Ratings and Reviews by JJ McC

Adapted from a Review-A-Thon 25 Review

Style: Choice-select
Played : 7/18/25
Playtime: 10m, 3 endings

Elsewhere, I have asserted that ‘good vampire’ stories can become prisoners of their own subtext. While I initially felt that knee-jerk here, BnS manages to dodge that trap pretty nimbly. It presents a sympathetic mortal-vampire love affair drama that through small touches defuses most of its potential gotchas. Let me call out three of them. 1. The mortal half of the relationship is aware of and consenting to the relationship. Consent is among the thornier of the subtexts to “good vampire” stories. 2. Vampire lore is offhandedly tweaked, implying these are not vampires as we might understand them, giving us permission to shrug off more confrontive subtext. 3. Bloodlust/feeding is ignored, like completely. It is unclear these vampires feed at all, let alone on people. A lot of this begging the question “why vampires at all?” beyond the most obvious “in service of the Jam theme.”

We are presented with a drama of college-set drunken New Years, cresting to an overnight decision. It is an interesting dynamic. Young adult romantic selfishness, magnified by alcohol, is a super relatable human situation. “I know daylight will agonize you but… HOLD ME!!!” It is a pretty deep cut of human experience and gets hella novelty points. Other than the observation of it though, it felt kind of … slight? I played through three endings, and they all showcased clearer Day After eyes in realistic ways. Meaning the tension in the choice itself was not undercut by unconvincing melodrama, but nor were its stakes meaningful. In daylight, the selfishness of the ask is acknowledged, its outcomes concrete enough, and neither particularly impactful to the overall arc of the relationship.

Brevity is a strong asset here. Yes, you are not getting deep, impactful pathos. You are getting a contained slice of life, showcasing an underserved young relationship dynamic in a precisely realized setting. The three endings I got were all clear, justified, but pretty uniform in long term emotional impact. In, out, novelty on the way, what more you can ask of a short work?

I can’t help but suspect and wonder how much previous work knowledge might enhance this (of which I have none). This is part of an ongoing series with these characters, and my suspicion is that the vampire lore, and the particulars of the relationship, are rounder across them all than on display in this standalone work.

I do humbly suggest that should this “Blood and…” series continue, you will for sure want to include “Blood and Sand.” Blood and Sand: equal parts scotch, cherry liqueur, sweet vermouth and orange juice. Shake with ice, strain, garnish with orange peel. More than the sum of its parts, hopefully a meta-statement on the series!

Adapted from a Review-A-Thon 25 Review

Style: RPG/Choice-select
Played : 7/17/25
Playtime: 2.5hrs, Day 55, plateau’d

This is a work that inflicted a very specific, very powerful Deja' Vu on me. So much so, every review approach I have tried to frame has devolved to ‘Compare to Other Work.’ Which I very much did and do not want to do. Until I went back and looked at it. It’s by the SAME AUTHOR!!! Why must you TEST MY OBJECTIVE RESOLVE SO?!?!?!

This is a, for want of better term and hopefully not coming across as too dismissive, cottage-core story. As an island’s new resident, you will spend your days eking out a living (kind of as a scavenger! at some point, all the silver chains you yeet might qualify as a crime wave), integrating into island life, exploring its mysteries and making friends. You have a daily routine of tend your garden/make a living/ and interact with four main environments/NPCs while other events continually crop up to get your attention and interest. You get so many actions a day before you must sleep and repeat. It is a very familiar, very grindy and not unpleasant gamplay style. It helps that as choice-select, it incorporates some simple but effective optimizations to minimize repetitive click friction.

The biggest strength of the work is its devotion to very specific, varied and interesting local lore. You will run the gamut from monster stalking, to treasure hunts, to naturalism, to cold case investigation, while encountering multiple local culture events of varying oddness. It all blends to a very rich picture of an island’s life, dispensed naturally enough through the act of living there. Like its spiritual doppleganger (a phrase I am DESPERATELY trying not to overuse), the depth of implementation is amazing. I went 38 game days before I started seeing intrusively repeated text (outside of dreams, which, recurring dreams are among the most easily forgiven). That’s pretty deep!

There is also an interesting twist on the ‘choose your love interest’ trope. Of the major suitor NPCs, all of them are longer in the tooth than typically showcased in these kinds of things. They all have interesting, full prior lives and are portrayed as middle aged or later. Late in life romance is an uncommon, and welcome choice to focus on, trading youthful infatuation and passion for a softer, warmer, informed-by-life sweetness. A welcome new flavor here.

There are so many nice touches and flourishes - a four-humours based “RPG Stat” model of the world. An event timetable that conveys life beyond the player and their choices. Wonderful prose throughout that sells its cottage-core setting and is fun in its own right. I can’t tell you the joy phrases like this elicit in me: “There are fish with the hearts of hanged men.” The ability to own a dog! Heck the ability TO NOT HAVE TO ENGAGE WITH A CAT! All of these made for a pleasant, immersive time. For a while.

The game is advertised as supporting 2-8 hours of gameplay! Nice swing for the bleachers here, game! Perhaps through my own choice architecture I did not get that. In fact, I seemed to have somehow steered myself into a box. Around day 38, the island’s space collapsed around me. I started getting repetitive responses to interactions. (For a moment, sit with the idea that this DIDN’T happen until gameday 38!) The missions, quests and stories kind of petered out leaving only the grind.. to no obvious purpose. In particular, my romantic interest crescendo’d to a sweet early scene of mutual interest and then… nothing? Textually, it felt like maybe I had gotten too ‘friendly’ with another NPC and the game interpreted that as disqualifying? In the moment, that was not my intention or impression. After that initial romantically charged interaction, my chosen paramour’s repeated (and ONLY repeated) text acknowledged nothing of what had passed between us. Too, I think I somehow boxed myself out narratively where one quest required depositing 4 (Spoiler - click to show)historical artifacts, of which I had secured 3. Superficially, there seemed to be no other loose threads to pursue to get the last one, even after another 17 game days. It just felt like the game petered out around me, caging off that fourth quest? Turns out, I probably needed to have more patience with unrewarded, repeated tasks.

If I resign to inevitability and compare it to its successor, there was one crucial difference. Eikas had goal focus: a specific event/climax you were building towards and able to focus on both with game play and as a narrative. Here, the much more wide open, seemingly climax-free architecture seems to encourage a wider playstyle that ultimately it does not fully service? For example, one NPC, the (Spoiler - click to show)woodsman had a humorously awkward meeting. Unlike other NPCs, who you could engage with in a variety of social situations, this NPC was a textually tougher nut to crack. Who I quickly assessed as ‘more work than worth.’ I cannot help but suspect my lack of engagement with them is what plateau’d my experience at the 2.5hr mark. (Though belated attempts to shower in gifts did not show promising daylight.)

I am intellectually curious how my choices led to this gamestate. Whether it was a choice architecture artifact or truly a narrative one. Despite the winding-down-calliope I experienced, I do recommend it. It was a very engaging two hours that only deflated and stalled in the subsequent half hour. Per my experience, though, I very much missed the climactic focus of its successor. Feels like the right lessons were learned.

Style: Choice-select
Played : 7/15/25
Playtime: 7m both endings

An honorary entry in the "Penny Pinching Parity" review sub-series. This JAM entry limits word count to a full 1k. Thankfully the author declines to provide their actual word count, freeing me from the conceit of matching it in review length. That particular fancy was FAR funnier in my head than in practice, and was running real danger of taking over this review season.

HC presents as an older school - pixel font/square nav button/90’s browser kind of feel game. As a newly awakened denizen of some unknown space (the blurb claims it to be a wandering fortress, though the text of the game does not establish that with any certainty), you explore and decide to escape or not. The exploration space was uneven, I found. One location was imminently interesting and engaging, while the others were far more functional. I get it, word constraints were a real pressure. Even so, the work would be much better served, I think, by putting all locations on equal footing, especially in a map this tight. To the point, one fewer location could free up word count for the ones that remain without really losing anything.

The central question is foregrounded pretty effectively by player exploration, camouflaging what is essentially a one-choice work behind a veneer of agency. That sounds negative, but I don’t mean it that way. By giving the player exploration agency, the choice feels organic and seamless rather than an atypical agency in an otherwise linear narrative. That said, the choice does not feel particularly HARD. The nature of the choice is presented pretty dispassionately in both cases. Thing is, absent contextual text of some sort trying to SELL the inferior option, it seems pretty clearly a resignation rather than a legitimately attractive choice. Meaning, I am at a loss to figure out who would choose it over the other.

So I didn’t, and got an ending that was reasonably satisfying for its modest investment. Then I went back and chose the other and got another ending. In a longer work, I don’t think these would have satisfied much. Which I don’t think is a useful observation, as a longer work would have had more word count to explore, paint the environment and engage the player. As a short work, we have established that artist voice is a wonderful thing to experience, warts and all. I definitely left with that here. HC’s idiosyncrasies were modest but nevertheless engaging in this short dose.

Adapted from a Review-A-Thon 25 Review

Style: (single) Choice-select
Played : 7/15/25
Playtime: 20m, one playthrough

Fantasy hero awakens with patchy memory and vaguely defined quest - a well-trodden premise, no? This is a one-choice game that does a lot to make you forget you’ve seen this before. For one, it operates in a dreamy unreality where the challenges and tasks feel simultaneously metaphoric, mythic and immediate. It accomplishes this with its prose that I ultimately found to be successful, but not unambiguously so. Moment by moment there were phrases and passages that felt more showy than impactful. Reaching just far enough that the strain was felt. But. Those passages also accumulated over time to create a specific vibe to the thing, one that sang cleanly off its ending in a really cool way. Whether this crests from “on balance good” to “completely justifies its excesses” is a nuanced line I’m just going to leave as an exercise to the player. I found it to be AT MINIMUM the former. Which, if you are familiar with my biases on this score, is no mean feat.

A less ambiguously successful element is the NPC population and our protagonist’s journey with them. A flighty but insightful “bard,” a priestess being reclaimed by the forest, a horrific wax king (a true highlight to the work), and a pursuing demon. I found all of these NPCs to be compellingly imagined, hinting to metaphor and meaning beyond their physical presence but also oh so physically PRESENT. They showcased the fantastical creativity alive in our most beloved fantasy properties and are the overriding strength of the work.

The other major strength of the work was its plot conceits and turns. Which I’m going to endeavor not to spoil. As our amnesiac protagonist progresses, more of their situation is revealed (as is de rigueur for these kinds of things), which ends up being truly surprising. Perhaps more of it is dispensed in a final info dump than I might prefer, but honestly the twist itself is interesting enough (and resonant enough with the work’s not-quite-overwrought vibe) that that is easily forgiven. What felt metaphoric, mythic is both acknowledged and justified in a very satisfying way. The portentous (Spoiler - click to show)room of swords is an amazing image that totally sells the final twist. It is the kind of work whose immediate details sometimes ring hollow or unconvincing (not enough time to remember? emotionality asserted but not felt?) but whose final twist contextualizes those disconnects into a specific kind of mythology.

Notwithstanding all the moaning I’ve stitched into the above paragraphs, by the work’s end all those quibbles were kind of moot and immaterial. Its overriding plot engine, and the wonderful characters that populate it to that point compensate and justify all of it in a very satisfying way.

There is one quibble I have that was not so easily dismissed. The interactivity. It was billed as a one-choice work, in service of a Jam of that theme. One choice works have a unique challenge. As a percentage of the choices available to the player, a HUGE amount of weight is placed on that choice. Here, that one choice is kind of… (Spoiler - click to show)immaterial? The narrative makes quite clear what the impact of the untaken choice is, to the point there is no real need to revisit it. It is effectively a (Spoiler - click to show)no-choice narrative masquerading as something else. This is perfectly aligned with the narrative theme of the game, by the way. This artifact reinforces the tragedy of the piece. I am at a loss to envision a better one-choice this particular work might proffer. What I question is, does the one choice ADD to the narrative in a meaningful way? I’m not so sure. In compliance with the Jam’s rules, the player has no agency up to that point, so it is not really a question of playing with player initiative. It is a choice that reinforces the theme of the piece, but whose ACT OF CHOOSING doesn’t really register as meaningful, either in the moment or certainly in retrospect.

Look, Jam games have their specific rules. Sometimes these rules breed unexpected creativity and resonance. Other times, you get a really cool story, well rendered, that is not necessarily showcasing its constraints. Does that make the work lesser? Not even a little bit.

Adapted from a Review-A-Thon 25 Review

Style: Visual Novel
Played : 7/15/25
Playtime: 15m demo

There were enough caveats and warnings to this work, relative its Linux readiness, that after some mental tussling I decided to start with the demo. I needn’t have worried, it seems. The engine ran just fine for me. This is a well put together visual novel that carries some super strong Wonka vibes. We are introduced to a collection of characters, most to one degree or another characterized as flawed if not selfish. They are invited by a wealthy innovator to experience the wonder and magic of his latest creation - shared, immersive VR. While the demo ended before further generalizations could crystallize, early on it feels like it is leaning into “and get some comeuppance for their narrative-imposed shortcomings.”

It has a lot to recommend it. The production value is quite high, showcasing photographic backgrounds to static cartoony character portraits animated in clever and amusing ways. The graphical interface is pleasant and engaging, and the peppy background music sets the stage quite well. The butterfly motif and animations in particular are really wonderful. It feels ungenerous to focus on how those elements failed to land for me, the more so given I only really experienced the preamble. It is true that that experience convinced me this was not going to be for me, which, ungenerous or not, is the headline for my engagement with this work.

In general, the graphical choice of cartoon-characters-on-photographic-backgrounds has an uphill climb with me. I get the cartoon character thing, those kinds of portrayals facilitate player engagement better than photographs through iconic aliasing. Contrasted to photo realism though, the effect is mildly jarring, positing a world space that requires some mental dissonance to resolve. Where used in service of making a statement about the artificiality of the characters, that works for me. As a default palette choice, I find its artificiality to carry perhaps-unwanted subtext. It also feels like a missed opportunity. You already have some dissonant graphical choices. In a story about VR worlds, the opportunity to contrast to the ‘real world’ via background graphics seems a potentially subtle and powerful possibility. Here though, at least through the demo, no such differentiation exists. Granted, maybe the point of the fictional tech is how “indistinguishable it is from everyday,” I’m just not sure how the graphical choices make a great case for that.

It isn’t helped, I think, that the very first character we meet is described as having white hair, yet whose illustration portrays a darker coloring. Again, it is a jarring dissonance that serves to push the reader a bit. If we can’t trust the words to report the evidence of our eyes, how can we trust their later assertions? Which, boy does it make. We are then introduced to a collection of characters that will be experiencing this uber-VR world on behalf of its creator.

As a crew they are clearly delineated but all kind of one dimensional? A nervous but well-meaning banker, elderly children’s author, skeptical scientist, passionate chef (whom the narrator, apropo of no dialogue or business we have seen, characterizes as ‘gluttonous’), a tech focused prodigy and a gamer/skate boi. And the PC of course, tentatively the Charlie in this Chocolate Factory. The NPCs feel as one dimensional as their Roald Dahl counterparts, which is not NECESSARILY a bad thing. If their story function is to avatar their shortcomings for poetic comeuppance, sure. Why not? The dynamic is just a little off though, since WE are a faceless vanilla Charlie, we don’t actually have a sympathetic guide to the proceedings here. Some of the caricatured characters do generate more sympathy, but that is its own pitfall. When we understand single-note characters as unappealing, their one-dimensionality gives us permission to dismiss them. Purportedly sympathetic one-note characters on the other hand… feel kind of uncanny valley? Undeserving of our sympathy because of their one-dimensionality? And also at odds with any emerging comeuppance narrative (raising the prospect that it is a misread of the tale). Too, some of them are kind of clumsily portrayed. The narrator’s drive-by comment on the chef stands out, as does some pretty dated slang used by the gamer.

Before getting to the central conceit of the piece, there is one technical choice that further pushes at player engagement. I speak of timed text. I assert that I have a greater patience for this than many in this community, but this was too much even for me. I dialed text speed to its fastest setting, and STILL endured dramatic pauses and other artifacts that slowed the reading experience in a counter-productive way. Like the graphical choices, it never settled into a background atmospheric artifact, it continually jarred and frustrated my progress.

The plot does move pretty briskly to our first encounter with the magical VR, where the cast gets to inhabit each others’ full-sensory dreams. Once again, there is clear narrative shorthand on display. Our first dream is hosted by the elderly children’s author. Unsurprisingly, it is a whimsical tea party hosted by cartoon rabbits. It feels weirdly infantilizing. Here we have a woman whose decades of life do not give her a full inner life of which her art is only a part. No, her dreams are fully and completely summarized by her craft, by wanting to INHABIT that craft. Again, in service of a Wonka-like plot, fine. Except also, underwhelming? I mean, this amazing tech that breaths realistic life into our mind’s eye, and we get a tea party? Is that a compelling use of time and resources? How much data center water and power was consumed to deliver THAT? Fittingly, the characters focus more on the wonder of the technical achievement than the dream itself, but it can’t help but underline this as a novelty, and not the transformative innovation promised by its creator.

And there the demo ended. I reluctantly conclude this is not for me. Too many creative choices are pushing at me in too many ways. I outline them all above both as an honest reflection of my engagement (hey! It can’t be cruel if it’s honest, right?? RIGHT???), and to highlight that these choices are quite legitimate, artistically, and folks with different hot buttons than me may have a much more positive reaction. Certainly the Wonka template is a tried and true one, the setting and premise a promising spin on it. I wish the authors success in finding their audience.

(I should parenthetically note that my consistent ‘Wonka’ characterization is informed by the first 15m of the work. There is every possibility its narrative aims are different in the context of the larger piece. Please don’t take the word of a dude that bailed so early as in any way definitive of the full work.)

Adapted from a Review-A-Thon 25 Review

Style: Visual Novel
Played : 7/15/25
Playtime: 30m

This is a visual novel that (Spoiler - click to show)headfakes a supernatural premise as a tool to cast fraught family dynamics (and possible mental health issues?) as horror. It occupies a similar space as Turn of the Screw, playing with audience expectations of supernatural stories to cast its protagonist (and family) in high relief. I found it pretty effective at this. That frisson of ‘is what’s going on what they SAY is going on?’ is a constant engagement to the reader, keeping the mind open and probing so that adjacent emotionality can get past any disbelief or detachment and get purchase. It is a very effective narrative tool, well employed here.

Over its runtime, it also does something interesting with its characters. The same suspicious dissonance that keeps us engaged, allows (most of) its characters to grow from initially painted one-dimensional extremes to more fully realized characters. Most especially the mother and sister. This is accomplished tangentially, as we internalize seemingly conflictory story beats that are well crafted to paint a picture in our heads without outright explaining things. The father character never really rises to that level, though this is not necessarily fatal, he is somewhat orthogonal to the story’s aims. The protagonist is slightly different, no less powerfully painted. Here the fact of interactivity is used to flesh out the character via the reader’s engagement rather than any imposed plot beats.

The multi-media presentation is very winning - abstract, pastel fog spaces over a moody soundtrack are excellent choices to reinforce the slippery, out of focus nature of the narrative. The text itself is attractively wrapped in a cool graphical box. It is timed text, but crucially plays out faster than we (ok, I) could read, meaning we get the “realtime conversation” vibe without slowing things down. The only off note I felt here was an early screen that seemed to be out of synch - a second, visually incompatible screen crowding up from the bottom. Later, such a graphical dividing line is used to good effect but early on it felt more like a bug than an artistic choice. The fact that this “bug” was not repeated suggests it might be deliberate, even if it didn’t read so.

There are a few further dissonances. Most notably, the narrative plays with POV. The protagonist, the character we are nominally aligned with as reader, is rendered in first person. We have full access to their inner life and to the extent we feel proactive, it is with this POV character. It is somewhat jarring then when a later character is referred to in second person, explicitly casting them as the reader! The first effect of this is to nicely reframe some prior text that felt applied to one character as another’s. The price we pay for that neat twist though is a weird space where we understand/empathize/and align with the “ME” of the narrative, not the “YOU.” In fact, notwithstanding that we are consistently called “you” by the narrative, it does not produce a dramatic tension within us or the story, it just kind of jars things. I have no doubt there was a purpose to this explicit choice, but whatever that might be was lost in the confusion.

My other main quibble is that the ending felt… arbitrary. It just kind of ended, resolving little of the tension of the work. To be fair, there is real resolution for one character as well as the ‘what really happened’ plot. Between the reader alignment confusion, and the fact that the narrative continued to power on for a bit after those climaxes, I was left feeling like the story outran its own aims. Instead of crescendoing with resolution of plot closure, it lingered on. The message here is unmistakable - there is no CONCLUSION, life continues past things like plot climaxes. True, but… isn’t the power of stories heavily tied to closure and climax? Even “nothing ever ends” is a meaningful ending, but it should be underlined in the reader’s head to land as actual ending. For me, my mindset was just a bit too muddled to get there.

All that said, I would still recommend this work - it does many things right, creates a wonderfully enigmatic vibe for much of its runtime, portrays some interestingly fraught family dynamics and has impactful revelations to dispense.

Adapted from a Review-A-Thon 25 Review

Style: Choice-Select
Played : 7/15/25
Playtime: 5m, three playthroughs

Another in my review sub-series "Penny Pinching Parity," where I attempt to match review wordcount to IF Jam limits! In this case, the count in question is 498.

This is a two-hander, a dialogue based lightly sci-fi game of living with mismatched power. It is a relatively short game of trying to influence a mercurial lord to engage a rescue mission, when said lord is more preoccupied with their own inter-personal potence. It doesn’t take many viewings of Game of Thrones to understand the dread of this scenario, of LIVING it. Ultimately, you choose between (Spoiler - click to show)self-respect and (Spoiler - click to show)physical abuse.

I think this dynamic is pretty well understood (if quite timely), and deeply unpleasant. This familiarity could undermine impact pretty quickly. So much so that having it be the entirety of the work’s artistic aims presents a challenge to the author. The solution? Make the game short. A distilled, heightened representation, that has its say and lets you stew in the aftermath before you fully realize it is done. This is the perfect way to realize this message.

If I had a quibble with the game, it was in its multimedia choices. Not all of them. For example, the “Approval” score being the only game stat was a kind of genius way of underlining how primarily important this lord’s opinion was in the scheme of things. There is no “happiness” score, no other score AT ALL. Similarly, the sound choice was nicely evocative of the mood of the piece - omnipresent dread, even behind seemingly transactional conversations. Highlighting that the content of the words is only half the story.

Its visual presentation is what I find less focused. To my eyes, there is just a bit too much going on, in a way that doesn’t coalesce together. The background conveys “generic sci fi background” where its sci-fi-ness is the least necessary thing about the work. The bar coding is a very powerful choice, emphasizing the property aspect of the characters… except the lord ALSO has a barcode? That feels like a mixed message for this particular work. The title screen also feels unfocused: its logo and title fonts feel like too many disparate graphical elements that don’t resonate with each other. “Heaven” is one sci-fi font, “Alive” a more organic one, and the barcoding a third, only the latter resonating with the background in any meaningful way. Graphical dissonance is not a BAD impulse, but to my eye, this feels like one too many. I might suggest recasting “Heaven” to more align with the barcoding, to maximize the visceral punch of the “Alive” choice.

Don’t let these quibbles get you down though. As we have established, brevity and focus, even imperfectly realized, are overriding virtues. Don’t make me COMMAND you to play it… that might undermine your APPROVAL stat… and nobody wants that…

Feeling word-parity smug. Exactly 498!

Adapted from a Review-A-Thon 25 Review

Graphical playfulness seems to be the least-utilized tool in the IF author’s toolbox. I don’t mean to imply it is unique, certainly examples WELL predate the internet and IF, going all the way back to illuminated bibles. I am tempted to say it engages a different artistic muscle than the more writerly “words’ meaning are the canvas” approach. Maybe I’m just defining IF too narrowly? Or perhaps focusing too narrowly? What are words but graphical representations of ideas, intended to evoke an intellectual and/or emotional response? Different than paintings only in the steps necessary to create and consume them? Against this definition, IF (and all computer art. except AI “art”. f*@$ that s#!@) is just another medium, this one using its inherent tools of time and dynamism to enhance that same impulse. I mean, Super Mario conjures very specific human engagement, nevermind The Last Of Us.

This specific approach though, of using words both for their meaning and as graphical elements, this feels under-exploited. MIMM is a poster child for the potential of this approach. It uses dynamic graphical layout of conflicting snippets of internal monologue to drive home how messy, fragile and conflicted we can be behind the face we present to the world. Words tumble over each other, entwine in the full breadth of two dimensions, flicker, cloud and clarify all at once. I found this to be insanely well executed. A marriage of form and function that perfectly sing off each other to unify into an artistic statement more effective than its disconnected parts.

Two things ensure that this central conceit neither overruns the narrative premise, nor becomes a distracting flourish undermining the experience. The first is the work’s brevity. It neither overstays its welcome, nor dilutes its own impact. The choice to slowly but noticeably ramp the visual chaos in synch with the narrative is exactly the right one to maximize its punch. The second is the high melodrama/low detail plot. It is a heightened emotional story, almost Twilight Zony in its distilled dramatic shorthand. This resonates with the high artificiality of its construction. A choice this visually dramatic married to an appropriately dire melodrama allows both to flourish, rather than one or the other taking all the oxygen. It is less like form in service of function and more a collaboration of equals. Either in isolation could easily slip into schmaltz or histrionics, off-putting in their exaggeration. Together they resonate in a way that reinforces both.

I really liked this small dose of artistic playfulness. It felt novel, well realized, well tuned, and perfectly sized.

Adapted from a Review-A-Thon 25 Review

Style: Choice-Select
Played : 7/14/25
Playtime: 5m, two playthroughs, all 497 words

Another in my "Penny Pinching Parity" review sub-series. Microgame jams are a practically review-proof endeavor. If we take the reviewer’s task to its most transactional core, the question at play is ‘Is it worth a player’s time?’ Of course this question is nuanced. A simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ is so heavily steeped in the reviewer’s biases and fascinations that without context it is practically useless.

So we try to build context, frame our reactions. Readers can ideally extrapolate their own response based on this, either in sympathy or opposition. Y’know what that takes though? Words, man, lots of words. So.. at what point does the review become out of scale to its subject?

In service of a sub-500 word game? I’m not sure I can decide on a MOVIE to watch in fewer than 500 words, let alone capture complicated feelings from art! And for these short works, length matters. Investing in gameplay for multiple hours, to be underwhelmed is opportunity cost frittered away from other things you COULD be enjoying more. Investing in review reading is time you could instead be playing the game in question! I mean, I’m pushing half this game’s word budget, and haven’t said a damn thing about it yet!

Let’s just posit that 5 minute art IS worth your time. You will waste far more than that on far less rewarding elements of your day. Like reading these reviews.

Of, say, The Moon’s Knight! Art thrives under constraint, and MK is no exception. Every word is crucially important, and must cover multiple bases: mood, character, plot, scene. This is actually true of all writing, but the clarity of hard limits drives it home. I am an unabashed fan of this author’s prose. Their longer works cast a spell on me through the power of carefully crafted, moody sentences. It is a fair question, if I pretend I don’t know the answer, whether shorter works would clip these wings too short to fly. Well, no, not at all. MK makes the perfect decision to tightly constrain narrative focus - a study of a mythic, doomed romance set against a backdrop of brutal warfare.

Ok, writing it out like that doesn’t sound clipped, nor does it feel so in the moment. We are treated to visceral yet lyric passages that feel exactly as elaborate as needed to weave this particular tale’s spell. There is no sense of pushing against an arbitrary boundary, only the incredible sharpness of it. The discipline comes in what to leave out: backstory that is more powerfully inferred anyway; rounded character traits that are immaterial to the central conflict; world building that is so much chrome. Jettisoned or gestured at without belabored fanfare. This is a focused work that lets its prose breathe where it needs to, and does not waste time where it does not.

Do yourself a favor. Spend the 5 minutes. (497!)

Adapted from a SpringThing25 Review

Played: 4/21/25
Playtime: 1hr, Demon Hunter(2), Healthy Appetite(1); 2 playthroughs

If there is a category of reviews I struggle with, it is for trauma- or therapy-based IF. Don’t get me wrong, IF is a TREMENDOUS tool to use to build empathy, sympathy, and commiseration for people that can probably use a bit of daylight in their lives. It’s just, if I am not afflicted with the particular concerns of the work, my takes are always a bit suspect. The BEST I can do is approach from an empathy perspective, and even then, I am subject to debilitating blind spots in my engagement.

This is a work whose protagonist struggles with crippling, depressive self-doubt compounded with emotional family trauma. The nature of the work is to explore the protagonist’s apartment, struggle to accomplish daily tasks against a backdrop of near-insurmountable motivation gaps, and experience shadowed flashbacks when considering takeout menus. Ok, rereading that last sentence, that is way more glib than I intended. Food and food preparation are integral touchstones for the protagonist, so the conceit is not unjustified.

Moment by moment it works pretty well. The ‘marketing’ descriptions on the menus are particularly well done, and the contrast between them and their less idealized memories is wryly impactful. If you probe the menus deeply enough you are confronted with representative (Spoiler - click to show)mental demons that are evocative, nicely metaphorical and attractively illustrated. These are all very strong aspects of the work.

The interactivity is where I could feel my blind spots encroaching. On the one hand, atop the screen are three attributes that seem to gauge the player’s effectiveness and mental state. Not only did I not detect an impact to those, I did not seem to be able to modify them in a predictable way. In particular, if I deliberately chose the most (Spoiler - click to show)unhealthy responses, the stats remained resolutely unchanged. Nor did that seem to influence future possible choices.

Further, there was little to no back pressure when selecting the most (Spoiler - click to show)optimistic, constructive choices. Given the dramatic language of the inner monologue, this felt.. too easy? This culminated in gameplay that unveiled (Spoiler - click to show)more food menus if you just kept cleaning, well beyond a threshold even nominally healthy me would be capable of!

Another dissonant tone for me was the breadth of the menus (not all of which I encountered during one playthrough!). A wide variety of ethnicities is represented in restaurants. All of which can trigger childhood memories of family preparation? That is a VERY cosmopolitan family! The language used to describe this SEEMED to lean into handed-down legacies, but were so broadly applied I went from experiencing a SPECIFIC family story to a muddied, ‘wait, what is their heritage now?’

So, all of these things kept me at a bit of an arm’s length, until I considered it in retrospect. What if this was NOT intended to be a rigorous recreation of mental struggles? What if, instead, this was a determinedly encouraging work, aimed at players commiserating with the protagonist? The message was not ‘this is what it feels like’ but ‘you CAN do this, even if it doesn’t feel like it.’ ‘No matter how bad your past choices, you can make a different choice next time.’ The work was simultaneously acknowledging that life experiences can suck and put nearly unsustainable pressures on us, while offering that it is still in our power to grapple with it. We need not be defeated even when it feels like we have been. What I initially read as ‘reductively easy problem solutions’ became instead a cheerleading of some kind, offering hope. And maybe even a bit of wish fulfillment to sweeten the pot.

The blurb for the work seems to echo this take for me, and elevated the whole thing beyond my clinical ‘realism’ knee jerk. The fact that a work of subtle optimism and support can be wrapped in (and punch through!) a graphical package of such evocative darkness is kind of… wonderful.

Horror Icon: Leatherface
Vibe: Wrestling Demons
Polish: Smooth
Gimme the Wheel! : If this were my project I would be forced to acknowledge that I was pretty unprepared to engage this subject matter. I would focus, then, on maybe sharpening the protagonist’s ethnic heritage a bit. Pick a few each runthrough to center a family experience on and steer other menus to a different, less immediate shading. I say this in the full acknowledgement that it could double the word count!

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