Reviews by JJ McC

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.

Adapted from a SpringThing25 Review

Played: 4/13/25
Playtime: 45m, 13/8 bailed without unlocking Guide sections

Light-fantasy parsers run the risk of become samey in a player’s mind. Both in the moment and more so on reflection. They are such a staple of the field, you really have to cut new ground somehow to get them to stand out. Similarly for slice-of-life relationship dramas, though those at least have the hook of (usually) singular character work. Y’know what I can’t accuse of saminess? Weird poetry- and art- driven works that marry an impish sense of humor, playfulness of form and nearly opaque bizarrity.

Those things stick with you. I offer PWW as Exhibit A here.

The conceit, such as it is, is to select a series of abstractly themed art inspirations, to nominally sketch for an installation. Choose six times from a pool of four categories, three of which are delightfully random. The fourth being ‘a cat.’ In return you get a pithy line, a spot of poetry, a quasi-parser room description, or an anecdote, all very evocative and also standalone and unrelated to each other. All of it presented under a mutating boilerplate ‘restart’ title-author.

Y’know one way to get me to stop complaining about ‘poetry’? Make it good. Y’know the other way? Keep me so off balance, mentally, that I don’t have time to fuss with that, consumed as I am with clawing for mental purchase against the opaque logic of the thing. PWW does BOTH of those things! It would be easy to push into a state where I would just throw my hands in the air in desperation and futility and abandon things. Which I eventually did. But MAN did it take a long time!

The playful vibe of the thing is its overriding impression, just dazzling with inventiveness and unexpected text. This is augmented by a “guide/help system” that seems to be as playful as the rest of the work, if a bit more structured. I say ‘seems’ because I never actually got to consume much of it.

Oh, I was gamely playing along, no doubt about that. I was really enjoying it. After each set of 6, there was a portentous “status is X out of eight” message. Clear enough, right? As I closed in on 8 though, after hitting its wild themes in many combinations.. nothing changed. Well, one thing changed, I started to get some repetition. This did not itself break things, those repetitions were scattered among many novel ideas, but it did make me think ‘if you KNOW the player is going to go for 6x8 = 48 of these things, wouldn’t you have at least that many in the chamber, front-loaded?’ That was only a mild ripple compared to what happened when I closed the 8th run.

Which was nothing. No newly available guide sections were unlocked. No achievements noted. No textual acknowledgement other than the score itself. If the end note highlighted anything, it did not read as significant or different than the wryly fantastic observations of the other 7. So I kept going. 9/8, 10/8… all the way to 13/8. More and more repetition, but nothing new of note. Ok that’s a crazy thing to say about this work. SO MUCH new playful text. Just nothing new ludically.

I mean, I clearly missed the point of this. Let me tell you one more thing about how I engaged this piece. This Spring Thing has inflicted on me a variety of feline-influenced works at this point. You KNOW I am bull headed about this. For the first 8 runthroughs, I ignored that inspiration and only played with the other 3 in many varieties and combinations. All of 1, alternating, cyclical patterns, drum rudiment patterns. I flirted with a lot of them. At pass 9, my thought was ‘ok, maybe the work NEEDS me to bring in the Cats.’ So I tried that, begrudgingly. To no apparent effect. Did this perverse playstyle of mine trip over some subtle code artifacts? Don’t know.

I DO know the repetition got more dense. I suspect there is some sort of selection patterning that might be decodable. I find it hard to believe that 4 full sections of Guide are headfakes, including a bit on Sylvia Plath (whose work I was previously unfamiliar with, but who this piece encouraged me to explore). But after spending so long with it, enjoying the wild disconnects and playfulness of form, I was kind of unwilling to go back and treat those as logic puzzles. They just worked so WELL as disconnected shots of joy, I didn’t WANT to gamify them. It felt.. disrespectful.. to treat these wonderful bits of wordplay as functional puzzle pieces when their appeal was SO not functional.

I mean:

"You are a lot of not much to look at."
"Those who burn meat
to please the gods
know little of meat or gods"

Why do I want to do ANYTHING with that other than just titter delightedly? I am 100% sure I did not crack the code of this thing, and may in fact have confounded it. I am equally sure that it lived up to its FIRST boilerplate title block:

"A fun activity <3 by Drew Cook
Release Nulla / Serial number 12345 / Inform 7 v10.x / D

"This is a fun game with a gimmick."

That is true even if you never tumble to the gimmick.

Horror Icon: Regan/Pazuzu
Vibe: Creative Chaos
Polish: Gleaming or Textured, depending on the function of that 13/8 score
Gimme the Wheel! : What would I do next if this were my project? Hm. It is so clearly NOT something I’m capable of, so that’s hard to answer. I guess I would poke into that ‘nothing happens at 8/8’ artifact (which I think the author did?). Either sharpen the artistic statement for the dummies in the back row, or fix any bugs that need fixing.

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: 4/13/25
Playtime: 1hr total, 8 games, what a bargain!

The Senica student anthology has become an indispensable part of the Spring Thing in my head. Probably because it’s been here as long as I have, I’ve never seen a Thing WITHOUT one! I look forward to it every year. So much creativity in such small bundles, ripe for rapid consumption and enjoyment. The low-pressure uniting theme (this year is ‘found on a riverbank/seashore’) giving a form for the inspiration to follow. What a great part of this community, and what a great batch of games this year.

If I did the ‘blurb/learnings’ thing again, it would cast that in stone going forward, so instead I am going to break and do it more freeform. I will close with a ‘my favorite thing…’

A Brand New World /by Raiden/ (15m, 3 endings)
I would love to be coy and teasing with ‘what do you think is found on the beach..?’ but its right there in the title! Probably not what you expected, no? There was a really nice twist in this one, as some background text hinted that people were going missing, but it turned out (Spoiler - click to show)they just didn’t want to come back! That was a really clever twist on what we might expect to be a horror premise. Instead, the player gets an all-to-brief introduction to an imaginative and playful fantasy world.
My favorite thing: I really like the long paragraphs of deep description. The author took the time to paint a vivid picture of their fantastical setting, and really conveyed it well.

BOTTLE /by M.A.S./ (5m, 5 endings)
Ok, this one ALSO telegraphs the found object in its title! It’s a classic, but this one ups the tension a bit with a large branch of endings that jump on you quickly and impactfully. This is a very streamlined, interesting branching game, very replayable due to its tight depth.
My favorite thing: The IF version of jump scare is the text message that both the player and protagonist character read together. If there is a two-word phrase MORE charged than (Spoiler - click to show)You’re Next! I don’t know what it is.

Fragments of the Nile /by Storyteller/ (5m, 4 endings)
Here’s a story that hides its found object from the title! The player is an archeologist, interacting with a find that has some secrets. I am a horror fan (I mean the whole conceit of this year’s reviews attests to this), so this story was right up my alley. There are quite a few endings available, and interestingly some tie together building a fuller picture of the threat. This is a very good use of multiple ending IF!
My favorite thing: I think this one really went the extra mile to establish its Eqyptian archeology setting. There are a few screens worth of table setting that really bring the player into the story very effectively.

Nothing /by Gooseberry/ (5m, 6 endings)
Here we find a book on the shore, one that we are continually presented with opportunity to reject, neglect, or read and follow. As game players we are likely to want to engage, but the continual variations on ‘ignore it’ are kind of funny and present a low-key realistic picture of life. We might as easily forget things we stumble across as engage them! If we do engage, we are treated to a time travel scenario where we might learn a bit… and might suffer some unexpected consequences!
My favorite thing: This game rewarded investigation. Careful players can find clues down one branch to keep from dying in another. This kind of player driven setup-payoff is one of the stronger aspects of IF - letting the player have a fair chance at navigating its more dire outcomes!

POWER TURTLE /by 3N/ (5m, 5 endings)
What might we find at the shore, other than shore life? Here, the player rescues a.. well, you see it in the title. From there, you are treated to a VERY broad branching decision tree, leading a large array of outcomes. It is very ambitious and very well done. Every branch seems fully fleshed out with the consequences and subsequent choices to make. It was kind of thrilling how wide the space got, very quickly.
My favorite thing: I explored a lot of endings, and what was really cool was while they were all very different, depending on player choices, they were all pretty ‘good’! Just in very logical and satisfying ways! Conditioned to expect shock twists, or ‘good/bad’ endings, this was a delightful surprise.

Those voices are getting louder, captain. /by Mushroom/ (5m, 2 endings)
This is a quick dialogue tree game, where the protagonists is talking to a shipmate about something he may or may not have seen. The ‘found object’ of this game. The game does a good job of presenting varying responses you might take to the poor man’s ravings, culminating in a neat twist that fully reflects how seriously you have taken his ravings!
My favorite thing: I am torn. On the one hand, my favorite thing was the use of color cues to reinforce the endings. Default color/font schemes put all the emphasis on text to carry the load, but graphical flourishes are very much part of IF and should not be neglected! On the other hand, The author does something cheeky with their choice dialogue, where the main character’s thoughts are parenthesized and italicized. They form an often quite amusing inner dialogue that contrasts humorously to the spoken dialogue, and in some places soft-guides the player.

Untilted by BB-Anon (5m, 6 endings)
This particular found object leads the player on a mini-exploration of a section of the beach. I really liked the real sense of geography the game conveyed. I could picture the beach/cliff/road area I was wandering around in. Depending on choices I made, I might not get farther than the investigation, or I may get to some really funny-bananas endings. I don’t want to spoil it, but I had no idea that was ANYONE’S wish, let alone mine! :]
My favorite thing: As a wannabe game designer myself, I really liked how this author reconverged their choices where it made sense. If you go down one branch, you may find yourself on a different branch due to how those choices bring you to a similar state. This is very important tool in the IF author’s tool box, and I love seeing it here!

Wonder of the Woods… by Leontine (& Eudokimos) (15m)
Wow, this one blew me away. The graphical presentation, scripted font, the wonderful character and animal illustrations.. the enthusiasm and love in the project really came through. As a player, you get to explore a quartet (quintet?) of friends, each of which has an animal "familiar", as they try to engage their section of river and a difficult friend of theirs. It is both deep and broad, and really paints a full picture of friends cooperating in a very busy, very important afternoon.
My favorite thing: It would be easy to say that the graphical care was my favorite, but I actually think I liked the game setup even more. Being able to play as four different girls, each with their own animal friend was plain fun. All four were different, and their adventures varied. And they all came together at the end in a satisfying, choice-driven way. Yeah, I’m sticking with the game design as my favorite.

Viva la Senica Thing!

Horror Icon: Crypt Keeper. Ok, he’s not one of the icons I pre-selected, and I was VERY tempted to go “Children of the Corn” here, but no. I have pitched this year on year, so Crypt Keeper is reserved for Senica.
Vibe: Anthology
Polish: Textured
Gimme the Wheel! : No. Give MORE students the Wheel!

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: 4/13/25
Playtime: 20m, 2 endings, 9/10 on quiz

For a change of pace, let me ignore my own angsts and instead plumb the angsts of a first time author! There is something heady about the raw, unfiltered creativity of engaging a new communication medium. The thrill of learning new skills, and putting them in service of a creative vision, it is a boiling, bubbling, embarrassment of riches, a swirling soup of enthusiasm that latches on to the prose, the construction, and carries to the reader. This was my overwhelming sense of this piece - an enthusiasm to pack if full of graphics, external educational links, meaningful choice points and classically-informed mini puzzles. Stir it all together into a wonderful, asymmetric stew of an experience.

I particularly liked how it simultaneously functioned as an education vehicle (on the myth of Atlantis and a primer on ecological responsibility), and an unsentimental view of human history. As we navigate the events via our time-lost bottle, two options loom large. To view the last days of Atlantis (whose parallels to modernity seem very deliberate), or to pen a missive of warning hoping to avert that end.

That latter effort received with a resolutely cold “Time is a great wall, and my message is only a stone thrown against it.” The work acknowledges the limits of communication when communication is rebuffed, but somehow nevertheless infuses a stubborn optimism IN THE VERY ACT OF IT. And makes LEARNING an act of defiance.

Yes, the work carried artifacts of an author engaging new tools but was considered and complete nevertheless. And its cautionary, defiant enthusiasm more than compensated any rookie missteps.

Horror Icon: Regan/Pazuzu
Vibe: Stealth Education
Polish: Textured
Gimme the Wheel! : I would not deign to seize the wheel of anyone’s first effort. The joy of completing a project, of capturing messages you feel compelled to share in a medium that continually offers new mechanisms for it.. everyone should experience that without me grabbing the wheel!

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

Cat protagonist. This is what we’ve come to. If my credentials as a reviewer of superhuman dedication are ever in question, I call your attention to this review.

This is a light work whose overriding atmosphere is welcoming. From its friendly, warm wordsmithing, to its forgiving and increasingly nudgy gameplay; its limited vocabulary (meant as a design choice, not a criticism), to its stated purpose, as a feature showcase to budding Inform authors… all of it just conveys “C’mon in the waters fine, and not nearly as scary as you think.”

While I am clearly not the primary audience for any of these things, least of all its protagonist, the nature of its amiability is that it is impossible to begrudge the time spent. The presentation goes a long way to this feeling. From its care paid to Scene change formatting cues, its ascii cat ‘pause for more,’ its scorecard rendition, it is all very deliberate and polished, conveying we are in strong, gentle hands for the duration of this modest puzzle fest. Against a backdrop of parsers often characterized by an intimidating, minimalist and cold greater-than prompt, this work goes out of its way to make every part of the experience less vexing.

I could talk about what it sacrifices in service of that, but… why? I mean, it would be wild if I criticized Smokey the Bear for his inability to explain the difference between colon and semi-colon. Meet the big guy where he lives, yeah? This is a work that has a specific goal, and is SO successful at it other things don’t matter. Its creative tradeoffs are uniformly successful in service of that goal. Were I a blank slate at the beginning of my artistic journey, filled with unspecific ambitions and preoccupations and completely asea on how to even start, this work would be a godsend - both a reassurance, a first step, and a glimpse of what success could like.

It would feel outright inspirational, if not for the nagging feeling that its protagonist choice is a subtle and portentous warning. That the only cost the aspiring artist might pay is THEIR ENTIRE SOUL.

Horror Icon: Pinhead
Vibe: Welcoming
Polish: Smooth
Gimme the Wheel! : If this were my project, it would be focused on TADS, not Inform. Just that one small change. Well, maybe just one more.

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: 4/11/25
Playtime: 1.5hr dying all the time, even in Easy mode?

Is there less invigorating an experience than to dive deep into the rules and setting of a game, tentatively conclude it is probably not going to be for you, then see that borne out exactly as you foresaw? Oh, I know! It would definitely be less invigorating to read a ‘review’ that only had that to say!

Chronicles codifies a very maximalist TTRPG-kind of experience. Deep world lore, informed by a bespoke magic system that translate to specific game mechanics. Evolving powers, abilities and capabilities that unfold as you progress. Learning the strengths and weaknesses of all those abilities as a kind of problem-solving toolkit to apply to continually varying challenges. An ethos of progression through conflict, where most interactions are framed as mortal combat-focused encounters. Young me would have fallen head over heels for this kind of thing.

And one presented so slickly: its uniform artistic esthetic (described a AI assisted? pushing my boundaries here!) and card-reminiscent stat-catalog graphical design underscore its RPG bones. It is also boldly attractive in its own right.

Older me is not so easily won over. Or, probably closer to the truth, less open to it. I struggled mightily with the magic/combat system. I never really tumbled onto an HP-recovery mechanic, meaning I would go from encounter to encounter being worn down by enemy steel AND MY OWN SPELLS, until numbers went to 0. Some encounters did provide a healing goose, but in a way that seemed to underscore its exceptional and scarce nature. I just did not have it in me to explore the interplay of spell/weapon values and combat sequence to discover optimal, effective strategies.

The NPCs I encountered, even the central mystery were all quite interesting and engaging. For me, it just continually ran aground on seemingly unavoidable combat that I never mastered the subtleties of, gatekeeping all that stuff I really wanted. I died and restarted (on ‘middle’ setting) so many times I finally just capitulated to Easy/Story mode.. and still died in combat? I did not detect the promised ‘encounter bypass’ mechanism, so much so I question whether I was actually in easy mode at all? Is there a bug there? Or just a player missing an obvious out?

I guess my conclusion is I liked everything about it EXCEPT the combat, but found the combat inescapable, and ultimately pushed me away, unfinished. So in an effort to provide any value at all to this abortive review, let me say: if you like dense lore translating to complex, subtle fighting mechanics, this will likely thrill you. The supporting story and graphical elements are dynamite draws to that central suite of mechanics you could just d20 with all day. Certainly I could see younger me doing that!

Horror Icon: Jigsaw
Vibe: Lore Heavy RPG
Polish: Gleaming
Gimme the Wheel! : If it were my project, I would repair the Easy mode. Who’m I kidding, what I’d really do is ignore the other two modes! This is why so many projects are NOT mine to fiddle with.

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: 4/11/25
Playtime: 30m, two endings

There is a fundamental problem with “good vampire” narratives. It is all that gosh-darn subtext. In some ways that subtext is helpful - the exotic ‘other’ both feared and desired, a tailor-made receptacle for bigotry and bias. The problem is, in the text of vampire lore, that bigotry and bias turn out to be COMPLETELY CORRECT. They SHOULD be feared. They ARE a menace to the living.

“Some good, some bad” have it worse. If we posit an “all good” vampire tale, we might at least subvert cultural expectations with story-specific lore refuting the mythic presuppositions, expose them as true prejudices. With the “some” narrative we are into much greyer, much more human space. Yes, some illegal immigrants commit crimes. Does this give us permission to villify them all, as a monolith? Does that fact cancel all imperatives for empathy? That’s rich soil to work. I don’t feel that was really RI’s aim, however, to its tonal detriment.

The antagonists of this story, a religious order of vampire hunters, are positioned as cruel and implacable. But, they are not obviously WRONG to be so. Yes, we want our hero to live, but we come from a starting position closer to the bad guys than good. Worse, by our glimpse into the protagonist, we have seen that he is (and presumably all of his kind are) prey to dark vectors pushing them in murderous directions. Resisting, so far, but forever? All of this dilutes the inciting conflict, I think, muddies it in ways that detract from the drama. Immigrants deserve empathy because they are just as human as we are. Vampires are, textually, ACTUALLY BIOLOGICALLY PREDISPOSED TO MURDER.

Fortunately, this is NOT a good vamp v bad religion story. Well, it is, but it’s not PRIMARILY that. This is a character study of a vampire coming to grips with his undead afterlife, the sacrifices it demands, and the pressures it presents. Ultimately asking questions about the value of free will when a decision’s stakes are not and cannot be really understood. This tension I found much better realized than world lore. The details of his turn were nicely grounded, the tactile struggle to escape his trap visceral, and oh that encounter with the transition Demon(?). This last was the showpiece scene of the work. Kembrael (said demon) was delightfully witty, wry and charismatic. That scene alone is worth the price of admission. All these pieces fed a much more personal story of change (only vaguely understood at first) and ongoing struggle.

Before I could embrace the character study though, there was another aspect of the work that pushed at me. The language is formal and flowery, hearkening to a Victorian or Gothic setting in its sentence construction. Any work that uses this much ‘twixt’ and ‘yet’ instead of ‘between’ and ‘still’ is trying my patience, making me think of the dreaded ‘P’ word. And it did for sure, but it also had some real bangers in there:

“Paladins and fiend-flayers and their growing hordes of frothing zealots punished ever more obscure sins.”
“enough of his blood still lingered brainward”
“To consign that much silver to a vampire death trap required hatred with extravagant funding.”

In the end, these were the phrases I grabbed to remember, not that other stuff, so bullet dodged!

I played through twice. There was a weird artifact where one playthrough skipped part 6? Jumped straight from 5 to 7? I think? That was weird, but undamaging to the narrative. The varied endings did have something to say about the value of trust in a climate that discourages it which, while heartening, didn’t really coalesce with other elements in any kind of thematic unity.

And maybe that is the biggest danger vampires pose to a narrative. Their archetypal status, encapsulating so many themes and subtexts, immediately cue certain readers to madly scramble for messages and metaphor. Certain maybe-trying-too-hard readers like me. Maybe I should just settle down, stop trying so hard, and enjoy a more personal, character-based story?

Horror Icon: Babadook
Vibe: Vampires But Good
Polish: Gleaming
Gimme the Wheel!: If it were my project, I would be unable to resist taking an editing knife the more flowery passages. Sharpen those up just a little to really let the strong lines shine.

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: 4/11/25
Playtime: 20m 3 playthroughs

Synaptix is a work that posits a present/future where economic opportunity is so limited, human workforce so underserved by machines-are-cheaper capitalism, that the protagonist seeks out medical experimentation as a viable way forward. Ridiculous, right?

The scenario is painted clearly enough, with some endearingly detailed specifics on the protagonist’s living situation. Any reservations we have are repeatedly buried under a ‘guess there’s no choice’ shrug of compliance. There follows a series of dosages where the drug’s effects ramp up, modestly impact our protagonist’s daily life, give him some hallucinogenic visions, then (Spoiler - click to show)just settle into the background of ‘something I guess I did.’

It seems to present a dispiriting tale of no real choices. Even when presented with choices, they were quickly revealed as dead ends of wasted time. The real impactful choice seems to be your initial motivation for seeking the money in the first place. The side effect hallucinations cluster around that motivation, though seeing things through doesn’t really resolve uniquely.

There is one additional impactful choice: do you violate your non-disclosure to score some side money above and beyond your initial contract? It is an interesting problem to posit. While the terms of the experiment you sign on to and people conducting it are relatively benign, there is always the chance the side effects could be really bad. And the corp doesn’t care, not really, about that outcome, just needs the data. Arguably, the whole scenario is part of the system that led to rolling dice with your health to get money. Yet, pushing back against that system (Spoiler - click to show)is not better. You get rich but make the world demonstrably worse. Underlining that ‘success’ in this social system is still optimized and incentivized to personal gain over public good. By trying to break with a single available path, you are shown to be doubling down on that path after all.

All this is interesting to reflect on, but very light and underplayed in the work itself. The work is no-frills, ‘here’s what you want to do, you do it, (Spoiler - click to show)temporary win.’ That underplayed narrative tone does as much as anything to sell the impotence of choice when following the script of this post-capitalist dystopia. I appreciate the soft-sell approach to its dark premise, but the selling is SO soft it also kind of shrugs your engagement away. I see what happened to the protag. What choice did he have? What impact did he expect? Fiction doesn’t HAVE to inspire or terrify, but it could do… more than this?

Horror Icon: Carrie
Vibe: Big Pharma
Polish: Smooth
Gimme the Wheel!: If this were my work, I would feel compelled to use the purported function of the drug to enhance the themes of the piece directly, stitch another linkage into the story’s fabric. As it stands, while the drug in question is intended to confer useful abilities, it rarely seems to do more than generate some scenario-specific hallucinations. You could squint and see how the drug maybe enabled THOSE hallucinations, but I would take the squint out of it in my project.

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: 4/11/25
Playtime: 20m, two playthroughs, Marco stepped in both times

This is a work in direct, confrontive conversation with its predecessor, with community response to its predecessor. I was one of those respondents, having a truly whiny litany of complaints with the former work. “I don’t like AI art.” “Why is it so hard to do simple things?” “Why is the game haranguing me for not knowing things it hasn’t told me yet?” I believe I called it an “All Thumbs Simulator.”

EM is a sequel to that work, using its familiar characters with full memory of both the previous work AND ITS RESPONSES to usher through another low stakes morning ritual as gameplay. Buy and make some coffee. Buuut is that really the work’s aim? Or is it to taunt and double down, not trolling exactly, more like playfully tweaking self-important blowhards like me? Yeah, it’s definitely the latter.

Here’s one of innumerable examples:

- In the first game I complained about having to search pockets for something the protagonist knew, player did not, and game refused to acknowledge.
- Remembering that experience, the FIRST thing I did this time was a painstakingly thorough search of my pockets.
- To be followed by this:

"Hey look!" Monica claims your attention "There are the shorts
you love, the ones that drove so many people crazy with their
pockets in your last game."

"It's better not to mention it," you suggest "I don't want players
to run away thinking they have to search all the pockets for the
wallet."

I honestly laughed out loud at that. I mean that’s pretty unambiguous, yeah? Game’s having a go at us. This meta-teasing is the overriding vibe of the piece, from photos of the previous game’s aftermath that critics (just assume I mean ‘me’ when I try these lame misdirections) bemoaned weren’t part of the game, to some in-your-face fourth wall breaking. Even to interrogating the word ‘shrew’ which drew comment in the last game.

All of it coming to a head with the game’s dramatic climax of… pouring coffee. At that point, the setting becomes explicitly fourth-wall compromised with characters and narrator coming onstage to address the player directly. The impetus for that… it’s got to be deliberate. The game’s NPCs berate you for not reading instructions, where earlier gameplay provided

>get sheet
You take the written paper sheet.

>read sheet
A folded sheet of paper with the words "READ ME FIRST!"
clearly visible.

That response alone is kind of hilarious, I mean I was TRYING to read it and reading just told me to read it! The trick I did not tumble to, which I expect the game EXPECTED me not to tumble to, was to first (Spoiler - click to show)unfold it. Because in this world of micro-detail, implicit actions are for losers! All the better to later berate me for not accomplishing.

I did find there to be an excess of bugs and implementation issues which clouded the water a bit. Manipulating my credit card eventually just led to me unable to pick it up off the counter where I could see it. Many physical rituals had exactly one bespoke way to accomplish it, rather than any number of reasonable synonyms. Just try running water in the sink, or doing any damn thing with the moka. Even buying strong coffee seemed bizarrely out of reach. These implementation gaps made it as much a chore as its predecessor, and cast uncertainty on the ‘bug or creative choice?’ boundary.

But by directly engaging these artifacts in the text of EM, basically carrying the throughline from last game forward, it kind of takes on a hilariously confrontive tone. “Yo dawg, I heard you didn’t like some stuff so I TRIPLED DOWN ON IT FOR YOU.”

There is no better sum of this than the extensive, almost pathological use of AI art in its instruction and quick start manuals. I am in the camp of rejecting this ‘art’ as uncanny valley plundering of real, human accomplishment. “I hear you,” says EM, “how 'bout you drown in it?” I mean look at those dead eyes and faces. THEY KNOW WHAT THEY ARE DOING TO ME, AND ARE DEFYING ME TO DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT. They are absolutely SMUG about this!! Check the accompanying docs if you don't believe me!

That is absolutely hilarious. I can’t help but wonder how something like this can possibly play outside its critical context. Without the first game and some critics (my) reservations as part of the text, how does this land for new players? Does it matter? It is so clearly FOR US, why not enjoy it that way?

If you can under the relentless gaze of that shark-eyed couple.

Horror Icon: Freddie
Vibe: Trolling
Polish: Rough
Gimme the Wheel! : If this were my project, I would need to seek professional therapy, as clearly development would have devolved into an extended, schizophrenic shouting match with myself.

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: 4/11/25
Playtime: 30m, 2 fire dies, finished

This was a tight, light puzzle fest, exploring the interactions of waking and dream realities. As a relatively compact link-select work, it enabled ‘lawn mowering’ through its variations as a near default gameplay style. This is not necessarily a negative thing, especially if the aim was not ‘punishing logical challenges.’ Which it is not. Rather, the centerpiece of the work is its really wild dream scenarios, so ushering us through them all is the goal. Lawn mowering is a legitimate way to accomplish that.

This is a work that glories in the randomness of dream logic. Embracing that is to embrace a very specific challenge. True randomness is both hard and unsatisfying. A True random generator in your music player would occasionally deliver the same song, back to back, perhaps more than once. Despite it being ABSOLUTELY random, it FEELS less random to us because… pattern! No, the trick to satisfying-feeling randomness is to absolutely inform subsequent selections with prior ones, if only to DISTANCE from them.

This is also hard! It is not enough that you come up with an amusing random scenario, it must also explicitly NOT resonate with any prior scenarios. The more you create, the harder that gets. Here is where, I thought, ATFD succeeded most unambiguously. The scenarios were delightfully whimsical, hilariously specific, and admirably broad both in setup and solution. They didn’t quite flow together in a dreamy stream of subconscious, but were successfully random FEELING.

Stitching through this dream journey was a ‘real world’ need to keep a fire burning so you don’t freeze to death. This part was.. less compelling? The campfire setup was kind of light in tone, noting you want to keep warm but refraining from any dire admonitions. When the worst does happen, it is reported pretty impersonally as well, not really providing tension, uniting the work, or providing any thematic utility. It’s fine, try again! I don’t think I would be looking for ‘super realistic, tragic death’ in this work, that would feel just as out of place. Just some stronger linkage between the two gamestates.

That said, there is one sequence of dream scenarios that ABSOLUTELY play off the waking state in a neat twist on the formula. Definitely needed, as otherwise the waking state quickly becomes drudgery that must be endured, away from the dreamstate showpieces, to keep the game going.

Overall, I found this to be a light, pleasant affair, not too challenging, delivering an amusingly large array of nifty mini-scenes. Geez tho, I wish I could fall back asleep as readily as this protagonist does. I get up to pee, I struggle, nevermind playing with fire!

Horror Icon: Pinhead
Vibe: Slumberland
Polish: Smooth
Gimme the Wheel! : This dreamy, multi-scenario conceit is crying for graphical playfulness. If this were my work, I would spend some time pulling the work away from Twine Sugarcube (I think?) default esthetic. It kind of flattens the technicolor dream worlds being presented, and even simple changes in font and color would emphasize the waking/sleeping differences much more impactfully.

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: 4/11/25
Playtime: 1.5hr, 4 endings

There are some tropes in IF that are pretty well established. Expectations that are common enough that they exert a pull on gameplay and frame expectations while simultaneously represent a subversion opportunity to the author. Things like ‘explore everywhere,’ ‘collect all the things,’ ‘lying will be punished,’ ‘lore will become personal,’ all these represent opportunity to streamline gameplay with unspoken guidance and/or to create dramatic moments when subverted. There is one expectation I didn’t list due to its spoilery nature, one so ingrained a player may not even notice its presence. It’s going to be a challenge to dance around though, because its subversion is among the most noteworthy accomplishments of this piece.

This is a work unabashedly occupying the well-trodden ground of ‘lost sci-fi setting of historical secrets needing explored by faceless PC.’ It wears this tropey setup on its sleeve, leveraging its familiarity to smooth player expectations and gameplay. This turns out to be necessary, because it implements a timer of sorts, a looming danger that every move brings you one step closer to. It knows what it’s doing balancing tension and fair play into a very engaging scenario. If I had a quibble, it is that because I wanted to provide a transcript, I did not use the author’s interpreter of choice. This choice made guidance like ‘the timer is visible in the right corner’ an outright lie. If there was a way to access it, I never found it. Not a deal breaker by any means, but feels like a missing element of the author’s intent.

You poke around 3 small to modest sized areas, conducting your collect-use-ungate parser gameplay, all the while finding artifacts and documents that fill in historical gaps. As these things can be, the revelations are staged into a nice series of context shifts: "Yes, And.."ing itself as the lore builds and twists what it already told you. While the plot beats are not necessarily revelatory in and of themselves, you’ve probably seen most of these elements before, they do capably build on each other in satisfying ways. All the way up to the final closure.

Aaand here is where I dive into that final expectation in the most spoilery way possible. If you have not played it yet here is the takeaway: Go ahead and play it. It’s fun. Read no further.

If you HAVE played it, you full well know the expectation I am alluding to. That successful parser play means (Spoiler - click to show)‘player lives and/or triumphant when game beaten because finish = success.’ SubVERTED!!! The ending was the most noteworthy thing about the work, evoking (indirectly) two different pop culture properties for me: (Spoiler - click to show)Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series and (Spoiler - click to show)The Twilight Zone. I’ve been blurring, but that’s about to stop so if you still haven’t played, GET THE HELL OUT OF THESE PARAGRAPHS.

That second of those two resonances is the one that worked the best for me. The work is very peppily paced: between the ever present timer, the tight location space, the crisp descriptions cuing areas of interest naturally, the thing zips along with little drag. This as much as anything matches the tempo and discipline of the best of that second IP. It sells its twists through momentum, each subsequent twist just that much more impactful, culminating in a monster subversion that I really liked. I am prepared to hear that others might find that subversion a step too far, and somehow deflating, but that was not my experience of it. To the contrary, I admired it all the more for the bold (Spoiler - click to show)Serling of it.

The resonances of that FIRST property though, really the engine behind the plot twists, those I found less compelling. I find critiques of that first IP (which I will shorthand to F for the remainder of the review) more compelling than F’s canonical text. F is an interesting intellectual experiment, well suited to storytelling, but posits a technological determinism that undersells both random happenstance and human perversity. Do I need to explain the thesis of F? I’m going to assume I don’t. I find F great as a conversation starter, unconvincing as a conversation closer. So basing the twists so heavily on that premise kind of undermined it a bit for me.

Only a bit though. Because the resonances to that SECOND PROPERTY do a lot to redeem it. The pacing and sometimes shorthand allusions play directly to that tradition of ‘this is a clockwork of plot manipulation. The CLOCKWORK is the fun part, we can hand wave the individual gears.’ Agreed! Especially as it built to a rare, fun subversion of form.

Horror Icon: Jigsaw
Vibe: Just As Planned
Polish: Smooth
Gimme the Wheel! : The easiest little tweak I would make, were it my project to tweak, would be to add a timecheck in text mode. Either in the banner, or as a standalone command. Just something to focus up the ticking clock a bit.

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: 4/10/25
Playtime: 1hr 10m, finished

If there is a word for this series, it is ‘inventive.’ Hey, there all millions of words! We could ALL get one! I think I want to dibs ‘maladroit.’ Match Girl gets ‘inventive.’ This deep into the series, it doesn’t seem like there should be a strong need for summary, but keeping to review discipline: Hans Christian Anderson’s nameless Little Match Girl gets Daddy Warbucks’d by Ebeneezer Scrooge (and takes his name) while having cross-time adventures because fire is a time portal for her. And gradually assembles an entire portfolio of wildly disparate weapons, skills and allies while doing so.

There is a bit of a Dr. Who vibe to things, with most every stop in time being either an idiosyncratic historical pull (death of Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens!), a completely fanciful distant period of time, or a quick revisit of characters past. As often as not, the puzzle solving involves a clockwork of cross-time dependencies including how to find the flames needed for continued travel.

This episode does not disappoint in any of those dimensions, most especially the far future techno-religion that is this work’s main antagonist. This iteration compounds its formula with two specific new elements that work (and work together) like gangbusters: real-time dialogue and a countdown timer.

The real-time dialogue is essentially snooping on the antagonist radio frequency, getting to hear their (often amusing) back and forth as the plot progresses. I heeded the work’s guidance to play in an interpreter with html-like formatting support and was glad I did. This choice gave me font and color cues to help differentiate the different timelines, but also was used to great effect in incidental dialogue. The illusion of realtime responses by active NPCs was very strong, not the least of which because the conversations were so DEEP we never got into ‘mimesis death via robotic repetition.’

That last was itself partially due to the realtime countdown timer addition. Yup, from the jump, an uncomfortably tight and graphically centered countdown timer hangs over you like a Damoclean Sword. How relevant is a realtime timer to a time-hopper? How relevant is: 'shut up'? What a great dramatic device this was. Timers have a focusing effect on the player. This will be no leisurely saunter through the author’s implementation space, casually and belligerently poking into every crack until you find the implementation threshold then harumphing superciliously. We all do that, right?

No, the timer focuses you relentlessly on the immediate task at hand. In tension with and reinforcing the realtime dialogue, it represents a disincentive to test the author’s limits. You want to listen in more but HAVE NO TIME. It really is a wonderful mechanical synergy that sells the conflict and setting.

The timer ALSO really focuses the parser gameplay. A lot of parser games are characterized by experimentally fiddling with bizarre artifacts to find the complete left field way it needs to be manipulated to make progress. No time for that here! Every unsuccessful puzzle attempt drains away your remaining time making things sweeter when solved and tenser when not. It almost goes unnoticed that the DIFFICULTY of those puzzles is finely tuned here too, giving the player a fair chance at success and letting the timer inflict the tension, not the puzzle itself.

The prose is similarly tuned to the pressures of the game. No extended descriptions, elaborate joke setups and payoffs. No, everything is streamlined to the accelerated playstyle. Most especially the wry humor of the piece.

All in all, I found this a hugely successful iteration and tweaking of the franchise, even if it might hide a TERRIBLE SECRET, spoil-blurred: (Spoiler - click to show)I don’t think the timer is real! Not as real as it presents. There are enough relief valves to provide moments of build and release around accomplishment, themselves very well distributed into dramatic mini-crescendos. These releases felt both earned but also subverting of the conceit. Now, I did not test this, even though it would be trivial to do so. This is also due to the effectiveness of the conceit - even with my suspicions I completely embraced the work on its own terms because that delivered the best experience.

I know I dibbed ‘maladroit’ earlier, but is ‘satiated’ taken yet?

Horror Icon: Jigsaw /Freddie
Vibe: Bonkers Adventure
Polish: Smooth
Gimme the Wheel! : Honestly, I’m kind of at a loss here. I think if it were my project I would be satisfied with the precisely engineered experience on display. Perhaps smugly so.

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: 4/10/25
Playtime: 5m, 2 endings

This is a tight little work about strangers on a train, cresting into family dramas with a hint of the supernatural. It knows exactly what it is about, sets up a really nice early twist, and builds confidently to its emotional climax. It is SO short, if I give you anything more concrete than that it will end up spoiling a mathematically significant chunk of it.

Pacing wise it is pretty breathless, which is about right for a work like this. It dispenses background lore quickly, economically and clearly, building to a climax of some emotional complexity, though what is left UNsaid still looms large over it all. It also makes a nice decision to background the mechanics of its conceit in favor of the emotional tale. On the one hand, this leaves the player a little asea as to what appropriate responses might be, but that seems like a fair trade when the story’s aims are so wide of “Who can beat up who?” Its brevity makes restarting with new knowledge not really a hurdle at all.

It purports to be a first effort, which, I admire the discipline of it. Especially early in an endeavor it can be irresistible to bite off more than we can chew. Here things are focused tightly, to the story’s credit. There are some typos that creep into the work, some dissonances (like a teddy bear charm that is described more as an actual full-sized teddy bear) that could use a bit of polish. There are also some nice lines. I particularly liked

“offer what little empathy your undead heart can squeeze out.”

All in all a very worthy first effort. Look forward to seeing where this author goes next!

Horror Icon: Leatherface
Vibe: Spiraling Violence
Polish: Textured
Gimme the Wheel! : If this were my project, I would do a pass on those typos and tighten down dissonant descriptions. With a work this focused, it could be polished to a SHINE!

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: 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.

Adapted from a SpringThing25 Review

Played: 4/6/25
Playtime: 30m, 4 playthroughs

The Sandman is a horror-tragedy of helplessness. The setup is a small group of people, huddling in isolation, trying to escape a devastating plague that infects when you sleep. A desperate family finds a purported shelter with only a single remaining occupant, and they weather the days together waiting for rescue (Spoiler - click to show)that never comes.

It is structured as a series of days, during which you get 3 actions, and goads you into engaging conversations that provide opportunity to frame the protagonist (and player’s) thoughts on life, afterlife, truth; y’know the kind of things our human brains fascinate with when not overwhelmed by daily routine. The plague is kind of a lens bringing these philosophical problems into focus, and foregrounding our human desire to grapple with them. It is a legitimately interesting setup, reinforced quite capably by both the graphical presentation and its sound design. Collectively it really creates a dire, compelling mood.

I wish the gameplay, and even the conversations it sparked, rose to the same level. Here’s the thing. As a player, you inhabit the mother-of-two protagonist. You are told that falling asleep will kill you. Of the three actions allowed you must choose between: 1) keep yourself awake; 2) keep child #1 awake; 3) keep child #2 awake; 4) have deep convo. You see the problem? How on earth does #4 EVER rise to the top of the priority list??? What does it say about you and the protagonist if it does??? The game CLEARLY incentivizes you via end score and achievements to embrace those conversations, but remains quite mum on the implicit costs.

An initial playthrough reveals how (Spoiler - click to show)futile trying to save your family is. Ok, maybe this is the game’s way of saying “Might as well prioritize inner life, its the only agency you will have.” Sure, so… then what? Then of the available choice selections, WHICH option do I forsake to choose option #4? It is not a passive acceptance, it is an ACTIVE CHOICE to sacrifice loved ones to… have a midnight dorm-room conversation?

Assuming you can get on board at all (which, yikes), that puts a LOT of weight on those conversations, and for me, they were not up to the task. The back and forth seemed pretty shallow, usually culminating in “enter your thoughts into text box.” The driving force of the game is not bad, providing opportunity for player to reflect on deeper thoughts. We could probably all use more of that. But the scenario provided is a problematic launch pad. It doesn’t help that game world developments continually remind us that maybe chatting is not our best pursuit at the moment. Specifically, as loved ones (Spoiler - click to show)start passing not only is this glossed over, it is not even prioritized as a conversation worth having! Meaning a community is choosing to philosophize on everything BUT grief and interpersonal loss, while nominally suffering that in spades. I mean, in what world?

So yeah, I appreciated the impulse of the game’s aims, but could not embrace its setup even a little bit. It doesn’t help that the prose was to the ‘trying too hard’ side of my sweet spot. I think an editing pass would sharpen that up dramatically. Here are a few samples of prose that feel overdone, but could be sharpened into something better:

“she moves to the beat of forgotten water dripping from a loose pipe”
“scraping stridently across the cement floor”
“her exhausted body sits up with fervor”

There are examples of prose that did land for me, so it does feel in reach:
“light returns to them [eyes] like an old, abandoned, phone powering on”

While the overall presentation was very well done, there were some game artifacts too. Conversations didn’t seem to track game state, so if I delayed talking until day 6, dialogue informed me I “got here yesterday.” A major character disappears at some point, a disappearance unremarked upon by narrative or characters. Daily task selections were sometimes repeated in the menu to no obvious purpose.

There is a nice bit where seemingly obsolete options are revealed as very much in story, but their presence only undermines the artificiality of the philosophy discussions MORE. After four playthroughs, I was left with admiration for the presentation and impulse of the game, but a rejection of its dramatic construction. It was time to sleep.

Horror Icon: Leatherface
Vibe: Resignation
Polish: Smooth
Gimme the Wheel! : If this were my project, wow, what do I do? I guess maybe I would try to foreground the deep conversations in a way that DIDN’T require actively horrible player choices. And I think we would be well served to engage the scenario directly, steer the deeper conversations to the very vital events surrounding us, at least initially, and build to the less tethered concerns.

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: 4/4/25
Playtime: 30m two playthroughs

One point must be made clear from the very start. I am not now, nor ever have been, an adolescent girl. I raised one. I married one (well obviously not AS an adolescent, Jeebus). That feels a little like I’m saying “I watched Roots so I am an expert on racial issues,” which, be assured I very much am NOT saying. I am highlighting that I approach this work from a place of empathy, not sympathy.

With that framework established, know I immediately liked this work. The graphical design was very compelling and attractive: a low-resolution representation of early 90’s styling cuing both its recent-past setting and the concerns of the protagonist. Gameplay is basically navigating the protagonist’s online journal and IMs as she ages from 13 to 21. Almost always driven by her adolescent/young adult poetry.

“But reviewer, you famously despise poetry!” I hear you say, intimately familiar as you are with my inescapable cultural impact. Ok, ‘despise’ is strong, but yes, poetry’s appeal is more often lost on me than not. Here it serves a few purposes beyond its intrinsic wordplay, and does so magnificently. Firstly, it is used as shorthand for ‘adolescent yearning’ which strikes me as perfect. A hallmark of adolescence is struggling for relevance and truth while mimicking tools used to explore those goals absent mature understanding of them. Poetry is a pitch perfect and smashingly economical shorthand for that. Second, the rendition of that poetry is (almost) as revelatory as its presence. Now, these things are inevitably informed by personal biases, and as established boy do I have those. To me, as the protagonist’s journey progressed, I found the poetry progressively more effective, and less.. reach-escaping-grasp-y. I could feel the protagonist maturing, as reflected in maturing and more impactful poetry. Up until the final entry, which… I’ll get to in a few.

Established that I found the presentation and poetry conceits compelling and successful, lets talk plot a bit. This poor girl. Presented as a series of annual impactful collisions between newly-found puberty-spurred yearnings (often but not exclusively romantic) and real world complications, our protagonist struggles to reconcile the two. Yeah, that is a bland wash over what actually happens. With few (though critical) exceptions, her hopes and desires are pretty uniformly (Spoiler - click to show)crushed in the most dispiriting ways possible. We watch a ball of hope and expectation gradually and dramatically (Spoiler - click to show)reduced to a self-destructive shell of unfulfilled and presumably now unfulfillable aspirations. My first playthrough, I found this heart-rendingly successful as a tragedy, and a deeply sad indictment of the pressures on girlhood. The only off note of that first playthrough was that I felt the final, most mature round of poetry was not up to the standards of its evolving predecessors. I think it would have been a more impactful resonance if these final poems were the most accomplished, underlining the tragedy in the full bloom of maturity as a final repudiation of adolescent dreams. (And with something as difficult and personal as poetry, I totally get an author-note to ‘write better poetry’ is essentially useless.) But I think there is a generous read that allows for this as well: her journey has undermined even her most private aspirations to the point she just phones that in too.

In any case, warm in the glow of a dynamite, deeply affecting story I did something I regret. I played it again. Spoilers follow.

Here’s the thing. At several points you are given plot-redirecting choices. Entire swaths of narrative are bypassed and entirely new ones available to you. I mean, this is IF, that’s not really a surprising phenomenon. It is in fact an ENTICEMENT to replay. Thing is, the first time you played through, events sometimes blossom into horrific violence, emotional trauma and just plain misery. This leads inevitably and tragically to the very affecting endgame. This is clearly the dramatic aim of the piece, so the trick the author has to play is, without guiding the player’s direction, how do they ensure that arc lands via every branching path? The answer is they ensure EVERY choice has unique but equally (negatively) impactful consequences, all reconverging to the same absolutely justified ending.

This is where my limited empathy let me down, hard. What played in the first run as an extreme but not IMplausible scenario, on repetition became decreasingly effective. EVERY choice and aspiration explodes into the MOST extreme, dire outcome. It started to take on the tenor of A Series of Unfortunate Events, the increasingly implausible outcomes become almost comedic in their unremitting extremity. Ok, 'comedic' is a deeply tone-deaf word to use there. By enabling exploration of ‘alternate-universe’ sequences, and resulting in the same over-the-top outcomes, the meta-message is “this is girlhood. It will always break you.” It changes from a singularly tragic character study to (intended or not) a comment on ALL girlhood. No, no, no! I don’t want that for my wife and daughter! I have reason to believe that was not their sum experience. It would break my heart if they were hiding this from me!

Without benefit of sympathy, it is a dark and repellent thesis. Again, I do not presume to take on the ‘truth’ of this artistic statement, that is not mine to weigh in on. I am relating the impact on my empathic engagement, and how it corroded on replay. My very specific, very adjacent perspective is this: do yourself a favor. Savor a compelling narrative, expertly rendered and written. Savor it once. Repeat engagements require more empathy (or sympathy) than apparently I can summon.

Yes, that is definitely on me.

Polish: Gleaming
Gimme the Wheel! : If this were my project, I would be rightly excoriated for presuming to tell a story I am horrifically unqualified to tell. And undoubtedly would handle it really badly.

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: 4/4/25
Playtime: 30m, 3 playthroughs

Welcome game! So glad you could make it today, the panel and I liked what we saw in the CV. If you don’t have any questions for us, shall we get started? Wonderful! It says here you name is.. oh, that.. oh. That’s unfortunate. I see here we are conducting an Interview Interview Interview. Hrm. Well nothing for it but to power on, yes?

Let’s establish the basics. You are a Twine-based Dialogue tree game, yes? Oh no, it’s fine. The recent regime has insisted we ARE allowed to ask these kinds of questions. It may be mandatory. So, Dialogue Tree? Yes, good.

And playable in 30 minutes or less? No, we don’t have a specific requirement, just like to know where we stand. 30 minutes, then, good.

I see here you feature statistics and achievements, yes? Presumably to encourage replay? Don’t be embarrassed, no one is judging you. On THAT I mean.

Excellent, you’re doing great, now let’s get a bit deeper. Are you satisfied that you achieved your mission statement of *checks notes* I’m going to paraphrase, ‘exploring the artificial characters we create of ourselves in interviews?’ Well yes, it is an open ended question, that’s kind of how these things go. Ok, I’ll focus the question for you a bit. You present a few different scenarios: a fawning, celebrity interview, a traditional job interview, an interpersonal service interview, and a romantic ‘interview.’ For most of those, you present four, and only four lanes of response each with its own layer of artificiality. What’s that? Oh no, you definitely CAST one as ‘truth’ but that’s not really accurate, is it? I mean, unless the player happens to share EXACTLY the same neuroses as the protagonist, it’s just another role being played, this one to perhaps satisfy the game rather than the interviewer. You don’t see it? Hm, let’s drill into the personal trainer then.

The trainer scenario distinguishes itself as breaking the mold of the others by presenting binary yes/no questions rather than a range. Should the player not meet the trainer’s expectations, they are rejected. The binary questions are cast as even more tightly exploring the ‘truth/not truth’ boundary. Except, sometimes a PLAYER’S actual ‘truth’ response is interpreted as falsehood, and the way to progress (or at least lock in a game-motivating achievement) is to falsely align to the interviewer’s perception of truth… why are you smiling? Oh I see. You are exposing how goal motivation can pervert even a nominally ‘true to yourself’ path into another flavor of ‘navigating what the interviewer wants to hear.’

*laughs* Well, that makes this whole interview a bit awkward, doesn’t it? Heh, let’s power on anyway. Two final questions. Are you aware of the dissonance in the romantic interview? By casting it as fully artificial as the other scenarios, the work rejects the intrinsic value of true romantic partnership, making the ‘prize’ less desirable but nevertheless casting the player as seeking it anyway. (For a bit at least) Yes, certainly I see the resonances it is trying to strike for a protagonist struggling with insecurity. By ignoring other, more obvious motivations in that encounter though, the very scenario impeaches itself as perhaps not as universal or resonant as portrayed. What is my question? Hm, right, I don’t seem to have one there after all.

The final question is spoilery, so members of the panel that have not finished the game should recuse themselves now. Given the final denouement, which draws a pretty clear line between ‘satisfying interview goals’ and (Spoiler - click to show)‘mechanical responses of a lizard brain,’ not to mention the cheeky author-insert who refuses to clarify things, how do we come away with a higher understanding of goal-seeking artificiality, other than just recognizing ‘yup, that’s a dynamic?’ What I mean is, both in text and meta, the message is ‘when presented with artificial choices, we respond artificially.’ Sure. Agreed. What is the game telling us about that, other than the dynamic’s existence, and perhaps its inherent ludicrousness? The stated goals of the work were about ‘deforming reality by responding to artificiality’ but we didn’t see that. We saw responses in kind, insulated from reality but too obviously transactional to actually impact that reality. Was there something we missed?

Hmmm. Yes, ok, thank you, we’ll make a note of that. And thank you for coming by today, we appreciate your interest. What? Oh, we’ll take a few days, discuss your case and let you know. Yes, we’ll call… what’s that? You have some questions for me? Wait, are you really attempting to conduct an…

Interview Interview Interview INTERVIEW???

Bold move, Cotton.

Horror Icon: Freddie, though a case for Carrie
Vibe: Absurdist
Polish: Smooth
Gimme the Wheel! : No, we haven’t made a decision yet, but the panel would like to provide some constructive feedback. We think perhaps stating the goals of the work so baldly, and in such elevated terms, in the “About” section actually undermine the impact of the work. It sets a very high bar the work cannot quite clear. The work still has clever things to say, and true panache in its construction, there is no need to set lofty expectations that unfairly burden it. We would recommend trimming it to just the first three paragraphs.

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: 4/4/25
Playtime: 1.75hr, disgrace

Among the most uncommon experiences I have, here in my modern engagement with IF, is the tremendously enjoyable failure. I don’t mean failure of the game, I mean failure of me, the player. Games I beef so hard they leave welts, yet still look back on fondly. There are two flavors of those, both utterly remarkable for their accomplishments. The first, arguably more subtle, are a cold dose of water, exposing the REASONS for my failure as of a piece with the work’s themes. These games finesse my failure into the artwork itself. The more brute force way is “simply” to present such overwhelmingly enjoyable gameplay, such delightful prose and plotting that even the stink of failure doesn’t diminish my esteem for it. In some ways these are the spiritual Yin to the “It’s Not You, It’s Me” Yang.

I kind of showed you my cards with that intro didn’t I? The game presents a supernatural investigation into a mass killing scenario nearly a hundred years old, to free a ghost from purgatory. Why not? You then spend the game exploring beautifully described and illustrated carnival remnants looking for clues to solve things. Why didn’t police find these clues back then? Eh, who cares? You proceed to wade through old artifacts, notes and journals piecing together the events and characters from that fateful day. It is all so vividly rendered, which is a tribute to the prose. Both the decay around you, and the inner lives of long dead characters are painted so clearly that despite a reasonably large cast all of them feel alive and unique. Honestly, as a novel I would eat it with a spoon.

As a game, the link-select gameplay lets you navigate around the tattered tents, kicking up new clues with each revisit (to a point), all to the purpose of using a Clue-like scorecard to eliminate suspects, weapons and locations to solve a specific murder. Clue seems to have fallen out of favor as a deduction game this century, with so many stronger modern innovations stepping up, but its process-of-elimination bones are solid, especially when grafted to a well written series of vignettes that require player intuition to translate into “elim this one.” Other gameplay nods include tracking your return visits (as a soft pointer to potentially more information), reviewable lists, testimony and artifacts all supporting your ‘can I eliminate anyone/anything/anywhere?’ gameplay. As is my nature I tried to EXHAUST the information available before cycling to endgame. I took copious notes, even creating a spreadsheet to track character interrelations. I was one roll of yarn away from a full on Mind Map.

Along my investigation, there were more technical glitches than could be overlooked. The wonderful illustrations only actually loaded about half the time. More seriously, periodically I would get red bars of doom saying things like: “(mock-visits:) cannot be used outside of debug mode.”,
“A custom macro (with no params) didn’t output any data or hooks using (output:) or (output-data:).” Or other such. I don’t THINK they affected my ability to gather clues, though one appeared when I tried to retrieve a needed key that might have locked me out of something. There was still enough meat to power past those until I exhausted the environs and it was time to put up or shut up.

I did, like a good pro-player, save at this point. Foreshadow.

Here is where I must now discuss and dissect my epic fail. While technically not spoilers as, again, FAILURE, know what you are in for if you continue to read these, let’s call them ANTI-SPOILERS. Here’s the thing. This was a mass murder event, right? Despite what I am going to call too-soft steering that the goal was to solve ONE murder, I assumed, and played as if, solving them all would solve the one. Through that lens, there is no better alibi than ALSO BEING MURDERED. The game made this fun by sometimes identifying bodies, but sometimes requiring you deduce bodies’ identities to eliminate them. At the end I was able to narrow to two potential survivors/suspects. Only one of them had a plausible motive for mass murder (though that was admittedly a HUGE logical jump), so, boom! Suspect identified. Similar logic was applied to weapon: if I found it, it couldn’t be the murder weapon because the murderer clearly must have run off with it. Shut up, my logic is unassailable!

Yeah, the game didn’t think so either. Two strikes right off the bat with my two possibilities. Dafug? Ok, maybe the mass murder theory was blindering me - who remaining had reason to kill the victim even if they were somehow later murdered, unrelated? Strike three. Y’know how in baseball, after strike three you are out? In Hauntless, after strike three you are (Spoiler - click to show)DEAD.

Wow mystery, you have my attention, let me just restore that savegame I foreshadowed earlier and…
“The (dropdown:) macro was given a bind to $saveLoader and the string “guess 1”, but needs 1 more value.”

No restore possible. Well, crap. This left me at a crossroads. Do I really comb through ANOTHER at least hour and a half, retracing every one of my steps to revisit this scenario absent my initial assumptions?

I think I do, but maybe like in a few months when the technical problems have been fixed. I really was engaged deeply in this thing, loving the environment, gameplay and prose. The fact that I got it SO wrong hurt a bit, but hey, I’m resilient. I just don’t think I can give it that much time NOW, and not in its current state. ESPECIALLY without a functioning save-restore. (I was subsequently informed that the opening menu might have successfully allowed a restore, but too late to help me.)

Horror Icon: Jigsaw
Vibe: Supernatural Cluedo
Polish: Rough
Gimme the Wheel! : I mean, if it were my project, fix all those bugs, natch. Starting with that patently cruel RESTORE one.

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: 4/3/25
Playtime: 30m, two playthroughs

This is a melancholy tale of a (queer? maybe? not explicit but possibly implicit?) person hearing a familiar name linked to an air disaster, then having dreamlike memories of their time with them. Its vocabulary and design are quite wide of my sweet spot, venturing in both form and text into poetic verse. This is a style choice that often leaves me cold. To the work’s credit, its graphical and sound design were very evocative and convinced me to at least try to shed my baggage. It really raised the level of difficulty for me in a few ways though, seeming to actively pit its interface against any attempt to meet it on its own terms.

For one, when its really beautiful dreamstate backgrounds kick in, the text nearly vanishes due to unfortunate font color choice. For many screens, I had to highlight nearly the whole thing just to read it. It also uses a pane paradigm, where the presentation is a small pane, mid window (depending on how big your window is). The pane is not always visible, sometimes it is the same color as the rest of the window. Meaning text that needs scrolling to read gives no indication that scrolling is even possible! Early on, I nearly quit thinking there was a bug that masked a missing progress link, only to finally realize I needed to scroll an invisible pane to find it.

This was exacerbated by ANOTHER choice on some screens to only provide exit links after some “dramatic” delay, again leading me to believe I had stumbled into a bug when instead the game was toying with me, watching me jitterbug the pane until it deigned to allow me to move on. These technical issues were so consistently present, so consistently interrupting my experience, that I never really developed opportunity to accommodate to the poetic style of the prose. Again, I grant you that I probably need more centering than most to get into the flow of this kind of thing, so for me it was particularly defeating.

Here is the metaphor that came to me: I’m some, I dunno, post-war steel worker ok? I come home from a long day… steeling… and my young wife has decided we should get into yoga! Now, I can think of nothing I want less than to NOT get a beer and a shower, but since I love my wife, I gamely put down my lunch pail, take off my hardhat and kneel on the mat she lovingly laid out for me. Yeah, it was tough day riveting or whatever, but I force myself to try relaxing. I’m breathing and ohm’ing.. its a whole thing but by cracky I’m really trying. Then before I even get a fighting chance, the damn dog starts barking and barking and barking and won’t stop. As much as I love my wife, at some point, can’t we agree the dog is telling us to try again later and I just get the beer?

What, doesn’t everyone jump to full-narrative metaphor?

The game’s narrative took a curious turn at one point. For most of its buildup, it seemed to leave its present-grounding behind and vacillate between ‘real’ and dream memories. It had a solid enough throughline until… maybe 3/4s in it took a turn in specificity that both rejected the inputs it let me make prior, and introduced specificity that was jarringly.. not unrelated, but read like a second anecdote that shared resonances with the first. Like two friends telling different stories that had enough similarities that made them worth sharing. This effect was cemented by a closing screen that seemed to reference an entirely DIFFERENT work called Echoes and Traces. Like I had started one work and at some point it transitioned to a resonant but entirely different work.

Like my steelworker finally got the dog to shut up, closed his eyes, and when he opened them, his wife had gently seated a dozen acupuncture needles in him. C’mon doll, am I ever getting that beer?

That was actually kind of a cool effect, honestly. I just wish the work hadn’t been fighting me the whole time and I could have appreciated the ride and sly closing subversion more.

Horror Icon: Babadook
Vibe: Meditation interrupted
Polish: Rough
Gimme the Wheel! : If this were my project, I would toss a coin. Heads, I would rework the view pane paradigm: give clear indications when scrolling was needed and eliminate the timed text additions of links. Tails, I would think about fixing the font color to better contrast against the background, but then probably flip the coin again.

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: 4/3/25
Playtime: 3hr, finished

It seems every comp/thing/thon I wade into, there is a game or two that bears two distinct hallmarks: 1) Its conceits, prose, wit and composition seem engineered to trigger every pleasure center in my brain; but 2) for reasons I have yet to convincingly diagnose, familiar gameplay somehow suddenly baffles me. I have in the past inaugurated review sub-series to club works with common elements together. This particular combo has never merited one, as they are pretty rare within the confines of a single comp. Across multiple comps though, I could indeed create a meta-sub-series, probably titled “It’s not you, it’s me.”

RL is chockablock with hallmark number one. The central conceit (spycraft via a gun that transmogrifies things into their english-word reverse-order counterpart) plays into a rich IF wordplay subculture. We might call it a Schultzian-inspired game, though the conceit certainly predates our modern master. The writing here is strong in some areas. It has fun banter between the protagonist and principle NPC. The whole thing is oozing with wit, setting just the right tone to embrace its ridiculous premise and go along for the ride. There is a great detail where the companion NPC just reverses words when they talk for silly reasons. As an ongoing bit it is just fun.

It is further a competent parser implementation - spare enough in description to keep the weeds low, but with gratifyingly deep pockets of implementation. For example, despite only spare descriptions of beds that never mention subcomponents, you can nevertheless try to fiddle with pillows, mattresses and sheets. Another example: smells are frequently alluded to and never omitted if you subsequently interrogate them. Most importantly, scenery objects you might expect the magic reverser to work on almost always have wry comments on why that’s not a great idea. It’s attention to gameplay detail that both reassures the player they are in strong hands, and rewards player commitment. To a point.

Based on my intro, you know where this is going. To my ongoing shame, and in spite of its great achievements in hallmark #1, RL fell squarely into hallmark #2 during gameplay for me. It is inarguably my fault. I spent an hour spinning in the very first room because I interpreted a direction notation in a room description as color, not travel option. Later, I spun unnecessarily, convincing myself I had entered a silent no-win scenario because I simply neglected to examine an object before trying to use it. These are parser basics, something the author has every right to expect a player to be fully competent in, yet there I was, handful of thumbs, head bashing on screen. This dynamic repeated so often, it is my overriding memory of the game.

It didn’t help that the in-game hint system (conferring with your NPC-behind-the-screen) was only intermittently helpful. Like the author, that NPC likely assumed a base level of competence that I failed to supply, and so the hints and help were as often confirming directions I had already achieved as alluding to next steps without sufficient detail.

When I try to diagnose WHY some games reduce my normally suave, Bond-like mastery of my environment to Jerry Lewis level incompetence and fumbling, I generally focus on the combination of language and implementation. Spare descriptions tend to train the player that close examination is unnecessary. Clumsy disambiguation (at one point asking me “which spare part, the spare part or the spare part from freezer?” a phrase that can never resolve to the former) cast doubt on one’s ability to effectively interact with the world. Inability to consistently access information (for example, unable to >X OFFICE through an office window) implies that information is unnecessary when it very much is not. All of those phenomenon were in evidence here, but I think the central construction also impacted me. Ignoring some subtle parser conventions, like either lumping navigation directions together in text at top or bottom, having them explicitly listed in title bar or via >EXITS command, invites parser-savvy folks to miss things. The cumulative weight of these things represented a barrier between me and game.

“But reviewer, you finished the game - why are you bellyaching?” There was an additional peril in the exciting conceit of the game, perhaps more impactful than anything above. Wordplay games live and die by their cleverness and variation within their own arcane logic. The best such games provide a steady stream of laughing recognition of THIS wordplay solution. While there are some pretty great ones here ((Spoiler - click to show)drawer especially elicited a grin of delight, and the final puzzle was truly wonderful), there are many more that rely on words WAAY out of common use to the point of eliciting, “uh, ok” where the glee should have been. The work seems to acknowledge this, having our NPC guide us past those, but it has the effect of undermining the promise inherent in the conceit. Reversing words to create new objects is really only satisfying if WE ARE THE ONE DOING IT. This disconnect is further compounded by inobvious ways to USE reversed words, making deducing them that much harder. If (Spoiler - click to show)a tip is going to help me solve a puzzle, it should be obvious WHY that will help. Having to be walked through it by an NPC is not itself satisfying. I need more than hand-wavy explanations why core rules of the wordplay sometimes do and sometimes don’t apply. If not, I’m just reversing everything, hoping for a next step to materialize.

The unfortunate nature of the “It’s not You, It’s Me” hallmarks is that however accomplished and winning #1 is, #2 will nearly always trump it. It’s math. If the spinning drags a 45m game to three hours, it’s because over two hours of it is ineffectual self-recrimination. Why do I want that in IF, that is my all-day standard mode! (I should note, in fairness, that the final puzzle ALMOST rescued the whole thing for me, as a multistep variation that used normal words and was quite satisfying for it.)

Anyway game, I appreciate all the things you did right, I really do. I hope we can still be friends.

Horror Icon: Pinhead
Vibe: Cheeky
Polish: Textured
Gimme the Wheel! : If this were my project, I’d buff the HINT system for morons like me. I would be reluctant to damage the in-world hint conceit that makes such hinting next level enjoyable, so once I got to the limits of that, I think I would produce a walkthrough. Just in case.

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: 4/3/25
Playtime: 1hr, lost to Bolsheviks

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn is one of my literary heroes. I find his prose magnetic EVEN IN TRANSLATION. I can only imagine how glorious it must be in the original Russian. I am one of maybe 4 people in the US who started (in good faith) his Red Wheel novel cycle as it started to be translated into English. Red Wheel is a sprawling, epic, fictional account of the events dramatized by this game. Its four volumes start massive and grow to thousands of pages, increasing as the work drives on. Its translation is also incomplete, the initial English language work halted by the publisher after only two volumes were released. The third volume has subsequently been split into 4 hardbacks by a different publisher which I have not yet read, waiting for paperback releases. The final volume has still not even been translated, nearly 35 years on. Solzhenitsyn! What the hell world, what are we waiting for??? This is how capitalism fails us.

I offer this to establish I have a passing, though (vis a vis the game) debilitatingly incomplete knowledge of this setting. I also have a hunger to know more! When I first saw this game, it did not click for me exactly how it would resonate. Instead, my initial reaction was “OMG I loved the original, it is still in an open tab on my desktop! The original features NAZIS, how could this POSSIBLY measure up?” Only when I dove into the required preamble reading and party- and character-names started ringing for me did I grasp the full grip this author has on my psyche.

Don’t get me wrong. Like its predecessor, 1917 is a COMMITMENT. SO much detailed background, more than you can possibly internalize before playing. (And bear in mind, I have a head start here!) I spent a full quarter of my first playthrough reading background! How can you possibly justify that investment? Who on earth would possibly commit to this?

Besides me, I mean. Kinda like the Red Wheel itself.

This game builds on its predecessor in daunting ways. Where the previous was juggling multiple competing faction alliances, social unrest, government management, and population service with woefully inadequate resources, this game increases scope in nearly every dimension. It substitutes two new dimensions “Government” and “Economy” as indirect windows into the former games’s “Polls.” I didn’t do a full comparison, but each tab FEELS like it has more variables to watch.

It shares the card-driven paradigm of the first, with multiple decks based on what your party has secured control over. As before, you have a limited hand of options, a limited (though configurable) slate of ‘advisor’ cards to bust out for special powers, and must-face ‘event cards’ that demand responses every turn. The amount of variables in play is untenably large. You cannot possibly keep them all in your head, and while you have a vague idea how to influence many variables, there is no truly predictable cause and effect. “The peasants are hungry” “Let me spend resources to feed them!” “Well, the numbers barely move and it is unclear how well that worked.” As a card game trying to minmax to victory, this is frustrating beyond justification. As a simulation of governing, where you have clumsy, uncertain levers to influence complex problems it is PERFECT. Ditto the concurrent game of adjusting policy and actions to keep an effective coalition that doesn’t usurp your priorities for their own.

Like its predecessor, while technically a work of interactive fiction, its gameplay is just outside what that label generally implies. Also like its predecessor, that caveat is immaterial. I adore these games. I am overwhelmed by these games in the best possible way. At some point, I am going to cede some fraction of my RAM to Autumn. This is the second game that will just be permanently open on my desktop. I guess I kinda already have ceded that space.

Horror Icon: Pinhead
Vibe: Big Box Boardgame
Polish: Smooth
Gimme the Wheel! : I recommended its predecessor be Kickstarted as a cardboard implementation. Even then, I underestimated the wooden-counter cost of reflecting its breadth of variables, nevermind the mechanical demands of keeping them updated with every action. 1917 has shown me how ill-advised that actually was. No, if it were mine, I would use the full weight of my subject matter authority and clout to see the final volume of Red Wheel translated and published. That kind of seems more in reach than the Kickstarter. UPDATE: I see that the fourth volume has a publication date of Nov 2025. Thanks Autumn!

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: 4/2/25
Playtime: 15m, 3 playthroughs

Why make fiction interactive?

I ask this question sincerely, in full knowledge of the forum it appears in. What is the point of it? Oh, sorry, I should clarify. I’m not asking you, the reader of my winkingly labeled ‘reviews.’ I’m asking you, the would-be IF author. What is it about your work that makes interactivity intrinsic to its form or function? How do you expect interactivity to impact the consumption of your work - its plot, themes and characters and/or overall experience? It feels like a ‘gotcha’ question and it kind of is one. I see Interactivity as an attempt at a more personal engagement from the reader. By giving them some agency in a story’s progress, the reader develops investment, insight, and personal alignment with the proceedings. More intimate than even the best novel.

Maybe. The trick for the author is to nurture and develop that dynamic into an artistic statement. HOR (heh, loving the acronyms this year so far) takes several steps, deliberately or otherwise, to use interactivity to push the reader away. This feels misguided, if intentional. Really, I think it is the intersection of ambiguity and interactivity that misses the mark for me.

Let’s start with setup. This is kind of cleverly done by using mouseover to change dialogue options. We are presented with “coworkers” and “Boss” that become “Knights” and “Commanders” as our setting reveals itself to be an order of knighthood. That played pretty fun, though it did have one effect: it let we the players know that we are NOT aligned with the protagonist. Despite making conversation and thought(!) choices for the protagonist, we don’t really know their life. Now, this will always be true in IF - I have not lived my life as a hobbit or detective, I just haven’t. The trick is to maximize opportunities to align the reader and minimize overt disconnects. Unless tied to the theme of the work, choices that HIGHLIGHT that disconnect work against us.

A far more serious disconnect evolves through the creative choice to bounce the player back and forth between two sides of a conversation. The knight stuff is really just (interesting) background in a ‘you don’t appreciate me’ conversation between two… friends? Lovers? Something in between? Not knowing is another level of disconnect. We see and inform the STRENGTH of the protagonist’s angst, but develop no true feel for the SOURCE of it. Which is kind of important if we presume to carry half the conversation! Not understanding the source made the heat of it unsatisfying and ultimately baffling. Perhaps we are intended to supply it? That puts the cart before the horse a bit - asking us to watch an escalating emotional spiral, then retrofit motivations that make sense.

Further distancing player and protagonist, any attempts I made to defuse the angst (for example to focus on ‘are they maybe hurt?’ rather than ‘they hate me’) seemed to be basically ignored by the narrative. I was left with the strong perception that while I could try to shade things, I had no true ability to alter the conversation’s path. This is not automatically a problem if tied to the theme of the work (which it very much seems to be here), but it does have a distancing effect between player and protagonist. My input is roundly ignored, diluting my investment in the proceedings.

Worse, by occasionally being given the opportunity to drive the other half of the conversation, and by extension getting a glimpse of the partner’s inner life, we are underwhelmed. Nothing about the partner’s conversation choices suggest any level of worthiness, any level of justification for the protagonist’s angst. Rather, we are left in the position of confirming that yes, the partner is an obliviously smug and selfish person that the protagonist is well rid of. We saw their thoughts! We know this!

There is a read that maybe we are not seeing the partner’s thoughts at all, but the protagonist’s PRESUMPTION of their thoughts. Thing is, that may redeem the partner (though their objective actions are still an unanswered indictment), but it further exposes the protagonist as not ready for the relationship they want, and whose paranoid projections are decreasingly sympathetic.

All of which makes the bodice-rending, chest beating, wailing of the protagonist fall so, so flat. We don’t understand their investment, either internally or externally, and it comes off as needy drama they should just let go of. And it was interactivity that got us here!

All this plays into a theme (intended or not!) of alienation, of our interpersonal relationships being little more than projections we ourselves bring to the table. Both protagonist and player are caught in a spiral of having to assume thoughts, motivations and mindset of others instead of, y’know, having a real conversation about them. Yes, interactivity provides the tools to include the reader in this dynamic rather than simply presenting it. But to what end? The protagonist’s responses feel SO exaggerated they are off putting. Our need as player to fill in gaps feels less ‘universal truth’ than railroaded authorial hand. CAN this dynamic exist? Of course! MUST it exist? The work has not convinced me of that. The opposite, by using interactivity to alienate the player, the message feels unnaturally imposed. This is famously an ineffective way to work with people. Entire countries have been founded rejecting this!

Horror Icon: Carrie
Vibe: Doomed Relationship
Polish: Smooth
Gimme the Wheel! : While I’d be tempted to charge after the low hanging fruit of technical issues, I’d be better served to reassess the interactivity of the piece, sharpen its use against my narrative goals. Right. The highest possible fruit on the tree.

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: 4/2/24
Playtime: 45m

This is an ambitious look back at and interrogation of an underserved character in the Monkey Island franchise. It bounces back and forth between old style point-and-click play (translated to Twine link-select), and some authorial side bars and digressions into the franchise history, the character, and their engagement with both. This kind of thing is very appealing to me.

From the outset though, it seemed plagued with technical burrs and frictions. For one, it makes use of the dreaded timed text. I find myself more forgiving than most in the community, but this implementation tested that sorely. For one, the opening scrolled intro both had no concept of window size, nor any concept of screen integrity. What I mean is, the text played out, below the bottom of the window requiring scrolling. If you found yourself fussing with slide bars and fell behind… the entire screen wiped before you finished it to start playing out the next one! Eventually, I full-screened the window (which you DEFINITELY HAVE TO DO), but still found myself unable to keep up. It was simultaneously too slow and too fast. For SURE there must be a pause for more at the end of every intro screen. (I am given to understand the current release tweaks these artifacts to some extent.)

This was not the end of the technical woes, however. There were link chains with no back or reverse, which, if you clicked on you needed to cycle through the entire thing again before returning to start. Different colors were used for character dialogue, at least one of which was chromatically close to the color used for links, resulting in link confusion. Graphic elements overlapped words or were completely missing. And oh that timed text, pervasive and stalling through it all. It seemed to be reaching for a conversational paradigm, the author/work talking to you in ‘real time.’ I can squint and see that. Honestly, waiting for text to present itself gave me time to do that.

You get it. Technically it is problematic. I will waste no more time belaboring the point. It is unfortunate that the technical issues intruded so deeply. There was real wit and verve in its homages to the Monkey Island era fonts and layouts.

The content of the game is more rewarding, assuming you can fight through to it. The light ‘point and click’ style puzzles were evocative of, though nowhere near as challenging as, its inspiration. Part of that is that while you can mimic the motions of mouse-to-hotpsot with mouse-to-link, pictures are famously worth orders of magnitudes of words, and you just get fewer hotspots with the latter. While unsatisfying as a puzzle, it surprisingly and pleasantly echoed that playstyle. It is the first time in a long time the Twine paradigm seemed more than an arbitrary UI choice.

Far more interesting was the interplay between that puzzly work, and the author’s inter-scene commentary on the game, the character and the history that informed both. It used the textual complexities of the inspiration to openly engage the boundaries between PC and NPC, and what ‘reality’ means in the context of fiction and gaming. Clearly the author had cause to pour a lot of thought into a character they found compelling but the narrative did not, and how that tension kind of exploded the whole thing for them. Leaving them to pick up and examine all the different pieces without the distraction of the functioning whole. Explosive deconstruction, baby!

There was a really encouraging amount of depth to engage here. Which made the ending kind of anti-climactic. Towards the end, after some time toggling between light puzzle/escape-the-boat play and digressions into lore both real and fictional, it unexpectedly and abruptly turned into (Spoiler - click to show)Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead territory. All the talk of ways to appreciate, deepen and reclaim the character, including actually PLAYING as her!, were (Spoiler - click to show)abruptly forsaken into..literal nothingness.

It is a jarring climax. After all the explorations of ways to interpret the character, to confer agency or broader depth, it nevertheless ends with a repudiation of that very effort. Is it a comment on fan culture’s propensity for putting emotional weight on elements not meant to carry them? (see the first 20 years of Boba Fett fandom) On the tyranny of narrative, whose choices are quite literally the final word? Or are we supposed to cling to the sweetness of that exploration in the face of its doomed fate against an unchanging lore?

Honestly? I don’t know. And that’s kind of cool, but also kind of unsatisfying. Which, why should I have it any better than Elaine?


Horror Icon: Regan/Pazuzu
Vibe: Memoir-y
Polish: Rough
Gimme the Wheel! : For sure the first MUST DO is to add ‘pause for more’ inputs to every opening screen. While doing that, I would seriously revisit the timed text implementation, to make sure its use was intentional, strictly under control, and far less intrusive. Then, either fix or eliminate the Journal. Unless its inaccessibility was also part of the commentary…?

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: 4/2/25
Playtime: 15m

I am on record as observing that the RPG Maker gameplay paradigm is not exactly my cup of tea. Successful games (for me) on this engine are brief, light on repetitive combat, and heavy on attitude - that ineffable quality of distinguishing itself from the sameness that can plague such a strong gameplay and graphical tool kit. So let’s check out WSASTRAS (wizastrous? WIZASTROUS??? I just like it more now).

Is it brief? Oh yeah it is. Hard to believe I’m saying this, but maybe too much so? You get to meet maybe six characters, all but two of which are pretty functional, solve a mini-mystery and make a final choice. The stakes are established both clearly but also incompletely so that choice is as much about the player’s proclivities as it is the objective scenario. This is actually the most interesting thing about the game! It’s a nice dynamic: forced to choose with incomplete information, informed by your own internal biases. Y’know like life.

Does it have combat? Nonexistant. The BEST choice for this engine! (for me)

Does it have attitude? WSASTRAS distinguishes itself from the field, at least a little bit, in two ways. Graphically it is reminiscent of the primitive pixellated standard for RPG Maker, but more line-driven and cruder. It is just different enough to be notable, but not different enough to undermine the gameplay engine. These things are always esthetically personal. For me I liked it well enough, though it did introduce some fiddly artifacts of aligning sprites just so to interact, as well as seeming to cue interactable elements that turned out not to be so. After some onscreen jittering to be sure. Not fatal, just the slightest of frictiony. The other way it distinguished itself was its light, playful vibe. Most NPCs are functional - giving quests, background or choices, but their dialogue is spiced just enough to allow that they might not be info robots. The egg custodian was a particular standout here. All of it added up to a pleasant enough, if undemanding time. Tweaking its toolkit-driven gameplay in the right direction, if only modestly so. Building to an interesting-for-its-ambiguity final choice. Those ‘ifs’ kind of loom large in the summary I suppose, but at least it is consistently on the right side of things!

Horror Icon: Jigsaw
Vibe: Playful
Polish: Textured
Gimme the Wheel! : If this were my project, I might try to double down on the NPC personalities. Give everyone the attention that the custodian got.

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