Reviews by deathbytroggles

With a Kafkaesque dystopia the author must be very careful that while the world is constantly spinning around the protagonist that the viewer in addition to being misdirected doesn't feel cheated. For the most part Finley does his job here.

I played this twenty years ago and played it again just recently (because I had honestly forgotten most of it) and was swept away both times. I have generally enjoyed frequent plot twists as long as they're fun (e.g. Wild Things) and don't negate everything that came before (e.g. The Game). Multiple times while playing Kaged I thought to myself "Hey, this isn't logical" (Spoiler - click to show) like when the guard was conveniently asleep knowing that in this government that would be dangerous), or the code on the matchbook for no reason and then it would be revealed later that I was correct and the inconsistency was intentional. I also felt like many of the plot twists were foreshadowed so that I didn't feel cheated at the end. (Spoiler - click to show)My favorite was being told that the Commissar had front-row seats to the execution, very cheeky. I also figured out the final twist with about five minutes of play time left (Spoiler - click to show) because of all the cameras which was a brilliant move by Finley. Throughout the game I felt empowered and thrilled by the chase, until right near the end where I felt powerless but compelled to press on. The parallels between the story and my experience as a player were often step for step.

My only critique of the structure was the ability to die at several different points along the way. While I understand that seemed necessary to conceal the ending, it feels like in retrospect that those ways of ending the story do indeed negate the final ending.

Many have commented that the puzzles are poorly clued. I frequently use walkthroughs while playing and I didn't have to resort to one here. And I felt many of the puzzles were heavily clued (Spoiler - click to show)(the armband one especially, and even how to help the boy) but your mileage may vary. However, there is one structural issue (Spoiler - click to show) being allowed to access the 10th floor before helping the boy that killed the plot flow a bit early on.

Finley's writing is, as always, a treat and despite the game's flaws I was happy to be along for the ride.

When I played Night Guard / Morning Star last year I noted that I was captivated by the writing and atmosphere and turned off by the multitude of endings. I feel similarly after playing Dalmady's Cactus Blue Motel and I'll dive further into the reasons why.

The general conceit of interactive fiction is that you are the primary character. The playing character may be a cipher, such as in Zork, or a specific character, such as Maria Elena here. Regardless, you are making decisions for that person.

In a pure puzzler, the author hopes to engage the player in the game's objective. In a comedy, the author hopes to make the player laugh, and character development may or may not be necessary. Drama, I suspect, is the hardest genre for IF authors, as they must make the player care about the characters, unwaveringly, for the entire game. The CYOA format highlights this difficult task, as there are no real puzzles to distract the player.

Dalmady succeeds, as usual, in building a fun atmosphere with compelling characters. A mystical desert motel where time is squishy is ripe for intrigue. But the game's format, unfortunately, usurps the development of Maria Elena. Eight endings are written for Maria Elena and the decisions that impact those endings are based on how you interact with her two friends, Lex and Becky, throughout the game. There are no puzzles and nothing to deduce, so all of the game's real choices are impacted by Maria Elena herself.

For my first playthrough, I made choices for Maria Elena by projecting my desires for her character. Subsequent playthroughs to find different endings required me to project different desires onto her. This requires me, essentially, to divorce myself from how I feel about our protagonist. I am no longer rooting for her, but rooting for myself to find different endings. Dalmady sidesteps the awkwardness a bit by making these choices not impact the course of the plot or even much of the game's dialogue; however, this in turn has the side effect of the eight endings feeling somewhat arbitrary (not to mention a chore to find via repetitive restarts), and Maria Elena's relationships wind up seeming so fragile that a couple of fairly innocuous comments drastically changes the course of their lives.

In the end, the focus on these three characters and their fates detracted from the game's best character, the motel. Such is the bane of CYOA: the focus dedicated to plot branches necessarily gives everything else less importance.

When looking at the reviews so far for this game I am, frankly, surprised and appalled. A plurality of folks (probably well-meaning folks, but you never know) gave it only one star. Please bear with me as I dissect how very wrong they are.

I know we can't strictly rate games by their time period but one has to give credit to Rob Noyes to not falling into the traps that were common for the time.

Instant Death Rooms: None to be found. In fact, you are given fair (one might even say explicit) warning of any possible deaths. Zarf would have no choice but to give this game a merciful rating, a rarity in 1996.

Crimes Against Mimesis: None to be found. There is no need to explain why a phone booth is in a nondescript New England town in 1996, as phone booths were still fairly common. Even the haunting message from the operator one hears upon victory (is it victory?) is a testament to the harsh realities of telecommunication in the nineties.

Unrealistic Inventory Restrictions: None to be found. In fact, much like today's games that aren't as obsessed with inventory, you are strongly discouraged here from carrying anything!

Guess The Verb: I found at least one synonym for the game-winning action, and the most obvious verb is used anyway. One might argue that the puzzle itself is a leap of logic, but honestly, who hasn't wanted to do that to a phone booth?

Confusing Maps: Wait, so when I go southwest from the castle entrance to the antechamber, I have to go north to get back to the castle entrance? I don't know either, man. What I can tell you is that you won't have to worry about a map. Just you, a phone booth, and your wits.

Absurd Length: Noyes really anticipated the player of 2020. Who hasn't played Curses! or The Muldoon Legacy and died a little inside from the monotony (and a little on the outside from banging one's head into the monitor)? No such worries here. You can play this entire game and still have time to take your dog for a walk or remember to feed your children.

I could go on, but needless to say if you haven't given Noyes' timeless classic a try then you've probably lived too complicated a life.

One of the challenges of Twine games is to be more than just an interactive text dump or CYOA. There's nothing wrong with those formats, of course, but I was bred on Infocom and crave deductive reasoning in my text adventures. Black Sheep provides plenty of that and is three-fourths of a great game.

While playing I was reminded of The Longest Journey. Other than some of the sci-fi elements there's not a lot in common between the games, but I couldn't shake the feeling I had that I was in the same world. And believe me that's high praise. This game pulled me in from the start, and when I discovered that I was in a time loop I was extra giddy. Learn-by-dying is a well worn trope for sure, but its beauty is that it grants the player freedom to explore without the anxiety of making (permanent) mistakes. Other tropes played for full effect are the buddy cop (in this case an android) whose dead-pan delivery is quite amusing as well as the monolithic coldness of the bad guys.

Most of the tasks involve fairly logical inventory puzzles, though a couple are a bit obtuse and in one case I had to resort to a walkthrough without guilt. There are also several red herrings that gave the game more depth without being unfair. Otherwise you need to deduce the mystery by essentially combining clues together from your notebook. This is not always satisfying, because as I progressed through the game I deduced the mystery before the character did and before I could go ahead and solve it I had to figure out which clues to combine to get her to realize it.

My only other critique is the ending, which felt rushed. To that point the writing had been rather tight and I was hoping for an epic climax or a satisfying denouement, of which there were neither. Still, a very solid first game by the authors and I hope to see more from them.

An absolute delightful treasure romp in the vein of Hollywood Hijinx (only with loads more charm), Sugarlawn had me simultaneously hooked yet a tad frustrated.

I do love a logical treasure hunt and a game show might be the most realistic modern raison d'etre for taking everything not nailed down. And because it's a game show it's clear from the beginning that replays will yield better results; thus, I was prepared for obsessive map-making and note-taking which I thoroughly enjoyed. What frustrated me is the nature of optimization puzzles. For a while I enjoyed finding shortcuts to improve my score, but after a while the diminishing returns were more exhausting than invigorating. For example, one way to improve optimization throughout your treasure hunt is to pick up or drop multiple items at the same time, which to me is more of a trick of the parser than a realistic strategy. So after four or five meticulous runs through the game I felt sated, despite several puzzles not yet being solved, because I knew even if I solved them I would never have the patience for peak optimization.

Despite this I wholeheartedly recommend playing it at least once, if for nothing but the fourth-wall breaking whimsy. It's always clear while playing that you're on camera (this fact is used for puzzle-design as well), and it's frequently played for laughs. If you regret a decision and type undo, a voice calls, "All right, we’ll just record over the last thing you did.” And I've always had a soft spot for New Orleans culture and history, and so I got to bathe in that to my heart's content.

I have to admit I was unfamiliar with this aspect of Scottish folklore and I am glad I was able to learn about it through interactive fiction. The author here has a solid grasp of the prose and was able to immerse me in the fate of the horse and the child. Though while I found this to be quite interesting, that’s the strongest emotion I felt while playing. There wasn’t enough knowledge of the characters for much pathos, and the branches of each choice were so narrow they didn’t feel like choices until the very end.

A potentially decent game for beginners as the story and settings are simple and charming and puzzles are straightforward. Unfortunately, the prose is isn’t as elegant as it could be and there’s a few missteps that break the storytelling. The first comes right at the beginning. To wit:

“...your car is to the south where a straight road with no traffic passes the store in an east-west direction…”

>x car
You can’t see any such thing.

Yes, it was simple enough to go south and then examine my car, but I started out annoyed and gave up on anything being too detailed.

The most glaring issue comes in the ending, when you read a letter from Old Jim, where it begins with “Hi there (your name).” Either this was a bizarre design choice or the author forgot to prompt the player to ever enter their name while playing.

I was looking forward to this game, hoping to learn something about one of the all-time great IF authors. Unfortunately, the only thing that I learned was that he got married and he invited some friends. I learned a bit about the author, including his aversion to Uber, but I would have rather just a read a story about his trip than playing this game. Perhaps it was the fairly banal descriptions of people and places. Perhaps it was the complete lack of puzzles while being force fed commands to type to advance the story. Perhaps it was all the spelling mistakes. But the entire exercise felt like a chore.

From the start it is obvious this is going to be a fairly standard, beginner IF. Room descriptions are sparse, what to do is almost always obvious. Still, I was hoping that it would be a fun ride. Unfortunately, there was not nearly enough beta-testing. Spelling and grammar mistakes abound. At one point you’re told if you have the right tool you can pry some nails and yet the game doesn’t understand the verb "pry." There are several other unimplemented synonyms. The game’s worst sin, however, is that this is supposed to be suspenseful yet you are frequently told how you should be feeling (e.g. “you are on edge”). As always, show, don’t tell.

This has the skeleton of a well-designed entry into the horror genre. The backstory is interesting and several of the puzzles are fun. But first it needs a rewrite.

A beautiful Twine game by veteran Astrid Dalmady, this nevertheless left me a bit cold. It’s funny how an art exhibition is practically an IF trope, and it was ripe for the Twine treatment. And while the use of medium is top notch, my feelings are mixed on the story. The prose is certainly evocative, though a bit melodramatic for my tastes and to the point where I find myself not sympathizing with our protagonist.

I quite enjoyed the first ending I came across where (Spoiler - click to show)Leonara becomes the artist, enough to try the game again. However, each ending I came across was less satisfying and made the story feel broken (I mean, really, (Spoiler - click to show)killing my mom is an option?). I enjoy multiple endings in a comedy or adventure game; but in a serious dramatic piece, I say tell the story you want to tell. Being able to change the PC’s morals on a whim feels gross when the stakes are this high.