[Time to completion: 10-15 mins]
A New Year's Eve offering from Bruno Dias, set in the same world as Cape and Mere Anarchy.
When I played this for the first time, I had barely played the games referenced here, so why did it appeal so much to me? It's something about being a refuge from chaos, a safe place where those who put things right can rest - for now. The characters are weary, but at peace.
Its size and scope are kept deliberately small: the verb set is pared down to three verbs; the setting, to one room. But that one room suggests an entire world - one the player gets to know through its people rather than its locations. For a New Year’s Eve story, The World Turned Upside Down doesn’t point so much to hope for the year ahead, as it does to the fixing of past wrongs.
Disclaimer: I identify, to a frightening extent, with one of the characters.