Go to the game's main page
Review
The first thing you notice when you start Abbess Otilia's Life and Death is the stunningly beautiful first few screens - the cover and beginning pages of a book from the middle ages. This art design is consistent throughout the game, and it makes you feel like you're writing out a medieval manuscript while selecting the choices that define the story of Abbess Otilia's life. The comparison with last year's third-place IFComp game Harmonia is obvious, right down to the marginalia. In Abbess Otilia, though, the marginalia is illegible. Clicking it makes it readable.
The game uses a medieval-style font (the final page of the game tells you exactly the name of it). At first I thought the font was visually appealing. Then, after a while, I thought, "This is actually kind of hard to read." Then I got used to reading it and went back to appreciating its aesthetic.
I played through two times to see how the game changes with different choices. What I found is that the same basic choices were given to me in both playthroughs, with some subchoices changing. In a couple of places I think the game kept track of some choices and my success at attempting later actions depended on earlier choices that I had made. But this was only in two places; overall I found the gameplay to be fairly linear.
At the very end the book you're writing summarizes and comments on the abbess's life. While playing I tried to choose actions that would represent my worldview (within the constraints of the game), and the book's summary successfully reflected this. For my second playthrough, I tried to choose the opposite sorts of actions, and I ended up with appropriately different commentary on how the abbess's life had gone. So, while, the gameplay is fairly linear, all of your choices do end up affecting more than just the text while you're reading: In aggregate, they create the summary of the abbess's life. It's kind of like how I imagine it would be to hear a short eulogy given at your funeral by someone who knows you well.
An aesthetically-pleasing and satisfying experience.
