Ratings and Reviews by JJ McC

Adapted from a SpringThing25 Review

Played: 4/9/25
Playtime: 1.5hr

This work announces itself as a fictionalized-but-biographically-based relationship drama. Why, creative community, WHY?? Are we trying to see how MUCH damage my oblivious intentions can do in the minimal amount of time? Do I have a shot at the record??

No one wants to see me grapple with self-doubt and aspirational angst for ANOTHER review, so I am going to lean hard into the ‘fictionalized’ claims of the this visual novel and strive to inflict as little collateral damage as possible. This is a work that grapples with the emotional unreality of interpersonal relations, ESPECIALLY in an age where physical presence (and attendant physical cues) can be bypassed completely.

A pre-narrative extended online flirtation leads to a 3-day meatspace meet up where two characters try to plot a path forward. Even if this were not explicitly acknowledged as biographically rooted, it is so stuffed with specificity and detail I would have accused it of being such. The details are constant, offhand, and build a crisp and complete picture of the narrator(s) in our heads. There is no question of the ‘reality’ of these two, they are established fully in every moment of narration. This is like the holy grail of character work.

And we get two of them! The narrative gives us a god-view of BOTH characters’ inner lives, expectations and disappointments throughout the quick visit. The nature of the work is that it is unclear where the narrative might end. Unlike books, where we feel the heft of unread pages, there is no signpost here how much more narrative remains. We start with a full arc with one character… hey this COULD be a single character study! Then we get the OPPOSING character’s journey through the same events. Ok, it COULD be a contrasting narrative of two character studies! Those were effective, but to my eye slightly unsatisfying. Unsatisfying in the sense that both characters were a bit oooh, I almost typed ‘selfish’ there. Substitute another, less charged word please. Inward focused? One was reflecting their own expectations and disconnects on the events, the other treating it like a dating sim where the optimal choice of date events will lead to… SMOOCHY CUTSCENE!!! Neither were truly engaging the other outside online paradigms.

This seems a deliberate narrative choice, possibly at the heart of the work’s artistic aims. Their relationship blossomed online, initiated through avatars. Of COURSE it was more internal than external. Absent physical cues they were simultaneously able to bypass inhibition to expose their intimate inner lives quasi-anonymously while also free to project their own wants and desires on an unresisting avatar. It was both MORE and LESS intimate at once. That dynamic encourages the most idealized, optimistic and distorted view of relationships that can’t HELP but buckle a bit in real life. Sidebar - I found the graphical presentation to reinforce this in a stunningly effective way. The graphics are actual photos of London and environs - as real as it gets - superimposed with cartoony anime-styled characters. Further, those characters are EXPLICITLY from the POV of their partner! Is there a clearer way to emphasize the artificiality, the superficiality of how each sees the other?

So at this point we are left with a mirrored mini emotional tragedy. The work then does something I think elevates it but maybe also falls short? Hoo boy, please don’t think I’m saying ‘The real lives behind this didn’t work for me.’ I am REALLY leaning into the fictionality here, like HAAARD.

Crucially, once we have a ‘filtered’ view of events from each of the two characters, where their motivations and stresses have so thoroughly colored those events, each unreliable to at least a little degree… the narrative goes to third person omniscient. We no longer have access to either’s inner life, but get a script-format instead, practically a court transcript of dialogue. It is up to us to infer the inner lives based on what we have seen so far. The vivid detail we have digested makes this super effective. We kind of shed distortions each character works from to see it more dispassionately. Honestly, prior to this I respected the writing and scene-setting but was still a bit removed. This section really hit a new gear for me.

I really, really hope though, that WHAT I responded to was consistent with the authors’ aims. See, unfiltered by inner lives, that dialogue is kind of… bad? I don’t mean badly written, not at all. Drawing together the previous scenes into a coherent whole, with surprising emotional beats is REALLY cool. I mean the dialogue reflects badly on the two having the conversation. On the one hand, they FINALLY breach their anxiety barriers to have something approaching real communication. On the other, Nica’s response is self-serving outrage without an ounce of empathy for Chun. And only a hand-wavy acknowledgement of their own culpability. This is totally believable, we are watching artificial expectations crumble in real time, of course it can result in lashing out. It’s not exactly admirable, though. We, the readers, understand both Nica’s frustrations and Chun’s motivations, and how devastating these attacks will be. Nica is both oblivious and uncaring. (I do feel there was a disconnect between the heat of Nica’s attacks and Chun’s even, almost accepting responses. Given the emotional brittleness we had seen before, I half expected a concurrent dissembling on Chun’s side.) It had the effect of magnifying and exposing their self-preoccupations, their mutual unreadiness for something less idealized and more real.

At this point I should highlight I barely have a toe in modern online culture. While I understand the concept of parasocial relationships (hell, I’m having one with all of you right now!), it is really a vanishingly small element of my life. That said, Nica’s accusation of (Spoiler - click to show)stalking was completely unconvincing to me, in terms of these characters and this setup. It read like hurt passion overtaking reality in a disheartening way. This was not some rando in the comments getting weirdly familiar. This was a person YOU ENCOURAGED A RELATIONSHIP WITH, desperately trying to UNDERSTAND YOU MORE FULLY THAN THE ARTIFICIALITY OF THE MEDIUM ALLOWED. Were they supposed to NOT Google you? What kind of expectations did you think sexting would build? TO NICA, WAS THIS FUNDAMENTALLY DIFFERENT THAN JUST WATCHING PORN???

The effect of that scene was to strip away the sentimentality we developed by living in each of their heads, and expose the flawed, flawed characters with fresh, less sympathetic eyes. Dramatically, this really worked. I was deeply afraid this was NOT the intent of the piece.

But wait, it’s not over yet! There is a final scene, of Nica returning home, digesting the entire visit, and plotting a path forward. As conflicted as I was about that previous scene, I am not conflicted at all here. I found this to be a really strong, delightfully ambiguous ending. (Spoiler - click to show)We see Nica doubling down on the online relationship, somehow unpurturbed by the previous scene, unmoved by the heat of it. This is either a breakthrough, getting past the hurt and betrayal into something approaching a fuller relationship, or regressing to the idealized comfort of the icon-distorted parasocial status quo. I have a pretty strong feeling which.

I will just close with my favorite line from the work: “melodrama is only melodrama to those that don’t share the same concerns and stakes of the characters.” Thankfully, the authors threw me a bone to confirm I was not hopelessly in the weeds with these takes. With as much time as I spend in those weeds, you'd think I would recognize them by now.

Horror Icon: Babadook
Vibe: She said/she said
Polish: Gleaming
Gimme the Wheel! : Nope nope nope

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: 4/9/25
Playtime: 10m, 5 (of course) playthroughs

Here is the order you should play this game: 1-5-2-4-3. You’re welcome.

That’s a jarring approach for me to take, right? This is an autobiographical-feeling work of art, detailing a dire, debilitating emotional and physical disorder. Yet here I am, superimposing myself between you and the work, telling you how it should be experienced. I’m probably going to go on and tell you how you should feel about it. Then maybe how successful or unsuccessful it is. I kinda have a history of this. Honestly, who the f*#$ am I to weigh in on any of this?

On some level, this is how I feel with ALL deeply personal works I presume to review. Where is the line between dissecting a piece with the same toolkit I use on, I dunno, Cyber-Swordsman Detective, and dismissing actual experiences by actual people, striving to communicate their anguish? I’d LOVE for that line to be “intent,” whooo boy, I’d wear that like armor. But you don’t really get to say “Sorry my Coat of Sharp Knives sliced you up so badly, I was really just trying to find some space in this subway car. Oh, this old thing? Just something I threw on this morning.”

This is a work about eating disorder. It plays with the concept of “trigger warnings,” presenting various levels of trigger to select among. I appreciated this conceit, overlaying narrative on those selections while challenging the player with explicit charges of misery-voyeurism. I found the graphical presentation minimalist, but effective in its aims. The choices of what each level communicated were wry and effective, escalating as you expect but also embedding commentary with WHAT each trigger level could actually express (and the inherent artificiality of it), relative the underlying reality. How close are we willing to get to someone else’s pain, how much of it can we ultimately experience? And what are our motivations in doing so?

I think that is about as much as I am willing say here. Why do I even own that coat?

Horror Icon: Leatherface
Vibe: Confessional
Polish: Smooth
Gimme the Wheel! : Pass.

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: 4/8/25
Playtime: 15m, 5 endings

What is the line between dream logic and Dada? The obvious answer is, that depends on the dreamer. Dream logic is pretty famously associated with a deeper, sub-logical collection of images and scenes that feel and flow naturally in the moment, but become bafflingly disconnected when considered in retrospect. Dada, by contrast, intends to shock in the moment with dissonance. That is arguably its entire point. These are not opposing states of a dichotomy though, these are points on a continuum.

Ok, I am obviously ignoring the most important thing about Dada, its political motivations in its historical context. Maybe I’m just talking about Surrealism. Dada is just a much more fun word to say though, so I’m sticking with it.

Stowaway opens with the titular protagonist, but quickly spirals from a Treasure Island vibe into something fractured and weird. And honestly, kind of fun. As you navigate the ship, to initially uncertain purpose, maybe to steal some food, it quickly becomes apparent via navigation links that the setting is mutable and uncertain. It spins into wildly different spaces and settings in the dreamiest of dreamlogic connectivity. You encounter a wild variety of fantasy, sci-fi and otherwise unexpected NPCs, in service of loose fetch/use IF puzzle play, before cresting to an abrupt ending. Series of endings really, depending on your path.

Ah ha! I see you now, game! You kept me off balance for a bit, but you are really one of those “collect-all-the-endings” games! So let’s do that! Here’s the thing. For a work this short, this bonkers and varied, it has a remarkably narrow and similar suite of end states, different in detail but pretty samey in effect. This work was not going to have a ‘plot’ or ‘character’ based arc of setup and resolution. It could have an artistic arc, though. Treat its belligerent reality-defiance AS the character, develop this dynamic from its early discovery, through its escalation and expansion into a crescendo of weird dissonance.

Instead, it was kind of like we found a Golden Ticket, experienced the wonder of the Wonka factory, but then decided to just sell it to Nestle’s. For me, these kinds of works hit much better when the ending-collection is as or MORE disparate, bonkers and unpredictable than the midgame. Like, instead of a corporate buyout we get on a glass space elevator and fight cosmic turds or something.

I appreciate what the work was doing, and doing so economically, but I wish it commit to its Dada all the way to the end. Ings.

Horror Icon: Freddie
Vibe: Surrealist
Polish: Textured
Gimme the Wheel! : If this were my project, I would really explode the ending space, both in number and variety. Make them every bit as surprising and disconnected as the steps that got us there.

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: 4/8/25
Playtime: 1.75hr

Notwithstanding Clint Eastwood’s descent into deplora…bility? Yeah, deplorability. (Proving yet again, as if needing further corroboration at this point, that we will all “die a hero or live long enough to become the villain.”) Notwithstanding that, there is a slice of his filmography that I find compellingly mythic. His western Man With No Name character was featured in only a very few of his movies, but I find them the least poisoned by time. Dirty Harry reads as a parody, but at some point both the actor and the culture decided, no, that was GOOD, ACTUALLY. Bleah. MWNN rather embraced an existential unknowability of mythic forces apart from human concerns, but nevertheless imposing on them a code of justice that is as compelling as it is terrifying. A pressure-relief valve for the universe that makes us question ‘justice at what cost?’ and ‘is Justice actually about us at all?’

Cut the Sky evokes that archetype. Better, it evokes it by letting us inhabit him (just gonna go with ‘him’ here, in deference to the iconography, sorry) but never really UNDERSTAND him. What a fine tightrope to walk! We are the motive force for the character, but the guardrails are firmly universe-driven to keep our human concerns and responses at bay. This is driven home both in the text, which resolutely refuses to expose any inner life, and in the interactivity, which limits our possible actions to less than two hands-worth of options. There is no nuance to the MWNN, everything is one of 9 actions, of which only 4-5 are actually ACTIVE. This artificiality of constraint, more than anything, engages us with the mythic protagonist, reinforcing his unknowability to humanity. It is a use of interactivity I hadn’t seen before.

There follows a series of puzzly interactions, steps on the protagonist’s journey, where we are encouraged to creatively use these 5-9 actions to resolve a series of conflicts. The fact that, ultimately, every problem IS resolvable with those actions underscores the mythic nature of the role. MWNN doesn’t NEED more actions. Armed with those 5, he is immune to nuance and human complication. He CUTS through it if you will. (What, did you forget who was writing this review?)

Even the journey he is on, through a far-future, post-apocaplyptic landscape, we only vaguely understand as weigh points. Both the motivation and consequences are revealed to us so casually, so off-handedly, it is clear our understanding is tangential to the protagonist’s work. Yes, we direct him, but we don’t DRIVE him. It’s all we can do to keep up.

All in all, I found this a dynamite evocation of this compelling mythic archetype. The ability to put us IN this character but not diminish the mystery of him is a really cool approach, very successfully realized. If I had one quibble – and petty as I am, it loomed large – it is that, despite one of 5 active verbs being KISS, infuriatingly, one could not (Spoiler - click to show)KISS THE SKY.

In. Ex. Scusable. Wisely, this unconscionable oversight seems to have been corrected in subsequent release.

Horror Icon: Pinhead
Vibe: Man With No Name
Polish: Smooth,
Gimme the Wheel! : If this were my project I would never have let it escape into the wild without that final action. IT WAS JUST SITTING THERE, RIGHT THERE!!! HOW DO YOU NOT PRESS THE BIG RED BUTTON???

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: 4/8/25
Playtime: 45m

The conceit of this work, like a lot of genre works, is doing a lot of lifting. Genre fiction (interactive or otherwise) gets a lot of bang for the buck in wild conceits. Arcane magic or hand-wavy super science can create bespoke scenarios that range from full on metaphysical metaphor to nuts’n’bolts lore-wonkery where exploring the setting (and clever twists by the author) is every bit as engaging as any symbology or themes. It is not a lick on this work to say it skews to the latter, because it does it so WELL.

As a player, we are co-piloting (let’s not pretend the author isn’t ALWAYS also at the stick in these things) an artist. A painter, trying to live off commission work while hiding a secret that they can enter the reality of their paintings and bring back artifacts from them. (Ok, yes, you and I would drop everything to labor on our civic-mural-scaled STACKS OF CASH TRYPTYCH. This protag doesn’t. Just roll with it.) He also has a partner/pet of a talking cat. Yeah, even I am beyond blinking at that at this point.

Follows some nice intrigue, evolving lore and ever-more-clever twists on the conceit that are both completely reasonable and completely satisfying. Do not underestimate the finesse this requires. “Going deep in the lore” and “Crawling up your own butt” share a LOT of common imagery and perils. For me, CK consistently fell on the right side of that dichotomy.

It is enhanced by a lot of tangible, unadorned writing. In particular, the details of the painter’s craft were just as present and tactile as you would expect for this kind of protagonist. The writing went a long way to casually and matter-of-factly establish his bona fides as a working artist, and that in turn helped sell the really outre’ developments to follow. If there was a facet that was shortchanged, it was the characterization of the protagonist. Other than a REAALLY strong reluctance to bathe (seriously, what is THAT about? SO many grooming actions available, uniformly rejected by the narrative), and the physical details of their craft, they were more or less a blank slate. Now in IF, this is not generally an issue. The protagonist is often explicitly intended to be a player surrogate. Thing is, specificity in detail works against that identification, so we fall into a weird middle ground where the protag is not US, but isn’t really an identifiable OTHER either. This stands in contrast to NPCs that are quirky, motivated and interesting. Even the rather moustache-twirling antagonists are narratively justified and fun in their one-dimensional-ness.

What? You want me to say it? In print, attached to my name in perpetuity? Fine. Yes, the cat companion was quite fun. Happy? I feel dirty.

As the narrative progresses you work with the protagonist to untangle the implications and nuances of the wild lore, satisfying stakes that range from ‘losing an apartment’ to ‘slavery and death.’ I mean, what, you didn’t want it to escalate? I found the whole thing a really enjoyable lark, not the least of which because it enabled me to reclaim some dignity for those most-unfairly-maligned of creatures: no, not cats. Their malignment is totally fair. I speak of (Spoiler - click to show)giant spiders. Yes, I was not satisfied with my status as feline pariah, I must bolt headlong into FURTHER social marginalization! I regret nothing!

All in all, this was a nicely calibrated plot engine, just about the perfect size for its preoccupations. It also gifted us with a new legendary beast for the Monster Manual: the Artistivore. So good.

Horror Icon: Leatherface
Vibe: Reality bending
Polish: Smooth
Gimme the Wheel! : If this were my project, I think I would endeavor to flesh out the protag, just a little bit more. The nature of IF is such that players usually do not begrudge inhabiting a complete character who is NOT them. Would be worth pulling this protag in that direction.

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: 4/7/25
Playtime: 15m

Over the last few Comp cycles, Bez has treated us to a few works marrying art, voice and narrative IF. Each of them has had its own personality, its own quirks and fascinations. In terms of raw presentation, it feels like things are creatively cresting into a very next-level appealing package. The artwork here, combinations of hand drawn characters and scene setting background is immediately compelling, and laid out terrifically against the text space to make for an inviting interface.

Even more noteworthy than the graphical package was the voice acting. Bez has employed this in the past, to mixed success to my ears. There are a couple things here that really work though. First and foremost, the script really aids this iteration. When voice acting is less successful, it represents a drag on things. We read the text, then wait for the voice actor to catch up, repeat. Here, with really only one or two notable exceptions, the dialog is natural, but bounded. Relatively short observations, answers, then next prompt. This flows very naturally, and not for nothing doesn’t give us opportunity to get ahead and have to wait for the game. In particular, the Mack character chose a delivery that was rapid but natural and really kept things bubbling along. The other characters were not quite so economical, and Yancy had an extended monologue at one point that DID drag, but I find it noteworthy that that was the exception in this work. Otherwise it was quite tight, and made for an enjoyable time.

Now the function all this form was in service of. The work is a lazy afternoon with friends doing Tarot readings, as catalyst to have some friendly conversations about their friendship, including some mild tension around one of them harboring a secret. These characters have a history here, in a work I consider a unique combination of compelling thematic genius and biting family tragedy, swimming in a crowded sea of less successful dramatic elements. The friendship at the center of this work is one of the latter. If, however, I divorce the characters’ history from their presents, it is kind of sweet and amiable.

Up to the point of the plot twist. It’s…BIG, this twist. So big, it challenges the natural, friendly vibe.. no that’s not what I mean. What I mean is, it’s so big it SHOULD challenge that vibe and doesn’t. The LACK of incredulity, followon questions, other explanations in the face of unquestioning acceptance, PARTICULARLY when the foundation was already some suspicion of deception, did not ring true, not for this quiet afternoon.

So now I’m off balance, trying to figure out how we got here and where its going to tumble, and then it ended. Hm. Ok. Maybe I was a bit hasty. The revelation was huge, kind of bonkers huge, but we are talking about a world of animal-people. Oh, did I not say that? Yeah, these friends are all ani-people. In THIS world, which the narrative tells us nothing about, maybe this wild revelation is not as strange as it reads to boring people-people? Certainly the overriding takeaway of this work was as an interlude, some connective narrative bridging the previous work and leaning into a followon. I assume. It certainly plays like that. If so, on the strength of the artistic growth and next level voice work, count me in! I mean, how do I NOT hear how this bonkers development gets resolved???

Horror Icon: Carrie
Vibe: Afternoon Hang
Polish: Smooth
Gimme the Wheel! : If this were my work, I might take a look at the revelation’s reception, make sure it is playing out precisely the way the next work needs it to. Ensuring the jarring effect on the reader is deliberate. (There is a good chance it already is!)

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: 4/7/25
Playtime: 10m

This is a Ren’Py game, kind of an under-represented platform in my IF journey. A visual novel, with IF choice-making as an engagement engine.

The visual part of this visual novel(ette) is attractively realized. A very distinctive artistic style rendering protagonist and their home for us to loosely navigate on the way to work. The protagonist is an endearing mess, with her daily routine juuuust barely, and amusing, beyond her grasp in the full view of her creepily-intrusive electronics. The art provides the perfect informal, warm vibe, kind of mirroring the protagonist’s attitude. It makes some choices that raise eyebrows, not in a deleterious way, but in a ‘carving its own place’ way. For example, you play as a cat-girl with rabbit-person friend… who also has an actual cat. Is it just me? It’s not just a hat on a cat – that’s wild, right? People don’t keep people as pets, do cats keep..? I don’t know, I can’t stop wondering how that works. Also, our cat person uses skin cream but not fur cream…? Where does the rabbit hole stop???

Look, I get that I could light a pipe, put on a sweater with elbow patches and digress into artistic representation vs underlying reality but… why? That sounds pretentious and joy sucking and dull and SO out of step with the fun of the piece.

Complementing the art style, is a sassy writing voice that is snortingly fun. Here’s some examples:
“its ass oclock”
(para)“did you know you can lose 87% of your joy eating zuchini?”
“absorbing the power of 350 incels”

The whole thing is rendered in this matter-of-fact, cynical, put-upon voice and it is just thoroughly winning, the more so contrasted against the cartoony hello-kitty characters. The premise – flailing to get through a morning of trivial challenges – could end up hopelessly twee if this last element were missing. Conversely, the presence of the wry voice transforms both art and premise into something worth riding along with just to get more one liners! The frisson is as much the joy as the sly language itself.

So there I am, bubbling along happily in this cozy, witty flow. And then it ended.

Wait, what? Yeah, if I have a quibble with the piece its that in its vanishingly short runtime it gave us a lot of fakeout (low) stakes, humorously trivial setbacks and then… ended. There was no arc, dramatic or otherwise to the piece. No escalating tensions, needs unfulfilled, setups and payoffs, just a really fun hang with a charismatic character that abruptly stopped. I mean, that’s cool, it WAS undeniably fun. Without those other things though, I’m not sure how much sticking power it has.

Other than questions that will never leave me like “…DO THEY FIGHT OVER THE CATNIP???..”

Horror Icon: Freddie
Vibe: Beleagured
Polish: Gleaming
Gimme the Wheel! : If this were my project you would know it because there would be more dogs. If I were to finesse this project, I’d have to try to provide some semblance of a dramatic arc. Something, anything to stop me wondering how MARKING works in that house.

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: 4/7/25
Playtime: 1.5hr, 3 endngs

Wayfarers is a work firmly on the FICTION side of Interactive fiction, which isn’t to say it is not interactive. It is the story of a soldier recovering from horrific losses that cause her to interrogate her world, her family, and her place in both. It is set in an ill-defined future of endless warfare, advanced technology and all-too-familiar psychological and social pressures.

It is also stunningly, staggeringly, well written. Every scene, whether it be military battles, virtual reality game-world, interpersonal conversations, background lore, all of it drips with verisimilitude, confidence and authority. We are in super firm hands here, gang. The prose is unadorned and insightful, propelling us from one scene to the next like a series of small explosions. I captured so, so many lines, here are a few for flavor:

“I had prayed for my hatred to keep me from being killed, but here I was.”
“We were pretty and white like the main characters of yesteryear.”
“They’ll run out of people before they run out of money.”
“I wanted to tell her that if I had designed this world, it would have been kind.”
“How small a scrap of human would I have needed to be, to be allowed to die?”

Holy crap ya’ll even out of context that stuff ROCKS. In context it is devastating. In story, we jump back and forth between wartime (and to a lesser extent, family) flashbacks, therapy gameplay, and post-combat recovery. Interactivity is used to get the player invested and aligned with the protag - clicks are rarely choices but they ARE shepherding us along the protagonist’s journey and each mandated link another step forward that we take with them. The graphical presentation is tight and effective - the use of color and fonts differentiate and suggest the reality (or gamey unreality) of the current interactions. By the end we are both along for the ride and driving forward for some measure of closure for our protagonist.

The narrative is super controlled - despite the disorienting unreality the protagonist experiences, we the reader are never unclear what aspect of their challenging existence we are experiencing, how important it is, and how it interacts with every other aspect of their recovery. It all builds naturally and dramatically to one of several totally justified and enthralling twists, leading to a final choice we DO get to make on her behalf. Having plumbed all the endings, let me just say I find it impossible to think any one of them would disappoint the buildup. We’re all going to have a favorite and boy do I. To the end, the story retains its stubborn difficulty. There is no ‘story book’ tightly knotted resolution, just a measure of closure in a still-messy life with frustrating gaps eluding protagonist control. But definitive closure nonetheless.

I was blown away by this entry. You can probably tell I am dancing around the core of this thing, relying on my superlatives to carry how smitten I was with it. I do this deliberately. With some works I might be tempted to pull apart the themes of the piece, dissect characterization or compositions, all in an effort to convince myself I have a full handle on the author’s intent and/or the work’s impact. Here, I feel the writing is SO precise, none of it is uncertain or ambiguous. It is a tale so well told, creating complexity then navigating us through it so sure-handedly, it really doesn’t need anything from me but the most minimal endorsement I can provide.

“Wow.”

I think that’s as concise as I will ever get.

Horror Icon: Regan/Pazuzu
Vibe: PTSD
Polish: Gleaming
Gimme the Wheel! : If it were my project, I would marvel that I were capable of such an affecting story. Which of course, I am not. So in spite, I would tweak two small technical issues: I would add a back link in the Credits, and cut the timed delay at game’s start in half. That’s it, man.

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: 4/7/25
Playtime: 3hr, finished with walkthrough goosing

In the past I have observed a few “Golden Oldie” creative choices that are poison to my enjoyment of IF. Unavoidable instant death. Silently unwinnable states. Inventory management. Opaque solutions to invisible problems - ie required moves not narratively clued, that are unlikely to register as tasks, but even if understood, the WHAT of the task is equally opaque. Hell Ride exhibits all of those, not pervasively but notably.

Review Spoiler: not only did those things not kill my experience, they didn’t even destroy the flavor of it. Before I get to the triumphant plot twist, lets explore the makeup of the poison here.

Inventory management is the softest poison in HR. Your inventory space here is actually quite large, including a fanny pack that you can shunt stuff into. The world is similarly chockablock with stuff to grab, much of it red herrings. It is a somewhat baffling equation though. The game lets you carry WAAAY more stuff than physically plausible. This is fine, probably preferred actually! It is a gameplay concession that reduces friction and a bit of ‘realism’ we are fine without. However, there IS an arbitrary line drawn where EVENTUALLY you have to start juggling things between ‘hand’ and ‘pack.’ There is no ‘realism’ this is in service of, the line manifests when your inventory is laughably large, so it begs the question, why bother with that limit at all? It is unnecessary friction.

Instant death is also an issue, though arguably the one instance of it is completely narratively justified, so much so that even an incompetent like myself knew enough to savegame before committing to the path. Poison neutralized.

The silently unwinnable states are more insidious. I detected two during gameplay (which I savvily avoided), and fell into a third that seemed bug driven? When I tried to use string and gum to better my odds (Spoiler - click to show)at a dime toss, I entered a state where the string thought it was attached to a dime that no longer existed, AND the (Spoiler - click to show)magic dime I ACTUALLY needed was rendered unavailable. I identified it as unwinnable almost immediately, but only through meta-experience. The game itself was going to let me play forEVER in that state. These I do not forgive so easily.

The last was the worst. There is a chokepoint puzzle maybe 2/3 the way in that there is no way I could determine was even a ‘puzzle’ let alone what to do about it. There are locked doors. Getting the key required (Spoiler - click to show)giving objects to a character that expressed no interest in them (in my playthrough). Giving similar objects might or might not have resulted in soft cluing, but even thinking to do that was prompted nowhere in the game. It was the mind-readiest of mind-reading puzzles.

These were all compounded by infrequent but numerous technical issues. Besides the string bug above, game state was stubbornly static. Descriptions continued to hint at objects you had long taken and moved. Vital objects are not mentioned AT ALL in the text of the game, and were only secured because they were noted on the pdf-eelie map. Some conversation topics were necessary for progress, but near-neighbor topics ignored, suggesting no value in probing for more. There is a no-image mode of play (which, as an anti-ChatGPT zealot was the only way I was going to play), which the text inadequately compensated color information for, making some puzzles much clumsier.

Ok, the litany is long. You saw the spoiler though. I actually really enjoyed this game a lot. The most obvious way this game minimized the poisons is simple, well understood, yet still less frequently employed than I would like. There was a Walkthrough. Any time things started to drag, I could goose forward by (maybe restarting or reloading and) cheating past the offending blockage. This game, more than any in immediate memory, demonstrates the value of this ONE SIMPLE TRICK BIG I-F DOESN’T WANT YOU TO KNOW ABOUT. Walkthroughs are not a panacea however. Simple presence may change a rage-quit to a joyless, mechanical transcription but it will not on its own rescue the experience.

No, the game did that with all the things it did SO SO RIGHT.

For one, I LOVED LOVED LOVED the evidence gathering mechanic. Oh, yeah, the plot: you are a reporter gathering evidence against a shady carnival. The evidence gathering mechanic was wonderful - integrating question asking, lore reading, clue finding into an intuitive and cohesive whole only SLIGHTLY showing its gameplay underpinnings in a way that soft-clued the player how to use it. It is essentially a parallel puzzle you are working while doing standard explore-grab-fiddle parser puzzles. Its inclusion was a standout for me, complicating and enriching the game in all the right ways.

The setting was also engaging. Carnivals are just classic parser settings, and this one was rendered with real verve and detail. Everything you think should be there, is, and most of it is interact..able(?) even when not strictly necessary for the plot. It was a really complete, largely bug-free, certainly engaging experience.

Then there is the ineffable vibe of the thing. The author notes that Hell Ride was created in the 80s and updated today, and does it ever capture the feel of an 80s parser. You might not think that is a compliment, but boy howdy it is. It is more verbose than what I would think of as 80s-provenance, but its level of detail and soft word choice are that alchemical mix of full-but-indirect that cues the player which elements of detail are worth probing and which are not. And more often than not it does so effortlessly. The language, finely tuned level of detail, employment of repetition all steer into the traditions of 80s games, not yet infused with expectations and conventions of the next century. Couple that with puzzle design that was SO much in line with 80s conventions you might as well have been playing this IN THE DAY. Puzzle solving was as much a logical exercise as a muscle memory one, dredging up 80s neurons that were patiently waiting for exactly this to re-fire. These resonances had the effect of buying forgiveness for its faults in ways we forgave 80s games because we didn’t know any better yet.

So yeah, I found this game unplayable without the walkthrough. It tried its best to poison me on multiple fronts. Rasputin-like, this reviewer survived all those malicious attempts to.. drown in a river? Wait, no, to revel in a wonderful throwback experience, enhanced by a truly unique and enjoyable detective mechanism.

For those that doubt the power of the WALKTHROUGH, you are on notice.

Horror Icon: Jigsaw
Vibe: Classic parser
Polish: Rough
Gimme the Wheel! : Clearly I would go on a bug-squashing spree, starting with that string/dime thing. I would follow that up by reworking that chokepoint non-puzzle into something a player might recognize. Then fix states, room descriptions, cue unwinnable states… but whatever I did I would PRESERVE THAT WALKTHROUGH.

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: 4/6/25
Playtime: 3h (2 endings)

Echoes was a seminal composition in the discography of the band Pink Floyd. From their album Meddle, it was a watershed, melding their established trippy and entrancing musical compositions with a dramatic leap forward in lyrics and artistic preoccupation. Taking half the album, the work was notice that, as popular as they were, they were on the precipice of a quantum leap forward. A leap that would deliver seminal works: Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, Animals (fight me, it belongs in this list!), and The Wall.

Is this to be the legacy of Ben’s Echoes as well? Well first off reviewer, that is a DEEPLY unfair comparison to even posit. Though there are, as any time a full-of-their-conceit reviewer turns their mind to something, ways to wring out some parallels. Maybe I can buy some good will by revealing that Pink Floyd was the first band I resonated with in a non-superficial way, and consumed large chunks of my personality through high school. Meaning for me, even drawing the comparison displays the esteem I have for this author’s works. An ECHO of it, if you will. Uh, you won’t? Oh reader, I have bad news about the conceit of this review…

This author leapt onto my radar with their overwhelming graphical prowess, their composition skills if you will. Professional, evocative, superbly integrated with gameplay and narrative, I can’t think of anyone doing it better currently. On top of that, Ben is creatively voracious. Different platforms, UI experimentation, Google Forms fer crissake. Deeply creative and engaging premises, across multiple genres, crafting finely tuned, friction-free gameplay experiences that are so unfair to the rest of us that maybe he DESERVES to be compared to a towering super group just to take him down a peg.

This work feels like a fractal view of the entire ludography - an anthology of different playstyles, different genres, different narrative aims all bouncing off and resonating with each other in a uniting narrative. Multiple movements all building to a unified whole, as the movements of Pink Floyd’s Echoes does. A quick survey:

Sticks and Stones: the longest play of the three, itself a fractal composition of three movements. A fantasy dungeon crawl leveraging parser tradition, but with a streamlined and zippy arrow-button interface. It is peppered with wit and leverages familiar tropes both as shorthand player guidance and to twist them to humorous or gameplay effect. It is so effective and confident it looks much easier than it is.

Treasure of the Deep: a short, linear horror narrative, employing language not exactly in a pastiche of HP Lovecraft, but HP adjacent, evoking the feel of it without slavishly recreating it. Like the gameplay above, the pitfalls here are numerous and deep, but so deftly avoided it seems deceptively simple. If only there was a word for something that rang and reminded of an original…

Labyrinth: a quasi-ancient-Greek multiplayer escape room, leveraging mythology for soft guidance and mood, but leaning hard into escape room style puzzle play. The puzzles were clever, and put a premium on multiplayer communication (even if schizophrenically driven by a single player).

All three established gameplay conventions, thematic preoccupations and lore unique to their episode but reinforcing and resonating with each other. It would already be an impressive submission if left there. But no! The Master Conductor then unites all three, interweaving those disparate gameplay, themes and lores into a cohesive, finely tuned whole! A series of puzzles follow that stitch them all together in a wonderfully satisfying clockwork that once again appears natural and inevitable when in fact is out of reach to all but the most accomplished watch makers. Kind of like the recurring single note in (musical) Echoes that launches multiple musical divergences, only to reassert at the end.

Y’know what I haven’t remarked on? The graphics. They are, as usual, uniformly wonderful when employed, but just not the focus of the work here. They precisely fit the concerns of the work, enhancing both gameplay and dramatic beats, but still subordinate to the experience. In some ways they are the Careful With That Axe, Eugene of the work, their accomplished quality setting prior expectations, and informing but ultimately only one facet of a larger whole.

So, is this the notice of Ben’s coming quantum leap into superstardom? Is his Dark Side right around the corner? I dunno man, I can’t see the future. Even if not, even if I posit a timeline where Meddle was the last Pink Floyd album of consequence, that album itself was an accomplishment few bands achieve. I still listen to it ALL THE TIME. This feels like the creative space this Echoes occupies.

And here is where the Floyd parallels end. I do not recommend gummies with THIS Echoes.

Horror Icon: Pinhead
Vibe: Kaleidescope
Polish: Gleaming
Gimme the Wheel! : If this were my work I would be so astonished that I could produce something this well honed that I would fall into a creative paralysis over the prospects of further work. I am confident, like Floyd, the actual author will not be so stricken.

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