You Can Only Turn Left

Adapted from a SpringThing24 Review

Played: 4/4/24
Playtime: 15min, two passes

I know I just said two passes, but this is a one playthrough game. It pretty crisply tells you exactly what it is up front - an exploration/simulation of the grey area between sleep and wake. The presentation is terrific - swirling backgrounds of symbolic dream images or sleepiness-contorted real world fragments. I think the plunging, swirling staircase was my favorite. It also plays with font and layout in intriguing and evocative ways very much adhering to its mission statement.

The story it tells is drowning in specificity, to its great benefit. It’s not trying to be a general dream state, with shadowy details that might or might not resonate with you the reader. It presents a protagonist of specific experiences, well and tightly described, then sleepily distorts those vignettes. That is its true power. Those specific details are our entry into this halfway-state. Only by understanding what clear looks like to we appreciate the depths of murky. I was swept along in its thrall, and happily report it delivers its intent with panache and confidence.

My first playthrough left me in a happy fog, kind of like an hour into an evening of edibles. Uh, so I’m told. Always leave them wanting more, right? Well, when I want more, I want MORE. In this case, that meant revisiting this short work.

Peppered throughout the proceedings are occasions where you get to select sleep v wakefulness. I decided to poke a bit, see what those choices amounted to. This was a mistake. During first playthrough, my selections had everything to do with the ebb and flow of the dreamstate. Where did it FEEL like I was going. That was cool.

Second time, deliberately playing with it, it looked to me like those choices had no effect on the narrative. Worse, the way I determined that was making a choice, then going back and making the other choice. Sometimes this was not possible, but when it was I detected no difference in the subsequent text. It didn’t seem to matter which choice you made. Except it did, because making a choice and rolling with it kept you in the flow of the piece. Stutter-stepping back and forth shattered that calm and effectively destroyed the mood of the piece. Which was really its whole point!

Learn from my mistakes, team. This is a really cool one-off experience. Like my oft-cited butterfly, examining it closely wrecks it.

Mystery, Inc: Shaggy. You know why.
Vibe: Pre-Munchies Fog
Polish: Smooth
Gimme the Wheel! : What would I do if it were my project? Good question, it is very accomplished at going after its goals. I think I would expand the use of music. Ambient sounds often try to reflect the current scene, but their transitions to new scenes are usually abrupt. Rather than disrupt the flow, I think I would commit to an unbroken, dreamy soundtrack. Music could powerfully underline the mood it is going for. Even better if you could engineer smooth thematic changes as the game progresses and avoid those jarring cuts.

Polish scale: Gleaming, Smooth, Textured, Rough, Distressed
Gimme the Wheel: What I would do next, if it were my project.