Reviews by JJ McC
Spring Thing 2023
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Step 1: Revise Life Goals, July 14, 2023Adapted from a SpringThing23 Review
Played: 4/11/23
Playtime: 20min, finished as prizefighter
When I first found Adventure Snack in IFComp, I went bananas. What a lovely thing to exist in this world. Bite size IF for the busy guy/gal on the go. YPATDL is very much on brand. It is a pretty stripped down hog farm simulator, with post apocalyptic flavor in the tasks (like shoveling toxic dung or Road Warrioring). (I promised new verbs.) You have more tasks than you can complete in a day, but rudimentary prioritization schemes seem to work just fine in keeping the oinkers happy until you can figure out what you want to do next with your life. In my case, apparently, fight in death matches.
The text is consistently fun and light, more bemused chuckle than belly laugh. The graphical presentation is nicely informal. The algorithm is pretty forgiving with only slight time management tension. It appears, based on what you prioritize that you might get different end game careers. And then it’s done! I feel like an extended review a) would miss the point of these things and b) would be less successful than Adventure Snack itself in navigating the value/time equilibrium.
Adventure Snack indeed. So far, every one I have encountered (YPATDL included) is a testament to Oscar Wilde’s ‘brevity is soul of wit’ observation. It is impossible to begrudge even the goofiest premise or constrained gameplay when it is so deeply, and wryly, respectful of your time. The word I want is impish.
“Adventure Snack: what’ll those scamps get up to next?”
Spice Girl: Sporty Spice
Vibe: Playful
Polish: Smooth
Is this TADS? No.
Gimme the Wheel! What would I do if this were my project? I mean, clearly start working on the next Snack.
Spice Girl Ratings: Scary(Horror), Sporty (Gamey), Baby (Light-Hearted), Ginger (non-CWM/political), Posh (Meaningful)
Polish scale: Gleaming, Smooth, Textured, Rough, Distressed
Gimme the Wheel: What I would do next, if it were my project.
Dammit Jim, I'm A Doctor, Not a Wordsmith!, July 12, 2023Adapted from a SpringThing23 Review
Played: 4/5/23
Playtime: 20 min, finished 76%
Off to the races! Using a personal randomizer for Spring Thing, and it did right by me. Great game to launch the Thing with. BMUS is a wryly funny word game. It’s what happens at a pitch meeting when 8 people are brainstorming, and seven say “Whatever we do, we have to avoid Guess-the-Verb. People hate that.” Then the eighth says, “Team, I got it! The game IS Guess the Verb!” I am just giddy at the subversive audacity.
Ultimately it is a word game/vocabulary test. But if a spoonful of sugar famously helps the medicine go down, what does a cascading deluge of sugar do? Makes you cackle like a rooster in a madhouse is what. You launch from one terse absurdist scenario to another with the perfect amount of lubricating text: almost none. And you guess the verb. All you know is, it starts with B.
The tone is just perfect for this game. It opens with over-the-top exaggerated denial of the obvious that builds on itself recklessly. I am a sucker for blithe denial of the obvious when it’s not being used to corrode democracy. Then it smoothly shifts gears to serially casting NOT familiar characters into absurd scenarios, all to wring that B-verb out of you. I wasn’t counting, but you get 10-15 of these and you’re done!
This game knows exactly what it is, clicks along crisply, delivers the chuckles, and finishes without overstaying. Like an appetizer at a 5 star restaurant - it’s gone in a moment, but lovely while it lasts.
Only a few notes on polish: I found early inclusion of images set a graphical expectation the rest of the game did not deliver on. Would strive for a more consistent application: more or none. Really dug the combination of hyper links and parser input. Also liked the text color fading for older input and bright for new, though in a few instances the new text faded with the old. Would have gone with icons instead of loose “I” (inventory) “L” (look) and “U” (undo) letters in the corner. Nits really, a really smooth presentation.
Spice Girl: Baby Spice
Vibe: Playful.
Polish: Smooth.
Is this TADS? No.
Gimme the Wheel! I would focus on making failure more fun. The PASS capability is nice, keeps things from dragging which would be death for this thing. In one instance, I failed to guess, hit pass, and the transition text obliquely let me know what it was I failed to guess. It brought a knowing laugh at myself - of course that was the word, dummy! It seemed very much in the spirit of the game but I did not see that again. (Yes, I PASSed more than once.) I would do that every time. Alternately or additionally, I might add some code to detect multiple failed guesses (say, 3) then have one of the NOT Enterprise crew chime in with a hint. Both seem in the light spirit of the game, and would smooth out the drag of “I just can’t think of it!”
Spice Girl Ratings: Scary(Horror), Sporty (Gamey), Baby (Light-Hearted), Ginger (non-CWM/political), Posh (Meaningful)
Polish scale: Gleaming, Smooth, Textured, Rough, Distressed
Gimme the Wheel: What I would do next, if it were my project.
What Mysteries the Night Holds? At Least Two Dozen..., July 12, 2023Adapted from a SpringThing23 Review
Played: 4/5/23
Playtime: 40 min, 26+ Endings
Talk about right-footing me. Something about “An enthralling tale with more than 25 endings!” when the title proclaimed 26 just tickled me. The intro screen further cemented my good will by providing 4 hilariously disparate possible endings, only to sadly tell me no, those don’t count. Between the instructional text and these examples, the stakes and purpose of the game were communicated economically and amusingly: FIND ALL THE ENDS!!
After that it is a click-select exercise to explore all the narrative branches. Some very short, others long and extended, only a few reconvergent. The scope of the game is about right to keep all branches in your head, almost. Like most time loop games, after reading text once, you madly click past text on subsequent cycles to get to the new stuff. A bit of a chore for long paths, but the game is smart about rewarding your perseverance with skip-ahead, jump to branch-point, and achievement unlocks to keep things moving after you collect enough endings.
There is ample wit on display. Which is about the coldest, least convincing way to convey the pleasant humor of the piece. (“Oh really, ample wit you say? Well ha ha HA indeed.”) It was at its best when it ramped from mundane to transcendent dizzyingly fast. I chortled aloud at (Spoiler - click to show)“Have you touched the divine?” Mostly I was just kind of smiling as I went.
At about the 30min mark, I started questioning myself as I continued, “Is this too long for what it is?” Just asking that question felt like a yes. The more interesting question is, “Why so?” Here’s what I came up with: the early promise of the game was 26 wildly divergent endings and paths, the humor residing in the disparity. I didn’t count, but it felt like the truly disparate endings (and make no mistake, they’re in there!) amounted to a third or less, the rest being variations on them. Meaning you get a few unique, then 4-6 variations of one, 2-3 another, 3-5 of another and so on. To me, this chipped away at the early promise enough to let me feel the time. And some of these variations were noticeably less ambitious than others. If they had been more audaciously varied, I think it would better justify the length.
The work was well polished, no noticeable bugs. Most interactions are single-screen easily digestible chunks. The early warning screen was notably longer, and by notably I mean I didn’t realize I needed to scroll for an embarrassingly long time. Otherwise, definitely a smooth presentation.
Spice Girl: Baby Spice
Vibe: Comedic Time Loop
Polish: Smooth
Is this TADS? No.
Gimme the Wheel! If it were mine, I would invest in committing to the bit: reduce or even eliminate the endings that are modest, reasonable variations. The more tortured the logic, the funnier it’ll be. Just test myself to see how many unconnected bananas end states and scenarios I could pack in. More than 25!
Spice Girl Ratings: Scary(Horror), Sporty (Gamey), Baby (Light-Hearted), Ginger (non-CWM/political), Posh (Meaningful)
Polish scale: Gleaming, Smooth, Textured, Rough, Distressed
Gimme the Wheel: What I would do next, if it were my project.
Mr. Mouse, meet Mz. Cat, July 12, 2023Adapted from a SpringThing23 Review
Played: 4/6/23
Playtime: 1hr, in tutorial mode with Sneak off, escaped!
Ok just up front, let me say I’m going to do my best to stay neutral on this but you should know my biases:
1. I’m a TADStan. Full bore. While clearly pushing me one way, there is also some back pressure in that I can’t help but constantly think ‘ooh, nice use of OutOfReach Container object…’ ‘aah, they maybe implemented it this way…’ ‘ehh that prepositional variable is off…’ which fights engagement.
2. Triggered is too strong a word. Maybe Tweaked. I get tweaked by ‘things stalking you’ games. It gives me anxiety way out of proportion for a guy typing on a keyboard.
3. The TADS author group is populated by a wonderful cast of Mensch and SuperMensch. Even among that Menschy population, Joey stands out among the Menschiest.
What I’m saying is you will have to judge how successfully I put all that aside. Anyway, this is surely the best game of the Thing, probably the year, maybe all time.
No, let me try to run at that again.
The setup is, you are a new life form in a sci-fi closed base setting, pushed into a life and death game of cat and mouse by a chatty but mostly unseen Adversary. WHY ARE WE ALWAYS THE MOUSE IN THESE THINGS??? There are two supporting docs you should absolutely secure before playing. A map and a rule book. I was a bit put off by the rule book. It is certainly complete. It also throws a LOT of information, gameplay reveals, and commands at you, before you have any game context. I definitely felt information overload reading it, the anxiety of needing to remember lots piling on my ‘I don’t like being prey!’ anxiety. Which is weird, because I am also a board game guy, and it certainly is not excessive in those terms.
On the other hand, the map is both cool and vital. Don’t try to play without it.
After the preliminaries, you wake up from your sci-fi cocoon and must parser your way to freedom! Despite the nervous wreck it made me, the stalking aspect is absolutely crucial to this game. Between that and the Turn Counter (or, as I though of it, the Stalker Progress Tracker) you are immediately focused on optimizing everything you do. Given I was playing in baby mode, maybe I didn’t need to be so nervous but whatever. The environs are economically described, in the sweet spot of having personality but not weighing down with repetition. There are some ‘gamey’ aspects (like letter coding segments of corridor) that at first feel weird to read, but quickly settle into transparent map orientation shorthand. Though god forbid you don’t have a map. (To be fair, there are accessibility hooks I did not test drive that may alleviate this.)
I really dug the parkour element of the game, though I chafed at calling it ‘parkour.’ Practically speaking, what it amounts to is finding hidden areas and exits in rooms by scrambling over stuff. That’s cool! As a word though, ‘parkour’ evokes a kinetic, acrobatic dance of sorts, and this is not that. This is finding hidden areas and exits. What it does do is make even the most spartan of rooms intriguing with possibility, and often rewarded! There seemed to be a few glitches once you parkoured (yes, I will be making up verbs in this series of reviews too), specifically around what was visible/reachable from different perches, but rarely and nothing fatal. At least on baby mode.
Two more quick quibbles. One, I think the Adversary needs just a little more spice. The impulse to let the reader’s imagination do the work is good, as I think we are meant to be unclear whether they are human or not. (Sidebar, there are some enigmatic things you can find that beg all kinds of intriguing questions.) It would be even better with just a few unexplained and disconcerting details. “The voice somehow catches when making glottal sounds, in a way human tongues never do.” “Every now and then, a dragging sound accompanies the footsteps.” “I catch a glimpse of cold, unblinking eyes. I’m not sure if it’s a trick of the light or if they glowed with a frigid inner light.”
Second, I think the search puzzle could be a little harder. Thanks to a quirk of the randomizer, (Spoiler - click to show)I found over half my escape items in one place! Though maybe I shouldn't complain about being Too Easy on Baby Mode.
Yeah, I’m overcompensating on the negative. I really had a blast playing this, and in particular liked the additional nuance of the parkour mechanism. Notwithstanding the mechanic’s name, it made what could have felt limiting and sterile breathe a bit with its own vibe. And I didn’t mention the stealth capabilities which were also crucial to this! You can manage or be tripped up by slamming doors. You can peek into and around areas before bumbling into your pursuer. There are atmospheric cues that help you gauge how close your pursuer is. All of these really push you into the role in an effective way and make the game feel more fair. While I didn’t include my IFCOMP metric of 'Would play after comp?' I definitely will.
Prolly also devour the source code like a novel.
Spice Girl: Scary Spice
Vibe: Controlled Panic
Polish: Smooth
Is this TADS? YES, oh gods of my fathers! Lo’ the clouds didst part and the skies were rent with sweet music… sigh
Feels like I took the long way around on this gag.
Gimme the Wheel! While spicing the villain seems an obvious next step, if it were me I think I would instead focus on internalizing the rule book into the game. Not just cut and pasting it into HINTS/HELP, ( I mean definitely do that, but the author seems to already have that planned) but introducing mechanisms through early gameplay. “He’s almost caught me! As I duck into the Lab, I reflexively SLAM the door behind me. I hear his satisfying cry of pain and the sound of feet staggering. That gave him pause, I reflect with momentary satisfaction. What do I do with the bought time?” If narrative alone can’t get the job done, “(I have unlocked SLAM DOOR!)”
Spice Girl Ratings: Scary(Horror), Sporty (Gamey), Baby (Light-Hearted), Ginger (non-CWM/political), Posh (Meaningful)
Polish scale: Gleaming, Smooth, Textured, Rough, Distressed
Gimme the Wheel: What I would do next, if it were my project.
Paging Mr. Cussler, July 12, 2023Adapted from a SpringThing23 Review
Played: 4/7/23
Playtime: 3hrs, finished, good guess author!
IF in Google Forms. What even is my life right now? Of course, in five years, I’ll be typing “Live IF via GMAI, what even is my life right now?” I guess I should enjoy the ignorant bloom of youth. (Because that phrase TOTALLY applies to me.) Look even if Kuolema were terrible, the chutzpah of a Google Forms implementation alone would rack up goodwill points from me.
But its really not. Terrible I mean. Yes, it’s a Clive Cussler-esque abandoned mystery ship carrying a terrible secret on stormy seas. But it’s a pretty good abandoned mystery ship carrying…etc. Roger Ebert famously said (paraphrasing) “It’s not WHAT it’s about, it’s HOW it’s about it.” And Kuolema has a long laundry list of things it does really well. For one, it feels like a well thought out ship, inhabited by a well-thought out crew. Every location has a reason for being, its absent inhabitants real motivations and impact on their environs. The puzzles have at least some rational motivations, though lordy the code pads. The mystery is capably rendered with the requisite twists that satisfy, if not amaze. The overarching plot is that nearly impossible sweet-spot balance of grounded and goofy. All of this is upper tier IF stuff.
I think though, its not so secret strength is its art. The rendered style is moody, a little dark, but consistent and immersive. Most especially the artifact and document art, which smoothly integrates you into the experience. You get to see corporate letterhead, “hand” written journals and notes, technical manuals, promotional posters, scientific and casual computer screens, and all of it feels perfectly designed.
In most ways, it might as well be a worthy choice-select IF from any number of systems. So let’s talk about the strengths and challenges of the GF implementation.
The game goes out of its way to, ungenerously, apologize, or more generously, set player expectations for the GF experience. The first caveat that drew extreme skepticism from me, was the statelessness of it: the game would only intermittently remember your inventory, or things you knew. You would have to track them on your own, in a separate document. Pencil? Paper? Like a STREET CORNER BOOKIE??? But man did I get whiplash turning around on that. Turns out, the quickest way to get me to engage deeply is to write stuff down. I actually knew this about myself, I often map as I play, but to be told I HAD to was a shock. Regardless, once I accepted the inevitable, I got into a rhythm of game screen/note screen that was just fun and immersive. Look, spreadsheets are a hobby of mine, leave me alone.
So points for GF on that one. Definitely making a limitation into a strength. On the downside, statelessness also meant that revisiting locations, you were often treated (with minimal shading) to outright repetition. You can have the same conversation as many times as you want, (mostly) without acknowledgement that you’ve had it. To be fair, GF is far from the only platform to see games with this weakness, and even games that successfully mitigate it, do so with caveats of their own. Minimal points off.
I think I’d call it an unmitigated success, except for one thing that bugged me all out of proportion. In order to advance the story, most pages would close with a radio button list of options, and a BACK/NEXT button pair. Meaning every time you wanted to move on, you needed two clicks: radio-select option, next button. That is twice as many clicks as necessary. It didn’t help that oh so frequently a page down was necessary too. It sounds small but man did it grate! I really enjoyed the game, but I think I would have enjoyed it twice as much with half as many clicks. Could GF really not support direct links there? Or was this a perverse choice by the author? What did I DO to them???
As far as polish, the artwork and page layout lent a really professional air to the proceedings. The only thing that kept it from being gleaming was some wonkiness in the progress tracker. I think maybe I solved a few puzzles “out of order” and got to watch my progress meter dance back and forth a bit. Not a deal breaker, but definitely a distraction. Don’t start me again on the radio buttons.
Spice Girl: Scary Spice - I may never look at Refresh buttons the same way.
Vibe: Pulpy
Polish: Smooth++
Is this TADS? No.
Gimme the Wheel! Dear God I would drive myself to the madhouse fixing that double click. I would engineer a hostile takeover of Google for the express purpose of deploying their entire software development capability on only this until it was fixed. If that’s what it took.
Spice Girl Ratings: Scary(Horror), Sporty (Gamey), Baby (Light-Hearted), Ginger (non-CWM/political), Posh (Meaningful)
Polish scale: Gleaming, Smooth, Textured, Rough, Distressed
Gimme the Wheel: What I would do next, if it were my project.
Bizarro Job Hunt, July 12, 2023Adapted from a SpringThing23 Review
Played: 4/7/23
Playtime: 20min, 3 endings
This entry lives up to its title, without doubt. There is a loose plot about finding a job, but so not the point of it. This is another (the third so far in Spring Thing23!) IF patterned after a joke: setup and punchline, no goal but to make you laugh. This one struggled a bit to find its footing, I felt. It is rife with misspellings, awkward sentences, and questionable grammar. An early gag about mistaking computer for social networking was structured too loose to land, but there was something there. It just felt like the language was making me do a lot of the work to find the humorous core of the idea.
When comedy is most effective on me, not only do I not have to work, the language is a full partner in laughs. It is the sharply honed needle that injects that uncut, industrial strength funny right into my brain. Which is not to say that there were no chuckles. In selecting a book (after selecting your wardrobe) to prepare for your party-cum-interview-opportunity, two options are:
"2. How to gain friends and influence people by Dale Carnegie :
"Talk about networking while networking to network the network
"3. Business at the speed of thought by Bill Gates:
"Business business, business is to business what business."
The first one tickled me, but right on its heels I was brought up short by “I don’t know how to read that.” There were some other amusing bits: (Spoiler - click to show)the protag’s spider sense, continually misnaming the ex (once I realized it was not a typo), and especially one ending reveal about your host. The sum of these and other gags leaves little doubt that the protag is not going to be a model employee wherever they land. For all the successful gags, there were as many or more that elicited “I think I see what they were going for there” instead of a laugh.
It’s short, as far as I can tell at most 3 potential jobs you choose from, then done. While the selection of potential bosses was daffy, I felt they could be MORE widely disparate to really land the absurdism. A (Spoiler - click to show)sentient cactus and an urbane donkey felt somehow more similar than different to me? Maybe that’s just me?
All in all, I found I was working too hard through the language to find the humor. There were a lot of frenetic, goofy ideas on display, but more often than not they were undermined by the sentences they had to inhabit. It was thankfully short, a soul of brevity and all. But I appreciate it more when I don’t have to work so hard for my laughs.
Spice Girl: Baby Spice
Vibe: Playful
Polish: Rough
Is this TADS? No.
Gimme the Wheel! For sure spell and grammar checking are the next stops if I drive this bus. It would both sharpen the laughs and improve the polish in one fell swoop.
Spice Girl Ratings: Scary(Horror), Sporty (Gamey), Baby (Light-Hearted), Ginger (non-CWM/political), Posh (Meaningful)
Polish scale: Gleaming, Smooth, Textured, Rough, Distressed
Gimme the Wheel: What I would do next, if it were my project.
Aggravation Can Be Fun, July 12, 2023Adapted from a SpringThing23 Review
To Be Clear: Review title refers to Character, not Game
Played: 4/8/23
Playtime: Distracted timekeeping, maybe 2.5-3hrs
IF feels like a nice match for heist/crime caper stories. Between the logic problem of defeating security, the think-on-your-feet crisis management during the inevitable reversals and complications, and even the manipulative work to defeat physical barriers it all just synchs nicely with IF strengths. Unlike, say, punch punch kick punch I win fighting. Throw in some quirky character work, and maybe a relationship or two and you’ve got a great stew boiling.
Here, you are renowned GentleLady Thief Thalia. (I know Lady is the proper feminine to Gentleman, but by aliasing it to 'woman' so often, it kind of sheds that essential ‘Upper Crust’ connotation.) I understand this to be part of a series, but this was my intro, and the game eased me into the setup smoothly and seamlessly. In no time I was hosting a social event, crossing mental swords with intellectual inferiors and plotting an intro heist. While this worked well to set the table for the main event, I found myself at a remove, and it took me a bit to understand why.
Either through the staging of the introductory sequence, or due to the choices I made, LadyT was consistently the smartest, bestest, most capable person in the room. And knew it. Boy did I find her tiresome. She was surrounded by amusing bumbling wannabes, socially awkward gadgeteers and conflicted adversaries. In particular, I enjoyed the Q character Gwen, who only near the end of a conversation did I realize was actually a Scoreboard telling me my score from the previous scenario! It was a delightfully subtle bit of writing. Every one of the supporting cast was fun to read and engaging to interact with. If only the protag half of the interactions wasn’t such a chore.
Now fiction is full of these kinds of characters. Characters like Doc Savage work because you spend more time with his colorful, flawed assistants and he acts more like a walking Deus Ex. Superman has endearing humility. Classic Bond works thanks to his sociopathic sense of humor. The immediacy of IF puts us IN the protag, where remove is not possible and an absence of mitigating personality is pronounced. I am given to understand that this negative impression may be an artifact of jumping into the series cold, which, fair enough.
As the game shifted to the main heist planning, I was further thrown off by narration telling me I had a map. This led me to believe I didn’t need to do paper mapping, as the protag/game would take care of me. Boy was that not true! I was a few rooms in before realizing, wait a minute, I’m lost and shoulda been mapping all along. It’s not that the museum is geographically difficult, it was just a bad expectation.
So I’m in a hole, enjoyment wise, and then the game does the most perfect thing. It introduces an adversary character who is EVEN SMARTER than LadyT! Mechanically, this character is basically a reversal generator to keep the plot fun. But CHARACTER wise she has the crucial function of putting our protag off her game, getting her worried and frustrated and second guessing herself. She is so much more interesting this way. It was compounded by me the player totally bollixing an interview. LadyT’s frazzled self recriminations (due to my ineptitude) were perversely amusing. The protag was much more fun when I was doing badly!
This turnaround came at a crucial time. From here, we are off to the races in the Big Heist. A quick word about the setup here. This game made some really smart game play choices, specifically in the preparation (recon! interviews! staging! NPC coordination!), giving real perceived agency in getting things set, and how easy or hard the endgame would be. While I suspect failure would be really hard (if not impossible) to achieve here, the illusion of creating success was strong. Not to mention the detailed work of engineering a heist was just plain fun. Ditto managing the inevitable escalating reversals, culminating in a nice bit of character work (if you’d done your homework earlier!) to secure your escape.
Overall, I spent about half the play time at a remove, a quarter of time “ooh wait, I like where this is going,” and the final stretch fully engaged. This game dug a hole for me, then through a few tightly choreographed twists, propelled me to a very satisfying end. Seems about right for the genre!
Spice Girl: Ginger Spice
Vibe: Crime Caper
Polish: Gleaming
Is this TADS? No.
Gimme the Wheel! If it were mine, I think my next step might be to create an in-game map. Either as a pdf-eelie, or better yet use that Twine dead space left window to implement a dynamic map that grows as you explore. You might need to rotate the museum 90 degrees (the map is wider than tall, but turning on its side could take advantage of that narrow window). In addition to realizing the promise of the text, it would add a nice graphical flair to a bare bones presentation.
Spice Girl Ratings: Scary(Horror), Sporty (Gamey), Baby (Light-Hearted), Ginger (non-CWM/political), Posh (Meaningful)
Polish scale: Gleaming, Smooth, Textured, Rough, Distressed
Gimme the Wheel: What I would do next, if it were my project.
Theatre of the Mind, July 12, 2023Adapted from a SpringThing23 Review
Played: 4/8/23
Playtime: 30min
Depending on how you approach it, this one either packs a lot into its short runtime, or not enough. It’s a Monster of the Week kind of setup, an in media res supernatural investigation with personal stakes. It’s also very linear, very few choices to make and most of those adding details without changing anything. For sure, the narrative is the star here, not the game play.
To the narrative’s benefit, the writing style is smooth and confident, and plays with itself in fun ways. At various times it subverts itself with humor, and elsewhere falls victim to the powers of the monsters it is documenting. The latter in particular is a really fun tweaking of form that works better in IF than it might on the page. All in all, the writing style is a solid foundation to support the story.
But the writing’s biggest strength I think also ends up ham stringing it. The narrative leans a lot on implied back story, loric details tossed out without much explication, leaving the reader to speculate/fill in the gaps. It is a powerful technique, and the details dispensed are singular, odd, evocative and intriguing. (Spoiler - click to show)Rainwater Death filters, reality bending creatures, god shards, there is a lot to tantalize, but because it’s new to you but not the characters you only get oblique hints. It really engages the reader’s imagination.
Unfortunately, the same remove that makes the backstory so tantalizing is also applied to the main character and their relationships. This works less effectively, and makes the protagonist a bit of a blank. Interesting things are happening to and around them, but they remain enigmatic at the center of it. There are relationships presented as fact, but without details that showcase the emotional underpinnings that have to be there. While the reader’s imagination is fully engaged in theorizing the setting’s details, it’s quite a different thing to ask us to ALSO plumb the main character’s personality and emotional history. Most especially because of the personal stakes in the plot.
As the story drew to an end, the most overpowering impression I had was that I had just read an outline, rather than a fully fleshed out story. A really intriguing outline, with details I’d love to hear more about, but needing a lot more meat on its bones.
Spice Girl: Scary/Ginger Spice
Vibe: Horror Outline
Polish: Smooth
Is this TADS? No.
Gimme the Wheel! If it were mine, I would focus on fleshing out the protagonist’s character. Let the reader see more of their inner life, either through dialogue, actions or direct access to thoughts (a bit easier to do in IF). Most especially the two relationships that are at the heart of the story. The plot and background can get away with leveraging the reader’s imagination. The protagonist and their emotional life is going to be more powerful delivered on the page.
Spice Girl Ratings: Scary(Horror), Sporty (Gamey), Baby (Light-Hearted), Ginger (non-CWM/political), Posh (Meaningful)
Polish scale: Gleaming, Smooth, Textured, Rough, Distressed
Gimme the Wheel: What I would do next, if it were my project.
.. and the Delightful Despot, July 12, 2023Adapted from a SpringThing23 Review
Played: 4/9/23
Playtime: 2 hrs, finished. FOR NOW.
Like [REDACTED] years ago I went through a phase where I was fascinated by the pulp magazines of the 30’s and 40’s. High Adventure, against a backdrop of first draft wild ideas and third-hand science knowledge, delivered on an insane monthly deadline. These ingredients created some propulsive, wonderfully goofy, imminently readable stories. Not for nothing, the source of the word ‘pulpy’ as a narrative type. (Also yes, so much racism and sexism.)
Galaxy Jones is a wonderful echo of those tales - Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon without the White Man’s Burden. The game makes the crucial choice to cut away all the problematic baggage without comment or fanfare, and give us the straight uncut adrenaline. It would have to REAAALLY drop the ball to lose me, and it didn’t.
As a parser game, there were rough spots. Quite a few unimplemented nouns:
"[...] the dock features several dozen speeder bays. Only a few are
filled right now. [...]
">x speeders
"There's nothing like that nearby."
Or worse, then:
">x speeder
"(the speeder)
"Galaxy One [...]"
This kind of thing happened often enough that it left an impression, but the piece is so tightly paced it doesn’t let you dwell on it in the moment. Most commands give a concise and often amusing 1-2 lines max in response. The thing is sprinkled but not drowned with dry humor and pulpy spice, letting your internal Buck Rogers fan fill in what’s necessary behind the nicely thematic cues. This gives the whole narrative an internal momentum, like ‘no time for details, here’s what’s important, quick, what’s next?’ It is such a successful marriage of form and function. The pace is further reinforced with relatively spartan locations, again discouraging extended loitering. When you do get more than 4 lines of response, it immediately conveys, ‘wait, this is big!’
The puzzles are, for the most part, also pretty streamlined. It is uncommon that things you need are not a room or two away. I struggled with one ledge-related puzzle but was otherwise fine. (I particularly like the task boards, though I was crestfallen that adding ‘solve my puzzle’ to the board didn’t actually get it done. :] ) I go back and forth on whether the relative simplicity is a drawback or a feature - it certainly supports the dynamic momentum of the story to not spin excessively on locked doors. Given all that, the presence of inventory items (some of which were tricky to collect) that were ultimately unused was confusing, unless some puzzles had multiple solutions?
The game further endeared itself to me by implementing in-game hints in the form of your ‘gal behind the keyboard’ over comm link. For sure the positive outweighed the friction by a good margin, and that’s even before the part that had me giggling and clapping like a toddler getting a new woobie. Which I will spoiler because the surprise is part of the delight.
(Spoiler - click to show)The piece opens with an ascii-banner, the logo of our heroine. Itself, just a perfect mood setter for the vibe of the piece. Then, after the first significant victory, the logo flashes beneath your success text, “GALAXY JONES!” It is the most perfectly surprising, evocative, and delightful touch, and you get it with every subsequent major success. I am on record calling that the best 8 lines of IF in 2023. I stand by that assessment.
After a whirlwind of action/adventure, it ends on a cliffhanger, promising another episode! A really well executed homage, crisply translating classic pulp fiction’s narrative momentum into the IF medium. Also translating retro-pulp into the new millennium, come to that.
Spice Girl: Ginger Spice
Vibe: Sci-Fi Pulpy
Polish: Textured
Is this TADS? No.
Gimme the Wheel! I would take time to scrub the noun universe, and to a lesser extent verb responses. There were enough glitches for me to notice them, even at the speed I was moving. The skeleton and muscles of the game are there. At this point, it’s all polish.
Spice Girl Ratings: Scary(Horror), Sporty (Gamey), Baby (Light-Hearted), Ginger (non-CWM/political), Posh (Meaningful)
Polish scale: Gleaming, Smooth, Textured, Rough, Distressed
Gimme the Wheel: What I would do next, if it were my project.
The Purring Chaos, July 12, 2023Adapted from a SpringThing23 Review
Played: 4/10/23
Playtime: 1hr, with hints and transcript
This is an established fact about humanity: that there are dog people and there are cat people. It is further an established fact that cat people deserve empathy for life events that led them to welcome into their hearts a being that at best greets their suffering with complete disinterest, and at worst passes the days mentally creating Final Destination fan films where their owner is every victim.
// What is this feeling suddenly possessing me, of being alone in a vast minefield surrounded by shadow-born trebuchet? Probably just the wind. //
Sacred Shovel of Athena is a notionally fantasy IF about befriending a cat, then fighting. Boy does it whitewash the first half of that.
Stepping away from the premise a bit, this was mechanically a rough ride for me. There was a lot of guess the noun/verb. There were some positional dependencies not well flagged, where the right action in the wrong location failed without explanation. There were descriptions that didn’t quite convey the mechanics of what was happening, and inconsistent levels of detail. There were successes without clear explanation what I did to make them succeed. All of this led to an overwhelming feeling of constantly fighting the game to make progress.
Other games have these challenges for sure. The tone, stakes and narrative act as motivation in those instances to push through. Here though? The narrative is really thin, it’s intended as a puzzle fest. The tone is occasionally wry, but not overly humorous. The stakes are low, which by itself can be admirable. Low stakes can still be compelling stakes, and even when they’re not, if the game play is short and light you may not notice. But an hour, mostly fighting this thing, is not the right balance for these stakes. Not when the stakes are befriending a creature that would kill me in my sleep if that would grant him my opposable thumbs.
// Eyes fierce with determination, I gaze upward at the distant lip of the pit. Ignoring the old man’s counsel, I redouble my efforts to dig free. //
The bug that ultimately crashed my experience was the Hint system. When I tried to use it in Gargoyle, I got 18 lines of help topics, notably short of what I needed. I got the same when I played the downloaded HTML, or the online link. It was only when I cribbed another reviewer's transcript that I even realized more were available (not sure what interpreter they were using). This left me in the unenviable position of trying to solve some obtuse guess-the-sequence puzzles via someone else’s similarly struggling transcript.
For me, this was way too much work for too little reward. I fully acknowledge that Cat People may find a better experience here. But don’t they already have ENOUGH cross to bear?
// And lo, a chill wind surges and the clouds darken. Too late, the peril is revealed. I dared trifle with Pet Forces Beyond My Ken, and my reckoning will be swift and violent. //
Spice Girl: Baby Spice
Vibe: Fantasy-Lite
Polish: Rough
Is this TADS? No.
Gimme the Wheel! Ok, if this were mine, the Hint bug clearly needs addressing one way or another. But my first stop I think would be to internalize as many transcripts as possible to a) add noun and verb synonyms that make sense and b) add cluing prompts and feedback in areas where complicated sequences are required. “The cat curls up snugly. You can’t imagine that angelic face being anything but pleased once it wakes up.
“AND MURDERS YOU.”
Spice Girl Ratings: Scary(Horror), Sporty (Gamey), Baby (Light-Hearted), Ginger (non-CWM/political), Posh (Meaningful)
Polish scale: Gleaming, Smooth, Textured, Rough, Distressed
Gimme the Wheel: What I would do next, if it were my project.
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