Ratings and Reviews by manonamora

Le grenier de mon grand-père is a short interactive game, similar to Bitsy in its gameplay: you move a sprite around the screen to interact with the different elements. You are at times given options, either to examine something further or continue a conversation.

In this game, you are an eighteen year old who is snooping around their grandfather's attic, searching for information about his past. This is because he never talks about himself, nor ever allows you to get in the attic. But he's currently away, so you take this opportunity.

In the attic, there are a handful of elements, like stacks of old letters, clothes that you don't remember ever seeing in person or in pictures, and trinkets from your childhood. It is only when you check all of them that you hear your grandfather coming back. Follows a discussion with the man, where you can confront him with what you found.

Because of the branching in the conversation, there is one path that reveals everything, making the puzzle of his past whole(-ish). The grandfather's past is full of tragedies, some of it his own, some of it being just life throwing curveballs. It is clear he is a flawed person, and I felt both pity and distaste for him.

I did wish it was a bit longer, maybe exploring other side of the grandfather's life and his relationships with his children (like your mother, who is mentioned in passing for dropping you off there and not coming back?), or reminiscing maybe on kinder times with the grandmothers or the kids? The conversation bit felt a bit too rushed to have the impact it could have.

A neat game otherwise.

Le Manoir Abandonné is a multi-episode escape game based on the LucasArt game Maniac Mansion, imitating with its images the point-n-click feel. This review continues on the one in the first part.

In the first part, you found yourself stuck inside a manor, and was able to explore the "front" part of the building, with a hallway and a few rooms. During that time, you gets bits and pieces of the former owner of the manor, with hints of a tragic event. This game continues where the previous part left off ((un?)surprisingly you are locked inside this new part), and allows you throughout the game to piece out what happened.

Spoiler for the mystery: (Spoiler - click to show)A brilliant surgeon/doctor loses his wife in a tragic accident. Ridden with grief, he gets in his head that he must find a way to revive her. After many trials and errors, he unearth the body of another young woman who recently died, resembling his wife in some ways, and manages to fulfil his wish... for a few minutes. The revived wife soon turns on her husband and kills him. Still her ghost remains.

This part continues in the same vein as the previous on, in that it is choke-full of puzzles, and different variety at that (as much as a choice-based format allows you). There are many more ways of succumbing to your wrong choices, but the game sends you right back to your previous action (unless this is the last escape bit, when you run out of time, but I'm sure that is a bug). Out of the puzzles included, I liked the putting the torn paper back together, the books in the library, and the unlocking the doors without a key, the most.

Unlike the first part, this game has fewer hints for some of its most important puzzles, forcing you to interact with all of its elements, even if it means dying in the process. It is at times tedious, having to go back and forth between the many rooms because you needed to examine an item multiple times in a row even if it told you there was nothing in the drawer, or finding a key in one section for a door on the opposite side. The frustrating aspect of the game feels very much similar to the old point-n-click games.
It does, however, include a video walkthrough on Youtube.

The horror aspect in this game is cranked up higher, as you start in a hallway with bloody arrows on the many doors and on walls, meet some spectres, have strange visions, and get a few more jump-scares. The ambient sound and sound effects does add to the creepy ambiance.

As for the prose, it follows the tone of the previous part, with its humour and wittiness, playing again on the tropes of the horror genre.

This was a good game and I enjoyed it quite a bit!

Le Manoir Abandonné is a multi-episode escape game based on the LucasArt game Maniac Mansion, imitating with its images the point-n-click feel. This review will only account for the 1st part.

Starting the game with a prologue, the prose plays on horror tropes with the sudden breakdown of your car and that manor looming in the distance as your only place to find potential help, taking a witty approach to those. Once inside the manor (you really have no choice, no matter the other options), the doors shockingly close behind you, leaving you stuck inside the building. Starts then the escape-game portion.

In this first part, you get to interact with the "front" part of the house: a large and luxurious hall and a handful connected but locked doors. Some of the rooms are quite freaky, down to the more obvious horror elements (like blood on the wall).

The game allows you to explore this section of the manor, examine items lying around, and manipulate them through a list of options. There are a handful of puzzles, which are fairly well hinted, even with the curveballs it tries to throw at you. The thing that took the longest was trying out the different keys on the different doors (lots of back and forth).

While I got to the end of the section, which is fairly abrupt, there was still one locked door that stayed locked, even after solving the main puzzle.

Looking forward to play the second section!

La fugue d'un homme-poulpe is a small fantastical Moiki adventure, in which you incarnate an octopus-man stuck on a pirate ship. Though your fate is more alluring than being enclosed in a zoo, you yearn for freedom. With your trusty herring spoon and oyster fork, you will face some trials before you can reach your goal or... chose the wrong answer and end up back where you started. There are 20 endings to find, most resulting in your bad choices.

While short, the prose is witty, veering at time on the sarcasm. The companions allow for a branching of choices down the line, which is neat. The game includes some illustrations, whose different styles don't always match well together, and sounds, which do add to the ambiance of the story.

Nice for an entertaining short break.

Le Grimoire de Saphir : Prologue is a short Moiki game, which, as the title indicates, is the prologue of a much larger fantasy epic. Leaving your home, you are in search for quests and adventure - hopefully, glory and riches would come to follow.

After a rude maritime crossing, you arrive in the town of Sirfang, which you can explore or try to find and employer. Thanks to a handful of coins, you can visit a few spots in town, like its library, a smithy, or a bazzar. The latter option will give you a quest: find the titular grimoire so the great wizard Saphir can be dealt with. Unfortunately for you, this quest will also land you into some political intrigue, as multiple parties have different goals with the grimoire.

It will be up to you to locate the book and decide the best path for its use... in the next episodes!

So far, the series seems rich in worldbuilding, which you get a taste of, and a nice amuse-bouche. I'm looking forward to see how it will continue.

Les Prophéties Perdues is a short interactive prophetic piece. Finding your way to the Temple of Destiny, you are able to interact with a tablet to alter a prophetic poem, which may or may not (but definitely will) affect the world as soon as you step out of the temple. There are seven endings to find, six involving interacting with the poem, and an early out ending.

Interacting with the poem is not obvious at the start, at least not as obvious as the large choice buttons at the bottom of the page, and requires a good memory (or a piece of paper) to remember the different options. The cycling of alterable words is finite - once you reach the last option, there is no way back to the start... until you reload the game to reset it.
While I would have preferred the option of having an infinite cycling option (to test out and edit the poem at will), the context of the story does makes sense for why it is not: it's an old temple made out of stone... there's only so much mechanic you can have hidden xD

Fun mechanic! And pretty fun text too!

The Lacquer Screen is a short horror game made in Twine. Your neighbour, for whom you've been remastering the eponymous series for some quick cash, just passed away... leaving you a short window to snoop around his apartment and go through his memorabilia.

Though fairly short, the atmosphere is quite interesting, balancing between the mundanity of a life as a recluse and more surreal/horror-y aspect of your subconscious playing tricks with you. The prose is pretty evocative at times, especially in the descriptions of the past.

Exploring the apartment felt somewhat sacrilegious, considering the setting, even if the PC indicates no one would bother going through his neighbour's things. Paradoxically, I wish there were more to explore, both about the show itself, the man that lived in that apartment, and yourself. There are traces of this being the author's plan, as the computer (with a neat little puzzle) includes files that would explain things... if they were clickable.

Par une nuit d'Halloween is a short Moiki Halloween adventure, meant to be read out-loud for children (according to the comments on the Moiki website). In this game you play as a child during Halloween, going around the neighbourhood to pick up some candies. Between the spooky house and the grand manor, the game subvert expectations in what you encounter in these locations.

The concise prose is simple and light, perfect to be played with children. It was sweet.

Four Mates is an interactive game made in Moiki, in 48h for the Global Game Jam, where you play as a queen ant whose subjects are not quite happy with her. Humouring their discontent, the queen must find ways to increase their happiness, without making a fool of the kingdom or loose all the money in the treasury.

The game is incredibly delightful, both in the prose and the interface. The former is full of puns (on names, organisations, and locations), some memes, and absurd jokes. I found the dig at La CAF to be hilarious. There are a lot of silly choices you can make throughout the game (like make the country drunk or have a military parade worthy of Monty Python.

The game includes a bunch of endings, and quite a large amount of variation. Depending on your choices, you could be done in a few minutes, or spend a good half-hour sorting out your advisers' ideas. I managed to max out the happiness meter, getting my subjects to essentially worship me!

An important part of the game is the design of the page, with its many illustrations. Like the variation passages, these added a lot of flavour to the game: from "photoshop-ing" famous masterpieces to silly little children drawings made in Paint, or the many depictions of the scene... all fit so well with the game, and made things at time even funnier.

Very funny!

Folie Contagieuse is a short interactive game made in Narrat, following an epistemologist looking for a cure (for a disease that may or may not have taken their grandparent's life?). You get to explore the home of another scientist to find clues, which will help you put together a recipe for the cure. While the puzzle is relatively simple, you will need to go back and forth between rooms to unlock doors and get to new locations.