Ratings and Reviews by Rovarsson

The main cycle of the game is straightforward and simple: get money, spend money.
The plot-driving objective, the goal of the game, is to spend that money wisely so you can finally make a movie and become famous! Your big break into stardom.

“You” is three girls with different ideas on what the necessary ingredients for a smashing cinematic cocktail are. There are a few rounds where the player can choose which girl’s suggestions to follow.

I was surprised at how far the endings diverge depending on the order of the choices. The highlight of the game was how matter-of-factly even the wildest scenarios were put into words.

Fun game.

In the not too distant future, a biotechnologically enhanced judicial registrar puts the protagonist, a newly appointed detective, to the test by asking his opinion about a notable case in the early beginnings of spatial jurisdiction. While on the ride up to the space station in a space elevator (!coolest thing ever!). Better than softly droning musak, if I may say so…

Through his implants, the registrar can provide all reports in evidence in the case of a 1998 death (murder) in the ISS.
Careful, meticulous combing through these documents is necessary to form an opinion. In the end, inform the registrar of your judgment.

I liked this. A but dry, but that fits the subject matter. Thought-provoking too, with different national space agencies involved, raising questions about jurisdiction in space, power struggles and conflicting interests in space.

A straight-up murder mystery … in space.

A tale of sorrow,
And comfort sought
Between the trees, by mirror pool,

This author has
Intently wrought.
Voice of shade and waters cool.

A ragged rhyme,
I’m out of time,
Ripples close above my head.

The sun is gone,
I have no rock
to cling to here…

Am I now dead?

Layers.
Fence, door, dome.
Wood and paint, intricate carvings and ironwork designs.
Longing, imagination, indifference to all else.
A writer, a reader, a character, a house.

Peel them off one by one.
Look harder, feel deeper.
Become…

A meditative, transcendent exploration of the house on the hill.

A text-based RPG with combat tactics and levelling-up your abilities. I must say, I haven’t played a lot of games in this genre. The closest thing I can compare Moorwakker to in my limited experience is probably Roadwarden, which I thoroughly enjoyed. And I must say, with a bit more polish and the eradication of those last few coding errors and minor flaws I encountered in this iteration, Jupp’s game can proudly stand next to Moral Anxiety Studio’s creation.

Chronicles of the Moorwakker takes the player along through an intriguing and well-composed story. The basic backbone of the narrative is the well-known and and very effective (especially in IF) “uncover the backstory”-structure. Moorwakker drops a few surprising hooks early on which serve as enticing starting points for the search for deeper understanding.
Progress through the narrative is subtly and unobtrusively gated to ensure the player has gathered enough information and/or strength to be ready for the next chapter. Perhaps an advantage of the choice-based system, this can be done by directional links simply appearing or disappearing at the right time, instead of placing a conspicuous locked gate or guard asking for a shrubbery on the protagonist’s path.
At the beginning of my journey, I did encounter a few continuity glitches, where the fragment I was reading contained surprising or unexpected information, seeming to rely on knowledge from another branch I had not yet found. This could just as well be my brain still finding its way into the story and not being in the zone enough yet.

The writing was both efficient and emotionally gripping.
– On the smaller scale of individual fragments, each screen has no more than a few sentences, a short paragraph or two at most (with some exceptions for longer events). Those select few words still manage to convey the atmosphere of the present location, drive the story along a bit, and highlight some particularly moodsetting details of the surroundings. Strong sparse writing.
– On the larger scale, the overarching structure, Moorwakker begins as a broad adventure-style “Quest for Knowledge and Weapons”, and, with enough of the backstory exposed, increasingly zooms in on the narrower and more pressing objective of tracking down the culprit responsible for the main character’s hardships, and perhaps to seek revenge. Looking back after having played The Cronicles of the Moorwakker, this zooming in becomes an almost cinematic experience, especially by how it’s reflected in the game’s use of space.

There are a couple of nifty buttons at the bottom of the screen. [Inventory] shows (obviously), the weapons, talismans, potions and whatnot the PC is carrying. [Journal] opens a log of the lessons and discoveries found encountered so far. On this screen, there is also a link to the [Map].
This beautifully drawn map gives a sense of wide-open space and an abundance of possibilities. Even though the actual number of available directions is limited and carefully pruned, the visual map paired with the moody location descriptions presents an impression of an expansive land to explore.
Travel through the gameworld feels organic. This is especially noticeable when an obstacle (or just a pinch of sudden curiosity) drives one off the intended path, away from the planned destination. The newly taken route never feels forced, but rather a natural consequence of the circumstances. It definitely helps that the new path or detour is itself always rewarding or thrilling with its own range of fresh discoveries or, um, sometimes less-fresh dangers…
While exploring the land, I particularly enjoyed the variation between long travels between far-apart landmarks such as towns or moors across great distances on the one hand, and the much more tightly-knit, almost parser-like room-to-room movement between adjacent locations in some of the larger areas. My investigation of the Eastern Moor felt especially tense and wriggly, with danger lurking behind every corner. I got out pen and paper to sketch a map of that confusing patch of marshland.
The fine-grained parser-like navigation culminates in the final chapter, with a spine-tingling search of The Castle, which illustrates the narrative narrowing of focus reflected in the use of space I mentioned above.

While I don’t usually pay much attention to graphics in text-games, they certainly add to the overall quality of Moorwakker.
Each screen has its own small and delicate grey-tone drawing to augment the atmosphere. Even aside from the content of the drawings, their placement serves well for dividing the screen, providing a resting space for the eyes and greater reading comfort.
The quality of the graphics ranges from nice and pretty, like the landscape renderings which offer an enhanced visual grasp of the surroundings, to exquisite and deeply moving, as seen in the final confrontation with the main adversary. The facial expressions of the NPC in question gave me the creeps!

I’ve gone on at length about the narrative qualities of The Chronicles of the Moorwakker, the writing, handling of space, graphics that drive and enhance the story. Time to turn to the challenges that make the game enjoyably hard for the player to work through.

Although I have learned to enjoy, and indeed have wholeheartedly embraced, choice-based interactive fiction, I’m still predominantly a player of parser-based text-adventures. The kinds of puzzles and obstacles that are familiar to me are few and far between in Chronicles of the Moorwakker. There are some locked gates, some incantations to remember, some objects to combine, but nothing very complicated. Success in overcoming these obstacles mainly depends on thorough exploration beforehand, similar to the text-adventure approach of “grab/read everything you can get your hands on”. This will almost guarantee that you have the requisite objects or knowledge once the need arises. This also means that oftentimes you will “see the ladder before you’ve encountered the cliff”, meaning that you’ll find yourself carrying around objects just because you came across them, with no purpose or intention aside from the out-of-game motivation that this is what adventurers in games do.
Over the course of the journey, gaining a deeper understanding of the gameworld and its (magical) rules, it will become clear what to use when and where. In this aspect of puzzles, there are no brainbreakers. Memory, in-world common sense, and determination to travel all available paths wil suffice.
There’s no grinding, levelling-up flows naturally from thorough exploration, interaction with NPCs, and of course combat against adversaries whose strengths are well-tuned to your own at each level of the game. (I did play in easy mode. The adversaries may well be somewhat tougher on higher difficulty settings. Speaking of easy mode, this also lets you skip combat entirely, throwing you the win automatically and continuing with the story. If you’d want that…)

Ah! Combat.
There’s that word. Actually the whole RPG combat thing is pretty far outside my comfort zone. Micromanaging powers, attacks, and defenses is normally not really my cuppa. (I consider switching from sword to bow in Dink Smallwood a big deal…)
And Chronicles of the Moorwakker certainly has a fair deal of micromanaging. Summon beasts to shapeshift and use their abilities, summon rune-ghosts to strengthen yourself or weaken the enemy, decide when to attack or defend with your “normal” weapon (and which weapon to use at the start of a fight). All these things can influence each other, so it’s necessary to take into account the effects of combinations of beast, ghost, and weapon… Not to mention timing the extra potions or alchemical bombs in your inventory…

But!

The more I experimented, the more this intricate combat-system grew on me. It turned out to be a very tasty cuppa after all.
Once I had consciously shifted my perspective away from the superficial “fighting”, I realised that this is where the real puzzles lay. It became very satisfying to calculate (or guesstimate, or feel in my left pinky toe) the best timing to hit the enemy hard, or when to use a combination tactic that sacrificed one of my summonings in exchange for a quick mid-battle healing.
In this way, not only did Moorwakker provide a very pleasant gaming experience, but maybe it also nudged my view of RPG-combat in general toward a more positive inclination.

Which is nice.

--“The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.”
Stephen King, The Gunslinger (Dark Tower series pt 1)

Meanwhile, across an unfathomable distance in both time and space, in a world with a Black Tower of its own piercing the glowing sky, a Master Swordswoman sets off on a quest of her own…

--“Under the golden glow of the noon sky, a sea of withered stalks sways in the wind. A rusty crossroads sign post rises from the ground before you, leaning slightly. Whatever roads it once pointed towards have long been lost to the grass.”
SVLinwood, Cut the Sky

Now, I don’t know if Cut the Sky was (intentionally or subconsciously) inspired by Stephen King’s Dark Tower series. I don’t even know if the author has read any of King’s books. But to me, even if it’s completely unintentional, Cut the Sky feels like a tone-perfect interactive novella set in a world closely connected to that of King’s magnum opus.

Cut the Sky drastically limits the allowed parser inputs. This narrows down the possibilities for interaction, providing a clear way of solving the puzzles and investigating the surroundings. There is still considerable difficulty in finding the correct target and the exact timing. A number of solutions depend on an intricate sequence of commands.
I found the limited parser especially successful for the evocation of movement through the setting. The game consists of a linear series of events, confined to one location, with an unknown but considerable distance between them. NESW are disabled, so instead of going in a compass-direction after finishing an event, there is only the WANDER command. This simple change works perfectly to suggest the wider world, and the protagonist’s uncertain search for a way forward.
Early in the game, I found myself worrying if the limited parser was going to succeed in carrying a full-length game, as I felt increasingly distanced, almost mechanically typing the same few commands. However, the puzzles soon became more complex, forcing me to focus not on the command, but on its results on the environment, and on combinations of those results.

Even more important in holding my attention were the fantastic storytelling and writing. I was truly involved in the setting and its colourful characters.

Throughout the main character’s journey, interesting bits and pieces of the surrounding world and its history are revealed. Ancient technology alongside magic, revolvers and swords, a cult based around a half-forgotten Oracle,… (Speaking of technology, magic, and swords… What is your own blade made of?)
The environment changes a great deal from scene to scene, from desert to mountain to lush jungle to city, enhancing the impression of a complete world outside of our own limited experiences.

The narrative is structured as a collection of small vignettes, self-contained scenes with one or a few obstacles. The mood differs greatly between them, with the relentless pull of the wandering serving as connection.
Almost all of the vignettes feature an encounter with a stranger, and it’s the personalities of these characters and the interplay between them and the protagonist that give Cut the Sky such a special feeling. Depending on the NPC, the feel of each vignette can be threatening, comedic, dramatic,… All of the scenes are small stand-alone miniature stories, with a touching human connection as their kernel.
About that human interaction, I loved the lightness with which physical intimacy and sexuality were portrayed. The meetings with strangers can often lead to lovemaking, and it’s quite easy to steer the encounters toward such an outcome. However temporary or casual these amorous adventures are, they never feel tacky but always sincere and warm.

Amidst these wonderfully evocative images of the setting and the haphazard encounters with interesting strangers, the protagonist remains an enigma. You can enter a name at the beginning of the game, and you can project a gender of your choosing onto the PC. Aside from that, it seems that your protagonist’s personality and appearance are hardly determined at all. The player’s choices will fill in some of the blanks, but the PC’s core will remain out of grasp.
This does not mean at all that the main character is an AFGNCAAP, a blank slate of cardboard. Quite the contrary, through the unknowability of the protagonist shines an enigmatic depth, a sense that if only you could get to know them better, you would be astounded by the stories and experiences they could relate. But that’s not possible, and they always stay at a distance, always out of reach.

A wonderful setting, some very memorable characters, and one of the most intruiging protagonists I’ve met. Very good game.

Tragic deaths leave the old circus haunted, but progress marches on so the ghosts must make way for the new owners to develop the plot. Your job is to find and remove any remaining spectral activity.

The best way to send a persistent ghost on its way to the Great Beyond is to make it aware of the circumstances of its death. Since this particular lingering deceased’s ending was of the violent kind, your straightforward approach of scattering a bit of purifying salt and telling the poltergeists to “move along, nothing to see here anymore” will not work. You’re facing a real cold case mystery.

I really like this setup. It offers all the sleuthing opportunities of a murder investigation while providing a look back in time through the eyes of the protagonist. A time when the circus was a place of wonder and awe and that strange mixture of attraction and repulsion caused when entertainment borders on freak-show.

The setting is beautifully realised. The writing and the remarkable drawings give an almost tactile impression of the old derelict circus tents and the shambles that remain of the performance equipment. It was a joy and a thrill wandering through this environment, half-expecting some paranormal activity around every corner. And there is certainly something going on here. Details of the rooms are changed when you revisit them. Some ghost going behind your back, or is it your own inattentiveness the first time through? Either way, Hauntless demands thorough, careful, and ongoing exploration to expose its many layers of clues.

There. See that last word? It’s a clue!
Hauntless is heavily inspired by the board-game Clue (“the butler did it in the library with the golden candelabrum”). During your investigation, it’s your task to sift out any clues, indications, suggestions, as to the possible location, method, and culprit of the murder. (There’s a nifty note-table available where you can indicate your knowledge about these things.) When you’ve investigated the circus and its immediate surroundings to your satisfaction, you should be able to deduce the true account of the crime.

Perhaps it’s my parser-instincts, but while I did enjoy the exploration and investigation very much, it frustrated me at times that I couldn’t actually do a lot of stuff. The example that sticks most in my mind is the corner of a newspaper sticking out from under a cushion. I so wanted to pick it up and read it, it was a detail so temptingly mentioned in the room description, but I couldn’t get at it.
The vast majority of “action” in this game happens in the player’s head, sifting through the text and searching for important information, combining that information to deduce facts and eliminate possibilities. But there is very little active searching for clues.
Everything you need is in the descriptions, and discovering the things that weren’t initially in the descriptions is achieved by walking away and coming back to the same room, where the angry fit of a poltergeist may have blown some important papers into view. If I’d had a parser at my disposal, I would have looked on, under, and behind the furniture the first time.

I extensively used paper and pen to take note of everything’s and everyone’s whereabouts, and finally I did manage to fill in the in-game roster and find the murderer. Maybe it would be a nice touch to have a blank in-game notebook too, where the player can type anything.

I enjoyed walking around this old and rundown circus a lot. The wonderful drawings made my exploration even more engaging. And it was very satisfying to put all the clues together at the end. (After, fortunately I would say, also being wrong the first few times so I did experience the “You Lose! Mwuahahaha!” fail state.) I even stayed after the main investigation to play the epilogue game, where you can tie up some loose threads about the deaths of the other circus performers.

Good game.

I went to the carnival the other day. It was really cool, with exciting rides and candied apples and games with prizes. When I won at the ball-throwing stand, I got a Billie Eilish poster to hang on my bedroom ceiling. Many, many steps later, it turns out that however much I wanted Billie Eilish on my bedroom ceiling, that was not the prize I needed. I had been walking around as an adventure zombie since pretty much the beginning of my carnival tour.

But a little bout of early onset zombification didn’t hinder me in my enjoyment of the carnival while I was unaware of it. The attendants and other folk around behaved a bit weird in a cardboard robotic kind of way, but they were interesting nonetheless, and some were actually really helpful. The rides and games were fun, always either presenting a challenge or helping me solve one. Every once in a while, I did something that I just felt like at the time, and a little bell chimed out of nowhere. It gave me points.
The best bit of my tour was when I discovered a whole hidden area which doubled my field of exploration. (Just a bit funny that I wasn’t thrown out when I crossed the boss there…)

Fun, needs a bit of polish and a shave, cool map.

Your blood is yearning for understanding. No matter how harshly you’ve been warned, no matter how scary the elders’ stories, you are drawn to explore the old ruins outside the village.

On the surface, Terra Nova plays as an old-school parser adventure. A map full of blocked passages, basic but engaging puzzles to unblock them, finding artefacts and information that uncover the events that came before. And death.
Even though the map is small, there’s a whole lot to discover, thorough and persistent investigation is rewarded. Doubly so because a number of discoveries about the backstory are not strictly required to move on to the next part of the map, or indeed even to complete the game.
Another reason why playing in an adventurous and curious manner is the above-mentioned death. There are many well-written failure scenes in Terra Nova, some dramatic, some over-the-top humorous. Often a hint is included about what you could have done different. I really liked this, so much so that poking around looking for ways to die became a very entertaining side-quest.

I felt very sympathetic towards Kai, the protagonist of the story. A blend of a children’s book curious and brave hero, and a lonely boy who feels distanced and unconnected to his community, his determined exploration of the dangerous ruins becomes more and more justified as a deep and strong inner need, rather than being the result of the external drive of just being the “You” in and adventure game.

The setting, ancient ruins filled with half-broken tech from a bygone age, now only known through oral history, is right up my alley. The writing is certainly adequate by itself, terse and to the point, with just the right amount of atmospheric detail. I would have gladly played the raw text version had I not been aware of the Vorple multimedia version. It does gain strength with the accompanying graphics. They show the coherent author’s vision of what this imaginary world looks like, and they make the deaths even better. Likewise, the sound effects are well-suited, unobtrusive (I switch the sound off for most games that have it), and draw the player deeper into the setting in a balanced interplay with the text and images.

At times, I found the implementation somewhat on the light side. Little technical things, like the singular of a plural noun in the description not being recognised, or a verb not working in a situation one would expect it to. But also by deliberate design choice. Set on a world of ancient desert ruins, in a parser game that thrives on exploration and discovery, there were nontheless a bunch of instances where the implementation could have been at least one level more fine-grained. Such a setting lends itself superbly to the proud use of underused (and, granted, sometimes controversial) verbs such as MOVE, LIFT, LOOK BEHIND, and SEARCH. This mainly caught my attention when there was a pile of stuff in a certain location, and all I had to do was X it to find and take the object buried in there. After this, I began to notice other places where the use of more specific, or perhaps repeated, verbs would have emphasised my active influence on the surroundings and thus deepened my engagement.

The further the story progresses, the more it brings up themes and questions which go beyond the simple dungeon-search treasure-hunt set-up of the beginning. The ending especially takes the player aback, it compelled me to go through all that I had learned again and look at my discoveries about the history of the settlement of Zephyr’s Landing in a new light.

Very good game.