Cannery Vale

I enjoyed Cannery Vale immensely. The structure of this IF is extraordinary. It plays much like a Twine story, in which the player selects different phrases and are rewarded with either expository material or an experience. What I enjoyed most about it was the (Spoiler - click to show)extremely clever use of the author state, dreams, and the protagonist state to carry along the storyline. It never felt tedious switching from the hotel room to the novel, and I found the ability to change outcomes by choosing to 'write' in different plot points was really fun and masterfully executed. Even though you can theoretically finish this game very quickly, it is a game I enjoyed spending several hours in, exploring all that it had to offer(Spoiler - click to show) You absolutely can achieve all the 'good' and 'bad' endings if you want without ever experiencing the orgiastic carnival rave, the suspicious meatpacking plant, the gorgon chained to a bed. But why the hell would you want to miss out on that? Another really excellent element of this game is the fact that it provided an extremely rewarding and forgiving world to explore. I am often hesitant to start an IF because I'm worried that I'll lose my grasp on the world that is constructed as I play, but having the storyline grounded in this (Spoiler - click to show)recursive return to the author's hotel room helped me maintain my bearings. Also, kudos to the author for including the option to decrease or increase the level of explicit scenes as well as offering the player the ability to quickly explore all of the endings (provided you've managed to successfully acquire all the prerequisite items).