try to find your way out of my wizard maze

you shouldn't read this review, though. you should just click play above. it doesn't take very long to play she lied.

much has been written about the nature of games or all art really as indirect conversation between souls. there is perhaps no greater work to explore this concept than try to find your way out of my wizard maze, a game which feels a lot like a video game adaptation of the experience of showing up for a party at someone's house and discovering you're the only person there, so you and the host just chill out on the sofa and talk and look at stuff. in this case, however, the host is fully in charge of what you are talking about and looking at and your input in the conversation is limited to a small number of possible responses to each encounter, generally expressing varying levels of dismay or delight at whatever you've been presented with this time. one later passage suggests this game may have been written for one specific person, so I guess I really am the gatecrasher. (i later learn this originates from a popular tumblr blog starring these very wizards. mixed feelings about the patreon plug as a narrative element but get that bag wizards i guess.)

is it a video game? the game soon admits that uquiz does not support branches and your choices are doing nothing but adding to a series of unseen backend totals. still, you are frequently presented with possible actions - attempt to go through the hedge? get trapped in a psychic prison? - and sometimes you do get to maintain state by picking options that match with your previous choices. so it's more like a simulation of a video game, or rather the player is doing part of the work of executing the game. maybe this is closer to a ttrpg? you are roleplaying for sure (or detachedly rolling your eyes at the possibility of play) since you can only really play the game if you imagine you are really trapped in the wizard maze and construct the rest of the game in your mind. I didn't get stuck in the psychic prison, but the analogy is there. why would I have persisted in playing this over two weeks if some aspect of my mind (and my computer) hadn't been occupied all that time by the wizard maze? I chose to play in this world, but it is not my world, and I could not escape until the gamesmaster allowed me.

yes, it really took me two weeks to find my way out of the wizard maze. because there really are 126 questions in this game. which is a lot. I played through in chunks and every time I left off it seemed there was so much more ahead of me. I never thought I could be so immersed in a uquiz, especially when after two weeks the loud noise warning finally paid off and I reached the part of the maze where the host just started showing me youtube videos. here I felt we were really hanging out. you know, it's easy to send someone a list of funny things to watch. but it feels different when you put them ninety questions deep in the wizard maze. I don't know, I thought that was interesting.

all in all, I do not know who put this on IFDB or why, but I am glad they did, and I am glad I entered the wizard maze.

also I wrote this review partway through the maze and then got hit with a ten-hour countdown. which was entirely optional, to be clear, but I felt this was some kind of divine retribution so I left it open on my computer until it ended. (Spoiler - click to show)also even after completing the game I am still trapped within the wizard maze i guess this was the only way it was going to end but still for the love of the goddess HELP ME