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Number of Ratings: 4
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3 people found the following review helpful:
Innovative but annoying format, December 8, 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)
Oof, I can’t help but feel bad for the timing of launching a Facebook Messenger game the same week that it crashed. I didn’t run into any downtime, but I did find FB Messenger an awkward platform for this game, from really-annoying timed text, the need to manually scroll down the chat log after each prompt to see the options, and accidentally restarting the game several times when I tried typing instead of just clicking. It definitely seems like there could be advantages to the format that make it worth these downsides, but I don’t think The Belinsky Conundrum does anything that can’t be capably handled by more traditional platforms like Twine, and using one of those likely would have made the implementation a fair bit smoother.
The substance of the Belinsky Conundrum is also a little awkward. The blurb made me expect intense moral dilemmas, and then the opening seems to be framing a high-stakes espionage mission, important enough to be launched from the White House Situation Room, but your character’s dialogue options radically undermine any sense of gravity – like, upon being told that the mission will involve assassinating an American citizen and his minor children, my choices were “sweet!”, “that’s messed up”, and “oh my god”. Which, I mean sure, it is messed up, but I was expecting something a bit more articulate? This irreverent tone continues throughout the mission, and while I guess it’s meant to keep things grounded and conversational, it really took my head out of the game.
It doesn’t help that most of what you wind up doing is fairly dull. The primary gameplay is about managing the logistics of getting to the mission and gathering the needed weapons and transportation. Preparation can be a fun part of a heist story, but here there’s not much interesting going on in any of the sequences – even a (Spoiler - click to show)a surprise betrayal from a key contact played out in a low-stakes, low-consequence way – and I ran into what was I think a bug that made the resource-management part of these decisions moot, since I started out with several thousand negative credits (but could keep spending anyway).
I can see how things might pick up at the climax, but just as I got to the mission’s target the first time, I learned that they were about to be raided by the cops, and I decided to scrub rather than get caught in the middle. Turns out this ends the game, which is fair enough, but since there was no save functionality, rectifying that mistake meant starting over, and I didn’t have the endurance to face all that timed text again immediately (I eventually won -- see below). It’s a shame, since a good moral dilemma can be satisfying to work through, but I fear TBC might have gone too far in back-loading the good stuff.
Highlight: I did enjoy the drama of kicking off the story in the Situation Room – it’s a fun touch.
Lowlight: Getting a gun was a really tedious process, not least because you need to call through five different people with very-similar names to figure out which one is actually your contact. It’s pointless busywork since there’s no way to guess which one’s right, and no penalty other than sitting through identical wrong-number dialogue, if you fail.
How I failed the author: I haven’t logged onto Facebook in like 3 or 4 years (look, I’m not a big social media person) so I was distracted the whole time I was playing by a sidebar full of people I’ve flaked on writing back to for an extraordinarily long time. Sorry!
MUCH LATER UPDATE: I went back and replayed this one to a real ending. There’s definitely a climax that brings some excitement and ties together the plot threads laid down earlier, and presents the promised moral dilemma. This didn’t change my mind on the game too much, though, since the story felt very much on rails after the point where my first playthrough prematurely concluded. There’s a lot of action and some wrenching decisions, but they all appeared to happen automatically, with only one significant choice coming in at the very end. There do appear to be major consequences for the decisions made in the mid-game – there’s a score listed at the end, and there was definitely room for improvement – but I think front-loading the interactivity like this wasn’t a great idea, since it means there’s a lot of fiddly decision-making before the story kicks into high gear, then not much to do except click “next” once the ending arrives. If this had more of a heist vibe, where you could know a bit more about what the climax was likely to look like and make your preparations accordingly, I might have liked it better, but as-is the decisions felt too much like shots in the dark.
3 of
3 people found the following review helpful:
Stick to clicking links -- don't type anything other than your name, November 13, 2021I liked the mechanic of playing a game in Messenger. To progress, you usually have three options you can choose from. It is a spy thriller, but much of it is played like a comedy. You are given a mission at the very beginning: to kill a man and his two children.
I was very interested to see where this would go. I played several times to get better endings. It seemed like a large percentage of the choices, mostly dialog, don't change the course of the story at all. I tried to pick different options on each playthrough, and eventually ended up at the same place, although I did find different endings.
Something that disappointed me: (Spoiler - click to show)I don't think you ever get the choice to actually complete the mission and kill the family.
The description says that it is a game about making difficult choices, but the character seemed to make the biggest decisions on their own. There is a mini-game with a bartender that I wish I could have skipped over when I played the game back. Also, I don't think there is a way to save. When I typed it in, the game ended.
I wish there was a walkthrough that showed the different endings and how to get them. I would keep playing to find them myself, but with no way to reload a game, I would have to click through a long series of choices to get to the part where things start to branch. If there ever is a sequel, I would definitely play it.
0 of
3 people found the following review helpful:
Crashed, October 12, 2021I got about three choices into the game and it crashed. I selected "oh my god" in response to the explanation of what OPERATION SNOW is, and the game just… didn't respond any more. There's no restart/reset button, so I'm just stuck. I can't play anymore.
IMO, a game set in Facebook Messenger should should be a chat of some kind, like Lifeline or Emily is Away.
8 of
8 people found the following review helpful:
A Facebook messenger game about a cyborg spy thriller, October 2, 2021This game is played on Facebook messenger, and requires you to be logged into Facebook to play it.
This is a choice-based comedy spy thriller. Most choices are out of three options.
The story is set in a future where everyone is controlled by a PLUS chip, especially you, an Enhanced cyborg, the first of your kind and the number one assassin for the United States government. You are asked to assassinate a man and his 2 young children to preserve the current regime.
This heavy story contrasts with the goofy and often mean-spirited writing. Your choices are often reactions like 'OMG?' or 'This is nuts', etc. Your character frequently insults each other and seems to have problems with women. There are several errors (such as a character whose name changes from Roosk to Roost and back), and characters often seem to change motivation or personality without warning.
Overall:
-Polish: The new system is very impressive, but the game itself could use some more editing.
+Descriptiveness: The author is good at vivid descriptions.
+Interactivity: At first I felt like almost all choices were meaningless, but some later on seemed definitely to matter. Whether or not it's true it was good at making me feel like it was true.
-Emotional impact: I tried to get invested in the story but the stakes and goals frequently change. Our character is a jerk, and I've realized that, while many people like playing as a villain, few like jerks, and the difference is that well-written villains have strong motivations for their evil actions, while jerks go out of their way to cause harm for no benefit to themselves.
-Would I play again? The somewhat slow performance of facebook messenger and the difficulty with backtracking or saving, combined with the length of the game means that I don't plan on replaying.
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