198BREW

(review based on the IFComp 2024 version)

Disorienting.
Discomforting.

Strange…

198BREW drops the player in a nearly incomprehensible setting. Just familiar enough to wander around and explore. Hints of backstory, glimpses of history, fragments of memories,… paint an icy, fractured picture of a World, a Church, a Queen, and of some of the unfortunate people inhabiting the City.

The writing is splendid. Descriptions feel alien while still evoking detailed-yet-disturbed images, the sequence of events and actions draws the player along with urgency, without ever gaining clear motive. There’s an interesting juxtaposition of the large-scale prologue with the practicality of the apparent game-objective in the opening scene, especially since that down-to-earth practical objective is twisted and spun and distorted during the game that follows.

I loved this, but precisely because I can see the potential, I also grew frustrated. While the descriptions are very impressive on the surface, it takes but a minor scratching to see that the implementation is sorely lacking in depth. Many nouns are not recognised. characters who seem interesting turn out to be cardboard figures with only one conversation-trigger, commands that flow naturally from the setting are dismissed by a default rejection-response, plausible alternate courses of action () are not accounted for,…

This game excels as a mood-piece, it has provided images that I will probably see in my dreams, it suffused me with an undefinable feeling of strangeness. However, to become the truly masterful IF-piece it carries the kernel of, more polishing and shaving is needed.