Bogeyman

by Elizabeth Smyth profile

Horror, Fantasy
2018

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Number of Reviews: 9
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1-9 of 9


1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
He likes the blue things in the broth..., December 20, 2023
by Rovarsson (Belgium)


(A very effective horror Twine. Gruesome, sometimes disgusting on the surface, but the most scary was how it manipulated my mind into helplessness. My impressions of Bogeyman:)

Bits and pieces, shreds of brutality and gag-inducing vileness.
Images behind your blinking eyes, impossible to erase.
Foul acts, abuse, neglect.

These may be gruesome, but they are not the worst.

The anticipation is.

The certainty that the next press of your finger may, nay,
will effect the next step of cruelty.
The realisation that heroes are powerless, resistance begets more pain.
And you're glad it's theirs, not yours...

Silent acquiescence becomes your friend.
A smile is a crime, betrayal a virtue.
Is life worth continuing, if life is sacrifice of fellow victims?
Or try to sacrifice yourself.
Are you that brave... and does it matter in the end?

All this in the next press of your finger...

The eeny-weeny tinkle of agency drills down the fear.

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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
A horrifying story told with fairytale elements, October 19, 2022
by verityvirtue (London)
Related reviews: melancholic, phlegmatic

(Warning: This review might contain spoilers. Click to show the full review.)CW: violence - spoiler reveals more specific, but spoilery CWs: (Spoiler - click to show)Abduction, violence against children, abuse

Although the titular character is framed as the bogeymen of children’s stories, to another eye - an adult eye, probably - he is a more quotidian, though no less terrifying variety of criminal. Fairytale elements meld easily with real-life methods of cruelty and control: the strange food and drink; the deserted cabin in the middle of the woods; turning frightened people on each other.

Bogyeman is largely linear, but where there are choices, they are difficult - emotional dilemmas most of them, choices between self-gain and protecting your fellow captives.

In other aspects, it’s simply a good game. Its slick design reminds me of A Good Wick, though much more readable. The layout of choices, especially where they concern exploring a space, are laid out to reflect that space. This has been one of the things that I found difficult when building a map of the story world during choice-based games. The directions I can explore are almost always laid out in lines of text, which I must translate in my head to how they would look on a diagram.

Bogeyman is certainly not an easy-going read, but grim and focused and well worth playing.

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
Disturbing and incredible, December 8, 2021

The best interactive fiction game I've ever played.
Its intriguing beginning leads to horrifying and disgusting moments and you can't help but want to keep playing.
The writing is very well done and leaves a haunting affect on the player. The choices you make have a real affect on the world around you.
It makes you feel things, it makes you worry, and ultimately I fell in love with it.

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
One of my biggest favorites, October 31, 2021

This might be my favorite writing in any IF game. It gives exactly the right amount of details, delivered for maximum effect. It is extremely well-paced, with impactful reveals at just the right moments. On one hand, I think one of its most effective traits is its economy; at the same time, I was really wanting more. I played a through a second time immediately after finishing. Regarding the ending, (Spoiler - click to show)I really, really wish there could have been one or two more branches. The fact that this game goes places most wouldn't adds to my appreciation. For those who can handle content of this nature, I give it my highest recommendation.

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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
Dark and darker, January 24, 2021
by Ogre (A Cave)

For me, this was a tough read. And no, not just because of the content. The layout was horribly distracting for me. Each page had 1-3 sentences on it. I guess that was for effect, but if I’m going to read a story, I’d like to read it, not spend more time clicking “next.” But also, the font changed on pages. I think this was for speech, but it wasn’t clear, was really distracting, and really would have been so much clearer if there were simple quotation marks. The fact that all the short lines were centered on the page added a little more difficulty for me as well.

While there were options in the story, there were not a lot, and few seemed to have much of an effect on the story. I see that this story won a lot of awards, but maybe this just isn’t my scene, baby. Indeed, it was dark and just kept getting darker. And maybe if I had analyzed a lot more later into the story, I would have seen choices that made a difference, but it honestly wasn’t all that pleasant for me. Maybe for others who really like horror with kids, this is something for you. But if you don’t, you probably want to skip this one.

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
Disturbing piece that embodies a malleable entity from folklore, October 21, 2020

Bogeyman is a deeply disturbing and successful piece that casts the titular creature as a sadistic paterfamilias who employs psychological and physical abuse to ensure the children he abducts remain “good."

The design choices for the game are bold and effective, without overshadowing the story. These include a white-on-black palette, text fade-ins, spooky images during chapter breaks, and a haunting, thrumming soundtrack.

The choice-based flow of the game is relatively linear, with short passages that move the reader through the story quickly and smoothly. Every passage adds to the dramatic tension, slowly piling on indignities small and large, flowing through days of quotidian chores and tasks that range from the banal to the grotesque, all in the service of building a complex portrait of life under a tyrant whose moods and reactions are often unpredictable.

The game is able to deftly tackle a number of themes ranging from abuse to the nature of punishment and whether complicity is ever morally acceptable, all while delivering a gripping story with moments where it’s often as difficult to look as it is to look away.

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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
A gut-wrenching horror game with flawless execution, February 18, 2019
by MathBrush
Related reviews: 15-30 minutes

It's rare when an IF game is presented exactly right, every portion designed perfectly well to give a uniform presentation. Liza Daly's Harmonia is sort of the standard for this type of presentation.

I think Bogeyman has achieved that level of quality. The layout, fonts, sound, and color scheme give gravitas and a haunting sense of dread to the story.

And the storyline fits the presentation, with interactions that lead you to believe that you can identify with your character, followed up with choices that pit your beliefs against themselves.

An effect, but disturbing, game. One of my go-to games when introducing IF to people.

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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
Changed my view of a genre, January 15, 2019

OH, MY WORD. I'm tense by the third screen or so of this game. I'm still a little tense, having played through it twice now. I'm so glad I played this game in the morning. I think it would have given me nightmares if I had experienced it right before going to bed.

Bogeyman is a choice-based horror game. Horror is one of my least-favorite genres. When horror doesn't work, it usually just feels dumb to me. If it does, then why am I reading fiction or watching a movie, just to be scared? Real life is scary enough as it is (just glance at a random day's headlines); why should I seek it out? But I'm playing through the games in this Comp and trying to give feedback, so I played Bogeyman anyway.

Maybe because I don't seek out horror in fiction much I'm more sensitive to it. Whatever the reason, I am still tense, even though I'm now three paragraphs into this review. Okay, deep breaths. I'll try to be objective from here on.

The blurb and cover hint well at the menace to come, especially the tagline: "You can go home when you learn to be good." Then you start the game, and you're faced with basic white text on a black background. This, the simple font, and the spare writing together just ooze menace. Something about the choices being in all caps enhances it, too.

I don't know that I want to say much about the content, other than that it is terrifying. For some reason (Spoiler - click to show)the prayer at the table, "We are truly grateful for what we have," was one of the worst moments. I suppose it's that effect of "Not only can I make you physically experience these horrifying events, I'm going to twist your soul so much that you'll be thankful for the horror." Then combine that with the fact that it's being done to children, in a perversion of a simple act of gratitude that many of us daily choose to make... Shudder.

The absolutely worst thing I've done in IF - ever, in any game - in terms of how it made me feel, was (Spoiler - click to show)eating Grace. Eating Grace! After saying grace! It would be kind of funny if it weren't so awful.

Despite my dislike of horror as a genre, I don't think I regret playing this game. Even while I'm feeling what I'm feeling, I'm thinking, "Wow. What an amazing piece of art, to be able to produce this reaction from me."

My conclusion: Bogeyman is an excellent horror game. Play it, and experience it for yourself. Just not right before bedtime.
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I wrote the above review on the authors' forum during IFComp 2018 right after playing Bogeyman. It led to a discussion among several of us about the themes in Bogeyman, as well as horror in general. I had always thought that the primary (sole?) purpose of horror is to frighten or disgust people, and those are not experiences that I've ever been interested in seeking out. However, the authors' conversation convinced me that horror can be used effectively in the service of worthwhile artistic goals.

For example, Chandler Groover argued that Bogeyman does an excellent job of making the player feel what it's like to live with an abuser. It's not a pleasant experience, but it's true, in the sense that there are people who do live under an abuser's power. It's important that we know this - and that there is art out there like Bogeyman that can dramatize it for us.

So, I no longer stand by my dismissive comments about works of horror in the second paragraph of my original review. Horror is still not going to be my go-to genre, but I have a much deeper appreciation for it than I did before I played Bogeyman.

That makes Bogeyman one of only a handful of works I've experienced that have been integral in changing my view of an entire genre.

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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
An Impressive, Atmospheric Tale of Horror, November 23, 2018
by J. J. Guest (London, England)
Related reviews: IF Comp 2018

I first had the pleasure of playing Bogeyman in an IF Meetup group, and of meeting the author, Elizabeth Smyth. Before the playthrough, she felt the need to give us a trigger warning. The game does indeed include scenes of cruelty towards children.

What impressed me right away about the game was its presentation. A choice-based game, Bogeyman’s links are presented at the bottom of each scene in a grid formation, separated by white lines, which is very effective. A glow effect around the text of each link on mouseover was a nice touch. The choice of a fixed width font for the Bogeyman’s dialogue was less successful, however. There are also a few illustrations, of which I would like to have seen more, and some suitably eerie music.

One thing that parser-based games tend to be better at than choice-based games is creating a sense of place, but Bogeyman, a choice-based game, left me with a very clear mental picture of the Bogeyman’s mountainside hovel and its surroundings. The child-kidnapping title character on the other hand is more of a cypher - we are given only glimpses, and this also works very effectively. One gets the feeling that description is absent because none of the children can bring themselves to look at him.

Also well evoked was the sense of a daily routine, which serves as a reminder of how quickly we tend to normalise a terrible situation.

Bogeyman is a long game, and I only had time to play through it once during the competition, but I’ll certainly be returning to it now that the comp is over.

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