Single Dad in Space

Single Dad in Space is, like the title suggests, a story about a dad trying to save his son during the destruction of a space station. It's short and getting the "best" ending shouldn't take more than an hour. It takes longer than I would like to get into the meat of the game, but there's an option to skip the intro from the game over screen, so it's not an annoyance.

Gameplay in Single Dad in Space consists mainly of a resource management puzzle; you have only a limited amount of oxygen to do everything you need to, so there will be games, especially early on, where all you can do is stay with your dying son or leave ship. The main of the puzzle is pretty well done, it's just there are a few hitches here and there, which in such a short game really add up. One such hitch might not be a bug or mistake per se, but it seemed weird and inexplicable all the same. (Spoiler - click to show)After you fix the structural damage to the ship, there's no option to fix the life support systems presented after. This would be a pretty minor problem overall, except for the fact that there is a different bug, later on: (Spoiler - click to show)when you try to fix the life support systems after realizing you need to buy more time to save your son, the game barfs out a red Twine error ("Passage not found", or something like that), and while that may still fire the code that extends your time (I got a game over due to an unrelated reason shortly after), the player still needs confirmation that it worked. As is, the game locks you into doing things in a certain order without really meaning to.

But despite these flaws, Single Dad manages to be an affecting little puzzler. Wait until the author makes some bugfixes if you must, but do give it a try some time.