Reviews by manonamora

La constellation des Intracines is a short choice-based game set in an apocalyptic future where humanity is under the threat of extinction. A strange plant from underground has started taking over the ecosystem: drying out the land, rendering the waters acidic... Between the military in its futile fight against the plant and the scientific community in shambles when faced with little solutions, humanity tries to survive as best it can, even with this uncertain future.

Your background as an astronomer helps little with this struggle, and you can choose to despair and accept humanity's fate, turn to the stars for solace with this end, try to find other survivors and fight until your dying breath, or succumb maybe to madness.

The writing does a pretty good job in capturing the horror and gloomy aspect of this apocalyptic future and the unknown of this natural enemy, and the mental breakdown of the PC when faced with the realities of the situation.

La Maison de Mamie is a fairly short parser where you play as Sarah Wolverton-Pelletier, a woman who recently lost her grandmother, going through her house to retrieve some keepsakes before your mother sells it.

Through the exploration of this home, which was yours too for a time, and inspection of the different objects in each room, you remember fragments of your past and people of your life. Through the memories of the individuals that crossed your life, you can piece back the broken puzzle of Sarah's fragmented relationships.

Those memories are quite short, just a handful of sentences at most, and are either linked to examining objects or remembering people. You learn of tensions between mothers and daughters, as they understand their identity and find themselves rejected by the ones they love. The prose goes from bitterness to warmth as you remember things, though most of the text felt quite detached and indifferent to things.

While I wish you could remember more things, like through the different events mentioned, it was interesting to find the different hidden elements to get the background story. (Spoiler - click to show)Your grandmother married your grandfather after the war, a marriage that fell apart when she meets Chantal and realises she prefers women to men. Your grandparents divorce, something that your mother doesn't/can't accept. Your mother first keeps you from seeing your grandmother (now in a relationship), before kicking you out later on (when you realise you are gay too). You find a roof and acceptance with your grandmother. It is really telling, and sad, why the mother wants to sell the house...

Thank You For Your Inquiry is a short game from hell, forcing you to endure the nonsensical exchanges with a customer service representative from Simplicity Transportation Customer Service that is either overworked or doesn't care about your claim (or the company is just trash ¯\_(ツ)_/¯). Trials and tribulations awaits you as you try to get a refund for [undescribed event that cost you a lot of money]: from the request of very private information to their unbudging offers of a pitiful refund, hardship is the only thing you will gain from this.

Though it is played for laugh (or horror) here, these exchanges are not that far from reality: exchanges that go nowhere, pathetic amounts refunded (if any at all), complete disregard for rights (big deal in the EU!), unresponsive representatives, strict and just plain terrible procedures... There is only so much sanity you can have with some of these companies before you want to pull your hair out and set everything on fire.
Thoughts for the cool customer reps that try their best to help!

I hated every single exchanges with the customer reps.
Would 100% torture myself through it again! I've already done it multiples times (the endings are so funny), but I still would do it again!

Trying to get back home after visiting your cousin, you are met with a few challenges - your trek is blocked by a few obstacles: little insects and giants block your way. Trying to solve the little puzzles are fairly simple (if you remember to climb things around you), and the responses quite silly. Who knew an acorn (Spoiler - click to show)could make a great seat!

The second half of the game is filled with puns and funny names for things around the building. If there is a list of cursed food out there, the menu hanged in the building should definitely be included (so yucky! poor kiddos!).

A short but very sweet little adventure!

I Gave You a Key and You Opened the Darkness is the introductory epitaph of a longer project set to be released episodically throughout 2024, named Los Huesos del Cielo, as an archive of the author's thirties in short form IF.

IGYKYOD is a short piece about returning to your former home, now empty and abandoned, reminiscing on your past, one you are forgetting, and identity.

Only branching out at the end towards one of three endings, the piece uses interactive elements to show that disconnect between what is there, what once was, and how lost you seem to be. Memories get darker as you interact with the text, the state of the house more decrepitated, choices questioned. You're here to find something (thought it's not really made explicit).

There is something quite uneasy about rediscovering a place: one your body remembers clearly but your mind does not (want to?). Surreal in its depiction of how uncomfortable it is at time - almost horror-y at some points.

Looking forward to see the other instalments.

This short kinetic piece is presented as an elegy written by a Dr. Chandra Roy about the Men'nai people - a distant human cousin from deep space. Following a forward about said scientist, the piece goes on to describing the Men'nai, from their biology to their culture.
It does make you wonder how far into the future the setting is supposed to be, and how related we (humans) are with that race (did we go to space and become the Men'nai? did the Men'nai arrive on earth and become us?). The end leaves you with more questions than answers...

It also included image snippets to help illustrate the text - though it was a shame these lovely illustrations were hidden by default.

While the interface reminded me of those sci-fi screens and the content of codex pages you'd find in games, there were a few friction elements with the UI, like the description of the text being cut-off/unreadable.

In this lovely meet-cute moment, Blood and Company follows Zach, a vampire looking for his next meal. He walks into a local bar, currently hosting a student meetup for the local architecture department - one he frequented once - and finds Lyle. The two strikes up a conversation... and may end up with something more.

To say I was gushing as their interactions was an understatement - it as so adorable seeing two ace not only finding each other but also vibing to the same wavelength. Two peas in a pod! When things click so well and the chemistry is flying off the wall, you only need to sit back and enjoy the events unfolding. It is so smooth and so right. Every beat just fit with the others so well - whether you do take the bitey path or not.

I went an played it again and again to try to find all the different endings (still looking for some), but even the more... bummer(?) ones felt satisfying - though none beat the more romantic one.

Such a delightful read!

This was such a different experience from when I do grocery shopping. From arriving just before closing time, to having the option of berating the poor employees, or just choosing items that are definitely not on the list... there are so many way of getting on the wrong track - and, at best, disappointing your wife.
And that's also what makes this game fun: you can be pretty chaotic, to run down the clock or feeling your terrible-manchild fantasy or being an absolute horror of a customer. Who cares about the consequences, just start again!
I did get the best run on the first go, because I can't be mean to service workers or not following lists...

Still... good thing this is just a game. Cause I'd feel bad for the wife of this person.
Entertaining chaos nonetheless.

This binksi game is an text-adventure adaptation of the *Jabberwocky* "poem", with hand-drawn background to represent each location/bit of the story. The text is quite a faithful adaptation to Carroll's whimsical (and slightly dark) style, and I'd even see the illustrations being part of a printed edition. While I managed to beat the monster on the first try (completely at random, because I forgot how the poem went - a poem included in the game, btw), it was fun restarting the game and try other directions, finding other monsters - ones you are not prepared to fight...

I think the synopsis says it all: it is a reformatting of an old short story, accompanied by contemporary pictures and music. This is supposedly meant to enhance the ambiance of the short story. You can go back and forth in the story, which is shown a couple of paragraphs at a time.

Though I do like adaptation of older work into an Interactive format… It didn’t really work for me, especially when portrait-oriented pictures were included (forcing you to scroll up/down the page). I found the contemporary pictures kind of going against the story, not finding the link between the specific picture and the text shown on the screen. I think it might have worked better if the adaptation also included more interactive text…