House of Wolves

(This is an edited version of a review that first appeared in my IF blog during IFComp 2024.)

My clinical-sounding and admittedly cynical summation of House Of Wolves by Shruti Deo might be, "Depression Quest but shorter and with you forced to suffer at others' hands as well." I had predicted what kind of experience was ahead when the first choice I picked of three basically said, "You can't do that yet, pick a different choice." Then the second choice I picked said, "You can't do that either, pick a different choice."

This is a Twine piece with an unclear metaphor that could be about being completely depressed, broken and non-functional, hiding these facts from the world, and also being in an environment of zero care or flexibility, and where you are forced to go against your own wishes in terms of what you want to do, or when, or even what to eat. This manifests as having a round of chores to do each day, forced eating supervised by an unspecified They at night, and the visiting of three other storylets on the way.

The storylets were the best parts, I thought, because they offered specificity. They approached character and situation. Learning, friends, college, those kinds of things. Returning to the House Of Wolves at night returns the prose to a pained but too generic dirge of hopelessness. That is what I most disliked about this piece in the end, its non-specific version of all-out hopelessness. I have made this same criticism of many other works of this type over time.

I don't understand the wolf metaphor of the title. It would be disingenuous of me to say I have no idea what it could be about. The trouble is it, and the work, could be about almost anything. Conformity. Vegetarianism. Mental illness. Abusive families. Society. Hunting (wolves hunt). Pack mentality. Metaphorical realism. Symbolic fantasy. What is actually going on with the protagonist? I found no motivation or evidence to throw down in any particular direction. Specifics can suggest forms and forms can suggest specifics. House of Wolves is in the grey zone of this relationship.

I was glad (in a broad way) that it ended on a note of hope, but really, it didn't feel like it should. There's not much hope on the way, so the end feels like a deus ex.

This piece gives Trigger warnings. They are exhaustive for its short length, and really do it no favours. Too long, too much detail, robbing the piece of surprise, overstimulating the listed effects before they've even been attempted to be executed by art.

There is also a paradox with warnings that encompass the whole of something of this size that they amount to a message saying, 'If you relate to any of this (the entire listed content of the game), maybe you shouldn't play this game.' Which is taking the target audience and turning them away.

House Of Wolves is plainly not my cup of tea, but it does have a simple grace of execution and presentation on its own terms.