Ratings and Reviews by deathbytroggles

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.

Finding that there’s a new game by Robb Sherwin is like opening up the first present on Christmas morning. Discovering that he didn’t code it is like knowing you’re not going to find a sweater inside.

Sherwin’s writing, as usual, is sardonic and full of referential humor aimed at children of the 80’s (despite being set in a future that frequently references the hellscape that is 2020), with not-so-subtle regular doses of liberal ideology from the PC. If that’s not your thing then there’s probably not a lot for you here. That’s not to say the game is about any of those things, but its strength lies in the writing. I chortled at least a half-dozen times and I enjoyed exhausting all conceivable actions in every area just to keep reading (and then replaying with the list of amusing things to try).

The game is designed to keep you moving, with the puzzles being perfunctory and the conversation prompts inserted for pacing. The game wants you to get to know the characters, easily unravel the investigation, and find the jokes. Sousa’s coding is excellent. The game understands tons of variations on things you are trying to do while also often correcting your own spelling mistakes like a Google search. And even if you find yourself stuck, there are gradual in-game hints. I had to reference them once (Spoiler - click to show)(for the snake puzzle) during the one time in the game where you must help the PC deduce the solution even if you, the player, already instinctively know the answer.

While Jay Schilling feels similar to most Sherwin characters, the highlight here is the parrot and dog that follow you around for half the game. I won’t spoil anything other than to say they are used for puzzles while also becoming the games’ pathos.

Nineteen years ago Sousa and Sherwin paired up for No Time To Squeal early in their respective IF careers. While that game had its highlights, it was a bit of an awkward and confusing mess. Jay Schilling’s Edge of Chaos is consistently delightful from beginning to end.

I was really looking forward to playing Vespers after reading reviews that it had similarities to Anchorhead, though I was left underwhelmed. I'm bummed, too, since Vespers has so many good things going for it.

The setting is damn near perfect. Playing a monk during the plague, watching everyone decompensate and die around him, is ripe for vivid imagery and tension. At times the game reaches that pinnacle. There are many subtle changes to the environment that occur as everything collapses, and in general, reexamining things on a regular basis is horrifying and rewarding. I also appreciate that while time moves forward with plot triggers, they are not always obvious at the time, which helped keep me in the moment. In this way Vespers succeeds as a successor to Anchorhead.

For me, though, just about everything else here is a misstep. The most egregious is that the game frequently does not remember things you have already done. I counted at least four instances on my first playthrough where the descriptions given do not match what is actually happening. For example, (Spoiler - click to show)if you ask Lucca about the flagstone while he's locked in the calefactory, he responds as if he's still in Matteo's room. Also, if you examine the bell after Matteo dies, the game responds as if he's still alive. While it's not expected that an author catch every single random thing a player can try, this happens more often in Vespers than just about any well-received game I've played, and it took me out of the moment every time.

The horror also didn't hit the right beats for me. Part of that is everything goes sour perhaps a little too quickly, so while I'm still digesting one horror, the next one is thrown at me before I have time to relax. By the end I was a bit numb to it all. I think part of that is also I didn't have time to really get to know any of the other monks, and with the exception of Drogo, they all kind of seemed the same to me. I wasn't invested in any of their fates, so when terrible things happened, I just shrugged it off.

I'm lukewarm on the multiple endings based on the moral choices you make. Vespers avoids the pitfalls of Tapestry, in that you aren't force fed choices and nothings feels overly moralistic. On the other hand, it's hard to tell (unless you do something truly horrific) that you're even making moral choices most of the time. Adventurers tend to just take the easiest path, and to not find out until the end that there was a harder but more rewarding path feels like the game played me a bit. Wishbringer and Counterfeit Monkey offer a more satisfying alternative by telling you at the outset that most every puzzle has both an easy and a hard solution, and neither of them are right or wrong. Just different.

I'm a broken record at this point, but in a serious dramatic piece, I much prefer there be one story with one ending. Replaying Vespers by making more despicable choices feels very icky, as it's no longer a character I'm playing at this point but rather me deciding to do despicable things.

I did enjoy my first run-through and it was the right amount of difficult. But with all the problems I have no desire to see it through again.

This is probably the toughest review I've written so far as I'm not entirely sure how I feel about Turandot. I should note this is the first ChoiceScript game I've finished and it's not my preferred style of play.

I was immediately turned off by the game's first section, where we intimately are introduced to Calaf's misogyny. Gijsbers tries to play it for laughs, as the entire game is kind of a parody of the opera, which was terribly sexist. While I smirked at times, I just don't find sexism ripe for comedy.

Things definitely improve once we meet Turandot, as she is a revulsed by Calaf as anyone should be and has an appealing flare for the dramatic. Her running commentary as she sends Calaf through the trials to win her over is witty and endearing. I was less taken by her change of heart, as Calaf's self-actualization feels out of nowhere, though I have to admit I was rooting for him by the end. And the ending turns the game on its head one more time, making us once again reevaluate everything we thought of our characters and I was left feeling a bit dizzy (not to mention confused for Calaf's friend).

Ultimately, I gave this three stars because Gijsbers is an excellent writer and I was compelled for most of the ride. But I was left quite unsatisfied. Perhaps if this had been written as satire, with more focus on the historic racism of Orientalist operas, I would have appreciated it more. Instead it felt to me like a few different sketch comedies thrown together, full of some laughs but with an inconsistent theme.

I should also acknowledge the quite overt references (so overt that it would be hard to call them Easter Eggs) to several famous IF works sprinkled throughout, though I'm not sure why they are here. It reminds me of how out of place it felt to get an XYZZY response while playing Babel. Though I imagine I will never again find quite as satisfying a result to clicking "Show Stats."

One of the more emotional interactive fiction pieces I've played. The intro hits hard and the rest attempts to show us various snapshots of Fred's battle with Alzheimer's. The characters are drawn quite well; between my grandmother and my job I've been around many family systems going through the same thing and it all felt very real to me. Granade also does some interesting things with Twine that emphasize Fred's confusion.

I can't help but wonder if this could have been more powerful as a parser game. Take the scene where Fred (Spoiler - click to show)gets his wife some Tylenol. If I had more input than clicking hyperlinks I think an already heartbreaking scene would have ruined me. It would have forced me to take a more active role in fighting the unwinnable fight. As played it feels more like turning pages of a story.

The story jumps around quite a bit. For me it was a bit jarring and I think I would have enjoyed something more linear. But now I'm picking nits. Huge props to Granade for tackling this with earnestness and grace.