Beneath Fenwick

I have a low tolerance for horror. I see enough bad things going on in life, and realizing they are not confined gives me enough horror. I played Beneath Fenwick in the middle of a bunch of other horror games I'd procrastinated. I'd like to think I saw good in all of them, but some of them drained me a bit. BF, on the other hand, BF was a pick-me-up. It's in twine but tries for a parser-like feel, and I think it succeeds overall. My biggest complaint was the sudden ending--I wasn't the only person unclear that it was just part one! Perhaps part two would explain some other things, such as rabid dogs that chased you. Nevertheless, there's more than enough to attack in the game.

There's nothing overly complex in the plot. You're a graduate student looking for housing at a rural college. It's all a bit Lovecraftian, but not cringingly so. You run into the locals, who are either vaguely scared of something or actively hiding their fear. Your lodgings feel delightful until you stumble on things that don't quite seem right. You seem to need to tiptoe around the landlady and the gardener, as both notify you of Places You Shouldn't Go, and the bigger puzzles in BF are about gaining access. One place is, of course, very very dark. You'll need light.

Through this, there's clear evidence the author knows what he's doing. I really like the conversation system and how I was able to use the tab and enter key to lawnmower through the options. That's tricky in the parser, where you have to write the right words. But here, there's a popup box for dialogues as well as description, and I think that works better than a page with a "return to what you were doing" link. For me it helped the experience feel uninterrupted. There was even an undo arrow that I missed until I needed it, because I got chased into a dead end by a rabid dog. (This was my fault. The game had two ways to shake them off.

And a few neat touches made me smile in the middle of all the horror, and atmosphere, and so forth. The first was getting booted from one location for asking too many questions. I appreciated the extra focus of having one less place to look at in the future, and how the game still ratcheted up the tension in the process, and it balanced nicely with later parts when the game preventing you from visiting certain areas until you knew where you were going. The second was actually having to use the "drop" command for a small puzzle. The third was having to cover your tracks, as in Sub Rosa, but with bumpers: as opposed to losing final points for leaving evidence, you were forced to do so by the game. I wound up feeling "gee, I'm lucky I didn't get killed, there."

On the downside, I do feel like more could maybe have been done with the "combine" command. It's got a neat interface and is mostly used for an early puzzle to fetch a package without being noticed and largely discarded after that. This feels better than the alternative (overusing it so we have to guess a lot) but in this case, it was pretty clear what to do, though maybe some clues about combos that almost work would've been nice. I may have missed them. But it's some neat under-the-hood stuff that deserved more mileage. There's also a dog chase that feels technically neat but doesn't have the emotion it should. It's a rare part of BF that might've worked better in a parser.

I can't give any advice here to do things better, but I think having shortcomings like this means it's a pretty darn good experience. The author commented in the forums that a sequel was forthcoming, because they wanted to narrow the scope to have something fully playable. Still, BF leaves you with more than enough. I'm definitely waiting for the second part.