Ratings and Reviews by RadioactiveCrow

Moved my review to the fourth installment's page, search for "The Land Down Under" by the Marino Family

Oh man. I almost held off reviewing this one because I wanted to see what others had to say about it first, in hopes other reviews would help me understand it better. But this isn't the first Chandler Groover game I've played and so my guess is that I'm not meant to understand it fully, so here we go.

This game is really more a statistically based puzzle game than interactive fiction. There are plenty of words to read, but I'm pretty sure they would only make sense if you lived in the absurd world of the story. The puzzle itself involves accumulating fish or tech related stats, like brine and bytes, by putting religious-themed "disks" into processing slots, sometimes accompanied by what I think is an AI, and clicking submit to see what kind of stats you get. After hitting submit each time you get a few lines of text adding color, but a really weird color like Smaragdine, to the world. The rules of the game are barely explained to you, so it is just up to trial and error to figure out how to accumulate the necessary stats fast enough to win the game. I was starting to notice the pattern towards the end of the game, but I wasn't into it enough to keep playing and fine tune it.

Because all the text was so weird and I wasn't able to pick a story out of it, it quickly devolved in to me just clicking as quick as I could to try different combinations of disks and slots to reach the end of the game. I love Groover's game "Eat Me" and it was the first of his I played. Since then I've always played his games early in each IFComp, hoping for more greatness, but mostly finding weird mood pieces. I'd love to hear from someone that really enjoyed this game to help me understand it better.

I didn't care for this piece much. As the author notes, it is a short story he wrote some time ago turned into a very linear Twine piece, where the only interactivity is clicking on a few words to get some extra details. There are no branches in the narrative and there is only one ending. On top of that the story is really weird, like Upstream Color weird, and I didn't get it. Sorry.

It was clean execution though, and I appreciated the author's "About" page at the end.

This is a primarily a straightforward choice-based piece, but there are lots of visual bells and whistles to accompany the text. Pop-up panels (not pop-up windows, don't worry) to add details, changing choices depending on which details you decide to examine, and other visual/text effects. And I've never seen them put to better use. Usually visual effects in text games don't add a lot to the story, they are mostly distractions or an author/programmer showing off. But in this story they are on point.

You play a cybernetically enhanced woman, making her living in a high-tech brothel. But your enhancements are not for use in your sex work, as you might expect in a story like this, but rather the result of experiments on you as a child, and you prefer to keep them hidden from the world. One of the benefits to this tech is a hyper-awareness of the world around you, implemented by flashing or stylized words in the text that you can click on to examine that aspect of the story in superb detail. At times these additional observations will alter the choices available to you, with new choices delivered in a corresponding color and typed out quickly, one letter at a time, the perfect choice to strengthen the mood. To me, it felt like some of the opening scenes of Terminator 2, with your electronic components giving you micro-reports on the environment and people around you, directly to your HUD/consciousness. It really helped me embody the character.

I'm looking forward to playing through it again when I have time, hopefully when the next installment comes out, as this is meant to be the first in a series of stories.

My only compliant would be that the pivotal scene, at least in my playthrough, when you are (Spoiler - click to show)fighting with the mysterious woman in your massage room, drags a little bit for what should be a fast-paced and tense scene, and that some parts of it are vague/confusing as to what Elizabeth is perceiving to be happening (I'm sure more will be explained in future installments though). A very minor downside to an otherwise entertaining experience.

This game is part of IFComp 2020, so if you are reading this in October or November of 2020 head over to ifcomp.org and sign up to be a judge. You can play this and other wonderful games and vote on which authors should win cash prizes!

Honestly, at first I wasn't into this piece (which was partly due to playing it on a phone rather than a computer and having the status sidebar cut off). It didn't seem particularly deep or all that interactive. But once I understood how it worked, the mechanics that would influence the rest of the game, I really got into it.

I don't want to spoil anything at all since the game is so short, I would just recommend giving it a whirl. I will just say that I thought it does a great job capturing the magic that great fiction can have on the imagination, and by extension on mood and mental health as well. The author also did a nice job of making use of the hyperlink controls to illustrate the magic at work, both with changing text and fonts.

Well worth the time for any lover of fiction!

This game is part of IFComp 2020, so if you are reading this in October or November of 2020 head over to ifcomp.org and sign up to be a judge. You can play this and other wonderful games and vote on which authors should win cash prizes!

"The Magpie Takes the Train" is the authorized sequel to "Alias 'the Magpie'" by J.J. Guest. You once again assume the role of the eponymous gentleman thief, this time riding a train in hopes of stealing a priceless jewel right off the lapel of an aging steel magnate. Pretty much the entire game takes place in a single train car, which had me confused at first as this was the first one-room game I've played. But once you realize that (or after reading this) you will get into the groove of the game's mechanics, which I found very clever and made the puzzles a joy to work out. I feel like there are enough hints along the way, plus a limited number of choices, that if you read carefully and try messing with everything in the usual IF style then you will have the satisfaction of solving the game without hints. However, the author has provided a walkthrough if you need it.

This game also has some features that make it extremely user-friendly and cut out some of the tediousness of other games that require (Spoiler - click to show)waiting for certain conditions to be right before a puzzle can be solved. I also thought the conversation system was good and fit with this size of game perfectly, no playing "guess the topic" that will advance the gameplay.

The prose is excellent and laugh-out-loud funny at times (particularly when you try the amusing things suggested after you beat the game for the first time). Mathbrush is a long time IF author and one of the most passionate and dedicated advocates for IF that I've encountered. So far I've only had the chance to play one of his other games ("In the Service of Mrs. Claus", available from Choice of Games, which will certainly give you a lot of bang for your buck), but I look forward to playing more.

This game is part of IFComp 2020, so if you are reading this in October or November of 2020 head over to ifcomp.org and sign up to be a judge. You can play this and other wonderful games and vote on which authors should win cash prizes!

This game took me by surprise in that it is a hypertext choice-based game that is basically one big puzzle that involves clicking the choices in the right order. It takes place during a critical moment in a woman's life that is pretty much spoiled from the beginning ((Spoiler - click to show)she finds out she's pregnant, presumably for the first time). There isn't a lot of dwelling on the emotions or impact of the moment, each screen is only 2-3 sentences long until you get to the end. It is mostly the mechanics of moving around performing the actions in the right order and in the right place to get to the ending. It just struck me as weird.

It also involves the dreaded timed-text several times.

This is really just a short limited choice conversation, with a picture of very expressive eyes that change based on where the conversation goes. Very small, but I like the idea. If having responsive eyes or a face popped up in longer game as part of the conversation mechanic, I think that would add a lot to it.

So great experiment and I want to see more, but not really a game in and of itself.

Forgive me, Amy, for getting to this review so late. I played the game for last year's IFComp and tweeted about how much I liked it, but totally forgot to review it here.

Thinking back on this game I think I like it more now than I did when I first played it (and I liked it then!), might go back and play it again too. There's a lot of content to discover for such a short game. The game takes place after a break-up and follows the ex-girlfriend driving out with one of her friends to break some of the ex-boyfriend's stuff. There are lots of things to break, with each scene being a reflection on different aspects of relationships.

Play through this game at least twice and make different choices at the critical junctures each time. I want you to discover my favorite scene on your own, but you can check below to see how to get there if you want.

My Favorite Scene:
(Spoiler - click to show)
After breaking stuff you get to "the following night". Choose "Call Libby" when it comes up, then "Call Libby. NOW!". This scene got me all misty-eyed when I first read it. The love and desperation in this scene really hits you in the chest. Bravo!

I very much enjoyed playing this game. It is a parser-based, puzzle-filled game in the classic style of Infocom's "Deadline".

You play a gentleman thief (think Danny Ocean) and master of disguise, on a mission to steal a priceless jewel (and anything else you might find of value along the way). You roam about a two-story manor and the surrounding grounds, trying to find a way to get at the prize, while also having to solve a few minor mysteries along the way.

The size and length of the game are easily digestible. I was navigating without a map an hour into the game and it took me a little over three hours to complete (and I was definitely barking up the wrong tree a couple times). The puzzles were very fair (with one notable exception). I felt like there were plenty of clues to guide you along the way, and also a few red herrings to keep it from being too easy. The game is also very funny, with some off-the-wall characters, hilarious situations and always polished and clever prose.

The game, I think, pays homage to Deadline in a number of fun ways that I found enjoyable, including a (Spoiler - click to show) somewhat hidden room between two bedrooms, balconies that you had to access via ladder, and a curmudgeonly groundskeeper.

For my one problem with the game, I thought there was one puzzle that I never would have solved on my own without the walkthrough. Even the in game hints didn't do enough to get me to the solution. So if you are stuck and you've been over everything twice and you still don't know what to do next, see below for my own Invisiclues to help you get through it. But don't let that scare you, you should definitely play this game!

1)(Spoiler - click to show)
Are you trying to get your hands on the giant cucumber? If not, then I would just recommend examining everything and trying to "get" everything again, because these clues are cucumber-centric.

2)(Spoiler - click to show)
What if I told you there was a way to get the cucumber without finding the key to the padlock?

3)(Spoiler - click to show)
Good, because there is no key to that padlock. So what else can we try? In case of cucumber emergency...

4)(Spoiler - click to show)
...break glass. But wait, if the under-gardener hears us then the jig will be up. How can we break the glass quietly?

5)(Spoiler - click to show)
Maybe if we put something soft over the glass before we break it to muffle the sound. But we haven't been able to procure anything soft for the job, so what else do we have? Maybe the newspaper?

6)(Spoiler - click to show)
Okay, but plain newspaper won't really muffle it at all. What if the newspaper were wet?

7)(Spoiler - click to show)
If you are an American like me, you probably have no idea what treacle is. Apparently you can eat it, but mainly, if you put newspaper in it then it will turn the newspaper into a silencer for your clandestine glass breaking operations. Give it a try and good luck with the rest of the game!