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Review
Space Adventure Laika is a rather short (10-20 minutes) twine story written about Laika, the first dog in space. It chronicles her upbringing as a subway-riding Moscow stray, to her capture by scientists, and her suffering as she's placed into a tiny capsule and rocketed on a one-way journey into orbit.
This game is really good at imagining the dog's perspective. The story is divided into present and flashback segments; the present is when Laika is in the space capsule, and the flashbacks show her life as a stray dog. I like the space of possible actions in the "present" scenes; it's a parser game-inflected style, kind of reminiscent of howling dogs, that's effective at conveying a sense of Laika's confinement and her suffering. The flashback segments were well-written and interesting to read; they provide a loosely historical overview of a part of history I didn't know much about. There's some interactivity, but it all leads to a foregone conclusion.
There's recently been another twine game Laika about the same dog, which is more of a fantasy. Playing both games, I think that I prefer this one because of its more historical focus.
