Ratings and Reviews by Juuves

A game centered on the pursuit of light and finding your way out of the darkness.

The interface was very smooth, and I liked the idea of 'recycling' links. It felt very intuitive to me and even fun to go back and see how the content of each link changed over time in the game. This is my first time encountering links being used like this in interactive fiction. I wish more games could employ the same/a similar style — push the boundaries beyond the known, y'know?

If I'm honest, I almost did end up tearing up at the last couple pages. Some might find the content too sedate or cheesy, and the emotional experience for sure isn't going to be all that there for everyone, but I personally connected very well with both its gameplay and message overall.

(Spoiler - click to show)It was also very nice how the page darkened/lightened in tandem with where the player character was in-game. I found that particular touch very immersive, and it's the second work I've encountered that makes use of this effect — the subtle changing of the page visuals in relation to variations of time/place within a work — the first being Perihelion, by Tim White, which I also only just came upon earlier today — and I find that I like it very much. Opposed to, I don't know, say for example a new background image or the such in response to the player moving from place to place in other games — the changes in these games are so small, so subtle — even barely-there, I guess you could say — that I don't find them as disruptive (or jarring) as automated visual changes usually are (in my experience) — quite the opposite, in fact, I find they enhance the effects of the game quite a great deal for me.

I liked the lyricality of this, the fact that the author didn't have to use overly-flowery words and phrases to effectively convey the scenes. The journey at the center of this game; a hike, feels very personal, makes it feel very personal to the reader. For me, at least, the first reaction I had to the story after spending some time getting to a certain level of acquaintance with its text was this: familiarity. The scenes and experiences described in this game were somehow very familiar to me. I'm most definitely not an experienced hiker, though I do have the memories of going on long walks with my family whenever we could in my childhood; on trails, through neighborhoods and suburban blocks. But I think, mostly, it's the love of nature in this that attracts me; I experience nature in perhaps much the same way that the protagonist of this work does, and it is always deeply gratifying to have your experiences written down on paper (or, in this case, on the screen), to have a sudden epiphany of, oh, so there are other people out there who think like me too, and to not feel so alone or lost or strange about yourself and your beliefs for a little bit after.

Rarely do I find games that are like this, games that are purely about exploring a space without the additional baggage of puzzles/plot being incorporated somewhere, that don't end up just being boring. In fact I read the reviews by the other reviewers on this game and was astounded to see some of the things that I had missed in my playthrough; (Spoiler - click to show)a bear?! a bear, of all things? and you could stay in the woods 'til evening and see fireflies and even get a search party sent for you??? I had no idea, not a single clue. Just goes to show how expansive this work is, or could be, if you let it.

Sweet. Sticky. Surprisingly refreshing.

This game is different from the ones I usually peruse. A Twine work with parser elements (typed commands transformed into clickable links), JELLY is a lively adventure-quest through the sweets-filled lands of Lonely Valley. The puzzles never felt too hard or finicky, which was a breath of fresh air from my usual experience (read: struggles) with puzzle games. The style of prose, again, diverts from the archaic, word-leaden types describing nature or manmade settings that I often enjoy, but was exactly what drew me into the text with this particular game. There were a lot of places you had to repeatedly visit throughout the game to get to the final objective — and because the writing was so good, it wasn't boring at all, having to do that. I happily reread most of the writing as I played and returned to each location, submerging myself over and over again in the sugary, gelatinous, and sometimes gory experiences of the young jelly.

A minor improvement perhaps might be the addition of a light mode version of the game. Though that's mostly just personal taste, given that I generally don't like dark themes very much. It also would've been nice to see more illustrations, mostly because the writing was so rich and evocative that I badly wanted some visual representations of what we were seeing. Furthermore, I wish that some of the storylines (there were several; adjacent, parallel, overlapping) were explored more; for example, (Spoiler - click to show)that of the brigadier general, the Captain - jealous brother and suitor, apparently, and the unnamed love interest they both fought over, or the one about the two *other* brothers, the merry droll-teller and the ginger-root man — why did they keep crystallizing?, for example, as well as some of the story concepts (Spoiler - click to show)— the monoliths, the channels/network, the tree, the constellations —; they seem to be a big part of the exciting lore of the place, and it would've been really nice to get a clearer picture of the history and entire canon of folklore we were exposed to of Lonely Valley. Oh well. For future games, maybe? ;)

But I can't complain. I loved this one a lot. Oh, how nice it was to be a red jelly, wandering through the wastes of an arcanic world!

Here, a song I had on in the background as I worked my way through JELLY: L'anima balla, by Olly, and which I found surprisingly, rather fitting both musically and lyrically for this interactive fiction!