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Live! Die! Repeat!, September 6, 2020One of the challenges of Twine games is to be more than just an interactive text dump or CYOA. There's nothing wrong with those formats, of course, but I was bred on Infocom and crave deductive reasoning in my text adventures. Black Sheep provides plenty of that and is three-fourths of a great game.
While playing I was reminded of The Longest Journey. Other than some of the sci-fi elements there's not a lot in common between the games, but I couldn't shake the feeling I had that I was in the same world. And believe me that's high praise. This game pulled me in from the start, and when I discovered that I was in a time loop I was extra giddy. Learn-by-dying is a well worn trope for sure, but its beauty is that it grants the player freedom to explore without the anxiety of making (permanent) mistakes. Other tropes played for full effect are the buddy cop (in this case an android) whose dead-pan delivery is quite amusing as well as the monolithic coldness of the bad guys.
Most of the tasks involve fairly logical inventory puzzles, though a couple are a bit obtuse and in one case I had to resort to a walkthrough without guilt. There are also several red herrings that gave the game more depth without being unfair. Otherwise you need to deduce the mystery by essentially combining clues together from your notebook. This is not always satisfying, because as I progressed through the game I deduced the mystery before the character did and before I could go ahead and solve it I had to figure out which clues to combine to get her to realize it.
My only other critique is the ending, which felt rushed. To that point the writing had been rather tight and I was hoping for an epic climax or a satisfying denouement, of which there were neither. Still, a very solid first game by the authors and I hope to see more from them.