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Review
I loved this short horror work by Dias, set on a scrubby little island where rich New Englanders bought cottages and displaced the sheep herders and fishers who once eked out a living.
The voice of the main protagonist/narrator is strong and realistic; I could imagine this man talking to me in a dark bar. Little details complete his character--he doesn't just chain smoke, he makes a snide comment about vaping, too.
The house is navigated by clicking text links--room to room--and I quickly made a mental map in my head which looked an awful lot like the small Cape Cods and saltboxes of the coastal towns from my home state.
The ending is perfect: as far as I can tell, you have two choices, and it is worth playing a second time to experience both of them. There are other small choices throughout, but most of them function more as "which to do first", although a few conversational options are binary.
Highly recommended. I would love some appropriate audio in the background too, although I recognize that I'm getting greedy as the overall quality of Twine-like games improves. I imagine the quiet clink of glasses and low murmurs, the jukebox of a dive bar...
My only complaint is the candle UI, as it was; you use candles to communicate with the dead, and the game cleverly displays your candles at the bottom of the interface. I may have been wrong, but I had the sense that my candles were limited, and could be used up prematurely; it would be nice to have some way to know that this isn't the case, as it would remove a bit of, I think, unintended tension from the experience.
