Eidolon

This is a very large Twine game that starts out mostly linear, branches a little, and then branches a lot. It includes a large area with a variety of rooms, including a clever means of transportation (Spoiler - click to show)the curious door/button combo. The genre is subtle horror/mystery, and the writing is evocative and sticks with you.

The lack of a save feature is annoying; as a casual gamer, I can't finish the game in one sitting, and it's difficult to juggle tabs to keep the game open throughout the day. This is one game I would like to finish.

Edit: The above is my original review, and I gave it 4 stars at first.

I think at the time that I played this in 2014, I assumed that there were many such Twine games, and found it a curiosity.

However, since then I haven't really found anything like it. Its writing is truly beautiful to me, and I count it among my favorite games (around the 11th or 12th favorite). It has a way of blending the deeply unfamiliar and frightening with the too-familiar and painful and the hidden and suffering. Wonderful imagery.

This is one of the most atmospheric and evocative Twine stories that I have read. The things you see and read on your mysterious journey seem full of meaning, yet I could not say what they mean exactly.

The strangeness and arbitrariness of some of the objects which you interact with allow for some workable puzzles, even in Twine: rather than logically figuring things out, as in a parser game, you need to visit various different locations several times and note when they change and where new links appear. Many of the passages and descriptions do nothing to move the plot onwards, but they serve to develop the atmosphere and act as red herrings as you try to find a way forward. The visuals were absolutely appropriate to the gloomy midnight setting - black background, white serif text with pale grey link text - but I found that I really needed to look closely in order to notice where the links were.

I've dabbled in a few dozen IF titles in the past few years, and since i played this one in early 2015, i still come back to it. I've recommended it to a lot of fiction, horror, or fantasy readers I know. The interesting mix of dread, amusement, fear, sadness, and surprise throughout really won me over and I still think about it a lot.

I agree with some other reviewers that it's length is such that a save function would be welcome, especially since it did get more challenging eventually. But there's no death or circumstance that demand a restart. But as a personal story with great imagery, some interesting puzzles, and a great and genuinely pretty bizarre tone I think it stands above a lot of IF games. Play it asap, with a lot of free time and a dark cool room.