Ratings and Reviews by Juuves

Best of the best. I loved how the characters were characterized through their dialogue. I don't think the reveal/twist to the plot was particularly clever, but it was entertaining to play through. The author did a good job in making us feel like there was a world beyond the characters' conversations/pages of letters to each other. I, for one, would love to see more of Syzygy. Commendations to you, author!

"Organizer's note: This is a special entry, with four games presented as one. These games come from a classroom in Slovakia that encouraged students to enter a 'mini competition' called the Senica Thing. These students are looking to learn and grow, and would benefit from constructive feedback."
— From the game blurb of Mirror.

I have henceforth decided to write my review in the form of letters (if it's not too inappropriate).

Mirror

Dear Lilian Lalonder,

Your game was very imaginative. The language is very evocative of touch, feeling. e.g. (Spoiler - click to show)I liked that you took the time to describe the feeling of the glass under the protagonist's fingertips, or how the unnatural weather affected them. The endings were very creative and branched out, which I appreciated, if a little abrupt at times. Sometimes I had a little bit of trouble following the storyline, so you could work on strengthening the links between the events that occur in the story and maybe even some elements of the worldbuilding. It might also be nice if the reasons behind why certain things were happening (e.g. (Spoiler - click to show)the unnatural weather in the middle of August, the empty street and cars) were explained more.

Thanks! I had fun clicking through your game!
Jess.

P.S. I really liked the titles for the endings you came up with! They were funny to read and generally encapsulated what had happened perfectly!

Dear Mihi,

(Spoiler - click to show)The idea of forcing your readers to stop when they pick a 'wrong' decision is ... a novel one. Generally I didn't really understand why an option was there if we couldn't really go through with making that decision. On the other hand it was funny to read how the narrator / the situation constantly changed to try to throw the reader off from making those particular choices, which despite reading as ridiculous, always had just enough logic to make it believable. If I'm honest, the ending was a bit infuriating because it really made it feel like the player had no agency at all throughout the course of the game (especially if you consistently chose the 'wrong' choices in the game).

I don't think you need to dispense with the idea altogether, but I do think you might want to try exploring scenes where the action is allowed to take place? What happens if the player does make the wrong choice (i.e. instead of the narration just going (Spoiler - click to show)"nope! you can't do that!").

Good job and keep on going!
Jess.

Dear James,

Yours was the most alike to the traditional "parser" that I'm accustomed to seeing in the IF (interactive fiction) community. (Except, of course, that it was in hypertext.) Hence it felt very familiar and consequently was my favorite among the four (just as a matter of personal taste, nothing more). Your game really reminded me of (and I encourage you to check out these games if you haven't already, they might help you expand on the ideas you've had thus far) mutiple-ending Twine games such as 16 Ways to Kill a Vampire at McDonalds by Abigail Corfman, or even Insomnia: Twenty-Six Adventures After Dark by Leon Lin, which was one just entered in this year's Spring Thing (in the Main Festival)!

(Spoiler - click to show)It was nice that we had a checkpoint to go back to so that we wouldn't have to start from the beginning a bunch of times to explore all the endings. However, I'd advise against including things such as "You look around and find a secret trap door under the carpet. Do you want to explore it? YES / NO". Who wouldn't want to explore a secret trap door they find hidden under the carpet?! This is a very small nitpick, but perhaps try giving the player more realistic situations to romp around in.

Looking forward to more of your work!
Jess.

Dear Dr. John,

I'm sorry, but I found your game very confusing. (Spoiler - click to show)Who is IXI? (An alien?) Why are we observing him through a GLASS WALL? What's the deal with the light? It seemed like we were supposed to turn it on, but I couldn't understand the game enough to figure out a way to do that. It sounds like you had a pretty ambitious idea, which got lost on the way because of poor execution. (Spoiler - click to show)It was also a bit annoying having to type in something (your name?) to the box every time I went back to that point to try and solve the game.

I'm not sure how much the language barrier played in making your game hard to understand, but perhaps try to go through your game from the position of a player — how much does each step make sense? Even better, get your friends or family to test your game for you. Or people you can be beside as they play your game, so that you can get feedback real-time on what's exactly not working each step of the way through your game.

I'm not sure how much help I was, but I'd like to see you take this game further (the idea seems really intriguing)!

Fighting!
Jess.

Afternotes:

* All four games would've obviously benefitted from better handling / editing of the English language. But we can obviously also be understanding in this case, as the authors are in Slovakia and aren't expected to have a perfect handle of English. (I wonder, were the works originally in Slovak and then translated into English (the most likely case), or were they written in English in the first place (not likely)?)
* I wonder if the students have been introduced to multimedia (graphics, audio) IF yet? Obviously it's fine to have work in just text, but I'm curious to know what they would've done with images or sound if they had access to / knew how to incorporate such things.
* The whole idea behind this bundle of works is very exciting. And novel, because I haven't really seen anything like it in the IF community before (I haven't been made aware of any if there is). There are jams, but they're grouped more under systems or a general theme or by creative process, how it should go, instead of, for example, a single object, a single thing, as was in this case. e.g. I'm curious to see, if we throw the theme 'Mirror' to the IF creation community, what they would come up with? In fact now I'm thinking about an annual comp, where a rather tangible thing is selected (different each year) and the participants have to make works spinning off that one 'thing' — no restriction in system or type of game, so parser and choice-based and all the in-between or outside-the-box games are all welcome. But this is just a thought, I don't have much realistic know-how or abundance of time, energy, skill behind it to back it up. There are already so many comps throughout the year anyways, and I'm not sure how much value this one idea would add to the mix. Anyways. It was just really interesting to see how differently each of the students' games turned out and how varied their approaches were, in regards to a single thematic subject (which is an object). Some interpretations were quite creative, even if the gameplay was lacking. All were very personable. Endearing, even, perhaps.

And that's the end of it! I don't know the ages of the students exactly, but I hope I didn't sound too patronizing with my words here.

The Mamertine is a Twine-ized parser game supposedly about you (the player) escaping a cult. I say "supposedly" because I barely saw any hints of such a story when I was playing.

I imagine there's a lot of debate on "Twine" parsers / and a wide spectrum of them besides. Some of them are done so well that you forget that there's any distinction between the two — Twine and parsers — and they rightfully 'escape' into having a whole new genre of their own's. Some of them flounder, a little bit. The Mamertine was somewhere in the middle for me. The controls made the 'parsing' part of a parser easy — but at the same time, they prevented the player (me, at the very least) from feeling fully immersed in the game — this I could tell because I kept wondering during play if this and that 'action' or this and that 'command' might work better in a traditional parser format, instead of focusing on what I was doing and how I was supposed to solve the puzzles.

The puzzles and the endings were very confusing in this game. I couldn't help but wonder what, exactly, was the point for some of them at several points throughout my playthrough. The problem is that the game lacks logical flow in many of its departments. (Spoiler - click to show)e.g. The puzzles — you pull the lever? To make someone scream? What for? I thought you were trying to escape? There was also the sitting skeleton in the room you return to near the end of the game — is that the old man, and if so, how did he wither down to just his bones during the short period of time that we were gone? Is the implication that something happened during our brief sojourn into the outer walls to influence our perception of time or otherwise just make time go faster? But again, I ask, what for? There's just too many questions and not enough answers. The ending, when it came, was just as abrupt and as nonsensical as many of the events that happened before. (Spoiler - click to show)I've only managed to get one ending, with the variation of how many times or whether you managed to pull the lever at all. Let me know if there's anyone out there who's managed to get something different. But the author did describe their game as being "rather confusing" in the game description, so I suppose all of this should've been expected, anyways.

I looked up the title out of curiosity. Surprisingly, "The Mamertine" is a real place — an ancient prison used in Roman times — located in Rome, Italy. It's obviously fallen out of use now, and was in fact used by the Christians for worship since medieval times (the site, at least, apparently not the prison itself), so I'm having a fun time trying to place the "cult" that the player escaped from (Spoiler - click to show)— and, assumedly, been brought back into — in history and recognize its historical significance, if there's any to speak of in the first place ((Spoiler - click to show)and though some of the tools that appeared throughout this game gave off the feeling that the game is based in if not modern, at least very recent times). I'm now just curious why the author decided to choose the Mamertine as the setting at all (assuming it's even eponymous in the first place?). It just seems rather niche and sort of out-of-the-way, not an obvious choice for any author.

This game did make me think of other games with similar fuzzy categories — A Long Way to the Nearest Star or JELLY (my personal favorite), for games that also kind of attempted to destroy, merge, blend (I don't know, okay) the boundaries between Twine/hypertext and parsers, and even The Master of the Land, though that one's more of a conversation puzzle game than parser and a bit more far-off than the others. Anyways, what I'm mostly saying is that these types of games are an interesting developmental direction that should be further explored. (Cue tiny me cheering in a tinny voice at the back: Yeah! Break the boundaries, baby! Okay, that was embarassing. Ignore that.)

As afternotes — I liked the signage of the 'cult' in the story, as well as the background music, which is definitely not for everyone, but I personally found it suited the progression of the game very well — though it stopped quarterway during play for me. Visual design was okay; the fonts could have been done better. Some proofreading and work on sentence structure might be in order to fix a couple obvious mistakes (e.g. (Spoiler - click to show)"You are you don't think ..." right in the beginning few pages) and to break up run-on sentences.

This was a dry yet thoroughly engaging exposition of the trench warfare of French-German lines at the hills of Verdun in 1916.

In truth I hadn't needed to state the latter half of the previous sentence the way I did. A simple 'WWI' would've sufficed. The game didn't make any noteworthy distinction of its specific historical settings and time (of it taking place as part of the Battle of Verdun); at least, nothing I was too aware of. Unless you count you playing as a German and the enemy all being Frenchmen as nuanced historical detail. The weapons seemed mostly accurate to the overarching timeline of the war: usage of some of them as employed by the in-game personnel ... were not ((Spoiler - click to show)see: the grenade).

Bits of spotty code here and there, some a bit redundant. I didn't have the energy to track them. The game commands are complicated and specific to game. Some may find them convoluted and repetitive — I thought such qualities contributed perfectly to the illustration of the mechanical nature of war attempted by the game. I advise that new players acquaint themselves with the examples provided in the Help menu before playing. The notes on tactical coverage are also quite useful.

I'm not sure how well the game's attempt at depicting the futility of war succeeded. Things felt mechanical, certainly. I died an absurd number of times in unremarkable and usually unpreventable ways. The impersonality of the military personnel / the men under your command. Et cetera. But futile? I kept going back to correct my mistakes ((Spoiler - click to show)oversights like jumping into a trench too soon after hurling a grenade and not waiting long enough for it to detonate, ahem, or not equipping the men well enough) and seeing how long I could keep my men and I alive for. (Spoiler - click to show)I haven't had the situation of a new soldier joining me (mentioned in other reviews), for example. Though that might be because I haven't made use of the save feature yet in this game.

(Ignoring my personal feelings on the subject) I come from a family who culturally identifies with a positive image of war. So it's interesting to see and experience an attempted portrayal of the other side of the argument.

Highly recommended. Just get past the initial learning curve of familiarizing yourself with the commands (the Help menu is there for a reason!).

I liked the idea and premise of the whole thing, at first. The prose attempted to be pretty and it was, in some parts. However in other parts it was rather stale; and the disjoint between the two made for a rather jarring read. The content, in my opinion, wasn't presented or approached with enough sensitivity or nuance for this work to have accurately represented the plight and experiences of refugees, which are an important topic in today's world otherwise. This work inspired more apathy in me than the empathy it likely had set out in the first place to elicit.

I'm not sure. There wasn't much in the way of gameplay mechanics to be excited about either. The writing felt very inauthentic to me, which I can empathize with, given that I often struggle with the same thing. Perhaps this could be better with more research; or the author could've chosen a different topic to explore.

I loved this.

I've always had a tendency of railing against the traditional narrative experience in my reading and (most especially) in my writing. In my view, the point of prose is to deliver an accurate representation of reality (or any reality, fantastical or slightly-less-than, as you would have it), and reality's always shifting, to me. It always presents a myriad of options and is often beyond the writer's grasp. Therefore I frequently get bothered by the dialogue in some writing pieces, such as when a character says something and then the other replies with something of its own — and I'm like, wait, why would they have given that reply, when there was something else they were this % more likely to have said? (Ah, me. Assigning percentages of probability to people's responses in fiction. I would make a better computer programmer than writer, although I suck at writing enough already.) Some people might say that's just due to the dialogue being unrealistic. But, in my point of view, well, we all have different experiences of reality, right?

So how to resolve this? Well, skillful manipulation of some type or version of procedural generation, such as was seen in this game, is one way. And it's a good way. I loved the dissonance and atmosphere of whimsy created by the author's choice of words and the machine's mixing of them in a short walk in the spring. Some people might note that this actually makes the writing seemingly veer off into the bizarre and nonsensical territory, but I'd argue that this is a better representation of reality than most works. I don't know how other people 'experience' reality, but for me it's definitely not in ways of straight prose and predetermined decisions. This style captures it much better. To the extent it feels homey to an extent, for me. Natural.

Besides that, I also enjoyed the thematic use of 'spring' (which I always do whenever any markers of time — seasons, weekdays, hours — are used as an important element in creative work — it gives the work a certain poetic quality) in this game. The storyline seems so mundane on the surface — (Spoiler - click to show)a traveler embarking on adventures to honor a dead friend, or in this case, so they can meet with a dead friend's ghost (it's all a bit of the same thing at the end, isn't it?) — but this work does a perfect job of portraying that experience, of relaying the narrator's feelings and the comings and goings of his world, his memories to us, the readers, the players, so that we could understand and interpret them, and by extension, him.

Overall, highly lovely work. Give it a try if you haven't already. Have some patience — it actually took me two playthroughs to get into it — the first time I closed it almost immediately upon reading the first two 'pages' (transmuted by a click in-between), but the second time, when I bothered to play it through, it grabbed hold of my interest and I eventually went back to replay the game a third time.

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!

A subversive set of seven poems on the subject of UFOs. I liked it for its themes of cosmic worldliness ... which could be construed as abandonment, if we were to head the other direction. The prose and game functions were good, but not stellar — not enough for a fully immersive experience, though rather enough to simply stand back and appreciate. UFOs, on the other hand, are always an interesting subject matter to read about. The simplicity of the background image and the sparse, but neat formatting, design, and spacing of the text furthered its appeal. Good content with inventive execution.

My favorite was the first poem.

I am very frustrated right now. I just completed a very long review of this game, hit preview, and then it switched onto the Log In page and all my work vanished. I'd forgotten I had cleared my history (and cookies) in the midst of doing this. Well. Lessons learned. Next time don't type directly in the box when writing reviews (or at least copy everything before you hit the button to leave the page), and maybe don't spontaneously clear your history (and cookies!) when you're in the middle of doing something.

A shortened version of what I wrote before:

I liked this game, mostly. The writing? Inherently poetic. I found it a very accurate (and if not accurate — because I have never been a refugee in my life up until this point, factually speaking — then at the very least, immersive) of the refugee experience, and a moving depiction of war / the effects of war / and what it does to a people, to a country. I had no idea how the glyphs worked, not really (I intend to spend some time trying to unravel that mystery with an investigation, if I have the time, later), but they were very pretty. The fact that I had no idea what I was doing with the glyphs kind of resonates with (Spoiler - click to show)the translator's (the character that the player plays as in this story) frustration over her work in-game, creating parallels in fiction and reality, which I like and thus didn't mind half as much as I usually would've. The soundtrack was distressing, but I suppose distressing is fitting for works with subject matter such as this.

I think I'm going to go back after this, sometime, and try to get all the variations (the ones that make sense, anyways) of the paragraphs in this game.

Fingers crossed.

I have a special love of science fiction and futurism, especially. In fact I have a love of speculative fiction — which in my book includes both science fiction and fantasy, being that they both speculate on the nature and possibilities of things — in general, and this was one that straddled the line perfectly. I mean, a girl who can create universes?! That sounds like something straight out of a fantasy novel, but here they attempt to explain it with scientific theory, (Spoiler - click to show)with time and relativity and whatnot, which is gratifying to see. The graphics were amazing, having an (they were right) old-timey feel to them, and as well as being very organic, matched perfectly with the soundtrack. Contrary to what one might expect of the sci-fi genre nowadays — very dystopic, all gloom, death, grit — and though this one is a dystopia as well, there's still a rather cozy feel to the entire series of scenes. So I rather enjoy the fact that this one has something quite different from the rest of its peers. This work has an Italian version, and I in fact believe it was published originally in Italian (the English translation was very good!), so it'd be interesting to go through it again and practice my Italian.

I've always been into space, ever since I was a little kid, and I just recently got into stargazing (the night sky is astounding!), so the fact that this was set on Jupiter was *chef's kiss*. Again, though it's sci-fi, the settings are much more like those of whimsical fantasy, at least physically — the explanations, the mental gymnastics behind it all, are all very science fiction-ish, and I, again, enjoyed this contrast greatly. One thing I really appreciated was (Spoiler - click to show)the audiovisual effects of the constant thunder — it really made you feel as if you were there, in the teashop, on Jupiter, with the characters.

Only the prologue is out as of the timing of my review. I am very curious to see where else the creators plan to head with this, with the amazingly detailed worldbuilding and the quirky cast of characters. From what little I've seen of the plot, it's bound to be an exciting one.

This is a highly immersive piece of interactive fiction and comes highly recommended.

A ghost story with hints of apocalypse and atmosphere. Fairly short. I've been curious about spooky, paranormal things since I was a kid (I did my Grade 3 end-of-the-year speech on witches, and the Grade 4 one was about ghosts), so this was a hit for me. The ending I got was very satisfying, and I was left after wanting to know more about the world and character(s). Setting was an important factor in this work and was interwoven spectacularly into the elements of the plot, which I appreciate. Overall, great work! A fun little piece to try out. I'm curious to see what endings other people achieve on their first (if not only) round of playthrough.

I loved the style the author went for with this game. Risqué, but short and sweet and effective. It was enjoyable to see the effects of the "choices" in-game, rippling as if in water. The feeling of being "let in" on a secret in the ending was also greatly satisfying. Highly recommend for readers seeking un-traditional interactive fiction works; also for writers looking to expand the "innovative" repertoire in the interactive fiction genre.

I would love to see a series of vignettes utilizing this style to explore a single storyline, chronological or not. It'd be like playing connect-the-dots, as we did in the above work, but on a slightly larger scale.