All I Do is Dream

by Megan Stevens

2016

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
A slice of stale life., November 26, 2021
by Wade Clarke (Sydney, Australia)
Related reviews: Twine, choice-based, IFComp 2016

(This review originally appeared as a blog post of mine during IFComp 2016.)

Short, existential Twine game in which you specify the manners in which you will veg out in the house during your girlfriend's next night shift at the pickle factory. This is an experience hailing from the drab end of the slice of life cake. You can think about the bedclothes, fiddle a bit with the bedclothes, clean objects in several boring stages. Your character is clearly depressed, as the prose is insistent about the pointlessness of any activity. A few prose studs of specificity about the characters' shared life don't make up for the more macroscopic lack of specificity that prevents any insight into their plight over the short duration.

Perhaps this is the Twine equivalent of the parser world's 'My Crappy Apartment Game'. The apartment is still there, but the focus shifts to the immediate crappy existential rather than the immediate crappy physical. 'All I Do's...' observations of fiddly-stuck depression make for better writing than that of most My Crappy Apartment games, but its small catalogue of anxious domestic activity didn't interest me because I knew almost nothing about the characters, before or after.

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- NJ (Ontario), May 19, 2017

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
A shortish twine piece about depression, May 10, 2017

This is an entry by Megan Stevens, who has been doing her own thing in IFCOMP for several years. She doesn't focus as much on styling or complex link structures. Instead, her games focus on serious life events and a sort of grey evocative feel.

This game is about depression. It's short, but I found parts of it effective, especially the scene displayed in the cover art.

This game has a single, pretty much unnecessary strong profanity. It also references depression, obviously. If you like this game, you should try her other work.

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- Aryore, May 2, 2017

- E.K., December 5, 2016

- Doug Orleans (Somerville, MA, USA), November 24, 2016

- EJ, November 19, 2016

- Mr. Patient (Saint Paul, Minn.), November 18, 2016

- LayzaSkully (Italy), November 12, 2016

- Audiart (Davis, CA), November 3, 2016

sad trumpet, October 26, 2016

by Owlor (Sweden)

This is a game about lacking motivation, so the default look is at least thematically fitting, although it does not make it feel less lackluster.

I enjoyed it perhaps more than I should judging by its quality as it hit a little close to home in some ways. I actually like default Sugarcane, but I have to admit the text is hard to read unless zoomed in.

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- Matt Bates, October 5, 2016

- Oreolek (Kemerovo, Russia), October 4, 2016

- Sobol (Russia), October 2, 2016


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