You're the Judge Now, Dog!

You’re the Judge Now, Dog! is a Twine game(??), partly meta, partly a joke game (duh), partly… I don’t know how to characterise it? a rant? a weird praise? It’s a bit all over the place. There are 5 endings, some more gruelling to get than others.

The whole game moves along with the whims of an unlikeable narrator, who really wants to talk to you about Buford Rootberg, and how amazing of a guy he is (and how much of a looser you are), in between weird rants about –spin the wheel to pick a topic– and pokes at your disappointing… well, evertyhing. You go through an interview (a bit humiliating), shove your face with Hot Pockets (no vegetarian options?!), and bomb the ratings of all the games submitted to the jam (obviously they deserved it!).

I am not quite sure what exactly happens next, whether your life turns upside down and goes through some surreal experience where you are granted the honour of meeting (again) Buford Rootberg… or if it’s just some weird dream because of your definitely poor diet (so many Hot Pockets!!).

The absolute worst thing about this game, aside from the infuriating narrator and his questionable takes, was the timed text. Absolutely awful. Every single line is timed (around 2s each) and you have many many lines to read per passage.
Also pretty bad? The links. In three different spots, your page is covered with links (one is slightly worse than the other), all of which you have to click to go through. Infuriating. My hand would like a refund, please and thank you.

For some reason, the audio wasn’t working (I tried downloading the game, opening it on different browser, used the toggle…) and some images were broken too.

And for the low, very low price of $7,734.40, you too can own the source code (or skip the pay button). It actually does some interesting things with loops, especially with the randomised placement of links in loops.

So, yeah… it’s pretty bad. As you’d expect.