB page did. I navigated its limited vocabulary, its largely empty spaces of unimplemented nouns, its wildly uneven implementation horizon, its bugs(?) - in one area I was able to bypass a gatekeeper without solving a puzzle, just using a different directional command. Then I got stuck on a door I couldn’t open, which, in fiction, I CERTAINLY would have known how to. I battered myself against it for enough time to know this was not where I wanted to be spending my time and quit. UNPLAYABLE is a hard word, and certainly back in the day, with expectations of frustrating trial-and-error would not necessarily apply here. Against modern standards, I found it so. Not all wine ages gracefully!

If you consume a lot of nostalgic IF, it is hard not to appreciate modern evolutions. By buffing down the cruelty and subtly expanding from the opacity of early efforts the FEEL of early IF can be evoked without the frustration that peppered so much of it. Interestingly, it has also reduced the need for online communities to trade hints and discoveries just to make progress. Between robust hint systems and walkthroughs, that forced community pressure is all but gone. Yet, here we are anyway!

My first stop after being stuck was to parse some existing reviews for hints. I didn’t get any, but I DID tumble onto a generous review that likened its gameplay to a Scott Adams spoof. What a bold, ephemeral choice! The reviewer claimed, which I have no reason to doubt, that the ‘bad’ gameplay, seemingly buggy implementation and even typos were all spoofing that particular style of IF. If you were deeply conversant in that playstyle, immersed in that zeitgeist back in the day, maybe this would land a lot better. Maybe its Adams-ness would trade on some cultural knowledge that clued its gameplay better, and made its frustrations funnier. Cultural Comedy often has the shortest shelf-life. 40 years on, gameplay norms have evolved significantly and what might in fact be hilariously cutting subversions of well-known tropes, now is just… unworkable. Like, if there was a SIDE-SPLITTING joke written in Aramaic - I totally wouldn’t get it, and may not even recognize it as writing.

My second stop after being stuck was so much more rewarding. I downloaded and started to parse the source code. My initial motivation was to parse the code directly to find the solution to my blocking hatch. I quickly lost myself in the sheer, willful majesty of the Basic code. What a treat that was! Spoiled as we are by modern languages with innovations like named variables and object orientation, even the code itself was a puzzle to understand! The mechanics of its primitive parser, the spaghetti of its gotos and gosubs, where puzzles were organized BY THE VERB USED TO SOLVE THEM. You may not know exactly what I mean here. What I mean is for objects that, say, need you to attach something, across the entire breadth of the game, ALL of it is implemented under if/else trees under the ATTACH verb! Authors were adding puzzle solutions inline, disconnected from all context! I didn’t get quite there in decoding my specific puzzle, but what an astonishing insight into those old author mindsets. How insanely motivated and lateral logic-mired must those authors have been?!? I love, love, love that this was preserved, and that I dove into it. The game itself left me pretty cold, but the IMPLEMENTATION was mesmerizing.

Played: 7/19/24
Playtime: 2hrs, 2 false starts, good ending

I don’t know what it is with these alternate platforms for me. Just getting the game to launch was a mini-game of its own. Initially I tried to create an account on the hosting site, only to be told “there is an error, please try again.” Trying again, I was told my username/pwd was already in use, but no email (with confirmation link) was ever sent, meaning I was locked out. Then I just decided to play it without account, meaning I would not be able to save. Without a net baybee!

Unfortunately, the web hosting was not great. Periodically, I would encounter fits of extreme lag between command entry and response. Which looked like unaccepted commands, so I would keep retrying until eventually the first command response came back. Until eventually that didn’t work either and after 5 minutes of wait I concluded it was never coming back. That safety (save-ty?) net would have really come in handy at that point.

So I reloaded the game to try and fly back to stall point, only this time a crucial (and unfair) event failed to happen like last time. Consulting walkthrough, the prerequisites SEEM to have been met, so maybe something about reloading corrupted state? Killed window, started again. This time was able to play through, but with nearly 1.5hrs invested in frustration. Let me put all that aside though (assuming I can), and focus on gameplay.

It is an old school throwback design, deliberately evoking the primitive Apple II graphics and limited vocab gameplay. It did some nice work introducing its command particularities while simultaneously setting the mood with a charming opening sequence of ‘sit down and play.’ The illustrations were amateurish, but in a fun, loving homage kind of way. Early puzzles went fairly smoothly, though there were lots of glitches in vocab, mystery verbs (>LOWER VINES) and weird longhand sequences (>PUT KEY IN KEYHOLE instead of >UNLOCK DOOR (WITH KEY)). I found myself consulting walkthrough almost always to figure out how to key in a solution, not because the solution was unclear. Given the energy spent early to acclimatize players, these occurrences felt like a gap?

That said, fussy verbs, incomplete synonyms and janky syntax were not unheard of in early days, so it didn’t feel out of place, and maybe part of the nostalgic vibe? I did appreciate that instant death and unwinnable states had guardrails put around them which might not have been there in the old days.

Aside from fighting syntax, the puzzles were lowkey fun, probably in the middle/low end of difficulty with one or two moon logic ones, but often amusing and satisfying nonetheless. If I could tease out my frustrations with the platform, would be a recommend for anyone needing a shot of greyscale graphics adventures. Its not cutting any new ground, but it is faithfully and warmly recreating welcome old ground.

I trust others’ experiences with the platform will not be so fraught.

Played: 7/15/24
Playtime: 1.5hr, finished

This is the kind of game I could easily fall into for days and not come out until the Palooza was done, bleary eyed and wondering how my beard got so big. It is a big, single puzzle maze parser game. As a librarian mouse(?), you are tasked to protect your library from encroaching adventurers, bent on looting the place. The rules and constraints of this party-and-mouse game are not at all clear at the outset, despite an ‘Employee Manual’ that introduces you to the limited-vocabulary verbs at your disposal.

The arbitrary rules you must follow (build a maze of 20 rooms. open it to pursuers. direct LOS with your pursuers will kill you. limited control over pursuers’ path. some magic items to employ) really hit a sweet spot for me. Just opaque enough to engage my inner explorer-scientist. Just limiting enough to make a real challenge. Just flexible enough to encourage broad experimentation. I can’t remember the last time I was this high on the fumes of a SINGLE PUZZLE.

Its structure definitely supports it: it’s two phases really. 1) build your maze. 2) dodge through it, eluding pursuers and setting traps until victory! Both phases are engaging in different ways, tight and short enough that neither wears out its welcome in repeat plays. I felt like I could bounce back and forth forever, learning from failed attempts to inform the next build; experimenting with the build to inform the run/trap pattern. None of it too large to get in your head, complex enough to prohibit trivial solution. Just super, super great fun.

As a parser fan, I tend to favor narrative-driven works with notable NPC implementations, over-the-top humor, or clever lateral thinking twists. This has none of that unless you stretch a bit on the latter. But it still carved out an engaging puzzle, with fun, absurd chrome, that lived in my brain until solved. I forced myself to put it aside to review other works, but it stayed right there, open on my desktop. Beating away like Poe’s Telltale Heart, slowly driving me mad until it was all I could think of. So, thanks for that game?

Played: 7/13/24
Playtime: 2.5hr, stuck, unfinished

If ever I WANTED to like a game more, I can’t think of it just now. This is a 50s B-Movie Space Horror spoof, with strong Ed Wood Jr connections. Stop already, I think I’m getting the vapors! The game has an insanely good ambient music/soundtrack just perfect for its theme. Seriously, it is a perfect mood setter, don’t even TRY to play without it. The work is also funny, from an endless parade of funny tombstone epitaphs, to your pugnaciously willful partner, to the bonkers plot turns, to just outright winning prose. A fave: “everything carvable has been carven to within an inch of structural collapse” In my first half hour I was gleefully giggling, romping from one area to another, just having a grand time. Then it came time to start solving puzzles.

Man do I wish puzzle play synched with me like literally every other aspect of the work. There are a relatively spartan nine areas whose midgame puzzles just slammed things to a crashing halt. I consider myself reasonably experienced in these things, but after two hours of no progress whatsoever, the charms of the piece kind of washed away in torrents of frustration. Consulting the location-sensitive hints were only marginally helpful, sometimes offering opaque hints, sometimes reinforcing what I WANTED to do with no pointer HOW, and other times just plain missing. Lots of seemingly arbitrary deaths, funny the first few times, defeating after great stretches of no progress. In desperation, I consulted prior reviews that helpfully pointed out that (Spoiler - click to show)if you give your bag-of-instant-death to your partner and let him open it, it will no longer kill you when you do so. No story justification, mind, no text cluing that this might work, and once accomplished no text stating it in fact did. The helpful review characterized that move as a bug, but honestly, I’m not sure how ELSE it could be accomplished, and for sure it was needed to solve multiple puzzles! I blundered forward for a while after that, starting to make some progress, then again ran aground with no more internet help to guide me.

There are other, more traditional, buggy behaviors - text that addresses the partner before he arrives on scene; objects that should be consumed reappearing without comment - but these are exactly the kind of things that are easily forgiven in works that sing, and SO not the problem in works that make me struggle.

It doesn’t help that I tried SO SO MANY THINGS in the meantime that just didn’t work. Catching fireflies for light! Begging my partner to use his lighter! Wearing a helmet to avoid toxic fumes! Using objects as reach extenders! So many different gorilla entreaties! These are not spoilers, as none of them worked. It was the more frustrating because there was one puzzle I really liked, and tumbled into in what felt a ‘normal’ problem solving flow. I also seemed to be assembling some fun, intriguing pieces towards endgame, currently unemployed. I am forced to conclude that as on-my-vibe as this was in EVERY ASPECT BUT ONE, that one aspect we were just completely disconnected, this work and I.

It makes me unutterably sad that THIS game, of all games, rejected my puzzle-solving advances so resoundingly. A prohibitively opaque High Fantasy Cat People V Broccoli People RPG would not produce this level of regret in me. At this point, after slogging 2.5hrs in, it is pretty clear the relationship problem is not the game, it’s me. I’m in pain now, but with time I hope I can find it in me to become friends again.

Played: 7/11/24
Playtime: 15min

Let’s say I gave you infinite monkeys, y’know, as a birthday gift. Following year, I gave you infinite IF workstations. Never mind the HARROWING year you just suffered. In the even more bedeviling year that followed, let’s say those infinite IF monkeys submitted to infinite IF Jams and I reviewed every one of them. See, it’s not just you suffering!

So after those three years, math tells us YWAtaSW would be produced by that ill-considered simian gift army of mine. I call BS. There is no universe, irrational number based or not, where the conceit of this work is replicated, never mind its execution. Redo the math. If it tells you it could, the math is wrong. We made a fundamental error somewhere in history and are stranded down an untenable path, prisoners of our bad calculus. This explains quantum entanglement and energy teleportation too.

So yeah, YWAtaSW has a pretty singular premise - that you are playing a work of IF created by an entity you briefly swapped consciousness with, expressing their experience back to you. The identity of the swapper is not exactly a secret, but it is delightfully, bafflingly, bonkers as hell. I am torn between just outing the interloper’s identity and not. It is not a secret at all, but the implementation is so daffy I am reluctant to color it with any interpretation of my own.

If I had a wish, it would be that the work committed to its premise MORE. Most of it is a delightful ‘Stranger in a Strange Land’ ‘fish out of water’ look at the prosaic corners of human life. The mundane object inventories are particularly welcome. Like each artifact, however trivial to us, is worthy of deep marvel. Its ruminations on green and grass made me snort aloud. It is so good natured and pie-eyed about it, it is overtly winning. I had a nagging feeling though that the specifics of your timeshare partner could be more foregrounded. When the specifics show up they are clever and winning, but as often it feels more generic? Like any arbitrary alien identity’s experience? I don’t want to be too down on this, it is super successful in the general, wanting more specifics is just me being greedy. I particularly liked the sexual politics guilelessly left behind for the protagonist to untangle. Hey if I didn’t know what sex was, I’d sure be curious too. Not that my curiosity is COMPLETELY sated by full knowledge.

A totally bananas conceit, in a very fun, very funny implementation. Not the work’s fault I am fascinated with gifted equine denture.

Also, a REAL friend would have included infinite bags of monkey chow that first birthday. That’s on me.

Played: 7/11/24
Playtime: 12min, 6 playthroughs

This is a work submitted for an internet fad Jam - the BEST kind of Jam. An internet fad where lore is manufactured from a typo, a misunderstood offhand comment, a picture out of context, then that lore TAKES OFF into life of its own, composed completely of the whimsy of those whom it erupted around. Somehow stronger and more vital than the gossamer-thin threads of its animus and powered by sheer LOLs. The Best kind of fad.

As I was not part of the genesis of this particular memetic construct, I’m not the one to explain it, I am just expressing my admiration for constructs of its ilk. Someone took this phenomenon and said, “Let’s Game Jam it!” Ah humanity, when I fear all is dark, you endlessly remind me how great we can be, when we’re not being shitty to each other.

So this is a gangster game, notionally related to a fake meme gangster movie. You are tasked to find out some information about the other gangster gang for your gangster gang, by sweet talking a femme fatale. In the lore of the meme, the fake movie in question would be from the 70s, but this feels more pre-New Hollywood 50s-60s. It is a portentous conversation, with subtexts of danger and disaster swirling around a pretense of flirtation. It FEELS black and white, mannered, and swelling with unspoken anxieties. And no doubt fabulous clothing. Through a conversation tree you are asked to get as much information as possible, though how you prioritize that over flirtation is completely up to you.

Then, as these things mandate, the conversation ends with increased tension and without resolution. And that’s it. It is a very capable representation of a memorable scene between powerhouse actresses at the height of their powers, the scene that film scholars would endlessly revisit before TCM showings. Completely devoid of the context of the rest of the movie. Honestly, choosing THIS way to honor its inspiration is kind of … inspired.

It was pretty fun, certainly a quick play, and gave an admirable range of dialogue choices that narrowed to a few outcomes, none of which felt unnatural or lesser. Like the meme itself, it leaves great swaths of subsequent possibilities in the mind of the player, pointed towards but whose inclarity is its virtue. It kind of honors both the form and function of its memetic inspiration that way. It’s not clear to me it achieves much outside the context of its inspiration, but as a Jam entry was never required to do so. Viva fits of whimsy!

Played: 7/11/24
Playtime: 30min, read time really

This is a linear work, its aims cleverly clued by its graphical layout which conclusively evokes pages in a book. Its interactivity is precisely that, turning pages at each one’s end. It is exactly as interactive as a short story. As a short story, its effectiveness is entirely in the hands of the author.

Which is a wild thing to say. At some level, all art, interactive or no, springs from an author’s vision and implementation skill. At least in the ways I am interested in talking about. INTERACTIVE art explicitly aims to include the consumer in the art, (for want of a better word) PASSIVE art does not. This is a two edged sword for the author. The promise of interactivity is a deeper engagement, a unique frisson that is the difference between participation and consumption. The peril of interactivity is that the author has no control over the player, and must somehow accommodate or steer the experience to still deliver their artistic statement against an unpredictable range of interactions.

Am I saying fiction is “easier” than IF? That would be a hell of a hubristic thing, wouldn’t it? Let’s dodge that with mealy mouthed “they both have challenges.” The unique challenge of fiction is to get reader buyin, then keep it. The setup, scenario, human behaviors and plot twists all need to be convincingly communicated and sustained. There is no implicit buyin by player typing along at keyboard. In both kinds of art, the prose itself is doing the lion’s share of this convincing.

My Girl worked for me as a short story for most of its breadth, thanks to its prose. It is somewhat dreamy, somewhat poetic, but always cold and unsentimental, befitting its scenario and characters. It compellingly tells the story of an unhappy marriage, a woman abandoned by her husband for long stretches at sea, then expected to service marital and emotional duties during infrequent returns as if these gaps were immaterial. The wife a player in her husband’s story, as almost a glorified extra. Unsurprisingly, she is increasing dissatisfied with that role. For great stretches, the language and turns of phrase terrifically convey the feeling. Some standouts: “ever bending the crooked language of his devotion like a bludgeon” “There is nothing within your dominion that your husband would not claim as his own, in deserved access” “the hymns you sing segment it small, dividing the hours as neatly as in your book”

It is a slow, sad dance of spiraling despair, very effectively and magnetically conveyed… for 80-85% of its length?

Just often enough, there are narrative twists or observations that do not evolve naturally, that jarringly intrude into the narrative flow without prior warning or support. An observation about “frivolity of men” breaks the personal scope of the narrative, suddenly speaking (in isolation) to a larger indictment than the text was previously concerned with. Contradictory descriptions: “sniffing out for traces of betrayal that you could swear are dribbling in red rivulets down the inside of your wrist as he speaks.” vs “He has no reason to not believe you would be truthful, that you would be true.”

And two major plot twists, one of which carried some setup portent only to be so shadowed as to muddy its impact. Then a final twist from nowhere, the more unsatisfying for its terse, disconnected resolution.

There is a school of thought that for short stories, the ending is whole measure of success. I don’t think it has to be true. Certainly I have found any number of longer format works who have bungled the ending BADLY (looking at you The Stand) that nevertheless are fondly remembered for the many, many things that worked like gangbusters before that. My Girl doesn’t beef anywhere near that bad, but leaves me with analogous feelings. Sure, there were glitches at the end, but for great swaths of its length, I was captivated.

Played: 7/11/24
Playtime: 15min, two playthroughs

Y’know how some games are emerald-cut jewels of insight into some aspect of creation? That touch on universal themes and leverage interactivity to deliver that insight to the player like a thunderbolt? That instantly spark a spiraling sea of contemplations, revelations and powerful proximity to Larger Truths? That compel reviewers to hammer out page after page of analysis and exploration, as much desperately trying to grapple with the feelings the work elicited as informing potential audiences?

Wouldn’t it be EXHAUSTING if every IF work was like that??? Like, just fatiguing beyond all measure.

KoB is, thankfully, not that. It is another one-conceit Jam that slyly slips in a second conceit on replay. It feels graphically a little hastier than some. Textually, a little deeper than others. It is a pre-date screening by a helpful roommate that tests the player’s empathy a bit (I’m gonna say up to the line, but not hitting ‘manipulatively so’), then delivers some quick horror. In a game this small, that feels spoilery, but the game’s own descriptions basically confirm this, so I’m good.

I’m a horror guy, so my bar was not very high for this thing. I liked it for what it was. I really liked that it bucked a strong feline subculture in IF to SHOWCASE A DOG (who’s a good girl??). I liked it better on replay, when going for a different ending which really drove home the horror. Hard to imagine you won’t like those things too.

Except for, well you know who you are. :cat:

Played: 7/10/24
Playtime: 1/2 hr, 86 pts, fired; additional 1hr “won” with walkthrough goose
CW: AI art

CnL has a lot going for it, I wish so much of it was not qualified. This is a pretty classic parser experience, wrapped in an attractive package and oozing with wit.

The wit is the least qualified success in the work. It is suffused with pre-cancellation Scott Adams’ Dilbert vibes, which, death of the artist, when at its best was crushingly on point in its lampooning of empty business jargon. Most NPCs are endless fonts of vacuous business platitudes, and the game’s unbending commitment to the bit sells it terrifically. The game ups its ante by building these farcical lampoonings into its puzzles and plot beats. Occasionally laugh out loud, it is always wryly amusing and keeps things bubbling along. As a player you can decide whether this train of humor is still fresh, but for me, the work’s total investment just sold it.

The game’s presentation is crisp and clean - the vertical illustrations siding the clean font text panel establishes a graphic identity that is pleasing and engaging. The illustrations themselves flex between functional and part of the gag, and often work pretty well. There are some stylistic hints and non-uniformities that clue their AI authorship. For me, I concede that the artwork works with the vibe pretty well, introducing a 1950’s Man in Grey Suit overlay to 90s-00s corporate cult culture. It is not unsuccessful. The ambivalence you are detecting is that even when AI art is successful, and I have played other works where it was as successful as here, I inevitably struggle with its larger implications. “Death of the Artist” only makes sense to me when the artist was at least once alive. If this aspect of AI art does not bedevil you, you will doubtless find this less ambiguously successful.

The gameplay experience was more traditionally asterisk’d. There were many design and bug artifacts that I understand may now be addressed: weird state glitches, cross-room disambiguations, missing synonyms, moon logic puzzles and lack of reasonable alternate solutions.

These were not everywhere, by the way. There are plenty of lateral thinking, assemble the clues, and search for item puzzles that land squarely in parser tradition, often with humorous twists and satisfying clicks.

This review sounds kind of whiny and mopey doesn’t it? I actually enjoyed the experience a lot more than this review might be conveying. I think I got into that weird space where I enjoyed it enough to want to enjoy it even more, and felt those frictions more keenly. It is a worthwhile play - wryly amusing on several levels. Pretty fair, fun endstates even in failure. Its puzzles as often parser classics as glitchy-but-still-pretty-fun. I wouldn’t let my moping hold you back. Death of the Reviewer! (Especially as the updated version is probably even better)

Played: 7/9/24
Playtime: 45min, two restarts due to bugs

I was immediately won over by the sly, subversive wit that permeates the piece. It is nominally modern, but also medieval, and slides across its academia/occult knowledge/farce vibes with confidence and panache, dropping academic treatises and pop culture references with equal weight. It’s a quest for a portentious tome in the bowels of a library you are interning at. You need to make porridge, as is usually required in these things. There’s fights, snotty students, amusingly off-kilter puzzles. Two quick samples that I snorted in delight at: “[RE granola]The loudest, crumbiest of all the snacks.” “the medieval peasant you keep in your head for dialectical purposes cackles at you,”

It’s also, unfortunately, intrusively buggy in one of its central puzzles. In one early section, you are asked to concoct something. If you explore out of order, you can find yourself carrying the wrong ingredients for your puzzle solving mixture, with no way to replace incorrect items. In the course of decoding its mild complexity, I twice found myself in endless loops, unable to click free and needed to restart. This early in the game, not a huge problem but certainly jarring and unwelcome. If appearing in a longer work, would be game ending.

Even when not outright blocked, I was sometimes treated to buggy text as well, the following appearing after a paragraph of normal text:
"(set: the recipe card,jerky to it - jerky
what I can only presume to be internal code.

So yeah, a flawed experience, but honestly the rest of it is so witty and good-natured it was easy enough to forgive. The graphical presentation is pleasing, the use of sound amusing and deftly employed. A little more polish and it would be an unambiguous recommend. Will keep my eye out for promised subsequent chapters.