Bloodline

Bloodline is a short game where the protagonist (a 13 year old girl) has to make a single choice to win over a boy she is playing a game with. The game is called "Bloodline", hence the title of this game.

It's quite simple, offers three different endings (at least what I discovered while playing it) and the action advances with each turn, so the playtime is limited.

It offers several characters and enough details with good description to fill the scenery with life. It’s solid work, no obvious bugs but a little too short and simple for my liking.

This game has been on my wishlist longer than almost anything else, and I no longer remember why I put it on there, but it was fun.

It's a mini-IF, made for a speed competition, one of the earliest I know of (held in 1998, the same year as the first of the long-running Speed-IF competiitions).

Despite being short, what's here is surprisingly detailed. You're a young girl with a crush on Randy and the two of you happen to be playing a board game together. While you hold the key to victory at any time, the other girls suggest you let Randy win so that he'll be more open to your romantic overtures. "Boys like to win," they say.

There are at least two endings to the game, which was a condition of the original competition. I thought it was a pretty grimly humorous depiction of a lot of guys I know. I knew this one guy in college who dated my sister and he would get so genuinely upset when he lost at card or board games that we would all let him win just to avoid his temper tantrums.

Overall this was pretty great. It's small, but not rushed. It can be won very quickly, but has a lot of great detail.

Although the Z-Files review nails the essence of the game, there's a few other aspects worth commenting upon.

Bloodline is probably the best use of the one-room game setup besides Marika the Offering. All of time telescopes to a single handful of fragmented seconds as you play a game with a guy you adore. It's not nearly that Romantic, of course.

The game is wildly inconsistent about the objectives of the main character. Is it to have a first kiss, or to get laid? Yes, 13-year olds totally like "going all the way" does happen, but that doesn't mean it's pleasant to participate in such a game. This is one of those situations where it'd be nice to know before playing what was in the game. (The game does not mention the main character's concerns about fitting in, although that could be a possible -- albeit poorly-worded -- conclusion that would also fight against her other comment.)

Outside of the profanity and the implications of sex, Bloodline captures the feeling of a slumber party well: the cliquishness, and the sudden emotional changes, particularly.

Finally, the pacing is lackluster, as the game really consists of only four turns at the end; everything else is simply waiting for your turn and additional cluing.