Ratings and Reviews by SarahTheEntwife
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Delicious bite-sized sushi, July 9, 2010In A Day for Fresh Sushi, instead of trying to cobble together a whole game under the time limit, Short has written one perfectly constructed little scene. It's a few steps away from a one-move game; if you get even slightly lucky you'll win right away, but want to come back to see what happens when you try other things. As other reviews have said, the fish's commentary is hilarious and is really what makes the game. Most of this game is silly with touches of playful romance, but there are deeper elements suggesting a more complex backstory. (Hint: (Spoiler - click to show)look at the painting.)
Well-crafted fear, July 8, 2010Babel gets high marks from me in every way -- the story is compelling, the prose is beautiful, and the puzzles are well woven into the stoy. You are thrown almost violently into the world of the Babel Project station from the first sentence; while it's only a short-to-mid-length game, the sensory details will linger disconcertingly in the back of your mind for days afterward. It may be cliched, but the amnesia/flashback device is played here masterfully.
Every detail and every puzzle in this game is there for a reason; the player isn't made to jump through hoops just for the sake of mental exercise. Why are the keys to routine parts of the station so hard to obtain? By the end of the game you will know and it will make sense. The writing also gives an overwhelming sense of urgency while not, as far as I could tell, actually having a time-limit coded into the game (other than in one puzzle, which you can do over if you mess up). This makes it very playable for relatively new players apt to go over and over things like me.
No character in this game is morally unambiguous. They are human, fallible, and very believable. Some scenes do stray just over the line into melodramatic or preachy, and the romantic subplot seemed a bit unnecessary to me. But that's only a tiny quibble in what is otherwise a seamless and chilling story.
Words Get Twisted, etc. is very pretty but neither a game nor really a story, hence the lack of star rating. It is a set of 9 whimsical little concrete poems in different styles. All nine will take you less than 5 minutes to read through, so if you're feeling in a poetical mood it's well worth a look :-)
Message distressingly off-base, July 7, 2010As a game, this is well-executed by not particularly interesting. It's not very interactive and the environment can be a bit confusing. After reading the "About" file, it made a great deal more sense. Most of the plot captures the writer's intention beautifully, but my big one-star-worthy problem was in the ending. Idealistically, sure, it's really sweet. But if someone actually did anything like that it would be self-defeating and creepy.
(Spoiler - click to show)In order to fully win the game you need to hug the other shy person at the meeting. Given that she isn't named or otherwise described in familiar terms, you don't seem to know her. I also have some social anxiety issues, not even nearly as bad as depicted in the game, and if someone I didn't know walked up and hugged me, instead of being all happy and comforted, I would panic and never attend the meeting again. It's slightly less creepy if we assume "you" are female, but how about making the winning conditions something a little less harassing, like greeting her with a smile, or even shaking her hand? I know this is probably me reading more into it than is actually there, but seriously, don't touch the anxious people unless they've explicitly said it's ok. *twitch*
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