Reviews by Jo the Plunderer

In Keeper’s Vigil you play as a Keeper: basically a human who was granted magical abilities and preternatural strength and speed via a dark, necromantic mutation process forced on you as a child. Basically you’re the most powerful monster hunter alive in a dark fantasy setting with a young teenager mage as a sidekick and you’re trying to save the realm from what seems like an impossible threat.

The bones of this game or so good: the dark fantasy setting was grim but retained an element of hope and light; the premise is solid and ripe for all sorts of drama; and there are some really cool moments playing such a powerful MC. There’s mystery, intrigue, action, and drama. There’s so much potential here and I wanted to love it, but unfortunately the execution just didn’t land enough for me to get fully on board. The pace was rushed, with little time for me to immerse myself in the characters and world; the romance was really easy to miss; and my choices didn’t always seem to matter, or they mattered but in a really frustrating way where the outcome wasn’t at all what I would have expected. Overall I had a hard time navigating the story and finding a path that made sense for my MC. Still, I thought the plot as a whole was decent and enough elements showed promise that I did somewhat enjoy myself.

I have a more in-depth review here if anyone's interested https://jotheplunderer.substack.com/p/hosted-games-latest-dark-fantasy

Velocity: The Race Begins is an action-packed, high-stakes story where you play as a somewhat regular teenager suddenly thrown into the world of gang wars, vicious criminals, and street racing right after transferring to a new school in the 1980s. When a new acquaintance of yours finds his life at risk from the mafia after a meet gone south, you find yourself with the opportunity to join the street racing scene, rise to the top, make a ton of cash, save your friend or just spend it all on Rolex and Gucci - all the while getting closer to the truth of what happened to your older brother that vanished some years back.

This game surprised me. I’m not a car person, never liked (or finished) the Fast and Furious franchise, and dislike most racing games. If I wasn’t trying to review most new releases, I probably never would have made it past the demo. But I actually had quite a bit of fun with this one. Something about the text-based, narrative-first format sucked me in in a way other racing games don’t, and I found myself really getting into the story and the various mysteries to unravel along the way. Unfortunately, in its current state it suffers from some serious issues on the technical side, so I don’t yet feel good widely recommending it. Bugs, typos, and certain stylistic choices lend the story an unpolished feel, and the current game mechanics are far too punishing and extremely frustrating, with many possible instant game overs throughout. The author is working on some of these concerns already, as well as a sequel, so I could see this story really shaping up in the future, but as is I just don't feel good recommending it very widely.

I have a more in-depth review here if anyone's interested https://jotheplunderer.substack.com/p/velocity-the-race-begins-a-fun-and?r=8225x5

War for the West is a highly political kingdom simulator where you play as a lord or lady who recently inherited leadership over a medieval province and have to decide how to best use your time, money, and personnel to perpetuate your line and not suffer an untimely death.

This game feels very medieval, a rarity that I appreciated greatly. For example, you are expected to marry someone of the opposite sex, because you are meant to carry on your lineage which, of course, involves having children (though true to real life, this does not mean you have to be particularly romantic with or faithful to your chosen spouse, and I'm fairly certain you don't have to marry at all).

In general you have the same sort of array of options that I would expect from a real medieval lord: marrying for love or political gain, bolstering or defying the church, giving to the poor or spending all your money on banquets and pleasure houses, and so much more. Consequences for these choices felt realistic in the setting, though often unexpected in fun ways. For example, sometimes a just or merciful action could backfire but it always made sense (e.g., if you punish a guilty party when your people don't think they are guilty, you could lose a bit of their support).

While I wouldn't call this game a particularly wholesome game - it definitely makes some rather questionable actions quite tempting - it wasn't nearly so dark as I was expecting based on the grimdark tag and content warnings. You can't avoid all the unpleasant content, especially the violent kind, but the darkest stuff seems to be by choice (my MC was fairly honorable so I'm not sure how dark it gets, but based on the choices I was offered, I suspect very, very dark and disturbing).

There are also some surprisingly wholesome characters! I married the first suitor that came my way, who was kind-hearted and supportive (and a shy virgin on the wedding night, which I thought was sweet and rare for modern stories).

My biggest issue with the game is that I don't think ChoiceScript is the best format for it. I get why CS was chosen (it's hard to find an easier option if you're going solo), and the author did a good job with it, but I just found it so awkward and clunky navigating the CS menus and hard to keep track of resources as a result, which is a huge deal in a kingdom management sim. I would have far preferred a UI that more readily displayed key stats like money, and that made it easy to just click one button to pull up reputation stats and the like. It could also really use an autosave system! It's easy to die unexpectedly and if you haven't been saving with the clunky CS save system, then you're going to have to redo everything because of one bad choice.

I was also disappointed to find that this isn't a standalone. My particular ending was interesting but unsatisfying on its own, and I found myself frustrated with some loose ends that I suspect will only be wrapped up in a sequel which has yet to release after 7 years (not blaming the author here, these games take time, but it's worth noting for players who want a finished story).

This is just all around a really good game, it's easy to see why it won for "Best Gameplay" in a recent poll on r/hostedgames. Set in the World of Darkness, the lore is rich, the stats interesting, and the stakes (hehe) high, with plenty of story-appropriate moral choices along the way. You play as a low-tier vampire courier tasked with delivering a series of packages/messages to various powerful vampires, each of which seems to want to use you for their own purposes. You'll have to make hard choices to pursue your own goals while staying alive and not angering the local powers too much.

My main warning with this game though is that it does lean more heavily into the gameplay side of things than many other ChoiceScript IFs, which won't be for everyone. Casual players may be frustrated by having to think so much about how to spend money and allocate stat points, and how to best manage hunger and injuries. It's easy to fail miserably on many of the quests in your first playthrough, and if you're not already familiar with the World of Darkness, there are a lot of factions and concepts to keep track of. Even so the prose is clear and evocative and the characters interesting which makes it a good read even through some of the failures. Overall though I might not recommend this for new IF players unless I know they are into WoD or other RPGs already, or don't mind a few failures along the way.

I'm giving this one a thumbs up even though I don't think I could play it again for personal reasons, but it's just objectively a really well done game, and I quite enjoyed playing most of it and finished it in about a day. Enough other people have already detailed its strengths (branching, interesting choices, simple but effective stats) that I'm not going to spend too much time there and instead talk about the one thing that prevents me from wanting to replay it: theme.

This probably won't bother most players but I found it a little disturbing how the robots were treated in the game. I guess I'm just very pro-human and it's long been a pet peeve of mine when stories make it sound like machines can ever come close to the value and complexity of a human life. While I can get over that for stories in other mediums, it felt a little extra disturbing for a story written in the second person, where I'm the one encouraged to, for example, go on dates with a hunk of metal that I myself designed, maybe even get married to it.

Earlier on in the game, I thought the choices would have enough nuance that I could avoid some of this content. This is true to a degree: at the start of the game, I was given the ability to take a firm stance in saying that my robot was not human, that it could never match human intelligence, and that it was in fact an "it" and not a "he" or a "she". These kinds of choices are sprinkled throughout but I still felt a bit railroaded into accidentally creating a sentient being with emotions and free will and even the desire to procreate, which just felt off to me, especially with how I was attempting to roleplay a pro-human kind of MC. I found my ending to be honestly disturbing as a result and it kept me from wanting to replay the game, because I don't want to feel guilted about how I treat my robot.

Again, this is more of a personal pet peeve, though I do think that the game missed out on an opportunity to ask some bigger questions about the nature of humanity and whether or not a robot can really be considered some kind of valuable life and, if so, what that says about humans (e.g., maybe if robots are valuable despite being nothing but machines, does that mean maybe no human is truly valuable because we're all machines?). The game sort of tries to ask these kinds of questions, but I guess I just wanted a bit more. This game was written years before the current deluge of AI content but there are so many obvious paralells and these themes are increasingly relevant to think about,

Probably a decent book club book if those exist for IFs though.

Perhaps my expectations were a little too high for this one. Everyone is always hyping about the CDLC games and the author is such a wellspring of helpful information and a pillar of the IF community, so I thought I'd have more of a reaction than just...meh.

But I can see why it does so well for CoG fans, as it nails the CoG style. It's certainly polished and has decent gameplay, with a wide range of goals and personality customization for the MC (though I found the stat checks a little too pervasive and punishing for a supposedly cozy game). Had I liked the game more, I could see it being highly replayable. It's also a good examplar of CoG's commitment to diversity and particularly LGBT inclusivity. Players can choose from three different genders for the MC and romance options and the game is filled with gay couples and non-binary characters, including an option to join in a polyamorous relationship, all in a world that's deliberately crafted to be basically gender neutral so that there's no drama over anyone's gender or orientation.

It's basically a queer, cozy, non-magical Hogwarts story, but without anything close to the level of characterization and enchanting worldbuilding that Harry Potter is famous for. In general I found the world, characters, and romances to be flat and uninspiring.

The thing is, there are just way too many characters with way too many options. I saw someone else say there are 10 romance options (I lost count myself), and each (or at least most) can be three different genders. That's 30 different possible variations, not to mention the other non-romanceable characters we can curry favor with.

There is no possible way to do each of these romance paths justice in a game of this length. Frankly I'm not convinced any of the romance paths feel fleshed out and real but certainly not the ones I toyed with (I flirted with Freddie, dated Hartmann, then married some aristocrat from a competing school and I just finished the game a few hours ago and already forgot his name because I cared so little about him in the end).

Not every game needs good romance, but in a genre that's kinda all about character interactions, I really expected better character development and to care about at least one of them before finishing.

While Arcadie: Second-Born focused on your unexpected rise to power, Arcadie: Cold Lands follows an MC who is now monarch of the Kingdom of Arcadie and forced to start making decisions that will affect not just the citizens of Arcadie but all the surrounding kingdoms, all while continuing a romance from the previous game (or starting a new one). Thousands of lives are at stake: will you pursue war or peace?

On the surface, the series has made some improvements since Second-Born. The author moved to a more visual novel style format, with light background music and images, and the MC is far more powerful in this game and has far more agency. But with no stats, lower stakes, and no clear overarching plotline, it’s just not as strong a game as the first. A lot of fans are still really enjoying it, and I personally hope it does well enough for us to see a Game 3, but I get that some players are pretty frustrated with some of the changes.

If you liked the first game but aren't sure if you'll like this one, I've done a more detailed review for free on Substack. https://jotheplunderer.substack.com/p/arcadie-cold-lands-a-review

A lot of people love this game, like really really love it, so I'm not going to tell anyone not to play it (especially since you can play it for free), but it just wasn't my cup of tea. It's right in the game description that this is a philosophical romance, but neither the philosophical nor romantic elements really hit home for me personally, and it's not the most exciting game apart from that. I did enjoy the setting (you're a tour guide on the moon), the quiet vibe, and some of the meta game-within-a-game elements nonetheless.

Much of the game is just you talking to the NPCs (the developers of the video game your MC is playing through) about big topics: life, death, art, motivation, game development, and so on. The characters are engaging enough to talk to, but I found that many of these conversations just didn't work for me in this format. The topics themselves are important ones, but for me they are big enough questions that I've already wrestled with most of them before and had much better experiences talking about them IRL than with some NPCs. It felt like I was often just repeating the same sentiment three choices in a row instead of having a real back and forth conversation.

Based on how other people talk about this game, I think maybe it's the sort of game that'll really hit home if you're in the right kind of mindset for it. If you're interested in these topics, but maybe haven't already formed your opinion on them, you might get more out of the themes than I did.

Romance was okay but maybe a bit forced/rushed. You only really spend a few days with these people, so I found it hard to believe the connection was as strong as the game suggested.

Not bad overall, might even warrant a replay down the road, but I'm not feeling that motivated just now.

I'm giving it four stars just because the meta, game within a game elements were quite intriguing, even if there's not much else to the game. A really interesting use of code where each replay is just a bit different from the last (well, your first three plays in the game at least will all have a bit of different text and some new options to reflect that you have played this game before, with your MC getting a bit of deja vu and whatnot). You absolutely have to replay it to get the full experience, probably a few times, though I only made it 2.5 times before I just code dived to sate the rest of my curiosity.

Which is when I realised...there's really not much else to it. Like even the big mystery at the end (you might want to Google) just...didn't feel worth solving.

I guess I just expected to be rewarded more for replays, like have a chance to actually find out something meaningful about the game or do something that mattered, but I'm really not seeing anything substantial on either front. It's possible I'm missing something though.

In the end, my initial intrigue morphed into a feeling of emptiness. The game is as meaningless of the life of the MC. Despite its introspective, philosophical kind of writing style, it really doesn't seem to say or do much. At least not for me.

Worth a couple plays if you like seeing people do cool things with code. Just be warned that you won't get a ton in terms of character development or a satisfying narrative; these things aren't at all the point of the game.

Took me a while to get into this one and if I'm being honest I would've given up if I wasn't just stubborn about finishing these things, but I'm glad I did. Perhaps my favorite thing about this game is how you start as a teenager and grow old together with the characters. The bond my MC had with Tesla was something so beautiful and sweet, deepened over decades of working together, and I don't think I've ever had such strong feelings at the end of an IF.