Reviews by manonamora

Le Grenier is a short puzzle game made in Moiki, where you explore the attic of your childhood home. Among the forgotten comics and old games, you stumble one a locked box, tied to which is a note from your mother that starts a small treasure hunt. Going through the different old boxes and furniture pieces, you must solve a little enigma to find the code, and open the locked trunk.
It was cute, and the prose felt sentimental. I struggled with the code, starting with the wrong end of the hint...

Les Idylles is a short demo set in the fictional fantasy land of Loghria, filled with mystery and magic. In this episode, your goal is to help Elinor, a young woman who was tricked by a magician, needing help to break the 'Tattumanti' pledge. The short game includes multiple endings, some helping the woman at the cost of your own freedom, some changing your mind and leave her to deal with her problem by herself.

It was a fun little puzzling adventure, and I'm looking forward to further episodes. I liked the playfulness of the writing, with the play on words.

In this tiny game, you play a child chimneysweeper on the first day of their job. You'd expect the chimney to go straight up to the top, but... multiple paths strangely lay ahead of you: take one and find yourself in a strange world, the other takes a more creepy and suffocating approach.

You never know what's around the corner...

L'épreuve divinatoire is a short choice-based adventure that tests your knowledge of superstitions, common sense, and a few idioms. In this small absurd story, you are on your way to take your exam to become an oracle but are met with a few trials of your own. If you manage to solve the issues and finish your exam before the allocated time, you may be able to continue your studies! Or... you could succumb to the distractions put on your path.

It's stilly, definitely absurd, and fairly entertaining.

Until Tomorrow is a short experimental interactive piece made with Decker where you can explore the content of a computer.

Starting with a browser opened on a Youtube page for the song Comme de bien entendu, which sets a tone for what you may find, you are able to go through multiple folders on the desktop, a mailbox, and the last opened page on the browser. The game is very subtle in delivering the story, making you piece together the different elements as you examine the digital fragments of a life.

The final tale is quite depressing, being centred around loss, greed, and injustice.

Amour et déception is a short Texture game spoofing soap series like The Bold and the Beautiful, where twist and turns, deceptions and revenge, plots foiled make up the story. In this episode, you play the mother of the bride, who does not approve of her future son-in-law - so much so she is ready to kill him to save her daughter from a dishonourable path.

The game is very silly, playing on all the soap tropes, adding twists when you least expect them, and of course ends with a jinggle!

La constellation des Intracines is a short choice-based game set in an apocalyptic future where humanity is under the threat of extinction. A strange plant from underground has started taking over the ecosystem: drying out the land, rendering the waters acidic... Between the military in its futile fight against the plant and the scientific community in shambles when faced with little solutions, humanity tries to survive as best it can, even with this uncertain future.

Your background as an astronomer helps little with this struggle, and you can choose to despair and accept humanity's fate, turn to the stars for solace with this end, try to find other survivors and fight until your dying breath, or succumb maybe to madness.

The writing does a pretty good job in capturing the horror and gloomy aspect of this apocalyptic future and the unknown of this natural enemy, and the mental breakdown of the PC when faced with the realities of the situation.

La Maison de Mamie is a fairly short parser where you play as Sarah Wolverton-Pelletier, a woman who recently lost her grandmother, going through her house to retrieve some keepsakes before your mother sells it.

Through the exploration of this home, which was yours too for a time, and inspection of the different objects in each room, you remember fragments of your past and people of your life. Through the memories of the individuals that crossed your life, you can piece back the broken puzzle of Sarah's fragmented relationships.

Those memories are quite short, just a handful of sentences at most, and are either linked to examining objects or remembering people. You learn of tensions between mothers and daughters, as they understand their identity and find themselves rejected by the ones they love. The prose goes from bitterness to warmth as you remember things, though most of the text felt quite detached and indifferent to things.

While I wish you could remember more things, like through the different events mentioned, it was interesting to find the different hidden elements to get the background story. (Spoiler - click to show)Your grandmother married your grandfather after the war, a marriage that fell apart when she meets Chantal and realises she prefers women to men. Your grandparents divorce, something that your mother doesn't/can't accept. Your mother first keeps you from seeing your grandmother (now in a relationship), before kicking you out later on (when you realise you are gay too). You find a roof and acceptance with your grandmother. It is really telling, and sad, why the mother wants to sell the house...

Why bother with the philosophical questions when you could just make the trolley dilemma a humorous light-hearted murder-fest? Yes, you read this right. With a plethora of endings, from not even starting the trolley to just roll over absolutely everyone, this is a truly absurd take on the dilemma.

The writing is minimal, but to the point and poking fun at many things. It shouldn't be taken seriously...
There are many branches, some even looping, to lead you one of seven endings - some more funny than others, some more satisfying than others too.

In this micro CYOA booklet, you play as Aoda, a hotel accountant prone to falling asleep, dreaming of other worlds. Sectioned in small paragraph (about a sentence), the story takes you on a seemingly cyclical journey where you travel from dreamworld to dreamworld, only to be awaken in burst... and falling back into the arms of Morpheus.

The prose is incredibly dreamy and poetic.
There are no other word to explain it, it's just beautiful.

I also found the mechanic quite playful, with the tiny subtle enigma (which may or may not lead you to a secret ending). It will push you to go into the cycle again and again, making the story feel much longer than just 500 words.

In the formatting, the game forgoes the use of numbers for each passage, like you'd expect in a CYOA book, but words representing the section - which you can click like you would a hypertext game. This little subversion adds to the dream-like ambiance of the game.