Prospero

I have read through this story twice so far and together it only took me twelve minutes to complete. Overall the story is well-written and so well worth that minimal play-through time. In some ways I was glad about this simplicity. This story did not try to be something that it was not. It avoided the bloat of endless and pointless side-treks and distracting gameplay elements. At the same time the brevity of the work did not leave any room for characterization or a real fleshing out of the world setting. Even the ambiance of the story, a certain richness of tone and setting, which is an essential aspect of this kind of storytelling, was lacking because there was not enough time spent developing it.

The interactivity of the story was also hit-and-miss. My choices as the reader certainly had direct consequence. But the actual physical space of the story, the rooms I was wandering through as the reader/player, were not very interestingly setup. If the work was any longer I would have easily lost track of where I was in relation to the other rooms. The location of the story was not a very memorable place to visit or explore overall, and that is a problem when the whole experience of the story revolves around my movement through those rooms and exploration of that space.

The best feature of this story is the clock. The way the passage of time is presented in this work was the one thing I think I will remember about Prospero going forward.

This game is brief, and is based on (I believe) on the Masque of the Red Death.

The game is sub-q style, short and straightforward, but Bruno manages to make it interesting. The writing is heavy, like Devil's Food Cake. The game is an adaptation, but with enough early changes that I was intrigued to see where it would go storywise.

The game has good replay value due to a sequence of end actions wandering about a party and choosing what rooms to visit. I found at least two different interesting sequences.

I recommend this game as a short literary bite.