Structural Integrity

This game definitely brought back a lot of memories. I had a long relationship where I had a lot of work-life balance issues, and it eventually ended up falling apart, and this reminded me of that.

There are several endings, so there are likely different versions of this game depending on how you play, but in my playthrough, there were two main characters: a wealthy government official, and a young, poorer-class individual.

They love each other, but there are tensions. The poor one is concerned with fairness and trying to find beauty in day to day moments, while the richer one is trying to 'bring home the bacon' and do well at work.

An argument about one partner staying home late and missing an appointment because their boss corralled them at work reminded me of times that my boss in my first job wanted me to stay home late while my partner was caring for our newborn.

It's a tough situation. So I think there's a lot of emotion in this game. Your choices have a lot of freedom, too.

The only thing missing for me is length; I felt like the pacing in the first half was more drawn out and set up expectations for a longer game but that was rapidly concluded in the ending, leaving me wanting or expecting more.

This is a LGBTQ novella adapted into multiple ending Twine form.

There’s quite a lot of interaction with your partner, and a lot of choices about how to speak to them. But often early on I felt it wasn’t offering me the chance to explore difficult choices. There were things I wanted to say or do that weren’t offered to me. Which is maybe not surprising if it’s adapted from a novella.

However it does something narrative wise part way through that totally switches around, and I found extremely satisfying. I only played through to one ending. There are multiple choices you could make and change how it ends up. But i felt interactive, and exploring the characters, and reaching a satisfactory resolution.

So yes, initially I thought this was going to be far too linear and not interactive enough. But then things flipped, and it took a totally fresh approach. Well done to the author!

This falls into the genre of slice-of-life relationship-based stories, centring on a disagreement between a couple and how it ties into the hidden faultlines of their relationship: the title is elegantly apt. The story is told from different viewpoints, often flitting back and forth, which I wasn’t initially expecting, but it’s done very well. I wasn’t sure what the setting is supposed to be - one of the characters is supposed to have worked as a messenger, delivering messages across the city, but that’s the only real indicator: the story centres on a situation that could happen in all sorts of worlds.

A very nice-looking Twine, and rather like a short story in its ability to communicate a lot in what only takes a brief time to play. I very much liked the use of differently-coloured links for different purposes - blue to add extra description, red to move the story onwards. At the end, you reach a page listing all the endings you have reached so far, so it has some good replay value.