Ratings and Reviews by manonamora

There’s always an age when kids will start pushing boundaries with their parents, objecting to their decision or sneakily do what they are not supposed to. And there are often other nosey adults who will lecture those kids, even if they are not related…

From this generic setting, you must suffer through the dispensed morals of said adult who caught you speed-reading (reading without buying) a magazine. But the ordeal can pass through quickly and without much yelling… if your timing is just right.

See, the old man lecturing you has a lot to say to you, about what’s morally correct, and how should kids behave, shaming you for not behaving properly (you seemed to be just a regular kid). Click too early on the response, and you will be berated for cutting him off; too late*, and the scolding will be about not paying attention. If your timing is just right (there is a visual indicator) and let the man finish his moralistic monologue, he will let you move on with your day.

While this is a fun gameplay, my issue was with the timer. It is way too fast to be able to read anything. Even being able to read pretty fast usually, it was even hard to scan through the text before the timer runs out, and worse still with the latter longer morals. Your eyes just focus on the right moment to click the response, missing the rest. I had to open the source code for this part…

I guess it makes sense, context-wise, to have such short timer. You’re a child, and moralistic monologues are a drag - the preachiness of things, ugh… - you’d rather just uh-huh the adult until they leave. But as a player, it’s not very satisfying…

I will say it outright: this fantasy entry was an absolute delight to play. You are an inexperienced thief breaking in the word possible place one could think of: a witch’s house. But that doesn’t stop you - you will take something from the house before you are found out!

A list of options are presented to you, each leading you to a different ending. I recommend going from bottom to top for the most funny sequence. Each ending is different, some where you will succeed, some where you will absolutely fail, all very funny.

Speaking of the humour, it felt very Terry Pratchett-y to me, from the wittiness to the sarcasm, and even the moral behind it. Every passage has some quirkiness of them, each flowing from one to the next. I enjoyed it a lot!

I went into this entry completely blind (did not read the blurb) and came out holding my side from laughing to hard.
Go play it :P

This entry is a companion piece to "forever, an echo", a short game submitted to the Neo Twiny Jam, a sort of opposite point-of-view to the original piece.

It is an endless fight, an unwinnable fight, one your enemy will always come out victorious. But, you never despair. No matter the version of yourself, no matter your weakened state, you will continue to fight. You will always come back, ready to fight.

Unlike the doomed perspective of the other game, this one screams resistance, and hope. You may not win now, but one day you might. You will never surrender yourself, your soul, your everything to your enemy.

A good opposite to the other piece.

This game is a remake of Crawl Back to Me from the same author, but in a visual novel form. You play as Alastair, a gallant knight who recently lost his wife, Cassandra, in an accident while away. Filled with grief, you would do anything to speak to your wife one last time, hoping it will help you move on. Incidentally, Cassandra left you instructions to help your quest.

The story might be a bit cliché, and the twist a bit too obvious, but it works quite well as a visual novel, with the clunky sprites reminiscent of old RPG dungeon crawlers games with all its campiness. I did enjoy the wide range of endings from the final choice, with the moderately neutral ending probably being my favourite out of all of them.

Orbiting around the largest moon of our solar system, your ship is in a dire situation, and you are no better. Waking up with missing memory, and no way to get it back, you must find what happened to your ship… and how to get out of it before it is too late!

With choice options formatted like parsers, with the trusty > before the text, or even behaving like one, when looking at the actions (examine, move to a different room, interact with…), the game still restrict you in what you can actually do, giving you humourous reasons to why you can’t do a certain action (YOU REALLY DON’T WANT TO KNOW). Until the final show down…

This final part is actually quite interesting in terms of gameplay, giving you the option to a limited NewGame+ after your choice. I highly recommend to play through it all, as it will provide even more context to how you arrived to this situation, why you got there, and maybe even find a way to save yourself.
Some locked actions on that screen only become available if you perform another one before the reboot, giving you multiple multiple opportunities to reach a satisfying end. It was fun to piece the whole backstory together from the little bits and pieces each option provided.

I’ve quite enjoyed my time on the ship but I’ll let the fighting the cultist mecha dragon to another player now…

In a retro black and white UI, Tauvigjuaq send up into a post-nuclear winter future, following a small community of nomads trying to survive the winter, away from the rest of civilisation. Though your life is harsh, it is about to get even harder when the news of the matriarch’s passing reaches the camp. Assured it was foul play, you are tasked to investigate.

The game is fairly short and linear, with the choice being expectedly accusing the potential murderer. But before this penultimate task, you will come across suspicious individuals, wonky alibis, nonsensical accusations, worrying news, and forbidden objects. It is your job to piece the events together correctly.
I’d love to say my suspicions were right, but I just failed completely…

I found the choice options quite interesting. Not because you could accuse yourself, but also because the game delve into the consequences of the accusation for yourself, and most importantly the tribe. Different endings are included in the game, some pretty negatives, some more positive, and some… well…

It was nice to have a button to go back to the final choice without having to go through the whole story again. Especially to check out the other endings. The illustrations and patterned background helped enhance the vibe of the game as well.

Another Round is by far the chunkiest entry of the Single Choice Jam, clocking over 25k words. Set in a fantastical world where demons and humans coexist, you are Maddie, a probably depressed, definitely broken-hearted, lesbian drowning her sorrow at the Haven bar, trying failing to ignore her ex. But, you are also clearly not over her…

The game has an interesting gameplay: stuck with only one choice, it smartly uses a restart mechanism to both let you every aspect of the story and advance it (restarting felt a bit loopy/groundhog-y, I digged it!). Each start felt a bit eerie, as things both stayed the same and were just different enough to realise something was not… quite right. Every round culminates to THE choice. And it hits every. single. time.

I thought the story discussed a particularly interesting topic throughout the game: relationships, the labels of those relationships, and the expectations around them. Can we really think of relationships are purely transactional when removing all the mushy feelings that come with it? Should we try to change ourselves to fit the mold set by the other, even if it hurts us? Should we have expectations from the other and how to communicate them? How much of yourself do you lose in a relationship? How much of yourself should your refuse to give up?

There is honestly a nice and believable progression during the game, of the character realising how wrong things actually were, how mistaken her actions were and how hurtful they made her then-other half. It is not just communicated through dialogue between the player and her ex or her friend, but also through her snarky thoughts, disassociating daydreaming. Bits and pieces are dripped on the page, slowly painting a truthful picture of reality.

I particularly enjoyed the earnestness of Maddie, in wanting to ensure the safety of her ex. Though her action are more than flawed, disregarding almost the agency of the other woman, you can’t help but root for her. Maybe not to rekindle the relationship, but save her friend. The different path of actions taken between rounds and their sequences were particularly satisfying.

This was a pretty well rounded game all and all!

While one the short side, this parser is still much longer than its title promises. Set somewhat like an escape room, you must find three words to complete the simulation and escape a doorless room. Easy, right? Well… no. You can only do one action before the simulation ends and you need to reboot it.

Forced to replay the game until you find all elements to complete the puzzle, the game forces you to think about your previous action, as it does not track it on screen. You can look at different objects around the room, as well as manipulating them to discover the room’s secrets. But remember, the room resets when the simulation ends!

The Sysiphian gameplay is quite interesting and pretty smart. It really makes you think about the information you have on the screen before you have to reload the game. Examining every single element in the room will give you and idea of what you can interact with… and most importantly how. The hints parsed throughout the rooms are quite cleverly done (though it took me a while to find some of them - thank you Help for putting me out of my misery). The first word is probably the easiest to find, and as soon as you understand the logic in it, the other needed words will follow quite easily (or go check the help section, like I did :P )

It is a very neat small parser experience, and I would recommend to anyone with 30min to spare.

The trolley problem is as old as… well the invention of the trolley. And has plagued everyone with its ethical conundrum: do you act and change its trajectory, or will your inaction act for you? There have been hundreds and maybe thousands of iteration of this problem, with different amount of people on the tracks, the kinds of person on the tracks, animation instead of humans, close family members specifically… The possibility is essentially endless.

However, this might be the first time I’ve seen someone looking at what happens after the lever is pulled. What does your conscience say about this act/inaction? Are there consequences? Is pulling the lever actually the path of least destruction? Should we actually all pull the lever?

TTPP tries to answer these questions in a humourous manner, linking unlikely accidents to an already unlikely event. (I mean who has to handle trolley courses like this…). The consequences are so dire, you may have had triggered WWIII… Think about what you’ve done!

Though, one could argue the game is simply mocking this moral disagreement (why are we forced to choose between a utilitarian answer to save the many or refusing to participate in an already morally wrong situation? who are we to decide how worthy a human life is?).

Having played this author’s Neo Twiny entry, I was really looking forward to reviewing this one. And it was as expected: humourous, kind of campy, and a bit of a fun time.

One downside for me: after the choice, the text appeared a bit too fast, and the colour changed quite abruptly between screens, not a comfortable experience.

In this cinematic VN, you are Player, a drunkard jazz piano player stuck in Limbo, drinking your days away. Paired with three other stuck souls, Buddy, Big, and Chip, you must put on a show to earn your deliverance. One small problem… If you mess up, you will spend eternity in an endless pit… and Buddy is at best a mediocre saxophone player.

At the eleventh hour, you are face with a choice: save yourself but at a cost, or reject change and stay in Limbo forever.

The story kind of reminded me of Grim Fandango, with the stuck souls trying to reach a peaceful state, and you in the middle, trying to find your way. But unlike out favourite skeleton, our job is to play jazz, not sell packages to paradise. And you are riddled with guilt over what happened around your death.

The consequences of the choice might feel quite expected by the time you get to it. But it still holds its emotional weight - I don’t really want to spoil the twists. Though, without its impressive UI and formatting, it might not have.

I think I will end this review on what is probably the most impressive aspect of this game: how polish it is. From the choice of sound, to the sprites, from the formatting of the text to the sequence of screens, the game screams I have been worked on for days and every single bit of code has been checked and tested so many times my devs can’t take it anymore. Essentially the whole vibe is on point!

An excellent collaborative entry.