Reviews by deathbytroggles

Ever since I was a child I have loved puzzle books, especially ones with a lot of tiny, random puzzles. I'll happily solve one cryptogram, but six pages of cryptograms -- no thank you! Sage Sanctum Scramble is basically one of those comfortable puzzle books come to life, with a cute plot about destroying a monster using keywords you find by solving puzzles.

One's satisfaction with this game will likely be directly correlated with whether the puzzles within hit that sweet spot of not too difficult and not too easy. For me they did just that. One nice (and necessary!) feature is that you only need to solve around 30 puzzles to beat the monster; I solved 31 and had ten more that stumped me. Not having to check the back of the book for the answers to win the game made it a satisfying experience.

The game has some personality and I wish it had even more. There's a risk, I suppose, of getting too cute and detracting from the puzzles. But the highlight for me was when it shamelessly acknowledges that there is a slightly American bent to the game. To wit: (Spoiler - click to show) "GREY is for people who want colours. I want colors."

Deck building games have never quite been my cup of tea. Generally I get really into them for a brief time, but after a while I tend to get frustrated by the randomness. And while I'm unlikely to return to play due to my own proclivities, Tragic is quite competently built and I enjoyed myself for the two hours I gave it.

There's a larger story outside the deck game itself, as you play an actual marauder who is transported into the 21st century and finds themselves at a live tournament where this deck game is played. The hijinks that follow are expected, but amusing all the same. The heart of adventure is the card game, where you play while a dungeon master of sorts narrates your exploits. Within the card game are also mini-games and oases where you can win/lose/buy weapons/armor/cards, etc.

The presentation is slick and the tutorial did a great job of teaching me the ropes. There are also several modes of play depending on how much story you want and how difficult you want it to be. I do wish there was more than one save slot, but that's a small concern.

Definitely worthy of play by those who enjoy this type of game.

A very brief story about a stutterer trying to find their voice through a therapy retreat.

Despite its brevity, this conversation is hard to follow. It appears as if the player character is the therapist, though the conversation feels distant enough that I was detached from both the PC and NPC. The topic is important and the journey could be potentially moving, but the dialogue does not feel realistic. Both characters have a similar voice (aside from the stuttering of the NPC) and there are few interjections from the author for any atmosphere; it's just endless dialogue without any breaks, and sometimes it's hard to remember who is speaking. Their communication feels rehearsed, as if they're trying to emphasize the pathos of the story without letting it come out naturally.

The ending is pretty cool, both story-wise and stylistically. It might be worth the few minutes of play just to see it.

One of many 2020 IFcomp Twine games that is on rails, High Jinnks rises above due to being generally delightful.

For me, watching a jinni toy with humans is not generally my cup of tea; I prefer my games that take place in the real world to be ground in that reality without magic or mysticism. But gosh darn if it I didn't grin a dozen times while playing this one, probably because there's a heart and soul to these characters I wasn't expecting. The plot itself is forgettable, but the repartee between the jinni and your scrawny human friend is relentless. Sometimes the conversation feels a bit too cavalier and I don't truly buy the motivations of the humans in the story, but all in all it was a good time.

One thing Chamberlain excels at is using the hidden text feature in Twine to great effect. While I wasn't always enamored with the story choices, clicking on the hidden text was a regular treat.

Unfortunately, I did find one endless Twine loop near the end of the game that forced me to restart.

I suspect that this piece could be retraumatizing for some, so please note that this is an uncensored portrayal of violence, both emotional and physical.

I have to admit that when I first loaded up this story I was convinced I was going to hate it, and it didn't help that there's a few glaring spelling mistakes in the first few minutes. The prose was also jarring at first, not so much because of the profanity (apropos of the situation), but because of the often aggressively stilted manner in which the victim's thoughts are voiced. Punctuation is also inconsistent, with missing periods (sometimes) and random capitalization or lack thereof; intentional or not, it helped elicit the raw emotions the authors were trying to convey.

Beyond the words themselves, I'm impressed with how well I was drawn into this character and being in the moment with her. While I've never been kidnapped, I have been held at gunpoint, and reading this brought back a loud whisper of the terror I felt that day. The pacing is effective and the choices feel raw and honest.

One more comment on the game structure below the spoiler:

(Spoiler - click to show)I am quite grateful that the only possible endings appear to be positive (relatively speaking). I don't think I could have coped otherwise.

A very short Twine morality play about having responsibility as a CEO to do the right thing for your employees and the world.

Ima does some visually arresting things with Twine graphics that I hadn't seen before, and I found them to be mostly effective in communicating the mood the game is going for. Unfortunately, the game still needs a ton of work. There were spelling mistakes on nearly every page as well as issues with grammar that made some passages hard to understand. I also encountered one apparent bug where a macro text-type doesn't load.

This review is based on the competition release. I could see raising my rating if the bugs and spelling were fixed as it has some cool things going for it. That said, the moral the game conveys about corporate greed is fairly basic and there's not enough time within the span of this game to give the topic justice.

I love me a good time travel game and this one is fairly straightforward. There’s a loose backstory about saving the world from cultists, and you must travel within the same small radius (eight to nine rooms) via four different seasons. Puzzles are similar to that in First Things First in that changes you make in one season affect change in others. An in-game map was quite welcome.

The game can adequately be described as terse. There’s no flowery prose or a developing plot or anything heart-wrenching at stake. Most puzzles are intuitive, even if silly (I’m looking at you cow). While the game doesn’t get in the way of the puzzles, it doesn’t enhance them either. And since I had little investment in the results, I resorted to hints several times when I got stuck. Most puzzles have multiple solutions, with a couple locking you out of certain endings. There are eight endings, though mostly slight variations on another. While I don't see myself playing this again, I had a good time.

I have to give mention to an absolutely amazing tour de force of double-entendres that had me grinning from ear to ear. Below the spoiler:

(Spoiler - click to show)After placing a stop sign in the ground to keep the chicken from crossing the road and then examining the chicken: The chicken is standing stock-still, waiting for some kind of sign.

The Cave has you, a generic adventurer, exploring a generic cave, accumulating statistics and inventory with no easily discernible goal. I reached an ending mostly by clicking on options until I escaped. There are ten rooms, and I explored all of them, leaving possibly a couple of puzzles unfinished.

I think it's important to note something written in the walkthrough to help players make sense of the game:

Under the hood, this game is an alternative way to generate the basic character ability scores for your favorite roleplaying game. Your choices purchase increases in those scores according to a point buy system. In this case, it builds a character according to your preferred actions and reactions to situations. Once you've expended your pool of points, you'll find your way out.

While this is indeed an interesting way to play a game, I am not sure why this isn't told to the player up front. Otherwise, it feels unnecessarily random.

The prose is rough. Nearly every room tells you that you’ve somehow found an “even deeper darkness” and I was beginning to wonder how many levels of darkness existed. The author tries too hard to be cheeky in a game that doesn’t seem to call for it. When you pick up a club, you are told “it’s pretty heavy and probably packs a wallop. It probably can’t pack a suitcase or a lunch.” And when you reach into a puddle you find it “much colder and deeper than you expected. You know people like that. Colder and deeper than expected.” It’s one of many examples of the author alluding to some inner turmoil the adventurer is trying to overcome, except we never really get to know anything about them.

Additionally, puzzles exist but take no real deduction. At one point a choice is given to “push the stone button,” even though the room description never mentions a button. At another point you have the choice to pick a lock; click that and you magically find a bone nearby to pick it.

The background music is alright and there are some cool text effects in spots. I like the ambition from this first-time author and hope future efforts tighten the writing and improve the puzzle structure.

An interesting experience in interactive fiction, using a device I don't think I've ever seen in this arena. To say any more would spoil everything, so the rest of the review is hidden. However, I will say that this game is probably aggravating--if not impossible-- to play for the visually impaired.

(Spoiler - click to show)I played this on my phone and never noticed the motorcycle slowly moving across the top of my screen. If I had, that would have likely clued me into how to progress through the game. Originally I thought the game was unplayable, and that it was missing choices that would help me avoid constant death. I still figured it out on my own; on around my tenth playthrough I noticed I got different results depending on how quickly I clicked the "Move On" button. After that things were really straightforward and I was able to achieve victory in about two minutes.

I'm not convinced this is a story-telling device I would like to see more of with interactive fiction. Like a good book, I enjoy getting lost in whatever I'm playing; having to rely on timing and reflexes takes me away from that. One of the reasons is that to advance in this game, you have figure out which moments you have to be quick on the draw, and unless you're a speed-reader, you have no choice but to learn by dying.

The story itself is standard spy-fare and since you wind up just chasing a McGuffin it's not terribly rewarding.

In 2019 Winters released The House on Sycamore Lane, which screamed potential but was riddled with spelling, grammar, and guess the verb issues. With his sophomore effort, Alone, he has improved considerably and put forth a solid parser game that is a worthy entry in the apocalyptic horror genre.

Alone quickly establishes that you are a survivor, working solo and avoiding infected people at all costs. But a visit to a convenience store to get some gas changes all that. The gas pump is locked, and what follows is a long string of puzzles to get access to additional areas that hopefully have something you can get your hands on to cut the dang lock off. While partaking in the puzzlefest, you slowly learn what's happened in this neck of the woods Babel-style, reading journal entries and stumbling across horrific scenes.

I did not need to resort to a walkthrough at any point as the puzzles are generally straightforward. There are no red herrings, and all items you can pick up or manipulate have fairly clear uses. That's not to say the puzzles were insulting; they just didn't take leaps of logic or require a stroke of brilliance to uncover, which was definitely refreshing.

Another thing that Winters improved upon with this game was that he never tells the player how they should feel. He just lets the setting tell itself. Even the alternate ending (the less favorable one) is not given judgment by the author.

The reason I didn't rate this game higher is that the atmosphere didn't grab me as much as I would have liked. Room descriptions are sparse. Rarely do we get any details other than the objects we need to manipulate. Smells and sounds are not described very often. And with one pretty great exception (Spoiler - click to show)(the timed sequence with injecting Adrian), there's never a sense of dread or urgency, which there should be fairly regularly in a horror game.

I very much look forward to Winters' next effort.