Ratings and Reviews by manonamora

This was a very trippy experience, as lucid dreams can often be. It is surreal right from the start, finding yourself inside an airlock rather than cozy in your bed. Jumping from dreamworld to dreamworld, each with their specific "puzzle" and logic, you learn that you have trouble finding sleep, resting sleep especially. Having tried different remedies (each bleeding into the dream snippets funnily), you still struggle with getting good sleep.

The writing is pretty playful, going smoothly from the strangest descriptions of the dreamworld to a more frustrated tone of your awaken self. And vivid - painting lovely images, especially in the dreamworld.

The puzzles are fairly simple and fairly well hinted in the room descriptions and command responses. Even as a parser noob who doesn't always find the solution easily, it was still a smooth short game, with a satisfying end.

I wish my lucid dream were *this* fun!

Thanks for including a downloadable walkthrough too! I got to experience the "good" ending thanks to it!

Holy moley, what a game! Grabbed me by the throat and would not let me go...
I was at a loss for words for a long time when I reached the end.

Based on After the Accident, a poem by Sophia de Augustine, the story flips between the present, where excruciating pain and confusion overwhelms you, and snippets of memories, walking down a bittersweet memory lane. Showing that love is complex and relationships are complicated.

The mirrors between the present and the past, and the different snippets themselves, each adding details to what has come to be, bring powerful imageries and strong reactions towards the story and the characters. The deeper you go in the story, the more heartbreaking it becomes. But there is little you can do to change things. You know how it ends anyway. It is inevitable. By the end, I felt like a wreck, feelings in shambles.

There was an interesting aspect in the incredible writing: the function of mundane objects to convey the state of things. (Spoiler - click to show)The car is a wreck like the PC's relationship. The offered gift feels soft, giving you a warm lovely embrace, but still smells of the fight for the PC. Bread-making is used as a (re-)bonding moment, but drips of milk outside of the bowl breaks the hope of a good reconciliation. A meaningful portrait at the start of the relationship especially points out the PC's physical flaws, like a hint of what is come in the following months.

It is incredible powerful, raw descriptions of reality, painful depictions of love and hurt.

The entry does an interesting thing with the mechanic, limiting the playthrough to a 60 seconds - though it lets you "rewind" and try as many times as you wish. The games track which passage you visited, making it easier to find the ones you still have left.
I get why the discussions were timed, but they ended up being more frustrating to read through they they should have been because of the timer...

Though that restart may remove all that pressure from the large timer in the background ticking down the minute, it ended up stressing me out so much I found myself clicking aimlessly rather than focussing on the text itself. I had to restart the whole file (because of the tracking formatting) and "hide" the timer from the screen to actually take in the story. The "game" would still end after a minute, making it a bit more sudden, but I wasn't anxiously counting down the seconds...

The story itself is not so much narratively driven but a more exploration or snippets from a third-party perspective. You don't really do anything but look at what is around you, happening regardless of you. A bit of a voyeuristic take, wishing you'd be part of the world you are looking at, but still being incredibly distant from it.

It was an interesting experience.

I had completely forgotten about this short story until I tried to pick up the cookies. I thought this was going to be a Pick Up the Phone Booth and Die type of game, with multiple possible actions - but the game adapts more faithfully the short story than the title may let on.

The game does encapsulate the story pretty well in a parser format, leaving you with little to do but follow the events of the story (I did try to not pick up a cookie first...). It's pretty concise and very Adam.

I was not prepared to feel that secondhand embarrassment again...

free bird. is a minimalist hyperlink puzzle game, where you play as a bird (cockatoo?) locked in a cage yearning for freedom.

Using the seed “Feathered Fury” by Amanda Walker as the setting (locked birds by poachers), and “Room; Closed Door,” from Charm Cochran to format the text (only adjective + noun combo), the game takes us right inside the mind of our feathered friend. It is very effective in portraying this non-human perspective on the environment. And even with the minimalist writing style, the choice of adjectives gives a lot of personality to the PC (or bird-player-character).

The game has also a pretty clever set of puzzles, making you interact with different elements around you. Sometimes requiring a specific order, sometimes asking you to pick up an object and move it somewhere else... Its sparse hints give you just enough to nudge you the correct way. I still struggled a bit, picking up objects and going around the rooms, hoping it would do something... Still, it was pretty fun interacting with all those objects, carrying them on my back, and trying to trick other NPCs in helping me out.
Having different formatting between the interactive objects and other "rooms" made things easier when trying to solve the puzzles.

A pretty neat short game.

When it comes to time-loops settings and gameplay, Tabitha always delivers. This time taking a more silly approach to the genre, with you playing as a "dumbass time agent" that ends their missions in the stupidest of ways (essentially winging it). The goal here is to get through a guarded door. Simple, right?

WRONG!
Who Thought trying to get through a measly door with just one guard would be so difficult!

With each passage are given a couple of options, each branching into other set of choice, until you either manage to enter the building or reach a dead end. The game also lets you reset the loop from the start. Resetting will sometimes add new options (when you uncover information).
There are 3 ways to properly end the game, with 4 achievements to get.

Each path is pretty silly, tricking the guard by confusing him, or distracting him. There are tons of funny one-liners and hilarious exchanges (I laughed so hard at the (Spoiler - click to show)UNO-Reverse No, I'm your therapist option). The third ending was so stupidly funny!

I had a bit of an issue with how the learned knowledge was displayed on the page (with the oldest bit disappearing from the page), but changing the colours of the links, to display which path had been taken or which led to a dead end, was really helpful when starting a new loop!

A pretty sweet and simple premise: you are a bird stuck inside a case, one you really want to escape. How? That is for you to find out.
Around you are other caged birds - some of which want to follow you to freedom, other disillusioned by the possibility. Each bird getting a "prisoner" trope was pretty funny (the old one who's been here forever, the loud one that might bring attention from the guards, the one who could betray you...)!

Framed as some sort of escape room (you can't just open the cage and fly away), the game gives enough tension throughout the text to feel the danger creeping ever so closer, which could foil your plan for freedom. Still, you have more than enough time to play all the available actions without getting caught (it is possible to click all options!).

It did make me wish for more puzzles/manipulation actions within the choices, to maybe feel a bit more “escape room”-y. If you are methodical in the order of picking choice (top->down) - like me - it resolves things a bit too quickly/simply.
And there might be a little bug, where the text does not take into account you ate the food?

Word-play-ish parser my beloathed… (/jk)

Through exploration and mini-puzzles are part of the game, its central mechanic relies on the player trying to find the word for a special command to navigate through the coded world. While the commands [help] and [hint] are not configured, the descriptions/responses of actions or discussions with the NPCs (and incidentally the name of the game) hint at what that word could be.

I needed to restart the game a couple of times, because I kept being stuck in one room that required that command to exit it (and since I hadn't found it then, there was nothing else I could do). The game does advise you to restart and explore a different part of the world if your get stuck as well - so you can get another hint that would get you closer to the end.
[I thankfully got some help from super-parser players, after going through a list of potential word and being super frustrated...]

Even with the frustration of being forced to restart and getting stuck again and again, and trying way too many words, the game is still delightfully funny, especially in the responses from the game!

A Thing of Wretchedness is a horror “sandbox” parser, set in an empty farmstead in the middle of winter, away from any life, some time around the 70s(?). You play as an older woman, who having lost her husband recently(ish), deals with grief… and a wretched thing roaming the house. You want (need?) to get rid of this things, but how?
The game includes an external walkthrough with general guidelines on achieving one of the 3 endings.

The start is pretty intriguing with a more mundane take on horror, by having an indescribable thing roaming around your house, not actively hurting you, but also not letting you feel at ease either - you can’t bear to look at it. It is made pretty obvious there is some sort of relationship between you and the thing, in that it won’t hurt you and you kind of take care of it. Exploring the different rooms and its items may help get an idea (nice details there!).

For some reason, after months - or maybe years - of being tortured by its presence, you want to get rid of it now. Your first idea would be to poison it, as the introduction explains, though you are not too keen on hurting the thing either… In this regard, the games gives you multiple paths to take care of the thing, with some options more violent than others. This is the sandbox aspect of the game.

Some endings, especially the one which supposedly gives the most context, rely on timing and RNG. You set up an action that requires the thing to do something, but it may take a while or the thing may end up doing something completely useless, or hurt you. This becomes frustrating pretty quickly, as resetting the action sometimes takes so loooong.

I was also a bit disappointed with the endings too, as they don’t really answer anything at the end - the open-ended-ness leaving you with more questions than answers, especially if you don’t get the ending that provides some information. I still have no idea what was that box about…

Barcarolle in Yellow is a meta parser, working as an interactive movie script for a pulpy giallo, blurring the lines between reality and movie scenes. You play as B-list probably-washed-out actress Eva Chantry as she gets the call to star in the eponymous movie. With a twist-on-twist-on-twist, the game includes multiple endings (found A, I know of at least 6), in-game hints, and a walkthrough for one ending (A).

This game got me a bit conflicted.

The premise is enticing, the poster is so eye-catching, and the starting scene? an incredible way of hooking players. So darn unique! With the formatting the game introduction and credits, the game seem to play heavily on movie codes. With its whole fake-cult movie vibe, it reminded me a bit of the Goncharov meme. I was really intrigued with what the game had to offer, what meta commentary it might be making about the genre, or how to approach the scene/real-life aspect.

Then I started the game… and the problems followed. During the first proper playable scene, a Spaghetti Western filmed in Spain, events ended up repeating itself when I took off my costume after the shoot ended, with the director screaming CUT again, belittling Eva for screwing with filming.
The following scene is timed, with any wrong move, any missing action, leading you to your early death. I died and restarted the game so many times because of that ONE scene needed a very specific sequence of actions to ward off your stalker. The timing is so tight it barely takes into account failing or asking for hints.

The rest of the game feels pretty railroady, with us/Eva getting few opportunities to have agency. This makes sense, considering she is an actress playing the role given to her, following the directions told. You have some options of choices here and there, which influences the story, but not much more. There is only one path you can take, or you’d lose the game, essentially.

But the game is not always clear about which actions are the wanted ones. It does provide hints, which are formatted like snippets of a movie script, telling the player a general idea of what they should do next (this was so smart!). Sometimes, the necessary (and unusual) action is not included in the hint… making things complicated.
This maybe the most obvious in that first times scene. I had to look the walkthrough up to avoid (finally) dying right at the start. It really takes you out of the immersion the game so craft-fully created in the prior moments. It happens again when shooting the scene on the bridge. The undercluing really messes with playing.

After trying and failing to get through the game… I just opened the walkthrough and followed it to the letter… or tried to. Your hotel in Venice changes name with every playthrough (that was neat), but only one is included there (so I died… again and again, until I realised what was wrong). I would have been nice if the walkthrough included all possible paths instead of just that one ending…
I’m sure someone will end up publishing a comprehensive walkthrough at some point…

The writing goes all-in in the giallo genre, with the depiction of Eva as this seductress woman in her hotel room - the character being overtly sexualised, but also wink-wink hihihi - as well as being the subject of quite a large amount of violence… and not being able to do much about it on or off screen. It’s not really pleasant to go through, honestly, and I am not sure what the point of the game was concerning this.
Was it discussing how movies with shitty budgets have bad production periods where accidents happen but everyone have to deal with it? Is this a commentary on standards in the entertainment industry for actresses, especially in terms of being replaceable when their attractiveness fade? Or about the psychology being having no agency through the frame of an “adventure” game? Is there even a message in all this? Do you need to find all the endings to get the overall picture? (I hope not…)

This game had ticked all the checkboxes for being incredible, but its potential just fell flat with the muddled and sometimes buggy implementation. It has a good solid back bone, and some neat things (the script formatting and custom messages), but it still needs quite a bit of tweaking to make it the cult movie/game it is hoping to be.

Final note: spam Z at the end of the game for bonus features.