Reviews by deathbytroggles

A competently coded and not unpleasant game that is unfortunately devoid of story and creativity while implementing random combat elements and a pointless maze. There's only illusion to the plot, room descriptions are sparse, characters send you on fetching quests while telling you exactly what you should do, and all the interesting parts of the game are red herrings (for example, (Spoiler - click to show)the Morse code on the radio which I bothered to decode, the additional spells for the cauldron, and the cube which seems like it should have more scientific complexity but doesn't ). Despite this, Elsegar had so much potential!

For the most part, the parser is very kind. Exits are always clear and the game always seemed to understand what I was trying to do. One bizarre moment comes at the beginning, when you're told you can't get off the bed because the door is closed, though nothing in the room description indicates that the door is blocking you from standing up. Otherwise, things are clean and the presentation was crisp. The next game from this author will hopefully be more complex and give the protagonist motivations.

Everything about Tangled Tales screams 1980's text adventure, including the manual which feels like it came directly from Infocom. While on the positive side this brought out a lot of nostalgia, it also came with all the drawbacks of the time. Tangled Tales uses its own parser and is reminiscent of Scott Adams' games, with brief and awkward descriptions. To wit:

"You examine a rusty old wheelbarrow. This is the kind often used to remove garden waste, or drunk [sic] from parties. A rusty old wheelbarrow is open and in a rusty old wheelbarrow is an empty glass container."

Also:

"A bottle of water is open and in a bottle of water is nothing." This despite the fact that the bottle is full of water and you can drink from it!

The game itself is rather easy, as it's mostly a series of fetching quests for fairy tale characters, reminiscent of King's Quest only some of the stories have changed slightly, being more crass. I did smirk a few times, my favorite twist being the reimagining of the Three Billy Goats Gruff tale. However, because the parser was quite limited with its syntax I got frustrated early and went to the walkthrough. To my dismay, the walkthrough also had its issues, as abbreviations used there were not always accepted by the parser, and a couple of times the compass directions were wrong. Also, my fairytale kingdom for an undo verb!

The low-res graphics were the highlight.

There have been many games in the history of IF that have utilized the journal as a storytelling device, and many of those have had the player discover the journal pages out of order to add intrigue. In Passages, the entire story is reading a journal out of order, with the raison d'etre being a distortion of the space time continuum.

The time and space mechanics take a backseat here to the relationship described in the journal, primarily all of the author's regrets with regard to said relationship. It's a cool concept and I think it was structured fairly well. However, I think it would have made more of an impact if we had seen more journal entries from happier times to give the despair more weight. Mainly, I wish the protagonist wasn't such an insufferable twit; I had no emotions to spare for this person. To be fair, the PC reminds me of myself when I was fifteen, so your mileage may vary.

Two feelings kept swirling around me while playing A Rope of Chalk. The first was jealousy, regularly wishing that my brain could come with a concept such as this; the second was gratitude, as this is only the second game by Veeder I have played and no doubt there is plenty of fun in my future.

Veeder does his best Kurosawa impersonation here, letting us experience the events of a sidewalk chalk competition from the perspective of the four students who helped put it on. It starts out as a quaint slice-of-life and slowly becomes a multi-layered, avant-garde tour-de-force. While there were times I was confused as to what was happening, Veeder anticipated this and installs a character whose purpose is to guide you as much as you need to not only advance in the story but to interpret your surroundings. You also have the choice to ignore this character if you'd like to interpret the story for yourself. And then when the story ends we pan back to the director's office to search for development notes and other delightful minutiae.

In my one playthrough I found no flaws, and the game continuously rewards observation and exploration (and knowledge of 2012 American politics!). So take your time and bask in this world for an hour or so.

There are many types of games that can be made with Twine, but seemingly the most common and to this reviewer's opinion the most frustrating is the game on rails that pretends it's not on rails. The last thing I want to do after spending an hour playing a game is to replay it with all the different choices and discover that other than some flavor text, nothing has changed.

Babyface never pretends that it is a game or that the player has any agency. It's simply a short horror story that uses Twine to enhance the player experience by using inventive visuals, frequent changes in pacing, and opportune music and sound effects. I'm reminded of House of Leaves, a landmark horror novel that used vivid stylings with text to immerse the reader. Similarly, first person perspective here works as we're just along for the ride.

While the story itself is derivative of horror I've read in the past, and there are some loose threads at the end I wish had been tidied up, I was nevertheless engrossed and experienced the tension the author was going for. Good horror is incredibly difficult and I'm excited if Mark Sample continues with this genre.

The Shadow in the Snow is a short Twine adventure that uses as many IF tropes as possible, including the broken down car on the side of the road, the spooky forest, and the spooky hotel. Using tropes is not necessarily a bad thing, but there are no surprises with this story and thus the tension is minimal.

Beyond the story, there are also several issues with the game design. While the game allows you to ostensibly tackle the exploration and puzzle in any order, there is actually only one path to victory despite it being unintuitive (and rather random) that the actual path is correct. Additionally, you can lock yourself out of victory without realizing it, though the game is short enough for it to be only a minor annoyance.

The writing style also doesn't work well for this type of game. Despite the fact that you are given choices to make for the PC, it is written in the first person, which detaches one's self from the choices. There's also a lack of rhythm to the writing, with many short paragraphs, excessive ellipses, and a lack of sensory descriptions to the surroundings. An awkward simile is one example:

"The back window has been smashed out as if a large beast had leaped through it."

Honestly, I have no idea what that looks like or if windows smash differently if large beasts, small beasts, or table lamps have propelled through them.

This is the first game I have played by Andrew Brown. Looking back at their previous games, many reviews cite the lack of editing and beta-testing, and this game appears to have the same concerns.

My son is autistic. He's bright, kind, and empathetic. Most days go fairly well for him now. But some days he has big emotions and his coping skills he's learned in order to deal with uncertainty go out the window. Right now he's young enough that we can always be there for him and let him work through it. And I have the fear that when he gets older, and he's in the real world, we won't be able to protect him from people who want to take advantage of him.

This brief Twine experience from Ann Hugo brought all those fears to the surface while doing so in an honest, compassionate manner. The story is on rails, but the choices given effectively convey the lack of agency autistic people feel when under stress. Every time I was trying to champion a choice that I wanted Theo to make, the story came back with "You Couldn't Have Done That," and I nodded my head as my heart broke a little.

Superb use of the medium and a gift to the IF community.

What the Bus? is pure CYOA (about trying to catch the right bus to get to work) in that there are no puzzles to solve and no parser quirks. You just go through every potential story path until you find all the endings. When I was a child, I would use my fingers or paper clips to hold my place at different plot branches so I wouldn't have to start from the beginning. Joyce doesn't quite make things that simple, but the presence of an "Undo" button is incredibly welcome and makes this much more palatable.

Growing up and living in the suburbs, I have never been on a subway in my life, and only a few city buses. So I can only imagine the frustration that led to this story. Still, the snark is delivered well without drowning in it, so I was motivated to find every ending. And the choice to go surreal with many of the endings was also a treat. I don't think I would play this again, but I was grinning the entire time I played it.

The authors note that they completed this game in thirty days; it appears there was not enough beta-testing done, as within ten minutes I found a game crashing bug that purged my save point. Looking at other reviews, it appears I am not the only one. I stopped playing after that.

Prior to that, I found the premise somewhat intriguing. You essentially need to solve a long puzzle to escape a dinosaur park when your prehistoric friends get released. It's light-hearted and goofy. But for me it was hard to follow due to the grammar. In one choice early on, you are allowed to "Ask if you can pet the Ankylosaurus again," even though to this point in the story you have never seen a dinosaur nor has the ankylosaurus been mentioned. In a later point in the story you are hopping between boats, Frogger-style, and it's hard to keep track of which boats the game is referring to as in the text they're often just referred to as "the boat," despite there being several around you.

It sounds like those who have managed to finish the game have enjoyed the process of solving it, so hopefully if there is a future release it will be more accessible.

The author notes that this was a short story turned into a linear game, and I very much would like to read it; or rather, I would like a slightly larger version of this short story.

It’s a peculiar, intriguing world we find ourselves in. I wish I knew more about this place, and the people in it, and why our protagonist feels the way they do about the people in their sphere. I love short stories in that they often don’t exhaust themselves with pointless details while also leaving the reader with a sense of wonder. In this case, I felt I was wondering too much.