Ratings and Reviews by Drew Cook

No More is a short, narrative-heavy Inform game that largely uses the EXAMINE command to advance a story about (Spoiler - click to show) a werewolf's transformation. Its sentences do not go to waste. Everything is either providing important background or else advancing the action.

As the story begins, the protagonist, a young woman, is forced by her clerical father into a horse-drawn carriage. Her sisters cry. The father handles her roughly; this is obviously an abusive situation. (Spoiler - click to show)In the carriage, the protagonist examines her setting: herself, father, a tantalizing window. After a few moments, the young woman draws open a curtain, letting moonlight in, transforming into a werewolf!

A lot has been written regarding monstrous entities and the way they can represent or reflect a person's status of an outsider or marginalized person. The father perceives the daughter as monstrous, and, rather than change, (Spoiler - click to show)she embraces her inner monster. This sort of immediate reversal is ideal for a short story; it's punchy and resists dilution. That isn't to say that there aren't shortcomings to this No More's implementation. A player with bad luck might miss a cue for examining something, which can stall the narrative.

If I had a nickel for every time I read a review lamenting the lack of interaction in a game, I would be writing this review on a newer laptop. Why don't I ever see anyone complain about the lack of fiction in our games? What is at the back of this inconsistency? Please don't mistake me; games without an emphasis on narrative have their place. But it often seems that there is a double-standard when it comes to critical responses to works of interactive fiction without a narrative emphasis.

What really strikes about No More is its unapologetic presentation as a narrative-first parser game. Having tried to work in this space myself, it's my experience that linear narrative is a hard thing to do well in a parser game. No More's narrative focus is realized by using an Inform feature, scenes, to manage the way the game's world appears as the story progresses. It's a very effective programming tactic, and we as players experience this narrative strategy as a developing understanding of the protagonist's circumstances. While the approach might have shortcomings, it is a novel and productive approach to solving a challenge in parser design.

I also want to acknowledge the use of story mode here to offer an accessible option for player's who struggle with parser gameplay or, alternately, just want to read the story. A story mode allows to read an author-curated transcript by pressing the "enter" key. This activity is different from reading a printed transcript, and I feel it comes closer to the played experience. Since No More is, after all, a story, I found the availability of this feature appealing. Story modes are not common, and only a few parser games offer them at this time, but I think the value proposition is very clear.

A short snack (heh) that is certainly worth the modest investment of time it requires.

I have never, until this very weekend, played Max Fog's Method in My Madness. One reason is that my spidey-sense tingles when I see the word "madness." I have a serious mental illness. I am not a person who has a major depression every few years (though that is a very real hardship), or a bipolar II who runs up the credit card every once in a while (though that is a real hardship). The federal government recognizes my mental illness to be so serious that it prevents me from sustaining employment. There is a stigma that goes with that. People don't respect it. My partner and I always think *hard* about how to answer the question "what does your husband do?" People feel pretty comfortable being weird about mental illness in public. Perhaps you've seen that around.

I may pay closer attention to representations of mental illness in media than many others because I have a lot of skin in the game.

Method in My Madness is about a person with an overpowering romantic obsession for a man named Cauchy. My initial impressions were very good! The text on-screen is arranged in a very artful and innovative way that conveys the disorganized thinking of the protagonist. Words flicker in and out. Some are horizontal, and some are rotated. Animations sometimes shift the words in interesting ways. I feel this does a very effective job of rendering the abstract situation of obsession as a sort of concrete poetics.

In an earlier time of life, I did have a hard time letting go of a romantic interest, and, while it was never as weird as what we see here, I could almost relate to it. I could see it in the distance. Romantic interest can baffle, confuse, and blind us. The protagonist goes too far, stalking Cauchy. They know when Cauchy takes the trash out, so they meet him there. The presentation of the game keeps pace with the events of the story, both making and confounding sense. It's a mixture that works very well.

However, the game--forgive my use of a tired expression--loses the plot when the unnamed protagonist appears to have a complete psychotic break, forcing themself upon him, injuring him, talking about fairies. The building may or may not burn down.

When I see this kind of story, what I think is that society has failed this person. That's the real story, but what we get is a fireworks display. It's a shame, too, because this setup would have worked perfectly well with a less explosively obsessed protagonist. I can't really recommend this story, though the design itself is of definite interest.

As another reviewer has mentioned, Method in My Madness appears to be a very rare case of timed text working out. The delays, combined with the rotating and shifting texts, are very impressive. Perhaps Max would consider sharing information about his CSS setup when he isn't busy teaching us about ZIL! I expect we'll see more innovations from Max, whose IF career is just beginning.