Ratings and Reviews by Rovarsson

Wait. The Queen will notify you when there is work to do.

You are an artificer of sorts, making things of glass and metal, and of substances more rare...
While you are waiting for the orders of the Queen, you are free to roam the palace and the city.

The writing in With Those We Love Alive is extremely good. Short paragraphs with a few poignant words ignite the imagination of the reader, summoning forth a world of symbols and dreamlike juxtaposition. There are minimal glimpses of a world, with slight (and unsettling) variations in the descriptions. These sparse but association-filled descriptions offer fertile ground to the player's mind's eye to fill in the rest, and to let the mood suggested in the text percolate through.

With Those We Love Alive opens with a rather unusual direct plea to the player: have a pen nearby and draw symbols on your own skin when the game arrives at transitional moments. Related, but less immediately fourth-wall-penetrating are cues to participate in the events and surroundings in the game, like a breathing excercise, or strong sensory cues inviting the player to imagine the location as vividly as possible.
I was all-in, pen and breathing and wide-open senses and all.

The first part of the game lulled me into a slow and soothing routine. Each day-cycle I would take a tour of the palace and city, tinker a bit in my workshop, and go back to sleep, all the while waiting for the Queen to call upon my artificer's talents. Despite the relaxed repetition of familiar actions, there was always a feeling of looming threat.

Things change when outsiders show up. The pulse quickens, new elements and shards of backstory are introduced, intruiging but hard to connect.

The finale charges forward in a frantic flurry of impressions, a fast-propelling chase/action sequence, fragmented and breathless.

There is a notice at the start of the game: "Best experienced with headphones." It is. The soundscapes and music are an integral part of the experience, guiding the player's mood and heartrate through the acts of this story.

While I appreciated all this, and was impressed with a lot of elements, the piece didn't move me in the way it obviously did others.

Despite the meditative calm of the first act's routine, and the additional assurance at the start of the game that "Nothing you can do is wrong", I was still put off by the seemingly endless repetition. The small variations in the text seemed to hint at events happening behind my back, but however much I visited all the locations, precious little changed. This caused a certain level of background distrust in the game. Was I missing something obvious to move the plot along? Was this routine really supposed to drag on for so long? I started to feel lost, disconnected from the intentions of the author, pointlessly flailing wandering.
Of course, in hindsight, this might well be exactly the feeling that the game wanted me to have. If so, it didn't really take.

After the change at the start of the second act, things do start to happen. I remained quite unsure what things though. Except for the most superficial layer of actions and events, I remained in the dark about any meaning the game was trying to convey.
The associative dream-like style left me without handholds, bewildered, drowning in a sea of unconnected symbolism. I felt something deeper was going on, but I couldn't for the life of me get a handle on it.

Having read several other reviews, I do acknowledge the impact of this piece on many people, but this deeper impact stayed largely outside my grasp. I experienced a sequence of beautifully written symbol-laden associative story-fragments, with a sense of deeper significance always out of reach. It left me with a sense of missing out, of reaching in vain for context and meaning.

(A very effective horror Twine. Gruesome, sometimes disgusting on the surface, but the most scary was how it manipulated my mind into helplessness. My impressions of Bogeyman:)

Bits and pieces, shreds of brutality and gag-inducing vileness.
Images behind your blinking eyes, impossible to erase.
Foul acts, abuse, neglect.

These may be gruesome, but they are not the worst.

The anticipation is.

The certainty that the next press of your finger may, nay,
will effect the next step of cruelty.
The realisation that heroes are powerless, resistance begets more pain.
And you're glad it's theirs, not yours...

Silent acquiescence becomes your friend.
A smile is a crime, betrayal a virtue.
Is life worth continuing, if life is sacrifice of fellow victims?
Or try to sacrifice yourself.
Are you that brave... and does it matter in the end?

All this in the next press of your finger...

The eeny-weeny tinkle of agency drills down the fear.

(Review based on the IFComp version of the game.)

I’ve played gummibears and wizards solving crime, private noir dicks and superheroes vs villains, animals even. Time someone dropped the whole costume dress-up routine and just wrote a straightforward murder story.

Enter Last Vestiges. You step into the room. The corpse has been taken away for the post-mortem examination. All the furniture and other items are untouched, awaiting your detailed examination and balanced judgment. Two people, the landlord of the premises Carl and your superior officer Knapp, are present to ask for additional information.

I love this. A well-constructed murder mystery by itself is more than enough to the inquisitive mind. It does mean that there is more pressure on the game to provide a compelling experience without the distraction of a tongue-in-cheek narrator, parody references, or comedy antics.

There are two related conditions in my mind for a serious, realistic crime investigation game.
-Deep simulation is the first. This is a case where the author cannot get away with having the game tell the player “That’s not important,” or “You can’t do that.” It’s in the nature of the crime investigator to examine everything to the last details and search even the dusty corners of the drawers. I was surprised that the verb SEARCH was denied. I know it has fallen into disuse in modern times, but if ever there was an occasion where one wants to search things, it would be the investigation of a murder location…
-The second is player authority. The game has assigned the PC as the chief investigator of the case, the detective who leads the inquiry into the circumstances of the crime. I took this as the game implicitly recognising my supreme command through my role as the PC.
This means picking up, turning over, looking under, smelling, tasting, licking anything I deem worthy of inspection. It also means expecting the parser to understand what I mean when I point at a “mug” and call it a “cup”. Or any other synonym or half-synonym the thesaurus has to offer.
No handwaving or lame in-game excuses for why I can’t move the desk. Just move the desk, even if it takes half the police force and the mascotte dog.
In short, I’m the boss.

----loosens tie, flutters hanky at reddened face----

Last Vestiges falls somewhat short in these areas.

The clues I gathered were vague enough to leave some lingering doubt, but they did support the suspicion that had been growing in my mind from the moment I opened that top drawer. Very satisfying to see that my not-100%-sure gut feeling paid off and pointed me in the right direction.

I liked this a lot. When I wasn’t trying to yank the clothes out of the wardrobe.
“You don’t need to do that.”

Snuggling under the covers together. An unsettling dream. Waking up to a changed room. She’s bleeding! You have to save her.

KABOOM is about some very heavy subject matter. It’s filtered through the viewpoint of a girl’s cuddle toy, a stuffed hare. This means that the PC is innocent and clueless about the circumstances happening around it, and it produced some fuzzy cuteness feelings in me (“Aw! I like games with stuffed animal protagonists. Is this going to be like A Bear’s Night Out?”).

Soon however, reality pierces the cuddly feelings. Wriggling free from under the girl’s arm requires some determined action, a grim image immediately underlining the desperate urgency of the situation.

Considered this way, the cuddly stuffed hare protagonist has opposite effects. Its cluelessness about what’s happening initially dampens the impact of the horrible events, but the player’s realisation of the true nature of the game’s subject hits harder because of it.

Saving your girl requires some quite standard object manipulation. In both puzzles (after getting out of the girl’s embrace), there was a single step I overlooked at first which made them a tad more challenging.

The entire game (puzzle solving, narrative tempo, player engagement, clarity of the surroundings) suffers from poor design. The interface forces the player to do a confusing amount of clicking to get her bearings and to manipulate the intended object. Imagine having a parser without an implied LOOK when entering a room, for example. Sometimes the player has to explicitly (and for no discernable reason) refer to the PCs limbs, which are separately implemented under an “Inventory”-link. This necessitates spreading your awareness over more buttons than is needed. It frustrated me when I thought my intended action was not in the list of choices, and then found out that it was several more clicks away, buried in this “Inventory”.

Taking my distance from the technical issues and letting the story come to the forefront, I must say I’m very moved by this piece. The helplessness of the little girl in her collapsed room, the powerlessness of the hare to rescue her by itself… (This is captured in a touching image when the hare looks at the ruined house and concludes a scary giant must have caused this.)

Technically lacking, emotionally moving.

The ringmaster’s nerves are in tatters. Along with all the paperwork threatening to overwhelm him (and flood his camper), there’s now Phantom of The Circus sabotaging the crowd-drawing main acts of the show! As the clown of the troupe, surely you have the necessary skill set to save the spectacle…

Armed with naught but your brain and the tricks of your trade (balloons and pies), you must find out how exactly the Phantom succeeds in spoiling the performers’ acts and counteract his schemes. There’s a fair amount of freedom to do some clowning in the meanwhile, but I would have liked DANCE and SING and JUGGLE and JUMP to draw a bit more of a crowd. I loved some of the classic slapstick routines you can initiate while navigating your way through the crowds.

Honk ! consists of three thematically separate parts. The player is free to mix and mingle these though, there’s no pressure to tackle them in any prescribed order.
I opted to treat the parts as distinct chapters:

The NPCs’ campers are huddled close together, perfect for accessibility, and also to hear their stories one after the other, so as to form a coherent picture of what exactly this Phantom is up to. Dialogue happens through a menu of topics, but there are a bunch of freeform ASK ABOUT options too. Either way, the characters’ conversation goes beyond what is strictly necessary for your investigation. The personalities and the social dynamics within the circus are as much a talking point as the manner in which the Phantom disturbs the performances.
With the requisite knowledge about the saboteur’s modus operandi, I headed out to treat myself to a grand tour of the fair grounds. If you should feel an inclination to clown around, have at it! Your appearance alone will draw some looks, carrying around a certain object will necessarily cause some unintentional(?) slapstick antics, but it’s perfectly possible (and in-character!) to add a little more clownesque mayhem to the general hubbub. Just for the heck of it!
Finding (and safely acquiring) any objects you think you might need is fairly straightforward. Some are just lying there ready to be picked up, some need a bit of laid back puzzling. This is not a puzzle area. It’s for preparing the puzzles to come.
Hearing your circus friends accounts’ of how the Phantom goes about sabotaging their acts, combined with the objects you picked up on the circus grounds, should have given you a reasonable idea of what to expect and how to handle it, at least in broad strokes. I found that my plan for saving one of the performances worked exactly as I had imagined. The others needed a little tweaking. Luckily, after a failed attempt, there is a short “debriefing” with the circus artist involved where they point out how close you came to the solution.
Helping your colleagues get through their acts unscathed is all well and good, but the point is of course to thwart the villain’s attempts once and for all. The endgame turns out to be an action packed sequence where, when the player takes too long with certain actions, the game narrows the interactivity and proceeds the plot on its own. Tempo is more important than guessing the next move. This works brilliantly, and the final confrontation with the Phantom permits one final triumphant clown move.

I laughed a lot!

Your empty suitcase on the bed. Time to pack up and leave. Leave this house, leave this “us”. But you can’t figure out what to pack and what to leave. Loose ends and grating questions stand in the way of going away.

The Gift of What You Notice More offers a symbolic representation of self-analysis. Digging through past experiences and feelings to unravel the doubts that lie beneath. Photographs serve as portals to enter and interact with particularly meaningful points in your now-over relationship.

The game has the protagonist explore the world in the photographs. Dreamlike subconscious additions to the reality of the photos offer opportunities to better understand yourself at the time.

Deep and hard questions about relationships arise throughout the work. I think that the form clashed with the content in this respect. Three self-contained puzzle areas have to be solved and revisited, three chains of rather traditional adventure puzzles. I found that I lost sight of the deeper symbolism as I was merrily exploring the areas and solving a stack of puzzles which involved, among other things, (Spoiler - click to show)a mouse and some cheese, or a counterweighted heap of sandbags. My thoughts were more centered on mechanics or mammal dietary particularities than on the protagonist’s emotions.
Presenting the puzzles in a choice interface which facilitates the lawnmower approach further diminished my engagement with the intended meaning of the piece.

I also felt that The Gift of What You Notice More grasped at simplistic answers to the questions it asks. It partly lost my goodwill when it wanted me to pinpoint “Where did it all start going wrong?” by choosing one of three distinct moments. I can’t read other people’s minds or hearts, it may be different for them, but my emotional history doesn’t work this way.
It is however a common coping mechanism to point at one event or moment as the cause or the origin of problems. It gives a sense of control and clarity. Viewed like this, the game approaches some ways people deal with emotional hurt very closely. (Misguided ways, I think, but I can’t read hearts or minds.)

I encountered a few gripping images during my playthrough: (Spoiler - click to show)a theatre where the birthday party is the play, (Spoiler - click to show)an Angel under a lantern in motionless rain, (Spoiler - click to show)tangled vines instead of hugging arms. Very strong symbolic emotional impact there.

At the end, stronger because of your newly found understanding and balance, you are free to pack your suitcase and leave.
I would have loved an epilogue that incorporates the items you chose to take with you, to elaborate how these items fit in with your new resolve to live your life.

A little boy is sad but hopeful. He’s programming a game about an adventure by the lake behind the house. Maybe it’ll be a bit clumsy, but it’s heartfelt and exciting. It’s a present for his little sister. They’ll play together when she gets home from the hospital. She cut off all her favourite doll’s hair, but she’ll be home for her birthday. And then they’ll play his game together.

A teenage boy is sad and angry. He hacks into his old hobby game. He pours his grief and rage into it. Their father left you know. And she didn’t come home to play his game. He kills his enemy. He stores away his memories, safe to vaporise or keep according to his wish.

An adult man is sad and desperate. He found his old game in a forgotten box. It won’t work on his computer, really, an acquaintance plays it for him while they’re talking through the screen. He doesn’t know this guy that well, he chose him quite at random, really. Just someone who could get the game to work and be there while the man remembered. And oh! how did that angry stuff get in, I was a teen, I think I don’t remember… It was long ago…

His daughter’s here, he says: “Dear daughter, tell me please, it was so long ago, does it still matter now? Ancient history, it is, surely it can’t matter now?”
His own denial answers the question.

And we, dear players, who are we? Are we young hopeful Eddie, rushing to the lake? Then we must be angry Ed as well, taking vengeance on the lake, in the little way he can. Drowning and saving his memories at the bottom of the lake, as best he can.

Are we listening to adult Edward, as he comments on his game? His old and ancient game with his old and ancient pain and joy and loss?

Can we sit then with old Edward, while he asks: “It’s all so very long ago, does it still matter?” And we pat his shoulder and assure him: “No, no, it’s ancient history, how could it still matter.” We can sit there with Edward, both knowing that it does.

Sunday afternoon. Lie back in the sofa, get your book and a cup of tea. Aahhh…

----tingaling----tingaling----

Or take a call from your mom who’s desperate because she can’t get her printer to spit out her oh-so-important presentation.

Fix Your Mom’s Printer is short, but it offers a wide range of choices and pathways. Most of your mom’s speech offers three possible replies from you, roughly in the categories Insensitive Jerk, Angelically Helpful, Unwelcome (but often funny) Snark, Uninterested Okay-Mom.
I played through on both extremes (Jerk and Angel) once. As was to be expected, limiting myself to the one category of answers quickly became mechanical, the conversation unrealistic. But I wanted to see the sure paths to the Win and Lose states of the game.
When following the guaranteed winning path, it became obvious that fixing the printer was a case of game-imposed lawnmowering. And also that fixing the printer wasn’t the point.

For my earnest playthrough, I adopted a more natural, organic mindset. I tried to be helpful while lightly showing my annoyance at being disturbed on a sunday by occasionally giving in to the urge to reply in a sarcastic or jokey manner. (“Har-dee-har,” is mom’s irritated answer.)

Approaching the game this way opened up a whole breadth of underlying, never quite explicitated family issues. The relationship between mom and dad, your own relationship with your dad, unresolved tension between your sister and you,…

Fixing a recalcitrant piece of technology together with your mom becomes a way to work towards a better understanding of each other, an honest attempt to (re)connect.

A short piece with surprising depth.

MWAHUAHAHAAA !!!

----bzbzZzoOooOoomm----krkrRrkzZziiing-KRAK----

It’s alive! Aliv-… Well,… I saw its pinky twitch. And it sneezed.

Darn! How does that Frankenstein fellow do it? This is the umpteenth attempt where you sewed sinew to muscle, connected the nosebone to the buttbone, rewired the freshest, least mushy brain you could dig up… Still nothing. The jigsaw-corpse on the slab before you remains dead meat.

But you are no mere Mad Scientist! You can draw inspiration from other sources of dark knowledge. The arcane arts of Magick & Summoning are at your fingertips… Hmm… It seems your fingertips are also a bit rusty. Now how did that Faustus fellow do it?

Nevermind. Just get a magicky Grimoire from Ye Olde Disappearing Magick Trinket Shoppe and follow the instructions.

Tadaa! Easy-peasy.

It’s just… Now you’ve got the Devil Itself here in your lab, and you haven’t figured out beforehand how to get It to do what you want…

Dr Ludwig and the Devil is funny. (The name “Dr Ludwig” is enough to make the corners of my mouth twitch.)
It’s framed as a recounting of events told by Dr Ludwig himself, some time after the fact. As such, the writing is infused with the hyperbole and delusional grandeur one can safely expect from a maniacal science-necromancer. The room descriptions are neutral enough not to get in the way of a proper reconnaisance. Once we have the Dr describing his own actions though, his twisted personality shines through.

>TAKE MIRROR
The mirror was mine! All mine!

Every description of an action is filtered through the Dr’s diabolical mind and comes out sounding, well, a tad on the obsessive side…

The biggest source of humour though are the characters. Dr Ludwig himself of course, whom we get to know through his recounting of the dark occurences of that night.
Hans (I think), the somewhat dim-witted president of the town’s Society for Pitchforks and Torches, is lovably stupid and friendly to all. He’s also vehemently opposed to the nightly digging up of corpses, for some reason…
The elusive shopkeeper of Ye Olde Disappearing Shoppe has a dry wit and a hint of sarcasm in her voice. She’s not so amused by all the work involved with packing up her goods and disappearing behind customers’ backs.
And then there is the star of the piece, the Devil Itself. Condescending remarks and deadpan snarks aplenty, it’s great fun to break down Its feelings of superiority by showing It exactly who Summoned who.

The customised responses hold a small treasure of winks at the fourth wall and clever jabs at IF-conventions. I derived many a chuckle from this. It also brings me to my next point:

Dr Ludwig and the Devil is polished. Like granny’s silverware when the Mayor comes to dinner. It sparkles like it’s been endlessly rubbed with pulverised brimstone and demon-dragon spit.
Failed commands, unrecognised topics, an accidental press of the “Enter”-key on a blank prompt,… They’ve all been re-imagined within the narrative frame of the Dr telling the story. Even meta-commands are part of this:

>RESTORE
Now where was I?
----[player looks up previous save]----
Right, there I was.

… as if Dr Ludwig had simply paused to drink a sip of water.

Of course, humour and polish quickly lose their strength without a good foundation. Not to worry, because…

Dr Ludwig and the Devil is solid. I encountered no bugs to break the spell. Scenery, object-handling, conversations are all deeply implemented. To aid the player in finding her way through the widely varied dialogues there is a list of general topics as well as a list of topics specific to each character. Besides that, you’re free to try and chat about anything else that crosses your mind. (Try it.)
Puzzles range from straightforward to hard and frustrating-in-a-good-way, without any guess-the-verb or syntax issues to stand between the player and her intentions and so obfuscating the correct path to the solutions.
The game is gratifying in its structure: just as I was starting to feel claustrophobic, being holed up in the cellar with the Devil, the world opened up and allowed me to take a walk outside to look for treasure. (I use the term “treasure” in the loosest of meanings.) Returning to the basement with all the requisite articles, with my plan fully formed, and going through the necessary steps toward the ultimate objective was very satisfying.

…

And then the game threw a curveball and expected me to solve the hardest puzzle of all to truly triumph over the demonic presence in my cellar before I could reap the rewards of my hard work. A brilliant puzzle, requiring the player to fully understand the possibilities ànd limitations of having the Devil Itself under her command.

Dr Ludwig and the Devil is very good.

A white gallery room. A Francis Bacon triptych. You, empty-handed, wearing only a linen robe. Another room, and yet another. Three triptychs hang before you.

You can enter the art, yes. Please do. Have a closer look.
Talk to the paint-imprisoned pain, the monster and the lover. Talk to the Fury and George Dyer. Poor George, bruised, dead.

See what mirrors the Creator makes. What tortured creatures he chooses to reflect his image.
The mouth, the bruise, the death.

Come see… Make your acquaintance with Francis Bacon, painter, tormented heart.

Mourn with us, perform with us.

And ask yourself while asking them: What is this deep within us all?