Violet

Feel free to scoff at this, veterans of Interactive Fiction, but I found a lot of the puzzles in Violet pretty obtuse. None are outside the realm of figuring out without hints, but when I found myself throwing a wooden stool against every seemingly solid surface in the room, I decided I might need a little hand-holding. Perhaps a bit more lenience with the wording of solutions is in order, or maybe I'm just not very smart.

So if I found the "game" part of this game unsatisfactory, why the five star rating? Because Violet is so well written, so wry and poignant and clever and sappy, that every solution could be "use hands on thing," and I'd still recommend it.

In Violet, you play as a Wisconsin graduate student with the most severe case of ADHD in the history of fiction. Your Australian girlfriend, the titular Violet, has threatened to leave you if you don't finish your thesis today, and has already booked a flight back to the land down under. As a last-ditch effort, you conjure a sort of Violet-shaped tulpa in your head, who always has a sly comment or word of encouragement for you. That may sound like a spoiler, but I think it's better to go in knowing the main character hasn't actually dragged their poor, maligned girlfriend to watch them write for five hours.

One of my favorite details in Violet is how (Spoiler - click to show)nearly every sentimental object in your office gets destroyed by the end. It's both funny (Violet's increasingly withering commentary on your annihilation of her handicrafts was a highlight for me) and meaningful; these are just objects, and none of them are half as important as your love for each other.

I found Violet to be ruinously relatable, but someone who doesn't need prescription stimulants to function as an adult may, instead, find irritation. You'll know which camp you fall into within the first few paragraphs, so, as Violet would say, just sit down and try, wombat.

The last thing I'd like to mention is the "heteronormativity switch"; the default player character in Violet is male, but your gender can be toggled at any time. While it changes very little in the grand scheme of the plot, I really appreciated this option, and, personally, I found the story much more compelling when playing as a woman. Maybe I am a misandrist after all.