Detritus

Adapted from an IFCOMP25 Review

When reviewing IF, I sometimes find myself grappling with episodes in a series, of struggling to find the balance of contextualizing a game amidst a body of work and highlighting its unique, standalone merits. Detritus is a fully standalone game, and would normally skirt that particular minefield. Except that this author has established themselves as endlessly inventive, graphically accomplished and capable of finding pathos and surprising depths in the hoariest of hoary IF tropes. If he left a work unsigned, it is impossible to think anyone familiar with his ouvre’ wouldn’t IMMEDIATELY peg it as his. His singular style is its OWN context, tempting critics like a siren song.

Ok, here’s the thing. Last time (Jeebus. JUST SIX MONTHS AGO???), I compared the author’s ludography to pre-Dark Side Pink Floyd discography. Speculating that their next work (this very work!) could be his Dark Side of the Moon. I mean there’s ‘setting a high bar’ and then there’s ‘ok that bar just left orbit.’ As a gift to the author, let’s all just pan away from that conceit and agree to look at this standalone.

It’s gonna be HAAARD to do, but I have faith in us.

Detritus opens with the tropiest of IF cliches - awakening in space pod on derelict ship where must explore/survive/assemble the story. There is a suspect AI. A suspect megacorp bankrolling us. Some survival mechanics. A series of code-locked doors that gate subsequent puzzles and backstory. All building to several end-of-act twists that escalate most satisfyingly. You can probably think of multiple games, books, movies that all till these well-worked fields.

The mechanics of survival are broad - scavenge detritus to recycle via Fabricator into useful puzzle-items. Or really REALLY useful items like food and water! Code-locks have just enough logical challenge to engage, but resolve well before they become grindy. Flashbacks occur at just the right time to crystallize the next challenge. I swear, the more I explain it, the more I feel like yawning and dismissing it.

Except I NEVER felt that while playing, not for a moment. This was a fully engaging experience that made two and a half hours FLY by. Here’s Ben’s secret: there may be no one currently better at providing friction-free puzzles that connect and align to the narrative on multiple levels, the puzzles reinforcing the drama and vice versa. A lot of it is elegantly simple, evocative writing. A lot of it is attention to gameplay detail: graphical elements that convey VITAL information with no fanfare; parenthetically noting discovered nuance to locked doors that keep you from having to spam them; quietly providing multiple ways to secure puzzle objects to avoid deadlock; agile command links that let you dart any number of different ways without tedious back linking; silently slowing the oxygen bleed (on Normal difficulty) if you took too long exploring. All these gameplay elements make the proceedings smooth and seamless.

Dramatically, the narrative is every bit as considered and tightly engineered. Lore is paced to puzzle solving in a way that enhances what you’ve done, and nudges you on to the next. It plays with tropey expectations, almost always subverting or surprising rather than disappointing. In a scenario where you feel nothing could surprise you in this, N-to-the-Nth iteration of this setup, Detritus does so by building a tightly engineered clockwork of prose and gameplay. Even when not servicing plot motion, the prose is terrific. The entire sequence (Spoiler - click to show)outside the ship is as haunting, menacing and beautiful as you might hope.

This gameplay/prose interplay builds to two huge moments - a puzzle of lateral thinking so elegant and in-world that the satisfaction of it is memorable; and a capstone plot twist that again gathers threads into a profound and exciting subversion of expectations. Either of these could have been the showpiece of a work! Both is just an embarrassment of riches.

Here’s how terrific this thing was. Late game there was a puzzle my mind just refused to close. No amount of circling, experimenting led me to the final 1/3 of it. I was forced to consult the walkthrough… and then clapped in glee at the solution I could not find. It was wry, logical and delightful. The fact that I didn’t solve it myself didn’t diminish my appreciation at all! DO YOU KNOW HOW OFTEN I BLAME GAMES FOR MY SHORTCOMINGS???

If I have a quibble with this work, it is its unconscionable white-washing of (Spoiler - click to show)the AI character, GAIL. History will judge you harshly for that, Jackson.

Given this year’s retroactive reviewing cycle, obviously I know this was the 2025 IFCOMP champ. It is a very worthy winner, my heartfelt congratulations. Often, such admissions of mine are filled with passive-aggressive undertones, spurred by deep jealousy. Somehow this game is making me a better person? To me, it does beg an interesting question though. Had I been reviewing this work on the strict 2hr IFCOMP limit, I would not have encountered its incredibly strong end game puzzling and dramatic resolution before scoring it. Would that have shortchanged my ratings? PARTICULARLY if the timer expired while I was floundering? Hard to say. Thankfully, the community is either faster at gameplay, or able to extrapolate quality so much better than me. Good work, IF community!

There is no [Dark Side of the Moon] of Ben’s IF, really. As a matter of fact its all [Dark Side of the Moon].

Played: 11/11/25
Playtime: 2.5hr, two unique endings (2c, 3b), 94% complete
Artistic/Technical ratings: Engaging/Seamless, bonus point for spinning cliche straw into gold
Would Play After Comp?: No, experience feels complete

Artistic/Technical ratings:
Artistic scale: Bouncy, Mechanical, Sparks of Joy, Engaging, Transcendent
Technical scale: Unplayable, Intrusive, Notable (Bugginess), Mostly Seamless, Seamless