Heretic's Hope

Last Pylon
Clerics and Carapaces
Starting off, I became high priest of a religion I didn’t believe in, and improvised a prayer to crowd of enormous insects. [...] I fist-fought a bee. I … enjoyed this game. A ton. [...] It’s one I could see myself playing again in the future, making different decisions, for the hell of it.

Also, I got to give a benediction to some maggots at the behest of a face-stealing bugman. What more could I ask for in a game, I tell you?
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IF Comprehensive

[...] it’s well-paced, consistently interesting, and takes place in an original setting. [...] It’s difficult to anticipate exactly how the conversation branches will affect the development of the plot, but there are definitely branch points in the story and meaningful choices to make. There are also three different mentors from which the player can choose, encouraging replaying the game. The custom interface for the game is both beautifully designed and easy to use. The polished and professional writing is consistently strong throughout, conveying the utter alienness of the world and its inhabitants.
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EJ's Interactive Fiction Reviews
[...] [I]t employs its weird fiction tropes in service of a story that felt fresh and unusual for the genre. Heretic’s Hope is, as I read it, a sort of allegory about the experience of growing up as an Other, specifically in the situation where everyone around you belongs to the dominant culture and you have no community of your own people for support. [...] I found it a well-written story that felt emotionally real despite the fantastical aspects of the situation, and while I can generally take or leave graphics and sound/music in IF, both the visual and sound design were well-done and helped to enhance the foreboding atmosphere.
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Comfort Castle
The presentation is as gorgeous as Devotionalia. The visual styling is great [...] – I haven’t seen anything else like Baccaris’ games. This game also comes with profile pictures and scene-setting pictures to dress up the text. Music is used throughout, with appropriate music selected to raise tension or fill quieter moments. [...] This is a dialogue-heavy game, and something I love is that each dialogue choice comes with a little stage-action telling you what the protagonist means by it (“Evade,” “Agree,” “Deflect”…). [...] Honestly, what I read into this game wasn’t about being a human, but about being made an alien. There’s a strand of imposter syndrome – being forced to fake it and hope you make it, feeling like an outcast, feeling like everyone mistrusts you.
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These Heterogenous Tasks

This is a very polished piece: the writing is at a professional level, and a very thorough job has been done with presentation. But it didn’t really click with me [...] It was not for me, but I feel it deserves high placing.
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Iris Colt ⁠— Interactive Fiction
I enjoyed this a lot more than I thought I was going to at the beginning. I was a little hesitant about how fantasy with nice interface it was, but this is a strange and alien exploration of what it means for two dying races to flourish once again through a new found and tentative symbiosis. (Well, it is more about facing realities, and that those realities are complex and not always easy to untangle.)
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Stephen Granade
Let's Play Interactive Fiction Ep 6: Heretic's Hope
I play G.C. Baccaris's "Heretic's Hope," in which I am the religious leader for a bunch of giant insects. I also get a chance to punch a bee.
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