Ratings and Reviews by manonamora

Panique à Mandonez is a fun little mystery game made in Ink, where you play as Camille, the friend of Comtesse de Peyrian who recently disappeared. Taking the first bus to Mandonez, you will do everything to find your friend, and maybe… uncover a darker plot.

It was fun to investigate the village, talk to the different inhabitants, and solve the different mysteries. You need to interact with different elements to get to the next bit of the game (like make a character leave the room to search through it), and the concise prose gives you just enough hint on what you should be doing next*. And, like every good mystery, it has twist on twist on twist!
*when in doubts: pick the options from bottom to top…

It was short, but I enjoyed myself quite a bit. A neat and polished short game.

Only slightly related, but opening a drawer to see Vous trouvez une demi-douzaine de boîtes de calissons. on the screen was so funny to me. Then it made me a bit sad, because it wasn’t real and calissons are delicious…

Croquemitaine is a short Visual Novel following Érika Wolfenstein*, on a mission to retrieve an artifact from a faraway planet. The mission is rather dangerous, but the protagonist is not so worried, being a highly competent and knowledgeable agent. Though your choices are limited, as the game is incomplete, you are given two main paths of action to reach the artifact, each with its own sets of tribulations being introduced… when the game ends abruptly.
*any relation to the video game?

Still, it is possible to parse what to expect from further updates of the game: you will have an adventure (to find and retrieve the artifact), resolve a mystery (what the heck is actually happening on this planet?), and maybe have a romantic entanglement or twenty (you were tasked to seduce the inhabitants for some reason). With the currently intriguing worldbuilding, diverting character, and pretty design, there is quite a bit of potential with this one!
will we be able to smooch the vampires?

Retrouvailles is a multi-POV sci-fi kinetic story created in Twine, part of a larger multimedia universe Mémoires d’un Veilleur/Veillorz. It took me at least 2h to go through it all.
This release is a recounting of two linked events, which one of the protagonist, Jack, mentions to be one of his fondest memory. Following the disappearance of a group of scientist in some far away site, a special task force, led by Jack, is entrusted to investigate the situation. However, the investigation is sidetracked due to past trauma and unresolved baggage, forming and strengthening new relationships. The second event happens a couple of years later, with part of the team returning to the scene of the crime. Those events are told through three POVs (Alex, Jack, and Solène), which you can read separately or synchronously.

Interactivity-wise, there isn’t much to do but go back and forth in the story, change POV, or language. Which makes sense, considering the author categorised the entry as a book on itch. Though, it would have been nice to have some sort of agency, if not in the story itself, maybe in the investigation part (like looking on the site, or running test, or going through the scientists affairs - each with a different POV).

On the narrative side, I was confused for a while about what was happening. Though the mystery is the framing of the story, it often stays in the background of inter-personal issues between the three protagonist (Jack, Alex, Solène), with the location of the event heightening their emotions. Having the different POVs helps framing some situations, especially the past of the characters through their inner monologues.

A romance between two of the characters ends up taking centre stage, pushing the story forward, by the end. This personally made me uncomfortable, due to the strong age gap and power difference, especially with how Jack refers to Solène when trying to flirt with her. Their rekindling in the second chapter, while in character for both of them, didn’t particularly made me wish to root for them.

A neat thing from the prose: it exclusively uses French inclusive writing.

Radio liberté is a short fairly linear Moiki game, part of a series, set in the future where (I think) France may have conquered the world… or at least space. To the dismay of the government, who tries with great difficulty to shut it down, a pirate radio broadcast less-than-rosy news and support for striking workers. In this setting, you play as Hego, an electronic repariman who hates his job and his “tyrannical” boss*, and dreams of being a radio celebrity. You’d leave everything behind if you had the opportunity.
*lol on his name

In this setting, the prose is fairly light-hearted, with the occasional sarcastic comment in that French humour kind of way. There are many references in the text and options, like Jupiter Inter being the futurist counterpart of France Inter, a radio channel. The main reference of the game (and the series at large) is about freedom of broadcasting, which was a political fight in France in the late 70s-early 80s, with the broadcasting monopole being abolished with President Mitterrand.

Anyway, your world turns upside-down when you either decode the strange message coming from your radio from the start or after meeting your favourite radio celebrity - the first choice affect which path you take, but the branches meet back at one same point. That choice, however, ends up being the only meaningful one of the story. While you have other “choices” down the line, they end up being either false choices (just there for variation/move the story along) or forcing you to re-do the choice again until you pick the correct option.

With the entry being a prologue to a supposedly much larger series, it makes sense that the story with little deviation to the main path, as you will need continuity with the following parts of the series. But it would have been nice to maybe have some alternative paths, maybe towards non-canon endings, or making some actions feel like they have more impact.

I’d be interested to see how Hego gets out of the situation he’s currently in.

[ MAKE ME. ] is a short Twine demo about a supernatural present where vampires walk among us (-ish, most of the world doesn’t know), looking at how you managed to get embroiled in this situation. Are you a vampire yourself? Or a vampire hunter? or simply just a human? How did you get to learn about their existence? And where will you go from there?

The demo… doesn’t really answer any of those. As of now, you have some sort of an introduction to how you get acquainted with the night-walkers (mainly by chance) a year prior to the current story, and a small glimpse of what your present is like as a vampire/hunter/pleb. Though notes throughout the game does promise a future update where everything is explained. I liked that as a hunter you have a cabinet full of vampire-deterrent items that you can just pick up, including rice?

From what there is, the writing wants to be playful and light-hearted, even in between mentions of corpses or deaths. If further updates follow this trend, I think we’d see more of an absurd supernatural story and your run-of-the-mill horror vampire tale. I’m intrigued to see where this could go…

The Spin-Off is a short visual novel about six friends partying in a cabin in the middle of nowhere, looking for a game to play to pass the time. Thing is: all of them have some sort of history or tension with each other. So what better way to break the ice (or confess your feelings) than playing some sort of Spin-the-bottle with Inprov…

This game is also some sort of a prequel of You’re Next a slasher/horror adventure, which it references at the start as a creepypasta story (and also at the end). This seem to have influenced the aesthetic of the VN, with the darker colour palette, the funky not-very-straight typing font, and the obvious horror trope setting. Still, this is not a gloomy and scary story, but more of a comical one, with everything you’d expect from a party with close friends: drinks, awkward conversations about who still has crushes on whom, and weird games where the goal is to kiss everyone in the room!

It was fun… and I did manage to kiss everyone first

Forward is a short personal interactive piece made in Twine, about life. Worries and hopes, anxiety and assurance, failures and successes... the good and the bad of realities. Set as a meditation exercise, the prose weaves bits of memories of the past together, with sources of tensions and triumphs mirroring each other, showing both states will coexist, moving from one to the other, moving one with the other.

Setting aside the specific samples of situations, this is still an emotional piece hitting on those universal feelings of not being enough, of being lost and hopeless, of struggling with what is around us. And yet it still gives us a glimmer of hope, forcing us to think about the good things around us, of the achievements accomplished, how we grew and moved further than the struggles.

It is a good exercise to do.

One True Love is a short fairy-tale Twine game, where you have just one little task to complete the story: after defeating your evil stepmother and rescuing the land, it is time for you to break the curse of your one true love. Turned into a frog, you will need to find the correct amphibian and kiss it before it’s too late !

The prose is pretty humorous, overall, poking fun at those fairly-tale tropes (the curses and the trials and such). This was a fun short time, trying to go through all the different options, kissing all the different frogs. There are, I think, 3 endings to find: kissing the right frog, kissing the wrong frog, and giving up because who’s got time for that! But, be warned: the correct frog is never the same…

It was sweet and entertaining!

letters for su is a very short epistolary piece, a fan-fiction letter-writing game inspired by the Ace Attorney franchise. Missing your lover Susato, who moved to England some time ago, you write her a letter depicting your longing for her, hoping for a reply. The piece lets you choose a few options when writing the letter, even rewriting it, and when sealing it (whether you personalise it).
It’s very cute and charming, and seeing your feelings erased for tamer words is somewhat heartbreaking. I also liked being able to kiss the envelope :stuck_out_tongue:

Bonded in Darkness is a dark visual novel, where you play as Arnaud, a recluse vampire. His peaceful existence is often interrupted by Julien, a vampire hunter tasked to kill him, though the latter never manages to finish the job. Everything changes one night, then Julien appears at Arnaud’s doorstep, gravely injured. Will you tend to him or leave him to fend for himself?

While the game mentions having 4 endings, one good and three bad, I’ve only found two (which I think are the bad ones? it’s coded as enemies-to-lovers…), so I don’t feel yet like I had the full experience with this entry. From what I did get though, I quite enjoyed this darker atmosphere, with this dangerous tension between the two characters. They have history together, one is currently at the mercy of the other, and there are many moments where they could take advantage of the situation to end each other. It makes you think of which choice to pick, because any wrong move, and you might die…

I also really liked the sprite for Arnaud… gosh damn!