Ratings and Reviews by deathbytroggles

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.

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.