Reviews by manonamora

A Colorful World is a cute short visual novel, where two friends (who I believe are children) meet, play some games and have fun together. It’s really simple, with only a couple of choices, and essentially two paths to see all there is to it.

The interface is pretty simple, with a static background showing the two protagonist, drawn in a child-like matter (with like crayons), and with a cute little background track.
It really is cute, and child-friendly!

Grocery Quest is a short humorous Twine game where you play as an elf, in a quest of acquiring a Slushy and a Hot Dog at the local Fantasy 7-11. But the path between you and the desired item is essentially cursed: you will need to be careful in your actions and movements to get there safely, and retrieve said items with your life. There are multiple endings, with the winning state requiring a bit of sleuthing.

Even if short, it was pretty funny. The humour is on point and it made me want to get that elf its darn meal! I chuckled a lot. It’s pretty absurd, but it’s also my kind of jam. I also liked the use of formatting of part of the text, adding to the silliness of it all!

ohhh dear is a tiny Twine story about crows, and their wish to better crowkind. You (apparently being a crow too) must choose the course of action that will set the crows’ future, by choosing one of two options. You are not given the specifics on what those options are, learning only about their consequences when you choose them. There are two endings, neither of them being particularly great for you.

Half of the “game” is however spent on a short tangent about how the game came to be, rather than the story itself, kinda chopping off its wings before it could actually fly. Which is a shame because it could make for a fun concept (from what I’ve gathered of the endings). But props for putting it together so soon before the deadline, like participating in Speed-IF without it being a restriction xD.

Wedding Party is a parser-like game where you are currently attending, as the title suggests, a wedding party. During the main event, you are presented with multiple possible actions, from leaving the wedding to very strange behaviours (like squeaking?! it’s also a counter?). You also able to move around, seeing other spots at the wedding and interacting with NPCs. If there is an ending to it, I didn’t find it.

Oh, and there’s a bit red button that you can press! Which of course I did.

I’m not sure what the whole point was, though your available actions nudges you to essentially disrupt the wedding (making people very confused at best, disgusted probably). You can run away loudly for some reason, and can’t really get back to the party after that (the movements buttons don’t really work). You can interact with things, though there doesn’t seem to be much effect to it.

Shame the red button doesn’t really end the whole game right away.

T-Shirt Aisle is the location in which you are standing in this small Twine game, in front of a wall of very soft and enticing t-shirts (as in, you want to shove your face into the fabric and stay there forever), and well… maybe have some weird surreal slightly existential experience? Oh, and there’s a long thought process about Keanu Reeves.

The blurb indicates there are many endings to the game (I think I found 3, the source files indicates about a dozen?), some of them being harder to reach than others. Essentially, you’d need to do some loop-ty-loop around the different passages to see those choices listed. Some of them are pretty creepy.

Truly an experience. Would shove my face in soft t-shirts again.

Keep Queuing is a mind-numbing yet philosophical Twine game about queuing. At the mall, your sister, currently in queue to get the latest phone, asks for a big favour: for you to take her place so she can go to the bathroom. Since you are the best sibling in the world, you agree (not like you have a choice) and start to queue.

… and queue…

… and queue…

… and don’t stop queuing until you reach the door, and get your sister’s phone, and that’s when the game ends. Because, yes, you are a great sibling, you don’t leave the queue, even if you wish it to.

While you wait for the line to move, different prompts appear on the screen, showing the passing of time. You look at things around you or stare at your phone, ponder on the meaning of time and queuing or simply blank, etc… There are about 100 prompts you can “collect” while waiting, all of them appearing randomly (sometimes you get the same one in one playthrough).

The number of prompts you see is also random. I’ve waited 18 and 61 minutes for the most extremes. And knowing there are 100 prompts to find, many of them are hilarious (to me), you are incentivised in going back into the queue and trying to wait even longer!

The funniest bit about the game, however, comes with the ending screen. It might be the most unexpected ending screen I’ve seen: an afterword and pitch all into one. It discuss how the game was created and its future, in hopes someone would want to throw in a few bux and fund the sequel (seemingly slightly poking fun at those unserious Kickstarter campaigns). It really gave me a good laugh (the III MMO roguelike queue, genius)

A really great queuing simulator!

The Simuloid Affair: Infinite Possibilities is a short timed (turns) parser starting (well, more like ending) with a bang! You wake up from a strange dream and find on the other side of the barrel of a gun pointed at you, your partner in crime, hunting you down for being… not a human, it turns out. OH! and there’s also a bomb that will blow up in a minute (about a dozen-ish turns?).

The title suggest an infinite amount of ways to get yourself out of this sticky situation, with many ways of escaping and be free of all of this, maybe even learn if you’re truly a simuloid or someone up-high has done this to get back at you. Kinda gives me heavy Blade Runner vibes.

Except… well. You’re not really a dexterous person (somehow!!! considering you’re a hunter??), so getting out of there is tricky. Really tricky. Almost impossibly tricky.

If you don’t manage to get out, or just want to stay a bit longer because Ursula (your partner) needs to unload (hehe, she has a gun) what’s on her mind, you’d learn quite a bit about yourself, how everything got to this point, and your environment.

Who am I kidding… not a single command works in this game. You can try your best! But you will get at best a proper fail response, or just a random one that is barely related to what you just typed.

The game (I started with failing on purpose at first) has such a great setup that you can’t believe it would just end like this. I mean, I should have expected it, but it still managed to pull the rug under me EVERY SINGLE TIME. Damn it.

Terrence is an experience. There is no better way of simply describing it. It is a painful flow of second-hand embarrassment that ends only after 47min.

To get more technical, Terrence is an almost text-less visual novel, a mostly ad-libbed monologue, where you stand in the closet with the titular character, with only a single Leave button. You can stay in the closet, listen to Terrence ramble on about many subjects, or leave him behind with his thoughts (a probably better option, for your sake).

If you choose to have the full 47 min experience, you will learn a lot more about Terrence than you would ever want to. His disturbing past, his not-so-great relationships, his hobbies, his many thoughts, his favourite meals, his questionable life-models, his poneysona (I will shame him), and… let’s not forget the least worst of all: his poetry (not ad-libbed, but read aloud). You will also have to sit through long Uhhhhhhhhh and awkward silences.

Terrence is a bit of a creep, probably a bit of an incel, potentially a murderer(?), and definitely not mentally well or sound of mind. It would be kind of guy who would start up a conversation and would absolutely not let you leave, forcing you to answer his invasive questions when you are getting close to escape, and absolutely would make a scene if his ego is bruised. In short, he is the worst and his voice is grating as hell, and I never want to hear it again.

Though I call it a monologue, Terrence tries to have some sort of conversation with you, asking you questions about yourself. It is just the game does not give you the option to answer them (for good reason, alluded at the end: (Spoiler - click to show)you are a figment of his imagination and he takes meds to make you disappear).

I sat through this 47-min one-take (yes, really) monologue just to write this review. It was 47min I will not get back. But you can save yourself the troubles and not click play… though you will miss on the pretty great voice acting that did a great job making me hate a character as soon as he opened his mouth.

Someone should transcribe the monologue and add it as subtitles, so everyone can enjoy(?) Terrence in most of its glory without hearing him talk.

So yea… an experience, for sure.

I honestly don’t know if I should be impressed… or terrified. I was certainly annoyed and frustrated for most of the game, that is certain. So much so that I barely paid attention to most of the actual writing or what was going on. Just trying to go through the gruelling gameplay, hoping for the least amount of psychic damage.

The World’s Most Annoying Game is a one turn parser, but also not really. You are standing before a Great House, that no one bears to go through it. Except you will, if you try hard enough. The house is dark and you have no lamp with you (you won’t find any). It is also so terrifying that you will shiver and shake and faint in horror if you make one wrong move (and the game will literally close). And there are 100 rooms you need to go through before you exit the house. It is also seed-generated (everyone has a different run) and there is no ABOUT or HELP or explanation.

Does it start to make sense now? About the absolute absurdity of the game? The cruelty to endure?

It is, however, not impossible to finish the game (because, well, I painfully have). It does require some special words inside your command so you may go through the house in that one single command. A built-in word, but rarely used: (Spoiler - click to show)then. With it, you will be able to finish the game in…

a good 4 hours.

Yes, that long. Even with a bit of cheating, there is still a lot of trial and errors. Forced restart at every corner. It is incredibly tedious. The first third is frustrating (even after you find how to make it work). The second third becomes pretty boring (it’s always the same thing). And the last, well… if you managed to pull through until then, it has to be because of spite.

Oh and if you’re trying to keep track of the different rooms? Yeah… don’t bother making a map. IT WILL NOT MAKE SENSE! The whole thing is procedurally generated (random room, random direction). Just the command and the name of the rooms is sufficient.

This is truly the quintessential mad scientist insane project. This game should probably be send to your enemies (or to troll your friends). Absolute torture.
But I feel proud for being the first person to beat it :P

BEER is a relatively short Twine piece where two teenagers are trying to (illegally) buy some beer, discussing their plan to hopefully acquire the loot. And it doesn’t really go as they expect it . There multiple “endings”, with some only accessible through hidden links. I say “endings” because, if you are patient enough, you will end up getting stuck inside a trippy loop.

It’s pretty silly, starting with one of those teen adventures that may or may not end well. I haven’t really seen those in real life (cause we always had that one friend or sibling who was old enough to get us beer), but I’m sure it’s definitely a thing!

But then… you get these weird errors (fake, because Harlowe errors don’t look like that - except one later in a path), mentioning old Gods and a nudge at Greek Mythology (the Odysseus variable), as if those teens, oblivious to everything around them, stumbled into something they shouldn’t have (you may or may not die in one ending). Which… why? What does beer have to do with Gods? (or more what doesn’t xD)

Like many annoying games, this one also includes some timed elements, though it is to hide the truly nonsensical trippy, eye-maddening path (awful colour contrast/animated elements). It is completely disjointed from the main story…

Has some good, even for a deliberately bad game.