Thanks, but I don't remember asking.

Thanks, but I don't remember asking. is a short blurry Twine story, set in some sort of (post-)apocalyptic future, in which you are an unnamed woman living along in what seems to be a school (maybe a religious boarding school?). In comes to bother your tranquil life three individuals, two men and a woman, who snoops around and find things you'd rather not remember.

Vagueness here is important to keep the suspense of the game, as it is the "twist" of the story (though if you are a sucker for the (Spoiler - click to show)amnesic trope, the signs are all there).

Decisions must be made, though the choice is singular and not quite obvious at first (that is until you rewind and choose another path). It also does not seem to change much of the ending either, it seemed.

It is not so much as the shortness of the piece, but how far the story goes, how much you (the player) get to uncover the uneasiness you (the PC) feels around these strangers, and what ticks you when they snoop around (why can't you snoop around as well). As well, while you learn of past events, little is of true weight for the story - it always ends the same way.

I wish it went a bit deeper in the narrative choices, such as the gender of the characters clearly having an effect on their fate (it's clearly important to the PC), the importance of control and agency (ironic since we don't really have any), etc... a bit more exploration if you will.

That said: the (Spoiler - click to show)POV switch at the end sent a shiver down my spine.

I found this game disorienting at first, to the point that I almost stopped playing. I was confused about both the situation and the location (and still am about the latter to some degree, even after re-reading---I'm not sure where the chapel, school, and volleyball courts all are in relation to each other... or why there's a stage outside?). So initially I was more frustrated than intrigued---but when I read on I discovered that there's a good reason for the disorientation, and suddenly it became quite compelling.

Unfortunately, the story didn't live up to its promise for me; I never got enough of a sense of the wider world to understand the stakes for the NPCs, and they weren't developed enough for me to be invested in their fates. I didn't understand why (Spoiler - click to show)they became fixated on the PC after discovering the journals; there was an escalation there that I couldn't see a reason for. I also never felt much for/about the PC. (Spoiler - click to show)Her circumstances reminded me of the film *Memento*, but what makes that movie so good IMO is that the protagonist has a goal that he's deeply passionate about. Here, the PC has no goal beyond maintaining her status quo---and she is able to achieve that very easily.

I also had some quibbles about the writing; the dialogue was stilted at times, and the tense randomly switched between past and present. Finally, it would be nice if there was a "restart" button at the end; as-is, in order to replay you have to close and re-open the game.

I do feel like there's something interesting to be said about gender in the game---the PC is a woman, (Spoiler - click to show)as was her former lover, and the sole female NPC in the story has a different fate than the two male ones. I'll have to stew on that aspect some more...

I don’t think it’s a kick against Thanks… to say that its opening is disorienting and dreamlike, since the author’s note reveals that it was in fact directly inspired by a dream. My first ten minutes with the game involved me muttering “oh, now I get it!” three or four times running, as I grokked each potentially-confusing bit of the setup in turn. At first I thought the protagonist was a teenager, but maybe in like a fantasy world with monsters – but eventually I figured out the game’s actually got a postapocalyptic setting and the main character’s just hiding out at a school. Then I wasn’t sure what was going on with the main character’s oddly-aggressive behavior when confronting a trio of passing scavengers, only to realize that she’s got a traumatic backstory and a unique condition (well, unique modulo (Spoiler - click to show)Memento) that actually made those responses appropriate and thematically rich. And then a couple minutes after that the game wrapped up.

There were definitely some high points to the game’s short run-time – while the writing is generally pretty straightforward and the setting and characters remain archetypal, there were details that stuck with me, like the repeated emphasis on the color of the red volleyball courts outside the school. And the choices offered effectively convey that there’s something not quite right with the protagonist, like this set of options for which of the aforementioned three scavengers to engage in dialogue:

-I looked at her for a second too long before answering.

-Something compelled me to address the whimpering man at the back.

-I didn’t want to admit that I was alone, so I turned to face the short man again.

It reminds me of a Scientology personality test I saw one time, where all the questions were like “What do you do on a Friday night? 1) I stay home by myself because I’m alienated and don’t have friends or 2) I go out and party, trying to pretend my life isn’t meaningless by pursuing hollow pleasures.”

(This is I think the first time in my life I’ve said “hey, this is just like something Scientologists do!” and meant it as a compliment).

And the setup is does arrange some conventional tropes into a promising configuration (spoiler time): (Spoiler - click to show)the zombie apocalypse generally raises the stakes and puts issues of trust front and center, and also interfaces well with the protagonist’s inability to make new memories: is it actually a blessing to be able to forget the massive trauma of the past, as the main character’s abusive ex suggests, or is there a price to be paid for disconnection from one’s past? That memory issue in turn sets up the interpersonal drama to center on whether and how the other characters, like those scavengers, might try to manipulate and take advantage of her.

Unfortunately the game’s short running time isn’t nearly enough to actually do more with this framework than establish it; there’s a final, climactic scene that adds some action, but it felt very abrupt to me, forcing catharsis and resolution on a dilemma that hadn’t had time to sink in and have any impact. Short games can be great, don’t get me wrong, but there needs to be congruence between a game’s ambition and its length; Thanks, but I don’t remember asking, I fear, has a premise that demands more elaboration than it gets. There’s certainly a risk of dulling the force of an idea by padding it out too much – and I suppose that’s especially the case here, given that nothing makes a dream more prosaic than trying to explain it at length – but I think the author needed to either expand their scope, or trim the number of themes they were working with, in order to right-size the work.

Adapted from a SpringThing24 Review

Played: 4/1/24
Playtime: 15 min, 3 endings

This is a very short, stock-format Twine entry, with very few choices telling a mostly linear story. I exhausted the choice space in three cycles (though not the permutations of those choices, if that makes a difference). The choices provided more information, background and color and notwithstanding some different events were variations on a single theme. I feel like exhausting the space was the most satisfying way to consume this piece.

So, it was shallow and repetitive and on rails then? No, not at all. I am deliberately being vague as the few moving pieces the work offers mesh so precisely with each other that pinning any piece of it down might rob the reader of the ability to watch the gears flow together naturally. You know me though, I gotta try.

Hm, lemme try this. The work presents a dream-like and offscreen post-apocalypse setup with uncertainly reliable protagonist and antagonists. The blurriness of its details paradoxically are executed with extreme narrative precision, including ultimately-satisfying but jarring-in-the-moment descriptive choices. The reality of the situation dances in your peripheral vision but refuses attempts to focus on it. Seemingly key details are omitted entirely, only to later be resolved as maybe not so key after all. Almost by magic all these slippery and fractured story elements resolve into a complete whole by the end. It’s an admirable narrative sleight-of-hand, including its limited use of interactivity to underline key elements. It’s like if Chris Nolan adapted Little Nemo but not quite so fanciful.

It probably helps that themes of autonomy and control feel desperately vital just now, and the conceits of this particular dream logic build-a-story-by-innuendo approach enabled some legitimate insights, however oblique. Actually, the obliquity(?) helped sell things I think, in a way polemic or monologue would not.

If there is a downside, it is that between the deceptively limited individual components, and the ephemerality of the combined narrative construct I can’t talk about it without just trashing it for you all! You want me to pull apart a butterfly while assuring you it is beautiful despite its screams? Of course you don’t, and that was waaay too dark a metaphor. I would say enjoy it, submerse yourself in the dreamy vibe of it, let the connections come organically. You are in capable hands.

Not dissecting it does carry its own perils though, as even now I can feel its gossamer architecture slipping between my fingers. Down the road, will there be anything left to discuss…?

What were we talking about again?

Mystery, Inc: Daphne
Vibe: Dream Horror
Polish: Smooth
Gimme the Wheel!: I wouldn’t dare touch the thematic clockwork, but if it were my project I might spend some time reskinning the presentation. Non-stock font/color and layout choices could easily enhance the proceedings and further stitch the work together.

Polish scale: Gleaming, Smooth, Textured, Rough, Distressed
Gimme the Wheel: What I would do next, if it were my project.

I need to preface this review by saying that I'm giving this game 5 stars only because it specifically fits some very niche interests of mine. I think if I was just giving recommendations for general audience it would likely be 3 stars due to being short.

This game starts with you inside a school looking out on a courtyard, seeing some people arguing. You approach them, wanting to learn more, but you realize you have nothing to offer them.

The plot then swerves in several ways. The rest of the review is in spoilers:
(Spoiler - click to show)
It becomes clear this is a post-apocalyptic world. There are few enough humans that the group you've found just calls themselves One, Two, and Three.

The big twist is that you forget everything every 30 minutes or so. You've established a routine for yourself to stay alive, but you weren't aware of the forgetting fact. You discover that someone stayed with you previously and took care of you, but also manipulated you.


The game is definitely short, which is why I hedge my recommendation, but I love the concept and the combination and it inspires me to think of the possibilities. I'd love to write a game with similar mechanics (it used to be very popular in parser games twenty years ago but I think it died out).