Like a Sky Full of Locustsby Ryan Veeder profilePart of Tales from Castle Balderstone 2024 Inform 7
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This game is set in the world of Castle Balderstone, but is a standalone entry as opposed to the large anthologies usually found with Castle Balderstone.
It's a western, a genre of IF I enjoy as it traditionally wasn't very common (although more have popped up recently!) (although now that I think of it it's set on a military base, so it doesn't have to be a western, but it has western themes kind of, like a solo hero with a gun, musical elements, a jail with a single cell, etc.)
The idea is that literal hell on earth has appeared at a military base, and monsters roam around. You have a pistol and can acquire more weapons.
Most of the gameplay for me was finding demons and then shooting them a lot. There's a little bit more (like puzzles) but I found that the main appeal of this game was the overall aesthetic, with the mechanics mostly serving as a way to flavor your experience of the aesthetic. In that way, it resembles Winter Storm Draco and The Ascent of the Gothic Tower out of Ryan Veeder's other works.
I enjoyed the writing and its demons, and the excruciating moral quandary that our hero encounters in the final verse.