Reviews by manonamora

The campfire is the beggining is a short branching story, where you find yourself before a campfire, with no recollection of where you are or even who you are. Will you just wait and see what happens to you? or will you adventure out? There are 6 endings to find - some humorous, some meta, and some a bit nonsensical.

While I didn’t really connect to the story or the humour, I do need to give props to how smooth it ran in Google Slides. It created a nice ambiance through its visuals and background SFX.

yet another planning doc is a multi-medium epistolary/chat interactive story, centred around three students, from Passerine Hills Academy, an elite university in an unspecified region (but most likely non-American English-speaking), trying to organise the weekly student party. Through a series of Google Docs and external emails, the trials and tribulations of Ana Vitória, Emmeline and Izzy, after their usual processes unravel, are entangled with the peculiar life at the Academy.

The Academy offers an interesting setting for the story, with its three-tiered organisation of its student body (the poor scholarship students, the extremely privileged students, and the majority middle-ground), which is both discussed in the conversation and displayed through the group dynamic (Emmeline belonging to the first, Izzy to the second, and Ana Vitória the third). The difference in class is reflected in how they behave and communicated with one another (familiarity vs. deferential - what they share or keep secret), present themselves (visible name and pfp, language and tone), and how they handle their changing plans. It inevitably adds layers to the depiction of a fairly mundane task (organising a weekly meet-up) and to the personality of each student.

Though you’d expect these kinds of exchange to happen more in a chat software (your Slack/Discord/other), using online Google Docs/Gmail allows each character to privately communicate without the other knowing, go on tangents without disrupting too much the main discussion, and adds to the school group project vibes happening.
But, as an external reader, it gives too an intimate look into private conversations that no others should have access too. Gossips feel extra juicy to learn, even if you have no real knowledge of those other students. And, secrets hinted in the personal emails most impactful. It’s a fun take on the epistolary format.

This is what I need to tell you is an ARG interactive piece created through a Forum thread, in which the latter’s author goes through a mental breakdown, incl. a paranoia and dissociative episode. In wanting to share critical information, the author find himself fighting another (himself?). Reading as an unsettling struggle to have the final word.

The thread contains 6 posts, of which all but one has been edited at least once. At first glance, it seems like the edits were made by a collected person, covering a distressing period that should not have been shared, and urging others to disregard the original messages. Still, another voice peers through, with an agitated final edit, pleading to be heard. A starting knotted thread that unravels when diving into the edits.

This second voice, on edge due to an unspecified event or revelation (proof of which is linked through a dead link), attempts to fight at every turn the more calm and serious speaker, who, in turn, rebuffs those messages for their presumably harmful content (for whom? the author? other readers? we’ll never know).
The layers in the conversations, through the multiple original posts and then their subsequent edits, is fascinating and bone chilling. You have to comb through all the edits and rearrange their order to piece out things. Yet, it stops before we learn what the author wants to tell us, as the information is deleted even before being shared. And it leaves so much hanging about the state of the author - the final post feels forced and the final edit cold, brushing off the thread to be of any importance.

What we are left is a chilling and concerning exchange (in a good way, knowing it isn’t real), and a bunch of unanswered questions (will the truth every come out? was there one to begin with? is the author ok? will we ever know?). And a very interesting use of the medium to share this story.

Au village de pêcheurs is a short slice-of-life parser where your goal is to purchase some fresh fish at a fishing village a few towns over. Little issue, your child decided to come along on this little trip and be a little menace. This does not go over well with the only fish stall of the village.

The current version of the game has multiple unfinishable states, which the author is aware of and has been working on fixes. It also does not include hints or walkthrough. I was able to find one for sure one confirmed fail ending.

With that in mind, it is expected to struggle with the game, find what works and what maybe should be working but isn’t. I got stuck multiple times, as well as had a full page of error messages through my trial-and-error input.

Still, I couldn’t get away until I reached the end… any end. The game is charming to boot, with its dry humour, the exasperated and exhausted parent, the menace of the Child (also in capital in game), and the no-nonsense local fisherman. I found myself chucking at the descriptions multiple times, even when there probably wasn’t a joke. And it was fun to just try things, even if nothing happened.
Even when frustrated with the parser itself, it still worked with who you’re supposed to play: a tired parent trying their best to accomplish just one task without finding the child. The game actually allows (Spoiler - click to show)you to leave without having gotten the fish or the child. Which… is the only one I actually managed to reach.

I can’t wait for the new version to be completed so I can find the other endings and be as much of a menace as the Child.

Une simulation is a tiny parser game, where you incarnate a player about to try a new virtual game: a simulation of an escape room through a VR headset. The goal is to find the three keys required to unlock the door, each hidden behind a different puzzle.

The game makes it pretty clear what must be done, but if you have a doubt, there is a manual in the starting state listing the main commands, and a downloadable walkthrough. Though it can be solved without either.

For a first attempt at a parser, it was a smooth experience. I didn’t really run into any issue. The puzzles were pretty logical and obvious enough that solving them was a breeze. Being limited to one room and a couple of objects does help - there are only so many possible interactions. Handling the plant was probably my favourite one out of all the different puzzles.

Le miroir d’Ozivior is a relatively short fantasy escape room, in which you play as the friend of Ozivior, a student at a magical academy. Locking you in his room, he challenges you to solve his riddle: find his actual room and break the mirror.

The game is pretty simple, that even beginner parser players could manage to complete. It was tightly constructed, with just enough descriptions in responses to get the gist of the puzzle and how to solve it, as well as warnings of any change.
Hints are also available, starting from general to nudge you the right way, to more concrete/obvious ones. There is also a Win the game command to get to the end quicker.
And the vocabulary required is limited: examine, take/drop, enter/open.

You can’t even fail at the game. As it lets you play on and “automatically undo”'s for you if you break the mirror in the wrong room. No need for saves, or restarts, or undos, really. It’s very beginner friendly.

The game left me frustrated in all the good ways - but that’s more because I blame myself for not paying attention properly (or because I tried to brute-force the game to let me play the way I wanted to, even if it went against the puzzle itself).
The mechanic to go from room to room was pretty cool, and pretty magical. The way the rooms are essentially the same but differ depending on what you (Spoiler - click to show)choose to carry with you really adds layers to the setting. You learn more about your friend and his room, bit by bit. It is a matter of whether you keep track of the details (which I failed at too many times, it was embarrassing for me).

All in all, the experience is very smooth and charming (pun), and it made for a fun escape puzzle.

*La réclusion de Callisto* is a short textual adventure in the style of older CYOA books, both in form and content. Embodying a prisoner-jailer in a lonely island, you will recount your meeting with a very particular women sent to this prison. Mixing romance and unsatisfiable desires, the story pulls you into moral conflicts where your only solace is escape.

Though there are conflicting elements, I was certain from the start the tale was referencing Napoléon and his exiles on Elba/St Hélène, being sent away in a tiny island away from everything because of his actions. But this was clearly set in some imaginary land, with a focus more on piracy. And of course, Napoléon was the actual prisoner during his exile, not really the jailer.

As for the delectable prose, it was more the tales of Dumas, especially the imprisoned scenes, that came into mind while reading. Even with the limitation in words, and the surprisingly large variation of the text, the writing is flourishing and swallowing us into the whirlwind of emotions felt by the PC. Though there are only three ends, the journey is more fun than the end.

*Terra’s Leap : Un rêve incombustible* is a short sci-fi adventure, where we follow the ventures of Elio, a child in a faraway colony, dreaming that one day he will visit Earth. Earth's location being long forgotten, this task is not an easy feat! Thankfully, you get to meet multiple characters who have an idea about its location, though none are in the same spot. So you will need to decide how to get to it, considering you are still a child, and which person to trust, our of those strangers. Some of these choices do require you to sort of disregard logic, if you want to continue down those paths.

While the blurb indicate 19 endings, many of them end in the exact same way. Most of those are still pretty bad for the players as well - strangely, it is when you refuse to take the path pushed by the game that you end up with a more winning situation.

*Baston ou Ruse : L’Épopée de Krug* is a short humoristic game based on Warhammer 40k, where you play as Krug, an orc that has no idea with what to do with its life. Though known for their brutish behaviour, some orc find a more cunning approach to conflict more interesting. So choices are put before you at every turn: Ruse or Force. Depending on what you pick, you'll end up with one out of 16 different orc job (and its related epic end where your life is praised still after your death).

The writing is very funny and made me laugh many times per path. It was very entertaining trying to find all the different endings (I found 8-9), since the text is quite varied from the branching. And this I knew nothing about W40k lore, it was a fun and intriguing introduction to this universe!

Biblioflam is a short fantasy adventure in Moiki, where you play as an employee of a strange and magical library (where no books can be burnt!) tasked with retrieving late book returns (the tome in question being 3 years late...). Mixing more RPGs aspects, like dice rolls, and consequential choices, the game offers a frustrating but still satisfying puzzle to solve (even if you mess up a bunch, it's still fun to play).

With the change of palette/fonts depending on the current environment, and SFX/background sound to add to the ambiance, the game is really playful and fun to experience. You too will ask to retrieve more tomes after!