Stowaway

As I played this game, after Spring Thing had ended, I thought, "This is a lot of fun. I'll probably rate it at 4 stars, but I kind of feel like it should be 5 stars under my criteria."

Then I went to see what others had rated it as, and was really surprised to see that it had an average below 3 stars.

So I wanted to share my reasoning on it.

First, a description. This is a Twine game with a kind of central hub where you, a stowaway, are hiding in the cargo hold. From there, you can go to four different locations, each of which contains either an item to grab or a place to use an item, together with (Spoiler - click to show)a strange and fantastical world unrelated to the ship you're on. There are at least 5 endings, of which I found two.

As I write this, I reflect that this is very similar to the first Twine game I every truly enjoyed: Astrid Dalmdady's You are Standing at a Crossroads, which has a similar spoke and hub structure where you find places you need items first and use them later.

Perhaps it was this similarity which made me enjoy the game. Here is my breakdown on my rubric, which is not hard and fast, but helps me organize thoughts:

+Polish: The game was bug-free, as far as I saw, looked nice, and was complete.
+Descriptiveness: I enjoyed the descriptions of the very different areas, and I liked the feel of the pirate crew.
+Interactivity: I felt like I could strategize towards my own desired ends. Interactions were clear and intuitive.
+Emotional impact: I enjoyed the sense of wonder and the whimsy of the game.
+Would I play again? I was interested enough to play to two endings.

A simple choice game, where you head around a ship, picking stuff up. Navigating this ship via choices was pretty tricky at first, but I got the hang of it after a bit. After performing an action, you are still able to perform it again and again, with the exact same text. The game needs some way to acknowledge that you had already done it before.

I managed to find two endings, both of the fantastical and otherworldly sort. I won’t spoil anything, but to give you an idea of what I’m talking around, imagine I’m riding my horse in my shining armor across Middle Earth, and suddenly, a shuttle comes down with Darth Vader, inviting me to his Death Star. That’s sort of one of the endings. It’s outta this world.

I’m scratching my head. Smiling a bit too.

Note: This review was written during Spring Thing 2025, and originally posted in the intfiction forum on 5 April 2025.

Starting with this one, a short Ink story, where you’re a stowaway on a ship, creeping around at night, seeing what you can discover and do.

I was surprised at the start that the game is set in the seventeenth century and the Caribbean. There isn’t much of a feel of the time and place in the story itself. There are also some anachronisms, such as a piano being played (too early). But these pale into insignificance against the creative leaps of imagination the game takes you to.

There are many endings to find. I tried to find as many of them as possible. One ((Spoiler - click to show)performing the ritual) was particularly satisfying to find. Many of the endings come from the branching choice structure. But also from how you can use objects that you discover to further the plot and choice options. It’s a lot of fun.

On the downside the game needs some more polish in coding. It lets you repeat doing things over and over again, with exactly the same responses. Eg if in a given location you select option X which gives you a certain piece of text together with a new item, you get that exact same text and new item on repeated choices of that option.

But it is a lot of fun. A creative and imaginative piece of work. It almost feels like a parser game, in the way you find objects and get extra options to use them.

A fun start!

In terms of plot, this reads a lot like the old school choose-your-own-adventure gamebooks. Y'know, the ones where you're in a jungle hunting for lost treasure, and you choose to shelter in a cave, and oops! suddenly you've discovered a secret society of mole-people. It's fun and silly, but also a bit jarring, because things just sort of happen without much build-up.

There's at least five different endings from multiple playthroughs, and each were as distinct as the last, with maybe two of the five containing minor puzzle elements whose solution you can kind of stumble on. Only one of the five endings I discovered seemed to have any narrative consistency within the larger framework of being a stowaway on a ship, and it was also the one I found most emotionally satisfying. Nonetheless, I wouldn't consider this to be a fault of the game itself, and more of an incompatibility between what the author is trying to do vs my preferences for interactive fiction.