Reviews by RadioactiveCrow

First, let me begin by saying that this has to be the pinnacle of IF programming. This game is large and deep, and amazingly robust with its responses to player input. I can't even imagine how much time Emily Short put into writing and testing it. Bravo!

As far as the user experience is concerned, this is a great game. It has a well-built environment/world, with backstory for both the setting and the characters. The characters aren't particularly deep, but much more fleshed out than your typical IF game, complete with memories that pop up to reveal more about you (the player character) and the NPCs.

The map is quite large and mostly revealed from the beginning of the game (I highly recommend playing with the built-in map on), but you aren't overwhelmed with possibilities. As you complete the main tasks in an area and clear roadblocks to advance to a new area, you rarely (if ever) have to go back to get an object that you didn't know was important the first time you came across it. I loved that, it both made the puzzles easier to wrap your head around and gave me a real sense of progress as you moved around the map.

The puzzles are revolutionary, using a mechanic that I don't think had been explored before (or since?) this game. It is a nice change of pace from the more mechanical or character-stimulus puzzles of other games. The only downside was that because the puzzles were all word/letter based, it got to be a bit repetitive and a few times a little too easy as it was obvious what you needed to progress and you just had to find an object one letter off from your solution.

I enjoyed this game a lot and appreciate it even more. A must play for any IF enthusiast.

So I had some thoughts that I was going to write here when I was about 60% of the way through the piece, but when I finished I read the About section and now I'm not sure any of it applies. The author notes that the majority of the text for this game was written by an algorithm that was seeded with some of the author's writing from the past 20 years. The result isn't so much surrealist as it is non-sensical and the choices you are offered don't steer the story, but rather just pick the next random piece of text for you to read. There isn't any story that I could discover in it. It is just a Jackson Pollock painting of words.

Clean execution. It is also accompanied by some nice music to further deepen the acid trip feeling.

My childhood best friend was Filipino; born in the Philippines, but moved to the US at a very young age. I would hang out at his house a lot and heard his mom speaking Tagalog quite a bit. I picked up a handful of words, including the curse words, along the way. All that to say that I think this story reached me in a way in might not reach others.

The game is very short and takes places completely over text messages. A mother tries to teach her child her native language, something she regrets not having done sooner. A choice-based game about the decisions immigrants have to make in the name of helping their children fit in to a new country, and children deciding if it is too late or not to connect to their heritage. A simple and heartwarming conversation.

This one is right on the edge of being a 4-star game for me. So very close, but I just couldn't quite pull the trigger on it. Consider it the best of all the 3-star games that I've played as of IFComp 2020.

This story seems very linear, though I've only played it once, with choice really only allowed at the most pivotal moments. It would work really well as a visual novel as it seems to fit that genre: comic book-style hero vs. villain. You get to see the story play out from both of their perspectives as they stop fighting and start trusting each other.

The writing is above average, but could use a little more polish. The presentation of the text I think also needs so work, as several times during rapid-fire dialogue I would get confused as to which character was speaking. Perhaps more indentation and a few "said" tags at times would alleviate this. Also, despite not having much choice, there was a lot of clicking involved. You don't get much of the story before you have to click some of the text to flip the page. I started to replay it right after finishing it, but all the clicking to just get to the first choice made me decide to save a second playthrough for another time. Perhaps the text is kept short so as to not obscure the backgrounds (what appear to be stock images used to represent the various locations). While I did appreciate the backgrounds to help aid in establishing the setting, perhaps after the opening line of a scene the text could then be displayed in larger chunks. I also think it would be wonderful if the studio was able to get custom art of each of the settings, though I realize that is expensive.

I think the story was just a bit too long, it probably could have had one less (Spoiler - click to show)coffee shop -> house -> lair -> battle cycle and still had the same impact. Also, the ending I got, one of the "good" ones, I think just barely didn't stick the landing. It was satisfying, but I had the feeling it could have been a bit more.

Sorry if this review seems overly negative, I don't mean it to be. Most of my criticisms are small and perhaps picking at nits too much. I really liked this story and the characters especially. I felt the mood change between them (especially from Promethium's perspective) and my heart warmed with theirs. I also felt the tension at the moments it felt like it all might unravel. The lesson to be learned from the characters is also an important one for this day and age.

Well done! I look forward to playing this again one day and to the next project to come out of the Storysinger studio.

As deathbytroggles stated, to really give any details on how this game works would spoil it, so look below for spoilers. My advice: play it through the first time until you die, then play it again as many times as possible for 5-10 minutes (or until you achieve victory). Personally, I found it frustrating and gave up before reaching the end. While the mechanic is very unique, I just don't see any way this could get worked into a longer, more traditional piece of IF without driving everyone crazy.

(Spoiler - click to show)I believe this IF game is only about timing. There are no choices to make other than when you hit the next button. While I got enough different outcomes to confirm that hitting the button too fast or too slow changes the story (usually by killing you), the story wasn't sufficiently interesting for me to fine tune it enough to reach the end. Your mileage may vary.

This short choice-based work is about being both sick and homesick, and the comfort that certain foods can bring to both kinds of illness. While primarily text, the game is accompanied by soft music and occasional illustrations that perfectly compliment the mood of the story. I don't want to say much more as the game is very short and I wish for everyone to experience it for themselves. But I will say this: I've only played this game once, and for the best reason. The path that I took and the ultimate outcome of the game felt so perfect and brought me such joy that I can't imagine finding a better one and I want to preserve this one playthrough in my memory, undiluted.

I really enjoyed playing through this game again this year (after having played, but not beaten it back in the 1980s). Yes, I understand how the phrase "Zork hates its player" came about, but at least because the tasks are compartmentalized and getting back to where you last were doesn't take more than a few minutes that it doesn't feel like a major setback to blow yourself up when you weren't expecting it. I had fun puzzling through everything (or at least most things, I had to cheat to figure out (Spoiler - click to show)the secrets of the egg) and even making the maps on my own, though I can see how those can become tedious as well.

Overall I thoroughly enjoyed myself and look forward to picking up Zork 2 and 3 for the first time ever, soon.

First off, is this the greatest piece of IF of all time as it was ranked so a few years ago? I don't know about that. Currently I'm only giving it 4 stars (though that may change with another play-through), and since I have at least one other game already rated as 5 stars I guess I don't consider it the best of all time. That said this is a truly great work and something that everyone should play-through at least once. There really aren't any game aspects to it, you are just walking yourself through a story. But the story is so immersive and the way the interactivity is used really draws you in. And there are a few magical moments that just wouldn't have been the same without the interactive part, that wouldn't have felt the same just reading it. It really did open up new possibilities in IF and really lives out its own classic line: "Let's tell a story together."

I'd recommend playing the Glulx version to allow the author's use of color to enhance the story.

When I first started plaything this game I didn't really like it. It seemed confusing and I wasn't sure what my purpose was. The writing seemed thick and I had trouble getting going. There was also a shade of the grotesque to it all that I wasn't into at first. But as I stuck with it I eventually came to appreciate it more and more until I was hooked. Groover's writing is wonderful, even operatic at times. The puzzle components were kind of hard to pick out from the flowery prose, but the solutions made sense in the internal logic of the game and every time you completed a "course" the reward was great. I'll definitely play through it again sometime to see how my opinion of it has grown.

ADDENDUM: I did indeed play this game again more than a year after my initial playthrough and my appreciation for it has grown. I imagine it will be on my ballot for the Top 50 IF Games Of All Time for a very long time.

This isn't really a game, but a short story (or medium-length story, I think it might have taken me 2 hours to play through) that is very engaging and makes clever use of the mechanics of Twine to make you feel what the main character is feeling (like when (Spoiler - click to show)you click on a word to choose your path and the word changes in the updated text). The ending was both great and heart-breaking.

ADDENDUM: The more I get into IF and also away from the idea that all IF should have "gameplay" elements the more I appreciate this piece. It is primarily a linear story, but one that makes use of the interactive aspects of IF very well. Will be on my Top 50 ballot for a long time.