Ratings and Reviews by autumnc

This is one of the numerous superhero games originating in the choicescript ecosystem. Similar to the Heroes Rise trilogy and Fallen Hero: Rebirth, which was published a year later, Paradigm City leans towards the darker, more "realistic" side of the genre, towards what TVTropes would call "deconstruction". I enjoyed playing the game, but it isn't as successful for a number of reasons.

Paradigm City takes place in a world where superheros are an accepted part of society, working for governments and organizations as part of their forces. The player character is abandoned as a child to a superhero academy, and later ends up working for a UN (I think) superhero agency called SOLAR. They are sent to the titular Paradigm City, an isolated city run entirely by superpowered individuals, to solve a series of crimes. Of course, things become more complicated. The worldbuilding isn't as extensive as some of the longer choicescript superhero series, but it gets the job done well enough.

The game's writing felt overly vague at times. A lot of events were glossed over or barely explained; to me the most egregious was (Spoiler - click to show)Dawn's death, which jumped straight into the funeral with implications of conspiracy, but wasn't ever explained or resolved. But maybe I just picked the wrong choices? The fight scenes were impressive, but there were only two of those (and one training exercise). The investigation scenes felt like lawnmowering, just picking all the choices until reaching the conclusion. The mysteries weren't all too interesting to me, but mysteries in the usual choicescript stat-based style are hard to do. There is romance and relationship-building, but it feels like an afterthought solely due to the choicescript style. I thought I had started a romance but there was no content afterwards.

Space Adventure Laika is a rather short (10-20 minutes) twine story written about Laika, the first dog in space. It chronicles her upbringing as a subway-riding Moscow stray, to her capture by scientists, and her suffering as she's placed into a tiny capsule and rocketed on a one-way journey into orbit.

This game is really good at imagining the dog's perspective. The story is divided into present and flashback segments; the present is when Laika is in the space capsule, and the flashbacks show her life as a stray dog. I like the space of possible actions in the "present" scenes; it's a parser game-inflected style, kind of reminiscent of howling dogs, that's effective at conveying a sense of Laika's confinement and her suffering. The flashback segments were well-written and interesting to read; they provide a loosely historical overview of a part of history I didn't know much about. There's some interactivity, but it all leads to a foregone conclusion.

There's recently been another twine game Laika about the same dog, which is more of a fantasy. Playing both games, I think that I prefer this one because of its more historical focus.

Mecha Ace is one of the Choice of Games I've enjoyed and replayed the most, but I'm biased as a fan of the mecha genre. It was one of the relatively early choice of games, from an era where most of the games were genre pastiches. This is a pastiche of the mecha genre, taking the most obvious inspiration from the Gundam franchise (the name options give a pretty good idea of the story's inspirations). The backstory is based on a rebellion of extraterrestrial colonies against the rule of the Earth-based Empire; you play as an elite mech pilot for the rebellion through a few key battles in the war.

There are a lot of things the game does really well. The pacing is impeccable, with a careful balance of action and quieter moments, and a great climactic scene. The plot is well-developed, with interesting twists and developments despite the somewhat familiar setting. Fighting scenes are hard to write in interactive fiction, but Mecha Ace pulls it off as well as anything I've seen. The choices are usually pretty transparent in what stats are being tested, but it's possible to get into a situation where none of your well-developed stats are useful, or to get in a bad situation from picking the wrong decisions much earlier in the game. Getting the "best" endings took multiple playthroughs for me to find a path that worked. It's very easy for side characters to die with little warning, and one might die even on an otherwise ideal ending.

On the other hand, the characters are basically archetypes from similar media (but they're still well-written and have interesting moments), and the romance options were kind of sparse, as if the author were just trying to match the choice of games style. Sometimes, my romantic interest would die and my character would have no reaction. Unlike most choice of games, the stats page doesn't explicitly show the character relationships (but they are being tracked). Romance is not why I'm playing this game.

Overall, for the things it does well, like plot and combat, the game does them very well, and it sometimes elides the more character-driven aspects of other choice of games.

Okay, so, I feel like what I write can't really do justice to this story, so... please play it first? As with a lot of other Porpentine stories, major content warnings here for body horror, discussions of trauma and mental healthcare. And insects. The story was about 30 minutes long for me. As with all of Porpentine's stories, it's incredibly well-written and vivid, conveying a ton of information in small bits of text, but confusing at parts. There are cool visual effects, including changing backgrounds and colors, and links exploding in four when moused over.

The world of this story is basically a world where, instead of covid, we have a giant swarm of wasps. Every time people go outside, they have to put on a full-body rubber suit to protect themselves from the wasps. Also this society is a cyberpunk-esque late-capitalist hellscape, but that's a given. The protagonist is basically someone who is so alienated from society that she has more empathy for the wasps than any other humans. She partakes in rituals where she drinks fluids from the wasp queen (who is some kind of sexy anthro wasp?) because it gives a kind of meaning to her life. Meanwhile, she has an ambiguous relationship to a therapist who is the embodiment of the commodification of emotional connection, a surveillance-enabled agent who is really good at outwardly displaying empathy and sympathy for the protagonist (but maybe just wants control and conformity), but is also the protagonist's only connection to other people. The wasp queen leads the protagonist to commit basically a terrorist act that kills bystanders.

Most of the hypertext links in the story are exploratory until the very end, where there's the choice to either accept the therapist or try to escape and join the wasp queen (I'm not sure if it actually leads to different endings; I've only played through once). Ultimately, it's kind of a false choice, because both choices are a surrender of sorts, whether it is to mainstream society or the wasp hive. Both of these options involve the loss of individuality and a subsumption into a greater whole, it's just that one feels viscerally good.

This is another of those stories that hits differently in the post-covid era. It probably clouds my judgment of the protagonist and her actions (this is unfair, but, like, she's literally pro-covid??? is she an anti-vaxxer or anti-masker??? it is *extremely* a stretch to call this a sympathetic portrayal of an anti-masker, but like...).

Star Court is a brief twine game (a playthrough is probably less than 10 minutes) with a lot of randomized elements. The conceit is that you're on trial for a crime you may or may not have committed (it doesn't really matter), and you're supposed to try to prove yourself not guilty as well as just survive the trial. It has a whimsical sci-fi pastiche setting with a comedic tone where nothing's really taken seriously. The writing is pretty fun, and I enjoyed playing through the game. Insofar that there is a deeper message or social commentary, it's about the unfairness of the judicial system for the poor, but it's too wacky to really leave much of a message.

In terms of gameplay, there are a few standard phases: pick your lawyer, plead guilty or not guilty, cross-examine the prosecution's witnesses, and call your own witnesses in defense. Then there's a break where you can try to escape (and usually fail), before the trial either concludes or restarts. A lot of the result is randomized (although more expensive witnesses usually give better results). I think eventually I figured out a strategy to win most of the time.

This game is fun to play through a few times, to see the different ways the trial could go. There's a lot of content and replayability, despite the short length of each playthrough. The crimes are randomly determined (it doesn't matter what the crime is). I've seen at least five different "Ancient Rites" (the trial by cat was my favorite), and many different prosecution's witnesses.

As the conclusion to the Lost Heir trilogy, Demon War contains a mix of positive and troublesome developments. On one hand, it has some of the most interesting and unique narrative segments, and further advances characterization and worldbuilding. On the other hand, the ending has a ridiculous sequence of stat checks that could easily lead to a bad ending if you didn't optimized a number of previously underutilized stats.

The previous game ended with either a pyrrhic victory or a defeat that nevertheless left you, the lost heir, as the last one standing. Your task now is to defeat the evil demon summoner who killed your parents and reclaim your kingdom. This is divided into a number of distinct story sections. It is kind of strange to see a putative monarch do jobs like pretending to be a student at a school. But overall, the new scenes are fun; I thought the ocean voyage and mysterious island chapter was rather memorable. There are also some cool moments when selecting a prestige class, and interesting character-focused scenes with your party. I feel like the quality of the writing has improved with this iteration.

The ending is where things start to come apart. You are forced to rely much more heavily on physical stats, when they were rarely used in the prior two games and even in the earlier parts of this game. Thus, unless you knew about this change, you're basically doomed. All the preparations, all the kingdom-building didn't matter if you don't have enough agility and stamina. I only succeeded when I was using a guide, on my third playthrough or something like that. You basically have to plan for the final scene from the beginning of the first game, which was kind of impossible if you played the games when they were released.

I felt like I enjoyed this game more when playing with a guide (and with a save that used a guide in the previous two games).

Keeper of the Sun and Moon (or KotSaM) is a comforting game for me. This is in spite of the fact that it contains quite a deal of violence and dangerous situations; I think it's just because of a sense of familiarity, both from playing it a lot and from its use of familiar tropes. It is a very tropey game, taking place in a modern fantasy-kitchen-sink setting, with a hidden society of magical/supernatural beings. You play as a newcomer from a seemingly normal human background, who is discovered to have latent magical ability and is enrolled in a magical college. There, adventures start that involve life-threatening school exams, conspiracies involving the magical government, and potentially romance. The game follows the typical choicescript formula by offering a lot of character customization and numerical growth, a branch-and-bottleneck structure, and a lot of romance/relationship options.

From the description above, the premise resembles a number of quite popular YA literary franchises. But I feel like KotSaM implements the tropes well, and does enough to distinguish itself within its genre. As this is a college setting, the characters are all adults, and the courses and residential system are based on American universities. One of the fun parts of the game is deciding which species of supernatural creature you are; there are tons of possibilities from the gamut of mythological fantasy. Also, this is a setting that mixes modern technology with magic; mathematics and biology come into play a few times.

In general, KotSaM is one of the easier choicescript games, as it's hard to die and I don't think there are "bad endings" (or are there?). The stat checks are usually well telegraphed, but sometimes it's hard to tell how difficult a check would be. Failing stat checks might lead to lower grades or getting injured, but it's not that hard to stumble into a path to moderate success without really designing a specific route (kind of like college I guess). For min-maxers and guide-makers, there are secrets and achievements and hidden romance routes.

The writing is functional for the most part; some of the characters came off as a bit hard to distinguish from each other, and some of the scenes felt a bit vague. Still, the story was easy enough to read, and I generally enjoyed the character interactions. The resolution of the mystery and the reveal of the villain felt a bit anticlimactic. But it sets up for the sequel, which I'm rather looking forward to.