| 5 star: | | (1) | | 4 star: | | (6) | | 3 star: | | (5) | | 2 star: | | (0) | | 1 star: | | (1) |
| Average Rating: 
Number of Reviews: 7
Write a review |
1-7 of 7 "One Way Ticket" - An Unforgettable Journey , September 13, 2023"One Way Ticket" is an interactive fiction game that leads players on a perplexing journey through a mysterious town. Developed with meticulous attention to detail, this game offers a captivating blend of mystery, immersive storytelling, and a surreal atmosphere that will keep players engrossed and curious from start to finish.
For fans of interactive fiction or those seeking a game that challenges them intellectually and emotionally, "One Way Train" is an absolute must-play.
3 of
3 people found the following review helpful:
Captivating and odd and flavorful, January 20, 2023The cover art biased me early. It was obviously a train on the front cover but not quite like one I'd ever seen. Quirky the right way. But there was more than cover art–the in-game pictures reminded me of Tove Jansson, and so did the writing. (If you don't know who Tove Jansson is, please do stop by your local library and read all the Moomintroll books as soon as possible!) The plot and puzzles and layout are great, too. And though I didn't get through OWT, I loved what I saw, and given how well put together it is, I sense I'm missing something silly. Somehow, between the end of IFComp and posting this review, I didn't figure it, either. I need to fix that. But I saw enough even getting halfway through!
OWT is set in a nonsense land in its own rules, where you take a train, but your trip is derailed halfway through. It's unclear why, but you debark in front of a very, very odd town. The mayor seems very uninterested in greeting you, so off you go to explore a store with legs (it walks away after dark) and visit some very odd characters indeed. But it's the best sort of oddity that never feels forced, and the translation gives a unique voice native English speakers would sound very artificial mimicing. For me it reinforced how far-away this place must be.
I'm still fuzzy on some aspects of why things are happening, but I suspect things will be revealed once I find my way through. It's been fun to learn the town's history and how it wouldn't fly in the real world, but it would clearly make sense to those living there for a while. A key mechanic is changing your free room at the tavern from day to night based on the puzzles. You switch out a moon and sun in a painting. This was reassuring to me–I didn't need to worry about messing up or taking too long–and it also fit in with "look! The natives are helpless!" Townspeople have bizarre reasons for not transporting you palces you need to go, and there are jackals who appear at night. One very fun scene has an NPC scare some of them away so you have a few more places to visit. It's even legitimately creepy to explore at night!
I got stuck trying to find golden sand and trying to help a man with four right arms get his pedicab going. (Just walking didn't work, due to some existential woes.) Then there was the gambling game I knew was rigged. These barriers and frustrations amused me immensely, and I don't know if any other comp entry has hit this nerve so well, and I'm eager to see more.
One word about the interface. It's not immediately obvious, but once you see how it works, it makes sense. The text for each location has clicky bits that either lose all their links (a compass appears below to show a big picture map to pick your next location) or just let you cycle between the scenery--this gets a bit awkward as you open more locations, and it would be nice to jump, but this is quibbling. A notepad in the upper left, when highlighted, lets you remember clues you picked up, and a knapsack in the upper right lets you use items. Clicking on the location lets you save a game. At first I panicked when I didn't see how or when to save (it's quite possible I skimmed the instructions) but quickly I acclimated–and I was glad not to have even the hint of a save/restart menu tarnishing the fantasy world I was in! TLDR: the visual design is very effective, and maybe it can't be used everywhere, but I hope OWT inspires others to improve their own.
OWT feels like it might not get the attention it deserves because 1) it has a custom format (I think) and is hosted outside IFComp and 2) it is translated. And there is one instance where the translation misleads the player–the "say goodbye" option in the tavern actually means "don't talk to the owner this time," and there's one instance where being called "buddy" feels jarring and too condescending and "friend" would've worked. These are very subtle degrees of connotation, though, and if something was lost in translation, well, what's left is very special, and we have more than enough. I've never been as disappointed in myself for not finishing a game as I have for OWT. It's legitimately, organically odd, the sort of oddness that won't jump in our face and beg us to experience it fully now for our own good or be stuffy squares for eternity. In other words, the kind our souls need more of.
3 of
3 people found the following review helpful:
An interactive art-film, unique but draggy, December 20, 2022(This is a lightly-edited version of a review I posted to the IntFiction forums during 2022's IFComp).
There’s just something about trains, perhaps because they’re the very archetype of the liminal space: in a train car you’re halfway between where you were and where you’re going, not tied to your past and not yet able to make progress on your future. So it is for the protagonist of One Way Ticket, who’s bought the eponymous unidirectional fare in hopes of finding a new life, but who can do little but speculate as to what that life will be about so long as they’re riding the train – all the more so when the train tracks are blocked by a mountain of freshly-harvested corn, and they have to descend and solve the quotidian-yet-cryptic problems of the magical-realistic town where they’ve fetched up.
Maybe magical realism is the wrong comparison to invoke, though, since the vibe I get from the game is less South American literature and more European art film. This is one weird town – they use gold sand for currency, the local shop moves from place to place, the inn only serves food made from corn, people change names depending on what time you visit them, and there are omnipresent jackals who make travel a dangerous business. While you’re simply trying to unblock the tracks, the goals of the inhabitants are far stickier things: an inventor wants to raid the stopped train for part to build a machine of inscrutable purpose, while an unlucky gambler’s on the hunt for the aces missing from his deck. Everyone’s playing an angle – except the tavern hostess, who seems perhaps a little too interested in you, and the train driver and conductor, who’d rather drink and gamble than do their jobs and help you get the train moving again.
It’s not just the existentialist substance of the narrative and characters, though: for that authentic foreign-movie vibe, the text seems translated into English, with the occasional ungainliness, but also occasional uniquely-turned phrase, that entails. Here’s an encounter with a woman trying to enlist the player’s help in finding love, in a dialogue taking place over a shell game:
“The problem with our city is that people have stopped listening to each other. And topics for conversation are another story!”
“Have stopped listening?”
“Well, yes,” she continued the chaotic round dance of cups, “once, probably, people listened to each other, but now everyone is on their own wave — and, to be honest, these waves have already overgrown with mud.”
“What do you mean?”
She abruptly stopped the run of the cups:
“I mean that people discuss the same thing all the time, but everything is so everyday, mundane, boring, trivial… I could list a few more synonyms.”
“Perhaps I understand you.”
“Well I hope.”
“And you need to talk about the sublime?”
“Everyone needs to talk about something sublime from time to time. Especially me.”
(The shell game, like everything else in this town, isn’t on the level, natch).
Similarly, sometimes you come across a simile that makes the prose come to a lurching stop – as the protagonist makes their way through the dining car, they note that it’s “long and empty, like my intestines” – but there are some great images too, like the train station being described as “a low building with a platform, long as a bayonet, cutting the cornfield in two.”
Mechanically, this kind of story seems like it’d be a good fit for a choice-based system, making it easy to read long passages of sometimes-opaque text and present options allowing the player to progress without requiring them to completely understand everything that’s going on. Subverting expectations, though, One Way Ticket uses a very adventure-gamey approach, with quite granular actions, rather than the broader strokes allowed for by less systemic choice-based interfaces. A location typically boasts three or four links for the important objects or people there, and clicking each will usually change the final paragraph of the passage to provide for detail on whatever you selected. Often this paragraph will have additional options for interaction – moving or talking or taking something or what have you – meaning the rhythm of gameplay proceeds sort of like it does in a parser game, where you examine each item in turn and then decide what to do. You also have a modestly-sized inventory, as well as a much larger list of facts or questions you’ve accumulated in your notebook. At certain times, the graphics for these will highlight, indicating that you can choose an item or topic to try to apply to your current circumstances: when talking to the hostess, for example, you can go to the notebook to mention that the Mayor told you there’d be free lodging at the tavern.
It’s a solid system, similar to ones I’ve liked in games by Abigail Corfman or Agnieszka Trzaska. I’m not sure it’s a great fit for One Way Ticket, though, since it serves to slow down the pacing quite a lot: while the inventory is relatively compact, the topic list quickly reaches a dozen or more entries, and sometimes the proper choices to pick are relatively obscure due to the often-confusing nature of the situation and the prose. Exploration is also challenging because sometimes clicking on the name of an object will lock you into choosing an action and progressing, meaning you need to leave and then come back, hopefully remembering which choice was the booby-trap, to fully plumb the depths of each location. Relatedly, the map is big, and often you need to click through several links to get to the travel options in a location – plus, several puzzles have a fair bit of busywork, requiring you to go from one end of the town to the other, sometimes going to the tavern to wait for nightfall too, before you can make much progress. And while this is a big game with lots of stuff to do, the first portion of it seemed fairly linear, with only one puzzle that’s possible to solve at a time even though you’ll quickly unlock a dozen locations (with different night and day locations) and twice as many items and notebook topics.
All this means that after spending an initial hour enjoyably but bewilderedly exploring my way around town and solving a few puzzles, I began to worry and checked the helpfully-provided walkthrough, which indicated I’d barely gotten a quarter of the way in. I started consulting the walkthrough more regularly after that, but still, I’d only gotten maybe 2/3 of the way through when the two-hour judging deadline hit. Usually I’m not shy about scribbling down a rating then pressing on to the finish line for longer games, but here, I found myself anxious to move on. Partially that’s because it’s only the first game in my queue and I’m very aware of the distance to go to play all of them by November 15th, but partially it’s because while I like the ingredients here, the sheer quantity of options and obstacles feels overwhelming – going back to the movie metaphor, what would be a cryptically compelling 85-minute film can get quite exhausting once it rounds the two hour mark, in my experience.
If I wrap up my Comp before the deadline, I’ll definitely try to get back to One Way Ticket, since there is a lot here I’m enjoying – if I do, I’ll go back and update this review accordingly. Part of me, though, almost hopes I don’t; there’d be something apt about leaving the protagonist mid-quest, with one of the gambler’s aces found and halfway through a flirtatious dinner with the tavern hostess, eternally poised on the threshold of resolution, forever stuck between stations.
2 of
2 people found the following review helpful:
Straight Story? Lost Highway to Mulholland Drive, November 24, 2022Adapted from an IFCOMP22 Review
This is a fine example of a work that embraces deeply weird, vaguely sinister and supernatural-tinged narratives. But rather than commit to the well-laid Twin Peaks tracks, instead has the nerve to be its own thing instead! I'm sorely tempted to add a special grading system for this stripe of game. I have a great hook for it too, the pseudo-Lynch scorecard!
Is there cherry pie/coffee? Kind of. There’s (Spoiler - click to show)corn liquor
Is there a Log Lady? Eeh, no but there is a (Spoiler - click to show)Contemplator
Is there a Laura Palmer? No
Evil behind a cookie cutter face? Can’t tell at the 2hr mark, no.
Imagery pulled straight from our collective unconscious? No
Lynch-ledger: 1.4/5, Between Dune and Blue Velvet.
The protagonist finds themselves on an unscheduled stop on their bid for a new life, in a tiny town, just left of normal. Must solve puzzles to resume journey! The presentation is appealing. Crude uSoft Paint geometrical pictures and jaunty music pepper the experience. There is a map to follow, with a unique NPC guardian at each location. The map amusingly changes state with the world in a nicely weird touch. The NPCs range from deadpan, to flighty to just deeply weird, all of it combining to present a deliciously off-kilter vibe. The puzzles have some flair, but don’t seem to match the environment in weirdness. They are oddly pedestrian (Spoiler - click to show)deliver envelope, find matches, buy stuff. The main mechanism is simultaneously clumsy and clever - matching narrative notes or items to characters/places. It has a little more textual flair than TELL X ABOUT Y, but it requires multiple clicks on multiple screens to effect, and can devolve to mimesis-breaking exhaustive trial and error.
There’s a lot to like here, but a lot of it is qualified. None more so than the text itself. At its best, the text disappears and just straight-forward describes the weirdness around you. All too often though, it throws in flourishes that come out of left field in a distracting way. “long and empty like my intestines” “Tall green pillars stuck out their immature cobs like rattlesnakes” “door opened the silence of the room, releasing it right in my face.” See if you can guess what this one refers to:
"However, the snake opened its mouth, and I got out of this bell, as a lost sound finally flies out of the French horn, scrolling and traveling through all its convolutions, bends and nooks."
(Spoiler - click to show)Exiting a series of alleys! I had literally just done it, and took a minute to realize that’s what it was describing. I think it's the snake that doesn’t work there, I probably could have gotten on board with just the French Horn. Between the textual excesses and the puzzles that didn’t seem on the same level as the rest of the narrative, I couldn’t breach into Engaging here, but definite Sparks of Joy. No bugs found!
FTR, the Lynch Ledger scoring system:
0 - The Straight Story
1 - Dune
2 - Blue Velvet
3 - Twin Peaks original series and movie
4 - Lost Highway
5 - Eraserhead
Played: 11/11/22
Playtime: 2hr, Day3 (incomplete)
Artistic/Technical rankings: Sparks of Joy/Seamless
Would Play Again? No, my sweet spot is Blue Velvet+
Artistic scale: Bouncy, Mechanical, Sparks of Joy, Engaging, Transcendent
Technical scale: Unplayable, Intrusive, Notable (Bugginess), Mostly Seamless, Seamless
2 of
3 people found the following review helpful:
IFComp 2022: One Way Ticket, November 6, 2022Midway through this our mortal life: “The train seemed to be slowly moving towards its goal. To my goal, to be exact. The iron car, puffing to its destination, will go back in just a couple of hours — for me it was a one way ticket.” When the train breaks down, waylaying us in a mysterious village, we’re primed for a metaphorical journey of pilgrim’s progress paused, but quite quickly we’re handed a map, given a quest, which opens up another quest, which requires us to manage our inventory, and voila – you have stumbled upon the latest Russovian convergence!
Through this custom system, Twine in form but parser in spirit, characters nod us toward puzzles with glib pretenses: a character wants to get into the train for Reasons, but “I am not on the best of terms with the miserly driver, and without his cap it is simply impossible to get into the cab!” Yes, to get into the driver’s cab, apparently all you need is the driver’s cap. This whimsically arbitrary knockabout of “asking questions will only slow you down” fetch quests sets the tone for a puzzlefest that delights in both continually posing story elements while also subverting them with cheerfully blatant gamey surfaces: ““That the train is drawn on the map, as if it always stands there, like buildings in the city! What is this nonsense? And then, when did you manage to draw the train on the map?” / The mayor slowly drew the tobacco mixture into his bowels and passed his hand in front of my face as if he was stirring something in my head. / “Firstly, relax. Secondly, you are mistaken about buildings. Thirdly, the train stands exactly in the place where it is drawn, I don’t see a mistake here.”” Don’t be concerned about the how, definitely not the why, but the what, oh, we’ve got plenty of the what around here.
Charmingly surreal enthusiasm keeps you always one headscratch behind. You stumble onto the public transportation system, only to be taken for a ride: ““Why doesn’t the tram go?” / “Because there are not enough passengers, it’s clear!” / “Let’s say your passenger is in front of you.” / The man slapped himself on the forehead so that dust rose: / “Kh-kh! Oh, and I wonder why this face is unfamiliar. Are you off the train? The whole town is already talking about you. Let me explain how our trams work. / I tell you: trams run very rarely, basically we can do without them. But sometimes we have to poison jackals, otherwise they rush to people.”” So many questions, but rest assured, none of them will be answered. One Way Ticket commits to the bit, even as it enjoys thinning the bit as much as possible without causing the fourth wall to snap. Taunting you through the graphene grins the game’s humor: “The fence did not look very unapproachable, but I had absolutely no reason to pretend to be either a bee or a monkey, which at all costs had to get close to the flowers.” The implication being, of course, that you will need to puzzle through the fence to collect the flowers.
That creative tension between offhand grabbagging ideas and then committing to them with ebullient certainty bestows brilliant paint, “even yellower than the yellowest cadmium sulfide used by artists to represent the color yellow”, on what might otherwise be industrially mechanical. A statement like ““And what is this city?” / The little man beamed with genuine joy and answered: / “This is the city of which I am the mayor!”” manages to turn a character’s utilitarian flatness into a disarming joke. One character, having finally had his state changed by your successful completion of his fetch quest, shares your relief as we progress to the next set of unexpected whatsits needing whotsits: “"I’m so glad I can finally leave this basement. Frankly, I’m already fed up with the taste of the local hookah — it’s like playing with someone who knows only one opening: boredom is death, the very sense of the game disappears…” The sense of the game, then, appears in the dislocating weirdnesses that keep you guessing, not just through the puzzles, but in the much harder to parse contexts.
Unfortunately, the game dislocates you much more than I think it intends to, which dials up the confusion to migraine. Firstly, the inventory management necessary to solve puzzles is kind of unclear. You have two inventories, a journal full of notes you’ve made and a bag full of items you’re carrying, and you oscillate through them basically at random: to meet the priest for the first time, you need to use a note from your journal about meeting him in the evening to solve a puzzle about turning the sun to change the time, but when you get the fetch quest item for him, you have to use that item from your inventory to turn the sun to change the time. Then, once you give him the item, you need to make it day again, which requires you to use a journal note to change the time. In each instance, the UI obliques the puzzle through an obfuscatory layer roughly correlate with “guess the verb” frustrations.
Secondly, the occasionally haphazard translation can make disambiguating between what’s weird intentionally and what the language barrier has rendered confused difficult: ““Here is the last passenger!" the tram driver exclaimed when he saw me. / “An extremely curious passenger!” the python passenger looked at me angrily. “Here you are, in order to dispel possible misinterpretation.” / The passenger pulled out of his high boots first one, and then another one… hand. / “I’m a right-four-handed, haven’t you met someone like me?” / I was petrified to the point where I couldn’t even shake my head. The two right hands were fingering with the numb fingers pulled out from narrow boots.” So in this scenario, we have the zany puzzle that someone has all their limbs on one side, but when I first read this, I thought it was someone with four arms but who was right handed, a misconception that obscures the puzzle solution you have to later intuit. And uh, why is he a python? “He was like a python put in a box for a hamster serving a python a light breakfast.” Uh. Okay. I guess, um, that clears it up?
Thirdly, the Twinesque UI requires you to click through a lot, but requires precise input on specific screens, which is both more difficult than it needs to be and results in a lot of lost time cycling through or pausing to think if you should intervene in some new way before moving on, etc. Plus it makes movement around the map much more difficult, since each location requires you to click through the same introductory material each time, which can be annoying. Compounded this annoyance, the map is segmented into quadrants, which slows you down by forcing you to travel through hubs to get to the location you want. Given with the sheer amount of needing to wander around and try random things or notice random things that might have inexplicably changed from one moment to the next, it can become exhausting.
But if you can keep pace with the wayward logic, you can enjoy its complex layers of interdependence that lets you trace disparate elements as they course to an emotive core, slowly recognizing the life inside the inexplicable architecture: “The whole building looked crooked and oblique and rather resembled some kind of creature, molded from plasticine and not falling apart only because somewhere inside there were thin, but rigid wires hidden, with invisible ties connecting all unsightly protrusions and corners into a single whole.” Indeed, the game’s delight in inventiveness manifests most obviously in that everyone you meet, even the tavern hostess, is an inventor in disguise, and your job is to help them build their machines and improve the world in excitingly unexpected ways. Perhaps the game describes its madcap inventiveness best: “Some kind of harnesses and chains, which seemed to be randomly wound on the axles and gears of the mechanism, led from wheels to pedals, and from pedals to other wheels, creating a kind of mechanical tangle that I could not unravel at first glance.” And if it all breaks down, leaving you stranded indefinitely? Well, you ought to try the local corn wine.
1 of
1 people found the following review helpful:
Next time, take a flight instead, October 31, 2022 One Way Ticket is a surreal custom choice-based game about being stuck in a strange town after your train runs into an accident… the railway is covered in a big mountain of corn. These circumstances only get stranger. If you want to leave you will have to show initiative by pestering the locals, worming your way into off-limit areas, and maintaining your sanity is this odd, odd adventure.
This is a town where (Spoiler - click to show) people use golden sand as currency, night and day are determined by adjusting the arms on a clock, buildings have legs, everyone only eats corn, and lions hang out in the valley. There is also an NPC (Spoiler - click to show) who has arms and hands in place of legs and feet. Soon after your arrival, the mayor gives you a town map that already has the broken-down train marked on it, almost like a historical landmark. His also attitude suggests that the train (which, by the way, has *(Spoiler - click to show) eyes for wheels) and its passengers were meant to be trapped here, but that won’t stop you from looking for a way out.
Despite this weirdness, this is not a horror game, more akin to a demented version of Thomas the Tank Engine (not Thomas himself but the human characters). These themes are subtle, and that is the whole point. If you like vague, slightly unsettling themes right under the surface in a surreal game, this might be for you.
Gameplay
After an intro in the train, you are essentially dropped into the middle of town to fend for yourself. This means wandering around and asking people questions. Later on, the gameplay becomes more complex.
The gameplay is structured for convenience and frustration, a surprising combination. The central mechanic revolves around the two icons at the top of the screen: a satchel icon (for inventory) and a notebook icon. The satchel icon keeps track of clues and observations which are added as you play. Any noteworthy information in a scene is underlined and sent to this section for future reference. For me, there was a learning curve with how the gameplay implements these two icons. In an interaction you can open the notebook or satchel to select an entry to be used in the encounter.
"By the way, if you want to eat or something else, say, do not hesitate!" she added cheerfully, without turning around.
Say goodbye.
Ask about the driver and conductor.
Above is an early scene where you talk to the hostess in the tavern. “Say goodbye” and “Ask about the driver and conductor” are action links, the latter of which only appears if you open the notebook section and select the clue about the driver and conductor’s whereabouts in the notes section. Easy enough. The problem is that later in the game the objectives and puzzles become increasingly cryptic, technical, and confusing. I found myself just randomly trying every clue in an encounter until I found one that did something. At times, the number of clues and details can be overwhelming, especially if you have a hard time following the story.
The reason why I am giving this game three stars instead of four is because the last third of gameplay involves excess backtracking for solving the dozen or so final puzzles. You navigate by opening and clicking on a map which translates into, (Spoiler - click to show) go to the tavern, the trolley, another trolley, the cemetery, the trolley, another again trolley, the tavern, the southern trolley, the workshop, the southern trolley, the tavern, the- and so forth. Usually this is just to switch between night and day via the tavern, but it feels so repetitive, even more so since this is a long game. At least it was fun to see the night and day art for each location.
Story
The gist with the story is that a mountain of corn is covering the train tracks, and that the only way for it to be removed is to eat it…………..it is hard to keep track of events in this game. It largely has to do with (Spoiler - click to show) dealing with the lions in the valley, but to get to that point you must do all these odd jobs (like obtaining some golden sand so you can actually buy something) to acquire the resources need to achieve that.
I was using the walkthrough for most of the second half of the game (Initially, I thought I was making speedy progress, but when I saw the walkthrough, I realized I had a long way to go). By the time I finished I was not even sure of what I accomplished. It was (Spoiler - click to show) snowing and everyone seemed miffed that I banished the lions. I can’t even remember if I managed to leave.
It feels like you have to jump through hoops just to get some answers about the story. It is not as if the game simply skips over discussing exposition about the town but having played it for several hours, I find myself unable to piece it all together. While it is not really something I plan to play more than once, the optional achievements and bonus art galleries make it awfully tempting.
Characters
The game vaguely suggests that the protagonist is male, but there is a scene on the train that may or may not be an opportunity to choose your own gender. It has to do with examining and entering the bathroom doors, but it does this so vaguely that I cannot say for sure.
I thought it was interesting how the game uses a first person and past tense narrative. The protagonist is telling a story that already occurred, which I do not see as often in interactive fiction. We also do not get much background on the protagonist, only that they are on the train to leave an old life behind. Obviously, this debacle with the corn-oriented town derailed (hey!) their plans of starting a life somewhere new.
Some of the NPCs are a little intense, but others are mysterious in a cool way. It is hard to pinpoint characters’ motives. Combined with being stuck in a strange town, that is a little worrying, but also the whole point.
Visuals
I really like the art which uses basic lines and shapes to form an image but at times it’s a little unsettling. Imagine taking several sticks and lining them up perfectly side by side except for one that is slightly bent. It is barely noticeable, but something at the back of your brain thinks, “huh, that’s weird.” This is not a complaint since it contributes to the bizarre weirdness that is lurking about. Most of the art though, is not like that. A great feature is a gallery section that collects the art you have found. There are quite a few.
There is also a handy in-game map of the town that expands as you explore more areas. You just click on where you want to go. If I had to describe the map’s style, I would say that it looks like it was hand drawn and then processed through Microsoft Paint, but much nicer looking. And I like the style. It is just hard to describe.
A downside is that I noticed some mildly frequent spelling errors sprinkled about. The game is certainly not sloppy, but a final round of proof-reading would have added some polish.
Final thoughts
One Way Ticket does an effective job at conveying a surreal setting featuring a flustered protagonist forced into bizarre and unexplained circumstances determined not to succumb to the wonderful life that the town claims to offers. I must say, this game’s story is probably the most eccentric, but also memorable, out of all the entries I have played so far for this IFComp.
Ultimately, this is a quality game, and quite an adventure. However, based on its length and repetitiveness near the end, I recommended it if you are looking for a creative take on surrealism and have the patience to be in it for the long haul.
*When I saw the cover art, I had the impression that this would be a kids’ game. It’s not. But it was not until I played the game that I noticed the “wheels” on the train are supposed to be (Spoiler - click to show) eyes. I think since they blink on the menu page in the game.
2 of
2 people found the following review helpful:
A big surreal game about a train and a strange city, October 12, 2022This is a large, custom-engine choice-based game that takes place in a surreal world like the Phantom Tollbooth or a Roald Dahl book.
The player is on a train that mysteriously stops in a giant field of corn. You get out and explore a town full of odd people.
It uses a custom javascript engine that relies on a map to get around; however, you can't click just anywhere on the map; you must click on an adjacent tile first.
Gameplay revolves around having a big notebook full of thoughts or ideas as well as a bag of items. Each location has some intro text, following which you can use the map or click on one of these ideas.
This is essentially quadratic in nature, then, with interactions of each item with each location. This was manageable at first but grew a bit out of hand for me. I also found the movement in the game extremely tedious as I had to click a location on the map, navigate its initial text for the dozenth time, then click on the next location, etc. especially when running back and forth to check for missed things.
After about 2 hours of gameplay I found trouble following the walkthrough, as a woman I had talked to earlier was supposed to appear in the Center-West Tram Station but never showed up.
Overall, I would be interested in seeing the rest of the game at some point, but the interactivity was pretty frustrating.
1-7 of 7 | Return to game's main page