Ratings and Reviews by dogdennings

Less interactive fiction and more endurance test, The Story is a Room is what happens when you structure an entire game around one action and then force the player to repeat said action ad nauseam. In this case, the player is going to be opening boxes. Lots and lots and lots of boxes.

The real appeal here is the humor. While the writing itself is not overly comical, the act of having to repeatedly open box after box becomes so tedious so fast that the humor is created through wondering what the purpose of it all is.

Unfortunately, that humor is not going to appeal to everyone. The gameplay is very repetitive and the boxes have various sizes, shapes, and descriptions, so simply spamming “G” over and over is not going to get the job done.

The Story is a Room is certainly unique, but that uniqueness will probably not appeal to a wide audience. If you enjoy absurdist humor, you will probably enjoy this box-opening marathon.

You are at a cafe with Sandra and O’Brien. You can trust Sandra, but not O’Brien.
An ancient castle looms large on the horizon. There is a glass of wine in front of you. You really need to get out of this town.

Based on one of the author’s dreams, Dreadwine is a short and surreal game about trying to escape from a totalitarian government. You and your friend Sandra must find a way to leave town together before you both are arrested and turned into wine.

On one hand, the game can be frustrating. There is very little that you can interact with and the locational details are often inconsistent. For example, a building might be described as a barber shop at one point and a brothel at another point. Sandra serves as your companion NPC, but she proves to be more of a hindrance than a helper.

On the other hand, I suspect that the frustration is mostly intentional. Dreadwine is based on a dream after all, and dreams are often confusing and disorienting. That feeling of frustration also ties in well with the game’s themes of hopelessness and paranoia.

The game features two endings, but they both share similarities.

While I didn’t find the gameplay of Dreadwine to be very engaging, the surreal and oppressive narrative more than made up for it. Fans of weird fiction will find a lot to enjoy in this interactive nightmare.

It is not easy being a bread artist with sculptor’s block. Maybe a night out on the town will spark your imagination.

Written for a Speed-IF competition, Tall Tales in the Big Easy is very short with few locations. However, the game does have a lot of creativity, with a plot that involves voodoo-cursed croissants and alligator bones. None of it makes a lot of sense, but the game is so short that it doesn’t really matter.

The game features multiple endings. It also has a scoring system, which sadly doesn’t seem to work.

Tall Tales in the Big Easy is a bite-sized slice of Louisiana atmosphere. If you like your games short and weird, I highly recommend it.

I am a cat burglar, and I am currently standing outside a house. Eric is here, and he wants to talk to me.

>Talk to Eric
I don’t understand what you mean!
>X Eric
You see no such thing.
>Hello, Eric
I do not understand the word "hello."
>Eric, hello.
I do not understand the word "eric."

There is a ladder here. I can neither "get" nor "climb" the ladder. When I try to examine the ladder, the game informs me that the ladder is "object1.leaning on the wall|lying on the ground."

Through a combination of brute force and dumb luck, I eventually make my way into an upstairs bathroom. The homeowner notices me. A fight ensues. Sometimes my punches land, sometimes they don’t. Sometimes the game seems genuinely baffled as to why I would want to fight someone in the first place. After wrestling with the text parser for about three minutes, I accidentally trigger an ending. The game is now over.

Put simply, Cat Burglar has a lot of technical problems. I played the game in both ADRIFT 5 Runner and Parchment. The game definitely ran better in Parchment, although I still encountered a lot of bugs.

On a non-technical note, I feel the need to warn potential players that Cat Burglar has a pretty dark tone. It is advertised as a pornographic game, so I expected sex scenes, but Cat Burglar’s approach to sex is very much of the “You are helpless and at my mercy and I can do whatever I want to you and no one will stop me” variety. And I want to stress that I am not judging the author nor the people who enjoy this type of fantasy. However, I personally didn't find it very appealing.

While the prospect of playing as a sexy criminal who has to use not only her thieving skills but her womanly wiles to get her way sounds appealing, Cat Burglar suffers from far too many technical problems to be an enjoyable experience. I do not recommend it.

Locked Door III feels very much like a combination of the two previous Locked Door games. The puzzles are not overly complicated, but the gameplay does require both object manipulation and NPC interaction. The map is small, but the locations have their own unique personalities.

I didn’t notice any typos, but I did encountered a bug. I was able to finish the game with a score of four out of three, which I am pretty sure is something that I am not suppose to be able to do.

Compared to the two previous games, Locked Door III feels the most like an actual puzzle, albeit a very small one. If you are thinking about getting into this series, I would recommend skipping the two previous entries and starting with this one.

A balding man named Bob stands between you and your freedom.

While more complicated than the first game, Locked Door II is still pretty bare-bones. It is a two-room game with one puzzle, but this time the puzzle is centered around interacting with an NPC. The game can be completed in seven turns.

While I applaud the author for continuing to write games, there is still not enough here for a recommendation.

You find yourself locked in a room. Can you unlock the door?

Locked Door is a two-room game centered around one puzzle. The game can be solved in four turns.

I am usually a fan of terse writing, but Locked Door takes it to an extreme. Not only is the game very short, but almost nothing in the game has a description, although examining yourself does produce the rather humorous response of “just some dude.”

On the positive side, I didn’t encounter any bugs or typos.

I realize that Locked Door was an exercise in minimalism, but there is simply not enough here to warrant a recommendation.

There is a killer on the loose in Elmville, and unless you want to become their next victim, you better hurry up and bring them to justice.

Wolfsmoon is a horror-themed puzzle game with pixel artwork. It was written in a terse style that is meant to mimic the text adventure games from the 1980s. However, Wolfsmoon is much more forgiving than games from that decade. While the puzzles are not exactly easy, the game cannot be put into an unwinnable state.

The gameplay is broken into two parts. The first part has you exploring the town of Elmville while collecting items and solving puzzles. There are a few NPCs that you can interactive with, but they are mostly static and unhelpful.

The second part takes place in a puzzle house. You find yourself trapped in a mansion, and you have to search every room carefully for clues on how to escape.

I felt that the puzzles were of medium difficulty. I did get stuck frequently, but progression never felt impossible. I was able to finish the game without a walkthrough.

Wolfsmoon also features beautiful pixel artwork for every location. The artwork does a great job of adding to the atmosphere without distracting from the written descriptions.

On the negative side, some of the writing is a little awkward. For example, if you try to fill a tankard with stew, the game will tell you that tankards are for beer. Fair enough, except for the fact that you have to eventually fill the tankard with something that is decidedly not beer. These moments are few and far between, and they certainly don’t ruin the game, but I can see how they could cause confusion and frustration.

Atmospheric and challenging, Wolfsmoon is a great game. If you enjoy solving puzzles, I highly recommend it.

You are home alone, but not entirely alone.

In All Alone, you play as a struggling artist who is currently living in a sub-basement apartment. Your significant other is at work, and you have settled in for the night to watch some television when a news report about a serial killer comes on. And suddenly the phone rings.

While not technically a one-room game, the entirety of All Alone takes place in a very claustrophobic apartment. The gameplay is puzzleless with a focus on exploration and object examination. It is a short game, but the author does a great job of ratcheting up the tension. And the level of object interactivity is really impressive. Almost everything in your apartment can be examined.

It is hard to talk about All Alone without discussing the ending, and it is hard to discuss the ending without revealing spoilers. While I did enjoy the ending, I will admit that it left me with more questions than answers. Maybe that was the point. Maybe the underlying message of the game is that your emotions can distort your sense of reality. Maybe, but I honestly don’t know.

All Alone is a genuinely scary game with an impressive level of detail and a plot that plays with your expectations. I highly recommend it.

You wake up in the middle of the night with a throbbing headache and an itchy scalp. It is only going to get worse from here.

Based on an idea by H.P. Lovecraft, Ecdysis is the story of a man struggling to make sense of a rapidly changing environment. The game begins in a rather mundane setting, but soon shifts to an alien landscape of lust and violence.

The gameplay is a little too linear for my liking, but the story is interesting enough to keep me invested. Locations, people, and objects are represented as clickable hyperlinks, so you can play the majority of the game with just the mouse, although typing in commands will sometimes give you additional information. The game is short, and there are no puzzles, aside from the general process of interacting with the environment. There are multiple endings, with each one seemingly more grotesque than the last.

I recommend Ecdysis, but that recommendation comes with an asterisk. If you are looking for a scary but ultimately uplifting story about conquering evil, you are definitely looking in the wrong place. But fans of the macabre will find a lot to appreciate in Ecdysis.