(s)wordsmyth

This game uses Unity (and possibly Ink?) to give you a series of choices as you progress on a journey to avenge your master who has died. His spirit now inhabits a sword.

You pass through many interesting situations such as a pirate ship, a minotaur battle, etc.

I found the writing interesting and the concept charming. The text is typed out but fairly quickly, although that still hampered play somewhat The occasional use of graphics worked well.

In structure, this game reminds me of nothing more than Chandler Groover’s game Left/Right. In that game, you can either choose left or right over and over. One direction will kill you or end the game, and you never know which. It’s partially (I think?) a lesson in the inscrutability of that choice structure.

And it’s that way in this game, too. You have to guess the author’s mind on each choice. It’s possible to see the logic in each choice, but usually only after you’ve attempted to go through and die. I think it stems from a desire to make interesting decisions with only binary (or occasionally trinary) choices. But I don’t think having frequent deaths is the best option; it’s much more interesting to have old decisions affect future decisions several turns later and then to add some hinting to the game so that people have a general idea of what’s expected of them. Even better is adding multiple conflicting goals.

Overall, I had to stop at the cat-woman’s den because I was dying too often. But I found this fun.

+Polish: The game runs well and seems generally bug-free.
+Descriptiveness: The use of dialog made the game more interesting to me.
-Interactivity: Not a fan of 'guess which path is life and which one is death'
-Emotional impact: The characters didn't sink into my soul, so to speak.
-Would I play again? Not unless there were a faster way to replay.