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Eidolon

by A.D. Jansen

2014
Surreal
Twine

(based on 32 ratings)
4 reviews41 members have played this game. It's on 64 wishlists.

About the Story

When you wake up, something is passing through the night sky.

Awards

Nominee, Best Writing; Nominee, Best Story - 2014 XYZZY Awards

8th Place - 20th Annual Interactive Fiction Competition (2014)

Ratings and Reviews

5 star:
(5)
4 star:
(12)
3 star:
(14)
2 star:
(1)
1 star:
(0)
Average Rating: based on 32 ratings
Number of Reviews Written by IFDB Members: 4
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3 Most Helpful Member Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
Surprisingly large and non-linear for a twine game; vivid, haunting writing, May 1, 2015
by MathBrush
Related reviews: about 2 hours

This is a very large Twine game that starts out mostly linear, branches a little, and then branches a lot. It includes a large area with a variety of rooms, including a clever means of transportation (Spoiler - click to show)the curious door/button combo. The genre is subtle horror/mystery, and the writing is evocative and sticks with you.

The lack of a save feature is annoying; as a casual gamer, I can't finish the game in one sitting, and it's difficult to juggle tabs to keep the game open throughout the day. This is one game I would like to finish.

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
Mysterious and evocative Twine fiction/puzzle, December 28, 2021
by Wynter (London, UK)
Related reviews: Choice-based fiction, Twine puzzles

This is one of the most atmospheric and evocative Twine stories that I have read. The things you see and read on your mysterious journey seem full of meaning, yet I could not say what they mean exactly.

The strangeness and arbitrariness of some of the objects which you interact with allow for some workable puzzles, even in Twine: rather than logically figuring things out, as in a parser game, you need to visit various different locations several times and note when they change and where new links appear. Many of the passages and descriptions do nothing to move the plot onwards, but they serve to develop the atmosphere and act as red herrings as you try to find a way forward. The visuals were absolutely appropriate to the gloomy midnight setting - black background, white serif text with pale grey link text - but I found that I really needed to look closely in order to notice where the links were.

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
probably my favorite twine or even IF i've played, January 2, 2017

I've dabbled in a few dozen IF titles in the past few years, and since i played this one in early 2015, i still come back to it. I've recommended it to a lot of fiction, horror, or fantasy readers I know. The interesting mix of dread, amusement, fear, sadness, and surprise throughout really won me over and I still think about it a lot.

I agree with some other reviewers that it's length is such that a save function would be welcome, especially since it did get more challenging eventually. But there's no death or circumstance that demand a restart. But as a personal story with great imagery, some interesting puzzles, and a great and genuinely pretty bizarre tone I think it stands above a lot of IF games. Play it asap, with a lot of free time and a dark cool room.

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Game Details

Eidolon on IFDB

Recommended Lists

Eidolon appears in the following Recommended Lists:

Surreal/trippy/metaphor/mind's journey, with two worlds by MathBrush
There is a big genre of games where you explore a metaphorical region of dreams or symbolism, and which has meaning in the 'real world'. I love this genre, and these are my favorite examples of the genre. I only include games where there...

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These are games that for some reason or over I just couldn't stop playing and thinking about. There are no specific reasons given. These aren't necessarily my favorite games; one reason they are pageturner is that the pacing is good and...

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I didn't like Twine at first, but slowly I've changed my opinion about it, until now, many of my favorite games are Twine/Choice games (including Varytale or choice-style parser games). These games tend to be very different genres from...

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Polls

The following polls include votes for Eidolon:

Games with Books/Bookshelves/Libraries by Andrew Schultz
I'm interested in games with lots of books you can read through. Maybe it's just a lot of cool titles and authors. Maybe they're randomly or procedurally generated. Maybe they reference pop culture, or maybe they're the author's own...

Mother-Daugher Relations by matt w (Matt Weiner)
What are some IF works that involve a relationship between a mother and a daughter? Not necessarily as the center of the work, but as something that impinges on it at all.

"Weird and Eerie" interactive fiction by Dawn S.
I’m reading and really enjoying The Weird and the Eerie, by critic Mark Fisher. In this book, Fisher explores the sense of something’s being simultaneously unsettling and fascinating. “Weird” and “eerie,” according to Fisher, are the...

See all polls with votes for this game

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