Reviews by ChanceOfFire

As an indie game dev myself (and very crappy artist) this was a pretty nice conversation to have.

Anyway, this IF is not quite a storygame, but more on the dev offering you their own reflections on their time and feelings in art and game dev. While not quite a conventional experience, it was definitely an enjoyable read for me, to learn about another who has found themselves in the wild world of making games. I definitely did walk away feeling like I had gotten something.

(On another note, I couldn't find a restart button at the end of the game, so you'll need to hammer the undo buttons to go back.)

While written in twine, this game feels a lot like a visual novel, with plenty of hand drawn art. Simple, beautiful, and it gets the vibe right.

You're a cat. Cats are pretty mysterious animals, and you do have a couple of complex and menacing thoughts going on in your mind as you begin the day. You need something? What do you need?

Overall, an interesting short entry which provides some charm and laughs.

A pair of siblings in a car run into issues with their vehicle, and soon find themselves by the side of the road

You have a few choices around bickering, as you try to fix the car, suddenly launch into an extended section about an old memory... then... I've leave it to you to find out the ending.

It's mostly a short read with some interesting art and a strict word limit. That works for me. A back button could have been handy, but that's optional.

Short and simple, this game covers a brief memory with someone you liked and spent time with, before realizing that they are gone for good and letting you make some choices on how to handle it. The prose is brief, which allows it to stretch the word limit a little, while mostly without mistakes.

I'm mixed on the color scheme. A black and white highlight does help to covey the mood, but the white parts can make the text look pretty hard to read at some parts.

Anyway, a short and solid read for the jam.

I have mixed feelings about Drag Star. I'm probably not the target demographic for it, and when I first finished it... my feelings were along the lines of 'somewhat entertaining'.

You are a contestant on a reality TV drag competition, along with a dozen other characters. While they all pack interesting names and backstories to hit you with that TV star vibe, the huge cast didn't allow much room for individual character depth, and none of the characters felt memorable when all was said and done, although the author probably had fun coming up with all those different character names. The stat page does have a section allowing you to keep track of everyone, for what it's worth, but I didn't really pay much attention to it as none of the characters caught my eye after the flashy introductions.

The games does explore plenty of LGBTQ themes within the story. If you're here because of that tag, you'll get what you seek.

You get a lot of choices for character creation, along with pronouns, body type and the like. There are also plenty of (I suspect) fake choices during the game where you pick what you wear or what you think (with free text options). Still, these sorts of things are useful to set the mood, and picking another flamboyant and racy costume did help to immerse me and help me pretend I was really a contestant in a crazy TV show.

Gameplay consists of surviving episode after episode, completing all sorts of reality TV show challenges, watching other contestants getting eliminated and praying that you're not the next to drop. It's the bog standard CoG system of picking your best stats and running them through a gauntlet of stat challenges, hoping you've picked the right ones. I focused mainly on confidence and humor for my latest playthrough, and I think it saw me through a good number of stat challenges.

The writing is another interesting beast. At the start, the narrator uses plenty of slang and terminology from drag, showbiz and who knows where else, although it gave me the feeling of someone trying too hard to sound like one of the cool kids. Interestingly, as the story continued on, the writing style became more dry and run-of-the-mill, as if the narrator decided that the excessively cool kid vibe was too hard to maintain. That aside, the writing is technically competent all around, and I didn't see any mistakes.

All in all, this genre wasn't quite my thing, so you'll probably enjoy it more if the drag star TV show genre is more your style. Try not to get eliminated!

Eye of the Dragon is one of the later fighting fantasy gamebooks. It is also the first (besides the very easy Island of the Lizard King) where I legitimately discovered the one true path on the first attempt. You need one key item and five optional items which can make the final challenge easier, although I found all six on my first blind playthrough.

That said, it is also pretty challenging, with lots of game overs. Ian Livingstone also installed a few anti-cheating measures here, such as cursed items which hurt you intially but later save you down the line. Tough luck to folks who peep and go back if things look hairy. I admit to fudging some dice rolls to save myself during the game, but it was kinda hard. There is also plenty of cool stuff, as well as a companion, whom you can pick up along the way.

That said, the story is garbage, even by the standards of the Fighting Fantasy series. Someone offers you information about a magical treasure and lets you retrieve it. However, to ensure that you share the spoils from its sale, he gives you a slow acting poison and tells you to drink it, as an insurance policy for him of sorts, to make sure you do not take the treasure and run. I don't know about you, but that seems like a pretty dumb idea. He does betray you at the end later, but I'm seriously not sure if a reader should have expected anything different.

There are also lots of encounters in the game which make no sense from a writing perspective. I mean, why are merchants setting up shop in a random dungeon filled with monsters. Who are they selling to? One of them is kinda pretty, so there is that. At the end of the day, this feels like a dungeon filled with random things rather than a cohesive world.

I was somewhat entertained by it, but I can't give a pass to the story and setting after so long. Bloodbones proved that you could have a strong setting and writing in the Fighting Fantasy framework. At some point, I seriously can't give a free pass any longer.

Creature of Havoc is probably the toughest Fighting Fantasy gamebook in the series. (Although Crypt of the Sorcerer is also unfairly tough in a different sort of way.) It also features the most interesting premise, as you start out as a monster with no idea of who you are, or the strange evil which is rising up around the corner.

In terms of story and writing, I think this is easily the strongest of all in Fighting Fantasy world, as you slowly struggle to discover your identity and your sense of purpose. There are plenty of ways to get sidetracked along the way, and inadvertently end up working for the enemy. Tha game's backstory makes for pretty good reading, and it is also interesting to see it getting fleshed out in the world later on.

The game's signature feature is the garbled language which other characters speak. Over time, you might find a way to translate it, but doing so is incredibly tedious and not fun at all. You will need to do the translation if you are to complete the game, so you might want to google a list or something, beacause doing the busywork yourself just isn't fun.

I think this could have been a much better novel than game, and as much as I like to complain about the writing in the Fighting Fantasy series, I think this one is a true masterpiece of story and lore. Shame it is so difficult to complete. Free read is pretty fun, however.

Freeway Fighter takes place in a post-apocalyptic United States, where a mysterious virus wipes out a large portion of the world's population and leaves a few survivors behind. The latter splits into two groups, one group which wants to be civilized again and another which prefers to live the fun life, wearing impractical clothes and driving cannon-mounted cars. That said, I'm sure there aren't a lot of people to rob in a post-apocalyptic world, so I'm not sure what all these guys really do in their plentiful free time, and who does the expensive repairs and makes the ammo.

So you join one group of survivors in the town of New Hope. An oil refinery offers you an armored tanked filled with petrol in return for some grain. To reach them, you'll need to drive through the lawless wastes in your battle car, ready to rip apart gangs of outlaws in their equally spiky cars.

By the way, this is an Ian Livingstone game, so to win this, you will need to find the one true path. Every now and then, your car will run low on petrol, forcing you to scrounge for petrol somewhere. If you are unable to do so, your car will stall by the side of the road, forcing you to walk home. I don't know, did whoever planned this mission think there would be gas stations along the way to fill up for this long roadtrip?

So you will need to find some petrol on the way, or find the important key items which will allow you to extract the petrol later on. One involves winning a really violent car race which should taken a large amount from the tank, but ehh...

Combat plays out differently here, with the usual melee combat, as well as car combat and gunfighting combat. This adds a bit of spice to the usual Fighting Fantasy formula. It's a pretty fun change from the usual knights-and-castles fantasy setting, and I liked it.

That said, winning this can be a huge exercise in frustration to find the one true path. I liked the idea as a whole, but the tedium just isn't fun.

Also, this game takes place in the United States, right? Why are we calling it petrol and not gasoline?

While Ian Livingstone tends to follow a pretty fixed formula for his releases, Armies of Death does shake up the usual figthing fantasy system a little.

You play as the commander of a force of troops, out to beat the next big bad which has emerged from the horizon. Gold isn't an issue here, as you start out with a huge amount and aren't really in any real danger of running short. You can recruit additional soldiers along the way, which might come in handy as the final battle puts you through a gauntlet of destruction before testing your troop strength. Fail, and you die. That said, it's not that unforgiving, and I managed to enter the final battle well over the troop minimums. (But well, I was pretty aggressive with recruiting troops and also uh... fudged some dice rolls.)

Still, you'll need way more than a mountain of steel to win this. As this is an Ian Livingstone book, you'll need find all sorts of items and information before the final confrontation with the big bad. Missed something? THEN DIE! You will likely need a few attempts to find the one true path, picking up everything you see and hoping that it'll be the magic item to save you from the dreaded game over. There is also one extremely annoying character who demands a huge laundry list of items for very stupid reasons before giving you the numbers you need to win. Yeah, miss one thing, and you know you'll see a game over down the line.

Anyway, this is an interesting departure from the usual fighting fantasy formula, even if you have to submit yourself to the usual lengthy item checklist to win.

Note: This review is based on the full version of Zombie Exodus with all the DLC. I bought it a long time ago, back when each extra chapter was still a dollar each. (If I recall the price correctly.)

Zombie Exodus is a pretty substantial adventure with a fairly strong use of gameplay mechanics. First written in Stone Age CoG, it came out at a time where the HG library was still pretty rough around the edges. Still, with an inventory and stat system which is woven well into the game, it does capture that zombie action shooter feel in a text game.

The gaming feedback is pretty well done, as you pick items for adventures and go out on adventures where you get to put them to use. There are encounters with a good bit of branching and which constantly test your loadout, giving you the sense that actions have impact an on the game. The game also introduces interesting variations into the challenge every now and then, such as losing most of your items or having to deal with item usage limits.

The writing was a little rough in the first two chapters, although I think it did get much better later on. There were a few parts which I felt were a little contrived, such as the game taking away your choice and making you accept a very difficult mission thrown on you when you had the option to refuse earlier ones. Still, overall, the gameplay elements are strong, and still do a good job of conveying the sense of exploration and danger in a zombie plagued world.

I had only managed to unlock a couple of endings in the game - although I know there are quite a lot of them. Some require pretty specific actions on your part.

Zombies aren't really my thing, but I did really enjoy this back in the ancient days of CoG. Ahh... the memories.