Beneath Fenwick

by Pete Gardner profile

2021

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
Worth checking out if you're into Lovecraftian horror., November 27, 2023

Beneath Fenwick is the Lovecraft-adjacent story of a remote New England town full of sinister, malformed humans lurking just out of sight. The author's goal was to create an experience that is “primarily choice-based but plays like a parser game.”

On the one hand, I didn’t encounter the branching storylines that are seen in a choice-based game. There is only one “correct” sequence of links that brings an audience through to the end of the story. Readers are free to explore detours on their journey, and they're also encouraged to save often, because the wrong links will end things early.

On the other hand, I didn’t receive the clues that a parser might provide when players struggle with specific puzzles. Beneath Fenwick has a “combine” command that feels a bit vague — sometimes it involves using one object on another, and at other times it merges objects together, but the error message is always “That combination does not work!”

I respect the amount of effort that went into implementing and polishing Beneath Fenwick. It’s a smooth experience! I didn’t encounter any broken links or inescapable dead ends, and things functioned consistently.

My main issue was that the interface overshadowed the story, encouraging me to ignore the text and hunt for links. This problem has been discussed in Interactive Fiction communities before.

The writing in Beneath Fenwick is consistent, and fans of this genre might enjoy themselves. I recommend experiencing it for yourself to draw your own conclusions.

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
Lovecraftiana with a twist or two, December 3, 2021
by Mike Russo (Los Angeles)
Related reviews: IF Comp 2021

(This is a lightly-edited version of a review posted to the IntFict forums during the 2021 IFComp. My son Henry was born right before the Comp, meaning I was fairly sleep-deprived and loopy while I played and reviewed many of the games, so in addition to a highlight and lowlight, the review includes an explanation of how new fatherhood has led me to betray the hard work the author put into their piece)

The blurb for Beneath Fenwick says its genre is “suspense, with horror overtones”, but the opening of this parser-aping Twine game couldn’t be hitting the Lovecraft notes harder if it tried. The protagonist is on a creepy old bus, being driven towards an isolated New England town, and once you arrive the dilapidated architecture, pug-ugly inhabitants, and even the creepy grocery store invoke Shadow Over Innsmouth so directly that it’s clearly intentional. The story doesn’t stick too closely to that template, though – we’re in the present day, not the 1920s, and rather than being alone, the botany-student protagonist (named… Hedgerow) arrives alongside her boyfriend, as they’re both planning on attending the local college. Vive la difference, but still, I wound up wishing it had stuck with the horror tropes more fully, as the story slowed down in its last half before ending too abruptly. And while I usually enjoy the puzzley gameplay this kind of Twine game enables, Beneath Fenwick could have benefitted from leaning into its choice-based nature a little more fully.

Starting with the second piece first, the game’s interface does a really good job of mimicking parser conventions. Notable bits of scenery, usable objects, and other characters are highlighted in the text, and clicking on any of them pops up a new window with a more detailed description and possibly further possibilities for interaction – taking, unlocking, all the usual medium-dry-goods stuff, plus talking, which gives you a choice of topics. There’s a full inventory a click away, which works similarly, as well as a subsystem that lets you combine two or more carried objects. The major departure is in navigation: instead of compass directions, exits are listed by name.

This works well, but what you get is what you get, and I wound up missing more traditional Twine touches. Beyond the plain-vanilla puzzles, there are long cutscenes – especially the opening sequence – where there’s just a single continue option available, and the keyword-based conversation system doesn’t allow for dialogue choices. I suppose that it’s odd that I’m totally willing to roll with these limitations in a parser game, but it still seems a shame to do so much work to re-create in Twine the things that parser systems aren’t as good at.

The other issue I ran into had to do with moving around the world. The map is very dense, with a number of different roads and locations in the town, and the boarding house where the main characters wind up staying has an especially large number of rooms whose interconnections aren’t obvious and which have forgettable names. I know many folks find compass directions inaccessible, but they would have made it much easier for me to build a mental model of how the geography fit together.

Story-wise, Beneath Fenwick does a good job with the gradual build of tension. It’s beyond clear from the get-go that something’s deeply wrong in this town, but the game doesn’t tip its hand too early by indicating which of the many, many creepy people, places, and things on hand are the main threats. There’s at least one clever bait-and-switch (Spoiler - click to show)(the university at the edge of town isn’t a Miskatonic-style hotbed of occultism – in fact you never make it there), and it steers clear of the typical Lovecraft-game shift into gonzo violence midway through. At the same time, that means that some of the mid- and late-game felt slow, and even unmotivated – the requirement to fully explore the boarding house on the second day before running your errands felt artificial, and to get to the endgame sequence you need to break into a shed with no indication there’s anything important there.

Speaking of the ending, it’s effectively surprising, but rather abrupt – there’s no denouement to speak of, and the resolution of the mysteries of Fenwick felt disappointingly straightforward. I almost felt like the game stopped midway through – I would have definitely stuck around for a second hour that added in some more interesting puzzles and deeper interactions, while ramping up the tension into a more sustained climax. It’s always good to leave the player wanting more, of course, but maybe not so much more.

Highlight: The main character’s boyfriend – Randall, an architecture major – is a delightful fuddy-duddy despite being in his early 20s. He even introduces the protagonist (his girlfriend, again) as “my companion”!

Lowlight: It is possible to die in Beneath Fenwick, and while it offers a one-turn rewind, I think this can leave you stuck in an unwinnable state. Fortunately I’d done a save at the beginning of the day when this happened, but it was still frustrating to have to replay a bunch of the quotidian exploration I’d already completed.

How I failed the author: Playing the game went fine, but Henry’s been super congested and fussy today so I’ve written this review in like ten two-minute bursts, so apologies if it’s choppy and doesn’t make sense!

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2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
Parser-feeling Twine horror with innovative features, November 30, 2021
by Andrew Schultz (Chicago)
Related reviews: IFComp 2021

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.

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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
Act 1 of a puzzly horror game, November 22, 2021
by autumnc
Related reviews: ifcomp 2021

First impression: The PC’s name is Jennifer Hedgerow and she’s a botany student. Wow. This is a comedy right? *Checks blurb* oh.

Jennifer Hedgerow doesn't feel like a horror name, or a Lovecraftian name. There is music here, which feels unobtrusive; I don't think much is lost by playing it without music. I like the interface, especially the pop-up asides. Sense of Harmony from 2020 used that to great effect. Actually, this game reminds me of Sense of Harmony for a number of reasons.

Beneath Fenwick is one of several games in IFComp 2021 to use a parser-like mechanic in twine, with locations, inventory, puzzles, and so on. Of those games, I think this is the one that goes furthest; it feels more parser-like than any of the other twine games with similar ideas. And it works! It works quite well! The systems are implemented in a nice, bug-free way. Overall, the game is constructed very well, with a great UI, good writing, and an interesting setting and plot. I was always interested in what the game would throw at me next!

Navigation and travel can be kind of tedious. At several points I was wandering through the whole town trying to find the necessary thing to progress the story. It felt like lawnmower-ing, and it threw the pacing off a bit.

None of the characters act like human beings. Of course, being townspeople in a Lovecraftian story, they might not actually be human beings. But even the outsider protagonists act in strange ways. The first puzzle was kind of ridiculously contrived. The (Spoiler - click to show)escaping-the-rabid-dog-by-going-to-an-abandoned-mill puzzle was just weird and felt a little out of place. Is there no animal control in this area? Or even villagers with weapons or traps or any sense of self-preservation whatsoever? It’s weird that barely escaping from the dog with your life can’t be discussed with anyone (maybe it was discussed, but I forgot). But maybe this is all for the sake of Lovecraft-ness and that’s the point.

The game just... stops. There really isn’t an ending. It feels like an Act 1. In 2020, Sense of Harmony was another game to do this. I think I preferred Sense of Harmony because of the characters and plot.

I hope this doesn’t sound overly nitpicky; I really enjoyed Beneath Fenwick and I’m really looking forward to the next chapter, if/when it comes!

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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
Don't read any spoilers, November 11, 2021

I recommend playing this game. I do not recommend reading too much about it before you play. I didn't even read the description, and I'm glad I didn't have any expectations on where it would go. It is a Twine game (categorized as suspense), and you make most of your choices by clicking links. You also have a game mechanic where you are able to try to combine items in your inventory.

One thing I appreciated about the formatting is that when I got to a page full of links, they were color-coded so that I knew which ones were descriptions and which were choices. The descriptions were short, and there were reasons to go through all of them.

When I finished the game, I found that it wasn't quite as vast in scope as I guessed it would be. I would say that anyone who decides to play should be prepared to not have all of your questions answered, and not to expect every detail that seems important to necessarily lead to something. It didn't bother me at all, personally; I thought it was all worth it when I was done. I do think it could have been nice to have had even more to the story, and I would absolutely play a follow-up if the author ever decided to offer it. But again, I got plenty of satisfaction just from what was there, more so than I seem to from most IF games.

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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
An promising parser-like twine horror game with many loose ends, October 17, 2021
by MathBrush
Related reviews: about 2 hours

This game has a lot of good things going for it, but the end product feels like the author ran out of time or energy with creating the game and decided to focus on polishing what's there (which is much better than making a game with too much scope and not testing it).

Mechanically, this is a Twine game that is built to be like a parser. Most nouns are clickable to get a description, and you have an inventory. Depending on what you are carrying, some items around you have other links. Most interestingly, you can combine any number of items, although I only saw that used once in gameplay.

This game has many similarities with Anchorhead. In both games, you play as a young woman accompanying her husband/partner to a strange and decaying city in order to get work at the city's university. Both have a city of surly inhabitants and a strange house with many secrets, as well as a wood-related mill outside of town.

The unusual feature of this game storywise is that there is a cheerful and warming house you stay at with two talkative inhabitants. The house gains greater importance as the game deepens.

The entire game is lovely. The only issue is that there isn't enough game, I think. The ending itself isn't bad, it's just that it leaves hanging many of the important questions from earlier on. Great games have a narrative arc that builds to a climax and then has a shorter, but definite, denouement; this game essentially falls off a cliff.

Things I can think of that are unresolved (major spoilers!) (Spoiler - click to show)the dog's origin and/or fate, anything with the sawmill, anything with the university, the chain and the slapping in the back room, the ability to combine items, the wicket in the town hall you say you can't go up yet, the pedestal in the town square.

I think it's not really helpful in general to tinker with games, but I think an 'expanded' version of this game that fleshes it out more would be great, maybe entered into the back garden of Spring Thing one year. Of course, just writing another game would be fun, too; the author is good at writing and codig, so I'd look forward to that.

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