Ratings and Reviews by Rovarsson
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Of geese and circus-people., December 19, 2023The 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!
Where did it all start?, December 17, 2023Your 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 matter of memories., December 17, 2023A 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.
Refrain from Sarcasm..., December 12, 2023Sunday 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.
Juggle your responsibilities as an impromptu B&B host., December 12, 2023I mentioned the name of this game to my son and soon we were jamming and scatting to it. It lends itself well to improvised didgeridoo-ish mumbling (♪mmballiimm♪bwwiiaannn♪bbwwiiimmm♪) while the other is rhythmically repeating it (taktakkatakBAli-be-EN-be-BAli-be-EN-betakataktak).
That was a lot of fun.
It also put me in a good mood to actually start playing the game. I soon found out that our free and joyful accapella improvisation fit the feeling of the game very well.
When Jack (the game lets you choose name and gender; I went with a young woman named Jack) arrives in Bali to visit her grandparents’ bed&breakfast, they spring a surprise on her: they’re going to Paris! Leaving Jack to run the B&B for a week! By herself. Yaay…
The choices allowed me to fill in Jack’s emotional and practical responses to this turn of events. I went with a mix of youthful confidence, appropriate care for the guests’ wellbeing, and a pinch of let’s-wing-it-and see…
I only played through once, so I can’t compare paths through the game, but I thoroughly enjoyed the story I experienced. I got to eat (and recommend) great food, enjoy pleasant breakfast conversations where people only half-understood each other and had to translate back-and-forth with their phones. I got to name and tame a feral cat and give her a shelter for her kittens (we became good friends, as far as that’s possible with a cat). There was a monkey I soon developed a hate-love relationship with. I got to deepen a friendship with a local young man and hike up a volcano with two teen girls who were glad to spend the day without their parents.
And at the end there was a thrilling sequence where we saved the B&B from a natural disaster!
Bali B&B felt like a combination of a soft hug, a warm shower, a sparkling conversation, a dip in the pool. Topped off with an exciting thrill ride where I felt safe to go with it because I knew the author had my back.
I enjoyed this a lot.
Read the Fine Print, December 12, 2023MWAHUAHAHAAA !!!
----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.
The Fury and the Beaten., December 11, 2023A 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?
A glimpse into a world., December 11, 2023(This review is based on the IFComp version of the game.)
Have a rummage through the fridge and get a can of something from the pantry. Half an hour later, serve a bowl of something delicious. I love creative cooking!
A bit of creativity is needed here to cook your festive midsummer dinner. After looking around the house and checking the pantry, you realise some ingredients are missing.
Well, the missing ingredients, and by extension the whole game, are an excuse to get the player out the door and exploring the town. Creative Cooking is the author’s way of giving us a glimpse into the imagination he poured into his ongoing WIP. The ABOUT text advises the player to type HELP in every location, not for any hints, but for more background information on the world the author is building, of which this town, Leroz, is a small part.
The quest for the ingredients and the puzzles to get them are close to irrelevant to the experience. So is the actual “creative cooking” from the title, apart from a bunch of ending paragraphs about cooking. As a game, even as an attempt at a realised interactive setting, Creative Cooking fails. Its surroundings, scenery and details are severely underimplemented, there are no alternate commands for necessary actions, almost anything that falls outside the scope of the walkthrough is denied.
As a tantalising sneak-peek at what the author is working on though, I found the flaws and the author comments in the HELP-section made the work feel like an unfinished archeological artefact which I could try to investigate and decipher.
The most intriguing to me was perhaps the collection of books in the home library, the third location I visited. Their content hints at a world where there is a mixture of wisdom and intuitive magic at work, harnessed and studied and analysed in a scholarly manner.
One of the books also drops a clue that this fantasy world, Railei, is a far-away planet somehow connected to our own. Apparently a Raileian seer-prophet has witnessed a world of technology instead of magic, a great distance from Railei both in space and time.
An interesting glimpse into the world the author is building.
Theatrical Reality (or vice versa?), December 11, 2023(This review is based on the IFComp version of the game.)
I already liked the sound of this title before I knew what it meant. It has an inviting ring to it. Then I looked up “barcarolle” and found it’s a Venetian gondoliers’ folk song. That got me interested even more. A bit more searching learned that the “yellow” refers to an Italian murder/horror/mystery film and literature genre, named after the distinctive yellow (“giallo”) covers of the pulp novels that started the style.
An actress travels to Venice to star in a Giallo film. On her first night, she barely escapes a murder attempt. During filming the next day, a similar attack happens.
Barcarolle in Yellow is set up as an interactive movie script, blurring the lines between what is the scripted movie world and what is the in-game real world. Failed commands are met with an angry director’s voice telling you to focus on the part, descriptions of the player character’s actions make reference to an unseen audience, people around you are viewed as through a camera lens,…
Eva, the PC, is filming in Venice, so we also follow her during her acting work, and have to enter the commands according to the prewritten script she has to follow, adding another layer of confusion as to which world we’re engaging with.
As I noticed in the author’s work 1958: Dancing with Fear, IF is a genre that lends itself very well to a cinematic scripted style, allowing the player to direct the main character and decide on the action. Here, in Barcarolle in Yellow it seems that a perfect opportunity presents itself for a suspenseful murder mystery. The story is divided in scenes and acts, each with its own pace, atmosphere and tension. We can almost see the camera cut from one location to the other in the transition between scenes.
The writing is good, with a nice balance between attention to the surroundings (or the set…), and the events happening to our main character Eva Chantry. I like the use of space, with part of Venice condensed down to a handful of locations without feeling cramped.
I love the idea of the game.
But, however much I want to, I do not like this game as it is entered in the Comp. Perhaps aiming for next year’s Spring Thing would have offered the author more time to make it as good as it can be.
A game that’s modeled after a suspenseful film should move. Half the time I spent with Barcarolle has been struggling with the parser and unclear directions.
A game that depends on smoothly following the course of action, dragging the player along with the action and putting her on the corner of her seat with tension needs a generous, forgiving parser.
Synonyms for all the nouns should be abundant, every action should have half a dozen alternate commands, the player should be able to trust that her intuitive commands will be recognised and have immediate consequences that hasten the story forward.
Instead, half my commands were met with that angry director’s voice yelling at me “No, no, focus on this scene, don’t start dissociating again!”. And that’s a great story-appropriate customisation of the default rejection response! But not when the game recognises so few of the player’s commands that it comes up again and again.
I really liked Dancing with Fear. I have good memories of its main character Salomé. I’m starting to like Eva too, this game’s main character. It would be a pity to keep playing while frustrated at the implementation, and missing a great story with a great character unfold.
I’d love to play Barcarolle in Yellow again once it’s gone through at least one more thorough round of testing and editing. The way it is now, it doesn’t do its protagonist honour.
Dark Worship through DIY-furniture., December 6, 2023It’s been a long day, but you might as well assemble this last little table. Even though you don’t remember picking it from the racks of a certain furniture store that will not be mentioned by name…
All this DIY furniture has funny names, and this particular table is called “Dölmen”. Hmmm… It looks a bit like a one too. Upon looking a bit closer, you’re sucked in and transported to…
The protagonist has no idea yet, but the player has read the intro. The Old Norse Gods want to return, and they found the ritualistic nature of kneeling down in the living room, slavishly following instructions from a poorly printed booklet to map quite organically onto religious service to Them. In short, each desk or cabinet strengthens them and widens the archway into our universe.
Fortunately, in a way that reminds me of Pratchett’s Colour of Magic, the universe has a strong sense of self-preservation. Why that means exactly you must be the saviour of reality, no one knows. Maybe you’re an offshoot of an ancient royal bloodline or something. Anyway, save the world!
By assembling and disassembling furniture.
Apart from a few problems finding the appropriate verb caused by the fact that for much of the time you’re reading the instruction booklets backwards, meaning that you need the antonyms of the verbs used in the instructions, the (dis)assembly work went smoothly. (Not even one missing screw. Assembly does not follow the realistic simulationist path here.)
Actually, the booklets almost serve as a magic tome would in a fantasy game. A series of incantations that, when properly intoned, change the physical reality around you.
The real puzzles therefore are where to find the booklets, and where to practice the magic contained therein. One of these had me perplexed for a good time ((Spoiler - click to show)bringing the wardrobe to the lamp, instead of the other way round.)
The map is small but very effective. I loved the (Spoiler - click to show)"twisty little passages" in the description of the showroom.
After a spectacular large-scale endgame puzzle, it was unclear to me how to actually WIN the game. There are two options (I stumbled into one before I had a chance to try the other, which was a good/bad thing, depending on personal priorities.) One of them wins by (Spoiler - click to show)getting the hell out of there and letting the store burn. The other loses by (Spoiler - click to show)trying to do the heroic thing and confronting the Old Gods in their Cairn. Being a hero isn’t always the right thing, ask Susan Sto-Lat.
I was hungry for some backstory on the Old God’s cultists, maybe in a sort of “Meanwhile…” non-interactive intermezzos?
Good fun game, some tricky puzzles. Big show piece of a final disassembly!
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