Ratings and Reviews by verityvirtue
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Short, timeless adventure, August 6, 2020A convenience store with a secret - standard fare I'm sure for those who grew up on adventure games. This game feels timeless, actually; what use is trappings of modern life if all around you is blank desert? Features a generic PC whose motives are generic and relationship with the titular uncle conveniently vague. Look, it's not a bad game. While short and predictable, it's complete and mechanically sound; please don't see my rating as meaning that the game is actively bad.
Coming of age in a stark landscape, August 6, 2020This review is based on the current version, not the IFComp version.
Dull Grey is a coming of age story in a mechanised, stark landscape with the aesthetic of Soviet fiction. The story universe is dominated by the Progress-program, but it seems to have little sway in the towns we venture through. To them, the Progress-program is a distant mandates and forms flashpoints for ideology; the decision-making power does not lie with them.
The game itself is visually gorgeous, with just enough descriptive writing to sketch out a deserted depot here; a village house there.
Handling the choices was simply and very well done. You technically only ever have a binary choice between two professions. Neither seems good. The lack of choice is by design - and to good effect. There is a bit at the end which reveals the true scope of the game(Spoiler - click to show), rather like Caleb Wilson's The Northnorth Passage (I hope this isn't too revealing!). It also divulges the percentages of players who found certain endings, and looking at contemporaneous reviews, I'm starting to wonder how true this is.
This game piqued my curiosity in many ways, and was surprising in the best ways.
Sombre take on folklore, August 3, 2020MacLeod the neighbour has a kelpie - the water horse of yore - the same kind of creature that drowned the PC's aunt.
The story was compact; the writing descriptive and the storyline fairly straightforward. Each decision has realistic moral stakes, and if we're talking about moral decisions in IFComp 2019, this was much more convincing than, say, the Milgram Parable. Overall this was a polished piece of work and very competently done.
Allegory with a hint of story, August 3, 2020Starting with the story of Stanley Milgram's psychological experiments, The Milgram Parable reads like an allegory, using the setting of a corporate militia. All the elements are there: unquestioning obedience, limited information and one to one meetings with superiors. I guess the sporadic binary choices come with the narrative territory, too.
So the game forces you to make increasingly abstract choices. Showing compassion at the start of the game yields the admonishment that you are quick to judge using very little information; this is what the game forces you to do. Ironic? Purposeful? Maybe. The scope of the game is so narrow, the stakes and emotional impact so vague, that the decisions start to feel academic.
Conversation-powered living poem, August 3, 2020This is a conversation-powered, living poem in which two people uncover a village previously submerged by a dam. As they uncover layers of the physical landscapes, so they also uncover the landscapes of the PC's childhood and family.
Everything is fragmentary, forgotten, which creates a sort of creeping horror. The unpredictable visual design adds to that.
The game has a striking use of images throughout, and whether by design or browser variability, the text design occasionally looks buggy - text sometimes appears in unexpected places, or laid out in odd ways. Here I chose to see that as part of the effect of the game.
The Good People was intriguing, not least because it scratched my particular itch of exploring abandoned landscapes and memories.
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