Reviews by BrettW

I have to admit with great shame that this is my first Andrew Schulz game. I’m aware of the area of IF he had staked out, and every year I’ve intended with my whole heart to play his entry. This year I finally managed it.

Us Too’s main technique is wordplay puzzles about shifting the space in a two-word phrase and finding the right interpretation. This puzzle type took me a while to lock into by perfecting some kind of mental slurring of speech and then resolving into something new.

The whole experience was really quite unique. The wordplay melted my brain a little, having the direct analogue of A-ha moments of other puzzlers, but being something different. The writing is good but in a way not too consequential. The story and location kinda slid off my brain, and even in some way the puzzles too. But I was in a flow state looking for a unique phrase and deconstructing it. The writing doesn’t make this too obvious nor too obscure.

Some time in – after I was locked into the wordplay – I was wondering if the game could instead be a PDF of puzzles. Right then, the game started presenting more involved puzzles requiring chains of interactions.

This gave me the overall impression of Schulz’ expertise at creating puzzle games with appropriate pacing and ramp up. The writing is interesting but not an obstacle. There is significant infrastructure for hints, cheats and guides for the player. Everything is quite fair (although my play through came to an end with the puzzle which was a bit of a stretch for me). I enjoyed the game as an abstract puzzle game although it’s not presented as such. I feel wordplay puzzles have to be like this - embedded in story but slippery in the diegetics.

I enjoyed my time with Us Too. Time for me to start mining through the back catalogue!

Interactive fiction spans a wide plain of different content. In some games the author slams down a puzzle box in front of you and cracks jokes as you attempt to solve it. In others, the author beckons you into their car and then locks the door muttering, “Let’s go see some trauma!”

The Little Four is nothing like these. It is a handsome box of chocolates that you sample from as you take your time tidying your study. Some petit fours, so to speak.

You are the author, Captain Arthur Hastings, offsider to the great Hercule Poirot. The game itself is a gently-nudged exploration of a set of flats occupied by the men and Hasting’s children, each examination accompanied by a reminder of past exploits with Poirot or little character details. You run into other supporting characters from Poirot.

The writing is charming and lovely, with great attention to detail. I’m only mildly familiar with Poirot, but I felt there was an admiration of the books and general character in each little flourish. I was especially touched by the description of Cinderella; I had no idea of the character and walked straight into the sad backstory which was quickly but excellently captured.

I really enjoyed the story of the relationship between the author and Poirot, how things changed when they took on “The Big Four”, and how they intended to spend their twilight attending to “The Little Four”, Hasting’s children. I felt there was a queer undercurrent, which I don’t know if it’s in the original, but it works well here. I could imagine someone desperately explaining away “No, no, they’re just good friends!” even despite caring descriptions of what Poirot looks like when he’s asleep.

There’s no murder, but there is a tiny mystery to solve. Anything greater would have been a distraction.

I thoroughly enjoyed The Little Four in all its craft and warmth.

I am a sucker for a certain type of terminal computer aesthetic. As a kid I enjoyed watching disk defrags in MS DOS 6.22. Nowadays I can’t help but be a little fascinated by every Docker image build or Linux boot diagnostic cascade. whoami uses this aesthetic to tell a story about a scientist at the end of the world who uses a quantum scanner to save their self digitally – mentally but not physically.

The Twine game is presented like a Linux system, which I’m very comfortable with. You could present the same system with a bespoke graphical interface which would help those not comfortable with Linux, but would miss out on that aesthetic. The actual interface is cut down to just what you need, although there are a bunch of contextual clues that someone unfamiliar with the interface might miss. For example, to unlock a capability you have to remove a bash comment marker.

It’s all done with mouse-clicks, but it straddles a tricky line of using the structure of bash, but interfacing it with dropdowns. I think that might be the best solution for a wider audience, but it can be alienating for the expert and non-expert alike.

The presentation in whoami is really great. It’s not just the terminal aesthetic, but does a very good impression of a Netscape Navigator-esque web browser, and some beautiful sciencey displays when you get into the puzzles. Some of it you could nitpick. For example, mixing a terminal CLI interface with cool, high-resolution mesh diagrams. But I didn’t care. It’s the vibe not the verisimilitude.

The writing is very pruned back, but I liked the occasional detail like finding your body on the cameras after the mind upload. I feel like it could have paid dividends if there was a little more investment into the world-building and exploration of, say, the social simulation used to calibrate the mind. As it is, you get the impression of these things but it is a bit hollow. Which is a shame because the presentation is so lovingly crafted.

Other reviewers have noted with a groan the Towers of Hanoi puzzle, and the Nick Bostrom reference. I appreciated the attempt to frame the Towers of Hanoi as a staging puzzle for a compilation, but yeah… At least it was only 4 rings. I was less worried about the Bostrom reference. It’s an apt thing to mention as texture given the themes of simulating minds.

I think n-n should be lauded for the technical aesthetic feat they pulled off here. I was hoping for something at least as meaty in the story, but acknowledge that would be an extra huge amount of work on top of an already substantial investment.

I thought the writing task of “you’re a rock” would be a tough one to get much mileage out of, but I was wrong. You find yourself cursed in the form of a rock, yet one that can talk. This is about the limit of your agency, but with time on your side, you can talk to passers-by and interact with their quirky lives.

The gameplay loop ends up fairly straightforward: wait for a random encounter with an NPC, talk to them to uncover their quest, and match NPCs up against one another to solve problems. If this was all it was, it’d be just okay. But I quite enjoyed the layers of discovery shining light on the many mysteries. What initially came across as goofy ended up having a meaning, or at least a puzzle to uncover. It’s not hard work, but it pays careful reading.

I found the writing delightful. Each character felt far from being cookie-cutter and all had a part to play in the overall setting. Solving problems for the characters unlocks one of twenty different endings, which is impressive given they are all fates for a sentient rock. Some of them had a gentle transcendence to them, even though the game doesn’t take itself too seriously.

I accrued about 15 of the endings when I accidentally hit a slow text reveal that was also a link. Clicking impatiently sealed my fate by choosing one fate as the canonical one. This was the only rough edge I felt in the game.

So while the game didn’t shake my understanding of the world, it was oddly a lot of fun to just sit, and be patient and observant.

On the tin, this looks to be a weird beast: a puzzly mix between Total Recall and The Hobbit. Now I’m the last person who should worry about weird genre mix-ups, so I gave it a go.

Would you believe this is my first Gruescript game I’ve ever played? I was delighted by the IF presentation, which is near-but-different to games like Monkey Island with the set of verbs and then objects to click. Here the objects tell you what commands you have available. I ascribed a bunch of the novelty to JD Bardi, but half goes to Gruescript. I want to see more using it!

JD wasn’t absent though - there’s clearly a lot of love poured into the game and its presentation. It’s nicely colourful and with many neat embellishments. However, I could tell that JD Bardi is a relative outsider to the IF Community. It’s the little tells --- the IF Comp blurb is long and a discussion rather than an attempt to woo a reviewer to play their game; the game is described as inspired by ZX Spectrum text games and point-and-click ones; there’s AI art even though that’s quite unpopular around the IF Comp-adjacent community; there’s an advertisement for the author’s web design job mid-game... These all felt a little awkward but were understandable.

I played the game and got stuck at the same place many others did ((Spoiler - click to show)the hospital). Unfortunately the comp blurb suggested that they had bug-tested the game and it was completable. The walkthrough peters out before this point, so perhaps it wasn’t able to be completed. An awkward mistake, fixed by the monkey patch suggested by the forum, or at least a bugfix release. I’ve been in the same position and it sucks.

There were a few elements in the game that I felt you get one free mistake, and every time thereafter is a bit of a ding. The less egregious one was the old trope of solving unmotivated puzzles blocking your progress. For example as you are trying to get ready and out of the house, you need to find your house keys. There’s a hedgehog who needs to be fed food scraps from a nearby bin, and once you do, you find your house keys. Weird puzzle, okay. But then soon after there’s a similar situation in the same location with a cat on the shed roof.

The element that put me off the most was the casual misogyny regarding the character’s wife. I could allow the looks-like-Andy-Capp’s-wife characterisation as a nod to the era, but there is a laundry list of little injustices the game lobs her way, for no real reason. The casual cruelty sucked a lot of energy from the otherwise fun presentation. I’d be happy with a growing progression of some earned animosity over the game — as a nod to Sharon Stone’s character in Total Recall — but that’s not what the game seems to worry about. As a result, it feels like a game not of modern times.

In the end, I got to play a bunch of a slice-of-life, limited puzzle game, but missed out on any deep Total Recall/Lord of the Rings content. I’m okay with the former, but was hoping for the latter.

I enjoyed the enthusiasm of the game and while I wouldn’t want to dampen that, I think it could have done with an external barometer of some testers, both for completion and tone. I hope to see more from JD Bardi.

I’ve never really been keen on Western courtly intrigue. There’s always been something blunt and stodgy about it, like a beef wellington of ideas. But the Eastern version, oh man, I am there with bells on. you are are an ancient chinese poet at the neo-orchid pavilion captures that style of Chinese political machinations really quite well. Different characters and factions are captured by a single but intricate philosophy. The court is sacred, yet everyone in it is in some way profane.

You are an unwitting poet dragged into the middle of the intrigue and have been tasked to speak the truth as an outsider and a wordsmith. Your explorations and responses to the philosophies of other people you meet prepare your mind for the task of creating a poem that will change the very fate of the kingdom.

This reminded me a bit of Imprimatura, although you are.. is more direct with regards to the gameplay loop, but more indirect in terms of the poetry/art. I enjoyed the poetry and it felt very in-theme and there were a few delicious plums of poetic lines throughout.

I got endings 5, 7, 8 and 16, and could tie the final story with the choices I made, although less so with the final poem. I feel like that’s on me, though, rather than the author. I did manage to get the elusive fifth line option once.

I loved the visual change of gradient and image with different scenes. It felt like a careful, evocative choice.

Throughout the piece are occasional anachronistic-sounding lines, which signal modern allegories and criticisms. For example, the cult of poets arranging themselves in a vast array in a polo field is a sly discussion about AI generation. In general, the writing was poetic yet down-to-earth --- a great embodiment of the protagonist.

I had minor troubles with the UI, but once you got the rhythm and standards for cyclic vs non-cyclic links, it was fine. I felt like the main text box could have been larger, but that was no big deal.

I’d like to see behind the scenes to know how the endings worked. 23 endings is curious to me as a mathematician, but maybe various options collapsed into one.

I quite enjoyed the game, although I may not be dedicated enough to find all 23 endings. The clockwise/counter-clockwise choice at the end seemed rather strong.