Unreal People

Note: This review was written during IFComp 2024, and originally posted in the authors' section of the intfiction forum on 21 Sep 2024.

This is a Twine piece, where you are some form of entity who can inhabit other things. Through a series of transfers from one object to another, including people, you uncover mysteries and secrets going on in a medieval version of India.

There’s a very long linear opening with lots of non interactive text. But after that you have more choice about what to do, and in particular what creatures to inhabit. Though through the framework of a largely pre-set narrative. Conversations are often the main choice opportunities in the game.

There are a lot of typos. It needed much more proofreading. I also ran into a number of bugs, for example error messages that would pop up mid text, or blank interaction boxes with no content and nothing I could click on. There also seemed some rough notes that I think were maybe meant to have been finished off / rewritten?

The characters that you encounter are intriguing, though the game takes longer to play - for me anyway - than the estimated half hour time. I’m a very fast reader.

There are lots of fail points, but you can back track and make a different choice.

Until it just suddenly ended for me. And I didn’t know if I’d hit a bug, or something unfinished, or what. It felt like lots of unresolved story strands left hanging.

So an interesting concept, but needed smoothing, especially re bugs and typos. Because those could stop the game flow, and reduce the game’s impact. Maybe more development time and more playtesting would have really paid off here.