Reviews by manonamora

just a poem is, like its name suggests, a micro poem. With four short stanza, the bleak and gruesome poem paints a memorable image. The effect is enhanced by the type-writing effect, as it slowly reveals the bloody words.

He Knows That You Know and Now There’s No Stopping Him is the first entry of the RBG trilogy, inspired by the Bluebeard tale, a dialogue between wife and husband. In this first act, you are the last of Bluebeard’s wives, caught in the act of disobeying him (i.e. finding the bloody basement). Threatened by your husband, as were the others, you must find a way to escape the deadly fate that awaits you. And so, with a concealed knife, you wait for the perfect moment to strike.

Though there are multiple choices and paths for dialogue (from pleading for mercy to downright be antagonistic), there is only one ending to reach. All fates are sealed after all.

The dialogue is smooth, which ever path taken, building tension until the culminating point (that moment was a bit jarring, with the prose moving to a more modern English compared to the rest of the text). With such an eventful final action, I’ve been impatiently waiting to see what the other two Acts will bring…

My Grandfather’s Clock is a short piece where you must decide what to do with your grandfather’s broken clock after his passing. Between fixing or selling it, you have little choice in the matter at the end. Like your forefather, it is stubborn and unmoving. You could try to change it, but it will take effort that may not be worth the headache down the line. The parallel made between the clock and its former owner in the text made me chuckle a bit – I know a few grandpas like that one…

Roboto is a sci-fi horror kinetic piece, where you follow a robotic scientist waking up in their dark lab, looking for their phone. Forced to rely only on touch, you explore the lab, in search for the item, second guessing every sound and everything. The minimalist prose gives off an uneasy atmosphere, with the descriptions of the inanimate robots challenging their lifeless state. It is subtle, but enough to make you feel that shiver running down your spine.

I Have Something Important to Tell You is a short kinetic entry about depression and communicating personal experiences with this illness with their young child. While I question the phrasing of some sentences to be age-appropriate (to the hypothetical five-year old), it still can be an important discussion to have, especially with de-stigmatising the use of pills to combat the illness.

Kel Versus the Kitchen is a short meter-sensitive Twine, where you play as teenage Kel, walking in on a frenzy family affair, of getting ready for dinner. Before you can even take off your shoes, you are commandeered to do this and that, and blamed for things essentially out of your control. The entry does a pretty good job at depicting that stressful moment before guests arrive and nothing is truly ready. Very chaotic!! Depending on the choices made, which may decrease your/everyone’s patience, you will get one of the four endings, from frustrating to cathartic. But it’s pretty fun to try to find them all!

The eight-headed giant is a micro parser where you are some sort of fantasy office drone about to go face your eight-headed giant boss, and do an important presentation. But before you get into it sword swinging, you need to go around the office and get ready (i.e. collect all that you need). It’s pretty railroady and simple to solve, but I still manage to get stuck because I forgot to do the most important thing: FACE the giant xD
Also a neat thing: it has cool ASCII art!

Oh No: My Hot Coworkers Keep Turning Me On! is a tease of a tiny entry, where you play as a horny space farer trying to cross their ship. But their path is crossed by their many hot coworkers, doing this and that, in very enticing positions (or so you, a pervert sees as). You can either be a peeper and gawk at your coworkers (learn about who they are, how they look, what they are doing), or pass by and keep to yourself. But peep too much and you’d burst!

For the little words available, it’s very tame. But I’d definitely play a longer version of this game!

you are an ancient chinese poet in exile is a short poetic day in the life of an Ancient Chinese poet in exile. Almost kinetic, with subtle variation between your choice of activities, you wake up in a beautiful scenic location, alone and maybe a bit lonely too, filling your day with distractions and reminiscing over your fate, sealing the day with a few poetic lines. It is delightful, both in the calmness of the setting, the bitterness of past events, and the melancholy of it all. Lovely!

To Let Go is a short interactive exploration piece between the ever changing state of nature and bustling speed of change in cities. Though, it seems somewhat a rejection of modernity, looking down on the city “winning” the fight against the woods, technological advancement ruining the natural state of the world. Maybe a bit naive in its nihilistic view. Disregarding the beauty and good.

I don’t know what to make of the interactivity. Coupled with timed text, you go back and forth between passages as some paths are locked until you see a specific text. I wasn’t always sure whether I needed to wait longer to see if a new link would pop up or if I had to try another path first. I did like the different text animation between the “city” and the “forest” sections.