Jay Schilling's Edge of Chaos

I beta tested this game.

This game is about a private detective hired to track down a woman, and features a number of unusual animals (for instance, it starts in a petting zoo with an aye-aye and an iguana).

Robb Sherwinn is an incredibly funny writer who makes games that involve bizarre logic and creative situations. Mike Sousa is a talented programmer who also has a knack for humor.

So this game is a tag-team effort that warms my heart. When I beta tested this, I laughed out loud several times. Parts of this game are so funny to me specifically. It really depends on what type of humor you have. For me, the thing I think I like best is that it’s good-natured humor; the people might be weird, or violent, or non-human, or troubled, but they’re inherently kind to each other. I’ve always been averse to games with strong profanity and sexual references, which featured in early Sherwin games (not in this game, though), but the inherent goodness and kindness in the stories overpowered that for me. Because isn’t that more important? Isn’t doing your best and trying to help others more important than the way you talk? I still felt uncomfortable with the content, but this game is like ‘clean’ Sherwin and I can’t say how much I appreciate that that exists.

I also enjoyed the references to Mike Sousa’s earlier games, like the computer sports news about Jake Garrett the baseball player (from At Wit’s End) and the garrulous taxi driver from Fake News. I also appreciated (of all things) the smooth elevator in the game. I did some ‘Inform tutoring’ with someone and we spent an entire week of lessons working on his elevator extension he was trying to write, so I confidently say that this game has an excellent elevator, the kind of elevator I aspire to write.

Finally, I love the art in this game by artist asteltainn. So I definitely plan on revisiting this and playing it again in future years.

+++++Polish, Descriptiveness, Interactivity, Emotional impact, Would I play again? This game satisfies all 5 criteria for my star rating system. It's great for my tastes!