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3 people found the following review helpful:
Parser game via text-message: explore an ex's dorm, October 23, 2021This is a great game concept that's well-executed. It's an Inform parser game with custom CSS to look like text messages. I've been interested in this concept for a while and had even made a draft once of the necessary JS/CSS, but my version looked bad and was buggy and deleted it. So seeing someone who achieved a complete and great-looking version of that concept is very nice!
You play as a random person who is getting texts from a friend. Your friend has broken into their ex's dorm room in an effort to get back a photo and to experience closure.
Technically, the game is very impressive. Besides the nice appearance, it also does some fun text stuff (like (Spoiler - click to show)drawing out the last letter of the name you inputted(Spoiler - click to show)).
Puzzle-wise, it's fairly light, focused on exploration without requiring you to use a ton of logic or calculation. I had to use one hint, as I had thought I investigated everything but missed a subobject I had seen early on.
Story-wise, I could identify with the themes of loss, snoopiness, and the realization that you didn't really know the other person.
The one caveat I had about the CSS/JS is that I sometimes had hiccups where I expected the texts to be done and started typing, not realizing there were more. There is a visual indicator (the flashing line), but it might have been nice to either add another indicator that more was coming (perhaps replacing the standard 'more' with '...') or just printing all texts at once, especially when using 'LOOK', which is the only place I had trouble.
Overall, I found the game was polished, descriptive, had interesting interactivity, was emotional resonant, and I might play it again.