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I was glad to see the name ‘Carter Gwertzman’ because their (one’s? zher? the pronouns do seem to matter after playing this game, but I don’t see them listed anywhere) games are generally imaginative, creative, and not too hard to complete.

This is perhaps my favorite of this author’s games so far. It uses the idea of fairies or similar creatures stealing names and identities, a very old concept that was popularized in recent years by stories like SCP-4000. I made a game about it this year called Faery: Swapped.

Carter Gwertzman’s game is a color-focused Twine game that makes clever use of CSS styling. You (and the name ‘You’ is important) are someone who has lost their identity in a strange forest. To get help, you have to explore and help others in an attempt to recover your true identity.

There are various mushrooms in the game that can affect your size and color, which directly changes the text in the game. Pronouns can be modified, too.

The game openly operates as well as a metaphor for personal change and growth, where sometimes our self-identity becomes something different than we thought it would be. It reminds me of myself, where I planned for years on becoming a professor at a specific school, and when I didn’t achieve that goal I fell into deep depression (and started reviewing IF as a coping mechanism) and spent the next few years rewriting who I wanted to be in life.

Very glad to have the experience playing this!

Very esoteric (and sometimes flat out weird), but cleverly designed! I liked the way it played around with colours and pronouns to take on an enigmatic and slightly puzzling taint (pun intended). Its weirdness, in a way, reflected the strangeness surrounding humans' search for meaning and identity (in other words, this was absurd art well done), especially by sticking labels on everyone and everything. The world was small and the puzzles were somewhat straightforward but, interestingly enough, I wasn't left wanting more from them, nor from the (few) characters, map, etc. I tried comparing how this IF made me feel to one of similar calibre, *Focal Shift*, and concluded that this one feels like it ends on a significantly more satisfactory and final note.