Errand Run

A short and completely linear Twine game with one ending and no choices. I liked it, though it was too short to really be affecting. The styling is somewhat simple, but it makes use of CSS effects for emphasis and cleverly-timed transitions to aid with pacing. The plot reminded me of the short stories I'd see on r/writingprompts, which often had the same thing going on: the entire story is (Spoiler - click to show)built up around one shocking plot twist that's foreshadowed in increasingly obvious ways before being revealed at the end, changing your opinion of everything that happened beforehand. Twist endings are common in short stories. The "this actually takes place after the apocalypse" twist is one I've seen a lot, e.g. in Michael Swanwick's "Walking Out", which is also a story that starts with what appears to be normal modern life and slowly reveals that it's not the case.

I thought this would be a story about what it's like to go grocery shopping when you're short on money, something all too many people have to live through. (Spoiler - click to show)Wrong: surprise apocalypse. But the writing is competent, and the slow buildup is fun. I feel like more could've been done with the ending to tie it into what I thought the game would be about, which was the crushing weight of poverty. Though I guess (Spoiler - click to show)crushing poverty can at times feel like the world has ended and nobody is left to see you struggle, and everything good you could've had is irrevocably lost - but I still think more of a connection could've been made, or something was missing.

Grocery shopping. Again.

You play as an unnamed protagonist who begrudgingly hauls herself into the local supermarket to complete the weekly errand of buying groceries. You only have $20 in your pocket, so budget wisely.

Gameplay involves going through the store and deciding which groceries to buy. It soon becomes clear that (Spoiler - click to show)buying groceries isn't important. Turns out this mundane errand is the protagonist's desperate grasp for any normalcy because, well... it's the apocalypse.

The strength of Errand Run is how the protagonist knows more about her situation than we do, leaving us in the dark until the end where it pulls a delightful bait-and-switch.

Now, we do know that something's going on. The lights are off, the AC doesn't work, and the store is understocked. But you can be fooled into thinking that the world is simply going through a rough patch. Local food shortages, overdemand of the power grid, etc.

With a sigh, you step through the automatic doors of the local supermarket. No blast of cool air whisks over to greet you; the AC's been acting up for months now.

Oh, no, no, no.

The game’s writing is frosting on the cake. Its cynical humor provides commentary about the task at hand without being too dire. The author builds on this visually through text effects and colours that convey (Spoiler - click to show)the protagonist’s wobbly mental state.

To conclude, Errand Run is a brief horror game about (Spoiler - click to show)crawling back to the familiar because the entire world has gone to pieces. It doesn’t go deep with its story, but it doesn't need to.

Where it doesn’t have depth, it sure has attitude.

Errand Run is a short Twine work, nominally about going to the grocery store, but all is not what it seems. It has a few choices that I feel work well to keep the player engaged, (Spoiler - click to show)although there’s no real branching.

The writing sketches out an intriguing portrait of the PC in a short amount of time and doles out “wait, what?” details with carefully calculated escalation. By the time the player reaches the ending, the broad strokes of the situation are unlikely to be a surprise, but there’s still a lot that’s unexpected in the way those lines are filled in, with some striking, well-chosen imagery. The Twine styling is Harlowe default, but the use of text effects and colors was effective and I never found it unpleasant to read or distracting.

It won’t be to everybody’s tastes, of course, but it’s a short enough piece that I think it’s worth checking out. I found it well-crafted and look forward to trying this author’s other entries.