Ratings and Reviews by deathbytroggles

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.

Theatre was one the first modern IF games I played on the heels of Babel. I was immediately pulled in by the same plot device that Finley borrowed, what with the journal pages lying around to provide chilling backstory. I was also pleased that for the most part the puzzles are straightforward and the only way to put the game in an unwinnable state is doing something obviously stupid. For a while I had this one rated four stars.

I revisited this one again today and decided to lower my rating. I still enjoyed myself and finished it rather quickly, but several aspects turned me off this time around:

-- The reason you're stuck in the theatre is because you're in a "slum" and a "bad neighborhood" and a "thug" is waiving a knife at you for some reason. All of these words are steeped in racism. I'm sure that wasn't Wyber's intent and I used those same words regularly twenty years ago. And sometimes old things we like become painfully dated for similar reasons.

-- Other have mentioned this, but the writing is definitely uneven. There are some highlights for sure. Wyber never tells the player how to feel, which makes my heart sing, especially in the horror genre. And there are some good touches with the occasional sound or shadow that creeps around. But then there will periods of less subtlety, such as when you move some things around and, "You suddenly realise there was a body under the pile!"

-- The central Lovecraftian theme is intriguing, but other horror tropes are just thrown in that don't seem to fit and are never explained, such as (Spoiler - click to show)the possessed mannequins and the random cobra in a locker. Also, at one point a skeleton is said to be the source of a horrible smell. Decaying bones would not give off an odor.

-- Wyber breaks the fourth wall a few times to comment on his own writing, which doesn't help maintain the sense of dread one expects in horror.

Despite these criticisms I still am very fond of Theatre and am grateful that it led me to trying out Anchorhead. It's a solid entry in the Lovecraft genre and worth playing if you like that type of game.

For most adventure games historically, puzzles have been overwhelmingly frustrating and preposterous. The better efforts have tried to reduce contrivance or at least reduce the difficulty, but for the most part I don't think players enjoy them, at least for their own sake. For every puzzle that is satisfying, often several negate that feeling. Adam Cadre once said something along the lines of that most games are far better to have been played than to be playing. I often find myself agreeing.

One way to sidestep this problem is to make the puzzles the reason for the game and another way is to make them so goofy as to disarm the player. Guest succeeds on both accounts.

I immediately appreciated playing this because your adversary, Mr. Booby, is barely functional and if you decide you want to do something, you can do it without resorting to trickery. Booby's reactions to your subversion are the highlights for sure, my favorite being his calling for the local constable despite being thousands of feet up in the air.

Unfortunately there are a couple of puzzles that didn't quite land. The first was (Spoiler - click to show)figuring out how to clear the trombone; using violence still doesn't seem intuitive to me. The second puzzle was (Spoiler - click to show)saving Aunt Gertie. I was trying to make a parachute, not realizing that the answer would be as simple as "make parachute." I was trying to thread the needle first and wondering why the game didn't understand all my attempts and starting the process of sewing. I greatly appreciate the simplicity of the puzzle, but just wish the game would have guided me there when I was on the right track.

Thankfully, the game includes gradual hints for every puzzle and I accessed them guilt-free. In the end the goofiness won me over and I count this among the games I enjoyed playing while playing.

In high school I was in an abusive relationship; the song "Push" by Matchbox20 resonated with me so much that it became and still remains one of my favorite songs. Is it a great song? I don't know. I only know that it stirs within me something raw and profound.

I feel the same way with Spider and Web when it comes to "The Puzzle." I've been playing adventure games and puzzle games non-stop since I first played King's Quest in 1985 and there is no other puzzle that makes me feel this way. In my first playthrough twenty years ago, it gave me chills. I played it again this week, knowing the answer, and that familiar wave came over me again. I am in love with this puzzle. I want to marry it and have brilliant puzzle babies.

I could try to break down why it gives me all the feels. Perhaps it's the gradual buildup that is extremely well-clued but never obviously so. Perhaps it's the oneupmanship over the interrogator. Perhaps it's the extraordinary gift of getting to play back the entire game in your mind up to that point with the knowledge bestowed upon realizing the answer. Ultimately, though, it doesn't matter. No logical argument will sway my adoration nor my reverence.

For those who are fortunate enough to read this review and have the opportunity to play Spider and Web for the first time, for all that is good and holy do not resort to a walkthrough. If you must, use the Invisiclues linked to on the main page. And be patient with yourself. Let the game play you.

Please don't mistake my adulation for belief in perfection. There are parts I'm not a huge fan of. The gadgets could come with more of a tutorial, especially since our spy is an expert with them. And the end puzzle itself doesn't really fit in with the theme of the rest, leading to a whimper of a conclusion. But our loves don't need aspire to perfection. They just have to sing to us in a way that will touch our hearts and stay there forever.