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Review
Played: 7/24/24
Playtime: 15min, 3/3 rescues, 2/4 fails, 3/5 awards
This is an entry for a Comp I do NOT judge! Weirdly, as EctoComp’s organizing principle (spooky Halloween fun) is slap in the middle of my road. Hey, I gotta pick and choose though, right? I intend to have a creative life of my own, and not just vicariously latch onto the heady works of my betters, then pepper them with whatever is happening in my brain chemistry at the time! I too have a dark passenger that needs servicing! Anyway, he’s in the backseat now so pepper away I shall.
The premise is exploring an old church and dealing with (Spoiler - click to show)the horror inside. It is basically a linear story, with a variety of details in the player’s hands (including the nature of your companion) that fan out into a series of replayable, collectible achievements. Achievements, more than any other mechanism, encourage ‘collect all the endings’ style of play, so that is how I engaged it.
I found the prose in this one more than it needed to be, in a very good way. In exploring the church, we learn our protagonist might have been raised religious but has since lapsed. The language was very good at conjuring a reverence of iconography and environment that, once seeded, still has a hold on us despite our subsequent spiritual journey. It was a nifty observation and mood to set, unnecessary for the horror that followed, but uniquely well-observed all the same.
After some short ((Spoiler - click to show)optional) exploring, you encounter the antagonist, make some choices and it ends. It is very disciplined, in that it understands replays will be less concerned with exploring and repeated text and thankfully provides for shorter paths to plumb its outcomes on subsequent plays. Of particular interest is the ability to choose the relationship of your companion. This choice opens different climax options and variations. I think my favorite was the (Spoiler - click to show)acquaintance whose fail ending made me laugh out loud.
So yeah, this was a MEIF (multi-ending IF), nicely tuned to its repeat play paradigm, offering a healthy variety of branches and written much better than it needed to be. Worth a play or 8-12!
