Reviews by JJ McC

Adapted from an IFCOMP23 Review

"Mine eyes ope’d, my world 4 walls wide and manifest but as long as my gossamer memories, only the last few secure in my head. In my solitary madness but one path, one sequence of links in an inviolable and ever-tightening chain of fate opened to me. My will was imprisoned by uncaring destiny as surely as my body by my cold, spare cell. I was ensorcelled by a vile presence, denying even semblance of autonomy.

"When the devastating import of my impotence settled on me like a greasy fog, only then did my tormentor take form. First, a hideous mewling, followed by a rasping of pitted, dry tongue on an undulating coat of silken corruption. From the fog it slunk into view, coiling and uncoiling like some biblical judgement, here where the Bible holds no sway. Its horrid, slitted eyes regarded me from beyond reason, its motives unknown and unknowable.

"‘Meow,’ it said.

"In some perverse torment, it feigned liberate me, allowed me a semblance, a mockery of initiative. Giddy with the promise of freedom, I lurched through a maze of non-Euclidian geometries, traversing dimensional boundaries as easily as a madman cackles. Only later, during a surcease in my fever dream, did I pierce the lie, the deliberate and perverse obfuscation of cardinal directionality and a labyrinth that folded in on itself.

"My task was four gates, four slim barriers between everlasting madness and freedom. ‘But speak the Elder Words,’ purred my tormentor, ‘and thy freedom is secured.’ Mine environs were soon revealed as claustrophobic, even in their obscene intertwined passages. Echoes of the Elder Words rang hollowly through the space, slipping through my grasp the more desperately I clutched. In piercing, dissonant tones they evoked mocking images of great power within me - a cruel and despairing counterpoint to my abject inefficacy. Time and again I hammered at the portals, in my desperation forcing my tongue to ever more elaborate variations of the horrid syllables echoing from abandoned rooms. Time and again, my labors for naught.

"I was but mortal man, my desires and thoughts playthings before the awful abyss. Anguished beyond my limits, I pierced the veil and dared stare unblinking into the heart of creation’s grand design. And there, in that void of forbidden knowledge, my sanity shuddered, shriveled and died. In my feverish graspings, I had neglected to start with Capital Letters.

"‘Meow,’ it said.

"My autonomy revealed as futile delusion before an unforgiving syntax, I slumped in defeat. My vile guide entwined me once again in the cold embrace of fate, and the most wretched part of me was grateful. Grateful that but one inevitable path lay before me, my steps as Mechanical as an automaton, ever more quickly pulling me to some new abominable state. And I, limp with surrender, clicked along behind, enslaved by my Intrusive passenger. This was my fate. The Whisker in Darkness deemed it so.

"‘Meow,’ it said."

from The Lurking Feline and Other Tales

Played: 10/23/23
Playtime: 45min, finished via walkthrough
Artistic/Technical ratings: Mechanical, Intrusively Fussy Gameplay
Would Play After Comp?: No, sanity banished, I can but suffer

Artistic scale: Bouncy, Mechanical, Sparks of Joy, Engaging, Transcendent
Technical scale: Unplayable, Intrusive, Notable (Bugginess), Mostly Seamless, Seamless

Adapted from an IFCOMP23 Review

Turns out, you don’t have to be Twine to be part (4) of the “Twinesformers: Parsers in Disguise” review sub-series! Gruescript can play too!

This was a lovely, nearly beautiful presentation. It was pseudo-parser, in that clickable buttons resulted in cursor text that mirrored parser commands. Directional and inventory commands are available. It is an interesting tradeoff. Inventory management is clumsier and clunkier for sure, but the paradigm trades that for visible guardrails on what to do and where to go, preventing frustrating thrash. For this work, it really felt like the right choice. You are a tween/teen exploring the forest near your house. Thanks to careful option curation, you are quickly put in the mindset of a young explorer, including ways blocked because your parents will be mad! A true open-world parser would not accomplish that so effectively thanks to the difference between “you can’t even try” and “no, I reject your input.”

I did feel there was a possibility in the interface that was teased at but not exploited. The parser commands displayed after clicking were sometimes much more complicated than an actual parser implementation might support, opening the door for some poetic command interpretation. Ie, where a parser game might have “>TOUCH LEAF” this interface can put whatever it wants after the cursor. “>GINGERLY STROKE THE LEAF’S SURFACE” It seemed to gesture that way and I would have loved to see more of it as a way to build player mindset.

Graphically it was engrossing. The browser window’s background colors changed as the fog lifted and the player explored. Lovely framing graphics faded in and out slowly, suggesting the pace of travel and the variety of terrain. If there was an off note, I would say it was the map - when selected or displayed by the game, there was no option to leave it up between moves, and the “Cancel Map” cursor was inexplicably large and ugly. In the face of the rest of the presentation it stood out, but can be forgiven.

I went back and forth on the gameplay. On the one hand, I really liked the choice architecture that encouraged studying the natural world around you, even collecting specimens to share at school. While my adult “take only pictures, leave only footprints” indoctrination rebelled, it did conjure class assignments of yore. The puzzle play was fairly simple - find stuff in one spot, use in another, made more fiddly by the demands of the inventory management buttons. The map was tight and straightforward. All of it pleasant but too slight to truly engage.

Leaving the remaining burden on the narrative. There are a few off notes, some typos and spelling issues, some unnecessary drama with screaming at caterpillars that are not even touching you. Still, it was first and foremost a great simulation of an illicit childhood nature walk: unguarded moments of openness to nature, complicated by unforeseen events that will get you IN TROUBLE. In particular, interactions with nature were simple and often beautiful. Underneath that was hints of adult awfulness that very appropriately danced in the corners but were too complicated to get much protagonist regard. It hinted at strong drama, but never quite came into focus. While that was a terrifically thematic approach to the story, and kudos to the author for generating it, it nevertheless couldn’t help but be something I WANT TO KNOW MORE ABOUT. The story would later tell me that was on me, but my aggressive “click all the things” approach leaves me wondering how I could have missed anything.

An hour and a half invested with a LOT of clicking and ambling, it was deflating to hear my efforts summarized as “I have the feeling that I’m missing something. That there is something to be understood in the middle of all this, which I can’t understand, I can’t even guess.” I was also somewhat let down by the story’s assessment of the artifact I chose to share with the class. It spent all this time putting me in the mindset of childish priorities, then hit me with, “Well little girl, you really could have done better.” That is the opposite of encouraging to questing young minds! Highlighting missed story elements and achievements is a tried and true IF staple, encouraging repeat plays. This type of story though, with its slow, deliberate engagement and serene environment contemplation isn’t a good fit for that brand of gameplay.

Sparks of Joy for sure, in presentation and terrific mood and player mindset setting. Hints of drama unrealized, a lowkey sour finish and uncompelling gameplay pushed just enough to keep it from fully Engaging. While there were technical glitches, the impressive presentation overall was so strong as to be Mostly Seamless.

Played: 10/23/23
Playtime: 1.5hrs, finished, mystery unsolved?
Artistic/Technical ratings: Sparks of Joy, Mostly Seamless
Would Play After Comp?: On the one hand I’d like to know more, on the other the investment required seems just a bit too large.

Artistic scale: Bouncy, Mechanical, Sparks of Joy, Engaging, Transcendent
Technical scale: Unplayable, Intrusive, Notable (Bugginess), Mostly Seamless, Seamless

Adapted from an IFCOMP23 Review

This IF work juggles a few dimensions at once. A unique user interface. Narrative elements meant to be appreciated as a reader, perhaps informing but disconnected from the rest of the game. Mechanical puzzles where the protagonist manipulates environmental items to achieve goals set by the game.

Some games manage these facets by integrating them tightly together, making for a seamless, holistic experience. For great swaths of IF, they can be judged on how effectively these (and perhaps other) elements meld to achieve something greater than the sum of their parts.

Kaboom seemed unconcerned with any of that. It presented a spare problem of two finicky mechanical puzzles. It utilized a choice-select UI that echoed parser-like mechanics, earning a spot in the review sub-series "Twinesformers: Parsers in Disguise." Kaboom's implementation has an inconsistent and befuddling paradigm. It included a disconnected-from-rest-of-game, tantalizing maybe-metaphorical dream sequence of intriguing pith. Its premise could easily have been cloying but was SO unsentimental and spare that it wrapped around to sweet again. And it nodded to an understated interpretation that played off that cold sweetness to offer real poignancy.

Say I gave you four fabric dyes: red, blue, green and yellow. You could carefully measure each color to be blended into a specific shade of subtle beauty. That’s one way to go. Slap it on a T-shirt and soak up the "I’ve never seen that on fleek shade before, girrrrl!"s Yeah, I don’t know why you are sharing it on TikTok either. The other way to go would be to tie dye - create a wild swirling pattern where the colors swirl around each other in a nearly fractal pattern that never actually blends them together. The sum is actually the pattern of distinct, contrasting, undiluted shades.

My assertion is that Kaboom is a tie dyed IF that creates its own vibe without ever attempting to blend its disparate elements, and is singular because of it. Let me pull at the individual components.

UI - this is belligerent and confusing. There is main text, the page-specific selection links and an “Inventory.” Which is a weird thing to call it as you are a stuffed rabbit with no pockets and the strength of cotton. Your Inventory are your legs. Just legs. Sometimes there are illustrations - really evocative illustrations - whose impact is minimized by the page layout that strands them in swaths of black and disrupts the text. And that also just kind of stop appearing half way through? I for sure missed them when they were gone. A horizontal multi-pane construct could have mitigated most of the layout issues at least.

That’s how it presents to you. Now let’s talk about the command selection paradigm. It is clunky and clumsy. You must LOOK AT ROOM; LOOK AT OBJECT; SELECT ONE THING TO DO WITH IT. Then start again at the top, cycling round and round to manipulate items. Except sometimes, options show up in your hidden Leg inventory. Since you are nominally doing everything with your legs I never figured out why sometimes things showed up in main text and other times as inventory options (which again, hidden unless you explicitly look). Can’t solve without them though!

That made manipulation puzzle solving difficult, drudgy and punishing. It was further compounded by having at least two silently unwinnable states that required restart.

The narrative was mostly unadorned, unsentimental prose. The first puzzle is (Spoiler - click to show)using a child’s blood as lubricant! I promise it is nowhere near as dire as that sounds, but opposite of cloying, no? Underpinning the cold proceedings is an assumed, understated bond between the protagonist and the mistress. The spare descriptions allow this feeling to establish itself without fanfare, and gradually fill the space with something approaching real depth.

The exception to this default prose mode is a meaty dream sequence filled with surreal, psychedelic abstractions. What a weird, cool choice!

So here’s the thing about tie dye: my wife hates it. (Probably influenced by cultural baggage inherited from her Baby Boomer Dad tbh which maybe breaks my metaphor a bit, so let me recast it as ‘esthetic objections’ without challenge.) The pattern is either going to speak to you, or you’re going to focus on “Geez I really hate that Green and it’s way too prominent.” The UI was super intrusive to me, it quickly pushed me into Mechanical, Super Intrusive gameplay (particularly when I got an unwinnable state).

That’s what I felt for 99.5% of its runtime.

Final twist. There is a dedication in the credits that sang off the setup in such a specific way, it hammered my heart. It is never explicitly stated, but the work supports an interpretation that the bunny and her mistress are (Spoiler - click to show)Ukrainian civilians suffering a missile attack. That gut punch of a thought shook me into reconsidering. I had undervalued the absurdist flourishes of the dream sequence and the understated emotional vibe that set me up for that final poignant punch. This was not Mechanical at all, it was Sparky but took a shock for me to see it. It gets a further bonus point for so effectively wolloping me with that final gut punch.

Played: 10/14/23
Playtime: 1.5hrs, finished after a few restarts
Artistic/Technical ratings: Sparks of Appreciation, Technically Intrusive, bonus point for unsentimental poignancy
Would Play After Comp?: No, experience seems complete. Also, my heart is fragile.


Artistic scale: Bouncy, Mechanical, Sparks of Joy, Engaging, Transcendent
Technical scale: Unplayable, Intrusive, Notable (Bugginess), Mostly Seamless, Seamless

Adapted from an IFCOMP23 Review

This piece brought home to me that relatively speaking, Westerns feel underrepresented in IF. Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Romance and Trauma all have significant bodies of work. Maybe not SO surprising, given the sun had set on Westerns before IF really became a thing. Finding one, or even a work adjacent to Western, is a pleasant surprise.

This is a comedy about a cowboy time slipped into modern New York, looking for his hat because “A cowboy without a hat is just a guy in a poncho.” Well done game, quest economically established! The protagonist is a full-of-himself Old West maybe-lawman. The game gives him RPG-like stats, but really amusing cowboy-based ones. Choices present themselves throughout the game that map to one or other of those stats, either increasing them or testing against them for success or failure. Decide how you want to lean into the search and Find That Hat!

The opening had a real Crocodile Dundee vibe to me, the overconfident frontier man asea in a metropolis he vaguely understands. A lot of it is wryly funny, especially when stats like “Rodeo” are employed to simple modern tasks like following street signs. (Though I’m reasonably sure that technology predated the Louisiana Purchase.) Incidental text is warmly amusing too: “There is a lot of trust in this table and its structural integrity. There should not be.” As is the best case with these things, some atmosphere and humor is competently built through the choices on offer - reasonable things to do that would not occur to a time-displaced cowboy are simply not available!

Between the light tone, brisk pace (fueled by narrow gameplay) and often funny text, the Sparks were flying. I feel though, that it could have been sharper. For as many tasks and activities that sparked with fun as many felt flat, needing a bit more salt to really land. There is an extended (Spoiler - click to show)conversation about the movie 12 Angry Men for example that needed a little more punch. The work’s use of profanity was a bit at war with its vibe. It felt more Singing Cowboy than Deadwood so the profanity jarred. I’m not saying don’t curse. Do what you f&@#$%in’ want, game. Nothing is quite as funny as well-employed profanity, but it should reinforce your piece not stand out.

Second time through, I made different choices (as one does) but still kind of ended up on the same path. To its credit, it was still amusing with enough new yucks to justify the playthrough. The quest thread though, resolved in victory with an almost trivial conclusion. This doesn’t HAVE to be fatal. Low stakes, trivial problems exacerbated comedically by fish-out-of water humor is a pretty reliable formula. Again, here the need for additional spice deflated things just a bit.

The game proclaims it has multiple paths and endings. I expected more divergence than I got, and certainly it is possible for yet-untaken choices to unlock those. For me, the too-repetitive play and unsatisfying victory was just a higher bar that the comedy couldn’t quite clear. Now that the Writer’s strike is over, maybe a script punch up cycle could really make this thing shine?

Also, this game is dead wrong about gin, but whaddya want from a traildust-encrusted palate?

Played: 10/22/23
Playtime: 30min, two playthroughs, found hat!
Artistic/Technical ratings: Sparks of Joy, bonus for inspired Western RPG stats )
Would Play After Comp?: No, experience seems complete


Artistic scale: Bouncy, Mechanical, Sparks of Joy, Engaging, Transcendent
Technical scale: Unplayable, Intrusive, Notable (Bugginess), Mostly Seamless, Seamless

Adapted from an IFCOMP23 Review

Part 3 of the “Twinesformers: Parsers in Disguise” review sub-series.

This is a surreal, metaphorical reflection at the end of a relationship. In packing to leave a failed marriage, the protagonist is preoccupied with discovering WHY things went wrong. They undertake a journey into surreal memory space, trying to unlock ever-deeper possible sources for the relationship rot through the medium of deeply symbolic puzzle play.

You can be forgiven fearing that is a self-serious, too-cute-by-half premise. I forgive you. I just need someone to forgive me, because that was my uncharitable thought once it dawned on me what I was in for. Roger Ebert famously said (para) “It’s not what it’s about, it’s how it’s about it.” This is the work I’m going to point to in the future to justify that quote. Well, probably not actually, as it requires that I repeat that quote to someone who is familiar with IF, and has encountered this particular work. So I guess just to you guys? I’ll have it in my head though even if I don’t say it out loud.

The challenge with metaphor is that it needs to simultaneously be evocative, precise, internally consistent and ideally surprising. In IF, it also needs to be fun. In earnest but clumsy hands it can too easily fall apart into illogic, or maybe worse, obvious on-the-nose…iness. I think my first hint that I was in capable hands was the first puzzle which required a “mug of insight.” What a terrific phrase, simultaneously ponderous and wryly self-puncturing. It didn’t back away from its import, but winked at itself playfully. That set me at ease, but it was really the series of memory vignettes that closed the deal. They are surreal distortions, diving into still photos then finding out-of-frame details straight from a subconscious dream world. The detail choices are kind of breathtaking. They obey dream logic but unroll naturally and certainly intuitively, and the symbols chosen are often surprising and precise representations of the protagonist’s internal state of mind. Against my own cynicism, I was Sparking all over the place.

Another peril the work sidesteps is overwritten prose. When aiming for High Concept Metaphor it is all to easy for the prose to try to match with overwrought poetry. TGoWYNM recognizes that symbols land more squarely when not obfuscated behind try-hard text. Its unadorned simplicity of prose really lets the intelligence of its metaphorical constructs shine. To the exact degree as that previous sentence DOES NOT.

Interspersed between metaphorical puzzle runs, there was an opportunity to choose among clues, to select threads that were most meaningful to the player. This was a neat use of interactivity to personalize the proceedings, supported by options that were qualitatively different yet mostly equal in weight. It was an excellent use of interactivity to further immerse the player/reader.

The in-the-moment gameplay was often damn close to perfect. It was very parser like - try to use inventory items in puzzly ways to advance. As a UI it was pretty good - your inventory in a side pane bracketing the main text, where links navigate you around. Selecting inventory options in specific locations ‘solves’ a puzzle. The puzzles themselves followed a symbolic logic that was usually pretty rigorous. I want to drive that point home. Despite being nuanced abstract puzzles, more often than not the connections flowed intuitively and FELT right.

It was when they didn’t quite flow that gameplay glitched. The inventory link mechanism lent itself to, hell practically DEMANDED, lawn mowering - selecting every possible inventory item in every single location. It happened infrequently, but was mimesis-shattering when it did. Until the puzzle was solved, when you had to wryly admit, yeah I guess that metaphor did work after all! During those moments of disconnect though, one thought kept echoing in my head “A Parser implementation would have resisted this better!”

As an experience it was overwhelmingly impressive - great ideas conveyed with unadorned but evocative writing. Unfortunately punctuated by brief periods of outside looking in, wanting to get back to that sweet, sweet flow. Is this a narrative failure, prose misfiring just enough to keep me from fully Engaging? Is it Notable Technical intrusiveness, a limitation of Twine that intrudes and breaks the author’s meticulous spell? I’m going to err on the latter, because I found the symbolic worlds so compelling.

There is a third possibility, almost too ludicrous to mention. That the work is fine in both dimensions but it’s ME that’s… ha ha no, you’re right it was stupid of me to even bring it up. Engaging, Notable it is.

It occurs to me that there is a metaphorical read even for the floundering. That the protagonist is so desperate for answers they wildly throw even inappropriate ideas at the wall, anything to try to get some purchase. If that thought could have been teased out in the moment by the game somehow… holy CRAP that would have wrecked me.

Played: 10/22/23
Playtime: 1.75hrs, finished
Artistic/Technical ratings: Engaging, Notable mimesis-breaking gaps
Would Play After Comp?: I might actually. I wouldn’t mind another look at that accomplished use of symbolism.

Artistic scale: Bouncy, Mechanical, Sparks of Joy, Engaging, Transcendent
Technical scale: Unplayable, Intrusive, Notable (Bugginess), Mostly Seamless, Seamless

Adapted from an IFCOMP23 Review

It’s time to inaugurate a new review sub-series: “Twinesformers: Parsers in Disguise.” Encompassing Twine works that share enough DNA with parsers, Maury Povich could dedicate an “are you the Father?” episode to it.

Like many in my generation, I have a soft spot for the Muppets. Sesame Street, sure, but especially the Muppet Show. Henson and Oz et al had a unique sensibility of optimism, generosity, and melancholy darkness that just went down amazing when delivered by felt. They created characters (so many characters!) that were multi-dimensional, often with a desperate core that nevertheless served up raw red comedy chaos. Boy did I lap it up.

And boy was I angry when the Disney IP machine gobbled it up. Is there anything more squicky than a formerly creative studio buying what it can no longer produce, then milking the joy from it? See also Star Wars, Marvel, Pixar. On top of its generation-long war on public domain, after building its rep by plundering it. That Disney v Florida feud? I wanted BOTH to lose. DISNEY DIDN’T DESERVE THE MUPPETS.

So you can see I was primed for this game before it ever showed up in my queue. For at least a decade.

The setup is a clandestine raid, to save Handfuls (Muppets) from a monstrous fate under a rapacious and demonic new corporate owner, and by the way rehabilitating their creator’s unfairly besmirched rep. (Yeah, Henson was not actively crushed by Disney, but it FEELS like Disney, doesn’t it?) It is a hopelessly youthful gesture whose success would lead to uncertain benefits, but whose urgency is completely tied to the risks willingly embraced anyway. I love it so much for that. “I’m not sure what stealing Kermit will accomplish, but BY GOD I will risk horrific daemonic death to do it!”

The work makes the crucial, wonderful decision not to replicate the Muppets with thinly veiled pastiches. Rather, it creates a completely different and unique pantheon of felt that effortlessly evokes the VIBE of the Muppets. The bananas, unique multi-dimensional characters. The shades of melancholy and chaos. The super-specific details that marry an impossible breadth of influences. I was smitten and awed by the consistent, creative RIGHTNESS of it.

The writing is a full partner in this, not just via in-character commentary (which is wonderful), but descriptions, incidental text, and the hinted picture of the studio’s hey day, as seen post shutdown. If this had been all there was to it, I’d be fully satisfied. But to then marry it a Horror premise: a deliciously stark contrast lurking around every corner! And to then further up the ante with engaging gameplay!!!

See, there are (Spoiler - click to show)supernatural stalkers haunting the defunct studio. You need to steer clear of those while searching for and liberating the Handfuls. And each of the Handfuls has a specific power to help you, but with two hands (one if you hope to carry a rescuee to freedom), you must select which power will be most helpful for specific circumstances. It’s a puzzly challenge with a terrific buff mechanism, each with their own hilarious and poignant commentary that ALSO can help build an underlying story of sweet sadness.

Exploring, solving key-based puzzles, avoiding monsters, interacting with delightful NPCs in service of a powerfully human story. What a great parser ga… rheeeeCORD SCRATCH. IT’S NOT PARSER. It is a deeply parser-influenced gameplay engine, rendered in Twine choice-select. Look this author can do what they damn well please if they are serving anti-Disney Muppet Horror to me. But there are artifacts: blocks of text not abbreviated on subsequent visits, uncertain geography, sometimes clued/sometimes not adversaries. It is hard to tease out where it is actively wrong, and where it is really just the vibe of the piece. As an experience I have to call it Mostly Seamless, as it’s not game breaking so much as “oh author, parsers could solve this for you.”

This is the first game I rejoiced at being incomplete at 2hr expiration. I’ve got at least two more hours ahead of me and I CAN’T WAIT. An amazing alchemy of Henson-flavored horror and human tragedy. BALZAC (say that name like 50 times. you’ll get it) and BLINTZ 4EVA!

Played: 10/22/23
Playtime: 2hrs, 7 Handfuls, 3/4 buildings explored
Artistic/Technical ratings: Engaging, Mostly Seamless
Would Play After Comp?: Good luck stopping me!!

Artistic scale: Bouncy, Mechanical, Sparks of Joy, Engaging, Transcendent
Technical scale: Unplayable, Intrusive, Notable (Bugginess), Mostly Seamless, Seamless

Adapted from an IFCOMP23 Review

This is a work about all of time, the entire universe, intersection of the divine and the human ideal, and Epic, All-Consuming Love. In 15 minutes or less! Short of a dramatically poignant fortune cookie, I’m hard pressed to think of a tougher ambition-per-word ratio.

Your first choice is an enigmatic one with unclear consequences, on behalf of an uncertain protagonist. So you make a choice! From there you get the sketch of a story about a divine being in love with a heroic human, (Spoiler - click to show)suffering the end of an unspecified history of time loops. On this time budget, neither character is painted in any detail, beyond their emotional connection. This connection is certainly avowed in passionate, earnest terms but without any underlying establishing scenes. This is a “Tell, Don’t Show” narrative.

For Interactive Fiction, the interactions you allow your reader/player are everything. They are the differentiator, the ace where you can give the reader personal investment in the proceedings. That only works if 1) the player makes choices with some in-the-moment expectation of what it means and 2) that the choice serves a narrative or gameplay purpose. Since our choices here frequently do neither of those, it feels like we are watching strangers, and kinda weird ones at that, overhearing a private crisis that is not for our ears. In real life we would mutter some half-apology and quickly give them the room.

Both characters are alluded to in Epic terms, with lives and experiences that could fill volumes. What we see of them belies that. (Spoiler - click to show)In one path our Epic Human Adventurer dies a punk, partially self-inflicted death. Worse, our (Spoiler - click to show)non-human protagonist, whose experiences should inform an alien perspective on existence and humanity, nevertheless devolves to the monomania of adolescent first-love. Where is either of their Epic lives influencing things? Couldn’t they just as easily be, I dunno, an accountant and a dog walker?

It’s almost of secondary notice that the production itself is unpolished. There are many typos and spacing issues in the text. The lack of introduction screen is a minor nit, but absence of clear indication that you have reached an ending is worse. The first ending I got, I assumed was a missing-continue bug. On replaying, I figured out no, all the endings just stopped giving you more places to go. This latter was deeply Intrusive to the experience, and built on typos to give a first draft feeling to the proceedings.

It is hard to escape the idea that the work just tried WAY too much in too little time. It wants EPIC, in scope, emotion and impact. Narrative Epic takes time to build. The reader/player needs to be introduced to large conceits over time, be invested in the cause and effect chains and interactions that created this narrative edifice. Here we are basically jumping in to the end of the story without any of the buildup needed to feel how it lands. I will say, I did experience one Spark in the playtime. After achieving two endings, I liked that for my third I got to see it (Spoiler - click to show)kind of from the other perspective. I do need to be a stickler about the PLURAL sparks in my criteria, but even as the result of an opaque choice, that was kinda cool.

Played: 10/21/23
Playtime: 15min, 2 paths, 3 endings
Artistic/Technical ratings: Mechanical, Intrusive
Would Play After Comp?: No, experience feels complete

Artistic scale: Bouncy, Mechanical, Sparks of Joy, Engaging, Transcendent
Technical scale: Unplayable, Intrusive, Notable (Bugginess), Mostly Seamless, Seamless

Adapted from an IFCOMP23 Review

Say you have a friend that is REALLY into flossing. We all know flossing is important, right? It’s kind of inarguable. For this friend though, flossing is their WHOLE DEAL. There is no conversation, no pop culture experience, no shared activity that won’t in two short steps become a diatribe about Gum Nobility or the evils of Big Corn Cob. Even when you try to agree that flossing is good, 45 minutes later it becomes apparent that you still don’t get JUST HOW GOOD it is. When asked to say three things about this friend your best effort is: “1) They are a flossing champion! 2) uh, they are ANTI-FLOSS’ worst nightmare and 3)…pass.”

Lake Starlight is the IF version of that floss-stan friend. It says some strong things about techno-capitalism and patriarchy. And while the thesis is totally defensible, it is also flat declarative, unnuanced, dripping in contempt and takes every opportunity to remind you of this. It’s biggest sin isn’t that it’s WRONG, it’s that it can’t get over how RIGHT it believes it is.

It doesn’t help that the non-polemic parts of the narrative are a bit unfocused. Let’s start with interactive opportunities. When you are asked to interact you almost never have sufficient information or agency. You are prompted for a name, before the protagonist’s (very specific!) gender and background are revealed, so my 14-year old Hispanic girl carried the name “Gritty.” Her favorite color is orange, and favorite fruit peach, but not sure those choices even mattered. Elsewhere, choices you make are rejected. “Which roommate do you want to hang with?” </select one/> “Nope, sorry, you get this one instead.” You earn “Intuitive Whispers” which I interpreted to be guiding hints, but the one I tried was opaque and unhelpful. It was frustrating enough that when presented with a seemingly-meaningful choice NOT to go to the titular camp (Camp Hogwarts For Girls?), I took it to see what would happen.

It was meaningful alright! Would you believe that a 14-year-old’s choice NOT to go to camp resulted in (Spoiler - click to show)a stifling marriage, casual drug use, and emotional distance from a shrug of a daughter all on the way to an early death? FOR SKIPPING CAMP THAT ONE SUMMER??? Reran with the other path because clearly the work needed me to, begging the question against a field of such limited choice, why was THAT choice even available?

Mostly, there isn’t much interactivity, just continuing to next page for LONG blocks of text about the virtues of nature-based magic and feminine power. Even there the monotone of it is the biggest takeaway - every character we meet has a tale of family tragedy wrought by techno-colonizing males. (Almost) every character is super supportive and capable. For sure, they are all female. (There is a Good Guy Uncle who gets a walkon, but he is the only male we see.) I mean, given what we’re told about the world, I am at a loss why these women haven’t just Lysistrata’d things into order!

Look, I don’t need fiction to be about me. I kind of love it when it challenges me. But if it wants to yell at me (about something I’m already on board with!), maybe try to entertain me also? Instead, I found myself grimacing more than 'yeah sister!‘ing. It doesn’t help I think that the subculture presented as Inarguably Good is much more sus than the narrative believes. Story background establishes an ill-defined Mean Girls’ cult as Bad. I initially thought of that as kind of clever world building. But the reality of our protagonist’s indoctrination into her Magic School… that put off really strong cult vibes. To the point I started questioning, “wait a minute, do we really know how bad this other one is? I really only have the narrator’s word for it, and Cult Camp is getting a total pass from them.” Elsewhere, on the heels of a diatribe against technology, we learn one of our key Role Models is a herbalist? We don’t get a lot of details, but there’s a reason your doctor warns you against herbal remedies. Recent history has shown that there is very little daylight between homeopathy advocates and anti-vacc’ers, where are we on THAT spectrum? If I question the narrator’s assertions on what is Good, maybe what is Bad is in question too?

It is awesome that specific-perspective fiction exists outside CWM wish-fulfillment. It is awesome that THIS long-neglected perspective fuels a fantasy empowerment story. For me, a lighter hand would have gone a long way. I found the narration to be suspect and off-puttingly one note. The protagonist’s primary characteristic was “self-doubt” and was mainly lectured at by Unimpeachable Authorities from behind metaphorically shaking fingers. Those two things made this a Mechanical exercise for me. Lack of meaningful interactivity, except when it was TOO impactful, felt Notably intrusive to the experience.

Seriously though, you gotta floss.

Played: 10/19/23
Playtime: 1.5hr, two playthroughs, 1 short, 1 to end of Book 1.
Artistic/Technical ratings: Mechanical, Notably buggy
Would Play After Comp?: No, experience seems complete

Artistic scale: Bouncy, Mechanical, Sparks of Joy, Engaging, Transcendent
Technical scale: Unplayable, Intrusive, Notable (Bugginess), Mostly Seamless, Seamless

Adapted from an IFCOMP23 Review

Let’s imagine IF as a dance between Interaction and Fiction. What else you got to do right now? Imagine with me! Sometimes Fiction leads, establishing steps and rhythms while Interaction follows - the player trying to keep up with the gameplay goals the author is setting, swept along in sure hands. Other times, Interaction leads, the player pushing on the environment and story flaring and prancing in response, the author rewarding intricate moves. Some works are structured to have a single lead, start to finish. Other works trade leads back and forth one or more times in a rapturous full body collaboration, ramping excitement and tension as the music builds and builds and gameplay swirls around narrative around gameplay around… I’m getting the vapors. You get the idea.

What happens though, when NEITHER takes the lead? When Interaction’s attempts to coax that cute story out for a spin, are politely rebuffed. And not even during a slow song, the Cha Cha Slide! Meanwhile, Fiction sits in the corner playing on its phone, too cool to come to the dance floor? A painfully fraught middle school dance happens, that’s what. Everyone has a vague idea they should be doing SOMETHING, but no one has any idea what, so there’s just a lot of foot shuffling and awkward glances. An angsty adolescent Thing of Wretchedness.

You start as an elderly woman, snowbound with the titular Thing, trying to figure out how to poison it. Now, that opening is already super sus. If the first (and almost only) thing you know about a person is that they are ready to poison something, it is fair to question how reliable that person is. Particularly when, through their eyes, the Thing is too horrible to behold, but its actions are just not that threatening. It just seems to be wandering around aimlessly, not so different from the protag. After some exploration I even had cause to ponder, (Spoiler - click to show)hey, this is the husband, isn’t it? It wasn’t. Probably.

The environment is spare - 8 rooms and a mailbox, none of it bursting with objects to interact with. And wandering and exploring reveals next to nothing about the protagonist, the Thing, or suggests tension outside the protagonist’s mind. But you can do two things: (Spoiler - click to show)poison the Thing or mail a letter. Since I was unconvinced of the protagonist’s motivations, I chose the latter and the game ended! By which I mean cut to new layer of narrative without resolving anything. And it EXPLICITLY told you that the former would likely not work.

huh.

So I restarted, knocked around a bit, continued to not trust the protag’s sense of threat when tangible evidence was lacking, and got nowhere. Eventually I consulted the walkthrough. Turns out (Spoiler - click to show)the Thing was a menace. It could get angry and start attacking and breaking things. First playthrough I had heard loud noises, but the environment seemed to weather things fine, so I felt no peril. Certainly I shared the room with the Thing often and suffered no harm or even unease. The trick was to wait, (Spoiler - click to show)and maybe poison it (even though the first failure ending told me not to bother!). At that point though, is it maybe acting in self defense? Don’t DO anything, just wait a lot. Until a randomizer exploded. Then, if you didn’t die you could get a vital object to unlock a final area where ANOTHER object led you to a better ending.

Well, the text claimed it was better. Certainly your interaction with the object was opaque and not obviously problem-solvey, but it did? It led to another layer of metatext that only obliquely resolved things for the old woman you’d spent all your time with. The work is apparently part of a series but claims no knowledge of the rest is needed. Maybe not, but missing knowledge of stakes, consequences and cause and effect should be provided somewhere.

I’m a horror guy, October is my primetime. The title made promises to me. My goodwill (and Engagement!) is a horror game’s to lose. Here, the gameplay decisions were its undoing. The protagonist was afraid, that was clear. As a player I was at a loss to see why, and actually suspicious of her fear. While my suspicion of the protagonist was kind of fun, it was deeply counterproductive to the narrative. The work really needed to sell the Thing’s menace better, with concrete, observable consequences outside the protagonist’s mind. To some extent, reliance on a randomizer may exacerbate the problem. The author cannot guarantee a sense of menace if they delegate the threat to a die roll. Without a walkthrough, I’m not sure I would have had the patience or inclination to wait around (doing nothing!) to see if it got worse. Getting exactly the WRONG message from my first failure didn’t help either.

The work had a moderate amount of unimplemented nouns and disambiguation issues between clocks and boxes. In a work so spare they stood out as Notable, where a more engaging work might better weather the glitches. I will say, as a horror fan, evoking Middle School Dance was maybe the most chilling thing about it.

Played: 10/19/23
Playtime: 1hr, 2/3 endings
Artistic/Technical ratings: Mechanical, Notably buggy
Would Play After Comp?: No, Middle School was DIRE


Artistic scale: Bouncy, Mechanical, Sparks of Joy, Engaging, Transcendent
Technical scale: Unplayable, Intrusive, Notable (Bugginess), Mostly Seamless, Seamless

Adapted from an IFCOMP23 Review

Comedy is a macro phenomenon, a numbers game really. Success is predicated on getting just the right formula that resonates with the most people. A “Marketplace of Laughter” if you will. There are tricks to maximize purchase. Surprising, off-kilter connections is a prime mechanism - recasting or contrasting things the audience knows about human behavior, communication, and/or shared culture. So to generate a laugh you need one of those common baselines, and a twist on or connection with it that folks will respond to.

Human behavior is probably the hardest of these - it requires savant levels of empathy, observation and understanding. If you’ve ever bought a complete dud of a birthday present you understand how hard a deep understanding of one individual is, nevermind crafting a more general observation of mass resonance. Communication humor is a more cerebral exercise, playing with the context, meanings and interplay of spoken or written words. (This formulation does require you to concede that even the lowest brand of humor, Puns, is somehow cerebral. Which I am loathe to do and understand if you are done with this analysis.) Shared culture may be the easiest to engage. All you need to know is that a thing exists, and other people know about it.

Easiest does not have to mean laziest! And an easy baseline does NOT mean easy laughs! It’s the audacity of the connection that brings the chuckles, the baseline is just the platform for it. I think of it like Olympic Diving. It is a greater athletic achievement, with commensurate reward, to execute a high degree of difficulty. But even with lower difficulty, precise execution is still OLYMPIC ATHLETE LEVEL OF WOW.

ODNSF is clearly trading in cultural humor. As a macro numbers game, I can only report one data point, my own. Through no fault of the author, my cultural relationship with the Rings property is… I mean its fine? Once you get past the Elvish racism I mean. And “get past racism” is really a whopper of a phrase to have hung on you, isn’t it? Cooking shows are… also fine? So yeah, these are things I know exist, but my affection for them is shallow and quickly expended. ODNSF trades on affectionate connections and twists here, so it was going to need some really audacious leaps to work for me. It’s ok that it doesn’t.

The work was peppered with some fun turns of phrase, though the ones that landed best for me were unconnected from the underlying setup. Talking about skinning cats, this nifty phrase turned up: "or why in the Realms the methods to do it are something people have devoted time to enumerating. " And I don’t know why but my loudest laugh came from “Although your parents died in a showboating accident …” THAT TURN OF PHRASE HAS BEEN AVAILABLE THIS WHOLE TIME!

There were wry smiles around the periphery throughout, but its main-quest commitment to the mashup was its engine and that didn’t speak to me. I think maybe if it clowned in that space for a while, but used it as a springboard for more character-based or bonkers escalation humor untethered from the inspirations it’s goofing on, that might have worked better?

Or maybe more compelling gameplay? I played as Froyo 3 times and granted I was probably not the most attentive, strategic-thinking player. I pretty handily won the cook-off. It seemed to trade on character/stat synergy in a way I needed to recognize, but not manage to any degree of finesse. Coupled with random die rolls outside my control. That same scenario/stat synergy seemed to leave me unprepared to (Spoiler - click to show)defeat the final boss where choices either traded on Froyo’s lowest stats or pure randomization. I’m pretty sure I see what Froyo’s path would need to be, but after 3 cycles was content to leave it be.

Mechanical, Seamless for me. If you have strong affection for the inspirations and don’t need ambitions beyond that, you would likely enjoy this more.

…

Ok, real talk. I’m a Gimli guy. Dude knows who he is, doesn’t apologize for it, and is open to character growth without drama. At my house, “And my Axe!” is a pretty common response to “Hey, you wanna come to the store with me?” This is the makeup of MY psychological stew. Game did itself no favors sidelining him. While I did appreciate the nod in background, HE IS MORE THAN HIS RELATIONSHIP WITH AN ELF.

I’m also a Hufflepuff.

Played: 10/19/23
Playtime: 1hr, 3 cycles, won bakeoff 2/3, beat Sour Ron 0/3
Artistic/Technical ratings: Mechanical, Seamless
Would Play After Comp?: No, experience seems complete


Artistic scale: Bouncy, Mechanical, Sparks of Joy, Engaging, Transcendent
Technical scale: Unplayable, Intrusive, Notable (Bugginess), Mostly Seamless, Seamless