Ratings and Reviews by RadioactiveCrow

I really feel like there was the seed of a good story here, but I just didn't get it. Most of the time I couldn't tell what was going on. On the one hand it seems like kind of a surreal/trippy story, but on the other there was more than one NPC scream-cussing at me and it definitely took me out of the mood of the story. There were very few choices in this piece, most sections of texted ended with a single hyperlink. In those few places where multiple choices were offered, sometimes the choices were not separated by a blank line, and because other "choices" were often a whole paragraph of text it was hard to tell if this was a really choice or a paragraph of just the next part of the story. I would recommend cleaning up the formatting in that regard so that when the reader gets an authentic choice they know it at a glance. On the plus side, the story had accompanying surreal illustrations and an atmospheric soundtrack.

I feel like surreal pieces, perhaps always, but especially in the case of this game, are really more about the author expressing something or working through something important to them in a way that only they fully understand. These kinds of stories are like the songs you hear on the radio with a catchy tune and lyrics that you can sing along with, but when you really listen to the words you have no idea what the song is about.

This is a well enough written and implemented, short choice-based piece, but I didn't think there was enough to me to grab on to in the story for me to come away with a lasting impression. I could easily see the characters and bits of conversation having meaning for the author, but I think the average reader will not know what to do with this. Surreal pieces like this need to have very well-defined themes and/or symbolism, punctuated with moments of clarity, so that even though it seems like you've been tossed in the middle of Wonderland, you can still ascertain what the author is trying to say. Perhaps some lines of angry or poignant dialogue that pull together the last few pages of haziness into some philosophical point. For me this piece was lacking enough of those elements to give me something to get out of it.

I feel like if you don't read the blurb on the IFComp website, then you will never have a clue what is going on in this story. Even if you do read it, your head will likely still spin.

I'm not sure if the author's first language is something other than English, or if they were trying to be exotic/futuristic with the way some words were spelled, or if there were just several dozen typos. Whatever the case, it made it really hard to stay in the rhythm of the story.

The choices given to you are minimal, and towards the end of this short piece, there is a segment of text that goes so long in between choices that I had to scroll the screen of my tablet several times to find the next hyperlink, all the while having no clue what was being talked about.

Finally, the game ends unceremoniously and without any indication that it is the end. The text just ends without another hyperlink. Either it ended or it was a glitch.

I hate giving one-star reviews, but I just couldn't find anything to like about this piece.

If you threw Europa Report, Aquaman, Abyss, The Core and maybe a touch of Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets into a witch's cauldron and made it spit out a comic book, you'd have this story. Add in a Myst-like atmospheric soundtrack and you have the game "Mermaids of Ganymede".

You play the commanding officer of a research vessel that crash lands on Ganymede, or rather crashes through the ice layer and sinks to the bottom of the ocean surrounding the core of Ganymede. Soon it becomes clear that you are not alone in the icy depths, and there is a whole world down there that no one knew about. Can you repair your ship and radio for rescue? Or will getting home require a different skill set you never thought you'd need on this mission?

The game is broken up into five chapters. The odd numbered chapters play out much like a traditional choice-based game, with you selecting a story path at various junctures, and making dialogue choices along the way. The even numbered chapters play out much more like puzzle-centric games, reminiscent of "Tavern Crawler" from IFComp 2020. The interface remains the same, but rather than being pushed down the main plot line with some ability to steer, it becomes much more open world, with you able to go to a wide variety of locations, backtrack as much as you'd like and have to solve a puzzle of some kind to be able to reach the next chapter.

I liked the story chapters a lot more than the puzzle chapters. In Chapter Two it took me awhile to realize that was what was going on and it threw me off a bit. Chapter Four (Spoiler - click to show)is a maze that is hard to wrap your head around the geography of given the very brief descriptions. Additionally, you can die (which I did four times before finally figuring out the right order of actions) and have to restart the chapter. That threw me out of the rhythm of the story. I think I would have rather than whole game been like the odd chapters.

The story itself was fun, if a bit cliched and not terribly deep, but I think appropriate to a game of this length. It did feel like the author was throwing every idea they had against the wall to see what would stick. The best part of the game were the multimedia elements and the atmosphere. From the illustrations, to the color of the text, to the background music (different for each chapter), it was easy to really see myself in the world that the author had created and stay immersed in the story.

The game is very polished and well worth your time, a great improvement from the author's entry in IFComp 2020. Given that improvement and all the things that worked well in this game, I'm eager to see what the author comes up with next.

This is a weird game. Not so much in that the gameplay itself is weird, more just that everything that happens is weird. These leads to a lot of laughs, but also some frustrations with the puzzles/parser. I would recommend a liberal use of the walkthrough for this game, as the enjoyment is more the story and dialogue, and less the puzzles. That said even the walkthrough itself (at least the one I used) got nonsensical towards the end, that or the author was playing one last joke on us, which is probably the case in retrospect.

Throughout the game you get to play the four members of the garage band AardVarK, sometimes forced to play one of the characters, but often being given the option to switch in between them at will. It begins with Jenni, the guitarist of the band, being exposed to a mind-altering soda being shilled at her high school campus, that seemingly turns all over her classmates into zombies. She must escape and, with the help of her bandmates, save the world! Thus the hijinks ensue.

As you can imagine this situation leads to all kind of weird encounters and interactions, many of them laugh-out-loud funny, as the band careens through this crisis on their way to saving the world with the power of rock'n'roll! The author does some fun things with the parser ((Spoiler - click to show)like replacing what you typed with a more zombie-like response at opportune moments), and some clever tricks with the interface ((Spoiler - click to show)like turning some text upside down - how was that programmed?! - with comedic timing). Also, the status bar at the top of the window was put to good use, making sure that you remember who you were playing and what your current task was, which was helpful during some confusing moments.

I can't say that I was a big fan of the puzzles though. Some of them involved kind of off-the-wall solutions that didn't make a ton of sense or follow a logical path. Some solutions were adjacent to the ones I came up with on my own, those kind you frequently find in parser games where you had the right idea, you were just typing the wrong words. Some solutions were hinted at very subtly and I missed the clues (though usually because I was enjoying the story at the point and not in detective mode), other puzzles it seemed like the solution was (Spoiler - click to show)just to wait long enough, literally typing "z" over and over again would do it, for the game to tell you exactly what to do. There were also a few minor implementation problems. All in all, the puzzle portion of the game I feel took me out of the rhythm of the story a bit, so again, use the walkthrough any time you feel yourself getting frustrated and enjoy the game more for the humor than anything else. Certainly worth your time.

So what can you say about this game? I'm not sure. It is the second year in a row that the author has entered IFComp with a weird game that has almost no story, but rather is filled with a handful of little word or logic puzzles. I didn't really care for last year's game either, but I thought at least there was a really clever mechanic in the "boss fight" scene. With this game though I couldn't find much to appreciate.

The scene is straight-forward, you are have handcuffed your own hands behind your back in a flubbed attempt at practicing a magic trick and now you have no way to get free. However, you borrowed a gadget from a friend recently that might help: the eponymous egg. You can give it one word voice commands and it can perform a wide variety of tasks. Imagine Alexa, but with mechanical arms, drones and robots to carry out your wishes. The catch is that it was jostled in transit recently and so not all functions are available to it.

So is this a game where instead of commanding the egg to pick the lock of your handcuffs? Sadly, no. Instead it is a game of waiting for the egg to repair itself until the LOCKPICK function becomes available. In the meantime the egg throws verbs at you (functions that have been restored) which you can then parrot back to see egg perform a number or random, sometimes goofy, tasks. So like I said in the title, this isn't a parser game in the sense that you tell the game verb and noun combinations (all your commands are a single word), rather the egg gives you suggestions and then you are the one stepping to. It is either that or typing "z" repeatedly while waiting for the endgame. Along the way there are a few very simple puzzles to complete, but nothing challenging or enjoyable.

So I just don't get this game. I'd love to hear from someone else who has a better experience as to what you liked about it.

This piece strikes me as a very personal story from the author. Nothing at all like their entry in last year's IFComp (which I very much enjoyed). Kind of a journal entry and therapy session played out in the creation of this work of Twine. I'm not sure if the author explicitly said so in the blurb or intro to the piece, but it feels like this is a slightly fictionalized re-telling of things that actually happened to them. I hope that they have been able to heal a bit by sharing their story with others.

Perhaps because I haven't shared any of the experiences in the story it was hard for me to relate to this piece. I think I'm just not the target audience. The story is extremely (maybe completely) linear, where the few choices that you are given are often just different ways to say the same thing. I've found that if you aren't given enough agency to choose the personality of the character you are playing, then if you don't relate to that character sometimes the game just misses you. That was the case here. The short sections alternate between fandom discussions of anime, programming a website, online SFW role playing and discussions of the main characters home woes. The only sections I was really interested in were the last kind, and they seemed infrequent and over quickly. Again, because I'm pretty sure these were real experiences it makes sense to switch back and forth between these scenes in this way, just not sure it makes for the best story structure.

Honestly, my enjoyment of this game was closer to the two-star level, but because I know the game was important for the author to make and will hopefully be important for some others to read, and because I do want others to play it in case it does speak to you, I gave it three stars.

First let me say that this game would have been much better if it had been a choice-based game. I think the author learned Inform 7 to make "The Eleusinian Miseries", his IFComp entry in 2020 (my personal favorite from that comp and one of the best first games ever), and just stuck with it for this game. Sadly, I think making this a parser game detracted from it overall. That said, it doesn't take long to play and is still worth your time.

The game is a combination of personal memoir, tribute to the author's twin sister, and diatribe against bees (preach!). It is broken up into six vignettes, all personal experiences of the author, each punctuated by a bee sting (or twenty).

The second section (and to a lesser extent the fourth section) frustrated me greatly as I couldn't find a rhythm with the parser. It seemed like I was always getting scolded for either waiting or trying to talk, and in the meantime a lot of sailing jargon was being thrown at me and it was up to me to guess which words of that mumbo jumbo (land-locked pleb here) I was supposed to parrot back to the parser to get the game to progress. My advice to future players would be to just fight through that second section in whatever way possible to get to the rest of the game, which is much better.

In the end the game becomes a story of love, both the romantic and sibling variety, where it was found and where it was missed. All the while getting stung by bees (what rotten luck!).

Halfway through the second segment this felt like a two-star game, but at the end it felt closer to four stars. I'll settle in the middle with three with the knowledge that this game will probably stick with me a lot longer than other three star games.

(Spoiler - click to show)My sincere congratulations and condolences to the author. I hope you keep making games, Mike. F--k bees and f--k cancer. Prayers and best wishes.

IFDB helpfully informed me recently that this is the only game that I've rated, but not reviewed. Time to remedy that, though apologies as, even though I've played this game three times, it has been at least a year since my last playthrough and my memory has faded a bit. This will be a shorter review than normal.

In this game you play an elf "In the Service of Mrs. Claus" who runs things at the North Pole (really another dimension populated by gods, dreams and things that go bump in the night), now that Santa himself is dead. You have a wide range of options in selecting your characters appearance and personality, and indeed a pretty wide range of options at almost every junction. I'm not familiar with the general Choice of Games style that much (though I hope to be more in the future), but I actually could have done with less choices. It seemed to me like they were coming at me pretty fast, and that the choices, especially at minor moments, where myriad and long. Thus, of all the words I read in this story perhaps a good 10% were not actually part of the story I chose.

The plot is wide ranging and deals with both magic and tech, with humans and your fellow extra-dimensional beings. There a bit each of mystery, romance, intrigue, combat, along with a heavy dose of magic. The game is very well implemented and even when choosing a wildly divergent path on the second playthrough I could see where the author had both incorporated my changes into pivotal scenes that I'd played through before, as well as providing new whole new scenes to enjoy.

In the end the plot just didn't quite grab me and I didn't feel as attached to the characters as I have in some other CYOA-type stories. It was fun with lots of variety, but didn't feel that deep to me. I hope the author tries his hand at choice-based work again though (he is better known for puzzle-centric parser games which are usually great). I think this game was a solid first effort and I'm eager to see what he comes up with next.

This is a truly wonderful game. I don't give out five star ratings often and when I do it means that I'll be voting for it in the next IF Top 50 list that Victor Gijsbers complies every four years. That's how much I like it.

The game is set in a fairly standard fantasy-style world. It begins with you as a student at university on the day you have to pick your "major": Magic, History or Combat. Then the rest of the game spans the next 13 years of your life as you graduate, start your career, try to find love (as the author states, the game is part dating sim) and deal with whatever else life might throw your way.

I don't want to give anything else away without warning, but I have to discuss the plot and mechanics in more detail. Relatively minor spoilers to follow, I don't think your enjoyment of the game will be lessened by reading them before playing, but maybe go play the game for 15 minutes first and then come back and finish the review. ;-)
(Spoiler - click to show)
At the end of the 13 years on your first playthrough (there will be many), one of your old classmates, Jo, shows up to tell you that the world is ending. A magical comet will impact your world later that day just outside your city, destroying everything. Jo uses a relic, a magical stone/gem, to stop the comet, but they aren't satisfied. Other bad things happened over the past 13 years that they couldn't stop, and they think you can do better. So they use another relic to send you back in time to the beginning of the game, but with the knowledge of what is to come you have to find a way to save some, or all, of the world. From there you get to live your life again, and again, making different choices, learning what you can until you are able to stop the comet too. If you do then you've reached the end, but still the time-bending relic appears and you are given one more choice: be satisfied with what you've accomplish and stay in that timeline, or put your hand on the relic and start over again. Maybe next time instead of just averting disaster you can make a better life for others too. Maybe even find someone to spend the rest of your life with, after the comet is destroyed, that part of your life you haven't lived dozens of times over. Thus begins the real game.

I imagine that time-loop/"Groundhog Day"-esque games can get very cliched. And certainly this game doesn't really deviate from the usual tropes. What makes it great are two things: the emotion/heart of it (to be discussed more after I end the spoiler section) and the way that the author worked the puzzles into the game. Each playthrough you aren't just making life choices, you are trying to find new ways to discover knowledge, to learn the secrets you need to know to save the world. Discovering something on one playthrough will open up new options to you on the next. I'm not sure, but it seems that on some playthroughs, randomly or through some mechanism I didn't figure out, there are certain options available to you that aren't on other playthroughs. When those popped up the temptation for me to explore a never before taken path was too great and led to some really sweet moments. All in all, puzzling through how to construct my ideal timeline was fabulous and there were plenty of "Aha!" moments, more common to parser puzzlers, that gave me great enjoyment upon their discovery.

This game was marvelously implemented, the text always adapting to both what had happened recently and many cycles ago. I'd love to see how it was coded. It took me 21 lifetimes to figure out how to destroy the comet and an additional 8 on top of that to reach an ending where I was happy to stay.

What really makes this game great though is the heart of it and the emotions that it evokes. Usually, a game described as a "dating sim" would not be up my alley, but in this game it feels less like a gimmick to scratch a romantic itch and more just the tale of true human connection. And beyond romance, their are plenty of options for just making a friend, or helping strangers. Chances for selfishness and self-sacrifice. Triumph and sorrow at what your friends accomplish, and in how they choose to live and die. Every character has depth if you want to know it, and as you do you feel a real connection to this world.

As far as I can tell this game was just published unceremoniously to itch.io, not entered in any comps. This day in age it feels like any game that I play that wasn't entered in a comp is at least 10 (if not 40!) years old. I think this game would have had a great chance at winning any comp it had been entered in and it wouldn't surprise me to see it on the next Top 50 list!