The Kuolema

This review is for the Twine version. The original review is down below.

The Twine version of Kuolema was perhaps the biggest rewrite out of any New Game Plus game of Spring Thing, as it was completely ported to a new system and had a complex system of passwords, etc.

Surprisingly, it plays very similar to the original. In fact, I'd be hard pressed to find what was different about it gameplay-wise. Visually, there are added animations and timers which are used sparingly to great effect (although occasionally I switched to another tab to read something while waiting for it to finish).

The main gameplay things that I didn't remember from the first time around were the hints when getting text entry wrong, and also maybe there were more options for the ending? But I enjoyed playing all the way through. There also is a new story version which reduces the puzzles that I didn't try, which was also likely a major part of the rewrite.


Original version:

This was a nice, mostly-grounded thriller on a ship. A lot of games like this with a dark, abandoned ship at night devolve into Lovcraftian horror (which I love), but it was nice to have a change of pace this time.

This game is written in google forms and relies entirely on passwords and, occasionally, branching for state tracking. This means that if you right everything down, you can come back to the game much later and speed through everything. It reminded me a bit of playing NES/SNES games like Mike Tyson's Punchout and Willow; we had a wooden beam near our living room we'd write down passwords on.

Overall, the speed and responsiveness was pretty good; the system doesn't work all that bad, except when I tried to open the walkthrough in another tab and everything got reset. Fortunately I had my notes, so it was very easy to catch back up. I ended up opening the walkthrough in another tab.

I'd say that writing and storytelling is very strong for my likes, with crisp and clear imagery and a slow-burn thriller plotline. Some parts didn't make too much sense, mostly serving as excuses to find more passwords, but there were a lot of dramatic moments.

The final parts really felt like an action movie. I lost momentum at one point trying to figure out how to activate the next portion of the narrative, but overall it worked well.

Love to see experimentation work out.