Ratings and Reviews by manonamora

A Dodecapedic Box is a tiny parser where you are being chased by a dodecapedic box and must find a way for it to make it stop (or at least calm down). It involves fairly simple puzzles (AND YOU HAVING TO DO CRIMES!!), even if they are not always very sensible (I SAID CRIME) or logical at first glance. Still, with the absurd situation of it all (maybe it’s just all a dream), it was a pretty fun parser to complete! Quick and easy!

Oh Father, Please is a short interactive piece about a trans experience, being outed to an unsupportive parent and abused by said parent in retaliation. Your father, outraged by the new information, demands you give up parts of yourself to appease his sensibilities. You get to choose (or refuse) which part you can leave without to deflect his anger - the more important to your identity, the calmer he gets. But all comes with a price. Staying authentic to yourself bring his wrath, relenting to his request forces you back into a role that does not fit with you.
It’s pretty sad.

The One With Antlers is a fantasy mini-piece, where a knight returns to the castle with a Princess (which he probably rescued?) but meets a strange man on the way. Approaching it, they realise the man is more creature, with antlers and hooves: a satyr blocking their path, a dangerous aura defusing from it. There are a few options to go around it, though, none really lead to a happy resolution. A neat darker retelling of the princess rescue trope.

Bluebeard’s Not-Wives is a kinetic retelling of the Bluebeard story, in which you play one of the wives of Bluebeard ahead of the marriage. Except, the prose breaks the original mould about Bluebeard and his wife. Bluebeard is not some tyrannical blood-thirsty husband, but a misunderstood soul dealing with prejudice. And though the wives are never to be seen, you are not fearful of this terminal fate, for living as society demands of you actually feels like death.

The entry does a wonderful job at building the story, bringing the pieces together in such a lovely way, leading to a very touching end. It was very sweet, and though I would read a whole book of this, perfect the way it just is.

Thread unlocked. is a short interactive chat-sim like piece. Following a rough discussion, a (Forum?) thread is unlocked, enabling you to post something. Unknowing of the previous messages, you are given four different choices of words, leading to one of 36 different possible sentences (which you don’t know the content of either).

Ranging from short and sweet (which really makes you wonder what happened in that thread), to pretty antagonistic (which also makes you wonder what kind of arguments we had to deal with), with so few words, the piece does a pretty good job at giving a limited snapshot of what you could see after a Forum argument, when tension has supposedly died down and everyone has moved on. How so little words can really swift the vibe of a thread one way or another. Words that you know will just kill the thread for real, or see another way of doubling down (and maybe some stronger moderation action).

There is something slightly triggering about the first four words on the screen: Thread Unlocked. Slowmode Off. As some sort of slithering anxiety finding its way through your throat and tightening it more and more, as the worry, of people barging in back in and restart the argument that required the thread to be locked in the first place, just… bursts (these threads are emotionally draining).

I don’t think I’ll be able to look at another locked thread and not be reminded of this piece. Also a good reminder to pick your words… or just avoid posting? Yeah… sometimes it’s the best way of action.

maybe if i can find the right words. is a short emotional Twine piece about friendship drifting apart, and the induced anxiety of experiencing your friends ghosting you. You flip through snapshots, describing different moments of the feeling friendship, as you wonder what went wrong, and what you could do to fix things. But it’s pretty hard to fix things if the other person doesn’t interact with you.
One small thing, the interface kept flickering in the colour of the page when I clicked, which made reading a bit annoying.

You Died Sixty Seconds Into the Apocalypse is a short humoristic apocalyptic piece where you play as an artist in a recording room when the apocalypse starts. Like the title suggests, you didn’t make it very far. But, maybe you still tried?
Through crude snips, the short game was pretty entertaining. The final line was funny!

You is a tiny interactive piece focusing on the start and the end of relationships. The two paragraphs story lets you cycle through different options to create your own little final piece. The starts can be cute or maybe a bit creepy, and some pitiful, but the endings tend to be sadder, with only a hint of bittersweet. It makes for (bitter)sweet stories to downright depressing, depending on the options on the screen. Very much build-your-own-story.

A Whimsical Search is a short Twine piece, inspired by Tarot cards, where you play as Sage, the owner of a whimsical shop where you can trade in traits. A hermit comes in, looking for a tale, and it’s your job to fulfil the request (if you accept it). It was cute, and like the title suggests, whimsical. I liked the inclusion of the Tarot cards and what they represented in the story.

Carry On. is a short sci-fi Twine piece, broken into two scenes (seemingly unrelated? I am not quite sure, the break between the two is a bit jarring/confusing). You are a space farer at the start of a mission, looking for your captain, and finding more than you asked. That second part is a bit chilling, and made it feel like the whole was some sort of demo or prototype for a larger piece (it does set a bit of mystery/confrontation that would make for a neat game).