The Island Of Rhynin

You and an appointed "dark-skinned" English crew member are appointed to explore the Island of Rhynin. (Spoiler - click to show)At the end, you get to decide whether to kill him or not.

It's pretty easy to get to the ending. Despite the blurb's claim, none of the choices I made seemed to have any effect on the plot. My choices just increased/decreased my stats, which had no effect on the game.

And then, the ending, which is where the colonialism really kicks in.

What was the point of this story? None of my earlier choices had any effect. The ending choice means nothing to me. The plot is nothing but a regurgitation of colonialist propaganda.

I think this would be a two-star game if it weren't for the dehumanizing colonialism. Instead, I'm giving it one star.

Despite the game’s description, this story is largely linear. You travel to an island with a companion, dealing with some challenges on your way, ultimately culminating in a final showdown with a few choices including seizing power, perhaps by betrayal.

Choices in the game affect your stats, listed at the bottom of the screen. Having lower stat scores may impact your access to certain choices later, but this is not very elegantly communicated, with a red line of text where the choice should be indicating the unavailable choice and which of your stats fell short. You have a choice to fight your companion at the end, and I think your stats affect the outcome, but the endings as a whole felt pretty short and anticlimactic.

Some parts of the game also didn’t make too much sense. For example, at one part, you encounter an unstable bridge, and can locate unstable parts of it by shooting at them with a pistol to find out. This doesn’t strike me as very realistic or practical. Yes, that helps you get across the bridge safely.

The overall story felt somewhat mediocre. The stat system was ok, I guess, but some of the choices around them weren’t good from a writing standpoint. It’s a short read if you want to take a look. The undo button is handy, I suppose.

(Warning: This review might contain spoilers. Click to show the full review.)

This is a brief stat-based Twine game where you explore an island that has a civilization on it.

You are a renowned explorer joining an exploration team to check out an island. You can choose things like your weapon, whether to conserve or spend resources, how to deal with strangers, etc.

It has some interesting elements, but many of the mechanics don't make sense and the story relies heavily on pre-existing tropes.

For instance, mechanically, we have the choice to build up our food supplies or rush on ahead. But the game is over in around 20 choices or less, and there's no time to use supplies or not. Many choices are just straight up 'right' (stat boost) or 'wrong' (stat decrease) with no indication of which one is right.

Story-wise, the island has us hunting for food, crossing a decaying bridge, encountering a tribe, etc. There are a couple of twists but overall it could be stronger. There are a lot of plotholes (like the (Spoiler - click to show)chieftain saying they've been aware of us for quite some time but we just barely arrived on the island).

I think that with more time the author could develop these ideas into a more compelling narrative, if that is something that they're interested in. The most impressive part was the smooth UI presentation with nice stat indicators.