Reviews by manonamora

:-O (..)_ INTERRED (..)_ :-Q is a short parser-like escape puzzle, coded in emoticons. Waking up in a bedroom, you feel the urge to leave this seemingly unknown place. Getting out isn’t too complicated, there is only one thing you need and all actionable commands per room are provided. It shouldn’t even be possible to fail.
What is most intriguing, is more how the game was made and is running. You actually get to peek at the source code, since you need to copy-paste it in the interpreter - though it doesn’t make much sense as is. I didn’t even know emoticons could be used to store data or be used to code whole games. So that was neat.

a conversation with a concerned cow is a short conversation with, like the title says, a concerned cow. They've been feeling down for a while, thinking about life and death, wondering what happens when everything ends (you get to fill in a form). Worried about how you'd feel about the conversation, the cow sets some jazzy relaxing music and even sends you a cute slideshow (as some sort of palate cleanser), as well as an email address to each out for more conversations. It is a bit absurd, and also quite sweet.

Mad, Sad, Glad is a snapshot of a corporate workshop following the end of a project. Inside the Miro page, participants could express what made they made, sad, and glad about the project, so to wrap up. You can also interact with it yourself, leaving a note on the Glad board too.

While there is no information about the project, you do learn a bit more about the company, with (Spoiler - click to show)the departure of colleagues, hiring/bonus freezes, and restructuring. With this, you'd expect the feedback to be of a certain way, as team members were welcomed to share their feelings and opinions (as the player, you can also edit the file and add your own comment!). Surprisingly, it ended up being (Spoiler - click to show)overwhelmingly positive.

But is it surprising, really? The Miro board actually (Spoiler - click to show)doesn't allow you to add any comments anywhere but the Glad section - the Mad and Sad post-its simply being screenshot images, not interactive elements you can edit. As if management had decided on a conclusion ahead of the workshop, regardless of opinions. As well, I honestly wouldn't expect the team players to share otherwise, (Spoiler - click to show)considering the state of the company - during uncertain periods, sharing criticism could land you the boot. I know I wouldn't either...

It's a pretty effective criticism on project management, from the way the board is formatted (with the cheerful stickers and bright colours), the way information and tasks are communicated, in contrast with the interactivity ((Spoiler - click to show)or rather restricted...).

Bakery management challenge is a cooking/management sim made in GoogleSheets, where the goal is to make and sell as many good in a limited amount of time. Each good has a specific recipe, with timed steps (kneading, rising, baking). You need to organise the 10-min-incremented planning with the good you’ll work on in that time. The sim has three levels, with the last two introducing a new step and cash reward.

This entry felt more like a gameplay prototype than a fully fledged IF game: there isn’t much story or text outside of the actual place action in the block or recipe book, nor does it tally the actual result of your actions (XP/money earned).
There was also an issue with filling the blocks, as you can only put one recipe per action (i.e. one kneading, one rising, one baking, one selling), even though the instructions allows for multiple recipe happening at once (i.e. rising/selling/freezing) - this makes the planning a bit more convoluted than necessary.

While the execution could use some polishing (and a tiny bit of a story, maybe even some endings depending on how much you sell), the core idea is pretty neat. I’d definitely play a resource management IF game.

The campfire is the beggining is a short branching story, where you find yourself before a campfire, with no recollection of where you are or even who you are. Will you just wait and see what happens to you? or will you adventure out? There are 6 endings to find - some humorous, some meta, and some a bit nonsensical.

While I didn’t really connect to the story or the humour, I do need to give props to how smooth it ran in Google Slides. It created a nice ambiance through its visuals and background SFX.

yet another planning doc is a multi-medium epistolary/chat interactive story, centred around three students, from Passerine Hills Academy, an elite university in an unspecified region (but most likely non-American English-speaking), trying to organise the weekly student party. Through a series of Google Docs and external emails, the trials and tribulations of Ana Vitória, Emmeline and Izzy, after their usual processes unravel, are entangled with the peculiar life at the Academy.

The Academy offers an interesting setting for the story, with its three-tiered organisation of its student body (the poor scholarship students, the extremely privileged students, and the majority middle-ground), which is both discussed in the conversation and displayed through the group dynamic (Emmeline belonging to the first, Izzy to the second, and Ana Vitória the third). The difference in class is reflected in how they behave and communicated with one another (familiarity vs. deferential - what they share or keep secret), present themselves (visible name and pfp, language and tone), and how they handle their changing plans. It inevitably adds layers to the depiction of a fairly mundane task (organising a weekly meet-up) and to the personality of each student.

Though you’d expect these kinds of exchange to happen more in a chat software (your Slack/Discord/other), using online Google Docs/Gmail allows each character to privately communicate without the other knowing, go on tangents without disrupting too much the main discussion, and adds to the school group project vibes happening.
But, as an external reader, it gives too an intimate look into private conversations that no others should have access too. Gossips feel extra juicy to learn, even if you have no real knowledge of those other students. And, secrets hinted in the personal emails most impactful. It’s a fun take on the epistolary format.

This is what I need to tell you is an ARG interactive piece created through a Forum thread, in which the latter’s author goes through a mental breakdown, incl. a paranoia and dissociative episode. In wanting to share critical information, the author find himself fighting another (himself?). Reading as an unsettling struggle to have the final word.

The thread contains 6 posts, of which all but one has been edited at least once. At first glance, it seems like the edits were made by a collected person, covering a distressing period that should not have been shared, and urging others to disregard the original messages. Still, another voice peers through, with an agitated final edit, pleading to be heard. A starting knotted thread that unravels when diving into the edits.

This second voice, on edge due to an unspecified event or revelation (proof of which is linked through a dead link), attempts to fight at every turn the more calm and serious speaker, who, in turn, rebuffs those messages for their presumably harmful content (for whom? the author? other readers? we’ll never know).
The layers in the conversations, through the multiple original posts and then their subsequent edits, is fascinating and bone chilling. You have to comb through all the edits and rearrange their order to piece out things. Yet, it stops before we learn what the author wants to tell us, as the information is deleted even before being shared. And it leaves so much hanging about the state of the author - the final post feels forced and the final edit cold, brushing off the thread to be of any importance.

What we are left is a chilling and concerning exchange (in a good way, knowing it isn’t real), and a bunch of unanswered questions (will the truth every come out? was there one to begin with? is the author ok? will we ever know?). And a very interesting use of the medium to share this story.

Au village de pêcheurs is a short slice-of-life parser where your goal is to purchase some fresh fish at a fishing village a few towns over. Little issue, your child decided to come along on this little trip and be a little menace. This does not go over well with the only fish stall of the village.

The current version of the game has multiple unfinishable states, which the author is aware of and has been working on fixes. It also does not include hints or walkthrough. I was able to find one for sure one confirmed fail ending.

With that in mind, it is expected to struggle with the game, find what works and what maybe should be working but isn’t. I got stuck multiple times, as well as had a full page of error messages through my trial-and-error input.

Still, I couldn’t get away until I reached the end… any end. The game is charming to boot, with its dry humour, the exasperated and exhausted parent, the menace of the Child (also in capital in game), and the no-nonsense local fisherman. I found myself chucking at the descriptions multiple times, even when there probably wasn’t a joke. And it was fun to just try things, even if nothing happened.
Even when frustrated with the parser itself, it still worked with who you’re supposed to play: a tired parent trying their best to accomplish just one task without finding the child. The game actually allows (Spoiler - click to show)you to leave without having gotten the fish or the child. Which… is the only one I actually managed to reach.

I can’t wait for the new version to be completed so I can find the other endings and be as much of a menace as the Child.

Une simulation is a tiny parser game, where you incarnate a player about to try a new virtual game: a simulation of an escape room through a VR headset. The goal is to find the three keys required to unlock the door, each hidden behind a different puzzle.

The game makes it pretty clear what must be done, but if you have a doubt, there is a manual in the starting state listing the main commands, and a downloadable walkthrough. Though it can be solved without either.

For a first attempt at a parser, it was a smooth experience. I didn’t really run into any issue. The puzzles were pretty logical and obvious enough that solving them was a breeze. Being limited to one room and a couple of objects does help - there are only so many possible interactions. Handling the plant was probably my favourite one out of all the different puzzles.

Le miroir d’Ozivior is a relatively short fantasy escape room, in which you play as the friend of Ozivior, a student at a magical academy. Locking you in his room, he challenges you to solve his riddle: find his actual room and break the mirror.

The game is pretty simple, that even beginner parser players could manage to complete. It was tightly constructed, with just enough descriptions in responses to get the gist of the puzzle and how to solve it, as well as warnings of any change.
Hints are also available, starting from general to nudge you the right way, to more concrete/obvious ones. There is also a Win the game command to get to the end quicker.
And the vocabulary required is limited: examine, take/drop, enter/open.

You can’t even fail at the game. As it lets you play on and “automatically undo”'s for you if you break the mirror in the wrong room. No need for saves, or restarts, or undos, really. It’s very beginner friendly.

The game left me frustrated in all the good ways - but that’s more because I blame myself for not paying attention properly (or because I tried to brute-force the game to let me play the way I wanted to, even if it went against the puzzle itself).
The mechanic to go from room to room was pretty cool, and pretty magical. The way the rooms are essentially the same but differ depending on what you (Spoiler - click to show)choose to carry with you really adds layers to the setting. You learn more about your friend and his room, bit by bit. It is a matter of whether you keep track of the details (which I failed at too many times, it was embarrassing for me).

All in all, the experience is very smooth and charming (pun), and it made for a fun escape puzzle.