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No Good Deed Goes Unpunished, December 7, 2022Adapted from an IFCOMP22 Review
Very short work, giving you the role of witch in 1800’s Scotland trying to do good while evading close-minded witch finders.
Overall a pretty Spartan experience. The interface is functional, but not very evocative of its setting. Use of color is actually well done - different colors highlight three different game functions. The text has some offputting grammatical issues, like maybe a non-native English speaker or young author, but certainly forgivable. The text is functional enough, though contains few descriptive or character flourishes to establish the setting or players. Unfortunately, the relative sparsity of the text made the errors that much more prominent and memorable. Ultimately, without any textual immersion we are left with sequencing puzzles - how to fix certain problems without tipping off the Witchfinders that you are sus.
The NPC interactions are limited to problem identification and/or solving. Some action choices are contextual - options become available after you’ve heard of things – others appear to be available at time 0, even though you don’t know what they might be good for. People can be asked only one or two things, with only one or two actions available. It creates a claustrophobic world of limited possibilities that isn’t that compelling to explore.
Some responses and actions are obviously witchy, and these provide some tradeoff tensions, but others are ambushy - what seemed like a safe move still turned on you. Not outright unfair, just sour gameplay. There are really only 3 good deeds to do (that I found), one easy, one medium with tradeoffs, and one I didn’t solve after three tries. Was not really motivated for more attempts than that.
The text and/or presentation could have elevated by setting a stronger sense of environment and characters. Expanded, more interesting choices and destinations would have created a more interesting playground. Without either, definitely a Mechanical experience.
Played: 10/11/22
Playtime: 15 min, 3 playthroughs best score 60.
Artistic/Technical rankings: Mechanical/Notable
Would Play Again? No, experience seems complete
Artistic scale: Bouncy, Mechanical, Sparks of Joy, Engaging, Transcendent
Technical scale: Unplayable, Intrusive, Notable (Bugginess), Mostly Seamless, Seamless