Reviews by manonamora

Childbirth can be both a wonderful and traumatic experience, and the following period is no better. Nell gives a very personal and raw account of the anxiety, worries, feelings of not being enough, not having done enough, and struggles with one’s body not responding the way you wish it to. The use of the textboxes added onto the layers of those feelings, as they pile up on top of one another without a way to process them fully.
It is also a wonderful love letter to her newborn, a love pouring through those words, unending and unwavering through it all. It takes a lot of courage to be this vulnerable.

LttPR is a half-sequel to Litteraly Watch the Paint Dry (a meta Idle Clicker), during which you are looking forward to the weekend and hanging out with a friend. Through the limited options, neither answering the phone at first, you find out whether your friends are still truly your friends…* This short slice-of-life felt a bit too tell-instead-of-show for my taste… But I found the topic of friendship while being true to yourself had an interesting start.

*both friend appear in LWPD though they weren’t named at that point.

Trapped outside, a vampire is unable to find shelter moments before the sunrise. At the brink of perishing, they reminisce on their past, envy the birds able to fly away from this situation, and ultimately choose to resign themselves (or not) to their death. The writing paints a colourful tableau between the pain of the injured character unable to save themselves, and the beauty of a simple sunrise, welcomed by the songs of birds. The writing was also quite dynamic and fun, considering the situation.

On the surface, SOL is a prose poem of a benign conversation between friends about the sun, as they partake in sharing a joint on a summer evening, with the writing moving from concrete description to what could be interpreted as hallucinations. But, below, hiding under a mouseover macro, is hidden a secret message, unsaid words, repressed feelings. The descriptions of movements and bodies balance between a loving gaze to an almost obsessive and carnal survey through the narrator’s eyes. The writing is intoxicating…

the ride home does a great job at encapsulating the anxiety of a first time driver, realising how cars are essentially killing machines and bodies are just squishy flesh. This is enhanced by the author’s use of animated and timed text and through the formatting (moving from white to red was a good choice).

This piece has an intriguing premise, wherein a child sees (hallucinate?) their (dead? never existed?) brother when the latter cannot be perceived by anyone else. Feelings, sounds, and touches are only experienced by this child, creating an eerie dissonance that sends chills up a spine. The more I read this the less I was sure whether it was about grief or a hallucination through a horror lens… Either way, it works!

Moving on is hard, and harder still when you cannot forget their touch, when you keep remembering their voice, when you keep dreaming about being with them, when they keep coming back to your door… This piece portrays the ache the heart feels about break ups, the guilt of letting yourself down when you succumb to your desires, or the agony when you try doing the right thing, pretty well.

I liked the formatting of the text, with the fading-in giving some dream-like experience or the shaking of the word when your hands tremble. The choice to colour the words spoken was also a nice touch. Having to click after almost ever sentence to reveal another added to the excruciating experience shown in the words.

Trying to enter a palazzo at the dead of night is not an easy feat. Less so when you start from a gondola and there are no clear way to break in. Maybe that door or the window would do? I really liked the interactivity of the game, and how the puzzle is quite simple… if you examine your environment properly. I would play a longer version of this game in a heartbeat!

This piece engage with conflicts in a group chat in a very humorous manner. Through the limited word count, we get to learn bits of the characters and their relationship between one another. I laughed a lot while playing it.

Allocate your brain space to some themes, so the universe can hear a poem. Rinse and repeat to find all possible poem combination (and get the highest score? - I got 23…)
I didn’t really vibe with it personally but the mechanic behind it seems interesting.