Reviews by manonamora

How Do You Like Your Pain? is a short grim visual novel made in Ren’Py about a demon looking for death, or at the very least learning what death feels like. Contracting a painful disease, which he inflicted on himself willingly, the demon must now endure a painful operations to remove it, lest the pain would make him wish for actual death. The procedure is done by another demon, who finds amusement in the situation.
While the game is part of the Art Without Blood series, knowledge of the other entries is not required, the game being enjoyable as is. There are 4 endings in this game, through my choices, I found 2.

Formatted only as a dialogue (even the choices), the two characters get into a dance of quips and flirting. The writing circles between dark violence and borderline eroticism in the way it interacts with the flesh. The implication of pain, whether it happens during the game or prior to the story unfolding, looking for it before being forced to endure it as so to reduce it is masochistic but really grasping. The pursuit of knowledge about death backfiring, making you wish for or afraid of death…
It is uncomfortable but drawing to the point you can’t take your eyes away from the screen (ironic considering the procedure).

I don’t want to talk about it. is an emotional short Ink game about grief and connections. Set in a therapy office, you meet with a patient who recently lost someone and is reluctantly going through grief counselling. It is heartbreaking but also beautiful, in the way the story unfolds, as you ask the patient more questions and try to help them talk about the person they lost and what they are struggling with the most.
A beautifully made and executed short entry.

Who Stole My Sausages is a quirky little mystery made in Twine, centred around the theft of a package of sausages in a communal fridge of a student house. With your background in psychology, you are chosen as the mandated detective. With its light-hearted tone, you end up encountering a lot of sausage-related puns (like when you choose your name at the start, PI Porkins).

The mechanic of the game is fairly simple: interview your housemates, find flaws in their rebuttal and confront them about it, and… solve the mystery. You will need quite a bit of back and forth between the different NPCs to unlock the true ending (any wrong reveal will send you back right into the action).

The interface is pretty cool, as it was made to look like a Visual Novel, with sprites of the different NPCs, separate backgrounds for each location, and cool background music to match. While it is getting more common to see Twine games with a custom interface, it is not every day that you see a Visual Novel made in Twine.

The story itself relies on twists and half-truth, with a shocking ending that no one could have predicted (wink wink if you check the suspects list before making up your mind…). It works as intended.
Though, I do have a bit of a quip when it comes to the overused trope of (Spoiler - click to show)the vegetarian who will still eat meat in secret here and there because *shrugging* why have moral convictions…

One last thing that would have been helpful is a way to review the clues found, especially when it comes to counter-argue with the housemate. You get quite a bit of information from each NPC...

Le chaudron d’Anaritium is an interactive mystery made in Open Adventure (the author and system is one), set in a Gaul village at the dusk of a dreary winter. You play as Isara, a bard-in-training tasked to find a missing artefact before the gods turn on the village. Will you find the artefact and its thief? and figure out the why and the how?

On the Open Adventure platform, you are introduced to the mystery at hand, and the different paths you can investigate, whether it be visiting locations or talking to other characters. As you find more clues, new paths may be open to you. Along with two large maps, some paths are also illustrated, in a watercoloured comic-style.
Every path taken is listed one below the other, in a way that you can re-read them with ease. The engine also lets you know when you’ve already visited a section, and only puts forward on the main page the most interesting location for you to visit.

The prose is quite lovely as well, bringing to life an atmospheric setting, filled with mysticism and legends.

And when you believe you’ve solved the mystery, you can fill in your answers to the different questions in a text box, before how correct you were and get the epilogue. But, because of how the game is set up, you’ll never truly be wrong at the end. The website collects the answer and gives you the solution right away, regardless of how close you were to the truth. So while the mystery was interesting, and fairly simple to figure out, I wished there would be a bit of a consequence to who you accuse of the crime or explain how you think things happened.

The Time Machine is a short-ish parser that continues the eponymous story, where you play as an unnamed friend trying to find clues as to Wells' psychosis (or proof that is tale is true). You get to explore parts of Wells' house, inspect his machine, and travel to the future with it (where you can explore a bit of the new world).

There are only a couple of puzzles (mainly to get and handle the machine), most of the interaction being conversations with the different characters. A sidebar includes your full inventory, NPCs you can interact with, and conversation options with said characters. There are also hints and a full walkthrough in-game.

The thing is, there isn't much to do after running the machine. I get that your goal is to get proof your friend isn't crazy, but had I been sent to the future, I would probably have tried to explore more or find a way to interact with the world... or just stand right there and freak out. Time may be of the essence for your friend, but you have a machine to rewind time (at only a push of a lever, how practical...).
Or go off the trails and get back in time. The possibilities are ENDLESS!

The Truth About PRIDE! is a short bitsy piece, where "you" explore the meaning of < pride >, by going through each of its letters (and an exclamation point). It is short and sweet, though it seems more of a personal interpretation of the meaning of the word rather than its "true meaning" (is there truly a true meaning for the word? or wouldn't you end up with individual interpretation of the word depending on your personal experiences?).

Each path leads you down that-letter-shaped corridor, where you can interact with that-letter-shaped element (where the author defines and question the meaning of each letter) before you can choose which path to go through (get the special meaning of P or back to the main room). There is also a secret path (which wasn't working for me).
Moving the sprite is a bit tedious (which is usual for bitsy) especially when you need to go across the screen with no interaction, or when an element is blocking your path in the next screen, or when it is not quite clear which tile is the exit.

Does it challenge any concept? Not really, it's more of a feel-good celebration of Pride, a pep-talk about yourself as an individual rather than pride as an aspect of your identity. But sometimes, that's all you need.

The Portrait, also titled as A Taste of Isekai in-game, is an exploration parser, a sort of amuse-bouche to a larger game coming out in the future. You are introduced to the PC, isekai'd into a strange world (and a new body!) without knowing how or why, and are given hints of the world you stumbled into, through exploring the couple of available rooms and examining the different elements in this room.

As the title of the game suggests, there is a massive portrait in the first room you land on, with an insane amount of details to discover (earning you points every time you find something interesting). Depicting three women, the picture will trigger memories (which you are certain are not your own) or mention other elements you could examine next.
This was clearly influenced by the "IF Art Show" competitions, where the goal was to focus on one specific object and mainly interact with it. This piece would have fit right in that event, as you (mainly) interact with the painting and all its little details. It's kind of neat to see newer games being influenced by (almost) forgotten events that defined IF. It makes for a lovely tribute.

The text is pretty verbose and extensive, similar to the very flowery style of the late 1800s. And quite focused on the body (which shouldn't be too surprising as (Spoiler - click to show)you are a man, waking up in a woman's body), which at times sounds a bit strange. It reminded me quite a bit to those pulpy romance novels, actually. It feels a bit voyeuristic and a bit uncomfortable, as we are told the PC to be, and somewhat disorienting. I mean (Spoiler - click to show)wouldn't it be extremely disorienting to wake up in a completely different body?

From the little you get to explore (and examine), it is clear that a lot of worldbuidling has been put down to paper (in the same way Creative Cooking felt to me - are they connected?). From the different species (maybe even are in conflict with one another?) with visuals reminiscent of known fantastical creatures, down to the architecture and decor reminding you of cultures on Earth (maybe there's more than just one link (you) between the two worlds), there is still quite a bit to learn to make this picture whole...

I finished with a score of 64 out of 80. Though I didn't find all the details, I feel like I have had a complete experience.

You Can Only Turn Left is a surreal piece exploring "the hypnagogic state between sleeping and wakefulness", based on a past dream journal. Though it may seem quite linear when going through the text, the game actually includes multiple endings, affected by the choices you can made throughout the story. I found two out of the four coded.

The game is quite unsettling from the start, with a fast animated sequence of moving text, uncomfortable sound, and changing background, asking you whether you are present or still dreaming. This aesthetic, along with blurred or flipped text, continues on in the rest of the entry, emphasising on the unreality of it all (whether it is describing dreams, "memories" or pure hallucinations). It often veers on the uncanniness of things (especially one ending), edging on the nightmarish.
There were some moments where reading the text was almost impossible, as the white text would barely be readable behind a light moving background, or bring too blurry to make out the different letters.

This vibe is also mirrored in the text itself, as you move from memories to dreams, with the narrator waking up, only to find themself still dreaming or going back into that hazy realm. You will go from very detailed and vivid settings to just a passing blurred line in the distance, real and grounded moments to bizarre and skin crawling hallucinations.

This was very strange, and yet very familiar (fudged sleep pattern with insane vivid dreams). It is bizarre and comforting.

Bydlo; or the Ox-Cart is a minimalist micro Bitsy piece about, according to the blurb, the triumph of art over drudgery.

Using a simple orange and white palette, and the dreary Mussorgsky's Bydlo theme from Picture At An Exhibition, the game lets you control a little sprite (farmer?) navigating through its field, day by day, as an ox cart passes through the screen. Each sequence (about a dozen) shows a different iteration of the field, with boulders, plants, and carcases blocking your path. Yet, you must continue on, weaving through the obstacles to reach the next level, and the next, and the next...

Until... the cart exit the screens. And so can you.

There is very little you can interact with in the environment, only moving about the screen. You learn nothing about the setting or yourself, why you are here and what you want further. There isn't any text aside from the title and the final screen. Only the chirped version of the melancholic theme...

I am not really sure what to make of it still... Monotonous work pushing people into boredom and daydreaming? Tediousness making us wish for an easier time, a more fun time? Or is it a confrontation of how we view labour (i.e. seeing beauty and art in the mundane)?
Or... should we just enjoy a piece without reading too much into it...

Insatiable Jeunesse is a short "storylet"-based interactive story, where you incarnate some sort of creature needing to hunt down people to keep young. You come across potential victims, judge the situation (will you be satiated? is it dangerous), before you get to choose whether to eat or move on. But, watch out, if you're caught or starve, it's game over!
There are (as far as I could tell) three endings: the good one, dying of hunger, and getting caught because you were too suspicious.

The blurb describes itself as an unbalanced prototype, which is pretty on point, as you end up going through the different potential victims pretty quickly and it is *very* easy to die (or I could just be unlucky). Quite a good deal of randomisation, in the situation text (variation in victims, feeding and danger levels) and in the consequences of your action (how suspicious you are before you are stopped). The game requires quite the balancing act to win.
I am sure it is possible to win, but I have still not been able to do so...

On the game page, the author described their plan for a future update with more narration and locations, and a more balanced gameplay. I hope I get to play this update one day!