A House of Endless Windows

First off, I want to say that I think the quality of the prose here is really excellent. It’s precise and clear and restrained in a way that says a lot about Pierce’s character and creates some really subtle pathos. The choice of music is wonderful and one track in particular really got me in the heart (I wish the track info was listed in ‘About’ so I could go and download it somewhere!)

However - I know that everyone probably has a personal definition of what interactive fiction is, but I have to say that this didn’t really meet mine. In this game you click to advance text, without options to interact with the world or narrative in different ways, and I found that quite disappointing. I would have loved to have been able to try out different conversational responses, or visit different rooms in the house, or something else that made me feel like I had a bit more agency in traversing the story. Also, as a lot of the chunks of text are single lines, in dialogue heavy scenes there is a lot of clicking - which took a bit of the enjoyment out of it for me, which is a shame, because the dialogue was largely great.

I found the narrative quietly moving and well structured, and while the ending didn’t quite land for me (I tend to prefer ambiguity over clear-cut explanations), I do think it’s a strong piece overall.