Ratings and Reviews by manonamora

This short entry looks at the early stages of the lifecycle of a frog, from the moment they are spawned into the pond, to the day they leave it. You play as one of them, eating, wondering about your state, or wiggling around the muddy waters. As you grow, the season changes, and so are the dangers.
The entry is awfully sweet and delightful.

With the current ecological state of the world, it is hard not to feel hopeless for future generations. It is also quite normal to turn towards science/speculative-fiction to imagine a world in the far future where Nature has taken a priority, and technology can do wonders to protect it. Like a soothing balm, reminding us that things might work out after all…
This is this kind of hope that this entry is bringing forward.

Unprepared and inexperienced, yet tasked to engage in negotiations with a man who seems to have all and requires little from you.
You will need a few tries to find the right combination of choices to appease the Viper. Some are hidden at first… Choose the wrong one, and die(?). Take too long, and die(?)…

I really liked how the game was constructed. It was fun (in a bit of a stressful way). Though the ending page arrived just a second or two too early…

… is the “kindness of the vampire”.
Spared from the release of death, a vampire transforms you into her kind, no matter your protest. Forced to live as an undead, forgetting what it meant to be alive, human, despair takes a hold of you. Until you repay your Maker her kindness…
The imagery from the prose is delectable. A succulent and dark short piece.

This entry does exactly what the title implies. It is a simulator of battles between spaceships, seemingly infinite… well, unless you fail… which will happen (I have yet to win the game…).
Similar to Rogue-likes, ISBS requires some strategy in the actions you perform. Do you get closer to have a more accurate shot or evade to lower the chance of you getting shot? Do you deploy drones or shoot until you die?
You are also forced to choose which upgrade to prioritise when you do manage to shoot down an enemy, though you are limited…
Aside from the gameplay/mechanic, which is impressive in an of itself, the story hints at something maybe more sinister? You are told this is a simulation, and though you feel(?) pain, you supposedly do not sustain actual damage. Is this part of a larger experiment? What is that experiment for? A training for a future space war?
There is definitely more than the author lets on…

A Happiness jar is a fun concept, and can help give you a different outlook on life or remember the good times (like a time capsule). But the entry recalls some less fun things about the happiness jar, like delving into it too early, or recording ghosts versions of themselves, or plainly stopping adding to it.
The entry does an interesting job with the interactivity, adding more to the story, left in between the lines…

…or the humourous(?) adventures of Buck Rockford.
Bored out of his mind, Buck heads West in hopes to find fulfilment and meaning for his life. Though he has quite a few options on what to become, Buck never seems to find luck with any of those new position. Instead he job hops, hoping the next one will strike gold…
The entry is very anchored in the western tropes, and even through some of the underlying sadness, there is quite a bit of delighting humour. The twists made me giggle quite a bit.

In 5 small acts, the narrator describe its life from its creation, the first of its kind; its education, with questions about morals; its labour, surpassed by its children until discarded when useless; its retirement, passing in a blink of an eye; to its death, remembered or maybe forgotten.
It is an odd entry about the human condition…

Like Andrew’s previous entry in the jam, this one is again about you being a fan of a game, and wanting your team to do well in the tournament. You get to pick your rituals before the season starts and pray to the Basketball gods the RNG is on your side.

Then starts a lot of clicking, to go through each result of games your team plays in the knock-off stages. Even if the title of the entry warns you, it is still a bit tedious… I think a one passage per season, where each game result appears one below the other, with a timer, would have been a bit nicer?

I did like the name of the college team you are following (which is randomly assigned at the start of the game) and the strange rituals and superstitions from your eating habits to your cleaning schedule. Quite humourous!

A personal piece about depression, told from the perspective of the beast and the victim. Each POV have a choice between two actions, each affecting the other, before another day begin and the struggle starts anew.