The Insect Massacre

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An entirely dialogue-based sci-fi Twine game about a space station murder, February 3, 2016

This was an IFComp 2015 entry. This is a mid-length Twine game with an interesting format: each page is written somewhat like a play, listing the location and people present, each in their own color. Then dialogue appears a line at a time, each in the color belonging to the person.

The game is set on a space station. You are a computer, and there has been a murder on the station.

I enjoyed the story, especially the 2nd and 3rd times I played it. Most of the interactivity is found in selecting the order of presentation. I am beginning to become a fan of dialogue-only games, like this and Birdland.

Gently experimental, November 19, 2015

This game chose a couple of unusual engine options - setting out dialogue with a speech (no speaker tags, but colour coded), and using real-time delays (very gently, eg someone took a few seconds to fetch something).

The colours were a bit distracting - with my memory, I'd rather have had the standard script format of
Bob: Hello Jane
Jane: Hello Bob
etc
but I actually didn't mind the timing thing this time. I'm a linear storyteller myself, so it was surprising that I enjoyed walking from room to room to get the different bits of the story. And then I... wasn't entirely sure what the ending actually meant. So that wasn't good.

But luckily there's a "back" button, and from discussion I know that my impression of the ending was correct.

Playing as a computer, I felt my human-PC bias kick in, but the computer was more interesting than I'd have guessed.

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