Better than Alone

Like Will Not Let Me Go, this story is a well-written long Twine game about the effects of old age and Alzheimer's/dementia on an elderly man and those around him.

It plays out over ten days and ten nights. You struggle as a young at-home attendant for an elderly man named Carl who wavers between lucidity and violent forgetfulness.

At night, you have 4 tasks, the same every night. On the fast version, you do these once, but miss out on some important plot points. On the slow version, you do them 10 times every night, but they're tricky and shift around in very plot-relevant ways.

The 10-times version is hard but rewarding the first night. By the third night, though, I misclicked five times in a row (which restarts the night) and had to stop. It's hard because the image pushes all the text below the screen, so I had to scroll down for each image on a trackpad laptop.

The images are gorgeous and really contribute to the game. I wonder if, for the nights at least, it could have helped to put the image to one side and the text to another.

In any case, the story was meaningful to me, especially talking about divorce and changing relationships with one's spouse. I loved it, and appreciate the author writing it.