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Reflections

by Tristin Grizel Dean profile

2021

Web Site

(based on 6 ratings)
3 reviews

About the Story

You're the descendant of a well-known fairy tale character, trying to inherit your family's magical power.

This is an entry for the Text Adventure Literacy Jam, intended to be playable by kids and their grown-ups, and to build literacy through interactive fiction.

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Game Details


Awards

3rd place overall; Nominee, Scott's Choice Award - Text Adventure Literacy Jam

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Number of Reviews: 3
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
Lots of light, little glare, April 28, 2021

The danger of relying on the old fairy tales is that you don't wind up saying or doing anything new, or you wind up getting too wild and rattling on. Reflections does neither. It gives you a cell phone to navigate certain puzzles, and it keeps familiar fantasy elements without cliche. All this makes it a good fit for the Text Adventure Literacy Jam as well as a good short game.

The goal is to find five different ways to see your reflection. And yes, the cell phone plays an integral part in a few of them. The best part is, you can't and don't have to call anyone, or find any numbers, or anything like that, though one common side-feature of cell phones is necessary to use and ewll-clued.

Positive interaction with animals is most important, and it's never twee. The puzzles and setting avoid the cliches of fantasy as well as gross anachronisms. They're also comfortable enough that you shouldn't struggle with the parser. And while Sentient Beings, the other game the author entered in this comp, is more ambitious and memorable, Reflections really takes the tutorial requirements for the jam and makes them come alive. So the author should be proud of writing either of these games, much less both.

This game also circumvents a potential pet peeve: you have some baking to do, which normally isn’t my thing, because bigger games may get into details too quickly. Here, it doesn’t feel forced on me. I’m the sort of person who is relieved when a recipe isn’t very complex, so the game’s courtesy was appreciated her, and I think in general any game that takes on something you aren't usually interested in and keeps you interested has clearly done something right.

Because the final point of the game is for (Spoiler - click to show)looking through the mirror in your house after traveling to a cave, it has a there-and-back feel to it. And just knowing what the final point should be certainly left me feeling competent when I needed to think about a puzzle near the end. Overall the game does a lot and avoids overdoing anything or trying too hard to get me to like it, which is a very real risk when writing fantasy stuff, so I do recommend it.

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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
I'm starting with the evil queen in the mirror..., April 12, 2021

An entry in the Text Adventure Literacy Jam, a competition for entry-level parser games for kids. Reflections goes out of its way to hold a first-timers hand: simple, bold and colourful images for each location, short MIDI-musical ditties at appropriate moments, a helpful tutorial mode, and a map on-screen at all times (alongside the competition-mandated two word parser).

You're a kid wandering around the house and the back-garden looking for the titular reflections of yourself. A light sprinkling of magical realism adds talking cats and magic mirrors to the mix. Puzzles are suitably basic: mix a recipe, find out a dog's name, distract a rat, play with coloured crystals. All well-clued in the environment if you explore thoroughly.

Would feel perfectly at home on a 1983 primary school's BBC microcomputer, alongside Granny's Garden and Devil's Causeway.

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
Find 5 reflections in a cozy puzzle game, April 28, 2021
by MathBrush
Related reviews: 15-30 minutes

This game is part of the Text Adventure Literacy Jam.

You are tasked with finding 5 reflections of yourself. There is a helpful tutorial that's optional.

There are about 10 locations, and the game has some graphics that add quite a bit to the charm of the game, and to its utility, with the map.

The puzzles are fairly simple but hard enough to be rewarding.

I had a few hiccups here and there. The game wouldn't recognize commands like X RED, only X RED CRYSTAL. Overall, I found the game charming and with a few fun surprises.

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Reflections on IFDB

Recommended Lists

Reflections appears in the following Recommended Lists:

My (19) January CASA/solutionarchive walkthroughs/contributions by Andrew Schultz
This month I got back into contributing to CASA. Actually, I never seriously had before. I have a year's goal of getting to 150 points, or Dungeon Master. I tried to avoid duplicating David Welbourn's excellent work both by checking his...

Polls

The following polls include votes for Reflections:

games with cooking by jlvp1234
I'm looking for games with cooking. ever since I have played gourmet and, gourmet version1, wich is the same, I have also played you got a stew going. does anyone have any recommendations other than these on wich I have just mentioned?




This is version 2 of this page, edited by Grizel on 12 April 2021 at 5:47pm. - View Update History - Edit This Page - Add a News Item - Delete This Page