Reviews by deathbytroggles

As someone who has never found card readings appealing or helpful, this was not an experience I could get into. However, I would imagine for those that do that this could be a gratifying experience. Thomson has presented a slick, simple, and beautiful application and I hope there is an audience for this.

A far out (see what I did there?) story based on a far out (yup, still going there) theory about how our amazing brains became amazing by getting high all the time. I have never had the fortune of getting high, so I'm probably too stupid to review this, but I'll give it a shot.

Heaton does a decent job of making the theory come to life, though in a much more accelerated fashion. It's humorous how quickly our protagonist becomes smart and successful, including proving it by winning a game of mancala. But for me the protagonist never really came to life like the hero in The Edifice. Part of that may be the structure of the game; you can win without any thought at all just by clicking every link. The only choices are during the games of Tic-Tac-Toe (the most basic game ever invented) and mancala. And while I do like the occasional game of mancala, the presentation here was a bit confusing and I won by accident.

But, like I said, I've never been high before.

While the concept of being a doppelganger for hire is brilliant, what really excited me to play and keep playing this game was the sheer enthusiasm of our protagonist. It's hard not to be infected by their joy for their work and their optimism that their career will take off. Because of this, I made the effort to find every line I text I could even if I sensed it wouldn't change the plot or lead to a different ending.

In fact, I was ready to give this five stars until I couldn't reach one of the four endings as the game kept crashing for me while at the recital heading for ending four. The walkthrough was not helpful in avoiding this bug.

If there is a sequel I will be first in line to play as I'm still rooting hard for our rising doppelganger star!

The content warning for this game indicates "blood and murder" and to my knowledge this only refers to the final score this game will be given during the IFComp due to it being virtually unplayable.

I totally dig the concept as you play a young woman trying to break through as a pop star. You are given base stats in several different skills of a pop star which you can manipulate based on the choices you make. As the game progresses you must improve your ranking by impressing the judges, and presumably, murdering or avoid being murdered. Unfortunately, shortly after the first competition a passage becomes unpassable.

I may come back to this game if it's fixed. What is playable so far is bubble-gum fun and I'm intrigued by the horrors that await.

I don't love RPGs as much as I did when I was younger, but can still get roped in if the focus on story outweighs the focus on stats. Tavern Crawler does just that and succeeded in keeping me interested for a couple playthroughs.

You play as a gender neutral hero (with a choice of fighter, mage, or thief) who tags along with a female mage and a male fighter on a quest to slay a dragon and collect a handsome reward. What follows is a charming quest with plenty of plot twists and character development. You can take on many optional quests which can improve your stats but mostly focus on story development and a lot of your time is focused on building or destroying your relationship with your two partners.

Another cool feature is that you can decide to play in a more traditional RPG mode where you can focus on building your stats, but almost every puzzle can also be solved even with poor stats if you make the right choices. Saving and restoring is also easy along the way and there's no way to get stuck. There are multiple endings and every playthrough also has an epilogue that shows you how your actions affected others as well.

What initially appears to be a charming slice-of-life about a six year-old girl helping her dad get ready for a dinner party turns into a old-school puzzlefest with an extraordinary mechanic that I'm embarrassed to admit I needed the in-game hints to even discover. For those that don't mind knowing ahead of time, the mechanic is (Spoiler - click to show) that your bedroom has a dollhouse which is a replica of the actual house, and putting items in and taking them out of their respective rooms changes their relative size in reality. For example (not in the game), if you were to put a toy sword in the dollhouse's kitchen, and then go to the actual kitchen, you'd find a regular sized sword.

The coding for this puzzlefest is damn impressive, as there are so many things you can do that aren't required that the game allows you to do, and even some potential alternate solutions to puzzles are at least acknowledged even if unsuccessful.

I badly wanted to give this five stars, but the more I played the game the more I found myself exhausted. Some of the puzzles enhance the charm of this universe and the way your family reacts (or doesn't react) to some of things you do is great. I actually adore the whole sequence with (Spoiler - click to show) the stegosaurus and the way Dad reacts to it. But there are also several puzzles that seem to be there simply for puzzle's sake, (for example the (Spoiler - click to show)rope/anchor puzzle inside the impossible bottle), and I found myself going to the hints quite often just to get a jumpstart on what to do next. There are also so many items you can carry or manipulate and a lot of them are irrelevant to progressing in the game, so I found myself easily getting overwhelmed and resorting to the hints for that reason as well. For their own sake, the progressive hints were really well done and I rarely needed the final hint to progress; I mainly just needed a nudge on where to focus my efforts.

A must play for puzzle enthusiasts and I would be surprised if The Impossible Bottle doesn't win an XYZZY award or three.

A short game that interweaves the magic of literature with a pirate's need to live one more glorious battle. Several historical works are referenced, such as Moby Dick and Peter Pan and the way they are weaved into the story is charming. If you're a fan of pirate fiction then this will likely be more enjoyable, though the concept is meant for everyone.

My only significant criticism is that some of the font choices (especially the ones in cursive) are really hard to read for my tired eyes, which significantly hurt my enjoyment.

I'm glad this wasn't a puzzle, as it would have not fit with the theme for poor Captain Graybeard.

In the game's blurb, the author announces (after begging the player not to quit the game early, which is always a good sign) that, " I am a believer of absurdity, that our actions in the end have no meaninging (sic) in the interacting force between humans and universe." Yet, this author's other entry in the competition was a moralistic game which strongly advocated that our choices make a lot of difference.

Playing through The Place does little to shed a light on the purpose of this story, though the message appears to be to look within for happiness instead of material pleasures. The player listens to a narrator talking about the life of a woman who is somewhat defined by the player's own tastes, as the story is constantly interrupted so that you can answer questions about your own dreams which are then projected onto the female protagonist. I suppose the message here is to ask the player to put their own dreams in perspective, though if that's the case then I'm not sure why the protagonist is given a specific gender.

Regardless, the story is just not written well. In addition to a lack of proofreading, the prose tries way too hard and trips over itself. The most egregious passage may be the following: "She feels the breeze of spring air brushing through the tip of her nose. Her lungs (sic) capacity expands, absorbing that volume of fresh air. Then, slowly decompressing to release the cardon (sic) dioxide, she gets the negative thoughts out of her mind." I am not certain how air can brush through the tip of a nose, and juxtaposing this with a biology textbook kills any mood this passage was going for.

As part of my career I teach (and learn) racial equity and antiracism and was hoping at least one game in this year's competition would address it. Stand Up/Stay Silent addresses it through an allegorical piece that takes place on a future Mars colony. I was reminded a bit of Blade Runner while playing.

I kind of wish this had addressed today's racism and political environment head on, though this could be traumatic for BIPOC players so it was probably wise to make it allegorical. That said, the game simply wasn't long enough to build this cyberpunk setting, and I was often left deciphering terminology instead of being in the moment with these characters.

I appreciate the choices offered throughout the game and the acknowledgment that being antiracist can take many forms in addition to direct protest. I also appreciate it addressing that there is no middle ground; you're either for or against.

Growing up on JRPGs and being a huge fan of the Dragon Quest series, I was excited when I loaded this one up. For sure it really stretches the bounds of interactive fiction, but here there's no hand-eye coordination necessary and there's plenty of text, so it works.

Quest for the Sword of Justice is a brief send-up of the genre, poking fun at the same things that most everyone has been poking fun at for thirty years now. The jokes still work, especially the more subtle ones you can discover just by examining the most random of things in your environment (like other people's meals!). However, I wish there was more to it and both possible endings annoyed me more than made me laugh, especially since they contradict each other.

If you're a fan of JRPGs you will probably find this amusing for ten minutes. If you've never played one, the jokes probably won't land as well.