Ratings and Reviews by BitterlyIndifferent

This takes place in an environment that is familiar to anyone who has undertaken long-distance travel, especially across national borders. It’s the “adventure before your adventure,” looking at the things that happen in the space before a vacation starts.

I enjoyed the fiction because it was conversational and observant. It was like getting an email from a friend talking about their travel experience, or like writing that email to someone else.

It gets two thumbs up for interactivity. There’s a nice mix of cosmetic/immaterial choices alongside significant choices that trigger specific events. (Or maybe not? I played through the game a few times, and I’m not entirely sure I saw which choices linked with distinct outcomes.) (Spoiler - click to show)I made some conscientious-but-boring choices on my first playthrough, and I felt like my diligence was rewarded with a successful arrival in Hamburg. Things were much different on subsequent trips.

I was going to grumble, it would be that it was tricky for me to pick up the game’s full context without doing some additional research. The blurb establishes that I’m trying to ride the bus from London to Hamburg, but the opening of the game just drops me at the bus station and expects me to know what I want to do. I also needed to look up what Flygskam meant, because I missed that cultural conversation.

I read through Eye Contact pretty quickly, which was nice because I was able to zip through it several times to gain a full understanding of the story.

It recreates the experience of meeting up with a close friend who needs to vent. I thought that the story was skillfully delivered, realistically leading up to the part where you and your friend realize why she needs to vent.

It took me a shameful amount of time to recognize the wordplay in this entry’s title, but now I understand and I am here for it.

I did a quick playthrough as hoeforpoe and I thought it was a competent entry. The chat exchanges felt like real transcripts between people online. And they were applied sparingly; I appreciated that the game provided summaries of the discussions instead of trying to simulate lengthy poetry workshops.

On my second playthrough, I hit a blank screen and wondered whether I was doing it right — was there much interactivity in this story, and could I influence how it unfolded?

Then I opened up the walkthrough to see whether I had missed anything. OMFG, I did.

So, strong fiction, strong interactivity, and bonus points for adding interactive elements that played with the fourth wall. It was my own fault that I missed these features on my first two attempts.