Light into Darkness

[Depicts murder/violence, gore. Time to completion: 10-15 minutes]

This short parser game does not make for light reading, but it's so short that to explain more about its premise would spoil it. Suffice to say that the initial setup reminded me of Ecdysis (down to the mental images it conjured) and The Baron.

The PC switches between planes of reality within a few moves, constantly keeping the player off kilter. I found this pacing just right for the size of the game. The writing is tight, too, wasting no time on extraneous details.

The game was built on a small enough scale that I couldn't get lost, and of note is one scene in which the actions you have to do to move the story on is indirectly shown to the player. For its size, though, it still let the player decide on the ultimate interpretation of the PC's actions.

Discretion is recommended for player murder and violence.

This minimalist parser work is competent, smart, and well-designed. Content is very dark, dealing with themes of family violence and possibly the occult, although I have questions about what happened and the reliability of the narrator. I replayed it multiple times, wondering if there was more: an alternate ending I missed, additional context, something else to provide a sense of closure. This isn't a negative, although I would have liked something more, although I can't actually name what I want.

The plot and pacing are well-done in this fairly minimalist work, and the implementation of rooms and objects is well-done although sparse. All in all, a chilling, dark piece which engaged and fascinated me, leaving me to muse over the themes and speculate about influences, inspiration, and more. I'd love to see a post-mortem on this, and I feel very optimistic about Nordlander's future works.

The competition this was entered into is quick and places considerable time pressure on entrants, so I was pleasantly surprised to find such a technically competent and complete entry. I would love to see this work fleshed out into something with more endings and complexity.

This game has an original story, good writing and a nice sense of drama. You play a mom having a terrible dream, and the next day the events of the day are eerily similar.

This game is good, but it could have benefited from more plot development and better implementation. Because the author only had 3 hours, though, it's good in its sphere.