Beat Witch

Playing "Beat Witch" was certainly an interesting experience. Somewhat uneven, to be sure. More than once I wondered why the author had made this a parser game, as opposed to a choice-based game; the game advances practically on rails, and is a sequence of scenes that you move along; at the key points (usually the ones where death is a threat) you find the command that lets you go on, but it's so heavily hinted (this is a good thing in a game that's this narrative-focused!) that it might as well be an explicit choice.

Then I realised I was falling into the trap of judging the work by my expectations instead of judging it by what it is. Funny how easy it is to do that. When I realised it, I started to notice how the author uses the conventions of how locations are presented to achieve certain effects, and how the parser really isn't a senseless fit. The sense of exploration that the parser gives, and of experimentation in a game with a few non-standard commands, may be something I've come to take for granted. I shouldn't. It's very much part of the DNA.

The premise is sublimely weird. Beat Witches, mute women who can kill with a thought and are lethally vulnerable to music.

Whoa.

It starts in media res, so you'll soon have to find a way to survive before you know what's going on. And... the whole game is going to be like that, because it'll keep throwing weird shit at you, and the stakes will always be high.

Playing this is quite an experience. Be prepared for lots and lots of text. Not that there's a lot of text overall, but what there is tends to come in large sections.

It is well written. It is a cohese world. Implementation is about right, though there isn't a lot to interact with (by design). The characters are consistent and... well, weird. Everything about this game is weird. In exactly the right way for my tastes.

I did often tune out, as the weirdness became harder to follow. I'm not entirely sure what happened near the end, and I don't think I mind not being sure. At that point I was just experiencing it, not worrying about it too much.

You know how you know you like a game?

When, at the end, it says "Polly Miller will return" and you sit there for a while, and you go "Yeah... yeah, I think I'd like that. Yes, please."