Ratings and Reviews by manonamora

Congrats! Your writing doesn’t stink! is a short reflection on sharing one’s work with others. Formatted as an exchange between an author (you) and a player/reviewer, you listen/read the latter’s opinion about your hypothetical piece. Through a thinly veil of “hey, I’m just trying to help”, the praise ends up being less then genuine, and the criticism borderline insulting. But maybe, it should have been expected with the title…

It’s weirdly relatable, having had my work judged, not always kindly (thought often with kernels of truth), to the point that it can turn you off from a community altogether. Putting your work out there is very courageous, and being met with malicious comments can be demoralizing. Words can be powerful things, lifting people spirits as well as burying them six-feet down. It’s a good reminder to think about how we phrase our comments, especially when we don’t like something.

in the digital age is a short fan-fic piece based on Great Ace Attorney, in a communication-sim type of way. You play as Su, getting a phone call from Haori in the middle of the night, having avoided talking to her for a while and informing her of your return (among other things). Except you are a pretty awkward person, and behave a bit erratically (though, if they were teenagers, it would make tons of sense). While I did find the actual text exchange to be a bit confusing (on who was who especially), the consequence of the first choice was very funny to me.

come thru at 330am is a short kinetic piece, a jumbled reflection at a barbershop, which dealing with a traumatic past due to abuse in the workplace, making getting a simple haircut a herculean trial. With a minimal use of punctuation, the prose weaves together an often confusing imagery, mixing past and present, real and felt, emotional and rational… blurring all the lines.

Garden Party is an interactive unfolding poem, where you attend a garden party. Clicking on the different elements on the screen, the party unfolds before you, with cheers and drinks, dancing and playing games… but you can also escape the commotions and enjoy a little bit of a break, in the calming surroundings of Nature.

This piece reminded me a bit of NESTED by Orteil in the way it unfolds and displays new elements on the screen - though Garden Party does is finite, with its 100 or so elements to click on. It’s a pretty comforting experience.

sappho fragment generator is exactly what the title says: randomly printing on the screen fragments of writings of the poet Sappho. Each verse on the screen will vary in length and content, though it will often not make much sense (or at least it was my experience generating them), as it displays them from a small bank of words. Because little has survived, the generator sometimes even includes unexpected characters - though the general nonsensical of the generated elements is already confusing enough as is.
Maybe… we could still try to analyse the unanalysable.

Little Kitty Cat is a kinetic Twine piece where you are… a little kitty cat doing little kitty cat things. The prose is very simplistic, trying to emulate the mind of a small cat (or what we think a cat’s mind is, for all we know they are super philosophical xD), with the sudden changes in emotions and wishes (like purring because of pets until jumping away because it’s not as good). But it’s SO fun. It’s really cute and just happy. A delight for a short break!

Chronostasis is a short almost linear Twine piece about time… or lack of. Your evening ticking away, tempo’d by the metronome-like rhythm of your clock, it is without surprise that you notice when your surrounding suddenly turn completely silent. The eeriness of the situation, where nothing you do seems to help, brings a lot of tension in the way it is simply conveyed. The culmination of the piece, when time starts again, is really clever.

Good Luck and Godspeed is a short Twine game, where you wake up in a spaceship with a headache, unable to remember a thing. You get to explore around and examine a few items, though you have a hard time putting things together. You seem to be some sort of astronaut on a mission with other people (none of which you meet). The prose is weirdly alienating, as the state of the craft seems dire, but you don’t seem particularly bothered by it – you almost welcome your fate by the end, whichever way you choose to go.

All I Am Is This is a short ChoiceScript game about being human and the will to live. Going through a short questionnaire, you define yourself through emotions and how you look at the future. However you answer, the game will attempt to make you realise how being human is full of flaws and confusion, but that life is worth it no matter what. It’s a lovely short uplifting piece of IF.

Nameless Dream is a short surreal Twine piece, about dreams, how vivid they can become and still how little we end up remembering them. With a slight sci-fi element to it, as the human race was upgraded with cooler, more vivid dreams, you get to choose between three different activities, experiencing the high of those awesome new ways of dreaming and the lows of realising you can never really have this in real life… But nothing further than that happens, nothing really affect your real life. All stays as always in your dreams. It’s weirdly both comforting and familiar, and concerning…