The Unseemly Virus

Of course, viruses have been a big thing since 2020, what with COVID. It almost made us forget those other viruses that sprang up back in 2000--computer viruses! I guess the term malware is used now, as a more overarching term for "bad stuff people can do to your computer without you knowing it."

But virus is still a term. And here the author plays on it. You, as Dr. Sam Cure (unless you want to change your name, which is a nice touch,) have a choice between defusing a biological and computer virus. The original Twiny Jam had a 300 word limit, so I guess both of these games would've fit in there.

There are a few branches, and if you pick the wrong one you get gaffled by the FBI or IRS (the computer virus is a tax-fraud scheme,) or worse. There were some sudden deaths and all, but this being a 500-word jam, there wasn't much to recover, and we couldn't expect a detailed response.

Besides, the cheery colorful cartoon pictures (even the one where law enforcement is frowning) make up for it immediately. I didn't notice this right away, because my internet was slow, but once they started popping up, I tracked back around to the insta-deaths to see them all. You can do this with no problem in a short game!

There is one puzzle, figuring out the password for the computer, because computer conspiracies and passwords of course go together. It's of the "it's in the game text somewhere, and all the other words aren't particularly highlighted" type. But that is okay. Not every Neo Twiny Jam entry provides deep social commentary here. In fact, it might become exhausting. TUV advertises a good time, and it gives one.

This game was pretty cool; I replayed it about 4 or 5 times.

It's a Neo Twiny Jam game written in 500 words or less. But in this case that's distributed to two separate games: one about curing a biological virus, and one a technological.

The biological one is basically just a branching tree. But the computer one had a few fun parts, including exposing its own code in a clever way and having a text-entry puzzle that was complex enough to be fun.

Splitting up the text into two games may have been a mistake, though, as each part is almost painfully brief in terms of both descriptiveness and gameplay.

Two short puzzles taking on different definitions of virus (computer/biological), where you play as an investigator (hacker?). The puzzles felt quite reminiscing of the ones you'd find in an escape room. A neat idea in 500 words or less.