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Metafictional narrative about revisiting the past, using AGT, November 22, 2023I’m going to put on my ‘extra-critical’ goggles for this game, because it’s by a previous IFComp winner (who presumably can stand up to sterner scrutiny), and is in a genre (autobiographical emotional retrospective in game form) that has had several recent start-studded entries (Sting, Repeat the Ending, A Rope of Chalk, and of course the author’s own game two years ago). It also intentionally uses an older format and is mimicking ‘my crappy apartment/house’ games, which has to thread the needle between not being as bad as the source material and being accurate to source material.
So how does it succeed? Overall, the polish is evident. I rarely struggled with the parser, which (combined with the other AGT/AGX/MAGX game this year makes me respect the engine a lot). Teleportation and combat are handled well. Death and being reborn could theoretically have really messed up game state, but it doesn’t seem to have done so, which is really impressive to me.
The game itself relies heavily on the commentary to make it ‘good’, which makes sense, because it was built that way. At first I was critical of the base game as being too basic, given the rich and full games I’ve seen built by children and teens recently (for comparison, look at Milliways in this IFComp!). But then I remembered games like Coming Home 1 which are actually very similar in layout and descriptiveness level to this game (although not in polish), so I guess it is pretty authentic.
Exploration was fun. Sometimes commands and interaction felt just a bit ‘off’ from games I usually play, and this was good; it felt like seeing interactive fiction written by someone who had a different set of experiences than me.
I’m not sure whether the game is autobiographical or not; I suspect not, but I’m not sure that should factor into the overall evaluation of the game. The background story is emotional, and hearing only one side of the conversation really helps here as you can imagine the other side for yourself, with version painting the narrator in a deeply sympathetic light or as a barely-tolerated person stretching others’ patience. One thing though for me is that it was always very clear that I was interacting with a fictional narrative, one held at a distance, and that I wasn’t drawn into. This is a personal reaction and not necessarily one all would hold. That’s actually what made me wonder if this was autobiographical, as real life scenarios are often less believable than fictional (like the fact that Tiffany is a medieval name).
The map is nice, and I wish I had read it first. I solved one puzzle it solves on accident due to my normal direction-flailing I typically do when playing games. It has some messages like ‘Don’t Cheat’ and ‘Listnouns’ that make me wonder if there is some hidden content in the game.
Overall, it was clear from the beginning that this has high production values and includes a lot of elements I like. So the debate wasn’t whether to score high or low, but which high score to shoot for. I’m still thinking about it; in a way this game is more relatable to me than Best’s last game, but on the other hand it’s a slighter thing. The ending, for instance, felt anticlimactic, more of an opportunity to sit and ponder than a neat wrapping up.
I’ll definitely be keeping an eye out for other reviews on this; I feel like there are still some unresolved thoughts in my mind and maybe a fresh perspective can help. But I did enjoy this, and it was easy to play this on Gargoyle.