The Axolotl Project

I haven't given Twine, or ChoiceScript or similar systems, much of a look. I've been vaguely aware of their existence and looked briefly at a couple of twine games, a little more closely at a couple of choice-of games, but for the most part they weren't my cup of tea.

They never seemed capable of the same level of interactivity and richness as parser-based IF, and seemed wholly unsuited to the types of IF I have previously enjoyed the most - story-based exploratory IF.

The Axolotl project has changed my mind on that. Whilst I still prefer parser-based IF, this game did a wonderful job of exactly that sort of game I thought it was ill-suited for, with an interesting mystery, exploration and an engaging story.

The writing was quite good, neither too wordy or purple nor sparse enough to be without character. The implementation was smooth and did a good job of replicating the feel of parser-based exploration with links to noun descriptions and exit directions. I only came across one implementation bug, and that was the the announcement that cleaning has finished and the apartments were open was replayed later in the game when returning to the area from inside the dorms.

The characters, though quite few in number, were well developed and three dimensional. Tropes were used here but to good effect, and the descriptions and internal monologues did a good job of characterising the protagonist. The world wasn't huge but it was logical and interesting, and the story was entertaining enough that when I sat down "to have a quick look", I ended up playing it all the way through to see how it would end.

Overall, it was a pleasant surprise, an excellent game, and highly recommended.

The Axolotl Project is a choice-based narrative written in Twine. You are a lowly intern researcher working as an animal handler on the moon where research into new drugs is being conducted. Per usual in these types of stories, a sinister plot reveals itself, and you must untangle the threads and save yourself and humanity.

This game got hold of my attention and absorbed me. The prose is well-written and never indulgent. There's a surprising amount of agency, and I never got stuck so the narrative never lost momentum. I'm not sure if I was funneled, but after the exploratory first act, I was always given a well-timed nudge on what to do next. I never felt as though I was being forced to the conclusion, but once the diegetic hints start coming (they're all explained in the denouement) you appreciate them.

My only slight gripe is the story was in the default Twine font and format (I think it's called Jonah? The dark one that clears the screen after each choice). I always appreciate when authors make the font a little bit larger and more readable. There was only once or twice when the text filled more than the upper fourth of the screen, so that would be my only suggestion: style the HTML a bit more nicely.

I went from skimming some of the descriptions at the beginning to actually fully invested and interested in the story that Samantha Vick was telling, as well as her characters. So many of the Twine offerings have very abstracted plot lines or provide just so much metaphorical poetry (which Twine does very well), or are so poorly written that you may as well not bother. So if you've never read a good fully-fleshed out and plotted narrative in a CYOA-type wrapper, then The Axolotl Project is here as one of the best and most recent examples of how Twine can be used to tell an actual linear, non-abstract story.

I wasn't really fond of this game. I wanted to be, because it has generally positive reviews, but I was underwhelmed by the story and gameplay.

It's a testament to how far Twine has come, I think. Perhaps when this game first came out it would have been an impressive demonstration of what Twine is capable of, but nowadays we have Twine games like A Long Way to a Nearest Star or Trigaea which easily top it.

As for The Axolotl Project, contrary to a lot of the other positive reviews, I found the story to be simplistic and the characters to be mostly one or two-note. The plot holes and general inconsistencies in the writing are what bother me the most. The dialogue often just doesn't make sense with the situation the protagonist is supposed to be in. For instance, you can talk to Donovan and ask him basic questions about his research even though you've already been an intern for at least three months and should really know the answers to what you're asking. You can ask him basic questions about other people that you really should know the answers to, because they've definitely been around long enough that you should have met them already. But Donovan doesn't even question it. This really annoyed me; it's the type of scene where two characters have a conversation about basic information they should already know just to provide exposition to the audience. That, or the story's timelines are inconsistent, or both.

This happens very frequently. With almost any character you talk to, you can ask questions you should know the answers to and they'll answer without batting an eye. And despite the fact that the protagonist is an intern at the research station, it's never clear exactly what your intern duties actually are (the whole story takes place while you're not working), what project(s) you've been assigned to work on, or what an actual work day would look like for you. Henry, who you report to, has been gone for about three months, but who's replaced him? It can't be Gallo, right? The start basically says that the protagonist has been doing nothing for the three whole months after Henry leaves. There's also a big lack of scientists considering that the research station belongs to one of the most exclusive companies in the world, and I assume it's not easy to get a position in a moon base. Of the two scientists who work with you, one hardly does anything and the other is gone, with an empty lab behind him. Where are the other scientists? Assistant researchers? In fact, why is it even possible for you to be an intern on the moon base in the first place if they only have room for a few scientists, since I assume they'd want their most experienced employees who have years of tenure in there and not just someone who's presumably a college student and will go back to school after the summer's over? Especially because the moon base is where they produce their most important research on their most profitable and secretive product? The game mentions that the moon base is being expanded, but we never talk to any other scientists or researchers.

Questions like these aren't really touched on, and despite looking at all the items and backstory notes, I didn't feel like I had a good picture of what it would actually be like to work in the moon base, even though it's a huge part of the protagonist's situation. And I get that some of the quibbles I had, like the small number of scientist characters you can actually talk to, comes from game design constraints, but the fact that it's not really addressed or even lampshaded makes it hard to keep suspending disbelief.

It doesn't help that the dialogue paths are coded so that you can go back to the start of a conversation and go down a different dialogue path with no consequences, leading to the impression that the protagonist can either turn back time at will to have the same conversation over and over again as they wish or every character has some serious problems with short-term memory loss. Alright, that's a little mean considering that dialogue is hard to get right, conventions like this are common in Twine games, and I doubt the author wanted to implement stuff like remembering topics. But even something like preventing an already-discussed topic from being discussed again, or preventing the same conversation from being had twice, would go a long way.

As for the overall plot, it reminds me of a YA story. The protagonist is a young plucky do-gooder facing off against a bunch of older people who don't seem to notice or care about the great evil going on, she gets the inexplicable chance to solve everything herself (because the other people in this world have apparently been doing nothing in the three months since Henry left, and their evil plans just so happen to launch off on the exact same day that the protagonist discovers and is then put in a position to stop them), and she does so.

It's troperific. You discover clues to what's been going on via Slenderman-style exposition notes, for example. There's evil dramatic villain speeches and stuff, all very Saturday morning breakfast cereal cartoony.

Basically all the character backstories are explained via direct exposition, and you can describe the entire personality and life story of every character in a short sentence. (Spoiler - click to show)Donovan is the alcoholic scientist with a dead family, the protagonist is the plucky do-gooder intern, Gallo is the evil power-hungry scientist who steals other people's work, and so on. I liked Crystal more than the others, but even the opening conversation with her is extremely unsubtle: (Spoiler - click to show)almost no matter what you do, it ends with The Art of War being shoehorned in there as obvious foreshadowing that Crystal is planning something. And while having two personalities over one is an upgrade, I still wish she was more well-rounded, just like everyone else. We never really learn much about her past, her family background or what motivates her to act the way she does. What does she think about the ethics of working for the company? How does she justify it to herself? Is she actually religious or just pretending to be? We don't know.

The story felt too black-and-white to me, and moreover just too easily resolved. The ending has you (Spoiler - click to show)blackmail a CEO by threatening to reveal that his company would have delivered a medication that killed humans en masse, and has also been enslaving and torturing a population of innocent aliens on the Moon. The threat of the PR storm is enough to actually scare him, and later you can go free all the slaves by pressing a single emergency release button. Maybe current events have just made me a cynic, but I think that if it was revealed a huge corporation was enslaving and torturing a population of innocents, or planning to deliver a product that would have killed countless people, the corporation would suffer next to no consequences. People would acknowledge that it's terrible but they can't do anything about it, and most of them would move on while the CEO gets richer and richer off the blood of the exploited. The same thing has happened and is happening many times over in the real world, where Elon Musk just became the world's first trillionaire a few days ago.