The Forgotten Girls

My guess — and this is just a guess — is that this was written for a project for school under a time constraint and had no testing. I'm basing that entirely on the link to Vanderbilt and the fact that no testers are credited in the About/Credits text. If those two things are indeed true, this isn't too bad a release, and I do welcome more interactive fiction that tackles serious subject matter. However, I think the subject matter here would be better-served by a more solid game: immersion in this world is key to making the player really feel the visceral punch that the author is going for, and it's hard to become immersed in the game due to terse conversation and linear (and not-necessarily-intuitive) puzzle design.

We played this for ClubFloyd in March 2013, and there was a bit of interesting discussion afterward about whether this game needed to go entirely puzzleless or really embrace puzzles in order to make a bigger impact. Hard to say, but this middle-of-the-road approach didn't serve the story well.

All that having been said, and taking into account the valid points made by other reviewers, I nevertheless did feel this piece was successful in evoking emotions, and that was most likely a key goal for the author.