Ratings and Reviews by manonamora

In the format of a kinetic visual novel (there really aren't any choices), the story follows an Harvester - an otherworldly being who 'harvests' human memories - on a case: a young woman wanting to erase the memories of her former lover and the child she gave away.

I... don't know what to take from the game honestly. I can't say what the message of the story was. It seemed to be critical of one-night stands and loose morals - almost condescendingly, with pushing the almost unattainable 'pure love' - while dealing very carelessly with the situation of a child ((Spoiler - click to show)in what world was the child given away without getting the father's approval?? when the father was told about the pregnancy and birth? It seemed to hint the child was some months old?). It was as if the story put itself into a corner with having the child involved into the woman's back story and just... yeeted it away when it became too cumbersome. That was... very uncomfortable.

As for the climax of the game, the story kinda pulls the rug from under you, by having the Harvester (Spoiler - click to show)"seeing the light" and becoming a human because of what he witnessed with that case. I don't really get how *this* was the turning point for them to change this way. It felt a bit cheap?

I did like the introduction of the game, with the exposition of Harvesters and one of the humans who used their services.
I thought it could have been more interesting following *that* person after losing their memories...

I could not be furthest from the intended audience for this game: I absolutely hate running. I just don't get the appeal or why people would push themselves to exert themselves this way. Anything related to it will give me the hives...

Yet, I found myself engrossed with the story. Your will to finish this gruelling race, hopefully getting a good time too. Your frustration with your running companion, who is unusually lagging behind and whose condition is starting to worry you. And your struggles with the path, not quite as safe as you hoped.

While you are the character advancing the story, I felt it was more about Susan (or your relationship to Susan) that mattered most here. There are hints through most of the game to why your companion doesn't seem like herself -- though her condition is only vaguely mentioned in the ending, it is easy to assume what's what. Depending on your actions, the ending you get is heartwarming, even if a bit bittersweet, or pretty tragic...

The game is pretty short, with three and half room and hinted puzzles, branching into multiple endings (I think I managed to get three by myself?). One branching choice seems to have a random component to which path you'll end up taking (with the correct direction potentially changing with each playthrough).

It was a good well rounded short game!

We love games that make things accessible for newbies! :heart: walkthroughs

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!