Reviews by manonamora

Method in My Madness is a short experimental Twine piece about a borderline-mad person’s obsession over a man. Through stylized text, unfinished sentences, and hidden choices, you get a cool visual sense of the broken-like thoughts bouncing in one’s mind. There are two endings, leading to blank screens.

It seems more like a proof of concept/prototype than a fully realised piece. I think it would need just a bit more fleshing out.

The Ocean View from the Keiyo Line is a micro slice-of-life Decker piece. Sitting in a train, you spot the calm ocean afar, and wonder whether you should go and take a plunge or continue on your journey. It is pretty sweet and hopeful, with only a hint of maybe bitterness or insecurity with one of the path, though both end pretty happily in their own way. It was touching and dreamy.

A Clean Getaway is a micro Ink game about strategy and chance. You are an outlaw in a Western setting, trying to escape the law after your last botched bust. You have a few days worth of supplies and the authority at your heels. How long will you manage to stay out?
I still haven’t managed to reach a fortnight, getting caught pretty early on often, even while trying to lay low as much as possible. While it is possible to bribe the authority to get out of their grasp, I have yet to manage a clean getaway…
Pretty fun and addictive!

Out Of My Mind is a kinetic-like micro Twine about letting go and trusting the ones you love. Your sister has a crush on your trans best-friend, and you fear what could happen if it doesn’t work out between them (she’s your sister and he has a tendency of ghosting after breakups) or what would happen if they do (losing them to each other).
It was at time a bit difficult to realise who was talking when, but it was a cute short entry. The game may force you a certain path, but it does make sense with the personality given to the narrator.

GUT2 is the spoof/sequel of GUT THE MOVIE, where you don’t just play as the original trio, but also TER, the (Eurovision inspired?) rival trio, who is trying to one-up GUT by making a sequel before they do. It uses a similar gameplay as the original game, with having different actions for each character, except that it flips from one trio to the next.

Until the original, this spoof does not let you go very far, with most of your attempts being losing endings (either because your chosen idea was bad/impossible to make or because the game is broken), and one win by default (because GUT just doesn’t bother making the sequel). Still, it was funny how it poked fun at the original game, with even sillier actions or by simply giving up on it. It probably has also the smallest iframe I’ve seen in a long time.

stage fright is a short horror Twine piece, with a looping component. During a student play, your sparring partner gets a nosebleed, bad enough that it freaks you out and stops you from performing the rest of the scene. Queue leaving the stage en embarrassment and… finding your way back to the start again. Reliving the same scene over and ov–

oh, no, actually. Just once. Because you run into some broken links which stops you from experiencing the other coded scenes (though some of them are broken in other ways). It is a bit of a shame, because the concept of the story is really interesting in and of itself, and the nightmare/horror loop to escape (as some sort of stage fright metaphor) is pretty cool to explore.

the CHRONICLES of YORLANDIA: part One: The calm before THE STORM is a short Twine adventure game where you find a note from your friend/boy-girlfriend/love of your life, where you learn their father found out about your background and forbid them from ever seeing you again! Unless you meet them at 3am at a certain space… Except, it’s in just a bit, and you’re still in bed.

Will you make it in time?

Well… this won’t be in this entry that you will find the truth, as the exciting starting adventure ends on a cliffhanger as soon as you reach the first action point. You’re already on the edge of your seat, with a maybe cliché but still entertaining setting, and it’s pulled right under you! SACRILEGE!

There are also some fun little winks parsed throughout the game, of what could have been in unfinished coded elements, or of meta elements about the author and the development of the story, making us want to know more about the project.

But death to unnecessary timed text.

Cloak of Cleansing is a short parser, as a spoof of the Cloak of Darkness. Unlike the original, the world has been expanded and the goal as changed. You do not start with a cloak on your shoulders, but rather, must find your own. The message in the bar is still there, but is now too obscene to be displayed on screen or interact with. Instead, you must interact with a new NPC who will reward you for your unique “sense of style” (I think there’s a HHGG reference there?). Most of the game is pretty railroady after that puzzle is completed, and a sudden shift in tone/genre.

The parser is fairly bare with only a limited amount of command defined (or giving a response - even X ME doesn’t do much). I’m pretty sure I ran into a bug in the bar as well, where I ended up being stuck, unable to go back to the foyer (going against the “you can’t lose” admission in the blurb).

Why? is a kinetic entry created for the Really Bad IF, where you follow/are Luna, a transgender girl going about her day(s), talking to other people or herself. It is pretty nonsensical, especially with each scene loosely connected to the next and with typos everywhere adding on to the confusion (sometime it’s even played for laughs!), or when the game fakes an early ending. There are some funny lines and statements, making the more obviously bad elements worse.

I am oblivious to the fact that my best friend is a vampire is a fantasy slice-of-life Ink (Calico) story, where you’ve invited your best friend to spend the evening doing things that friends do: watch a movie, play some games, have some food, chat, and what not. But, as the title suggests, your best friend is not… quite human - a fact you are completely oblivious about, even when the signs are all there!

With each sequence, you have multiple options to interact with Nico (that’s your lovely friend btw, who brought cake!), though you will end up with the same general sequence of event: Nico enters, you have some activities, they want to talk to you. Yet, it doesn’t matter that the only obvious effect you have on the evening is which activities you do and in which order. Because…

… it’s just lovely. Your interactions with Nico are super nice, and awkward and embarrassing at times. Even if you are oblivious to the major signs, the dialogue is really charming and funny. I laughed quite a bit while playing, especially at all the vampire references going over “You”.