Epistemophilia

Epistemophilia is a hard game to pin down but a worthwhile experience. I've played it twice and am still not sure if I saw much of the content - this seems to be a large game.

The game starts with you waking up, disoriented and amnesiac, with little clue where you are and what you need to do. These feelings do not go away as you play - if anything the world gets more confusing as you go. This is not a plot heavy game, the enjoyment comes from exploring the environment.

There is a ton of text, there are many points where you can choose between six or seven different choices each with their own several paragraph-long response. Nothing leads you be the hand - it is quite difficult to determine what each course of action will achieve but usually something cool will happen.

I think that, as a game it would be better if Epistemophilia was slimmed down and more focused on plot but as an experience the long-windedness and strange tone make this quite fun to play.

If you like exploration and don't mind wordy prose and not getting real answers then this might be the game for you.

EDIT: After I completed this review I visited the game's strange website (https://epistemophilia.hotglue.me) which has some author notes explaining (but not really) a bit more about the game plus a tentative soundtrack album. The whole thing seems to be a real labour of love, which I respect. Does this make a great game? No. Is this interesting and worthwhile? Certainly.

Epistemophilia

This game feels like something made by someone who has inherent skill but little contact with the worlds of interactive fiction with which I'm most familiar. It displays creativity and exuberance along with some of the features of newcomers to choice-based IF (tons of options that branch in wildly different ways resulting in very inconsistent experiences, along with a couple bugs and a lack of styling).

You wake up with basically amnesia and wander around. Everywhere you go you find robotic or alien type things. Experimenting with them either kills you or gives you a good ending or unlocks more of the story.

I played to 4 endings, soft-locked myself for a fifth (I chose the same option twice in a room, Remove the Tarp, and it just ended the game accidentally), and then read some of the code for more background.

The world is interesting, kind of reminding me of things like the manga Psyren with strange human-like creatures in a futurish world. There's a lot of fun worldbuilding here like a Badger Boy mascot that helps you get around and some of the 'humanity is special among aliens' trope.

The writing varies from very cool to a little vague. I liked the creature descriptions a lot. Here's an interesting early one:

The cable hums softly as the man stares at you with blank eyes. You identify his face as a human face. Yet, it's also a very alien face in its uncanny blandness. For starters, this face has no lines. It's as smooth as a newborn baby's. Sure, there's a normal mouth, a regular nose and two whole eyes on it. But neither of these give you any hints about their owner. They look real but they "feel" like medical book illustrations.

Some of the writing is vague. Here's some of the vagueness:

You have nothing planned but nosing around, poking, tinkering and ruminating in your schedule. Not knowing anything might be bad for the psyche for a few hours, but once you get over the initial shock, it's truly freeing.

You're a nobody here. And here is...nowhere. So, there's nothing but discovery in your mind A pure, whimsical and experimental approach in learning. Sure, you may get hungry, sick or hurt. You may even die. So what? You don't know what you'll be leaving behind. So, all is good. You've got the whole time you need.

So overall, I see the effort, I had fun exploring, ran into a few bugs, liked some of the writing, didn't enjoy 100% of it. The game felt substantial and I do feel like I had fun overall. If I were the author, I would consider this game fun/successful.