Öhfwërhld

This is an Ink game entered into several competitions; I saw it in the Grand Guignol ectocomp competition.

This game is fairly long and has some nice, rich structure. There are parts where you can walk around a house, examining different things.

The plot is mysterious and frightening. You follow a friend to a town, hearing vague rumors about his past, until you enter his family home and discover his awful secrets.

The setting and concept were, I thought good, and much of the writing is good. However, I felt for the first third of the game like I was constantly grasping for threads of plot or action. So much was vague, it was difficult to see what direction things were going in.

That's a recurring theme with the writing, that it becomes so descriptive it almost becomes undescriptive. For instance, in a library, it says 'You wonder if the hallway's actual walls are the most-likely peeling drywall or columns of thick tomes covering them.' I get what it's going for here, with rich figurative language, but I think that hedging the metaphor with 'I wonder' and 'most likely' lessens its impact.

However, there are also very strong moments; I especially liked the arrival of the Brother, which was a tense scene and written very dramatically and descriptively. So this isn’t badly written, it just has highs and lows.

Overall, I like this story and would like to see what happens next.

Edit: I didn't realize this was intentionally dreamlike, so I'm increasing my score from 3 to 4.

Tiptoeing the other-wordly aspect of horror, this short game shines in its pacing, starting slow before picking up fast enough to hold your breath until the end. The writing does a good job at hinting during the first half of the game of something not being quite right, while still keeping the stake low, keeping it subtle enough to leave you confused until the reveal - though it can be easy to guess the kind of twist the story has.

I could have seen the ending going a different route than is currently there, where you don't make it out, pushing the horror aspect even further.