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Review
I was always going to like this one. "Gay werewolf social anxiety simulator," besides describing my transition timeline, is a premise that caters so specifically to my tastes that the game would have to send angry bees to my house upon every death for me not to like it. Even then, I'd probably still give it two stars.
In Social Lycanthropy Disorder, you play as Mia, a werewolf who has accidentally agreed to attend a Halloween party on the night of a full moon. Being more afraid of the definite faux pas of cancelling last minute than the potential faux pas of turning into a dog in your friend's living room, it's now up to you to keep up social niceties, make small talk, and stay just long enough to not look suspicious, while avoiding touching anything silver or peeing on the carpet.
I'm still quite new to narrative rather than puzzle-based IF, so it's possible this isn't all that salient a comparison, but Social Lycanthropy reminds me most of Brian Patrick Hennessey's work, specifically Birdland. Both games have a core conceit of a protagonist going through a decidedly supernatural event without letting anyone around them know about it, and I think they share a similarly offbeat sense of humor and overall optimistic messaging about the human condition.
Unfortunately, in that comparison, Social Lycanthropy lags behind in two major ways. The first is in the depth of side characters; this is understandable, since Lycanthropy is substantially shorter than Birdland, and your interactions with the other party guests are meant to be somewhat awkwardly brief. The second is that Lycanthropy lacks any kind of central gameplay gimmick besides "mill around a party for a while." This is...fine, I guess, and okay, yes, there is a "discomfort meter," but it's such a minor part of the narrative that you're unlikely to notice it unless you specifically shoot for a bad ending.
I think there was real potential here to lean even further into the "werewolf instincts" aspect: as the night goes on, maybe you have to ensure you don't hover around the snack table too long, lest your inner beast decides to hork down the whole charcuterie table. Maybe you have to avoid the host's cat so you aren't tempted to chase it. The game is still perfectly fine without these things, I just think they would have added a nice little zhuzh to proceedings.
I've found I have some trouble giving an ultimate verdict on heavily story-based games, since, so long as they have a basically cromulent narrative structure and no game-breaking bugs, there's very little in them I feel equipped to declare universally "good" or "bad." For what it's worth, I enjoyed my time with Social Lycanthropy Disorder, and I think you might too.
Now, who wants a treat?
Comments on this review
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Thanks for the review! The challenge of the game is supposed to be managing your discomfort in order to avoid a bad ending, but it was minimally playtested so the difficulty level is not well-calibrated.
I do love Birdland and that's probably in this game's DNA somewhere, unconsciously, but its most direct inspiration was actually 16 Ways to Kill a Vampire at McDonalds, which might be more up your alley than this in some ways if you like stuff that's very puzzle-forward/goal-oriented. It was one of the earlier attempts to do parser-style puzzle solving in Twine and the gameplay probably has not aged the most gracefully, but I'm still very fond of it, although of course as it was kind of formative for me I'm not the most objective.
You have no idea how giddy it made me to see your comment in my inbox. I jot down these reviews while I'm bored at work just to keep my writing skills from atrophying completely; I didn't expect someone whose work I've enjoyed so much to ever read them, let alone reply.
This is a little embarrassing to admit, but I wrote my review after just one standard playthrough, rather than getting every ending first. I think my first run just so happened to end without going over the discomfort point threshold. Now that I've seen more of the content, I think the difficulty is much better balanced than I gave credit for.
Oh, and I'll absolutely give 16 Ways a play. Thanks for the recommendation!
Aww, thanks! I'm really Just Some Guy (gender-neutral). I mean, IF being so niche, we're all Just Some Guy here, and you can come in as a newbie and talk to people who made games that you really admire like it's nbd, which I also remember finding really wild when I first got into it.
That said, I do generally avoid commenting on IFDB reviews of my work, because I know this is primarily a space for players to address other players and prospective players and I don't want to make things weird by reminding everybody that I'm watching. But unfortunately my weakness is that I can't shut up about the games I like, so as you mentioned being new to choice IF and not having played a lot of things similar to this, I couldn't resist plugging 16 Ways.
I'm glad you found the balance/difficulty level better on subsequent playthroughs!
