Reviews by deathbytroggles

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.

I grew up on choose-your-own-adventure stories, and one thing that often frustrated me was that the random decisions came with no deduction, resulting in little reward for the good endings or anguish at the bad endings. In rare cases, there was a story where only one good ending existed. I much prefer this style, as it helps me feel invested in each decision. Tristan Jacobs follows that style here with (s)wordsmyth.

The setup here is intriguing, what with the sidekick that is a very chatty sword (don't worry, it makes sense!). On your way to revenge your master you encounter various adversaries from Japanese mythology (and at least one from Roman mythology). Each encounter presents with a decision-tree that often takes three to six correct choices in order to pass (with occasionally some minor room for midstream correction). For the most part, I found the correct choices to make sense and they fit the moral of the story well.

Generously, if you fail at any point in the game, you are brought back to the beginning of the section to try again. Unfortunately, this still requires quite a bit of clicking to advance the story and my wrist was literally sore by the end. Now, part of that is on me as for one scenario I think I managed to pick all ten bad endings before finally choosing the correct branch.

The graphics are easy on the eyes, and I quite enjoyed the noise the text scroll made, reminiscent of Japanese RPGs from the 80's (Dragon Quest comes to mind).

I was not as invested in the characters as I would have hoped. The player character is explored very little, and I was hoping to find the sword more charming. Still, very solid game design and cool idea.

A linear, very short story about a woman missing being home and the women in her life who support her. Becci does some really cool things with Twine on the graphical end of things; the imagery is gorgeous. The story is not particularly deep, but it's heartfelt and something many people I'm sure can relate to. I almost want to try some congee!

What a delightful little story. This has the charm of Birdland without the depth. And it also has goats, and you can’t go wrong with goats. The color scheme and text is very easy on the eyes, and the prose is whimsical. There are four paths and they can all be found in about ten minutes. I can’t say I’ll ever come back to this but it was a charming interlude during the 2020 IFComp.

I grew up on BASIC and Commodore 64 games, so all my appropriate nostalgia cylinders were firing. Unfortunately, this game is so incredibly basic I’m unable to find the appeal. In fact, this was the type of game when I was a kid that I loathed, what with only binary choices and extremely vague descriptions. I have to believe this is intentionally terrible, a meta joke as it were. For example, you can get the exact same option twice in a row and get different results for the same choice, making one believe the strategy guide included is indeed part of the joke.

I played this longer than I normally would have given the author. Bravo to Montfort for taking the effort to program in an ancient language.