Reviews by MathBrush
15-30 minutes
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A funny take on fairy tales, with simple parser, May 3, 2024This game is part of the Text Adventure Literacy Jam. The competition requires games to have a tutorial and to be gentle for beginners, but to have substantial puzzles.
The game casts you as the Big Bad Wolf, in prison, and you have to account for your actions from your own perspective. It reminds me of classic takes on this subject like the movie Hoodwinked or the children's book The Stinky Cheese Man. The writing is humorous and fun to read.
The map is small and simple to follow, mostly shaped like a cross with a branch on one of the sides. The game draws on Little Red Riding Hood, the Three Little Pigs, Peter and the Wolf, and others.
I found many of the puzzles enjoyable and engaging. The game is relatively brief, just right for beginners. I would give 4 stars, but I had some parser wrangling issues. I frequently found that the limited parser felt like it made the game more complicated rather than less; for instance, TAKE is blocked, but many puzzles revolve around using items that are present. So a puzzle that would be very simple with TAKE becomes a complex guessing game of what the correct verb is. Similarly, some of the puzzle logic felt out of whack; actions that I thought would be reasonable are handwaved away, but later turn out to be the right solution, it just wasn't the right time (I'm specifically thinking of the (Spoiler - click to show)sheep disguise).
These issues were not severe and were overcome in the end, but gave me enough friction that it was irritating. The writing, however, was very funny to me, and provided me strong motivation to go on. I also didn't find any bugs or typos at all, and the game overall felt highly polished. I was planning on giving it 3 stars and saying I'd give 4 if the issues above were resolved, but I can't really think of any way to fix them myself, so why not just give the higher score for this fun and well-written game?
A game from many perspectives, set at a work party with drama, April 6, 2024This was an intricate and surprising game. It uses a seed for color palettes and another for ‘one click=one change in perspective’.
So the way it’s structured is that it has a setting and a list of dramatis personae. All of the people’s names are linked, and clicking on them gives you a view of the soiree from their perspective, as well as links to the three others.
So, I thought, ‘Ah, I get it. There are just four story passages, and you can pick what order to read them in.’ But, it was actually a lot more complex than that. Each link that you click takes you to another person’s perspective, like I thought, but it also advances the time. So there’s actually quite a bit of complexity in play here.
At first, I thought there were 8 or so people, until I realized that every person had a first name and a last name and that which one was used in the text depended on the familiarity of the person who was speaking. This introduced an almost puzzle element for me, as I had to go back and forth between the dramatis personae list and try to fit together the different perspectives into a unified whole. It made me feel like this was a lot of worldbuilding for one game, so I checked the ‘about’, and saw that this tied in with the author’s earlier game Structural Integrity.
Overall, the writing felt natural and the scenario was interesting enough that I played through 4 or 5 times (unlocking the ‘faster read’ mode). The basic concept is that you’re at a work party and two male/male couples that have beef with each other bump into each other with a combo of flirting and veiled insults.
I felt like the ending didn’t really end on a satisfying, conclusive note; it felt like there was either something missing left to be told or that room was being left for a sequel hook.
I also think that the extensive worldbuilding and the ‘one click = one viewpoint change’ concepts had tension with each other, because with such fleshed-out characters I would have liked to have more time with one character to learn names from their point of view and get a feel for them and their worldview before hopping over to the next character.
Finally, the styling looked nice, with well-chosen colors and backgrounds, and a fancy dramatis personae list. I thought early on ‘I wish I could just bring up the list of people more easily’, and then I realized there was a button that does exactly that, which was good design.
Fake game listings for games that could have been, April 6, 2024This game has a genuinely funny title, which I like.
In ATGIWHMFSIIHTTWIDNOWTANN, you are provided a list of game seeds the author was interested in. You can click each one to see the seed itself, either visual or text, which honestly was great; in the actual seedcomp planting round, you have to download the text prompts individually which can get really annoying, so copying the structure of this game to make a ‘hub game’ could be really nice.
Anyway, once you select a subset of these, you can push a mysterious-looking ‘alchemize!’ button. Now, there are a lot of seeds here, so there would be hundreds of combinations. But the game automatically culls things to combos the author thought of, so clicking one box deletes most others.
I was delighted to see that the function of ‘alchemize!’ was to make a fake ifdb page for the game! It comes complete with summary, reviews, and votes on those reviews.
It was really fun seeing what someone’s perception of IFDB was as expressed through the various voices they invented. It was pretty funny seeing things like two-word negative reviews that got a single 0/1 helpfulness vote.
I found it interesting that the fake reviews quoted or summarized large portions of the game explicitly. I know the reason for that was to communicate to us, the people reading this, what the games would have actually been like. But actual reviews tend not to include so much stuff (like a ranking of characters in a game), probably because people read reviews before playing and don’t want to get spoiled. It made me wonder, what if we did include more stuff like that? In spoilers, of course.
The one thing I didn’t really like was the color choices. The fake IFDB page had black text on a dark grey background (I tried two browsers just to check). I could read it but only barely, so I went into the console and edited the text to be easier to see. Might just be a me-getting-old thing, though.
Very fun to see IFDB represented this way.
Go on trial with several poets, April 6, 2024This game uses a seed where you have to stand on trial before four famous poets.
It’s written in Dendry, one of the first Dendry games I’ve seen not written by Autumn Chen, making this pretty unique.
The game presents each of the four poets (Sappho, Tagore, Milton, and Khayyam) as characters each having themes, virtues, and vices.
The concept is that you are on trial for plagiarizing their work. Each one accuses you of having plagiarized certain themes of theirs. Your own identity is kept secret.
At first, I thought the game would have very little interaction, since clicking on each poet gave me three pages of non-interactive text.
But then, I found out that that was just the intro! You then reveal your own identity which was a powerful moment for me (I got mild chills on my arm hair).
Then there follows a combinatorial puzzle. I found it tricky; I just randomly clicked for a long time and didn’t understand the mechanics. After about 10 minutes I started thinking more about it, and finally came up with a solution. It was pretty complex; it reminded me a bit of an Andrew Schultz puzzle.
The game inspired me to look up more about the poets. Due to my inexperience, it was hard at times to see the differences in their themes and their values, so I had trouble distinguishing between them. I look forward to learning more about them and am glad for Onno and Rovarsson (the seed author) for bringing them to my attention.
Make some sad food after a breakup, April 6, 2024This Adventuron game was pleasant to play. I was able to grasp what was going on, make a plan, carry it out with some exploration, and get a satisfying conclusion. It relies on the central core of parser games: take, drop, examine, open, close, etc.
You’ve had a bad breakup with a woman and she’s taken a lot of things, and you need to break out of your depressed languor and feed your very hungry stomach. Unfortunately, some of the food you have left is a bit weird.
I ended up making the tuna and tangerine pizza, which is pretty weird but not too weird (my favorite food when I was a missionary was green beans, tuna, shredded cheese and noodles).
Overall, short and satisfying. I did have some parser struggles, which I’ll DM the author as the particulars don’t matter for the review, but they were pretty similar to ones I’ve gotten reports for for my own game (little synonyms and such). It didn’t really detract from the enjoyment, and fortunately the game offers several layers of help to ease any friction with the parser, up to a full walkthrough, which thankfully I didn’t have to consult.
Manage conflicting social demands during a DnD game in a fantasy world, April 6, 2024This game consumed a lot of my attention and thought process.
You are a dungeon master/game master having a night with a classicallly-sized 4 person party, complete with fighter, rogue, cleric and mage.
All of the participants, though, are magical (well, mostly), including a fox spirit and a golem. Also, many of them are neurodivergent in different ways (including you).
The gameplay loop is that you advance the campaign a bit (which seems like its own fun story), and then an issue arises either in-game between characters or in-person. You have options to resolve it, which vary but often include taking gentle action, taking firm action, or doing nothing.
There are three ‘negative’ things that can pile up (or, occasionally, go down) that I found: you can get more and more distracted; the individual people can feel hurt or disconnected from the game; and time can progress.
I wasn’t sure what each of my actions would do or what the consequences, if any, of the above would be, but I had some idea and formed a strategy. It was very similar to a real-life stressful situation; it reminds me of my day-job as a high school math teacher (do I continue the lecture when everyone’s bored and the only topic left is really obscure but has a 5% chance of appearing on the end of year exam and ruining their life? Do I focus on the engaged students and let people talking in the back keep going? etc.)
I ended with time running out in the climactic fight, and that seemed just fine to me. I didn’t feel a need to replay, as there aren’t any perfect TTRPG sessions in real life, and ending without any major meltdowns seemed a big plus.
The characters were very distinct and their individual personalities mattered, making this work well as a character piece.
A surreal horror game about a friend group and their relationships, April 6, 2024This game starts off very strongly with a nice animation of tv static, good styling choices and a creepy intro. I was ready to be scared and felt a bit nervous/excited going in.
Four friends are going to watch a famously bad movie that has previously been edited, but now they find the original director’s cut.
Unfortunately, one of them is killed. Even worse, it’s the friend that was keeping the whole group together, the leader.
The game then takes a quick turn and opens up to the main gameplay, where each friend must confront the death of their friend and what that means for the future. This was a unique and fun part of the game.
There are a ton of different endings, and I played through to see 8 of them, but after the first two you have to re-see a lot of the game so it petered out eventually. But the endings I got were very strong.
The beginning was a bit hard to follow; I thought they were going to a theatre, then to pick up something, then a concert, then they were at a gas station. I eventually realized it was all one story, but the jumps were a bit confusing. That’s my little nitpick for an otherwise very solid game. I like surrealish horror with two worlds/realities, so this was fun.
The intro to a longer game about revolutionary radio, March 29, 2024This is a prologue to a humor sci fi game written in Moiki.
In it, you play as a radio repairman in a futuristic world. A transgender celebrity comes to visit you, and more importantly, a strike is going on and the radio station that supports it is in trouble!
The text comes in very short bursts, just a sentence or two per page in many cases. There are several character portraits designed with, I assume, AI art (many games in this comp have used it and it has that kind of style, although I could be wrong!).
The game has a kind of animated feel/vibe, like the Jetsons mixed with characters from the Spiderman newspaper comic.
The story's not complete, which makes sense, as I felt like it kind of jumped around and was a bit confusing at times.
A surreal game set in a dream, March 29, 2024In this game, you fall asleep, and wake up trapped in a strange dream world.
The game is choice-based, using Moiki, but it has a strong world model, with most interactions based on finding and using items, movement, and working with NPCs.
It's pretty short, but took me a while to work through, as there are many options. The writing was a highlight, with humorous quips, strong metaphors, and some just straight-up weirdness (like licking the horizon and discovering it is yogurt).
Overall, it was nice to have a short, kind of goofy break. There are almost certainly parts that went over my head; I bet if I were a native French speaker I'd appreciate it even more.
I did find a portion that resembled a parser game pretty funny, especially since it was a 'prairie informe', where inform can either mean the language or, in this situation, 'shapeless'.
A databse search game with revolutionary poets, March 29, 2024This game took me a while to figure out. There's a text box to enter stuff, but hitting enter just goes to a new line.
Eventually I realized it was a search feature with a bit of a delay; you type in a word and it brings up all elements in its database that match that word. I think the game Her Story might be similar (?)
The stuff that comes up includes text message conversations, journal notes, images, schematics, interviews, etc.
It was written in four hours, but there's some impressive stuff here. The idea is that two women who live together have been arrested after police suspected them of dangerous revolutionary activity, and you have to determine on a scale of 0-2 how dangerous they are.
Pretty neat stuff! I wish I learned just a bit more about them and what was going on, since the worldbuilding was so fun.
An easy-to-play and intriguing IF mystery set in a small town, March 27, 2024This Ink game was fun. You play as someone who received a note to come and investigate a town on behalf of a countess who has had to make herself scarce.
Most links involve either moving to a new location or performing an action in a location, most commonly talking to someone.
There are a diverse cast of characters. To me, the most evocative parts were the location descriptions; it's really nice to think of the bar with a back patio that is set on stilts overlooking a river. Sounds really beautiful!
The investigation was slightly tricky for me, being in French, but the game keeps things simple and it's not too hard to solve just by clicking around, although you may get stuck if you don't stop and think things through just a little.
Definitely enjoyed this one, and easy enough for a foreigner like me. I wondered about the motivations of the characters, though; I feel like they were as detailed as the settings were. Except for the priest, who I felt was very well characterized. Overall I like this, though; this is just some little nitpicks.
Play a low-key roleplaying game while hanging out in a youth hostel, March 21, 2024This is a fun game with a little bit of recursiveness in it.
You are a youth and are trying to get into a youth hostel. Unfortunately, the person in charge is on break, so you're stuck hanging out with a bulletin board, three wild young men, and an intriguing girl reading a book.
The main part of the game is discussion with the girl, who wants to play a role-playing game with you where you challenge concepts about the real world, creating a fantasy world that is different.
The contrast between the wild fantasies of the game and the grungy, mundane but exciting (for a travelling youth) details of the youth hostel was fun. I imagined an antiseptic-smelling cold room with tile floors and a green color scheme.
The character you play as seems a bit hesitant, someone not used to the world (at one point they speculate on the ethnicities of someone's parents, and you can choose whether you find it odd or not that they might have parents of different races). Overall, I felt like I was exploring an urban world that was new to me.
This has good writing overall, more like what I'd expect from a published short story author.
I had some trouble figuring out how to progress, and at one point was worried I'd have to lawnmower everything, but thankfully I didn't, and I managed to have some fun. I still don't know exactly what triggers the ending, but it came at a good time.
Fight zombies in a game set in the real-life Vigamus video games museum, March 19, 2024In Rome there's a video game museum called Vigamus that's been around for a while. This game, which is an illustrated and translated version of the English game I originally played in the 2016 IFComp, is set in that museum and includes photographs of the actual museum.
The gameplay is intentionally simplistic. You start off in a room of the museum where zombies have poured out of an arcade machine. The game offers you items one at a time, each one solving a problem at hand. There is some non-linearity in that you find things before you need them and you have some choices in what order to use them. You use many items from video games, like the hammer from Donkey Kong, to win the day.
I had a little trouble figuring out what to do at times in French, so I had to play the English version to figure out how to get through some parts before coming back to French.
The game has a few small errors here and there (like not capitalizing 'salle' in one of the room names). Some of the parts that felt objectionable in the English version felt a little less so in the French, as the language barrier gave me some distance from the material. There is a lot of silly things here, but it makes sense as a game intended for visitors to Vigamus to play.
A sci fi (?) metaphor game for relationships, March 19, 2024This was difficult to understand as a non-native speaker. It's a story about a fictional spacefaring society that is written in a way that's meant to be obtuse and indeterminate at first before resolving later on.
Everyone has an 'ors' or 'orsimonous' that is visible that lets you understand certain things about the other person; what that is is up to interpretation, but can include parts of their past, their current feelings, etc.
Your father's ors has disappeared.
It happened after a big natural disaster.
The intent of this piece is to discuss how that happened.
At least, that's what I think. The writing is very indirect, saying the same thing multiple times but never outright. It's possible there are many allusions I missed here (is the 'shock' a metaphor for something like Covid? Is the 'orsimonous' a term used in other works of French fiction). But I liked the way the choices were presented and the work made me feel contemplative.
A symbolic adventuron game, March 17, 2024In this Adventuron game (which reminded me in some ways of Andrew Plotkin's Shade, but is sufficiently different), you play as a figure in a medieval castle who is tasked with staving off a great army. Unfortunately, you fail, but you 'respawn' the next day.
You must explore a castle in a vast wasteland of sand, watching as mysterious figures appear and disappear.
I got stuck a few times, but exploring everything helped (a tip I saw on the itch page by manonamora). One thing that really threw me off early on was that the room description is at the top but events occur on the bottom, and often an event occurs before moving to a new room, but you are intended to read the bottom first and then the top, which I found confusing.
Overall, I liked the story and the multimedia was honestly neat! I like surreal horror-ish games so this was fun.
An incomplete game based on Machiavelli's The Prince, March 16, 2024This game has you play as a prince-in-training at a prince factory where everyone must read and study Machiavelli.
It's not finished yet, but it has a money system (where you earn money by correctly identifying quotes from The Prince). You can spend that to hear tales from past princes or to buy witty retorts.
The combat system needs some fleshing out; it's very difficult not to instantly die and thus be locked out of combat forever. There is a non-combat ending which I didn't find but received copious in-game hints for (Spoiler - click to show)something about the flower you can buy giving voice to something and also 'ailleurs' being the magic word?
Some really cool ideas here, just needs some fleshing out. But honestly very innovative.
An unfinished gardening game with a twist, March 15, 2024This Moiki game puts you in the role of a young gardener (who I imagined as a woman, although I don't know if it's stated), living in a cottage in a clearing in the winds.
You have an old, mossy well and a loyal dog companion, as well as a neatly organized life, with a shed, a book on herbs, tools, etc.
I thought it might be a kind of strategy sim, but I found that I had time and energy to just about everything.
Later on, the game changes dramatically. I was intrigued with it.
There's still a lot left. I wonder if having some more significant choices in the first day might be fun (but if not, it's totally fine leaving it as just a story lead-in if more exciting stuff happens later). In any case, I found this well-written and easy to follow even for a non-native speaker.
A reincarnation story that is hard to follow, March 13, 2024This French game has some problems. There is only one available choice on each page; some pages have other links but they are red/unclickable.
The text flows from thought to thought and it isn't always coherent. There are 'episodes' but it jumps from 1 to 6 and then back to 2. The point of view and names change frequently. After a few smaller passages there is one very large passage with no options.
The overall theme seems to be a person who has been or will be reincarnated many times over and over again, and who struggles with or against Gods.
Overall, it's possible this is an abstract, intentional art piece. If the author has some additional intent that I am missing, or a reader sees some hidden beauty in this gem, I'd be happy to rate it higher, but for now I'm giving it 1 star.
A powerful story of coming back for a funeral, and of post-Franco Spain, March 9, 2024This game is set in Spain but written in French. It's a powerful story; it made me glad that I still play interactive fiction, because I wouldn't have experienced this excellent story otherwise.
You play as a young man (I believe) who arrives at the funeral of his grandfather. However, you have decidedly unkind memories of your grandfather, who was part of Franco's army and committed numerous atrocities.
The story unfolds as you run into your family, deal with their awkward situations, talk to your partner, attend the funeral, or maybe not do a lot of these things; after all, there are several paths.
The only thing missing, I felt, could have been a little more personalization in the graphical presentation, or perhaps some more involved interactions. But the story is very well done, one of my favorite of the year so far.
Reconstruct the memories of a shattered mind in a short Twine game, February 27, 2024This game is a short Twine game with glitch-like animations and moody background music. It is designed to be replayed.
In it, you play as a computer program whose job is to interface with damaged humans and sort through their memories, deciding what should be saved. As the title says, Whatever isn't saved will be lost.
So the game is reaching for a poignant picture of humanity, and in a way it can be a projection for you, the reader. If you could only keep a few memories, would you pick the most painful ones, to learn from? The best ones, to treasure? How would you decide?
The words in the text (mostly the pronouns) glitch and shuffle themselves as you try to understand what's going on.
In one playthrough, there were only five or so memories to work through the whole time. In other playthroughs, I unlocked more somehow. Maybe I also did the first time and just didn't notice?
Overall, this is strongly written. The size of it felt a little weird, almost that it would make more sense to be slighter or more substantial but that it was caught in an awkward spot between the two. But the feelings of melancholy and nostalgia are powerful.
A linear tale of memory wiping , January 27, 2024This is a visual novel with no choices that deals with a race of beings called Harvesters that take away people's memories.
You play as one such harvester, and you meet a young redheaded single mother who has given up her child for adoption and wants you to wipe her memories.
You end up meeting another person who is entangled in her story, and you learn his past.
That art and music worked well. The writing was interesting, but seemed off, not following the conventions of plot and morality that I'm used to. I think I started thinking how very odd it was when someone said "You didn't just banish me to the friend zone or I wouldn't have sued you". There isn't any suing in the game; it might be a translation issue but I'm not sure it makes sense in any language.
Similarly, the endgame is that (Spoiler - click to show)You wipe the memories of her and her lover and then tell her you'll become her lover, which is kind of weird ethically.
I don't think this particular game is AI generated but these issues are similar to ones I've had with AI stories like Character AI (which my son plays), where the overall thing looks good but if you poke at it a lot of stuff just doesn't make sense. My guess is that it just needs some more time and attention, as it was written for Ludum Dare which doesn't give the author much time, I think.
A riddle whose exposition is given by world exploration, January 27, 2024I played this as part of the short games showcase.
This is a fun little game, reminding me of the Northnorth Passage or Out or Ad Verbum, all in good ways, but it is it's own thing and not a copy of anything else. It's a direction-based puzzler where each stride can take you to different kingdoms or even different corners of the earth.
I enjoyed the puzzle, although I kept thinking the solution would be (Spoiler - click to show)tang even though it didn't work and it didn't fit any of the clues. So I don't know what was going on in my brain. At one point I also thought the solution would be (Spoiler - click to show)literally typing out 'the opposite of east' since it starts with a T. Pretty fun!
A game about passing a bill in Congress, January 26, 2024This is a pretty straightforward interpretation of 'a game simulating a bill getting passed'. There's not a lot of characterization or strategy. It was useful to see exactly what all goes into it.
The US House Representative for my district visited my school I teach at recently and mentioned that around 10,000 bills were proposed last year of which some small number (like 27, googling says) actually got passed.
This game simulates that; I failed the house vote, got amendments, passed, passed senate, had president support, but got vetoed and lacked a supermajority.
Oh well. Lol
The game seems like it was made for a government event and it seems well suited for an educational venue.
The world of humans as seen through a single word, January 24, 2024This game has a bit of a different setup between the reader and the protagonist.
The narrative voice of the game is a sentient word. It addresses 'you', but 'you' doesn't mean the reader, it means a person in college that the word traded bodies with for a month.
The word is intrigued and obsessed with the human world, especially with things like color and visual stimuli.
The concept is clever, and there is a lot of enthusiasm that comes across as appropriate for a visitor from another world.
The longer it went on, the more I saw it as the story of someone who truly despises what they are; someone who does not like themself whatsoever. Because the word likes text least of all; it doesn't enjoy visual things more, it actively despises text.
There were two things that were a little weird about my interaction with the game. The first is that I felt like it was apologizing for itself a lot, which is weird because do you as a reader agree with it that it's non-ideal or feel sympathy for it? The second is that there was a wide range of interactivity which never fell into a rhythm for me; it went from wild combinatorial explosion to mostly linear.
Overall, I think it's a solid concept and that the game is just the right length for what it's exploring. I didn't click with all of it, but I did like parts and others might like all.
A powerful game told through poem translation, January 23, 2024This game is framed as homework for translation in a Russian lit class (or similar).
You are given the poem ( a famous one: Он любил три вещи на свете by Анна Ахматова unless I copied it down wrong), and asked to translate it.
The issue is that, like most poems and most translation, it makes use of idioms that don't naturally have a unique counterpart in the other language (in this case, English).
Choosing the meaning to stick with can drastically change the meaning of the poem.
I though this was well made, and powerful.
A strong story about a coin-operated confessional, January 22, 2024In this Shufflecomp game, you play in an alternate reality where the Catholic church has eliminated both priests and Pope and has gone to use coin operated confessional booths that are resolved by computer.
Except you are 'computer' in this case. It is your job to absolve others.
The aesthetics of the game, both video and audio, are very well done, restrained but effective.
The writing is evocative and clear.
I only wish the scenarios had been a bit more daring. Few if any of the characters had done truly wrong, almost as if the game is about moral greyness, the lack of a need for confession.
But everyone knows someone who has done another wrong. Truly wrong. What about confession and absolution in those cases? There can be no forgiveness if there was no wrong. No reconciliation if there was no separation. The elimination of true regret and punishment is also an elimination of true happiness and redemption. So to see such a case would have been interesting...
A collection of stories, on shuffle, January 22, 2024This game was made for Shufflecomp.
In it, you play as someone on a train who is approached by another passenger. He wants to tell you stories of the six other travellers who had spent time on the train before getting off.
The game uses Decker, and has a fixed width retro font.
The stories are very diverse, and build towards the ending stories, those of you and the storyteller. Each story seems to focus on personal relationships, either in pairs or threes.
The writing was solid, and the stories made sense, but something felt missing for me that I can't put my finger on. Almost like buying a box of legos and finding that most of them are already one big molded piece, like bionicles or something. After reading each story, it was hard to say what each one was about. Maybe it was because people were acting in them not as real, flesh and blood people, but as archetypes, like reading a story about tarot cards or astrological signs.
A cool looping Twine game about a temple and some helpful friends, January 21, 2024I liked this game. The presentation was neat, with real-time smoke in the background over at-your-own-pace text (I'd love to see more of this in games that use real time elements, letting me read as fast or slow as I like while other live stuff happens in the background).
You play as...well, you don't really know. It seems you're in a kind of group, at first, with text represented in different colors and alignments.
You have to escape a burning room in a temple. Everything is chaos.
You can play multiple times, and it can take quite a while to figure out what's going on. But everything built on each other, and I found it quite clever.
I was debating between 4 and 5 stars, as I usually use the 5th star for 'would I play again?' but technically I already played twice, so I'll give it 5 stars.
A visual game set in an apartment with surreal elements, January 21, 2024This game was entered in Shufflecomp, and I played the French version.
In it, you play as a young adult/teen living in your parents house. This is primarily a graphical game, like Myst, with some interactive audio and visual elements and with your thoughts and feelings expressed through text.
It's a kind of opaque game, with two segments. In the first, I felt like it was a psychological exploration of the young, unsatisfied mind. Roaming the house, trying to find snacks, avoiding your parents' friends, doing chores, reminiscing about the girlfriend you broke up with.
The second half is more disturbing, as you (Spoiler - click to show)encounter a stone that lets you see a different side to this world, or perhaps another world altogether. You see different messages, and in the end...
Overall, this game has many exceptional elements; however, many of the best parts of the game are things that I personally am not very interested in (the graphics, some text on a timer, videos and music, etc.), as I am mostly drawn to text games due to their inconspicuousness, the ability to play them quietly and at your own speed without drawing a lot of attention.
I do love the two worlds vibe, and will try to remember this game when the next XYZZY awards for multimedia come out.
Fun minimalist interactivity in an endless tower with neat effects, January 15, 2024This game was entered in the Single Choice jam, but it has some surprising depth.
Visually, it's a stack of cards representing floors of a tower. Every time you go up a floor, a card gets added to the pile. You can hover over older cards to see where you came from, and there's an inventory you can hover over.
There are no actions you can pick except to, whenever you want, fall, an option listed at the top. At one point, you're explicitly forced to choose to fall or not.
You can turn on game hints for the game, which I did out of idle curiosity at one point, but I'm glad I did; the ending was fun, once I realized what had truly happened.
I wavered between 3 stars and 4 and even 5, and settled on the latter, as I liked the originality and the implementation.
Murder mystery in a polar tribe, January 13, 2024This game is part of the single-choice jam. It has nice presentation using a very old school Hypercard system (or similar).
You play as a member of a polar tribe in the wake of a nuclear war. Your shaman has died, and you have ritually been chosen to hunt down the murderer.
There are quite a few options at the end, making this basically a murder mystery where you choose the ending.
It is in both French and English, and I played in both. Overall, I liked it. I'm not sure if it was 'authentic' to current native tribes or invented, but the characters were, I believe, well-written and I was invested in the final choice.
Short story about card game and luck told with 3d graphics, January 9, 2024This is a game entered in the single choice jam. It has animated 3d graphics, but is used to tell a text-based story, the images serving only as a (helpful) backdrop.
It sets up a big choice through a 3-act story about a group of friends in poor circumstances that are trying to get one of the newest, rarest cards in a trading card game.
There is some realistic-sounding dialogue and some nice character dynamics in this game. Overall, I was drawn into the scenario. I also liked the little touches like all of the fake cards the author had to make for different scenarios. Seems like the game could be pretty fun in real life.
A one-move game set in a subway, January 9, 2024This is a surreal one-move game entered into the Single Choice Jam.
You start in a subway, but something feels...off. Every choice that you make gives you deeper insights into the world, sometimes through explicit dialogue, and sometimes through dreams.
The setting and ideas become increasingly surreal. Somewhere along the way, I felt like it became disconnected; at least, I found it hard to thread together the various experiences I had had along the way into a coherent world.
I had a little trouble figuring out some of the actions to take, but thankfully there's a comprehensive hint system.
I didn't find any bugs in the game itself; on itch I had some trouble with the game not recognizing input halfway through the endgame sequence, so I thought I was stuck, but downloading it worked fine. This seems more like a weird interaction between my browser and not something due to the author.
A deadly game with urgency: a ship in true emergency, December 31, 2023This game features you as a crew member on a ship that has undergone a catastrophe. You have to race against time to survive and to save others!
Gameplay revolves around physics and physicality: pushing, pulling, using forces, temperature, gas, etc. There is a great deal of attention to physical details of things, such as inventory limit and 'recipes' requiring specific objects in specific orders. Everything about the game demands doing things precisely and in the proper way, like following shipboard directions only; even the proper way to name a spanner is provided!
The game starts under a timer, and I had to restart many times before finding the solution. After that, it opens up more.
It contains a cryptography puzzle, using standard codebreaking techniques and even with a provided password. I found that I preferred doing that with online software rather than working through it directly.
Overall, I didn't really find any bugs. The game's atmosphere reminds me of 70's to 80's action novels that my dad had lying around the house by some guy that was kind of like Tom Clancy but not (less military stories, more stuff like boat crashes).
Funny game about making emergency clothes out of office supplies, December 31, 2023This game was very funny, and pretty short and simple. It's Hawaiian shirt day at work, but you've forgotten to wear one! And, in fact, anything else but underwear!
You have to grab anything and everything you can to make clothes, starting from the most primitive to the less.
I only encountered a couple of minor bugs (no paragraph breaks sometimes where it seems like there might be some, and Mo is improper named so is referred to as 'the Mo' sometimes).
This is honestly a very funny game to me. I enjoyed every action I took.
A fun, short meta-game about beating a game by switching versions, December 22, 2023This game has a clever meta concept: you have to switch between different versions of the game, installing and uninstalling upgrades to progress.
In early versions of the game, you can see things like objects with can't be interacted with or placeholder text. In later versions, you get more advanced things like NPC conversation.
This idea of being able to switch back and forth between the two modes and explore outside the bounds of the game is brilliant!
It just doesn't last very long, and it can be hard to figure out when you can use these abilities or why. So the concept has great promise, and this version is okay, but I didn't feel that it filled out the measure of its promise.
Excellent world-hopping concept with some rough edges, December 20, 2023I had a great time with this game, then a bad time, then a pretty good time.
This is a PunyJam game, written using PunyInform, a variant of Inform designed to fit onto small devices.
It has one of my favorite game tropes, multiple worlds that all play off of each other. You start in one, but the game shifts you every few minutes into another, and you have to solve pieces of each one to figure out what's going on overall.
It uses nice color changes.
Where I had less enjoyment was a puzzle I got very stuck on in the CPU world. I turned out that there was one object I had overlooked in a paragraph, and so I spent over an hour trying over and over again to figure out what was wrong. I decompiled the game, used all in-game hints, got help online but had to ask for multiple hints. I don't know why I got so stuck! Most of it is my fault, but I think having some gentle nudges on what to focus on could help. And there were a few items that didn't have any descriptions.
So, overall started out loving it, got frustrated, but I still like the concept and most of the gameplay. Very fun.
A limited parser game about slowly gaining power, December 12, 2023This was a fun treat of a game to experience. You are a violent death machine, used as a pawn in an interplanetary war.
And you love slime prince, one of many duplicates of a true prince. The duplicates are made of slime, mere imitations designed as fodder for assassins like yourself.
The game is a limited parser game, and consists of slowly gaining capabilities over a map of around 20 (?) locations. Most capabilities are motion based.
The worldbuilding is both extensive and light; it's clear that a great deal of thought has gone into developing this world, but we mostly get hints and light touches of it, through the window of the slime prince's thoughts.
I did get stuck at one point, but the HINT command is gentle and helpful. I didn't use it at first, and ended up 'lawnmowering' for a long time. I wish I had turned to help sooner!
Overall, the writing is strong, the game is enjoyable. This is something that can be picked up and played relatively quickly, but is long enough to be substantial.
An illustrated trippy game about finding meaning, December 5, 2023This game always shows up on lists when I'm searching alphabetically, due to its use of parentheses, so I wanted to review it.
It's a Twine game that makes heavy use of 3d isometric perspectives. You play as a little rabbit whose world has suddenly gotten a lot larger.
The game has a kind of mix of cynical and dadaist worldviews. The characters make rape jokes and use strong profanity, drug use is mentioned frequently, and there is a long quest to see the color of the sky, which can break your mind.
The visuals were very nice. The overall philosophy reminded me of late stage Beatles. I think the game is well put together, but it didn't move me emotionally.
Defining the relationship in times of covid, November 27, 2023This game takes place in the same universe as Pageant and New Year's Eve, 2019.
This has one of the best mechanics I've seen used in the Single Choice Jam, which requires that players can only make one choice of any important.
What this game does is have many choices in a short-but-not-inconsequential game, but almost all of the options are greyed out (something I've seen in games like Depression Quest, but not recently). So you get lots of 'choices', and can see what you could have tried, but can only make one choice. This is great at giving the illusion of choice in a positive way.
The story is messy, like a lot of real-life relationships are. You have someone you mutually confessed attraction for months ago, but covid has happened and you haven't seen each other. Now you're isolated and it's so lonely. You contact your person and...well, the rest is what the game is about.
Some strong profanity, which seemed to fit the characters and situation. Overall well-written.
Morality test on an alien ship, November 23, 2023This parser game was written for Ectocomp.
In this game, you have been abducted by aliens for 3.5 years and are currently being held prisoner by them. They require you to do 2 tests: one with yes/no questions about historical views on morality, and then a practical test.
The yes/no questions are about scenarios from Cicero and Nietzsche, with a fictional viewpoint thrown in.
The practical involves a tense conversation between four characters pitted against each other.
The conversation in this game uses ASK/TELL, but I had trouble knowing what topics could be asked or told, and mainly just asked people about themselves.
Apparently it is possible to win, but I had difficulty doing so.
Interesting concept. It is a speed-IF, and could use more polish, and it is a little depressing, but it's also thoughtful.
Compact, spooky Adventuron puzzler, November 23, 2023This is a neat little Adventuron game that is highly constrained but manages to fit a real puzzle in.
You are at a campfire with three friends, and you are about to tell spooky tales. One camper tells the tale, and everyone else participates, including you.
The other campers and a book serve to add complexity to the game, each giving you more options to edit the final tale. Only one tale gives a good ending...
This was highly polished (bug-free as far as I can see) and, thought slight, was enjoyable, especially seeing the effects of your actions on the story.
Standard, classic mini-RPG, November 23, 2023This game was an attempt to make a dungeon crawler in 4 hours, and I think it did a pretty good job in that timeframe. I used UNDO a lot, and had to peek at the string dump to get the tiny key, but it might be fun to go back through without UNDO at some point.
You have weapons and armor, and you fight enemies in randomized combat, with damage and hit/miss chances affected by your weapons and armor. Defeating enemies gets gold (which doesn't seem to have an in-game use) and more weapons or armor. There's one puzzle that doesn't involve fighting.
As a game, it's okay, but as a prototype, it seems you could build something fun out of this. In a larger game I'd like some way to heal and more to do with the gold. But it can be fun to prototype systems in Ectocomp; I did that my conversation system and have used it for years, so hopefully the author got something out of this game.
Witness the decline of an Empire!, November 23, 2023This Ectocomp game takes the form of a series of pamphlets which describe the current state of the British Empire.
Each one presents a conundrum, which you can solve in several (usually 4) ways. At first, your options are to Acquiesce (which guarantees a moderate stat loss) or to attempt to fix it using one of your strengths (which gives either a slight stat loss or a strong stat loss). Eventually the option to acquiesce disappears.
There doesn't seem to be any way to improve stats; it seems to be a simulator for the long death and decline of the British empire.
I had a couple of sticking points with the game. There were several typos; I myself am prone to them, but if this is in Twine you can print out a 'proofing copy' with the 'proof' button and run a spellchecker on them.
The other issues were mainly taste; I would have liked the stat decrease to remain on the screen a lot longer, as I couldn't even see it as first, with my eyes near the top of the screen. Second, it's hard to figure out what true effect your losses have. I ran through part of it a second time and there didn't seem to be any changes in the pamphlets that depended on my earlier failures, although perhaps there were subtle differences here and there that escaped the eye.
In any case, turning the many negative actions of the British empire into a horror game by just printing what happened is pretty amusing.
A grim game about torture and abuse, November 23, 2023This ectocomp game was written using Twine.
It's a fairly short game about a man who has kidnapped a woman and a child and hurts them repeatedly. The game indulges in his verbal and physical abuse, almost reveling in it.
There is a slight supernatural element to the game which is stronger in some endings, but mostly this game just seems to serve up unpleasantries, and not in the service of some greater narrative; the torture seems to be the point.
It is polished and descriptive. However, the interactivity is a little bit weird; after one ending I looked around at the code, and it's pretty hard to figure out which action will lead to which result.
Emotionally, it was affecting, as I had a strong negative reaction to it.
I believe this author has a good writing talent, but different people have different tastes, and I'm not the target audience here.
A haunted family has a frightening Halloween, November 22, 2023This is a medium-length Twine game about a family that lives in a haunted house...but all the monsters in it are friendly with them, from the voices in the basement to the ghost children.
It has a nicely written and pleasant atmosphere, and kind of reads like books I'd read as a kid. I liked the homey feeling and the way the monsters worked together.
There was some real agency, where you could choose between different paths.
However, the game ends in the middle of the story; I would have given a higher rating if it were finished. Also, many of the background images had large patches of white, which made it moderately difficult to read some of thee white text.
Otherwise, cute family, nice worldbuilding, fun monsters.
Brief, unfinished game about school dynamics and friends, November 22, 2023A long time ago I studied IFComp games and noticed games that were marked as unfinished tended to do really poorly in the voting, regardless of their quality. I wonder if that’s changed now? It’ll be interesting to see how this game places, given that it says it will be updated and that several of the endings cut off in the middle of the story.
Your glasses are missing, and you have to find them! There are two key suspects, Minh and Jaime. All of them and you belong to the same book club.
The game branches pretty heavily, with one early ending being peaceful and happy and another ending I had involved organized crime(???)
Overall, it was fun, but just needs some more work. There were some typos (like ‘peak’ for ‘peek’, which is funny because I’ve made that same mistake at least twice this week), but not too many.
It’s interesting to compare this unfinished Choicescript game to One Knight Stand, another unfinished Choicescript game in the comp. This game is pretty minimal with just a few choices, but still manages to branch a lot. The other game has over 400K words with tons of choices for each option. Both manage to be pretty fun.
I liked what I saw of this game, there just wasn’t a lot.
Short, looping love and loss story, November 22, 2023This was a pleasant treat to play, although it was often sad.
It’s a looping game where the same events play out over and over but with variations. Many things are the same: a visit to a flower shop, passing by a statue, etc.
Things change visually as well, with the game getting darker over time.
I liked the writing and thought the loop was fun. I liked the note the game ended on.
I didn’t always see a clear progression between the different cycles. At first it seemed like things were getting worse and worse, and the darkening would imply that, but in many ways that didn’t happen. Maybe it was just about change? It’s okay for things not to have clear progression, but the background darkening seemed to indicate there would be. In any case, this was well written and I’d definitely play another game by this author.
Game about talking with mom, fixing a printer, November 22, 2023This is a Twine (edit: Ink) game about, well, fixing your mother’s printer. It features some neat UI by Josh Grams in addition to the main story content by Geoffrey Golden.
It’s basically a long troubleshooting call with your mother, trying to fix the printer. In the meantime, she discusses your life and hers.
Mechanically, I felt like I had a lot of options. I could be nice or mean or sad, I could attempt to solve the printer puzzle in various ways, I could bring up topics, etc.
Storywise, the writing was tight, and the characters realistic. But I didn’t connect emotionally much with it. I’ve had fights with my parents before, but I’ve never really doubted their love and care for me, it was always arguments about how that was expressed. I’m not really used to this situation where you’re on speaking terms but there’s constant barbs and negative comments and defensiveness. Even the way my parents were with their parents, there was some negativity and unhappiness (one of my grandfathers was physically abusive), but they just left him alone and were polite when interaction was needed.
So I think that this story would ring true emotionally a lot more to me if I had had a different set of experiences.
It was very satisfying to get the printer to work. I chose the nice options because it was fun, and because that’s almost exactly what I do when I’m tutoring math; you work through things with people patiently and listen because that’s how people learn, and so often the problem turns out to be just the one little thing you wouldn’t even think about.
I don’t know. It was interesting, and I think it was high quality. But gave me a lot to think about and made me want to text my grandma!
Game depicting struggles of stuttering, November 22, 2023This piece was good for me, I think. I’ve encountered different people with stuttering over time, and some of them I was kind too and some not. I had a group when I was younger that was both in church and scouts together. I never hung out with them alone but it was essentially my “friend group”. There was one guy who had a strong stutter. As a whole we often didn’t treat him well, and I regret it looking back.
Now I have a student who stutters a lot, due to having a stroke in his youth. I find it a lot easier to have patience with him and listen to his thoughts. He’s also an incredibly prolific writer (having written over 200 scripts each over 20 pages for a tv show idea he has.)
This game presents the experiences of one person with a stutter. They have a day to go through a list of chores and tasks.
I thought it was effective. It does have timed text but I made it work by playing it on my phone during a very boring work meeting where having it long and drawn out was a benefit. And I imagined the game itself as someone with a stutter and practiced being patient with them. After all, a lot of things that you would never do or like normally are acceptable or good when dealing with disabilities (like someone with IBS having frequent smelly farts).
My ex wife and son both use wheelchairs so it was interesting to see how similar some experiences are across disability, especially with other people under or over estimating the difficult of tasks. (Like “come to my house! It only has one step up, a few inches, that shouldn’t be a problem, right?)
So overall, lots of polish and good work and helped me reflect on life and saved me from a boring meeting.
Dreamlike Texture game about a horrifying nautical situation, November 22, 2023This is a Texture game, a system that uses a drag and drop of verbs to pull over nouns. The text was small on the buttons, which is a bug I’ve seen before that’s due to the system, not the author, I think.
I really liked this game. I’m into weird short horror/terror and the author has an excellent command of character and setting and is able to effectively spin a tale that drew me in.
The main commands are APPROACH, REFLECT, and TAKE, and I loved how each of these took on different meaning throughout the game. I also felt like I had real agency; there was an interesting object early on I intended to look at but lost the chance as I progressed; yet there were still interesting things to do. It made me feel like the game was replayable.
I found one ending (The Captain, I guess you could call it). It seems like there are more, but I felt satisfied with my playthrough.
I would definitely read more by this author, good work. It suits my particular reading tastes, and I can’t guarantee that others would have the same experience.
Dealing with an indescribable horror in your house, procedurally, November 22, 2023This was a fun little game about an unfun situation.
I think I experienced this game in the best way possible, as I am a fan of the game it is connected to (Ascension of Limbs) and I got the most interesting ending first. If I had experienced it any other way, I’d probably have not liked it as much.
You play as a woman in a house that has been tormented by a thing for a long time. Years, maybe? Maybe not.
Something is in your house, a wretched thing. The game doesn’t really expand on what that is. I imagined something like a mix between a baby, a Slitheen from Dr Who, and a silverfish from Minecraft.
Most of the action in the game is generated on the fly as the wretched thing performs various gross deeds. There are a few keys ways to interact with it, but other than that there’s not much to do.
That’s probably the main thing I didn’t like. Tons of items are in the game, but almost all of them have a message like ‘that’s not important now’ or ‘you don’t need that’. That makes sense from a scoping point of view, but I felt a little sad every time an interesting item turned out not to be usable.
But I liked the writing. And the ‘good’ ending really explained a lot about one of Ascension of Limbs’ main mechanics, so that’s what I liked best about this.
Wandering, branching cowboy game in Ink, November 22, 2023I think I underestimated this game going in. It seemed just like a regular old Ink game with a silly premise that would be over in a few minutes.
Instead, it was a somewhat longer ink game with a pretty funny premise and a lot more state tracking than I’m used to in Ink games.
You play as a cowboy who was been transported to New York City (I read that in the voice of the old pace picante commercial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gi6AFz2fbr8&t=13s 1). Once there, you have to find your cowboy hat!
I liked the tone of the game. It reminded me a bit of old ‘holy fool’ operas/plays where someone’s pretty dumb but is resistant to suffering and oddly accepted by everyone around them.
I had recently revisited NYC after moving out years ago and it was fun to see how his experiences paralleled mine (like wandering through the city and accidentally ending up in Times Square, having wild youths follow you around–in my case, the students I was chaperoning–, a helpful city native who doesn’t really care what’s going on with you as long as you don’t get in their way too much).
There was a kind of stat system. I couldn’t tell if it was actually checking stats or just being goofy, but I liked the stat names. And frequently I had to strategize to try to figure out what to do next.
So overall, this seems just right for a mid-size game in IFComp: not long enough that you get tired or bored, not short enough that you feel like you didn’t play anything. Good middle ground.
Interactive play in the Russian tradition, November 22, 2023This is a choice game in interactive play format, with the option to act out the play yourself.
It is set in Russia in the time of the NKVD and the period between the two World Wars. One character, a policeman, has to deal with those close to him, some of whom are dangerously too progressive and others that are dangerously too conservative.
While the Russian setting originally suggested similarities to writers like Dostoevsky or Chekhov, I actually found more similarities here with Ibsen’s plays. There is a great deal of emphasis on interpersonal relationships that are fundamentally flawed but with an underlying spark of life; not of hope, or of joy, but simply of a determination to continue existing.
I’ve seen other reviews describe the ending as perhaps weak; I saw a comment saying there was a third ending and tried it as well. I do think that something is missing. I feel like the narrative arc is missing a little more denouement. We build up throughout and get a climax, with the endings all being very climactic, but there’s not enough time to resolve the tension and resolve the various threads. So I don’t think there’s anything wrong with what’s here, but I think for my personal tastes I’d like a little more. I’ll be rating this one highly.
Twine murder mystery with good art, November 22, 2023This is a creepy game in Twine with well-drawn backgrounds and characters.
You play in a coffee shop where a variety of customers keep coming in, but also several murders have occurred in the recent area and shadowy figures are hanging about you.
The characters were all distinct and mostly believable. Everything is tinged with just a hint of grey realism, so everyone has mildly depressing flaws.
The art was very well done. My only complaint on the visual side is that the very first background image is close to the text color in parts, making it difficult to read.
I played through to two different endings, including what appears to be the final ending. I was a bit surprised by the implications of the final ending, as I’m not sure how the rest of the game would make sense in that context. Although as I’m reading this it just dawned on me how it could all tie together, so hmmm…
Overall this was a game that improved my day to play, so I hope others check it out.
A game with rich worldbuilding, where you have to gather ingredients, November 22, 2023This game is a brief but lively game in a fantasy world with anthropomorphic animals (although they're apparently not quite anthropomorphic animals) where you need to whip together a few random ingredients to make a creative recipe.
It’s written for the Magx compiler, a variant of AGT, and runs in Gargoyle for me.
The world seems fun and lively. To me it felt like Redwall but with invented names for the various species and fruits. While the game is fairly short, its many locations and NPCs and the worldbuilding made it feel large.
I struggled with some of the language as much of it feels academic and full of complex words. For instance, in a book on science:
"The book explain how the Subtle is the other face of handicraft and
mechanism-making, and how both can, and must, be balanced, being
the natural path of progress and improved living; the example of how
the energy from the lightning bolt spell can be stored in water-filled
glass container with metallic rivestiment on the outside and a central
spike inside is a prime one of this balancing between Subtle and
handicraft, when on the other side, handicraft instruments are needed
in Subtle research and practice, and no astrometry and time can’t be
done without mechanical devices, and illuminating orbs can’t be
produced without Subtle. Indeed an useful text for a creator, inspiring
useful (and not-so-useful, I admit) creations. Thanks, Etuye !!"
This uses complex language like ‘rivestiment’ and ‘astrometry’ and uses elaborate sentence structure, and some other parts of the game are similar, so I was lost at times.
The puzzles were generally well-clued; I enjoyed the puzzle involving the NPCs, as it felt organic and natural to look around the city and hunt for people.
The implementation is weak in several places, though; many things are described but don’t exist, so if something is mentioned in the text (like the ‘tools of the trade’ in the front room) a command regarding them will result in an error message (like 'X TOOLS: I don’t see any tools here). One puzzle says you need to (Spoiler - click to show)immerse a vine in a pond, but (Spoiler - click to show)PUT VINE IN POND, IMMERSE VINE, INSERT VINE IN POND etc. all don’t work. The walkthrough (which I had to use just for this puzzle) admits this is a ‘read the author’s mind’ moment, but I think it might be better just to make the other actions synonyms for the correct one.
So I think this has some solid worldbuilding and interesting puzzle mechanics, but I think the language could be simpler and more straightforward and the implementation could be refined. When I do rate this on IFDB, I will definitely bump up my score if there is a post-comp release. Overall, I think the characters seemed fun and the food sounded good!
A difficult, branching Ink game about hostage negotiation, November 22, 2023This is a pretty tricky ink game. I had to play it around 10 to 13 times to win, even using saves. I didn’t realize that one of the keys to winning was (Spoiler - click to show)steadying your nerves with a cigarette. At least I think that’s what happened. But it would make sense, since it’s in the cover art.
This a hardboiled NYC cop thriller, kind of like NYPD Blue (although I don’t remember much of that show as I wasn’t allowed to watch it. One of the first network shows with nudity!). You are a hostage negotiator at a bank robbery and have to find the best strategy for capturing the thieves and freeing the hostages.
After many, many attempts, I was able to free all the hostages, although the criminals went free.
On the one hand, I felt like it was too hard to strategize in this game, as there weren’t many clues as to what path is best. On the other hand, it was short enough that I could try multiple things on multiple attempts.
Escape a cult in the middle of the night, November 22, 2023This is a parser puzzle game made in 4 hours or less for Ectocomp.
In it, you play as someone who has been bound and thrown in the basement of a church, a sacrifice for a cult. You have to escape and find your way out of town.
Like most parser games made in 4 hours, it has some rough spots, some missing implementation. But I found many of the puzzles intuitive; I thought, 'hmm, I wonder if I could use that for...' only to have it work.
The writing was evocative and descriptive. There was an isolated example of strong profanity which didn't fit, I think, with the intelligent, brooding and contemplative hero.
Overall, a good effort for Petite Mort, and something I enjoyed playing, although it would benefit from more polishing if there was a post-comp release.
A difficult but rewarding dungeon making Inform game, November 22, 2023This game was pretty difficult but rewarding. It was entered in the La Petite Morte part of Ectocomp, which is surprising given its complexity.
In it, you have a large rectangular grid of a dungeon, and you have to make a map for adventurers to wander in. You have to destroy adventurers, but to reach the weapons you need to hit them, you have to make a path that adventurers can also take, and if they get the weapons, they win.
I was baffled at first, and had no clue what I was doing. I found that the adventurers follow close behind you and can kill you the instant they have line of sight. I also found that you can't throw the killing weapon unless you have line of sight.
So I was truly baffled until I read the hints on the Psionic weapon, and then things became a lot more clear.
Overall, this was pretty fun. My only sticking point was how hard it was to get started, but after that I liked the puzzle.
A confusing entry in a rhyming series, November 22, 2023This game has me at a bit of a loss. I'm a big fan of Andrew Schultz and probably have had more total fun playing all his games than almost all authors over the last decade.
But this one just doesn't do it for me. It has an amusing start (reminding me of Five Nights at Freddies), but then it got bogged down.
It uses rhyming pairs; each room name has two words in it, and you must find things that rhyme with those two words and which also are alliterative.
There were two problems for me. The first is that progress seemed to require hitting all of the rhyming pairs the author thought of (at least, some enemies weren't counted as 'defeated' until you had done so), and second, the game didn't recognize a very large number of rhyming pairs that would logically work. This is almost certainly due to the short timeframe of the game (4 hours), so as a speed IF this game is actually quite remarkable, but as a game in general I found it less successful.
The second thing is bugs; the downloaded and online versions acted differently, with the downloaded version not accepting the command that gives access to the east and west areas. The online version didn't accept one command in the walkthrough, and the final area could be accessed directly from the beginning of the game if guessed correctly.
Outside of those issues, the game is pretty great; I love the idea of having a showdown with multiple mech monstrosities. Literally the one thing that could take this from a (for me) two star game to a 4 or 5 star game is more polish, but, alas, that is exactly what this specific competition proscribes.
Horror noir with a lot of investigation, November 21, 2023This glulx game was entered in Ectocomp.
In it, you play a classic noir-style detective (who has, I believe, appeared in other games by the same author, as Castronegro was mentioned) who has been commissioned to investigate a haunted house.
The bulk of the game consists of investigating, first at places like libraries and courthouses and then at the house itself, which has more action pieces.
The writing is elaborate, fully leaning in to both noir style and early cosmic horror style. For instance:
'The house, wrapped in an aura of faded elegance, evokes a
bygone era through its windows and timeworn architecture. As the
wind stirs the leaves, a sense of mystery lingers, hinting at the secrets
hidden within its walls.'
At times it becomes a little too descriptive, where it can be difficult to piece together what's important and what's not.
The implementation is solid along a critical path but sketchy off that path. A lot of unimportant scenery is left unimplemented, but conversation is indicated fairly well through the use of a topics menu and bolding.
I struggled a bit in some of the actions scenes of the game, although the final results made sense. I believe the very end of the game has some randomization.
Overall, this was fun to play, although it could implement some more things.
Edit: This game is also an adaptation of a Call of Cthulhu module, I believe.
A horrifying tale of a strange being and a family's secret, November 16, 2023This is an Ink game entered into several competitions; I saw it in the Grand Guignol ectocomp competition.
This game is fairly long and has some nice, rich structure. There are parts where you can walk around a house, examining different things.
The plot is mysterious and frightening. You follow a friend to a town, hearing vague rumors about his past, until you enter his family home and discover his awful secrets.
The setting and concept were, I thought good, and much of the writing is good. However, I felt for the first third of the game like I was constantly grasping for threads of plot or action. So much was vague, it was difficult to see what direction things were going in.
That's a recurring theme with the writing, that it becomes so descriptive it almost becomes undescriptive. For instance, in a library, it says 'You wonder if the hallway's actual walls are the most-likely peeling drywall or columns of thick tomes covering them.' I get what it's going for here, with rich figurative language, but I think that hedging the metaphor with 'I wonder' and 'most likely' lessens its impact.
However, there are also very strong moments; I especially liked the arrival of the Brother, which was a tense scene and written very dramatically and descriptively. So this isn’t badly written, it just has highs and lows.
Overall, I like this story and would like to see what happens next.
Edit: I didn't realize this was intentionally dreamlike, so I'm increasing my score from 3 to 4.
A dark tale of someone who made a deal with the devil, November 15, 2023This is a long Twine game entered into Ectocomp, Grand Guignol.
You play as what I interpreted as a trans man, someone born as a daughter, raised as a son, who killed his father and took his name and identity. I may have misread it, though.
You have quite a few options in the game. In your life, you come across the devil, who makes a deal with you, which you get to pick.
Near the end, you get to choose between four different endings, some shorter, some longer.
The world setting is a dark and unhappy version of the wild west. Towns are dead or dying; men are jealous and violent; women are suffering. The Devil stalks across the land, doing as he pleases with no mercy.
While the opening didn't grab me, being a bit too rich for me (like thick, bittersweet fudge), the endings grabbed me, being strongly written. I had a love ending, and I liked it.
The timed text was obnoxious; when the game trusted to the text to provide the pacing instead of some html code, it worked better, IMO. I eventually discovered that you can speed it up a bit by clicking, but that meant that for both my endings I missed the finale, which is timed text where a single click skips it all with no way to get back. But the fact I wanted to read those endings was a tribute to the strong writing of the finales. A good game for those in a lonesome mood.
Restore a damaged timeline, November 13, 2023This game was entered in the 2023 Spanish ectocomp.
This game has you sitting at a computer, typing away, when your computer program ruptures reality!
As a strange figure announces to you, you must try to restore this timeline.
This game managed to hit all of the things I like. I enjoyed the fantasy style setting, I didn't encounter any bugs or typos, I liked the polish of the different presentations of text (computer, tile, etc), and I enjoyed the small puzzles.
It's a small game overall, but I enjoyed it while it lasted. I may have enjoyed it more because it's in Spanish, with translation adding to the fun.
A branching adventure about a deadly dance, November 8, 2023This short Petite Mort ectocomp game features a branching narrative written in 4 hours.
Despite its short creation time, it manages to be interesting. You are at a party where things are getting pretty dangerous.
As you explore more, you discover a dangerous group of individuals who have taken over the building. If you can only figure out a good path, you can survive!
This game mostly is a kind of gauntlet structure where there are dead ends at each stage (although it's not totally a gauntlet because you get multiple chances for some things). It can be thrilling at times or disturbing at others. Overall, I found the story effective, but would enjoy if more time was spent adding different connections between paths and variable tracking (which would obviously take more than 4 hours!) Great work for the time it was written in.
A Spectrum CYOA game based on a famous short story, November 7, 2023This is one of two games entered in the Spanish Ectocomp Grand Guignol that use a ZX Spectrum emulator to make CYOA games controlled by the Q and A keys and Enter. I thought they were both by the same author, but apparently not.
This game is actually an adaptation of the Legend of the Mountain of Spirits, an older short story. However, it has been substantially expanded. In the original, a girl and her cousin get lost on a haunted mountain, with disastrous results.
In my playthrough, we left the mountain almost immediately, and had an adventure late at night in the city, although there were symbolic elements similar to the original story.
Overall, I found the writing good and the quality high. I don't really like playing ZX spectrum on an emulator (I use FUSE and it's tiny and can't be expanded), but as a game this was enjoyable.
The origin story for a singing traveller and his demons, November 7, 2023Last year, when I played El Virulé (part one), I had a lot of trouble understanding it. It was written in what I would consider advanced Spanish, with very rich descriptions and realistic dialogue, about a guy with an ill-looking eye who sang for money but concealed more.
I rated it lower, but it ended up winning the Outstanding Spanish game award in the IFDB awards. So I reconsidered it.
I approached this sequel with new eyes. It has a lot of neat features, like a food bar you slowly fill up, but the real draw here is the relationship between the child protagonist and his father. Every aspect of the game shows how this child (the past version of the first game's protagonist) is influenced by his father's choices. Left alone, locked in the house, forced to feed himself, getting threatened, handling dangerous items...
I really liked this game. It's not too long, and while I had to think hard at times, most actions were natural and most commands made sense for me as a foreigner.
I especially liked the ending scene, and found it powerful. I didn't get to see the full ending poem because I was hitting enter too fast, but I liked this overall.
Graphical 'gauntlet' game fighting (and dating) zombie Michael Jackson, November 7, 2023I played this game in Spanish.
It's made for the Spectrum platform, and is designed with a ton of retro graphics, many of them consisting of images from the music video to Michael Jackson's Thriller.
You replay the events of that video in choice based form, but with a lot of changes and additions. There are weapons and items to use and the special power of Bollywood.
The story was zany fun, and the images very well done.
The two main problems I had were both related to the game structure. First, the game is 'gauntlet' style, so it's basically 'make the right move or die and start over'. I got very frustrated until someone pointed out that the emulators have a 'save' feature.
The second is that you have to fight Michael a few too many times, it gets a little repetitive.
Other than that, I enjoyed this and found it well done. The trailer is actually even fancier than the game!
The beginning of a big 1800's horror mystery, November 7, 2023This is an excellent Twine game...for a little bit. Then it ends, unfinished.
This game places you in the role of a detective in the 1800s, travelling to a region to try to help solve a series of disappearances.
Children are going missing in a grove of trees, and adults as well. The townfolk are fearful, and there is a too-powerful landlord hovering over everything.
The writing is good, with distinct characters that you can interview. It takes place over several days; unfortunately, it ends after the first day.
Excellent start; it only remains to finish.
Fetus vs mother, plus detective shenanigans, November 7, 2023This is a bizarre little game.
You are a fetus who is superintelligent and a detective. You have a very low opinion of your mother.
Unfortunately, you cannot move or talk. All you can do is kick your mom and crawl around inside her.
This game has a lot of endings; I found 3 and watched several more on a youtube video.
There is wild stuff in this game, lots of using body parts in inappropriate ways, and for some reason a ton of very advanced talk about ontological things and philosophy...I had to use google translate a lot.
Pretty funny; could use some more synonyms for actions.
Uncover a murder on the space station, November 6, 2023This is a pretty complex game entered in Ectocomp Grand Guignol edition. The same game is also entered in Petite Mort, where it was polished less (since Petite Mort has a time limit).
In this game, you are going up to a space station with two others in the shuttle with you. You all are identified by your roles, yours being the Inspector.
You are quizzed on an old case study of law, where an astronaut died on the ISS when their module was released too early.
Interestingly, the game features real life astronauts like Shannon Lucid and Léopold Eyharts, who are still alive, and is essentially fan-fiction about real life people. It's an AU, as the events take place in a fictional 1998.
You read everyone's journal entries then decide on whether the accused is innocent or guilty, and, if guilty, how guilty they are.
Perhaps due to the language barrier, I was confused about one mechanic. Before reading the case studies, you have to decide where the case was tried at. This seems to retroactively make the case have been tried there and limits which journals you have access to. It also changes what the actual verdict was, so it's kind of hard to tell what really happened, although I swear (again, can't be sure because my French is mediocre) that two of the journals literally confess to the crime.
This version has a lot of nice looking links and effects the other version doesn't have.
Investigate a space station murder from multiple perspectives, November 6, 2023This is a pretty complex game entered in Ectocomp Petite Mort edition. The same game is also entered in Grand Guignol, where it was polished more (since Petite Mort has a time limit).
In this game, you are going up to a space station with two others in the shuttle with you. You all are identified by your roles, yours being the Inspector.
You are quizzed on an old case study of law, where an astronaut died on the ISS when their module was released too early.
Interestingly, the game features real life astronauts like Shannon Lucid and Léopold Eyharts, who are still alive, and is essentially fan-fiction about real life people. It's an AU, as the events take place in a fictional 1998.
You read everyone's journal entries then decide on whether the accused is innocent or guilty, and, if guilty, how guilty they are.
Perhaps due to the language barrier, I was confused about one mechanic. Before reading the case studies, you have to decide where the case was tried at. This seems to retroactively make the case have been tried there and limits which journals you have access to. It also changes what the actual verdict was, so it's kind of hard to tell what really happened, although I swear (again, can't be sure because my French is mediocre) that two of the journals literally confess to the crime.
This version has a lot of weird issues with whitespace, all of which were fixed in the full version.
A Spanish game made of 30 nightmares in Binksi, November 5, 2023This game was made in conjunction with Inktober, which means the author made one part of it every day of the month of October. So there are 30 different 'mini games' put into one.
The game starts on a dark and spooky night. Alone in the house, you have to do chores. Once you do, you have such nightmares...
The bulk of the game consists of the 30 nightmares. In each one, you play as a Binksi character (a system allowing you to walk around a minimalistic pixel graphic world with limited 2-frame animations and selective color palettes).
The nightmares have a lot of variety in types, but some are more represented than the others. The most common are ones where there are several copies of the same object scattered on the screen, and you have to pick them all up, each one producing some text which is at first random then eventually repeated, before you can move on. This was good, but became a bit tedious over time. I preferred the large animals who had deep conversations, and I liked a graveyard with ghosts.
The writing is self-introspective, open and refreshing with self insecurities, kind of like the lyrics to Joni Mitchell songs.
The ending caught me by surprise, and I thought the game had broken. I'm still not sure if there's anything you can do on the final screen, but it was effective and different.
A French 'lost game' game with voice acting, November 5, 2023This game isn't the usual sort of thing I review. While it firmly falls into the category of what I think of as interactive fiction (due to being a story mostly told through words where you take part in it), it contains a lot of graphical and auditory elements as well.
It's in the genre of 'lost game', one I've enjoyed in the past; I liked the NES Godzilla Creepypasta before and stories like Lavender Town and Ben Died are all over the internet. More recently I've been introduced to Pets Cop.
This game primarily features Binksi, which is a combination of Ink, the scripting language, and Bitsi, which is used for making minimalistic pixel art games that trigger text when you walk into objects.
But, unlike most Binksi games, this is all set within a CRT screen inside the page, so it looks all warped and weird. Also, there is excellent French narration with captions. Usually, timed text is annoying because I read fast and it's too slow; here, I struggled to read it before it moved on, due to being a non-native speaker.
Like most found-lost-games, the game in the game is unfinished, and you have to experience it through a variety of different levels created at different times. The different levels provide insight into the creator's mindset as he deteriorates over time. Different game elements are specifically pointed out as symbolising certain aspects of the creator's life.
Levels vary; they include an interrogation in a Russian-themed prison; a confrontation in a castle; and a pretty annoying giant invisible maze (but which is solvable fairly quickly). At one point I thought the game had glitched and restarted, only to find that I just hadn't explored enough. The ending was a dramatic shift and seemed to be a suiting climax that brought the whole game together.
I would give this game a 4/5 as it is well made but has many elements that don't suit my interests. However, I am giving it 5/5 solely due to the chunk of English Inform 7 code that was found in the game, since it reminded me of a game I once had to write in a similar format. It was well done.
A quick combinatorial game , September 12, 2023This game is about aliens coming to earth and holding the earth hostage until you, an above-average intelligence human, can solve a bomb defusing problem that comes down to flipping a series of switches in every poissible combination without repeating.
When I was a young man, my father helped local missionaries, and one day he asked me to travel with one to an appointment. That missionary got lost and was confused, so he went back home and we both waited for an hour until the rest of our group came back. It was the most boring time of my life. To entertain myself, I tried to tap out every combination of fingers on my right hand without repeats: 12345, 12354, etc. and it filled up the time.
So I already had the solution 'in hand' when playing this game, but it was interesting to see it sketched out.
The puzzle itself is interesting, and the framing story is good, imo. For my personal tastes, I would have enjoyed some physical characterization to compliment the mental and emotional characterization. For instance, the aliens are described as "They are about as weird as you expected, but all the same, they look weird in some unexpected ways and normal in others. They look weird enough to you that you know you must look pretty weird to them as well." This gives a ton of information about your emotional state and your mental reaction, but little on the aliens themselves. That's not necessarily bad; a lot of the best science fiction and horror rely on indescribable things. I just thought it'd be cool to learn more in this scenario.
Last comment is that while this was entered into the single choice jam, it felt like a lot more than 1 choice to me. There are multiple correct patterns, for instance, and the version I played had at least two areas (the 3 puzzle and the 4 puzzle) that allowed those multiple patterns. So I think it's marginal when it comes to the theme, but overall I enjoy this type of puzzle.
The beginning of some fun games, July 16, 2023This set of 4 games was a special entry to the 2023 Spring Thing consisting of games written by a teacher and students for their own mini-Spring Thing.
Each game has the theme of Mirror, and I enjoyed seeing how that theme played out. In one, it was an incidental but crucial part of a real-life story; in others, it represented portals; in another, the device used to play the game.
Each game had some imaginative thought, but each could be significantly developed. Many stopped early, only partway through a story; all had a little bit of typos to be cleaned up; many had difficulty figuring out how to branch effectively (like offering choices but some choices are 'fake' and say 'you have to try the other choice'). The biggest thing they all need is time; however, for a school assignment, it is difficult to find such time. But I could see all of them making complex or richly descriptive games in the future.
A short, sweet Adventuron story about a mountain race and friendship, July 14, 2023This is an Adventuron game with a forward impetus: no UNDO, no going backwards on the map, only forward, often with a choice or two on how to do so.
The focus is a lot on your companion, a friend you've done many mountain races with who is not feeling as strong as before.
+Polish: The story is well-polished, free from bugs and typos as far as I could see, and responsive to commands.
+Interactivity: The inability to go back or UNDO is annoying in a puzzle game but thematically appropriate for a game about the march of time in our own lives. Good coupling of puzzle with theme.
+Descriptiveness: The locations and people were described in a way that I could easily picture it all in my mind. The changes in the weather and the passage of time were evocative.
+Emotional impact: It made me think of important events in my own life, like a funeral I attended yesterday where I didn't know the person who died but I did know some of their friends.
+Would I play again? Maybe, after a long time, but I think one time is best for now. But I would recommend it to others.
An extended dream in Unity with nominal parser interactivity, July 2, 2023This game is written in Unity engine. It uses Roblox-like characters to tell a brief story of a man sleeping and dreaming and confronting his fears.
This game technically uses a parser but in actuality the game tells you what to type at every step, waiting until you type it correctly before moving on. There are about 10 opportunities to type. In one of them, you get to make a choice.
The graphics are amusing, although the game says they were made in one day.
Overall:
+Polish: No bugs
+Descriptiveness: The text is barebones, but the art helps
-Interactivity: Very little
-Would I play again? Don't enjoy Unreal Engine very much
-Emotional impact: Kind of muted by long slow timed sequences.
A dramatic adventuron game about war and obsession, July 1, 2023This is the third time I have played and reviewed this game. I first saw it in the Spanish Ectocomp, where I found it difficult as I had to learn new verbs, but I found the story intriguing and creepy.
I then experienced it as a French game in French comp, where it was fun contrasting the two versions.
Now here it is in English, my native language, and it's honestly a different experience this time.
In this game, you play a Russian soldier who is obsessed with writing the perfect letter home, specifically the letter you write to your family in the case of death. You are not confident in your own writing, so you steal the letters of others that die, whether on their own, or with help.
The game contrasts the insanity of war with your own insanity.
Experienced in my native language, the game is still good, but I notice more the abrupt changes in scene, emotion, and motivation. Sometimes others are suspicious of you, while at other times they take your word even in suspicious circumstances.
One difficult I had was technical; near the end, with the tent and the (Spoiler - click to show)explosives, I needed to find a word to (Spoiler - click to show)light the explosives. However, (Spoiler - click to show)LIGHT and BURN didn't work. I had to type (Spoiler - click to show)EXPLODE CHESTS to get it to work.
Overall, it's been fun seeing this over time. There were definitely some nuances I didn't understand until I saw it in English (especially since Adventuron doesn't let you copy and paste text into Google translate). I had fun.
A fun magical adventure in adventuron, June 29, 2023I briefly beta tested this game.
This Adventuron game has you searching for seashells on a beach. Pretty soon, though, things take a drastic turn, and you end up (Spoiler - click to show)being able to cast spells!
The game also utilizes two protagonist perspectives which is nice, reminding me of the old Atlantis Indiana Jones game.
Overall, the mechanics worked well for me. I think the design of the game could have supported an even larger game, but it's pretty substantial already and is part of a competition for beginners, so it makes sense.
A pleasant summer carnival game, June 25, 2023I briefly beta-tested this game.
This is a feel-good game (mostly!) about a fun children's competition in a quaint village on a summer's evening.
A carnival is in town and the Mayor is throwing a competition where you have to gather clues. You race around with a bunch of other kids who move from place to place, all of you looking for clues.
The kids running around really helps make the game feel more alive. And the puzzles in the game have a wide variety, a lot of them making use of your ability to customize requests for various items like food and flowers.
There's a vaguely sinister subplot running through as well. Even with this, though, it feels like there's not a strong narrative thread, more just an excuse to have fun, which isn't necessarily bad. Fun for a nice diversion.
A silly and expansive game about making a pb and j, June 25, 2023I briefly beta tested this game.
This is an adventuron game about making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. You start in a kitchen and have to combine the three ingredients.
The game manages to add at least 3 major twists to this setup, which is pretty amusing. They aren't all necessarily coherent, but it makes enough sense to by funny.
The main character has a definite idiosyncratic personality that shines through more and more as you play.
Overall, it's pretty solid, but could use a couple more synonyms for things (like JAR for JAM), although it's been improved since I and others tested it.
A short and somewhat spooky Adventuron game about a strange woman, June 23, 2023This is a brief Adventuron game that has a short tutorial at the beginning.
In it, you play as a young child at a hotel who wakes up to find an old woman in your room. She beckons for you to follow.
And that's most of the game; the gameplay is pretty simple. There are a few small puzzles, but this is otherwise mostly linear. The concept has a lot of implicit horror in it, but I feel like that theme wasn't developed as much as it could have been.
Overall nothing is bad in this game, there's just not much: not much story, not much interaction, not much game. I feel like it could be expanded a bit, but as it is, it was fun while it lasted.
A cute and complex game about preparing eggs, June 23, 2023I played the English version of this game as part of the TALJ.
This is a fairly complex Adventuron game. Your girlfriend, a self-conscious milkmaid, is devastated that she forget eggs for her special salad, but you promise to bring some from your farm, in addition to another surprise.
The game is fairly large, with many rooms and also many items hidden within items within each room.
The writing is rustic and fun, with different animals you can interact with.
It's actually pretty hard; I found at least two different ways to completely fail without any warning given that I had failed, making it 'cruel' on Zarf's cruelty scale. But it's short enough that I was able to replay a couple of times to fix it.
This is one of the author's first full parser games. It's far more polished than most 'first' entries, but one kind of bug that slipped through is that many locations describe objects after you take them, like the alum.
Overall, it was one of the most rich and well-written TALJ games I played.
A trippy kind of child's story of a goat, June 23, 2023This game is entered in the Text Adventure Literacy Jam, designed to introduce people to text adventures through tutorials.
It's kind of a weird game. EXAMINE and TAKE are disabled for most things. The writing is minimalistic, based on an old French story. And things just kind of happen in ways that are pretty disturbing, like the poor lamb that wanders too close to the hermit.
UNDO is disabled, which is baffling in a game meant as a tutorial that has actions that are non-reversible and can prevent you from winning the game.
Overall, I found the writing style charming and the interaction slightly frustrating. I'm glad I played but like others have said I'm not sure I'll replay the final fight.
A brief tutorial and mini game introducing basic IF concepts, June 23, 2023This is an interesting game. It seems to be the author's own custom system, and uses a multi-pane format kind of like Scott Adams, with a room description constantly displayed and then parser responses in another window, with important items listed in a third.
The first part is very hand-holdy, as it is designed as a tutorial. Each room is a page or more full of text describing how interactive fiction works. It takes you through navigation and basic use of items.
I found this part to be relatively well-polished but also pretty verbose. That may be more useful to newcomers but also may not. I've seen a lot of IF tutorial games (like Bronze, Dreamhold, 'So, You've Never Played a Text Adventure Before, Huh?') and I've written my own, but most people I ask about who got into IF found a big hard game without a tutorial and tried it on their own.
This tutorial includes things like mazes and darkness which aren't quite as ubiquitous as once they are.
It then segues into a main game which is exploring a creepy abandoned house. This part has very well written descriptions. The story and puzzles form a coherent atmosphere but not a logical plot. Overall, though, I thought this part was pretty fun and well put-together.
A high school mystery adventure, June 21, 2023This game has a lot of the hallmarks of Garry Francis' work: puzzle-focused gameplay, polished responses, gentle hints on what to do next, short and easily digestible room descriptions, etc.
The idea is that you're a troublemaker at a school that's going under, and you need to find some treasure reported to be hidden in your school.
Gameplay is generally satisfying, the kind of thing like finding a can and later finding a can opener and using it (not the example in the game). There were a few times I had trouble with the interactivity: trying to leave the room early on (without the tutorial, I would never have thought to do the action, and even with the tutorial it took me a while to find it); and finding the right word for what to do with the (Spoiler - click to show)pencil was hard (I kept trying words like (Spoiler - click to show)rub and (Spoiler - click to show)shade). A couple of the phrases stuck out as odd (I was told many time I thought my teacher was ugly; I think the random chance might need to be lowered a bit).
Overall, I expected a polish parser game and I got one, so it was worth playing. I used in-game hints several times.
A minimalist bird escape adventure, May 17, 2023This game has you play as a clever bird, a macaw, who is trapped in a cage by a kind of illegal exotic animal dealer and has to escape.
All of this is communicated through minimalistic text that primarily uses adjectives and nouns instead of complete sentences. For instance, examining a bird early on gives the response:
sunken eyes. dry skin. depleted energy.
loose perch.
With the loose perch being a clickable link.
The overall style of gameplay is similar to a single-item-inventory text adventure. You get to pick one thing at a time to hold and can use that item in conjunction with items in the game's world.
This allows for some complex interactions that can be fun to set up.
I encountered a bizarre problem on my end while playing (no other player has found this problem and it wasn't on mobile, so I don't think it's the author's fault) where the game had a missing passage or encountered some other problem where I had to hard restart, about 4 or 5 different times. If anyone else encounters this, switching the platform I was on fixed it immediately (from windows chrome to phone).
Overall, the game is very polished and descriptive. I found the interactivity was interesting, and I could see myself visiting this again.
I didn't feel completely immersed in the game, and found it more of a puzzle box than a bird adventure. But I wonder if I hadn't encountered a bug on my end if I would have been drawn in more. So I'm wavering between a 4 and a 5, but I think I'll go with a 4, because while this game was good, I found the author's other games the Good Ghost and Closure even better, by a significant amount, due to their authentic and engaging dialogue.
Working out a writing puzzle, bit by bit, May 16, 2023This is a Python-based game. It asked me to install colorama, which seemed to work, but then in command prompt my colors didn't show up, so I think I had something wonky going on.
This is a combinatorics puzzle framed as writing. Your options are to Write (W) or Reflect (R).
But, there are rules! Some combinations of writing and reflecting aren't allowed. And as you go on, larger chunks of writing and/or reflecting are allowed.
Once you beat the game, there's a second round with more rules.
The text is abstract, focused on the meta-concepts of writing and reflecting and whether you obtained inspiration or not, how difficult this session was, etc.
I had some hints about the patterns from outside sources, but it was interesting to try and work out WHY the patterns were the way they were, which I found enjoyable; one of my favorite math problems in college was very similar to this (if you have N parallel parking spaces and can fill them up with Yugos, which take up one space, or Lincoln town cars, which take up 2 spaces, how many ways can you fill up the N spaces?) and of my own PhD thesis, which was concerned with strings of symbols with local rules like this.
I wasn't drawn in emotionally into the game as I was in 'solve' mode, but otherwise I enjoyed this puzzle.
Cool twine world model demo with confusing plot/layout, May 15, 2023This game is a demo for a Twine engine that lets you pick up things, move around, open things, etc.
The system works pretty well for me and looks cool, I think it'd be fun to have more games like this in the future.
The game itself was a bit confusing for me. You kind of pass out and wake up in a labyrinth with nothing but an old man for a companion. It's basically just a big maze, and at one point I thought I had gotten locked out, so I restarted, and ended up in the same spot, but then found something new and interesting, so I went to try it out on a room I remembered, but then it wasn't there any more...I eventually found an ending that seemed 'real' but overall the plot was disconnected and the maze wasn't super exciting. I feel like a lot of the elements of a great game were there, but just needed something more to glue it together.
An undead hybrid tries to kill their mother, May 15, 2023This game is heavily centered on world-building. It's a Twine game and it's focused on you, a person who is not quite alive and not quite dead, who has to stop your mom from destroying the world.
The main attractions here are the characters and world-building. This definitely seems like a setting and a group of people the author has spent a great deal of time thinking about, from the murder-happy girlfriend to the html-breaking Ataxia monsters to the mother figure herself. All of them seem well developed and polished.
I think what's in this game is solid (nice use of text manipulation, too), but I'd love more chance to explore the world and see more of these concepts in play. I guess I'd either prefer a tighter focus with the current level of interactivity or the bigger story with the wider exploration.
Learn to be kind to a cat!, May 15, 2023This is a cute little game made together as a family.
Your goal is to retrieve the Sacred Shovel of Athenia, which is stuck in the road. Unfortunately, you can't do that right now, because you aren't a cat lover, so a kind of restrictive device has been put on you until you are kind to a cat.
That doesn't really make much sense, but that's okay, because the game wasn't made to make sense. It's mostly a framing story to help a kid learn how to be kind to a cat.
I struggled a bit with the parser here and there, like trying to figure out how to use the fishing rod. Overall, the core concept of the game is good, but it just lacks a bit of cohesion and polish.
Enter variations on a single phrase to pass through silly scenarios, May 14, 2023This is a wordplay game centered on the phrase 'Beam me up Scotty'.
You play as Captain Kirk, and gameplay consists of the presentation of some silly scenario involving you, Bones, and/or Spock, as well as Scotty. To get out of the situation you have to type 'B____ me up scotty', where the blank is some word starting with B.
So it's all riddles/wordplay, and mostly centers on finding synonyms for words in the text. You either get it or you don't; if you just can't get it you pass. I got 70.86%, so I had to pass a few times.
At a basic level it's pretty funny, but I kind of found the hints and pass system abrasive. They're basically 'ha you loser you're dumb and didn't get it'. But why would I like that? It's just a made up game and I'm playing it for fun. The author doesn't even know I'm playing it. I'm just deciding of my own free will to have a computer say I'm dumb. I'm not really into that.
The humor is the best part of this.
Branching gameplay of goofy stories, May 14, 2023This game is almost a pure 'time cave', a style of game structure that was popular with a lot of paper CYOA books. Basically every choice branches, with each branch having a different ending. I say it's almost a time cave, since some paths end up recombining later on, but there's not a lot of state tracking in the story itself.
The main drawbacks of such a story are a lack of coherence in the storyline and boring repetition of early material. This story addresses the first by being wacky and nonsensical (so incoherence is a plus) and the second by adding a 'checkpoint' system once you find enough endings, of which I found all 26.
I'm usually not impressed by zany humor but I genuinely found this game funny. It reminded me of Simpsons humor a bit. I've seen that it fell flat for some other reviewers, but humor, especially surreal humor, is so subjective that you're always going to have enjoyers and disenjoyers. I liked this enough to play through all endings.
An amusing over the top fantasy game, May 13, 2023This game pokes fun at fantasy tropes with a lot of silly dialogue and 4th wall breaking.
You (Elftor the Elf) and your manservant (Manny) have to save a king and kingdom from a terrible plague that makes everyone shout at the top of their lungs.
Along the way, there are plenty of sidequests--sidequests you have specifically been instructed not to fulfill.
There are quite a few endings. Overall the game is pretty goofy but I laughed several times. I also had the issue other reviewers did with the 'stats' part at the top disappearing at inconvenient times, like when it was being referenced in-game.
Overall, I liked the 'good' ending the best. A slight game, but fun for people who like dumb humor.
A sweet story about a familiar crow saving its witch mistress, May 7, 2023This is an Adventuron game with some good pixel art and intended for beginners.
Your mistress, a witch, has been hexed by a wizard, and you have to help her! To do so, though, you'll have to go through strange lands, frightening areas, and combat.
The setting is reminiscent of Howl's Moving Castle, an industrial area town where magic is common and regulated in a guild while a war drags on in the background.
There are multiple characters with distinct personalities and the puzzles and quests are varied and interesting. On those few occasions were I got stuck, the HELP command listed all possible verbs and talking with people gave gentle nudges.
It appears there is a secret ending, but I did not feel a need to go back and replay.
Great for a beginner or for an experienced player who just wants to play a chill game. Doesn't feel kid-oriented but is appropriate for kids.
A Twine parser game about choosing your career in a futuristic society, May 4, 2023This games has a parser written from scratch in Twine.
Making your own parser is a fraught thing, and many people have tried and failed over the years. The last-place entries of IFcomp are sprinkled with poor parser of years past. The biggest issue is that there is a bewildering amount of tradition in parser games that varies from group to group, all of whom may get upset if your style doesn't match theirs (like GET vs TAKE, X vs EXAMINE vs LOOK [object], G for again, Z for wait, abbreviations for cardinal directions, hitting 'up' for copying an earlier command). A few people have managed to make very robust custom parser: Robin Johnson, Nils Fagerburg, and Linus Åkesson.
This one is better than many I've seen, especially since it doesn't require downloading a Windows Executable and it has fairly quick response times. However, there are a few oddities that got in my way a bit: compass directions are part of play, but the text does not indicate possible compass directions to go in. Some basic actions are not repeatable, although no reason is given for it (generally things that give you one-time info). On the positive side, keyword highlighting is in use, similar to many Aaron Reed games, where you can interact with objects by typing their names. On the neutral side, much of the game occurs by typing Continue.
On the story side, this is reminiscent of books like The Giver or Divergent, where you are in a futuristic society and your role in life is chosen in a big ceremony.
I liked the overall story, and found it fun. I ended with a pretty big surprise in my playthrough, which was good. Some of the individual word choices stuck out as strange to me; one guy was referred to as 'the being' and 'the male' a lot, which made him sound kind of alien, and there were a few other choices that were a bit odd.
Surreal gothic horror with a spider theme, May 1, 2023I enjoyed this dark game. You play as a young child bartered away to be the spouse of a pale and fitful girl, scion of a rich family.
The text is dark, but themes of light and the color white prevail through the game, with the light presented as being more evil and twisted than soothing darkness.
There are numerous endings to the game, and a variety of conversations where you can choose between topics.
I enjoyed the game's depiction of helplessness in the face of unspeakable horror, as well as its blending of dream and waking.
Surreal gothic horror is on of my favorite genres (such as the game Heart of the House or the book The Haunting of Hill House), so I think I enjoyed this more than most people would. So while I'm giving it a five star rating, I could see other people having different opinions.
A queer relationship in trouble, May 1, 2023This game definitely brought back a lot of memories. I had a long relationship where I had a lot of work-life balance issues, and it eventually ended up falling apart, and this reminded me of that.
There are several endings, so there are likely different versions of this game depending on how you play, but in my playthrough, there were two main characters: a wealthy government official, and a young, poorer-class individual.
They love each other, but there are tensions. The poor one is concerned with fairness and trying to find beauty in day to day moments, while the richer one is trying to 'bring home the bacon' and do well at work.
An argument about one partner staying home late and missing an appointment because their boss corralled them at work reminded me of times that my boss in my first job wanted me to stay home late while my partner was caring for our newborn.
It's a tough situation. So I think there's a lot of emotion in this game. Your choices have a lot of freedom, too.
The only thing missing for me is length; I felt like the pacing in the first half was more drawn out and set up expectations for a longer game but that was rapidly concluded in the ending, leaving me wanting or expecting more.
Endless boredom in the sand, April 28, 2023Apparently this game is a kind of in-joke parody of a German game from years ago about going south.
This game is about going north in the desert. It requires a great deal of repetitive commands (I found it useful to enter commands like n.n.n.n.n.n.n.n to get through faster).
The idea is you're marching through a very, very large desert to get to the north. The narrator occasionally throws in funny quips.
I got to a point I could go no further, and I decompiled the game to get a hint, but I couldn't figure out how to move on. Eventually, I tried (Spoiler - click to show)take all, noticed (Spoiler - click to show)a shovel in my inventory, and the rest was easy from there.
No bugs I could see, and an amusing concept, but not much else.
For a more serious but still funny take on the idea, you could check out The Northnorth Passage. But I didn't mind this game, it was amusing and very simple for me, a poor German speaker, to play.
A trip on a fishing ship runs into trouble, April 28, 2023This was a pretty entertaining German game. Due to my weak German skills, I relied heavily on the accompanying map for help, so someone who solves the puzzles on their own may have a different experience. I also appreciate the fact that HILFE lists every verb needed to complete the game.
You play as the captain of a fishing vessel where things aren't going so well. You haven't found any fish at all! And so your crew has nothing to do. Maybe that's why almost all the food is gone. And why your dishes are covered in weird slime. And why your first mate seems to be chanting praises to unspeakable gods...or just talking to himself. One or the other.
This game has horror elements but also is self-conscious and amusing about it. I enjoyed the scripted events, active NPCs and adapting environments, and I appreciate that it was more story-focused and not too long or complex, although there were definitely a couple of puzzles that took me a while to figure out. Fortunately, there's a nice mechanism when dying that takes you to a recent 'checkpoint'. Had a good time with this one!
Ghosts, suicide and gender issues, April 24, 2023This is a Twine game with some well-done styling that runs for a little over 15 minutes for me.
In this game, you are (I believe) a young Chinese girl at an American high school in Japan. Hannah, a friend of yours, has died, and her ghost is haunting you, but in a mostly positive way, like helping with homework.
Outside of death and ghosts, the games secondary emphasis seems to be sex; although no explicit scenes are shown, there are discussions about the relative attractions and submissiveness of different ethnicities, and of high school girls in general. I felt uncomfortable at times, but it never went beyond talk.
The story centers on finding more about Hannah and the reason for her death, as well as a couple of bullies in the school who do more and more over the top actions.
Gameplay was pretty linear at first; each screen had multiple links, with the last one going to the next page and the earlier ones revealing hidden text. Eventually there were more choices, with two major choices in the game providing the four endings (although the first choice, (Spoiler - click to show)taking the umbrella or not, may not seem important at the time).
The endings vary significantly. Some were about building friendships, but the others felt more shocking to me. One involved (Spoiler - click to show)violently dismembering a girl because she used anti-trans language and revealed she had bullied Hannah prior to suicide. The author in the authors note said that they could have seen themselves doing that to someone in their own life. Another involved (Spoiler - click to show)the bully pushing herself romantically onto the heroine, explaining that all the mean stuff she did was because she was attracted to her.
Overall, I think the interactivity could have used a slight tweak; either having more options early on, or, if it was intended to be read straight through, adding a smooth transition to the link-clicking effect (like a .3 second or less slide-in animation) to give a little more satisfaction with the links.
I didn't strongly connect with the story, but as a roughly 40-yr old cis man I'm not the audience this is going for. I could definitely see someone in a similar situation deeply appreciating and feeling touched by the story.
A fantasy conversation game with a Miyazaki-like setting, April 18, 2023In this game, every 'room' is a conversation with a new individual. Topics that you can discuss are highlighted in brackets or by other means depending on the interpreter.
Interestingly, every topic you learn in one location can be used in another. An important command here is 'GOODBYE', which I didn't learn for a while.
The story is intricate and interesting, told only in conversation. You have returned to a city dominated by a new god and his priest, Salyndo. You try to find a way to overthrow it.
Short, but breathtaking in the images it gives you glimpses of. I used 'help' about 5-6 times.
Strongly recommended.
A charming and low-stakes journey through a dream land, April 16, 2023This game has you enter a place you shouldn't, a portal, an actual liminal space between the real world and the world of dreams.
The main gameplay loop is looking at a subway map, picking a station to go to, and exploring, with items you pick up at one station coming in use at another.
Each station is a pure fantasy, mostly disconnected from the others. It's reminiscent of Miyazaki films like Spirited Away or My Neighbor Totoro (with their subway/catbus). The locations aren't intentionally scary, although some are pretty trippy.
I forgot which station I entered in and it was literally the last one I went back to. I ended up seeing everything, and it was a lot of fun!
To describe the vibes, one early station has a market run by people made of wood; another is a station almost identical to our world, but subtly not.
There were some spelling errors, mostly in the first few pages (like 'rennovating'). There was a pretty bad bug where trying to click on 'alight upon water' to transfer from the brown line to purple line going north gave a twine code error. You can get around it by going south instead and turning around. I think that one other station was like that as well.
Overall, a pleasant game with a few bugs.
Choicescript game about a bird escaping with other birds, March 26, 2023This game is based on a seed from the first round of Seedcomp about birds escaping from a cage and freeing other birds. Another game, free bird, is in the comp based on the same seed.
I liked this game, and found it fun to build up plans to help the other birds. It reminded me of 90's television like Captain Planet and Ferngully.
It was a bit hard at times to see the effects of things I did. I didn't look in a mirror until near the end, when it let me set my name and stuff, and that felt a bit out of place; occasionally text about releasing a bird would be repeated.
There were moments of tension (did I do the right thing letting the Wren get out when they were anxious?) which helped improve the game.
Overall, I liked it; I do think it could use a little more polish on a few things, but I think this is a game the author can be proud of.
A very complex-appearing game for Walkthrough comp, March 25, 2023Walkthrough comp was a competition that had a bizarre 'walkthrough' posited to have been sent by telegram, and each game had to be designed to make the walkthrough make sense.
This game is very rich and complex-seeming, starting with a bizarre meeting with an occult man deep underground. It moves on to magical painting abilities and a sexually harassing duck.
It interprets the walkthrough in very creative ways, making parsing the walkthrough the hardest part.
The walkthrough itself is here:
HERE IS WALKTHROUGH YOU REQUESTED STOP YOU WILL SEE WHAT TO DO STOP THINK STOP X UPHOLSTER SEAT ZRBLM TAKE ALL N LISTEN FOLKS DRAW SWORD WAVE FAN DANCE ABOUT PAINT FENCE TAKE NEXT TURN SMOOTH DUCK DOWN ANESTHETI I EAT IT UNLOCK DOOR SWITCH PLOVER EGG STAND ON EAST SWING KNIFE LION PRAY GET MOUSE Z NW WAKE FISH SWIM DRINK DRINK READ LOOK UP DRESS BOOK SHIP PACKAGE PRESENT BOWL DROP TOY SLEEP PLAY STRING PICK POLISH APPLE EYE MIRROR POSE UNDO TRIM CORSET PUT GREY ON BLUE STAKE LIGHT FIRE HELP MAN STATION STOP WATCH XYZZY
The one command I didn't understand was 'put grey on', possibly because I dallied around too much in one scene.
As a narrative, it's disjointed; as a game itself, far too complex; but as a walkthrough comp entry, it's fantastic.
As a bureaucrat play hide and seek with documents, March 25, 2023This was a refreshingly well-designed game. There were a couple of things that didn't work out for me, but this game had the kind of smoothness I'd associate with experienced authors like Ryan Veeder or Zarf.
The conceit is that you are a space bureaucrat in a future technocracy. You are in charge of delivering a technical manual, but it's after hours and every chapter of the manual was assigned to a different subordinate. You have to track down each person's personal copy.
There was a lot of light office and space-bureaucracy humor, some fun romance, and a lot of little niceties (like the 'press anything' button being an ascii art anchor and having exits listed).
One nice feature was having all verbs listed, and once you found something using that verb it was crossed off the list. This was very satisfying.
The author seems to have found the lack of verbs a weakness instead of strength; typing the wrong thing too many times gives you a big apology about how they didn't have time to implement responses to everything not on the list. But constrained verb games are their own genre and are fun, and having the player get repeated errors isn't negative, it's just a fact of parser games; the errors are the 'boundaries' of the world, and having firm boundaries can make a game better.
I had a great experience with this. The main thing I disliked is that 8 cubicles are mentioned but you can only ever interact with two, despite learning the names of the others. I'd prefer it if it recognized, say 'Becher's cubicle' and just said 'that cubicle is boring' or something.
A dark satire of art criticism, March 25, 2023This Seedcomp game is based on artwork submitted to the first chunk of the competition, and this game focuses heavily on the art.
It makes use of Quixe's image embedding features to let you zoom in to various parts of the artwork while commenting on it.
It's tone is intended to mock contemporary art criticism, especially the trope of critics creating entire invented fantasies about what the meaning of the art is, these fantasies having no connection to reality.
It allows for a few sexually explicit actions but only if you thought of and typed them yourself; a few slight sexual references pop up here and there otherwise. There are some few other painful things that can happen.
In a way it reminds me of Exhibition by Ian Finley or the IF Art Shows from years past, because many of them also spoofed the criticism idea. I think this is an effective piece, especially with the images attached.
A short puzzle-heavy game about sneaking into the King's Ball, March 24, 2023This game has you as a humble baker who has a chance of a lifetime: a sponsorship from a King. If only you can get into the ball!
The game has a few major puzzles, the first being getting past the guard, and the second involving hygiene.
The puzzles were a little tricky; the first one was hard to guess what method to use until it was revealed all at once by an item, and the second required careful examination of numerous objects.
Overall, it's a fine game, but it had a little more unimplemented scenery than I expected, like the bread in the shop or the fence in one of the back rooms.
Overall, a pleasant experience.
A game about yeast gone bad and underwater brewing, March 21, 2023This game was entered in a jam using PunyInform, where the theme was using an airlock.
The author came up with an inventive way to do this, having an underwater experimental brewery that is accessed by an airlock deep under water.
Unfortunately, a lot of the rest of this game was rough. Undo is not supported [Note: the author confirmed that this is because I played the z3 version. The z5 version allows undo, so I've updated my review and increased the star score], and its very easy to lock yourself out of victory during the first puzzle. A lot of interactions just don't make much sense (for instance, why can't we see the (Spoiler - click to show)scuba gear before examining (Spoiler - click to show)the hook? Isn't the first thing far larger than the second?)
I ended up going in and out of the airlock over and over to try things back and forth between the two main locations. That, coupled with the sparseness of the game, ended up with less enjoyment than I'd usually have.
Clearly the author has some good talent for programming things like context-sensitive hints and a complex airlock. But my guess is that because this was a jam they ran out of time to fully test and flesh out the game descriptions. I would be more than happy to raise my score if the game was developed a bit further; it's not a horrible concept, it just needs more care.
A choice-based story about an underwater dive gone bad, March 18, 2023This game reminds me of bits of a lot stories--Armageddon, Sphere, Alien. But it's it's own thing.
This is a choice based game where you are a oil rig diver on one last job. You're told that something bad happened down there and you have to fix it. But things get...weird.
The game had a pretty small default font and for me only used about 25% of my screen. Most of the choices were between 2 or 3 options, and I felt like I had real interactivity. There were some weird repetitions in the text some times, like when asking questions at the beginning.
The story didn't really resonate with me the way the choices did. Instead of building up tension it revealed things early, then acted as if you didn't know them, and big plot events didn't have buildup while big buildups had no payoff.
Still, I'm glad I played and had a good time.
Play an artificial intelligence rejuvenating the earth for humans, March 17, 2023This is choicescript game entered in Seedcomp, based on a seed by Slugzuki.
You play as an artificial intelligence that has woken up hundreds of years after humans left the earth through flight or death. It is your assigned task to prepare the earth for humans to return.
However, your stores have been heavily damaged. Your goal is to manipulate several different factors to make the earth whole again. You may, however, encounter opposition...
The main gameplay cycle is to wake up after a year or so, consume a piece of Human writing, handle any alerts, and re-evaluate your priorities.
My game ended after about 4 or 5 cycles; there may be more endings.
The media were interesting; I encountered the writings of Du Fu for the first time, which was nice. Looking him up was fun, and I got to read more of his stuff, although most of it was more contemplative than the active poem featured here. There was also some larger writing not entirely meant to be consumed at one sitting (?) like a tylenol label, and some writing I couldn't find when googling, so either from obscure books or not from published works.
I liked the main overall cycle, I liked the writing and the vibes. I think the only thing I could have wished was either that it lasted longer with more cycles and depth or that it was shorter with a tighter focus on the writing segments. Many of the were poignant but I felt like the game was pulling two different directions a bit.
Promising start to a bakery mystery, March 16, 2023This was a fun game, as yet unfinished (I would definitely bump up the rating once/if it gets done).
You play as a down-and-out detective who gets a last chance at making rent--a client whose beauty is so great that it overwhelms you, a beautiful baker who has been accused of a grave crime.
You have to go an investigate the 'corpse', and get to poke around the 'murder' scene and interrogate the suspect.
The animations and text styling is excellent. The interactivity, though, left something to be desired for me; for much of it, it is a 'gauntlet' style game where one option ends the game immediately and the other continues it. Undo exists everywhere except at endings, so it leads to their essentially only being one option at a time, since you have to pick the good one due to being unable to back out of bad one (unless you save every screen). This is not the case in every scene as some let you have a wide variety of interactions.
For me, the writing and characters were fresh and fun, and I'm intrigued by the mystery of the client's effect on the PC (outside of the obvious ones). Would definitely play a finished version.
A shattered relationship left behind on the asphalt, March 16, 2023This is a Seedcomp game, where people leave inspiration for others who go on to make games based on it.
This game is based on a poem by Sophia de Augustine.
Amanda Walker is one of the most successful authors of the last few years, having won Spring Thing, the XYZZY Awards, the IFDB Awards, and placing very highly in IFComp, Ectocomp, and Parsercomp. She works especially well with adapting poems into games.
This game is a shattered series of vignettes, mostly on rails but that's the way memory is some times. You are driving down a road--or, were driving down a road--with a boyfriend that you have been fighting with for months.
The game jumps around in time, moving simultaneously forwards and backwards. There are pedestrian segments of daily life made beautiful (or terrible) by the emotions present behind them.
I write this as I'm in a bad mood due to feeling a bit ill, but this game really made me think of the past. I had a divorce a few years ago, amicable in the end, but divorce can't happen with some scenes like that shown in the game. And the gory parts, the description of the blood, remind me of the early parts of our marriage, when I was at her c-section; birth is wonderful but it was terrible to see the doctor's hands bathed in her blood pulling out our kid. The memory stuck in my mind for a long time, together with the rest of the day of course. So this game made me think of that a lot.
I had some trouble here and there. I tried things like (Spoiler - click to show)bind wound, compress wound, tie sweater to wound,etc. before I realized I just needed to do what was in the hint. At the end, I somehow messed up the final action and got stuck. Before I tried to (Spoiler - click to show)answer phone, I tried stuff like (Spoiler - click to show)x phone, x message, x tree, run and then it just gave me a generic message whenever I tried (Spoiler - click to show)answer phone. So I restarted and speed ran to get to the end again.
Overall, I found this game polished (the hiccups were minor), had enough interactivity for me to enjoy, and obviously impacted me emotionally. It is lushly descriptive. I could see myself playing it again.
Underwater sabotage thriller, March 12, 2023In this game, you play as a military person whose submarine is under attack by poisonous gas. Trapped in the airlock, there's nothing you can do but wait until it subsides and hope your friends and crewmates are okay.
This game is compact and has neat and tidy implementation and puzzles. There are mechanisms and locks and keys and some clever puzzle solutions.
This has a lot more twists and turns and is darker than usual for a Garry Francis game, and I liked it. It was polished, descriptive, and the interactivity worked well.
The only drawback to me was that I kept getting this message after I left the command area and returned:
[PunyInform error: 3]
[PunyInform error: 3]
[PunyInform error: 3]
I did have to use hints once, but the solution was reasonable.
An astronaut experiences bizarre hallucinations , March 12, 2023This is a short Punyinform game made for Puny Jam #3.
In it, you play an astronaut who has to flee because an airlock is leaking. Bizarrely, the door to the space station is a heavy metal door with a key. More strange things appear as you explore the station.
This has some problems (especially uncapitalized room names and generally empty rooms). However, the author clearly was really into their descriptions and the flow of the game worked well with few hiccups (the only part I got stuck was a puzzle that was actually very fair).
So I think this is pretty unpolished and buggy, but I like the idea (I always like surreal/hallucination games). Having the character be (Spoiler - click to show)The Joker is interesting. Is this what the world looks like from his point of view?
A fun little easy treasure romp in a fantasy world, March 12, 2023This is, I think, the third Johann Berntsson game I have played, and I tend to enjoy his level of implementation. The other games I played (from 20+ years ago) were longer and more complex, but this one shares a lot of the good elements from those games.
You find yourself in a strange airlock, and have to go to another dimension of your choice. And you choose: fantasy!
What follows is a simple and complete fantasy story. Rooms have 2-3 exits, and each room has at most one object of importance in it. The next task to do is usually clearly indicated, making this more of a fun, breezy exercise than a puzzly challenge.
I didn't feel super engaged by the game, but it is quite polished and very descriptive, and the interactivity was smooth.
A symbolic contemplation of dreams and serenity, March 10, 2023This is an interesting short game written in PunyInform.
It follows a rhythmic pattern of sleeping, dreaming, breathing, and waking.
It feels like a purposely simple, stripped down game with simple aesthetics and a positive overall message. Puzzles are intentionally light and the focus is on atmosphere.
I found it to be polished and smooth, and the interactivity worked well for me. While intentionally crisp and precise, I did find it descriptive overall.
However, I didn’t feel an emotional connection to the overall story, even though I feel like I should have given it’s nice theme. I also didn’t feel like I’d revisit it in the future.
So, a good game, but for me doesn’t crack the top five of games written by this excellent and prolific author.
Investigate a medical lab after hours, but with some bugs, March 7, 2023This game has some problems, but most of them aren't serious or too hard to learn from, so I expect the author's next game would probably be great.
In this game, you are a genius scientist who is working late after hours, when suddenly things stop working. You have to figure out how to get past airlocks and get cameras to work.
This game seems to show a lack of knowledge of Inform, with lots of whitespace, items not listed in room descriptions, missing synonyms and commands, etc. These are common things for people who are starting out, and I feel like the next game the author makes will likely be much better.
The standout here is the occasional vivid description. But I found the interactivity frustrating, didn't make an emotional connection with the game, found it unpolished, and left without a strong desire to replay.
I do think the author's next game could be amazing, but for now this one leaves much to be desired.
Death and dark secrets threaten a discord community, March 6, 2023This is a great, character driven mixed-media game that simulates discord while also using additional text and pdf files to tell an overall story.
Bez and Josh Grams teamed up on this one, with Bez writing and Josh programming (according to credits), and I think the division of labor worked great, because the writing is on-point and the coding is very smooth and looks fancy.
The main thrust of the game is a Discord conversation between a group of friends that gathered together over the years to discuss an obscure (and fictional) poet. However, the main leader of the group is in a car crash. While this is being announced, dark secrets bubble up.
You take turns as the various members of the discord group, selecting between different variations of how to respond. It definitely seemed like my choices could influence the story heavily, but I chose a particular path of every time to get more juicy gossip.
In between the choices, there are interludes with additional information over the years.
I think this is some of the strongest writing I've seen in a while: a diverse cast of characters, realistic scenarios, people reacting the way they do in real life. It was especially jarring because I've lived through or seen a few different variations of the events depicted in this game.
There were a few quibbles I had; I was torn about the timed text, because it does make it harder to fit a game in during a busy schedule, but it definitely contributes to the overall feel of the game. Also, I feel like the game could have been just a little longer or have a firmer resolution. Otherwise, this is a game that I felt joy to play.
Edit: Apparently the poet Dorn is real. Who knew?
An entire world and ecosystem contained in a library, March 3, 2023This is a world-building heavy game about an enormous library the size of an entire planet. In it, there are all sorts of bizarre things: living book-creatures, ink serpents, portals and non-Euclidean spaces, etc.
You are exploring it with many other archivists, including your own apprentice.
The structure is essentially a Gauntlet, where you get two choices at a time, one that keeps you alive and one that kills you. I found this a bit frustrating, and most other interaction was either 'next page' or an option to be nice or mean with words. The game ended fairly abruptly after one major event.
All this is balanced by the very cool storybuilding and fun descriptions. So there was a lot to like here as well.
A two-player drama game, March 1, 2023This game is hard to review for multiple reasons, since it's a multiplayer game I played on my own (I've done multiplayer IF before but since this one is in French I didn't feel comfortable asking someone to wait while I slowly read it), and also describing the plot spoils it, as a big part of the game is figuring out the other person's story. So this I could basically rate it really high or really low depending on how I'm feeling today.
Overall, the setting is mostly muted and indistinct. You are at a society dinner (or maybe political dinner?) and everything is centered around that. Unlike most multiplayer games I've seen recently, which tend to have tons of text interspersed with a very small number of possible actions, this game has 30 turns each of which has ten or more actions you can choose.
However, these actions are almost all inconsequential or are only interesting once. I do have to give kudos for allowing players to pass any message at all to the other person. I did feel it straggled on too long by about ten turns.
Of course if I had played with someone else I wouldn't have spoiled the fun of finding out about the other person, which is a bummer. Overall, I'm giving this 3 stars, but it really could be anywhere from a 2 to a 4.
Cross the ocean while dealing with conflicting groups!, February 28, 2023This game uses Unity and has some visual component, similar to a visual novel (or the game Reigns, which I haven't tried).
You are the second-in-command to a captain on a trans-Atlantic voyage. The Captain, a bit nervous, asks you to handle most of the passengers.
Events are randomly-selected vignettes with different characters (which I'm told is similar to Reigns). Each one gives three options, which are selected by a ship's wheel rather than clicking directly on them.
Each character has their own agenda: a priest who wants to evangelize, a high-ranking and veteran officer who wants the crew to relax and party; a rich socialite who wants to be treated well; and a communist organizer.
Overall, the system is interesting and fun, but the interactivity felt disconnected and opaque. It was hard to find common threads through the interactions and it was difficult to know how your choices would affect the two main stats.
But the images were nice and the writing was very descriptive.
Explore a space station undergoing a crisis, February 27, 2023In this game, you wake up in darkness on a space station on Mars. The oxygen is getting low, and you have to repair the spaceship!
This is written in the Donjon engine, one I've seen come up several times in French games and which always works well overall.
There is a small map here, and only a few items, allowing the game to be completed relatively quickly with few surprises (except for some fun easter eggs).
Overall, the game is pretty sparse. The majority of each room description is taken up by listing exits. An AI is mentioned but doesn't seem to do much (it is almost implied that the player is the AI but then we put on overalls so it wouldn't make much sense. Unless the reader is the AI?) And there is a little bit of lack of verbs or clues.
I gave two stars to a game by the same author last year and I feel a bit bad giving two stars again, but I think that for me personally (since my rating is just subjective and is only my opinion), if the author did some more testing where they had players try commands and implemented anything they tried, the game would be a lot smoother. But maybe I'm wrong.
Actually, I am very glad there was a walkthrough provided and it made things very smooth after I had explored for a while and got stuck, so I think I will add a star for the good walkthrough and the funny spores.
An excellent twist on a mad-lib style story, February 27, 2023This French comp game has a form of interaction I've never seen before and which I quite like.
It is a mad-lib game, in the sense that the primary interaction is filling in blanks that are then used in the rest of your story. The blanks include things like your name but also more important things like what special object you have.
This doesn't make for very good interaction itself. But what happens is after your choices are locked in, the game lets you pick between several 'implications' of your choices, and that's where the true agency lies. For instance, you can create a kind of menace in the dungeon that causes some negative thing to happen to you (I made an enormous burger that makes you fat). Once you select that, the game asks if the Enromous Burger can be defeated in combat or talked to (I chose combat). I ended up losing the game in the end (my girlfriend from the guild of assassins was killed by the burger so I was stuck later). With different choices, there would be an entirely different story.
The main storyline though is that you are part of a monastery where the prioress wants you to lie to the future queen to protect the monastery treasures. You decide to disobey by finding the legendary ____ of Saint ______ to help you.
Overall, it was fun. Because I made the choices, I didn't get as emotionally invested, but everything else was great.
A cute animated visual novel about an intern solving a difficult case, February 25, 2023This is a visual novel that has some really great animation and overall visuals. The text was in nice little chunks that made it easy to read even though many characters had weird speech things (like one who talked while holding a golf club in their mouth!)
It's not super long, either. You play as a robot-looking character who has done a really great job at their last three internships, but who now is ready for the hardest one of all.
You're invited to a hotel where a dog-like manager tells you there is a conference of traitors going on, but one of them is a traitor-traitor: that is, they're secretly not a traitor at all! You have to figure out who did it and confront them.
There is only one suspect and one interview, so the game is much briefer than you might expect it to be, but it's hard enough that I played through a few times without solving it. It's okay, though, because it's just a fun, goofy game with memorable characters. Definitely worth checking out!
Unfinished Moiki game about a zany robot museum heist, February 25, 2023My enjoyment of this French game went up and down as I played. My very first thought was, 'Wait, Gavroche games? Didn't they win last year with a demo game that was unfinished? Why are they making another demo instead of finishing that game???? Will they never finish a game?"
But this game is, just like last year, very fun after all. If it just ends up having several demos each year, that's not so bad after all.
This game features you as a recently activated robot who has been repurposed to steal from a museum! Your human co-conspirators are designated by card suits and communicate with you via radio, with one being especially foul-mouthed.
Once you get further in, you discover a cast of robot characters that have some humor and some pathos. I got my arm ripped off in a robot arm-wrestling competition, and that was pretty neat. Visually, it's great-looking, like many Moiki games are.
Overall, I planned on a solid 3/5 due to the unfinished, but the exhibit vignettes changed my mind to 4/5.
Clever game about an ancient book that rewrites itself, with puzzles, February 22, 2023This game reminded me of why I have liked the French Comp over the years: the innovation.
You have in this story a book that can flipped forwards and backwards. It has about 8 or 9 pages total (at first). At first, I thought there was a bug, as the book seemed intended to have jewels on the front but they were missing, but as you read, you discover that's not the case.
An ancient civilization conquered all galaxies but couldn't prevent the end of the universe as it was consumed by black holes. Instead, it found a way to encode its entire history and culture into three crystals (the ones missing from the cover of the book), each held by a different guardian.
The book's history fluctuates, kind of like (but very different from) SCP-140 from the SCP Wiki. Different chunks of texts will flicker, and clicking on them changes the story. Change it enough, and you get a visual logiv puzzle you can solve by clicking.
I had a lot of fun with this. There are definitely some areas weaker than others (like Rovarsson mentioned, the story is fairly basic; another thing is the puzzles themselves are simple), but the overall interactivity is nice and the story is engaging, so for me the game as a whole was more than the sum of its parts.
A bilingual game about a menacing therapist and a cup of coffee, February 21, 2023This is a heavily-altered Twine game that has images with mouse-over animations, text that changes in dramatic ways, and other fancy effects. I had to turn on the scrollbar to get it to work on my mouseless laptop, but otherwise it worked well.
The game was written in English and then translated to French, but I played it in French first, an amusing intentional roadblock in understanding between two Anglophones. I then replayed twice in English.
The game is brief, but rich. You have been seeing a psychiatrist and are having lapses in memory, have been hearing voices, etc. At first, the doctor is eager to help you, exploring your past, but things get darker...
Overall, it's a surreal game whose strongest features are it's neat visual effects, its replayability, and its sinister atmosphere.
The story of a soldier obssessed with letters, February 17, 2023This is kind of a happy accident; this game is one I played before in Spanish from Ectocomp, but it happened to match the 2023 French Comp themes of treason and archives, so it was translated and entered into that as well.
This is a compelling story, which involves a soldier that is obsessed with collecting the letters of other soldiers, usually after they die. He wants to write his own letter, the best letter ever, and will stop at nothing for his goals.
There are 3 acts, each one fairly brief with actions that are generally clued in the instructions or text. I found it easier in French than in Spanish, to be honest.
Overall, the obsession here is very compelling.
Pleasant worldbuilding in an intro to an exciting fantasy game, February 16, 2023This is just the very first act of a large story. It sets up the main action and then promises the next story (as shown by the Episode 1 in the title).
It is a choice based game, designed in portrait mode rather than landscape, with either a 'next' option on each screen or a few choices. There are several nice character portraits done.
You are a new archivist at a library in a magical world. People and creatures from all over come and you, an apprentice archivist, must decide whether they should be admitted or not.
So it's kind of a bureaucracy simulator, but has more action in the end. In the middle it has more normal life things like dealing with allergies or finding a cute person.
Promising, but incomplete.
A basic introductory game introducing text adventures in an office setting, February 16, 2023This Italian game hasn't had any reviews since it came out 13 years ago, and someone suggested it, so I checked it out.
It's a cute concept although some parts are a little weird. You are headed to ZenSpa, a company that does interactive fiction. But you have to find your way inside, past the secretary, and up to the director himself.
The game highlights the difference between old school and new school IF, although maybe not the way you'd expect. Pamphlets inform you that kissing is all the rage now in IF games (which I don't think is a very strong trend?). Non-consensual kissing is a bit weird, but in most situations you try it in the game, you get firmly reprimanded and arrested. One situation, though...
Overall, the game was short but well put-together and well-clued.
A novel parser game with autocomplete and inscrutable mechanics, February 13, 2023This game is a demo for a new type of parser.
Basically, you type in the first letter or two of a noun on the screen, which brings up some possible words that can autocomplete, which you do by hitting tab; then you hit tab more to cycle through different actions or adjectives for that noun.
This is a clever idea. I did have some trouble navigating the game though. You're basically some kind of goblin entertaining an ogre king, so there were a ton of words that I didn't understand (looking them up, it was stuff like 'burping' or 'somersaulting') and there were some typos that I think were intentional like 'vous être'.
In structure, as far as I played, the game starts with you telling poems to the ogre king, then possibly fighting his executioner guy, then exploring your living quarters, then quoting proverbs, then fighting again.
Interaction was kind of wonky for me. Almost none of the actions have predictable effects; instead, it seems like the author's goal was to come up with funny or nonsensical results for most things. It was amusing, but it was hard to plan what happened. Combat was especially rough, with many actions healing the other opponent. On the itch page, others had complained about this, and the author suggested making sure that you mix up your attacks and not follow any pattern. I couldn't do this, and died during the second duel. There was also a clock that didn't seem to do much besides making you sleep for a while.
Overall the system looks pretty good, and the game is descriptive and amusing, but the actual game mechanics are pretty hard to figure out and could be explained more clearly.
A translation into French of a game with comic-only output, February 10, 2023I previously played the English version of this game in Parsercomp.
In it, you type in words like a regular parser game, but the majority of output is in images in a cartoon style. You are the 'guy' on a guys' restroom door, and the lady on the other door is stolen by a photorealistic hand. You have to rescue her!
I wondered if there would be any big differences in the French translation. I didn't find any. I looked and found a long post by the author after the comp had ended, which was very comprehensive. I learned that 1) the author had thought of many deep philosophical things, including Shakespeare, Brecht, Michael Ended, diegetics, etc., 2) the game was written in around 10 days, and, most importantly to this translation, 3) The author specifically refused input of several beta testers and several reviewers, deciding to stay true to an artistic vision rather than listen to the masses.
I generally find that 'being true to yourself' and 'making a well-respected and popular game' are two different goals for games. They don't necessarily contradict each other (Superluminal Vagrant Twin seems like it satisfies both goals!) but it's not usually to pick both and work on them. If you seek your own true vision, that means occasionally disappointing your fans, and if you seek to please fans, you may lose your own vision.
So this game still includes many of the things that made it difficult in the English version. The author states that almost no one has completed it without hints, but that hard games have both poetic value and it is better for players to play games without hints.
These are subjective positions for which there is no real answer. For my thought though, great games aren't great because they are hard, but because they make players feel smart or accomplished. I could make a game with a 10-digit multiplication problem and it would be hard without a hint or a calculator, but that wouldn't necessarily make it fun. Similarly, games like Dark Souls or Elden Ring could be made so hard that no one could complete them at all. So I think that difficulty itself does not create enjoyment.
Overall, this game is identical to the English one, outside of the French. It is polished, descriptive in its own fashion. I did find it amusing, and I have played it again. I gave the English one 3 stars, but I'm giving the French one 4 stars. Why? I think everything looks cooler in French, and playing in a non-native language adds a different level of complexity that I enjoy. I realize that doesn't benefit actual Francophone players, but ratings and reviews are always subjective.
A cute but brief game about becoming a recipe librarian, February 9, 2023This is a pretty short Inform 7 game in French.
You have been hired as an archivist at a grand library. Coming in, you are welcomed by the Master Archivist, who gives you a grand tour and asks you to demonstrate your capabilities.
The version I played was pretty short, with a lot of size implied (by stairs and locked doors and furniture) but with most of it not open to play (due to being locked or empty, etc.)
It had a cozy feel, like Stardew Valley or something similar. It was fun to look up the recipes and the memories it brought back of using a card catalog were the highlights for me.
Overall, this could be expanded to a larger concept or just serve as a training game for the author to hone their skills. It was written very quickly and not tested much, according to the author, but I like the writing style.
An Ink game that turns a round of magic the gathering into a story, February 3, 2023This game was vibrant and full of life but also pretty confusing. I couldn't tell if I was just confused because 'bad french' or because the game was weird.
Once I finished it and saw the attached youtube video it made more sense, and it's kind of a cool idea!
Basically the author played a game of Magic the Gathering: Arena and then wrote a story imagining how all those things could have happened. So, for instance, Ormos the Archivist gets played, so Ormos becomes a character in the story, a beautiful archivist you fall in love with.
Some of this translates well into a story and some doesn't. In many parts of the game, you have a bunch of links with unhelpful names like 'a little chat' or 'call a professional' that don't tie into the story. Clicking them sometimes has no effect, but sometimes has a longer story. Overall they don't seem to affect the main storyline much, as I played a couple of times to see what happened.
So I think the polish and interactivity of the game are a little weird, but I did play more than once and found the MTG idea amusing.
Brief but nice-looking fantasy Twine set in Spooks universe, February 1, 2023I've never read the Spooks series before (called The Last Apprentice in US), but this story makes it seem really cool.
This game is set in the Spooks universe, and follows Tom and Alice, the main characters from the series. You play as Alice, a young woman raised to be a witch who escaped before you became completely evil. However, your actions can increase your connection to the darkness, so you have to be careful.
There is a cool font and some nice coloring on the links. The writing is descriptive as well, and is friendly for people like me who aren't familiar with the book series.
There were two slight disappointments for me: one is that the story was cool, but the ending I found was anticlimactic (it was a 'happy' ending and just ending right after a quote from her father, which sounds like a great ending but it just kinds of cuts off). The other weird thing was that the moon image sometimes cut off the text.
Overall, I was glad to have some real choices; there's at least one choice that splits the game into two very different branches. It does feel a bit unfinished with the endings, though, and has potential for a much larger game.
A rough and buggy but compelling short Lovecraftian game, January 31, 2023Honestly I was surprised to see this game was entered in the Jay is Games Casual Gameplay Design Competition #7, since I associated that with one room games (like the excellent Dual Transform by Zarf or Fragile Shells by Sargent). This game isn't a one-room game at all, but has a large manor to explore.
I love Lovecraftian horror games, so I enjoyed the storyline of this one. You have a cousin that has passed away, so you go to his house in order for his mother, your aunt, to bequeath various possessions upon you.
The horror in the game leans heavily on fossils, a feature I haven't seen as much before, as well as some more normal archaeological finds. Also, fire-building takes a prominent place in the game.
The game is very buggy. Most items mentioned in room descriptions don't exist at all. Four items with similar names cannot be disambiguated one from another. Items often can be read or examined but not both. There are odd spacing issues. I reached an ending and the game didn't end, just a statement indicating an ending and nothing more. I reached things in the wrong order, like reading a letter before opening an envelope or putting things in a slot and then later revealing the slot.
Because of this, I resorted to the (very nice) walkthrough early on.
The highlights to me were the fossil stuff and the cool map you find. The drawbacks were the bugs, which were so prevalent that I didn't feel like replaying to try for a better ending.
Character-driven fantasy drama about chicken murder, January 22, 2023This game has been on my wishlist for years, as it was constantly recommended to me by IFDB's old algorithm. But it's in German, and pretty complex german at that, which my high-school-german brain can't handle well. I also had to use DOSBOX to play it.
But I'm glad I did! The story in this is actually one of the best I've read in a while, not even just in IF, although it is very short.
The game has some worldbuilding you can read up on in a txt file attached to the Zip. It talks about the Boronois, a group of people that live far away that are (I think???) short, non-religious, and with traditions about marriage and competitions, and some relationship with magic.
You're in love with a girl, but to win her heart you have to have the biggest chicken in the competition tomorrow! So of course you break into your rival's house to poison his fat chicken. Unfortunately, you aren't the only one who's broken in...
Beyond one puzzle early on and a basic puzzle later (that is on a timer), most of this game is menu-based conversation, with an interesting cast of characters, including your love, your rival, and his family.
Overall, I really enjoyed this. It was definitely worth the wait. As a non-native speaker of German, the very complex language (for me!) was mitigated by the shortness and the multiple choice aspect.
Dream-hopping assassination through assorted vignettes, January 9, 2023This game is a sequel to The Little Match Girl, a game that was about hopping through various fantasies to solve problems in each of them.
This game is a bit different, with a different premise (you are an assassin) and a different configuration of dreams (nested, rather than interconnected).
Like the Castle Balderstone games, this give the impression of being a grab-bag of passion projects, where some idea or thread was worked on in great detail and then the rest of a game scaffolded around it and polished till smooth.
The first few visions are pretty light and easy, just follow directions and look around. This can be fun, especially in shorter games, and the worldbuilding was nice with fun fake-outs, and there was animation and title sequences and colors, but by the end of the second one I felt like I could use a little more to dig into. The next world had more involved puzzles (with another fun fake-out), and the one after that was incredibly dense, filled with puzzles of all kind, which contrasted nicely with earlier material.
Overall:
+Polish: The game was smooth and worked well.
+Descriptiveness: The settings were very vivid, especially the second and last, and I could picture everything.
+Interactivity: Like I said above, there was a good overall balance of streamlined playthrough and puzzles.
+Emotional impact: I was entertained. At one point I took out my plans for my next game and took down some notes.
+Would I play it again? Yeah, I'll probably go through all the games in order when the others come out.
Completely straightforward ascii art version of towers of hanoi, December 8, 2022One of the old tropes in reviewing IF was to complain about how many people put the Towers of Hanoi in the game, since it was an old puzzle that had a well-known but tedious solution and there wasn't really any mental thought in solving it.
Unfortunately, I haven't seen many towers of Hanoi games recently, so I've lost my privilege of complaining about them.
That's why I'm glad I found this game. It's a perfectly implemented and otherwise completely straightforward implementation of Tower of Hanoi. The only implementation problem I did find was that it was a bit hard to find the instructions (typing HELP is how to start).
Now that I've played this game, I can complain about Towers of Hanoi for several more years. Thanks, author, for your contributions!
Q-Bert in text, December 8, 2022I was browsing through games published this year without reviews, seeing if I missed any good games.
I saw an Andrew Schultz game with no reviews, which is surprising because of his well-known style and positive general audience reception of his games.
It seems this was an April Fools game in the style of the old IF Arcade pack, which had some very funny games and some very traumatic/horrifying games.
This is an optimization puzzle game where you have to change the colors of a board that is an isometric triangle of cubes, but presented in text form. Your goal is to change the color of every square on the board.
It's a fun challenge, and I appreciate that the game doesn't punish brute-forcing things. I found some fairly simple solutions, but they took a ton of turns, so getting faster would be hard.
Overall, it was polished, pretty descriptive, I had fun and liked the interactivity. This is a small and simple game, but I'm giving 4 stars because it achieves what it sets out to do in a smooth and forgiving way.
Adjust to life as both a werewolf and a high-society young lady, December 8, 2022This is a branching stats-based Twine game that is fairly brief, split up into 4 or 5 segments that each last an in-game week.
You are a young woman from an upper-middle class family who has recently discovered she is a werewolf. You must learn how to deal with that while simultaneously maintaining your lifestyle.
The presentation is well-done, with good font and color choices and cleverly-named stats (like ILL vs VIM and GAL vs FUR). I didn't like the typewriter/slow effect, but hitting any key skips it so it wasn't a factor.
Overall, the things I most wanted more of was more satisfying endings and maybe a little longer game. I had one ending that was just a stat getting to 0, but another one seems like I got to the end but didn't really wrap up anything (Spoiler - click to show)I ate my date at the ball. I liked the writing.
Assemble your super team and fight, November 14, 2022This is a speed-IF written in 4 hours or less. It's written using Dendry.
Basically, you're at a party and need to assemble a party of fighters to take on a coming entity. You have both telepathy and future-telling abilities. You can use your telepathy to talk to others and know what type of arguments will convince them most.
There's still some puzzle elements, despite the mind-reading, as you have to figure out how best to implement what you learn. I always liked Divination specialists in D&D and this game seems to show exactly why being skilled in information gathering would be an excellent power.
This story is brief, but has easter eggs from the author's other works, including A Paradox Between Worlds (referenced in on friends' costume and favorite book series), and The Archivist and the Revolution, referenced in encoding data in DNA.
A brief, pustulent game about a horrendous zit , November 14, 2022This is a surprisingly polished game for 4 hours (I've said that a lot this comp, I wonder if this shows that I don't use my time as wisely as others do).
You have a job interview coming up, but you also have a massive zit! It's described in excruciating detail. You're in a bathroom with a little but a few things in the drawers and your cell-phone.
To me, the real appeal of the game is in the insight into your loved ones. Each one you call has a different reaction, some of them showing off a poor moral character, others a sweet or charming one.
The other big component is dealing with the zit itself. I had some trouble near the end with the game saying I hadn't done something when I had already done it, but it fixed itself pretty soon. Overall, a strong entry.
A brief but frightening Adventuron game about a zombie eye, November 14, 2022This is a pretty surreal Adventuron game with images and a little music about confronting a giant Zombie eye in the London Underground. It involves a lot of sensory details, including sound and touch, in ways I found pretty poetic.
Dee Cooke is perhaps the adventuron author I know best, having made several excellent games before and winning or placing high in a lot of comps. I was surprised when this game was so small, then impressed when I realized it was in the 'made in 4 hours' division instead of the 'longer than 4 hours' division it seemed like it was in. This is pretty great for a speed-IF, with conversation, a reactive NPC, and graphics and sound.
Overall, it's a nice little treat with good atmosphere and some perspective shifts.
A riff on gothic horror and folk tales through letter rewriting, November 14, 2022This is a charmingly complex game for one written in less than 4 hours for a speed-IF.
You are essentially a protagonist in a gothic novel, writing to your sister about your husband whose previous 6 wives have mysteriously disappeared. You can choose several different versions of each letter you write to communicate different tones, leading to different endings.
This rewriting mechanic is reminiscent of Emily Short's First Draft of the Revolution, another letter-writing game that involved cycling through different options; in fact, that game inspired the cycling mechanic in Twine!
The mechanic here hovers between too simple and too obscure but lands, I think, in a happy medium. The writing is a pleasure as always from this author, with many references to well-known tales (and some less well-known; I was glad to see Ann Radcliffe mentioned, as Mysteries of Udolpho is one of the few gothic novels I've read). Very neat overall, especially for such a short time-period for game writing.
A multiple choice certification quiz with extensive manual (but spooky), November 14, 2022This gave me a chuckle, especially as a high school teacher. The game consists of two parts: a 1000-line text manual and a 35-question multiple choice test.
The game encourages you to do exactly what most students do when studying: start the assignment first and only look up answers as you go along.
The text is dry, an imitation of standard technical writing, but sprinkled with a variety of frightening or hilarious spooky situations, like scissor lifts made of solid flesh or horrifying accidents brought on by improper rituals.
Overall, there's a lot of effort here and the extra flavor is good. But a simulation or parody of a boring thing is often, itself, boring, and while there's a huge effort here to alleviate that, it doesn't fully succeed. As an idea, though, the whole setup is very clever.
Grimdark prison interview, November 14, 2022This game, written in Ink in 4 hours or less, has you, apparently a psychologist, interviewing a cold, emotionless killer.
You have to ask about his life, his actions, and his dreams. He is emotionally unstable, so you have to be careful what you say. Your comments can make him shut up or open up.
The game uses a variety of charged language and imagery, including strong profanity, descriptions of violence, incest, misogyny, and violent death, and strong hatred.
It's all very grimdark. This man is irredeemably bad, and seems to hate himself or everyone around him.
It has some interesting narrative twists and the craftmanship in the choice structure really spoke to me. But the content did make me feel deeply uncomfortable, which is a subjective thing that of course differs from reader to reader.
A time management game where you make your house as creepy as possible, November 14, 2022I had a lot of fun with this game. Modeled on Untitled Goose Game, your goal is to cause trouble. Specifically, you have 6 hours before the new owner of your house arrives, and you have to make the house as scary as possible before then.
It's a cost/benefit analysis thing that requires trial and error: some actions take a ton of time but provide little benefit, others are short but trivial, some are heavy hitters. It requires some replay, but fortunately the choices are really funny and the text is enjoyable to read.
This was made in 4 hours, so it doesn't have huge depth, but it felt complete as a game. According to my rubric:
+Polish: I didn't see any errors, and the human-voice sound effects were really funny.
+Descriptive: The game had fun descriptions of everything.
+Interactivity: I felt like I could strategize and that the game was both responsive and not too easy.
+Emotional impact: it was funny to me.
+Would I play again? I played through three times.
A series of cyclical nightmares with inter-connected puzzles, November 13, 2022This is a Twine game where you have three dreams in order, over and over again, about dying.
Each dream is fairly brief, with 2-3 or 4 choices per dream. There are a lot of options, though, so it's hard to know what to do to be safe.
Fortunately, if you explore each dream enough, you find hints about the other dreams. Phrases that don't make sense at the time but later you look at options and go, 'Oh, I get it now!'.
Even after playing a couple of times, I didn't always understand why some things happened (like why the kitchen just kind of disappears or what triggers the ending for the final dream).
The writing is on-point and covers some frightening situations. I didn't feel sucked in emotionally, maybe because I was focused on the puzzle-aspects and felt safe as it was all a dream. But it was very descriptive.
Excellent work for a 4-hour game, and a neat way to do choice-based puzzles.
Untold horrors in a changing labyrinth with giant story twist, November 12, 2022This game is based on cosmic horror. You and two companions have been trapped in a shifting labyrinth for days, trying to find your way out. Tensions are rising, especially between your pushed-to-his limits friend Vlieg and your deeply-fascinated friend Tia.
The game is written using Binksi, a combination of Bitsy and Ink that uses tightly-constrained pixel art and the dialogue capabilities of Ink. You sometimes move around, running into things to talk, and other times have pure dialogue.
In the ending I reached, there was a massive shift in perspective. It was a clever concept and I enjoyed it quite a bit. However, it also brought a ton of profanity for a long time that honestly wasn't that fun to me. The big twist doesn't quite make sense conceptually, looking back, but it does make sense in terms of cosmic horror.
This game is quite complex, and I think it really shows off just what Binksy can do, for those interested in the engine.
A maze full of whacky horror-fied coworkers, November 12, 2022This is a Twine game with a neat little map in the corner showing all the rooms in a kind of maze. You navigate around with a score described as 'Survival Chance' which goes up or down depending on what you do.
It's a lot like gamebooks in gameplay style, except without randomized combat. You have different encounters with people and need to pick up various keys and tokens and other items in one area to progress in another.
Story-wise, you have to go to the help desk, but you get trapped, because it's haunted. All your coworkers are skeletons or werewolves or other wild things, and the humor is pretty goofy.
The game could use a little more polish; there were a few typos here and there, and I never really connected emotionally. But overall it was a pretty strong game and amusing while I played it. The author did add several features that improve gameplay, like the map and back button.
Zombie defense minigame written for Ectocomp, November 11, 2022This is a fun little whack-a-mole game written in Choicescript for Ectocomp in the Grand Guignol division.
In this game, you have a four-room house, with the baby in one corner and supplies and windows in all the others.
Your options are to forage for supplies, or rest, or, if zombies are approaching a window, to attack with shotgun or axe.
I passed one horde and leveled up, but didn't pass the next horde. It didn't seem like there'd be a lot more variety, so I didn't replay. Overall, an interesting concept.
+Polish
-Descriptiveness
+Interactivity
-Emotional impact
-Would play again
Mad scientist time-loop game written in 4 hours, November 11, 2022This is a game with a fun little idea for the speed-IF portion of Ectocomp. It's hard to write a parser game at all in 4 hours, let alone a time loop, so this one is pretty impressive.
I thought at first it was set in the world of Gravity Falls, since there's a guy with the name Old Man McGuffin that sounds like the gravity falls scientist guy, but the names aren't entirely similar (McGuffin vs McGucket). Either way, the game has the old scientist offload a weird time-loop device on you as a 'trick' during trick-or-treating.
The game has a pretty big map for a small game, but a lot of it is red herrings. Once you find the areas that are 'real', you can piece together what to do.
This game wasn't polished or fully descriptive (which is usual for speed-IF, including my own), but was fun and the puzzles were neat.
A tarot- and cult-influenced Halloween Visual Novel, November 11, 2022This is an impressive game for one made in 4 hours.
It features a kind of cult or religion that has 22 members, one for each of the major arcana. You are death. One of the highlights for the game is the custom art of each member (one of which features the non-sexual nudity mentioned in the content warnings). My favorite was the high priestess, with a symbolic-looking pose.
There is also music, background images, etc. The gameplay style is Visual Novel style, with several pages of text interspersed by few but impactful choices. I only saw a few choices, and it was hard to know the outcome, but I know there are multiple endings (I got ending 2).
The story is that your cult is horrified by Halloween, when the devil's servants are allowed to walk around unless placated by candy, so you go to a house whose owners have died and decayed in order to try to hear God's voice on the radio.
Overall, the writing is well-done, descriptive and evocative, and the game is well-polished for being made in such a short time. My current preference is to have more agency in a story (or to be able to read more quickly for replays for endings), so I wish I had a bit more to do. The worldbuilding is done well, and I'm glad I played.
Quick and short wordplay game centered around rhyming pairs, November 7, 2022This is the the first Petite Mort game I've played this year (games writtern in 4 hours or less) and the fifth entry in Schultz's series of rhyming pair games. It has less of the glitter of the other games, but has some nice coherence.
You play as someone summoned to aid some ancient beings in a great battle. To help them, you need to gather allies. The map is small, basically a cross shape, with a central area and a room in each of the 4 cardinal directions.
The story here is much more coherent than most of the games in the wordplay series, and it's nice having concrete goals and an honestly cool backstory.
The rhyming pairs are a bit tricky, though, and due to speedy implementation there are a bunch of rhymes that didn't make it in, especially in the main room. I eventually turned to the walkthrough.
The game is not yet polished and because of that I had some trouble with interactivity, but was emotionally impactful and had some fun descriptions. I would play again after more polishing, it was pretty fun.
A spooky halloween text adventure, November 6, 2022This game is the first released by fos1, a long-term supporter of IF through helping to organize ParserComp and other IF writing competitions and moderating IFDB.
It starts off with a gentle, fun recreate-real-life experience; there is a house that seems modeled off a real-life house, and you're asked by your wife to carve a pumpkin with your son Greg. The house contains things where you'd expect them (in drawers and cupboards), but it thankfully avoids a lot of clutter by not implementing a ton of red-herrings.
After working on your tasks, though, things change drastically and you find yourself in the Pumpkin World (as the description says, Be careful in the dark side of Pumpkin World!). Pumpkin World has more puzzles and some interesting characters.
Overall, I ended up making my way back. I had to use the walkthrough for the final command.
I think this is a promising first start. Some things I think could be improved, given more time. Probably the biggest thing I would do is add some flavor to parser errors and default responses, since that's what people see the most when playing. I find it helpful when writing games to type RESPONSES ALL during a game; it gives you a list of every default response in the game. You can then rewrite them yourself (like, The standard report waiting rule response (A) is "Okay, Dr. Law. I'll wait."), which I think is a neat effect.
Because of that, I think the game could be more polished; while the descriptions are minimalistic, they are heartfelt and positive; the puzzles were fairly well-clued; the overall emotion was cheerful; and I think my one playthrough was enough.
Multiple choices for making a truly terrifying haunted house, November 6, 2022This Inform games looks very polished and refined, unusual during Ectocomp, which often features quickly-written games.
Also unusually for Inform, most of the machinery of parser games is omitted in favor of essentially binary choices.
You are Bone Villa (a riff on Bob Villa), working with the Property Boo-thers (a riff on the Property Brothers), and it's your job to select the perfect haunted house. You walk through ten rooms, in each of which the two brothers, Hoary and Terry, present competing alternatives to the design. At the end, your choices are summed up as one of 33 different possibilities.
The first playthrough was pretty fun, seeing the different possibilities and coming up with strategies in my mind. It was longer than I thought, since 5 rooms with 2 binary choices each would have been enough for 32 possibilities, with the 33rd being special. So it wasn't just a binary tree, which was interesting. It said I should try to find more possibilities at the end, so I replayed.
Replaying shortens some descriptions but is the same material, same choices. Eventually the game can give you hints, but it wasn't until I had played several times that I realized there was an 'ideal' house. That was confusing to me, because both descriptions just seem contrasting styles; at first it seems like they're going for an 'over-the-top vs restrained' thing in the choices but that turned out not to be the case. I was puzzled on how you could have a best house when there was little chance to distinguish between them.
Eventually, you can summon help, which helps you find out that (moderate spoilers) (Spoiler - click to show)different choices correspond to different 'colors'. But even with that hint I was a bit bewildered.
I think 10 choices is a lot for a game that is intended to be replayed quickly and has no other new content between rounds besides finding out your score and placement. I think more clues as to the system could have helped as well.
I played about 5-6 times through, then decompiled to see what a perfect game would be like. I saw in there that this game is actually (Spoiler - click to show)based on an earlier 10-choice game by the author, reskinned to be haunted.
Overall, I think experimentation like this is what drives IF forward, but as an overall game experience I felt an imbalance between the rewards for success and the effort required to achieve it.
A lovingly illustrated short horror story based on Slavic folklore, November 5, 2022This game has really high production values. It's even got a custom loading icon! There are nice custom-styled fonts and colors and background images, and the text is rich and subtle. It includes cyrillic letters in cursive (I think) which say 'Welcome, sister' or something like that.
The story is about Rusalkas, water spirits that are created when someone betrays a woman and she drowns afterwards. There is a prelude, telling the story of a rusalka, and then a longer story with more choices about a young girl and the boy in the village she broke up with.
I was very impressed with much of this game, but I had some trouble, too. The text is complex, and I had difficulty following along between figuring out what's implied, jumping between multiple narratives without clear indications, and following the allusive language. And, for all the setup, the game feels incomplete; we only see the story of one rusalka, when the game seems set up to tell more.
In any case, this game could serve as good inspiration for people wanting to see how they could style Twine, it looks great, similar to Grim Baccaris's work.
Twine romance game about a genderfluid alien trying to fit in, November 5, 2022This is a prototype Twine game entered in the Ectocomp 2022 Grand Guignol competition. It is kinetic fiction, which means it currently has almost no choices besides going to the next page, where the main choice is pacing. The current stated plan is to expand it to include more choices in the future.
You play as an ornithologist who is also an alien assigned as the only alien in the area of earth you're in. Everyone stares at you, because you're literally from Pluto. You've managed to get some good work done and make friends, but your existence makes others uncomfortable and you just can't fit in with human traditions.
Especially gender, which your planet doesn't have a conception of. Most of the game consists of dealing with good and bad reactions to your conception of gender and self.
I said the game contains almost no choices; one that I appreciated a lot is the ability to skip the sex scene. I honestly wished this became a standard in choice games, as I was able to enjoy the genuinely sweet romantic buildup while avoiding content I'm not comfortable with.
I had a strong emotional reaction to this game for a couple of reasons. [Apologies for the long, unrelated personal story]. One is that I almost didn't play it because I was having stressful flashbacks. I used to be a math professor, but I always struggled. I had done all of my undergraduate and graduate work in the same math department where I had a lot of friends among the professors and staff. I had done well, and people had always supported me.
But once I left to be a 'real' professor, everything changed. My research faltered, and I encountered a lot of pushback from professors in my very narrow field. I was told that I had misunderstood major parts of the research topic or left out key parts of theorems, that my research didn't really have any applications, and the most hurtful, that my writing was just bad and/or sloppy. I started having papers get multiple rejections, and since that's the main 'currency' in the math world, I lost my chance at getting a permanent job, and ended up in limbo for a few years. And my refuge, the school I graduated from and where I liked everyone, had implied they would hire me when I came back, but ended up going with other people, only hiring me for a temp job, out of pity, I thought.
I eventually left academia (which is really looked down on in the field, like complete failure), and I've suppressed those thoughts. But I started fooling around with an old research problem today for fun, and I felt so many bitter, jealous, sad, and stressed thoughts remembering those times.
So I almost cried reading the story of Beckj, because even though the setting and reasons were so different, I recognized the feeling of everyone around you just feeling judgmental or looking down on you, and feeling like everyone just wishes you would be different than you are (I remember my postdoc advisor telling me I should never have become a father, because I took so much time off to be with my disabled ex-wife and newborn.). This story is a very specific story, but I think the author has done a great job of tapping into universal experience.
It also resonated with me because of the experiences I've seen with my trans friends, both Bez emself and also the numerous trans people I've met locally. I've seen how hurt they feel when people misgender them or feel uncomfortable using their chosen name (which is odd, as so many other people have nicknames completely unlike their birth names and no one cares), and the positive scenes between the MC and the love interest seemed completely authentic.
I do think adding the extra choices in could enhance the game, so I'm glad that's in the works.
A nice, brief spanish visual novel about crashing on a planet, November 4, 2022I liked this short spanish Ectocomp game entered in the '4 hours or less' part of the competition; it's brief, but longer than you'd think for a game made in 4 hours. It is in visual novel style, with some white-on-black lineart and relatively few, but impactful, choices.
In my playthrough, I had 5 days to live after I crash-landed on a planet, since oxygen was running out. The main theme was discovering nature on the planet, both good and bad, and deciding to interact with it positively or negatively.
I never felt super invested in the stakes, but I thought the game was charming and glad I played it, and since it doesn't take long I think people should check it out.
A cool custom engine used for a creepy murder game, November 2, 2022This game was interesting. I thought it was Twine, but it seems like a custom engine made by the author on github. It has regular links but includes a row of buttons for common actions like dropping, pushing, attacking, opening, etc.
The game has a world model with several locations and items and NPCs in them. You start with a dramatic opening: a note to yourself saying that you must kill Rodrigo.
The story is interesting and is based on a scene from a movie that left a deep impression on the author, but I wonder if it isn't a perfect fit for the UI here. I had trouble figuring out how to use a bank card to pay for food, for instance; do I click on the card itself? Open the card? Attack the card? Similarly, there were a lot of background red-herring items that had no real story use.
I felt like the story got progressively creepier, and the ending was impactful (literally). The engine overall seems very solid; I could see it working great in a larger game that was more puzzle-based.
A tale of emotional resolution in older times, November 1, 2022This game is fairly complex and its a good chance I didn't understand it completely. It involved quite a bit of folklore and older time things that were hard to translate (and copy and paste doesn't seem to work for google translate), and it is written in a dialect that drops the 'd' at the end of words (like tablao for tablado), which was a bit tricky for me. It's written in Adventuron, and is actually a well-implemented example of the engine.
You play as a man in a Romani family whose name I couldn't quite understand (I think it means something like the evil eye?). The game is divided into two sections; the first involves obstacles in the path of a wagon trip, and involves both conversation and some standard fetch quests.
The second part is a loop where you sing or play guitar for money in a cafe, each time receiving feedback on how to improve. I started off with horrible music but eventually got much better. That unlocks some ending scenes that are quite shocking and weird at first, but, upon reading the beginning quotes of the game again, seem to represent a kind of catharsis. I got kind of stuck on this second half of the game, to be honest.
Overall, this game is incomplete, according to the author, but I found it complex and descriptive. I appreciated the manual and the suggestions at the bottom of each page.
I debated for a long time between 3 stars and 4 stars, but I'd rather be nice if I can't decide so I'm going with 4.
A cute twine game about a young girl helping out her spooky grandma, November 1, 2022This French game written in 4 hours has quite a bit of material. You, a young girl, are excited to go out and assist your grandmother, who is quite old and maybe a witch?
She has the strange ability to speak only in capital letters. She leaves you a note with chores you have to do, mostly feeding cute or spooky animals.
Overall, I thought it was well-written and looked nice. There was at least one bug that made it a bit hard, but that has been fixed since then.
The grandma is a neat character, very intriguing. And the UI is beautiful.
A creepy French speed-IF about waking up in a bathroom, November 1, 2022This entry in the Petite Mort portion of the French Ectocomp speed-IF is simultaneously perhaps the most ambitious of the games I've played so far but also the one with the most problems.
It is a parser game, and you wake up in the bathroom wrapped up in something. Weird objects lie around the room, and you have to find a way out.
I thought it was descriptive and had a compelling idea, but I don't think the author had enough time to finish much of the game. Lots of objects have no description or just don't exist in the room. I looked at the code, too, which was really interesting.
In the end, I guessed half of the solution to the main puzzle but had to get help with the second half. None of the mysteries really get resolved. Overall, I think this is a good game for 4 hours of work, but would need more hours to get all the way great.
A trick-or-treating CYOA in French, October 31, 2022This is an amusing/frightening story written for the French Ectocomp competition in 4 hours or less.
It's an Ink game where you go trick or treating, and I actually found it more fun on replays to see where the 'tricks' are. You have to get a costume, meet up with friends, and choose what order to visit different houses. It's fairly short and simple, but has some strong characterization.
The writing is, as far as I can tell as a non-native speaker, slightly child-like, with run-on sentences and a carefree attitude.
I played three times, because each time I reached what I'd consider a bad ending. I think a good ending exists, but I haven't been able to find it; if anyone gets there, let me know how!
Flee an apocalypse while connecting with others, October 28, 2022This is the last of the Texture games in this IFComp 2022 competition, of which there were quite a few.
This one is fairly long and well-developed. The world is ending: the sun hangs still over the horizon and has for days, while a storm is sweeping behind you and other strange happenings are occurring.
In my playthrough, I encountered a haven in the storm which seemed to have sinister undertones. The game ended on a positive note.
Most or all of these Texture games were written in a workshop, and they generally seem to all have some supernatural manifestation of an inward emotional issue that has to be worked through, like the ending of a relationship. I think this one handles that 'prompt' (if there was one) really well. I would give 4 stars except I didn't, for some reason or another, really connect with the emotional aspect personally, just admiring it from afar.
A gross game about nosebleeds and social anxiety, October 28, 2022I had heard rumors about this game before I played it.
This is one of many Texture games entered in this competition, and it's probably the best-put-together one out of the bunch.
It's a visceral body-horror game in a limited sense; you have blood leaking out of your nose while at work but you feel desperately like you can't pay attention to it or fix to it or you'll be letting everyone down.
I'm sure there are many interpretations of this, but I definitely feel like it touches on social anxiety/impostor syndrome (actually, looking back, one of the content warnings is social anxiety).
The visceral text is accompanied by excellent animations that make the spreading drip of the nose bleed a lot more real. I had some trouble, though, with a completely black screen, taking a long time to find the right way out.
This game grossed me out and I didn't enjoy playing it, but I think that speaks to its quality.
Twine game about community organization, October 28, 2022This is a Twine game that has a brief intro followed by a large open segment where you can choose between 30 or 40 houses to knock on, each with their own mini-story.
You work for a community organization group and your goal is to collect a certain amount of subscriptions before the night is over. You have to monitor both the funds, your bathroom needs, and your body warmth. Each action takes some time to complete.
Out of all the 'simulator' games this year in IFComp, this one works pretty well mechanically, with clearly understandable variables and some ability to strategize how to use your time.
Storywise, I could partially identify with it. I spent 2 years as a missionary, and quite a bit of our daily time was spent knocking on doors, handing out fliers on street corners, or doing service work like English teaching or soup kitchen volunteering. I guess the difference is that I wasn't looking for money donations, but trying to share a religious message. I would say that the results in this game are much more positive than the ones I experienced on average!
It was well known even then that door-to-door is one of the lowest-productivity ways of making contacts. Referrals were much more effective, since you could find people who were already interested instead of bothering people who don't care. Door-to-door knocking for anything can be extremely wearing.
I'd be interested to see how community organizing plays out in real life. It almost sounds like a HOA in this game (give us money and we'll make decisions for the neighborhood). It's interesting seeing different problems people care about in the game and how the protagonist evaluates their importance.
A relatively brief game about witches in Scotland, October 28, 2022This game has a brief intro about the history of Witches in Scotland, and then lets you wander around several areas with an inventory of items, taking on different quests and trying to help people while avoiding suspicion of being a witch.
This sounds like a great setup, but all of its a bit thin. Inventory doesn't really get used much, maybe once or twice. I looked around a bunch but only found one of the quests that I could finish. (I looked at the code and see I should be able to finish the other, and other reviews seem to have managed it!) There are some spelling problems (the author says it's not their native language, which is very understandable). After a while, my game just ended the day; I think it might be on a timer? And it assigned me some points.
So, overall, some good ideas, but it felt like it could be more fleshed out, I think. It had a lot of clever concepts that just didn't feel like they got fully used, to me.
An adaptation of a spy thriller, October 27, 2022I really am not sure how to review this one, because sometimes I think it's excellent and sometimes I think it's a bit choppy.
This is an adaptation of the book The Thirty-Nine Steps. I haven't read it myself, but from Wikipedia it looks pretty cool, about a man on the run who is hunted down everywhere he goes.
This adaptation adds a good deal of additional content, and allows you to focus on being Bold, Open, or Clever. Interestingly, the choices not only increase your ability in that area, but they also affect the way you see the world about you, making you more paranoid or clueless, etc.
The game gives you a lot of freedom, but I feel like, due to that freedom, I missed a few essential plot points, such as never really learning about the people I'm pursuing. A couple of other things I feel like are confusing without context (late game spoilers:(Spoiler - click to show)I pushed a fireplace rod and a bunch of steps disappeared in a cloud of chalk. Why? What's the purpose of such a mechanism?).
So I'm wavering between 3 and 4, but I'll round up to 4.
A famous chess endgame in a puzzle format, October 26, 2022I've avoided playing chess most of my adult life. so I never learned about famous endgame positions and puzzles.
I've learned a few recently through Schultz's work. He has several chess-based puzzle games that teach principles of few-piece chess positions, including a few mini-puzzles that teach a single position.
This one involves a setup where each side has the king and 1 pawn each.
I found it enjoyable, and liked the backstory. But I spent a long time on it due to encountering a bug in scenario 2, which I forwarded to the author; essentially there is an unintended solution to that scenario, so I couldn't figure out if my unintended solution was blocking the 'real' one of if I could still solve it. I looked at the walkthrough and found one line that more or less gave away the second solution, to both puzzles in fact (the line was that (Spoiler - click to show)the king can only focus on one pawn at a time). If that bug were patched, I would definitely put 4 stars for the rating.
As a side note, I think this game struck a good balance between 'let the player keep playing in a losing position to see why it's losing' and 'cut them off right after the first mistake'. One quality of life change I would like to see is a more dramatic heralding of completing one of the scenarios. Right now, it is very similar in appearance to losing, so if one is repeatedly replaying quickly to try different strategies (especially since there's no undo), the text can blur together, so some kind of major break (like bold, or a line of asterisks, or some other signifier) can be nice. The counter in the corner does go up, and that's the main way I noticed the scenario number increase.
Overall, it's been fun to learn more about chess through these puzzles.
A conglomeration of literary references in a surreal twine game, October 26, 2022This is another surreal Twine game based on exploration (after just having played Lucid), but I'm happy with that since it's one of my favorite genres.
This game is built out of a bunch of literary references, starting with Neuromancer (which I've never read), and branching into Kafka, Alice in Wonderland, etc. Most of them are oblique references, ones you have to puzzle over or which potentially could describe several stories (at least for me).
The tone is fairly dark, beginning with unwanted surgery and poisoning and including a lot of theft.
The game is somewhat narrow; at first I thought there'd be tons of options or strategy but the game funnels you pretty effectively. I can say there are several options that are hard to discover and the endings can take work, so that's actually pretty good, now that I think about it. Maybe the funneling is actually a good thing, since with Lucid I had the opposite problem of too many choices.
Overall, it was pretty fun to try to puzzle out the literary references. 'Diary of Anne Frank' is a bit of a bold choice to have alongside more goofy or wild entries. But I had a good time with this. The main drawback to me was the lack of weight in the endings; to me, the endings were abrupt and didn't resolve many narrative arcs (I saw 3 endings, including a death).
A text memory of a real-life Christmas present with Harry Potter themes, October 25, 2022This game definitely seems like a good contender for the Best Use of Multimedia XYZZY award specifically for its map 'feelie' attached to it, which is a complex map that folds and unfolds multiple times.
That map is an essential part of the game, since it marks the main treasure or objects you're looking for.
Those objects are Golden Snitches. The idea of this game is that the programmer made a real-life treasure hunt for his daughter, hiding four golden snitches in the house and creating a map that reimagined their house as various locations from the Harry Potter series.
The game itself is sparse in comparison to the lush map. Your father, Papa, follows you around, serving as a hint system, and rooms he doesn't enter are unimportant, as he feels no need to give you clues in them.
I was struck while playing with the casual, unaffected display of wealth. I've been both moderately wealthy and moderately poor in life; in my youth, my father was a video game executive and supported 7 kids in a large house with a big backyard. But his business went under, and years later after my divorce I've experienced food scarcity and can't afford a reliable vacuum or a washing machine. With that background, this house seems quite magical, with a balcony over a grand hall, a spacious backyard with water features, multiple secret passages and hidden rooms, and multiple rooms for the child, including their own bathroom. It feels like reading British books like Middlemarch (which I've been doing), seeing the life of the upper middle class or lesser aristocracy.
The game itself is charming and full of love. The two areas that I think are drawbacks are the sparseness of the room descriptions and the lack of implementation of several objects mentioned. For instance, when I first encountered the bookshelf, I couldn't X BOOKS.
As a final note, the Harry Potter themes are heavily prevalent, as a heads up for people that have strong feelings towards JK Rowling.
Anton Chekhov short story with lightly interactive framing story, October 24, 2022This is, I believe, the third 'stateful narration' game I've played, and the first I've figured out how to get a reaction on. Edit: It was in fact the second, I have lied.
These games have an engine where you type something in a box (the game requires it to be in its internal dictionary) and then it parsers that output.
In all the past games I pushed the boundaries of it, like typing 'fart' in every box, and the game didn't respond at all. Even this time, I used words like 'deciduous', 'petrochemical', and 'brobdingnagian', and it didn't respond at all.
So I decided to just give in and type clear words like 'happy' and 'sad'. The game seemed to understand those, as well as 'despondent'. Given a couple of similar projects I've seen recently, I suspect that what's underneath the hood is 'sentiment analysis', where there is a database of dictionary words with a score associated to them about how positive and negative they are. Or not; I could be completely wrong. But that's what it feels like.
Like the other games, this has a classic short story inserted uncut and unchanged with a framing story around it. I'm not sure why this is the pattern; the short story is interesting, but it doesn't affect my feelings about the new parts of the game. It's kind of like buying a car and entering it into a car-decaling competition and putting a realistic copy of the Mona Lisa on the hood and then adding your own work around it without altering the original in any way. I think I rather prefer remixes of originals more than juxtaposition; A Fifth of Beethoven is a great remix of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, for instance.
The framing story has some interesting elements, but I found it hard to find a narrative thread or two outside of mimicking the lottery element of the chekhov story. It's possible the main purpose of the sauce story is just to provide several opportunities for the stateful interaction that is mostly about reacting positively or negatively to something.
Fun fact: the image used in the cover art is from a picture of a baby lottery held in early 1900's Paris and featured in Popular Mechanics. Pretty wild!
For my rubric, I find this game both polished and descriptive, but the interactivity could use a little more pushback on words with neutral sentiment; my main emotional impact was from the Chekhov story rather than the surrounding material; and there's not a lot of replayability here.
A procedurally generated maze with some symbolic elements, October 24, 2022I really enjoyed Charm Cochrans previous game, and I was surprised at how different this was compared to that. That one was a religious-themed Twine game with good graphics and lush descriptions. This is a stripped-down parser maze.
It's well-implemented and runs smoothly. You are met at the beginning by a man who introduces himself to you and explains the maze. You then go through it.
While it seems hideously complex at first, the vast majority of the maze rooms have only one entrance and one exit. If mapping, it's only really necessary to write down the rooms with three exits, which are rare.
There are several layers of meaning in the game, from the base Inform implementation level (with little meaning in itself), to the maze itself, to the objects in the maze (like the lizard you can follow or string you can leave behind you), to the messages from Everyman and the LED tickers, to clear political statements that are plain and not symbolic (especially (Spoiler - click to show)the gravestones describing people who died from being denied an abortion for a non-viable pregnancy or who died without anyone using their real chosen name).
Overall, I enjoy surreal games and well-implemented games. I thought that a lot of the messages were delivered well, and if it is designed as a way to feel the frustration of being a marginalized person in a white male cishet-dominated world, I think it demonstrates it very well (also the frustration of caring about the climate or similar issues and getting a lot of promises that don't get acted on). But the main gameplay loop was not one that I enjoyed; a frustration simulator is still frustrating; a frustration parody is still frustrating; a metaphor for imprisonment through frustration is still frustrating.
But given that the game seems designed to incur those feelings, I can only conclude that the author has succeeded. Given that they've so far made an excellent Twine game and an very well-coded parser game, I can only expect that his next game will be brilliant.
A decadent and grimly humorous illustrated twine game about a terrible town, October 24, 2022This is a lavish Twine game that has you visit a town as an apprentice baker, set on making a cake for the town's Savings Day.
The real appeal of this game is the characters. You meet a variety of well-illustrated characters, each in a unique style that reminded me of Tim Burton or Ruby Gloom or the Haunted Mansion or even HxH's Palm. Each one has their own dark secrets to hide.
The game simultaneously has a lot of variety and very little. Every time, you must visit the same people to get the same things. But you do have a chance in how you treat them and what you discover. You even can choose from many endings, but all of the good endings have a lot of overlap.
There were some minor inconsistencies here and there (like the credits page softlocking the game by not offering a way out of it) that damped enjoyment, but this is one of my favorite games so far in terms of content, characters and art.
A somewhat unpolished but creative candy murder mystery, October 23, 2022My dad use to run a video game company, and one idea he always had was to make an incredibly bloody and vicious fighting game with entrails and gore, etc. but with all characters made of chocolate, so that it would technically pass Nintendo rules.
He never got around to making it, but this game reminds me of that concept. It's a hardboiled detective story with candy version of murder, gore, hardcore pornography (alluded to only), a strip club, etc. All of it is bowdlerized through the candy medium.
The author of this game has made quite a few interesting and/or bizarre experimental Twine pieces (and one using an RPG making software, I think), so I associate him with creativity and innovation in a choice medium.
In this move to the parser medium, he's brought the creativity and the amusement. One thing I think is lacking though is dealing with 'bad' parser responses. Due to the parser medium allowing theoretically infinite possibilities, a large part of parser craft is nudging players gently (or not) towards commands that actually do something. So more custom parser responses, implementation of basically every noun in every description (or turning them into synonyms of other nouns), etc. This can often take up a huge part of programming time, but it also represents a huge part of player time, since often half or more of a player's commands will result in an error, as they try out whatever they think of in the moment.
That, coupled with some capitalization problems in room names, makes me feel like what this needs more than anything is some more time in the oven. I've found that the best way to get this part of the game nailed down is to have a bunch of testers send transcripts and then implement a response for everything they try (or redirect it to a pre-existing response).
Overall, a clever concept.
A Texture game about a lost sister and your quest to find her, October 22, 2022This is a well-written texture game about a young woman who is desperate because her sister is missing.
Starting with a true crime-like opening, the game soon pivots in another direction.
This is written using Texture, which is an engine where actions are dragged onto nouns. As far as was apparent to me, this story is mostly linear, with choices either expanding some dialogue or moving the story along. It is possible there is some branching but I didn't find evidence of it.
I enjoyed the story and the characters. I felt it ended a bit abruptly (I had a successful ending), and would have liked to see more variety in interaction.
A Texture story about several ghosts in a graveyard, October 21, 2022I initially misinterpreted this game quite a bit. I found 2-3 bad endings early on and thought that was the whole game, and was pretty disappointed.
But it turns out it's actually a 'gauntlet' structure game, with multiple binary choices, one leading to death/failure, one leading to success.
If you find the right path, the game leads you through several different ghosts, each of which are very distinct from each other. The 'failure' text actually gives a lot of background you can't get from just succeeding; fortunately, the other coded in mini check points for these parts of the game.
I enjoyed this the most out of the texture games I tried during this competition. It had some interesting themes about grief and those who may or may not deserve it, as well as the fun cast of characters. It is polished and descriptive and has interesting interactivity, but I didn't feel a strong emotional connection for some reason or another. Worth checking out.
This was my former review:
This is a tiny game written in the Texture language, which involves dragging verbs onto nouns.
When I say tiny, I mean it's only 3 or 4 screens, with 1-3 possible actions per screen and a couple paragraphs per page.
Tiny isn't necessarily bad; I love the Twiny jam games, which had < 100 words each, and even made some of my own games inspired by them. But this game and story don't have any features that benefit from brevity, like branching or innovative twists.
What is here is entirely competent: nice artwork, interesting writing, some fun action design. It could be a fine story/game if expanded.
A short, minimal parser game about a hidden tomb, October 20, 2022This is a short parser game with a premise similar to Infidel. In it, you explore an underground tomb and have to discover a way out, since your friend shoved you into the tomb so that he could take the treasure for himself.
The map is pretty simple, laid out mostly east to west with a couple of branching rooms. There are a lot of unimplemented objects and identical objects (like a large proliferation of candles).
There's only one real puzzle; the rest of the game is essentially a red herring. The descriptions do sound cool; seeing it depicted visually would be fun I imagine it would look a bit like the tombs in Moon Knight.
I struggled with the main puzzle because I didn't pay close attention to the room descriptions. Overall I think does the story pretty well and some technical details pretty well, but overall could use some work. I think the author has good potential if they get more practice and maybe more beta testers.
A short Twine game with a few puzzles about aliens inspecting humans, October 20, 2022This is a brief Twine game that has some complex parts to it. You play as a alien technician or researcher working in a lab with a professor, going through a pile of human artifacts and trying to figure out what they're for. It's kind of like Little Mermaid, when Scuttle tries to guess what human artifacts are used for.
The game is a little unpolished; I found several typos and capitalization errors. It's pretty descriptive though, and it's funny when it shows the items it's been describing. The author does a pretty good job of thinking of objects from an alien point of view, but sometimes it's too on the nose (for instance, some human keys are described as possibly a physical form of an encryption key).
The puzzles can be pretty interesting (a color one threw me for a loop), but some segments that seem like they should be puzzles actually are taken care of as cut scenes.
Overall, I found it generally amusing, but didn't feel a strong desire to play again.
A real-time resource management zombie Twine game, October 20, 2022In this game, you have a brief introduction explaining how zombies have caused an apocalypse, and then you become the commander of a base that needs to defend from zombies.
As commander, you have people you can assign to tasks. In the Easy Mode I played in, there were 6 roles (farmer, builder, etc.) each with several subtasks. It was overwhelming at first, especially when different bars started counting down in real time, but once I realized how slow it was I realized there was tons of time to make decisions.
Maybe too much time; the game got a little repetitive pretty quickly. I focused on farming and finding more survivors until those maxed out, then built a research base and focused on finding a cure.
Overall, the writing was goofy, but descriptive and vivid, and the simulation held together surprisingly well. I think it could have used a bit more variety though; I spent most of the game with the game in a side window just running, waiting for it to be done.
A charming compact game about getting everything ready to go outside, October 20, 2022This one-room parser game has about 20 endings, of which I found 3 (one significantly more difficult to achieve than the others).
You are tired and hungover on the couch but need to get up and exercise by walking outside; it's explicitly set during this Covid-19 pandemic we're in, and I have the impression it's during a lockdown/quarantine.
I zig-zagged a lot with this game. My first thought when I started it was 'Oh man, that's a lot of unnecessary items in the first room.' This is what it said:
"The Living Room is standard-issue, complete with television, sofa, floor lamp, coffee table, side table, window, ceiling fan, rug, hardwood floor, and a thick layer of dust."
My second thought was, 'ha, if this is just a badly implemented game, I can just TAKE ALL and it will tell me what is important.' That seemed to work well, but then I started trying to explore and realized that this was actually a one-room game, and all those things were there not because this was a poorly scoped 'recreate my apartment' game, but because it was a single room with tons of detail.
The first puzzle was pretty hard for me because I wasn't exploring at first, just trying to reason things out. Once I worked out the game logic, I got better. I started using the hint mechanic in the game before I knew it was the hint mechanic (I felt less clever about solving all the puzzles I did once I found out I had technically been using all the hints).
Overall, it was clever how many puzzles were crammed into one room. I think that the descriptions could have used a bit of fleshing out; minimalism is a good style, but this didn't feel like aesthetically chosen minimalism, just quick and dry descriptions.
I think this game is fun, and can generally recommend it for puzzle fans.
A short surreal game about graduation and finding yourself, October 15, 2022This brief Ink game follows two teens, May and Jason, who are graduating soon and preparing to head off to college. They stroll through the woods and discuss their future.
Things start just slightly surreal and go further, but it never seems to shake the protagonists, just like how it is in a dream.
There might be some plot branching, but most of the choices feel like character determination to me, like role-playing, not even necessarily saved as game states.
There was some beautiful imagery in the game, young adults trying to find their place in the world literally represented as a journey through an allegorical world.
It felt a bit disjointed and brief, though. I worried I had skipped a whole chapter when I reached the end of the first act and clicked on a tiny, almost missable 'right arrow' and ended up in a very different place than the last chapter ended. But the table of contents seems to indicate I saw all 3 sections, so I guess the game itself is just a bit smaller than its story could allow.
Overall, a pleasant game to spend time with. According to my rubric, it's polished, descriptive, has good interactivity, and reminded me of pleasant times, but I wouldn't play it again.
Heartbreak in twine: a relationship comes to an end, October 13, 2022This is a brief Twine game about a painful breakup of a relationship.
I have to preface this by saying that I didn't play the actual game. I noticed it had timed, slow text which I found difficult to read as it didn't sync up with my regular speed, so I'd finish fast then wander back above and miss the next part coming in, having to catch up again, etc. So I downloaded the game and opened it up in Notepad++ changing all the (live: 12s) or other such numbers to (live: 0.1s) using regular expressions so it all loaded a lot faster. I noticed one chunk of text was timed to slowly spool out over 156 seconds, while with my normal reading speed it took 31 seconds to read the same material.
Anyway, sorry for digressing about something unrelated to the actual story.
The actual story is heartbreaking and felt familiar to me from events in my own personal life, so I really felt a connection to the situation. The emotions are handled pretty well, as is the internal dialogue; it felt true to life, for me.
Interestingly, (spoilers about the breakup details) (Spoiler - click to show)in my playthrough at least, it doesn't seem there was physical infidelity, or that if there was that it was the main issue. It seems instead that emotional infidelity is the problem, the idea that you were once someone's number 1 and now someone else is.. That really hit home and made this a lot more visceral, to me.
Overall, it lasts just as long as it seems it ought to; it's fairly maudlin but that's what I like. It contains some strong profanity. I think it's a great work; I personally would like no slow/timed text, since reading text naturally paces itself through spacing and paragraph size, etc., but this is of course completely up to the author.
Edit: I saw another review that had a very different take on this, and I realized that different paths must have different endings. I replayed and found a very different path that is actually the opposite of some stuff I said above. That's pretty cool to have that non-linearity.
A short Twine game about monsters in a scientific aquarium, October 12, 2022This is a short, basic Twine game about an aquarium where weird monsters are in a pool and you have to run away.
The game does give you some options; there are several situations where you have to search for items by clicking on a variety of links. There are also some big branches in the story, especially at the end. At least one final choice just lead to a blank page.
The formatting doesn't put blank lines between paragraphs, which I found pretty difficult to read. There are many typos such as no spaces after periods, it's vs its and capitalization. The dialog felt a bit unnatural, but I don't know why.
I found the overall story to be descriptive, but otherwise I think this story needed a bit more work. I think the author is capable of pretty fun stories given more time and more feedback prior to releasing.
Minimal python game, October 12, 2022I teach computer science at a high school, and we use python (and, in the past, Java). At the end of last year one student really enjoyed making randomized D&D combat scenarios and weapon creation tools, and did that as his final project.
This game is very similar in nature and quality, the same as a final project for an intro python course. It has a randomized character creator that can give you magic abilities, a cat, or neither, among other things. You have the option to walk around, trade for better items, or warp to a new area.
Walking around is the main feature. Often it would describe me finding something and then something happens. The most variable was chests; having a sword and finding a chest, you slash it open, and it can kill you, give you an entity that follows you, or give you money.
Dying has no real effect; you instantly respawn and you keep all your items, so it's the same as nothing happening.
I was able to buy a sword, a shield, a map (which I think helps you pick where to warp), and some magic arrows. The game ends when you get 100 coins.
Overall, if this were a student in my class, I'd give them an A for excellent work. As an IFComp entry, though, I think it lacks polish, is not very descriptive, has somewhat unsatisfying interactivity, and doesn't lend itself to emotional impact. The game achieves, I think, its author's goals, but my personal tastes weren't aligned with them.
A very stripped-down game about aliens invading, October 12, 2022Marco Vallarino is an author who has entered several complex and well-regarded games in previous IFComps, including the fun Darkiss series.
So it comes as a surprise that this game is very basic. It has a simple map; each room in the map has a sparse description and one or two items to interact with. The game is a series of fetch quests that tell you what to find next after depositing the most recent item.
I got stuck at one point because I didn't think to (late game spoiler about bypassing robot)(Spoiler - click to show)search the junk in the closet, and there was a key response that misled me: (Spoiler - click to show)Trying to unscrew the mirror when you don't have the screwdriver says 'you need to unscrew the mirror' instead of 'you don't have anything to unscrew it with' or something similar,, so I just assumed it was bugged till I looked at the walkthrough.
+Polish: The game has some missing punctuation and some misleading responses. But it works generally smoothly, with most the problems falling under the next criteria.
-Descriptiveness: The descriptions are very plain.
+Interactivity: Basic fetch quests are more or less the bread and butter of parser games, and this was short.
-Emotional response: I didn't feel a strong reaction to this game.
-Would I play again? No, it was pretty clear the first time through.
2 stars is pretty harsh, but I know this author is capable of making very fun parser games. This one was just not as fun as Darkiss to me.
A piercing twine story about a woman torn from her love, October 9, 2022This is a somewhat brief Twine game with at least 3 endings.
In it, you are a woman who is set to be married to a man you barely know, wearing a wedding dress you don't even like. You actually are deeply in love with a woman, but in your small, religious town everyone is violently opposed to lesbian relationships.
You are driving away from it all, but feel like you never get anywhere.
There are at least 3 endings I saw; most of the game is linear, with a couple of branch-and-return points and two major choice points that I found.
Here are my thoughts:
-Polish: The game's formatting was a bit all over. It often switches from a prose-mode to a more poetical-mode by putting a line break after each line, but it was little cluttered and might look better with more spacing.
+Descriptiveness: The writing is vivid and imaginative, often visceral, like when describing the death of an animal or the horrific aftereffects of (Spoiler - click to show)a car crash. The vivid writing is the main selling point.
+Interactivity: While its mostly linear, the choices available do allow for you to characterize yourself and it feels like your choices have understandable and clear consequences.
+Emotional impact: I felt a lot of sympathy for the protagonist.
+Would I play again? Yeah, I enjoyed this game personally and replayed it a few times.
A brief Ink game exploring a 'mind cave' of a dying witch, October 9, 2022In this Ink game, you are a spirit or something similar in the physically manifested version of a witch's mind. Or rather, the witch is in the 'mind cave' and you give her directions while she describes them.
There are several puzzly elements. I never died or got locked out, so its possible that you can't lost, but I'm not sure. I found things like a maze, a giant that attacks you, and then a wide, branching area with different doors, where one 'ultimate door' was unlocked by all the others, as well as alchemy puzzles, a whole city street, etc.
Sometimes things seemed like they had to be done exactly 1 way, but I got by anyway (for instance, I used one ingredient wrong in a potion). A lot of the game seems more about roleplaying than about getting things right, and I'm okay with that).
Overall:
-Polish: The game could be more polished. There were a few occasional but noticeable grammar problems, and the storyline feels a bit incoherent.
-Descriptiveness: Things are often assigned interesting names, but few details are given about them. We know nothing about a 'window with a yellow frame' except it's a window with a yellow frame. We know nothing about a giant except that he's giant; a cat is just a cat. Minimalism can work, but for me here it didn't.
-Interactivity: I just forged forward because I've seen this type of game before and figured almost any choices could work, but I wished there was more feedback.
+Emotional impact: I found the game actually fun; surreal stuff like this is one of my favorite types of writing.
+Would I play again? Yes, it would be fun to explore.
A single challenging chess puzzle, August 19, 2022This is the latest in Schultz's series of chess puzzles, some of which have a series of increasingly difficult simple puzzles, some of which focus on one or two challenging problems.
This focuses on a single endgame position. I struggled with it a bit; not being a chess person myself, some of the rules involved were a bit arcane to me (like the stalemate rules). And perhaps my biggest problem with the game is that the author assumes familiarity with how endgames run, making seemingly useful moves end instantly without much explanation (most were generally well explained, I'm just salty because I don't see how pc7 kc5 where the rook goes to d1 is a stalemate; I wish that particular one was either better explained or if it let the player make the move and try for a turn or two more before shutting it down). So I just had to rely on random guessing for the first few moves.
I thought about searching for help, and I did look on the forums, which reminded me to read the documentation, which helped me grasp things. In the end, it was satisfying. And I think that this was the most emotionally poignant of the chess games; while my main attraction to this game was the puzzle, the emotional aspects were a nice touch and well-integrated.
I do think there is a mistake in the verbs section (correct me if I'm wrong):
It says (Spoiler - click to show)"You can also say N to set (or re-set) the default piece to promote to, say, the knight. In this case, although K is usually the king in algebraic notation, K is referred to as the knight, since you can't have two kings on the board," but typing N just moves the king up a square. To actually change the promotion you have to type the letter of the piece you want to promote to after the move, like c8b for bishop. As written, the text implies that typing N lets you select what you promote into.
Slick-looking custom parser in Godot with sci-fi and monsters, August 13, 2022This game was entered in Parsercomp, and I'll admit I didn't finish it (though I got pretty far!)
You play as someone in a fairly secluded area that sees lightning hit a radiotower, and then strange things happening. I ended up exploring a very large house filled with bizarre tech.
The game is written in Godot, which I think is an open-source alternative to Unity (maybe I'm wrong?). The game loaded quickly and looked nice, with several animations and a map that updated frequently, and also some visual puzzles.
I struggled mightily at first to even see the game, as it was taller and wider than my laptop screen and didn't seem to have dynamic resizing. I tried fullscreening the browser, then I tried shrinking and fullsizing, and only then did I realize there was a 'fullscreen' button at the bottom. One itch option actually lets you make the game fullscreen from the beginning, I think.
Instead of having the player guess the commands or remember a commonly used set, like most traditional parsers, this game has a specific list of commands which can be used, about 6 on average. These commands don't admit any abbreviations, and while there are clickable links for each command, the links don't enter the commands for you; instead they tell you how to use them.
Text is split in three areas: the room description, the outcome of non-important action below that, and your input even further below, similar to Scott Adams games.
The game branches into several endings, some early, some later, and includes a lot of weapons of various efficacy and different monsters that randomly pop out to get you.
I encountered a game crashing bug early on (don't inspect the truck seat!) but I got around it. I got much further, until I found (Spoiler - click to show)a still figure watching the wall in a basement that took 3 weapons.. After I defeated it, with just a sliver of health left, the game said I needed to type NEXT to continue, but NEXT didn't work. Having encountered at least two game-locking bugs, and having heard that it ends on a cliffhanger, and having seem much of the game, I decided not to continue.
I get the impression that the author isn't heavily involved in a lot of current interactive fiction, and so just went with their own direction and imagination on what a parser game should look like, based on old memories (this is all wild assumptions). I find it nice to see what directions people would go in if not constrained by a wider society or community, and this seems pretty neat, kind of reminiscent of Adventuron, which seems to have had a similar development pipeline.
I give the game 2 stars for descriptiveness and emotional impact but bugs make it harder to give more. If fixed (along with typos and quality of life improvements), this would be a 4 or 5 star game.
A game allowing you to reflect on a static short story, August 12, 2022This game was entered in Parsercomp, then taken out, then put back in.
I had a hard time engaging with this game. It's written for an online format that forces the focus onto text boxes. You are supposed to type words into the box that the game recognizes.
At first, I tried to put whatever words I thought fit good, but then I tried the boundaries. It recognized 'felicitation' but not 'felications', for instance. Eventually, I started typing 'fart' in every box and the game was just fine with that. It was a little dumb of me, but I wondered how it would respond.
And it didn't really do much. The main part of the story is a sci-fi story, which I felt was oddly watered down and non-descriptive. I tried to copy a paragraph of the text to pick at it and analyze it, but that's when I realized the game forced the focus so you couldn't highlight anything. In any case, I was trying to figure out what I didn't like about it, and I realized it reminded me of the overly wordy and empty-of-meaning style of writing popular in certain older books. I was surprised to find later that this story wasn't new to the author, but borrowed from a 1950's publication, which I seemed to have not noticed when it was mentioned.
Between snippets of this text, there are two characters having a conversation about the text, with blank boxes for you to fill in like mad-libs. These conversations are mostly analyzing the text.
Overall, the game was polished and very complex, but I bounced off of the main story and the side story. I think it has an appeal, definitely to other people, but for me the whole thing felt a little bloodless.
From a technical standpoint it seems very impressive, overall!
A promising time travel game with some rough edges, August 12, 2022This game was written in four days, which is very impressive given how complex it is.
This is a time travel game with 3 different periods you can hop back and forth between. You can also send items to different time periods as well.
Your goal is to go back and say goodbye to a girl you love who died, but in a different timeline.
There are about 6 or 7 different puzzles, and it's engaging, but there are a lot of rough edges. Especially in the graveyard, where I tried tons and tons of words, none of which were implemented. There are typos as well
I think this would be an amazing game if it was tested and polished. As it is, though, it is merely a promise of a future good game.
A unity game with text-completion parser set in Antarctic base, August 9, 2022This game was originally written in Godot and ported to Unity.
You play as a researcher in an Antarctic base. You need to get up, shower, eat, and check out some samples.
Unlike most parser games, there's not much freedom in what you can type. It lists the commands you can use (usually 2-4), and when you type one in, it lists the possible objects/directions. It's highly constrained, so there are usually < 5 possible options at any point.
This kind of takes away the best part of a parser game (freedom) and the best part of a choice game (speed), leaving a bit of frustration.
This game has several typos and is unfinished. I think the core idea is great and fun (I like Antarctic base games) but it just needs more work and more time.
A german game book about combat and economy, June 13, 2022This is the final German IF Grand Prix 2022 game I played. It's a static pdf that's a gamebook.
You keep track of an inventory, health, money, and time. The main gameplay revolves around rolling dice for combat with slimes and kobolds, as well as, later on, some human combatants.
There are several 'grind zones' where you can fight with enemies and gain wealth as long as you like.
I found the game fairly tough to play as intended the first time through, with only 5 health and a lot of enemies that have a 33% chance to beat them per roll, and losing 1 health per loss. But it was fun.
I felt like the setting was often a bit generic, kind of like a random JRPG (you have villages with inns for recovery, slimes are the main enemy, etc.)
Overall, not life-changing but fun for a short time.
A short german Commodore 64 game about crashing in antarctic, June 12, 2022In this game, you crash-land near an abandoned arctic station and have to find your way to civilization.
I was worried at first, as playing a commodore 64 game in a foreign language seemed daunting. But the game actually has a great layout emphasizing important items and directions, and had many simple shortcuts to make the game easier.
There could be some improvements overall; the game is fairly short, not a lot is explained, and there's at least one typo I noticed. But I definitely appreciate the simplicity and it had a cute animal NPC.
A german parser game full of hidden implications, June 8, 2022This game takes place in a small apartment after you have moved in with your wife Laura. Most of the house is filled with packed boxes.
This game is remarkable for what it doesn't tell you, kind of like 9:05 in several ways. I've played several games by this author before that I felt like were rich and vivid. In contrast, this game is stark and minimalistic.
Essentially, you're trying to fall asleep but you feel a bit agitated. You need to find ways to calm yourself. There's a timer before you have to wake up at 7.
In the middle of the night, things change. You're awoken by a disturbance and need to investigate it.
I imagined that this would open up new areas to explore, but it didn't, really. Instead, careful exploration is required and you need to think about what kind of things would work logically for you in this situation.
In the end, the game was very polished, purposely non-descriptive, had interesting interactivity but didn't really connect with me emotionally. I could see myself playing again.
Note: I had to decompile to figure out some actions.
A short, one-room german comedy game about disasters, June 5, 2022This German game has an English version, Wry, which was entered into Spring Thing and which was well-received.
I actually enjoyed this version a bit more, which I guess, for me, lends credence to the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis. I really appreciated how the game led you on on what to do, and how responsive it was, in general. In addition, I saw less of the ribald fantasies in this version, as I knew less commands to try out lol.
There were a couple of minor issues; looking at the wall gave a response in English ("On the wall above the sofa hang several pictures"), and X BILDER still lists a young lady being among the pictures even when the canvas has slipped out. But overall, I found this enjoyable and fresh.
Gorgeous graphics mixed with classic puzzles but confusing systems, May 18, 2022This Adventuron game takes full advantage of the system's graphical capabilities. It has excellent pixel art for a multitude of characters and mini-games.
You play as a young sentient animal on a spaceship. You want to be a star, so you go around the ship talking to others and getting advice.
Most interactivity is in the form of riddles or puzzles. There is a language-to-language duolingo-like game for learning languages, a graph theory problem, a logic puzzle, a cryptogram, math problems, etc.
An immense effort has been put into this game. Unfortunately for me, most of it was put into the areas that I am not quite as interested in. As for the main play, there are some frustrations. For instance, typing LOOK won't bring up the room description again, so you have to leave and come back to find out who's there. There is a chicken wing tree, but after you pluck one off and try to eat it it acts like you don't have it. There are occasional typos that distract. Overall, I had fun, but I think the very high production quality of the rest of the game gave me higher expectations for the text-based part.
The art is the best part of the game, with good shading and 3d perspectives.
Pleasant little illustrated Adventuron game intended for younger audiences, May 17, 2022This game was entered into the 2022 Text Adventure Literacy Jam. It has some lovely illustrations and uses the Adventuron engine.
You've lost your pet dog and have to explore a spooky mansion. A tutorial helps you out to get started. Most puzzles revolve around EXAMINing things and TALKing to people. There are a lot of cute characters, like philosophical skeletons and silly pumpkins.
It's not too long, but some of the puzzles were moderately challenging. One lasted a little bit longer than I would have wished, but overall this is one of the strongest games in the competition.
A kid's parser game for protecting Australian wildlife from a forest fire, May 17, 2022Garry Francis is a prolific author, specializing in text adventures with a focus on puzzles and core parser gameplay (like GET/DROP/etc.). This game and the other one he released in the same competition (The Carpathian Vampire) show a lot of growth in implementation and puzzle design.
This is one of the smoothest games of the comp. You play as a koala who is also a bushfire warden for the surrounding wildlife. You have to provide for yourself and all those around you.
The main charm in this game is the vivid descriptions of australian wildlife and plants, with background action happening (like skinks crossing your path), a garden area with tons of plants, and puzzles revolving around Australian wildlife.
I think this is pretty great, and was glad to play it. My one desire might be for a couple of additional things to implement for consistency. One puzzle, for instance, was only solved by (Spoiler - click to show)the verb ASK [person] ABOUT [something], while a later puzzle had a character (the owl) who didn't respond to ASK OWL ABOUT [topic] for most topics that mattered; instead, this was a TALK TO puzzle, which was somewhat inconsistent with the earlier puzzles.
Explore an underwater area with magic, May 17, 2022This is an Adventuron game written for the Text Adventure Literacy Jam. It's parser based and has you diving into the ocean, exploring for treasure.
Here's my rating:
-Polish: I feel like the game could be brushed up a bit. The tutorial isn't reactive; instead you have to type RUN TUTORIAL separately in two rooms, and in one of those rooms it just lists several turns' worth of info, whereas other tutorials in this comp reacted to your actions. Similarly, more synonyms could be added.
-Descriptive: Many objects weren't described. The descriptions in the game are easy to picture, though.
-Interactivity: This game involves guessing the verb a lot. For instance, opening the chest: (Spoiler - click to show)OPEN CHEST and UNLOCK CHEST don't have meaningful responses, but PLACE GEM does. And after you open it, (Spoiler - click to show)TAKE LIGHT, ENTER LIGHT, LOOK IN LIGHT, SEARCH LIGHT, ENTER CHEST, none of it works, except for TOUCH LIGHT.
-Emotional impact: It was hard to connect with the game, because I was frustrated.
-Would I play again? Same as above.
The game isn't that bad overall, but I wish that more people had tested it and that things the testers tried were implemented. If that had happened, I would definitely give this game a higher score, because it has a lot of good ideas; it's only bug-fixing and adding more responses that I think it could use.
A combo parser/link .exe game about collecting raspberries, May 16, 2022This game has a pretty unusual format. It's a .exe file entered into the Text Adventure Literacy Jam, and it features a bar for typing in parser commands as well as hyperlinks to make play easier.
I used just the hyperlinks, as typing was unusual. It may have been just me, but it seemed like I couldn't hit enter and get a response unless it was an acceptable command, which was weird because I couldn't tell if the game was lagging or if I just didn't have the right command.
The links operate by single-clicking for directions, double-clicking to use items or pick them up, and clicking once on one item and once on another to use them together.
The puzzles are fairly simple, mostly exploring and grabbing whatever you command. Finishing one puzzle generally unlocks the next.
I had a couple of frustrations. The text color was similar to the background image, making it hard to read. Text scrolling with a mouse was required, but the mouse wheel doesn't scroll. And there are some text mistakes that make things confusing.
A cute smallish game about a troll helping magical creatures, May 13, 2022I think this game does exactly what its creator seems to have wanted to do: make a light parser game with intuitive commands in a fun environment with lovely ascii art pictures.
You play as a troll who is lonely. All around you are magical creatures (one per region, each depicted with ASCII art). They all have desires found in a book, and essentially give you a bunch of fetch quests you have to accomplish.
Overall:
+Polish: The game is very smooth and polished.
+Descriptiveness: The characters are vibrant and unique.
+Interactivity: The game is simple, but has enough resistance (through multiple sources of info and several possible targets) to make it fun.
+Emotional impact: I enjoyed the game and art.
+Would I play again?: Yes, and may recommend it to others.
A solid, compact game with fair puzzles and a light difficulty, May 12, 2022This is a vampire game designed for the Text Adventure Literacy Jam. It's aimed towards beginners, and I think serves its purpose fairly well.
You begin outside a dark castle and have to find a way in. The tutorial will take you all the way through this part, about 1/10-1/5 of the game.
Inside, you have to explore the small castle and figure out a way to stop the vampire. There are quite a few items including red herrings, but everything is logical. I got stuck because I didn't notice one room exit at first.
There's not a ton of tension here. As a tutorial game, that's fine, and I've done the same in my own tutorial games, but I would wish for more in a bigger game. There's some nice atmospheric messages, though.
A short, linear adventuron game about a kobold looking for home, May 7, 2022This is a brief adventuron game entered into the Text Adventure Literacy Jam.
In it, you play as a little kobold thrown off a cart in a medieval town, and have to go find your way home.
It is a 'gauntlet'-style game, meaning that you face one challenge at a time and either pass it or die. The game has an instant-rewind feature, but there are numerous ways to die and some are better-signaled than others.
Some of the puzzles require a bit of cleverness to solve, while others require finding the right combination of words. Emily Short once said that once you know mentally how to solve a puzzle, a game should make it easy to get that to happen (without struggling with the right wording). As a converse to that, I'd like to say that a good game should also make it clear when you're on the right track. A lot of puzzles in this game ignore alternate solutions or don't provide helpful feedback (I'm looking at the door puzzle here the most).
Overall, I would have preferred less learning-by-dying and more simultaneous puzzles and more striking text descriptions. The best part for me was the sense of being stealthy.
Co-op sci-fi game about family in a slightly futuristic setting, April 30, 2022This game was inspired by The Last Night of Alexisgrad, an IFComp multiplayer twine game where the participants passed codes back and forth to each other.
The author of this game goes further by connecting players through a session ID that allows simultaneous communication in-game through choices. There is even a time portion, although it seems designed in a way that many playthroughs of the timed portion would not need collaboration, which is helpful.
The game is set in a somewhat futuristic setting where genetically engineered animals and cybernetically modified humans exist but are uncommon.
The two players take the role of two adopted/foster children of Ma Tiger, a rich woman entangled in shady business who has asked them to meet together with her after many years.
The MCs are a study in contrasts, one a man who is relatively happy and at peace, and a woman who is dangerous and has much to hide.
The game is fairly brief, which is good for a multiplayer game. The roughly 30 minutes play time advertised is generally accurate.
I played through twice, and your fellow player's choices definitely affect the game. That drew me into the storyline more. The plot arc is necessarily contracted; if anything, this feels like a setup to a longer game in the same universe, not in the sense that it leaves a sequel hook, but just that many plot elements seem like they could be developed much further and there doesn't seem to be a significant emotional resolution for either character.
Overall, a solid concept. It was a bit hard to find people to match up with; perhaps one day there will be a massive online server of people just waiting to sign up to play co-op twines, but it hasn't happened yet!
A time-travel loop game about a school and potatoes, April 30, 2022This game has a great deal of potential but unfortunately doesn't pan out yet in many areas. From reading about the game, I wonder if a lot of time was spent trying out different interactive fiction engines.
You play as a young high school student who goes to school and gets stuck in a time loop. You have to replay over and over to progress.
I had a bit of trouble with figuring out how the game worked. A lot of options seem to send you to a fake-death the first time you go to them, but then they are important later.
The formatting uses centered text and no paragraph breaks. I think it would have been a bit easier to read with left-aligned text and paragraph breaks, and using a serif font and colors with less contrast than pure black and pure white.
The writing has grammar that sounds off, especially with comma use or punctuation around quotations.
Overall, I think the underlying idea is solid and there are some funny moments, but I felt unsatisfied.
A voice-acted story of memory and music, April 29, 2022This is a story about cleaning out your mother's house after she died. As you explore the house, you discover little secrets and memories here and there, piecing together a larger puzzle.
It's a melancholy game, and has some nice voice acting. The pacing of the voice acting is interesting; only the text in quotes is read out loud, but if there is narrative text between quotes then there is a space in the audio, which I can only presume is to give people a time to catch up. So it kind of presupposes the reader's reading speed, but it worked generally well for me.
The story is sad, overall, but in some ways bittersweet. One of the scenes hints at the MC being trans, but I don't believe that's related to the overall sadness.
I don't use headphones and play IF around others, usually, so I had to schedule special times to play this, but I do feel the audio effects were positive and contributed to the story.
It includes a puzzly element at the end that provided some good interaction, and exploring worked well earlier on.
Voice-activated interactive fiction game about taking a baby to daycare, April 28, 2022I helped beta-test this game.
This game uses a custom parser first developed in Kidney Kwest, but with a twist: it's intended to be played entirely vocally.
The parser encourages you to use full sentences (so 'open door' might throw a warning that it's better to say 'open the door'). It also is designed from the ground up and seems to involve a lot of built-in systems. So, for instance, asking about the location of a thing will usually tell you what room it's in, what region it's in, etc. Due to this systematic nature, sometimes the game will omit capitalization or punctuation, but this usually not detectable in the voice version. A final issue is saying 'put Time on [anything]' (a phrase I said a lot because in my accent Time sounds like Tom to the computer), the parser says 'a bottom is not on a time'.
The game itself is simple, and gives you a lovely tutorial that shows you how the whole system works. The tutorial is, itself, a small game. The larger game is mostly interacting with things: doors, keys, containers.
When I beta tested, I completed the game, although it seems to have been expanded since then. This time I believe I got locked in an unwinnable state since I (Spoiler - click to show)left the baby in the car and went inside, and the car took off without me. Overall, I think this technology is interesting and must have been very complex to program.
A woman falls into a strange complex under standing stones, April 28, 2022This is a mid-length Twine game where you play as a visitor to some standing stones who is sucked into the ground and deposited in a strange room.
Gameplay is mostly based on exploration, inventory and examination. There is a bizarre, alien world to explore.
Overall, the concept was interesting, but I had friction in random places. There was a ton of profanity for no real reason (the game starts with a few screens of just the F-word over and over again), each page had an animation before the next page which was cool at first but slowly wore out its welcome, and a lot of choices were hard to strategize with (like choosing left or right in a featureless corridor, or only having one option)).
I definitely felt some atmosphere from the writing, and that was to me the biggest success in this story. It gave me Brian David Gilbert vibes so I start listening to some of his songs while playing.
Short and clever escape game, April 27, 2022I think it would be fair to describe this as an escape room game. You wake up in the dark and have to navigate from there until you exit the room.
This is exactly the kind of game that works well with La Petite Mort (the four hour competition): has a concept that wouldn't work as well in a longer game, has a constrained setting to allow for more detail.
I didn't encounter any implementation problems at all, which is pretty impressive. Definitely had a fun time with this little puzzler.
A cute but dramatic story about a dog and his ball , April 27, 2022This is a story intended for beginners, and I believe may be the author's first published game.
It's a brief parser game with a dog protagonist. You have been hurried away from your regular home and, in the tussle lost the ball.
There is a larger overarching plot, where (very early spoilers) (Spoiler - click to show)the reason you are shuttered away is because bombs are dropping in Ukraine. This makes for a dramatic storyline, and what started as a personal search for a ball becomes something more selfless, urgent and important.
The game uses a fun mechanic where 'smell' is as important as 'look'.
There are some errors, mostly things that are difficult to deal with in Inform (like extra punctuation and capitalization). Other than that, this is a surprisingly smooth game with a story that ended up feeling nice.
Thoughtful musings on life and running away, with game-breaking bug, April 23, 2022This is a game written in Squiffy, which is based on the engine that Quest uses but is choice-based.
You play as someone who walked away from a relationship and is going cross country on late-night/early-morning busses.
It does a good feel of evoking that wistful travel feeling when you've left something behind and are passing by other people's lives, people you'll never see again but feel important in the moment.
Unfortunately, there is one passage that contains no links to any other passages (in a section on a movie), and this makes the game no longer possible to play. It's possible to fix this by opening the game up in a text editor and adding a link to the next passage. I didn't do so, but read ahead.
Overall, thoughtful and musing. I wish there were a way to tell which links were exploratory and which links moved the story forward.
A tale of a dark and twisted family, told through twine, April 23, 2022This is a Twine game with few options, more of a kinetic fiction than a game per se. It's also one of the most effective uses of such a structure I've read (another effective one I could recommend is Polish the Glass).
The story is about the Bladesmith family, a twister group of individuals that read like villains from An Unfortunate Series of Events if it was aimed at a slightly older demographic. Abuse, fraud, deceit and murder follow the family and everyone in it.
It includes amusingly absurd elements (like the multitude of Mildreds) and provocatively vulgar elements (like the opening scene of a man smearing faeces on the glass).
Overall, here's my assessment:
+Polish: The game feels quite smooth overall. There were at least two typos (squeeking vs squeaking and some other typo near the end), but they were minor in the grand scheme of things.
+Descriptiveness: Very vivid and detailed writing.
+Interactivity: While mostly linear, the story does allow little sidebars and choice of navigation that lent interest to the story.
+Emotional impact: I found it both amusing and morbid.
-Would I play again? While I found it very well-done, it has a edge to it that's not my personal preference. I only enjoy darkness in media if it sets off an inner light.
Fantasy game with some 3d graphics and required login, April 23, 2022This game requires you to create an account with an email and name and to accept cookies, which felt like a lot. I used a burner email and fake other things.
The idea is that you are a young man named George who is the son of a blacksmith and knows the royal family. Every year, a young maiden gets sacrificed to a dragon, but this year, you hope to help stop that.
Here's my overall rating:
+Polish: The images look a bit strange, like the princess wearing some kind of autumnal leaf pajamas. Otherwise, I didn't run into errors.
-Descriptiveness: A lot of details are just skimmed over or assumed. Plot twists happen in quick succession without a lot of forewarning or explanation.
-Interactivity: It was a bit confusing figuring out what to do, or what did what. At one point you're given a ton of gold, but then it doesn't really come up again. I grabbed a fire crystal, but it said I needed a sword; later I was given a sword, but it never came up whether I used the crystal. Exploring a royal camp ended up showing me part of a villain's base, but it just seemed out of nowhere.
-Emotional impact: I had difficulty becoming emotionally invested in the story.
+Would I play again? I'd probably like to see other endings.
To be fair to the author, a significant amount of work went into this game. I may have been prejudiced from the start, as I enjoy the quick, anonymous, pick-up-and-put-down nature of more text IF, so having a full-screen graphics-based game with mandatory account creation likely put me off from the actual content.
Six horror stories told through real-time mechanisms, April 23, 2022This game is an interesting experiment in involving real-time in text games.
Basically, there are several storylines going one in different motel rooms as well as outside. You have peepholes into 5 motel rooms. Every minute or so of real time, a counter updates the in-game time and you see new things in the different rooms. Occasionally, you can affect things by being in the right place at the right time (the vast majority of these being deaths).
It's an interesting concept, but it was hard to puzzle out in-game, and I only heard it from others and saw it in the code. Without knowing how it works, the game seems oddly repetitive as you see the same scenes over and over, since they don't change until the next 'tick'.
The writing and plot is similar to B-movies, with some strong profanity, a voyeuristic but not explicit sex scene, and violence. Plots are mostly tributes to classic horror movies, although at least one seems non-magical.
Overall, I'm not sure this timed method worked for me, but I'm glad someone did it so I could see how it works. A couple of the stories were effectively creepy for me.
Awkward party simulator with meta-commentary, April 19, 2022This is an intricate Dendry game where you spend New Year's Eve at a party with your parents, friends and acquaintances. You've burned a lot of bridges in the past, and it's all coming back to get you know.
I was surprised at the end to see that Depression Quest was not on the list of inspirations, as it has a lot of similarity with this game. Options that are selected are denied due to your bad feelings, or greyed out in the first place. Things you'd like to say can't be said, etc.
The New Year's Eve setting provides a good backdrop for the time limit, which is until 12:00. Just like a real party, it first feels like there's too much to do and then too little. This game directly reminded me of all the reasons I don't enjoy big parties with people outside my own family, especially parties where romance is possible but unlikely.
Romance is a theme in the game, but not in a positive way; there are numerous former crushes running around. Edit: (there actually are some positive romantic elements, but I found more negative options due to my choices)
The game has excellent attention to detail, especially in Chinese-heritage culture. Characters are provided, usually with translation, and the game describes food, drinks, Mah Jong, etc., together with westernized/globalized additions like Marvel movies and pumpkin pie.
Overall, this is a strong game. I appreciated its meta-commentary at one point about how it feels like interaction with human beings is an optimization puzzle, and I've felt like that before. The only thing for me that I didn't click with was the waiting around aimlessly that happened a little more than I would have preferred. Perhaps it was due to my own actions, though.
I played this as part of the Seattle IF meetup, and then played on my own later.
Space-based twine game with some realistic images and procedures , April 17, 2022There is a long tradition in IF of space games where you start alone in or near a damaged space station and have to make it out alive or at least figure out what's happened. It's a genre I enjoy.
This one goes out of its way to focus on realistic aspects, something I haven't seen much before. A lot of images directly from NASA are used, as well as a variety of free images online that have been modified, with accompanying music.
Using airlocks requires a variety of processes, including exercising! Hadn't known that was a thing with pressure changes before.
I ran into a couple of issues with lists not lining up (numbers and text was mismatched) but I think that might just be my Chrome browser, as the same thing happened with a website my son was working on, so I don't think it's the author's fault.
The only thing I felt really lacking here was emotional engagement. The processes were interesting and clinical, and there were definitely places I could have hooked in emotionally (a picture of family, the loss of Commander Rico), but for whatever reason I just didn't feel that connection. Overall, well done scientific space adventure.
A complex meta-story about the struggle to exist and be seen in the IF world , April 17, 2022This game/narrative is one that references the IF world directly, something I'm always interested to see. I've played Bez's games since 2015 and been listening a lot on Twitter, so I was interested to see how things coalesce.
The result is a complex narrative similar in structure to last year's The Dead Account, but with very different content. Both games put you in the role of a moderator closing down the account of someone who's passed on, a kind of in-memoriam/Citizen Kane/Spoon River anthology review of someone's life and whether they are of worth.
What makes this game unusual is in its complex rewriting of reality and the IF world. It's a difficult feat to call out an entire community without calling out the individual people in it; to do so, Bez has created an entire false community replete with echoes of shadows of real people but which is so entirely different as to render it impossible to point fingers. This is a real feat; I feel like I've been embedded in the community under question here and played a role in many of these events but I couldn't point a finger at any person and say 'I know who that is!
For instance, the Jot Archive Volunteer Project is strongly reminiscent of both IFDB, the intfiction forums, twitter, and the old rec.arts.int-fiction forums and IFMUD. MrDear makes me thing of Ryan Veeder, Mr Patient/Sean Shore, Graham Nelson, etc.
The content of the game is several years worth of tweets or posts, describing a journey through games that is clearly (even mentioned as such in the author's note) Bez's own journey through the IF world, even if it doesn't always meet up one to one. Sometimes, the parallels are obvious (Bez's Queer in Public vs Algie's "Queer As F*** Because F*** You"), and other times its harder (there doesn't seem a clear parallel to the real 2020's Lore Distance Relationship, Bez's most popular game).
Points made about the community include:
-Twine is often overshadowed in big competitions by parser; even though there are clear outliers it remains the reality for most entrants
-Cis white males often have more success in IF with what seems to be less effort
-Due to the prominent position of some women in IF (which I'd assume would refer to both cis women like Emily Short and trans women like Porpentine), the marginalization of most people who aren't white cis men goes unnoticed
It's hard to disagree with those points.
Beyond that, there's some excellent quotes about writing games in general which I copied down:
"Making games is about giving somebody a hidey-hole to see my heart through if that makes sense? And nobody seems to really care about that imho."
I've often thought that IF and writing in general is a way of sharing a piece of your soul with someone. So I agree with that. But then he presents a new thought which hadn't occurred to me:
"But it is also only the version of me that was preserved at that time. AND does not mean you 100% know me or what I’m thinking. Unless I say it is all me in there, don’t assume that ffs."
I've never really thought about how media takes a snapshot of our current selves and saves it for the future, whether we want it to or not. I think that explains a lot of older authors wanting to remove things they wrote in the past that were objectionable or cringe.
And this is the last thing I copied down:
"I feel like my need for external approval is an ouroboros that will never EVER be fulfilled. Either I seek it and don't get it (often) or I seek it and do get the level I wanted (rare) but it ain't enough. My goal is so far away, and it keeps moving, so maybe I gotta lower my damn expectations—towards myself and in the IF world."
The end of the game concludes with Bez's current reality and deepest fears brought together to their possible end: the death of an author after a forgetting mind disease, followed by a second death when the community forgets him.
As a side note, I found it emotionally jarring when the game started with you helping an older IF figure to prune and delete people's old stuff, because that's what I'm actually doing in real life right now, working on a project where I close out people's old stuff that's no longer relevant. Fortunately, it's just bug reports, so no one's hard work or creative labor is being lost.
Assigning a rating to a game like this is behaving exactly like the narrative actors it contains, who judge and rank and sort and gatekeep. However, I am going to do so anyway:
+Polish: The game is thoroughly polished
+Descriptiveness: The writing is vivid and detailed.
+Emotional impact: clearly the game resonated with me
+Would I play again? I think so.
?Interacivity: On one hand, there's not much to do besides run through the list of things and then make a decision. On the other hand, the game itself talks about how stories don't have to be approached as systems first and stories later. On the other hand, I don't think I should give a high rating in a category just because the game calls it out. On the final hand, though, I wanted to rethink my decision at the end and spent a while reloading the page because there was no immediate reload, so it seems clear the interactivity worked for me at some level.
Angelic intervention with a creepy father-like being, April 15, 2022This was a game of big contrasts for me. There were parts of it that were phenomenal and parts I struggled with.
This is a story about a young girl alone at home whose father is outside, texting her to let him in. The problem is, though, that her father was in the study just a little while ago.
I loved the writing in this. Vivid and surreal images mixed together for a very creepy feel. It reminded me of some goosebumps stories when I was younger, like the one where the dad was a plant scientist.
I had a couple of problems with the choice structure, though. Where I struggled the most was:
-It was hard to differentiate between 'side-topic choices' and 'move on' choices. There are two distinct kinds of choices in the story: pink boxes and in-line links. But sometimes an inline link was a 'moving on' choice and sometimes a 'side-topic', and you couldn't tell just from placement. The pink boxes looked a bit out of place, too.
-I felt out of sync with the options. Something scary would happen, and I'd think 'I have to get out!' but the options were always things like 'Hang out and explore' or 'eat some food'. For some reason I couldn't get my mind in sync with the character.
I love horror and find this writing style to be very enjoyable, so I'd definitely like to see more games from this author. I just hope that I'll be more in synch with the choice structure next time.
Shakespeare, twine, and time travel, April 15, 2022This fantasy twine game is modeled on Shakespeare's language and style of writing, and deals with bandits in search of a temple with a hidden treasure.
The story has some fascinating elements of time travel and Pictish culture, of which I learned many new things (one I didn't fully learn was the other name for Picts, and so I haven't used it here as I've forgot it).
There are some interesting mechanics, such as a variable amount of gold that you can bribe someone with, with varying results. The styling looks quite nice.
I didn't feel completely drawn into the game, for whatever reason. Partially it might be because some of the language was off, like using 'thy' as a subject or the '-st' suffix for the third person tense. I enjoy Shakespeare quite a bit too, and I feel it could have been a little closer.
Overall, though, the game feels quite polished and I expect that I would enjoy further works by this author.
A pleasant and engaging anagram game, April 14, 2022Out of the many wordplay games Andrew Schultz has made, the anagram ones are perhaps my favorites (along with Threediopolis). I feel like coming up with anagrams is hard enough to be fun but easy enough not to be overwhelming or send me to hints or online solvers right away.
This is a compact game, set on a circle (or torus) with 7 different locations. Each one is solvable through an anagram.
After that, there is a motion puzzle that is a little tricky to solve. What is going on, exactly? Well, it seems like they want you to (strong spoilers without an explicit solution) (Spoiler - click to show)visit every square of the torus, never moving more than half its length at once, and varying your steps somewhat.
It took me quite a while to figure out what was wanted here, as I kept finding solutions deemed 'too easy'.
Overall, I'd say this is a fairly challenging game, and definitely one not to miss for fans of the first two, longer games.
A mildly raunchy comedy game about an insurance salesman, April 14, 2022This is a one-room parser game with a lot of little and big gags in it. You are an insurance salesman waiting for a noble Baroness to arrive to sell insurance too.
In the meantime, though, several mishaps occur, each more ridiculous than the last.
Like others, I found the ending abrupt and thought there might be more. Decompiling the source code, I could find no solution to (Spoiler - click to show)the burning curtains, while at least one other reviewer found that reaching the part of the game with more points gave an alternate ending.
Our male character has a sexual fixation with the baroness, and it crops up enough that I personally found it annoying, as I don't associate such material with positive feelings.
Overall, the comedic timing was well-done, and outside of the ending I found the puzzles not too hard and also engaging.
A chilling and well-researched ghost story in Manitoba, April 7, 2022This is an Adventuron game set in the plains of Manitoba. It involves research about local plants and wildlife and about Ukrainians who emigrated to Canada.
It also contains a jumpscare, so fair warning! Scared me quite a bit. Just the one scare, though.
Overall, it's a well-done horror story that is elevated by the obvious research and care into the background details. It has 10 different achievements, of which I found 8.
Overall:
*Polish: I didn't run into any parser problems, the art is well-done and the prose is smooth.
*Descriptiveness: A lot of vivid imagery and attention to detail.
*Interactivity: I liked the open-endedness of the achievements but also always had something to do.
*Emotional impact: Pretty scary, although 80% of it was the jumpscare.
*Would I play again? Yeah, I think I could.
A ghost story used to contemplate unhealthy relationships, March 31, 2022This is a thoughtful game, a mostly-linear ghost story about a roommate that haunts the place and about relationships and our dealings with the others.
I liked the writing in this, it's really about turning an inner eye on ourselves and seeing the bad habits and unhealthy relationships that we have let become so natural that we can't even see them anymore.
It also has an interesting take on ghosts, similar to but slightly different from most representations I've seen in media.
Amazing concept and potential but overall missing; horror story, March 17, 2022This a a very well-written but overall unstrusctured short, linear twine story about a funeral home late at night, and a cat.
It cites influences like House of Leaves, and has a bilingual protagonist, with the game including vivid details of a Hispanic family's life and culture. The protagonist is relatable and there's some great scene-by-scene writing.
This setup gave me huge expectations, but the story ends with a very quick infodump and sudden ending with nothing but a 'start over' link. It felt like it was missing a third of it; the ending could have worked with more middle exposition, or it could have worked with a longer denouement, but I was left feeling unsatisfied. But I would love to read more by this author, as I love the style.
A deep dive into an erratic and selfish character (a squirrel), March 16, 2022This is a weird game.
It's a unity-based visual novel with some video title cards, jazz music (or maybe ragtime?) and static cut-outs of animals.
You play as what I can only describe as a deeply disturbed squirrel, one out of touch both with the thoughts and emotions of others but also with physical reality itself.
While the game isn't super long (about 5 or 6 vignettes), each explores a dark facet of the human existence. It feels like the 'depressing half' of Anna Karenina (the one centered on Anna, as opposed to Kitty and Levin).
But in the end, even a narcissistic and untethered-to-reality squirrel deserves to live and has some human worth, and is perhaps deserving of love (although this goes against the squirrels own desires, so maybe not).
All in all, I didn't expect the pieces of this game to fall together for me the way they did, but I think I'll end up contemplating this for a while.
Extremely relatable writer simulator, March 14, 2022This is a game from the recent 'Running out of Ink' itch anthology.
In this Twine story, you play as a tired author who just moved out of her parents' house and is trying to write a story over 3 days. Your choices during each of the three days affects the resulting story, which you can read at the end.
A lot of it is very relatable; trying to manage your creative output by procrastinating through playing games (something I've been doing myself except with writing reviews), writing for the 'wrong outlet' (where you are verbose) instead of the 'right one' (where you get stuck). I especially related to listening to podcasts while playing grindy games (I can highly recommend mixing the Magnus Archives podcast with Sunless Sea/Sunless Skies).
The character is depicted clearly and the variable story at the end is neat (the code for it is basically a time cave, with three possible first pages, 9 second, 27 third, etc. approximately).
My only caveats are that the game could be tidier. Paragraphs run together; I'd rather see each new paragraph indented or a full line left between them, like the finished story at the end. And there were a couple of noticeable typos (like 'to' for 'two') that could be caught by using Twine's text dump feature and running the result through Grammarly.
A smoothly polished French game with Moiki engine and dark Bohemian themes, February 21, 2022Though just a demo, this a pleasant experience overall.
It uses a custom interface that is made with Moiki, a system I've never seen before but which seems like a smooth, stats-based hyperlink system with good graphics integration. My first impression is 'choicescript mechanics and Twine styling options', but I'm not sure how accurate that is.
Game-wise, I'm going to call it 'Bohemian' as it's focused heavily on wine, food, culture and literature. It has some darker undertones as well.
The stats at first felt like perhaps they weren't used very much, but as the game progressed I saw them more. It was a bit odd seeing some choices where you have to be good at a stat to use them, but your reward is just more of that stat (I swear I read an Emily Short post where she calls this 'rich get richer'). But the demo didn't last long enough to show the long game, so it's possible this won't be a problem in the long run.
My only other (small) complaint is that the text when gaining something special just flashes on the screen for a second, so I (a non-native speaker) couldn't finish reading it.
Otherwise, a good story, reminding me of an Edgar Allan Poe story adapted by someone who owns a vineyard.
Classic fantasy adventure in branching French twine form, February 21, 2022This is entry in French IFComp 2022 written in Twine.
You sign up to be an adventurer, giving your name, age, description, etc., and get to choose between swords and magic.
The game has an odd structure. It splits in wildly different directions a lot, like a Time Cave, but many of them are dead ends, like a Gauntlet, but the ones that don't often allow you to visit one of the other main branches.
The writing is classic fantasy, with wizards and wyverns. While pleasant, I didn't feel a strong emotional connection to the game. And some of the structure I feel could be improved; there is only one save slot, and no undo, and if you reach a good ending while you have a full save slot, there's no way to start over without clearing your cache. And on my chrome browser, there was a graphical glitch with scrollbars appearing out of nowhere.
But it was enjoyable enough if you just want a bit of fun on an afternoon.
A complex game with some progress but seemingly many bugs, February 21, 2022This is a game I'd happily replay in a better state and which is fairly descriptive. However, I had numerous problems with it that I'm not sure are solvable.
This is the author's first IF, and takes place on an island you sail to in a canoe. On the island you can disembark and discover a huge, bustling city with a complex web of possible trades and an economy.
It's a very cool idea. The problem is the bugs. The author had to try and work around several implementation issues and their solutions don't always make sense. For instance, instead of typing HELP or AIDE for help, there is a manual floating by you you read. Similarly, the walkthrough is just an item in a different room you can read, and so is an 'indice'.
The canoe isn't a vehicle you enter; instead you have to TAKE the canoe to use it. There is an object that guides you through the forest but it is purposely left vague and it disappears from your hand at some point.
More distressingly, the seashells used as currency seem to disappear as soon as you enter the village, which means I can't give them to anyone. Rats also appear which you can kill for money, but they are seemingly random and also pretty uncommon after the first one.
Over all, it has cool ideas and I would like to see a more polished version, but I had to give up.
A brief but imaginative French Dialog game about mirrored secrets, February 20, 2022This game is most likely the first Dialog game written in French (for the 2022 French IFComp). As someone who's currently writing an English Dialog game, I was intrigued by this.
The author admittedly had to rush this game, but it feels pretty smooth overall. I only found one error message not translated ('You can't go in that direction', I think). I did feel like a lot of synonyms and alternate solutions were missing (especially for [mild early spoiler](Spoiler - click to show)trying to get the shining object stuck in the rubble; I tried PRENDRE, PRENDRE AVEC BRANCHE, POUSSER AVEC BRANCH, etc.). Thankfully, there's a walkthrough.
Story wise, your mother always told you sweet stories about a mirrored princess in an enchanted land. But when she dies, the journals she leaves you have notes and maps that indicate it all may be true.
I found the story quite cute and liked the ending. If the game were polished a bit more I think it would be quite good, despite its brevity.
A rich and complex surreal French twine game about identity , February 19, 2022This is an interesting game from the 2022 French IFComp. You wake up in the back of a limo having lost all of your memories and have to discover who you are and where you are going.
It's written in Twine using a retro-looking font (appropriate for the name Retrospection, but not otherwise pertinent to the story).
Perspective and identity are a major component of the game. Both first and second person are used, as are gender-neutral french language (the pronouns iel/lea, as well as ending adjectives with .e like 'fiancé.e'). Your opinion of yourself evolves as memories trickle.
This game is a good example of how 'bad' design principles can work well if used judiciously. This game contains examples of 'gauntlet' design (where you have to pass certain trials and need to restart if you 'fail'), as well as having large chunks of non-interactive text that fills the whole page. Despite this, the large chunks are well-written, and the game is structured in a way that replay is quick and not tedious.
The game even includes a very fun visually interactive element a (spoilers for mechanics but not content (Spoiler - click to show)jigsaw puzzle), and possibly more; there are many endings, of which I saw two 'losing' endings and one ending I consider a 'winning' ending (mega spoilers for content)(Spoiler - click to show)deciding I wasn't worthy to return to life.
A French Ink horror/slasher game with several puzzle elements, February 19, 2022This is an entry in the 2022 French IFComp written in Ink. It starts off in an intense situation in a haunted house before flashing back to 'how it all started'.
It includes several possible relationships, the possibility of death for you and others, and a lot of state tracking. A typical portion of gameplay is reaching a room or series of rooms with the option of looking at several different sub areas. In each sub area, you can grab an object to use or attempt some kind of action. Keys are common.
The storyline and puzzles are satisfyingly good; I think both could stand to be improved and rely too heavily on tropes. However, I found the characters interesting and the puzzles much more fun than most Ink games.
There are few bugs (I think I found one about a drawer being stuck but it tells you what's in it anyway?). Overall, I found it mostly polished, pretty descriptive, interesting interactivity, emotional impact from exciting scenes, but probably won't play again.
A unique concept involving a journal and a strange mechanic, February 17, 2022This is a French IFComp game.
I think a lot of the interesting parts of this game come from the first few moments, so I'll put most of the review in spoilers in case you want to try it out real quick. I can say that it should be apparent fast what is going on, and that the first few seconds are interesting, and that the comma in the game title is not a typo.
(Spoiler - click to show)This is a game where you have to type out journal entries over several 'days'. The twist is that the entries are pre-determined: you have to guess what someone would type in a journal and hope that you're typing what they want you to. Every character you get wrong (including punctuation!) deducts a point. Every correct word adds a point up to 50. When you lost all 50 points, you have to restart that day.
The game doesn't last too long, so it can be completed in one sitting. This was intimidating, though, as a non-native speaker, but there are mechanics that help with that over time. The game did pull a couple of tricks on m though.
+Polish: The game is very polished.
+Interactivity: It was weird and I don't think it would work for other games, but I liked it in this one.
-Descriptiveness: The actual text was quite vague.
+Emotional impact: I was impressed by the cleverness.
-Would I play again? Not much replay value.
Cool new system, but lots of rough edges in this brief fantasy game, February 17, 2022This French IF Comp game has you sent as a spy to an alchemists lair to search for evidence of misdeeds.
You are equipped with a camera of sorts to take images of suspicious things. There are several secrets to find and a few hints of world-building.
This is written in the Donjon language, a native French language alternative to Inform 7 but also done in natural language. The file can be read in plain text, which I had to resort to to solve it.
My experience with the implementation was mixed. Playing IF in a language I'm not completely fluent in is always a challenge. It was hard to tell if something was implemented weird or if I was the one who was being weird.
But here are a few things that I think are definitely the game's issue:
-Several nouns are mentioned but not implemented. For instance, a desk has notes on it, but the game doesn't recognize 'notes'. In the end game, there are (Spoiler - click to show)chains but trying to 'regarder' them or 'prendre' them makes the game confused.
-There's a big issue with the 'taking' code: (Spoiler - click to show)the source code has special results if you 'deplacer' the rug or the alembic, but the game also lets you just 'prendre' those things without triggering the special event.
-Many objects have an adjective+noun name, but you have to type both. I became deeply frustrated with a 'livre verte' because I couldn't P Livre or P Verte.
So, overall, I thought the worldbuilding was cool and the camera device. But the frustration prevented a totally enjoyable experience.
Edit: as a side note, I had a little trouble due to my silly american keyboard not having any accent symbols. I got around it by copying and pasting words from the text, though.
Quest through time and space, with a Hans Christian Andersen setting, February 6, 2022This game takes the classic, depressing/sacrifical tale of the little matchgirl and uses it as a setting for a larger story.
In the original story, each match a girl lit gave her another vision of brighter things. In this game, each match is used to teleport to the user to...whatever location Ryan was interested in talking about that day?
The overall puzzle structure is fairly lenient; it is generally a fetch quest, and each task can almost always be solved by brute force, but has internal logic.
+Polish: The game is smooth. I had a couple of issues with synonyms here and there (literally can't remember what, but it was me typing dumb stuff), but the vast majority of possible actions I tried worked great.
+Descriptiveness: Very clear and easily envisioned settings and characters.
+Interactivity: The quest structure is simple, but I felt allowed to go off the rails at times.
+Emotional impact: It didn't have quite the gut punch of the original, but was more fun.
+Would I play again? Sure!
Some fiendish puzzles with implementation problems, February 4, 2022This iterative game series (each building on the one before it) has gotten to some pretty clever puzzles. I especially enjoy the puzzle that leads to (mild spoilers (Spoiler - click to show)the axe).
Implementation issues are rife, though. To complete it, I had to use the follow non-standard verbs (moderate spoilers): (Spoiler - click to show)SNIP, use BLANK with BLANK, and POUR.
While the increasing puzzle size has made the game quite a bit more enjoyable, I almost with we were seeing multiple levels of polish and implementation instead, with less and less bugs and more fanciness. But the problem with that is that minimalist content is easy to add; its complexity is linear, with a small change in size requiring a small change in coding. But smooth programming is quadratic; making a very polished game requires coding in tons of interactions between different items and things, adding responses to everything players try, getting a lot of testers, etc. So I'm not sure it would work in practice to show that through a series of games.
Bigger and fancier but messier, February 4, 2022This edition of the iterative series (each adding new material to the previous game) adds quite a few new rooms and makes previous interactions require more direct input.
However, most of the new rooms are quite sparse, and the new syntax for things isn't always clear (for instance, it took me a while to figure out how to use the (Spoiler - click to show)grabber). Also, it includes exits that are indicated in the status bar but not the text, which I find annoying in most games. Overall, though, I'm still interested in seeing what's next.
The sage continues: multiple npcs and bigger spaces, February 4, 2022This edition of the iterative game series (each one building on the code of the last) improves on the premise by including a new reactive NPC (Rex, a dog who follows you) and incorporating light and a dark subterranean area.
There are still unfixed bugs or quality of life issues from the past that likely won't get fixed in future updates (like 'bathroom' being lower case or disambiguation issues with keys), but it's pretty fun seeing all the things you can do.
As an individual game, 2 stars. As part of the series, 3 stars.
A criticism of fast-and-easy sloganistic political theories, January 22, 2022This is a fairly abstract Ink game (and one that I helped beta test).
In it, you play as a college student roped into a demonstration about Smart Theory. The speaker goes off for quite a while about smart theory, and you can choose between making snarky comments, playing along or being passive.
The Smart Theory is a parody of political theories. As presented, it could apply to both American political parties. Some digs seem aimed at one specific side (for instance, the huckster is selling a book called Dumb Fragility, which from the in-game explanation seems like a riff on liberals talking about white fragility), but it could apply to just about any political theory.
Overall, it has several humorous moments and works smoothly. However, I thought the random nonsense words didnt' work as well (like Bathcunk) and would have preferred more chances to act.
A collection of fear-inducing areas which could use some polish, December 15, 2021This game has you try to encounter 13 different phobias as you explore a small area with some woods and a bar.
The range of possible phobias is pretty big and I learned some new ones (like halophobia and ailuriphobia).
This game is written with PunyInform, a version of Inform shrunk down so that compiled files can run on smaller/retro devices.
However, it doesn't take full advantage of the platform, and is weak in many areas. For instance, there are shelves that have several items on them, as seen from decompiling the code. However, X SHELVES, SEARCH SHELVES, and LOOK ON SHELVES all show them as empty. As another example, the barman tells you to 'try buying <a certain item in the game>'. But BUY <the item> doesn't work. There were many such frustrations with the code. There is one person listed in credits who might have been a tester, but this could have used more testing.
-Polish: There is some rough implementation and some bugs.
+Descriptiveness: The setting is mundane, but the phobias were interesting.
-Interactivity: I felt frustrated by the responsiveness.
-Emotional impact: The storyline and fears didn't really draw me in.
+Would I play again? It's an interesting concept, and I never found 4 of the fears.
A bizarre adventuron tale of a soldier's desperate passion for...letters, November 26, 2021This is an Adventuron game in Spanish, made for Ectocomp.
It has 4 chapters, each detailing part of the story of Sidodorf, a soldier in a war that no longer cares about living as much as writing one final amazing letter. This leads him to desperate and bizarre acts.
The adventuron programming works well here, especially since the error messages give good hints on what to do next. My frequent problem with different dialects of Spanish struck again; I always thought TAKE would be TOMAR, but in this game one must use COGER, which is a strong vulgarity in the Spanish I learned. C'est la vie.
This game was really a very interesting character study, and I think its protagonist may be worth nominating for a Best PC xyzzy award next year. Unfortunately for me and other would-be translators, you can't highlight text to paste in google translate. However, it was overall pretty clear.
Take a virtual tour of gruesome Madrid history, November 26, 2021This is, as far as I can tell, the only entry in the Petite Mort division of the Spanish-language Ectocomp, all others being in the Grand Guignol division.
This is also the most educational game of the competition. It's essentially a guided tour of gruesome Madrid history, from torture devices to famous murders.
I learned a lot. The main interactivity is choosing which area to explore next. There is custom styling which was slightly hard to read (for best practices it's easier to read white text on dark grey than on black backgrounds) but had interesting images and even an embedded google maps link.
Overall, fun to learn from.
Four tales of a family curse, November 24, 2021This is a Spanish Twine game that is an anthology of 4 stories of a cursed family. It's contained in a framing story where you're in an abandoned house and teenagers are trying to creep you out.
The stories are all different, explaining how a member of the Ferrosa family was cursed.
Each one is fairly well written, but the interactivity is fairly negligible. There are some noticeable typos, and the story just kind of stops at the end. Each of the stories themselves left me wanting a bit more; the only one that felt really complete was the love story with fire. The others felt like a lot of build up with not as much resolution as I would have wanted.
Still, the writing is descriptive and the game is visually interesting.
A beautiful story set in Japan inspired by a vintage photo, November 24, 2021There is a photo called New Year's Visit with Jizo, Niigata Prefecture by the photographer Hiroshi Hamaya, that shows three young children trudging through the snow, the first one carrying a Jizo, a type of Buddha statue with connections to travellers.
This is a medium-length Spanish Ink story inspired by that photo. Its choice structure is fairly simple, mostly linear, occasionally some choices that are more complex.
The writing is very sweet and contemplative. You are the eldest of the three children, and you have to take care of your two younger siblings as you travel to a distant location. Along the way, you must take care of each other and guard the objects you've been entrusted with. You must also deal with your complex feelings about your late father.
The language of the game is simple and meaningful, and I found it emotionally touching. I also ended up looking up a lot of the Japanese words in the game; they're described well in-game, but I found it useful to find out more about them online.
A short parser game with a brutal story about airport survival, November 24, 2021This is a Spanish parser game entered in Ectocomp 2021.
In it, you start as a passenger in a bathroom with a dead body on the floor and a fire extinguisher that you used to kill them nearby. The game then slowly reveals the backstory, along with an urgent condition that you need to fix immediately.
The story takes several dark turns, making this possibly the most brutal
fictional airport experience I've seen. And it was pretty fun!
Playing parser games in another language is always difficult, but I appreciated the list of verbs in AYUDA (although there were some verbs I had to look up: (spoilers for several puzzles) (Spoiler - click to show)cerrar, encender, quemar, and I thought I could use acostarme but it was tumbar. The parser was generaly good, but occasionally there were problems with plurals (I attempted to solve the first puzzle with (Spoiler - click to show)PONER CUERPO EN CUBICULO, which gave an unhelpful error message, but finally solved it with (Spoiler - click to show)PONER CUERPO EN CUBICULOS, and similarly X PUERTA in the final area doesn't work while X PUERTAS does).
I enjoyed the atmosphere and experienced a strong emotional reaction to the game. Puzzles were logical and mostly exploration based, although this game is Cruel on the Zarfian scale (available here). In fact, it has a scenario almost identical to the description of Cruel on the scale. I used a decompiler to help me figure out the verbs and actions for several of the puzzles, but the final real puzzle can't be solved through decompiling so I had to figure it out alone.
Overall, I found it fun.
A heartfelt story of a woman's life told through Twine and Texture, November 24, 2021This game is really creative. Similar to the latest Castle Balderstone game, it uses Twine to create a 'hub' that you can play other, embedded games from.
In this case, there is a large page where a woman is remembering many things. Each thing you click on leads to an embedded Texture page that you can play through, employing your imagination. For instance, you can be a shadow trying to grow to scare some kids, or an apprentice witch, etc.
The game's ending has an overall positive and bittersweet message. The stories are cute, with animals and a lot of herbs and plants.
Having every option available at once was a little overwhelming, and the texture pages loaded up a bit awkwardly (after one click they looked good). The embedded gifs were a nice touch.
A parser-like choice game about exploring a strange family's house, November 23, 2021This Spanish Ectocomp game uses the Kunludi engine, which (at least in this game) means there are in-game links as well as a menu of options on the bottom, some of which have other options. There are rooms and an inventory as well.
In this game, you are exploring an Addams-family-like mansion on a dare from some friends. You have to find something shocking to show them.
The game is pretty linear; if you explore everything you will eventually progress. It's fairly quirky, like Addam's family, and has some pretty mild sexual content and gore.
Overall, the writing was pretty good, but the interactivity could have been more complex.
Explore a constantly-flowing river of blood in adventuron, November 14, 2021This adventuron game, written in < 4 hours, has a couple of nice pixel art images thrown in, which I suspect was hard to do in the time frame.
It also has a neat mechanic. You are in a river of blood, and objects float by, headed downstream. You have to chase them to check them out. Meanwhile, death, or Charon, or a similar figure is hunting you down.
It was tricky sometimes to deal with the moving objects (and I think (Spoiler - click to show)the dinghy will float away even if (Spoiler - click to show)you are in it, causing some weird disambiguation issues). Overall, a fun little treat, with what must be the most blood of any game in the competition.
Story-driven horror tale over several days at a forest lookout, November 14, 2021This is a complex story written in Inform. You play as a man who recently experienced a haunting tragedy. Driven to solitude, you take work at a national park working in a lookout.
But things aren't okay out here. Something strange is happening to animals and hikers, and there's little you can do to stop it.
The game is story-driven; puzzles are minimal, and the borders of your little world are enforced strictly, while the game takes most actions for you. I felt like pacing was slightly off, where a little more guidance in some parts and a little less in others could have worked better, but it's hard to put my finger on anything.
I think the story mixed together the threads of isolation, terror, and loss pretty well, and I found to be one of the better short games I've played this year.
Amateur witch hunters make a tough decision (in Choicescript form), November 13, 2021This game is set in 1500's France. You are a student, with a group of other students, and there are rumours of a witch in the city.
This is a short game made for a speed competition in Choicescript. Despite that, it manages to build up some fun tension in a short time. The main objects of interest are interacting with your fellow witch hunters and trying to decide whether you are really doing what's right or not.
As a caution, this game contains (moderate spoilers) (Spoiler - click to show)extreme violence to animals.
I found the ending a bit abrupt, but overall I liked the tension in the game. This was one of the more enjoyable Ectocomp 2021 games for me!
A short game with slowly increasing capability in a spooky atmosphere, November 12, 2021This is a Petite Morte Ectocomp 2021 game, written in 4 hours or less and featuring the custom parser system used in the author's game The Libonotus Cup.
Visually, the game looks good in terms of font and color.
The story and gameplay are that you are going to the bathroom when suddenly you appear as a ghost in front of a tower. There are 8 locations around the tower, arranged in a circle. Unfortunately, you don't have hands that can pick up anything.
So you have to visit different locations and gain different powers. One location had a riddle which was based on a pun, which could be hard for non-native English speakers.
The setting is interesting, and the descriptions are well-developed for a 4-hour game, but the whole thing is somewhat disjointed and nonsensical. It's just a fun, short puzzly game, and there's nothing wrong with that.
A surreal world with pig latin sprinkled throughout, November 11, 2021This game is an overflow for ideas that didn't fit into the author's previous Pig Latin-themed game, Under They Thunder.
Like the majority of Andrew Schultz games, this is a world with names based on some linguistic trick (here, Pig Latin) that is surreal and focuses a lot on overcoming bullies using self-confidence.
It's a speed-IF with a small map, and due to the constraints almost all objects are undescribd.
The main gameplay element is that you walk around, but the map is blocked, but occasionally you get an item when you're walking that helps you pass them.
There's a little more to it than that, but I confess that I couldn't grasp the main puzzle at the end without glancing at the walkthrough.
A brief game with a symmetric premise, November 11, 2021This is a wordplay game centered around the idea of repeated sequences of letters (like how the title, 'psyops, yo' consists of 'psyo' repeated twice).
This is smaller than most Andrew Schultz games, which makes sense for an ectocomp entry. It has 4 puzzles you need to solve.
I found two of them with a little thinking and felt good about it. The other two stumped me; I used an online word solver to figure it out, and both surprised me as I felt they could be hinted a little more.
Overall, a fun concept.
A long Quest horror game with good story but rough edges, November 9, 2021This game is fabulous plot-wise: you encounter a mysterious deer beast in the forest and track it back to a farm. There you discover a strange series of events in the past through the use of journal entries.
Getting that story, though, can be a real pain. Many commands go unrecognized. Here is an example from early on in the game:
(Spoiler - click to show)> x door
A solid front door made of heavy wood. The green paint has all but peeled away. You see a tarnished door knocker in the shape of a Fleur de Lis.
> knock
I don't understand your command.
> knock door
I better use the knocker to do that.
> knock knocker
You can't knock it.
> x knocker
A tarnished door knocker in the shape of a Fleur de Lis.
> use knocker
You use the door knocker and knock loudly... Nothing happens. Looks like no one is home.
(You unlocked an Achievement.)
A lot of the wording is confusing or misspelled (like 'Knock arrow' instead of 'nock arrow'). Overall, the game could've used less time in making its huge map and more time in polishing a smaller segment of the gameplay.
I really like the story, though, which is why I'm giving it a rating of 3 (for descriptiveness, emotional impact and the fact that I'd play again).
A horror/action parser game spread out over many locations, November 8, 2021This is an entry in Ectocomp 2021, in the Grand Guignol section.
You play as a young person who is able to see ghosts, or at least a specific ghost named Jack. Jack urges you to solve his murder and stop another which is about to occur.
The map is pretty large, extending over three different main locations, each with 8-20 rooms.
Interaction consists of classic parser gameplay (one puzzle (Spoiler - click to show)is familiar for fans of older games, although with an unusual twist) as well as topic based conversation.
The game has an interesting premise and excels most at setting and scenery.
The implementation could be more thorough. Many synonyms are not implemented (for instance, in the final scene, (Spoiler - click to show)the service box only works if you UNLOCK BOX WITH KEY, and not if you TURN ON BOX, RAISE LIFT, go UP, etc.) Many key items are not implemented, and some verbs that are directly suggested in the text do not work. An important PC's name isn't capitalized in responses.
I think this game could benefit from being ported to Adventuron. Adding some nice pixel art would improve the overall appeal, and the (large) Adventuron audience is generally less concerned about small details of implementation and appreciates the classic gameplay and interesting maps of games like this.
A gauntlet-style retelling of a Chaucer story, November 7, 2021This game, entered in Ectocomp 2021, is a brief Twine game in which you recreate the Chaucer story The Pardoner's Tale as one of the main characters.
For most of the game you have two choices: follow the story, or go off the rails. Going off the rails generally results in your death. There is no undo, so you'll have to replay, which can be mildly slow due to some timed text but not too bad.
There are three main endings: death, the traditional Chaucer ending, and, the game insinuates, a victorious ending, which I eventually found.
I think the Chaucer original is neat. The gauntlet story structure here was a bit rough, since you saw the same text over and over again and the extra deaths didn't really add much value. It was essentially a 'do you want to continue the story or start over from the beginning?' button.
The layout was a bit hard to read, with some paragraphs being centered and the lower paragraphs being left-justified. Also, the author used a serifed font on a pure-black background, both of which made it harder to read.
There were many stats displayed but they were a bit confusing. At one point I think I had -3 money.
Overall, the strongest points here are the interesting story and the characters.
A horror game inspired by experiences in Utah culture, November 7, 2021I was interested to see a game described as 'Mormon horror' on the IFDB feed. As a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, it's rare to see interactive fiction that's connected to my church.
This game is a take on Bluebeard, a topic I enjoy (one of my favorite opera's is Duke Bluebeard's Castle, which has a lot in common with this game).
However, it differs from traditional Bluebeard narratives by putting a religious spin on things. The religion in this game isn't the same as my church; instead, it's an amalgamation of the culture in Utah, especially Provo, some esoteric doctrinal references, and some new innovations I've never really seen before.
The Utah culture shows up in things like 'dirty coke' (which is soda with mix-ins like coconut or flavored syrups) and 'Sunstone' (the name of a magazine that does academic/critical studies of the religion), or people using 'Brigham Young was my ancestor'. The main NPC is an area authority, which I think is an in-joke as they are in real life distant, benign administrators that are rarely seen (most real-life church figures that people take issue with are local like bishops or global like apostles). The new innovations are things like having an estate with a chapel on it (?) that is also an official temple for marriage purposes (?) or talking about early settlers being called skillet-lickers.
The main horror components are centered around common concerns that women (especially in Utah) experience in marriage: feeling pressured into early pregnancy, feeling socially inadequate due to infertility, feeling a loss of ownership over the body, and feeling pressured and grossed out due to a new husbands request for (metaphorical) frequent sexual relations, or being worried that you'll be forced into a polygamous marriage in heaven against your will. These are things I saw a lot in my town growing up and which I've seen almost not at all in every other state I've lived in. Utah can be pretty weird some times.
You have a health meter which results in your death when depleted, as well as faithfulness (which (Spoiler - click to show)takes you to a depressing heaven) and unfaithfulness (which (Spoiler - click to show)gets you kicked out but safe).
The game was polished in general, with custom styling but a couple of issues with paragraph breaks. I found the writing to be evocative. The various stats made for good interactivity in a fairly brief game. And the horror was true to real emotions and experiences I've seen before (in particular, part of it reminded me of a (Spoiler - click to show)traumatic miscarriage my former spouse had which I helped/supported during).
I felt like the game had very little to do with the Church of Jesus Christ itself; the vast majority of messaging in the actual church is 'God loves you' and 'if you've messed up Christ will help you if you let him'. But I do think it represents the experience of many women, especially in BYU/Provo/Utah, and that many people could see themselves in this game.
An incomplete futuristic investigation game, October 24, 2021One trend in IFComp is that an unfinished game will place near the bottom of the comp, regardless of any other positive features it might have. There are some exceptions, but they are rare.
This game cuts off right after a big investigation. The idea is that humanity has moved on from reproduction, and everyone is now immortal, there are dozens of different pronoun options (the most meaningful choices in the game are centered around terms of address and pronouns), and everyone is smart and cool. The first biologically born person in millenia has been found murdered.
There are multiple typos (although literally as I was playing the game for 20 minutes near midnight on a Saturday, the author updated the game, which was a fun coincidence), such as 'TALKED WITH' instead of 'TALK WITH'. I also found the jumping between perspectives a little confusing as well.
Due to the confusing language and the errors and the unfinished aspect, I didn't find the game polished, descriptive, emotionally engaging, or something I'd like to revisit for now.
I do think the general idea is a good one. A game like this would probably do better in Introcomp, which was definitely underpopulated this year.
A minimalist map exploration and fetch quest game, October 24, 2021This game is a six-by-six grid of locations, each described in two words or less. Each location has something that needs resolving: a missing item, or a problem in a different square. You are the resolver, who will resolve the problems (including the word limit).
It's choice-based, but with mild quadratic complexity. You can choose between LOOKing and INTERACTing with each object in a room, and you gather an inventory of items.
I loved this game, with the only drawback for me being the 'lawnmowering' that felt natural for the mid-game, trying out different items in different rooms. This problem is both alleviated and exacerbated by the helpful text which tells you if you're in the right room. It makes lawnmowering both faster (less painful) but also more appealing.
Overall, I find this a very successful puzzle piece. It reminds me of Weird City Interloper, a bit.
I can also highly recommend Domestic Elementalism, another game by this author from the 2017 IFComp.
A well-put-together brief story about grief and accounts, October 24, 2021This game is one of two entered by Bez in this competition, the other being 'Weird Grief', and the two tie into each other.
In this one, presented in customized Twine, you are a moderator for an online community, and have been asked to begin closing accounts of dead customers.
Gameplay is divided into two components: reading through old messages, and entering a group chat with everyone involved.
The game has illustrated avatars for each important character, as well as a few other pieces of art.
The second section of the game is all on a timer. It's not too long, but I tend to multitask while playing IF (the format lends itself well to pick-up-and-put-down play), and I tabbed away to work on other things while waiting for the text to complete, only to come back and see it had wiped the screen and started new messages. I also had to leave in the middle of some text to use the restroom, and missed a couple of other parts because of that. So for future players, I'd recommend dedicating a set amount of time to read through the second portion.
The text includes frequent strong and mild profanities and depicts traumatizing events as well as reference to sexual activities.
Overall, I found the game polished and descriptive, with an emotional impact. The nonlinear interactivity in the first half worked for me, but the second half was a little rougher, so I'd give this a 3.5, which I'll round up to a 4 for IFDB.
A brief fighting sim and relationship manager, October 24, 2021This is a small but polished game, one that feels like an intentionally compact micro-game. The system would be appropriate for a longer game, but there's not much room to fit more in the game besides having multiple matches.
You are a cyborg gladiator in a political climate that seems to be modeled on current transgender discourse. You get to choose how you treat your fellow cyborgs, and you also choose your body type and weapon.
Combat has a kind of paper-rock-scissors format, with unusual combinations pleasing the crowd.
The game uses strong profanity every few screens and has elaborate violence and (spoilers for certain paths) (Spoiler - click to show)some vaguely described sexual scenes.
I don't feel like the game lasted long enough for me to get a good grip on it emotionally, but it's polished and descriptive, and the interactivity was interesting and responsive.
A short game about doctors and ethics in a future scenario, October 24, 2021This is a short Ink game. You are a doctor in a clinic that is almost empty. You have encounters with people and have to decide whether to spend your supplies on them.
The game is pretty short, almost like a demo for a larger game. Each major choice is an ethical one, and at the end the game thanks you for taking an examination (and starts with a similar comment), so I think it's intended for you to reflect on your morals.
Overall, it's a solid idea, but wasn't long enough to draw me in emotionally or to invite replay.
Parser game via text-message: explore an ex's dorm, October 23, 2021This is a great game concept that's well-executed. It's an Inform parser game with custom CSS to look like text messages. I've been interested in this concept for a while and had even made a draft once of the necessary JS/CSS, but my version looked bad and was buggy and deleted it. So seeing someone who achieved a complete and great-looking version of that concept is very nice!
You play as a random person who is getting texts from a friend. Your friend has broken into their ex's dorm room in an effort to get back a photo and to experience closure.
Technically, the game is very impressive. Besides the nice appearance, it also does some fun text stuff (like (Spoiler - click to show)drawing out the last letter of the name you inputted(Spoiler - click to show)).
Puzzle-wise, it's fairly light, focused on exploration without requiring you to use a ton of logic or calculation. I had to use one hint, as I had thought I investigated everything but missed a subobject I had seen early on.
Story-wise, I could identify with the themes of loss, snoopiness, and the realization that you didn't really know the other person.
The one caveat I had about the CSS/JS is that I sometimes had hiccups where I expected the texts to be done and started typing, not realizing there were more. There is a visual indicator (the flashing line), but it might have been nice to either add another indicator that more was coming (perhaps replacing the standard 'more' with '...') or just printing all texts at once, especially when using 'LOOK', which is the only place I had trouble.
Overall, I found the game was polished, descriptive, had interesting interactivity, was emotional resonant, and I might play it again.
A short and simple parser game about a child's toy, October 23, 2021This is a brief parser game where you play as a child's teddy bear who can walk around. Your goal is to defeat fears and gather friends.
The map is a bit complex in layout but small. Each friend requires a different method to find. A couple of the puzzles I found pretty clever; others were easy, and others I had to resort to a walkthrough for.
The implementation is a bit spotty; characters respond but they don't always make sense, and sometimes you might now the right action you need to do but not how to type it so the game understands it.
Overall, I think this was solid idea that needed more testing and polish. I didn't see any testers credited, which I think would have helped.
A post-apocalyptic road chase in Twine, October 9, 2021This is a pretty fancy-looking Twine game with options for play in Russian or English.
It features custom CSS styling with changing background colors and a cool mechanic where you can click on an item and then on any earlier highlighted link to use the item there, giving it more robust puzzles.
You play as one of two people in a vehicle speeding down a highway carrying precious cargo. It has kind of a Star Wars feel but on land instead of space. Some people start chasing you and you have to take control of the guns.
This is a fast-paced game and I felt nervous for my character a lot, thinking I'd mess up, but I got through okay. The storytelling and writing is good, and I enjoyed it.
+Polish: Very good looking game
+Descriptiveness: Vivid world building
+Interactivity: I liked the two-layer puzzles and the good hints the game gives you
+Emotional impact: I felt nervous for my characters
-Would I play again? This is a very good game, but it's a bit overwhelming at time, because there are just so many options.
Meet 4 characters on a supernatural mountain, October 8, 2021This is a game about riding a Funicular (basically a tram that is rope-powered instead of track-powered) up a mountain that has several special properties. It has unusual crystals all over, it emits strange radiation, and every 20 years it puts off a beautiful aurora.
On the funicular with you are 4 strangers. Each has their own joys and desires and secrets, and most of them (maybe all??) are romantic options.
The game isn't too long, but it has a major twist and then another twist in the ending.
The game explores some serious issues (drug use, infidelity, pseudo-science) and offers a lot of romance for its size.
Here's my breakdown:
+Polish: The game felt very smooth
+Descriptiveness: Getting 4 perspectives was nice
+Interactivity: I felt like I could make real choices in my conversations.
Emotional impact: It was good but I wasn't really drawn into the characters. Each contact felt a bit rushed; a 2-minute romance doesn't feel as real as a longer exposure would have.
+Would I play again? Yeah, it was interesting.
A somewhat linear fantasy story about helping your family, October 7, 2021This is a Squiffy game in a generic fantasy setting. Your town is raided by orcs that are mind controlled by white worms, and your brother and father are taken.
The rest of the story is mostly a bunch of standard fantasy sequences glued together and hurried over. For instance, you can go request aid from a king, visit an enemy city, make friends with a half-orc.
You generally have two choices at a time, sometimes more, but the branches converge again quickly. Sometimes the author forgot important information in one branch (like not telling you a beggar is following you).
There are major plot holes near the end. Overall, this story seems like if a very talented teenager spent a few weeks making a game in Squiffy, or someone older getting into writing IF for the first time. Either way, getting more practice will help and I expect future games would be significant improvements.
For now, though, my rating is:
-Polish
+Descriptiveness
-Interactivity
-Emotional impact
-Would I play again?
More chess puzzles with more complexity, October 6, 2021Andrew Schultz recently release Fivebyfiveia Delenda Est, a fun small game with chess puzzles that was one of his higher-rated games.
This is a larger game with chess puzzles that have a bit more complexity. There are a bunch of mini-kingdoms to invade and each has two 'tiers' to conquer. The game itself has 2 difficulty settings. I beat it on the first, and started the second, only to realize that it was very similar.
The puzzles involve setting up 2-3 pieces on the chessboard to trap the enemy king. Interestingly, sometimes you have to set up enemy pieces as well.
The storyline is fairly thin but understandable. The game sometimes holds your hand a bit more than I would have wanted. Specifically, beating one area sometimes automatically beats neighboring areas, even before you know what they do. If I had more idea before I left what each area was like, or was given the option to grey out such areas, I'd prefer that.
A wholesome game about tic-tac-toe with kids, October 4, 2021I was playing through all the IFComp games that are in inaccessible formats, and I thought I got them all. But then I saw this game and was surprised. This is a raw python file, and games like that almost never get reviews in the comps and tend to place lower down. As one of IFComp's most successful long term participants, Schultz would know it, which was my surprise.
But it's not always about crushing the competition, which is exactly the point of this game. You play as an adult who sees a kid playing tic tac toe. As a kid, you always had a 'draw' with other kids, and if they let you win, you got mad. But once, you won a game because the other player missed something, and you want to recreate that experience for the child.
I'll admit, I was mystified at first, and just played regular old tic tac toe games. It reminded me of Infinite Adventure in this comp, just repeating the same old interactions over and over (in this case, endless games of tic-tac-toe). But then I finally got it, and the game became a lot of fun. I first solved it the easiest way, and then I solved it the hardest way. I wasn't sure I had gotten everything, so I checked the walkthrough and saw I had done what was intended. I didn't go through and do all the other variations, because I felt satisfied.
This is a pretty small game, but:
+Polish: It was very polished
-Descriptive: There's some meaningful text trappings, but it's mostly a puzzle with some bare-bones story
+Interactivity: The puzzle was intriguing and thoughtful
+Emotional impact: I loved the motivation for the puzzle and enjoyed putting myself in the protagonist's shoes
+Would I play again? This was a very smooth experience.
Play-by-mail co-op twine game with the death of the revolution, October 3, 2021This is a 2-player Twine game. Every time you make a decision, you are given a code, and asked for the code of your partner. This means you could play side by side or (as I did) messaging back and forth with people. I played once as each faction and am playing again with another person.
I never play IF with others, except at the Seattle IF Meetup, but I was able to find some great people on intfiction to message back and forth. It took a while to nail down transmitting codes but then proceeded pretty well. There are only about 10 or so choices so the game is pretty fast, although there is a lot of text per each early choice.
Story wise, it reminded me of the faux-historical games from Choice of Games (like The Eagle's Heir). You play either as the first (and last) newly-made dictator of an idealistic socialist republic or as the king's general who is coming to crush the rebellious city.
Choices definitely matter here, with different branches by one character giving different branches for another. They tend to share many features in common (so it's not a Time Cave wildly branching structure) but it includes different locations, choices for death and violence or peace, etc.
I found it fun and effective, and I didn't expect that to happen. There was one or two typos, but overall it's fairly polished.
I rate games on the following scale, which can give a high score even to relatively short games like this one:
+Polish
+Descriptiveness
+Interactivity
+Emotional Impact (I didn't get completely drawn in, but I did roleplay as my character and was able to be drawn into how they would react)
+Would I play again? I already have several times
A retro-parser-aesthetic choice-based game about helping others, October 3, 2021This game defied many of the categories I tried to put it in. It looked like a parser game, Adventuron specifically, but appears to be custom written.
You walk around with on-screen arrow keys and a menu of verbs you can apply to your inventory or things around you, kind of like old Lucasarts games.
There are a variety of items, and a variety of people you can help.
On one hand, the programming is very impressive and the game looks well-done. On the other hand, it often contradicts itself. It will say 'there is a flier here you can take' but if you click TAKE nothing happens. It will say 'the frog leaves' but then the frog is still there. I was able to complete the game, and found it humorous, but I think that this could have received even more testing. For me, I like to spend 50% or more of my development time for parser games in testing alone, and for choice maybe 10-20% at least.
This game had heart to me, and it was polished and I might play again, so I'm giving it 3 stars. If the bugs were fixed I'd make it 4.
Assemble a Halloween costume while learning about phosphate binders, October 2, 2021This game is an educational game about kidneys made for kids using a custom engine that reads full sentences.
The game itself has multiple endings; I finished after only examining 3 rooms out of 5 in the main hub.
A magical fairy is helping you get a Halloween costume by transforming whatever you pick up into costume parts. Meanwhile, you get hungry, and eating requires you to take phosphate binders due to your kidney problems. This opens up a minigame where you have to hunt for phosphate crystals.
Throughout IF history there have been at least two different threads: one using text to provide a realistic simulation of the world (including Emily Short and her physics games), and those pushing for abstraction and ease of use (including Ryan Veeder who provides a lot of subtle affordances to make gameplay smoother). Most people authors use a mix of the two.
Abstraction and ease pushed to its extreme leads to dynamic fiction, where there are few choices besides 'next page'. And realistic simulation pushed too far leads to hunger timers, inventory limits, and an insistence on proper grammar, all of which this game has. It's a stylistic choice that some are fond of, but I don't really enjoy my character getting more and more hungry as I go back and forth between rooms because my character can only hold two objects. The engine is also slow between responses, so it can be a bit frustrating.
I found the educational part fascinating and didn't know the kidneys had anything to do with phosphate. Also, this game is specifically designed for kids unfamiliar with IF tropes, so I'm specifically not the target audience. And a lot of the things I found off putting could be fun for kids; discovering the game character actually responds like a real person with needs and limited capacity is something fun about text adventures when you're new (at least it was for me).
Overall:
+Polish: It worked smoothly.
-Descriptiveness: The game felt kind of bare at times.
-Interactivity: The game felt a bit too fiddly for me at time.
+Emotional impact: I love the idea of making a game for kids and the phosphate thing was cool.
+Would I play again? I don't really feel like it, but I only found one costume and there were many rooms I missed, and I'd like to support this idea of making games for health purpose (kind of like Gavin Inglis's game about self-abuse).
A story-focused multi-scene LGBTQ romance/disaster on a boat, September 13, 2021The author of this game has made several other very successful twine games, including Birdland and its related works and Known Unknowns. Many of them are smooth and enjoyable LGBTQ YA stories and this is in a similar category.
You play as a young woman whos prom date gets publicly ruined as embarrassingly as possible. Unfortunately, this prom is also on a boat.
There are many characters, and all choices are dialogue options. This author tends to have a ton of little options hidden in the code, but each path you can take in this game feels like the 'intended' one.
There's nothing to see here in the way of puzzles or major decisions; the real draw is the witty dialogue, teen-relatable situations and, for those interested, LGBTQ representation.
For me, what it keeps it from being 5 stars is its lack of the extraordinary. I enjoy this author's games the best when they become bizarre and absurd, like weird dream birds or raccoons speaking in emoji. For me, this was like very good cake without frosting: delicious, but leaving you wishing it had that extra ingredient.
A short adaptation of H. G. Wells Time Machine, September 2, 2021I beta tested this game.
This game is an adaptation of a static fiction story. This is something very hard to do well in a parser game; I've tried it myself and more or less failed, and so have many others. This game runs into a lot of the same problems: a faithful adaptation assumes a linear plot, while a parser game is centered around freedom of expression.
This game implements a house with many mentioned details but few which are usable. There are bugs, such as when one attempts to break a window (not needed in the game).
Plot wise, it doesn't follow the book directly, but instead starts after the action of the first one, allowing you to prove to the world that the time machine is real. The whole setup makes it seem like it will be very complex, but in reality there are only 2-3 puzzles and the whole game can be completed in very few steps.
A quick tour of liminal spaces that is itself somewhat a liminal space, August 31, 2021Liminal spaces are popular right now; my young son enjoys playing liminal spaces games on Roblox and I've seen bots about them on twitter.
Whatever the original definition of liminal spaces was, they are now dominated by endlessly repetitive/abandoned/mass-produced areas. The Backrooms is a classic example (an endless system of hallways with boring carpeting and yellow walls). Another common kind of liminal space is something designed for entertainment but which is now empty, or uncanny valley areas.
This game involves you travelling between several such regions. Interestingly, just like liminal spaces in popular culture are often worn down, this game is underimplemented, missing several exit lists and lacking custom responses for many things.
Here's my rating:
-Polish: The game is missing exit listings and just feels kind of undercooked.
-Descriptiveness: The areas that are described are evocative, but some are given just a single line that is rather unclear.
-Interactivity: I had to decompile to finish it.
+Emotional impact: It has the kind of liminal feeling that I assume it was designed to create.
+Would I play again?: Sure, why not. It's short and good at creating the feeling of low-key chills.
A cozy (or sad) wilderness parser game with graphics and sound, August 2, 2021This was a truly pleasant game to play. The art was very lovely, reminding me of a more advanced version of the art in Laura Knauth's Winter Wonderland.
This is written in Adventuron, and has a few 'modes', including a cozy one and a sad one. I played both of those.
The game has its own internal logic that doesn't correspond 100% to standard interactive fiction tropes. For instance, a few puzzles require that you type the desired result without detailing the physical actions that prompt that result (an example, not in the game, would be like saying 'go golfing' instead of 'hit ball').
Because of that, I got stuck a bit, but I noticed that the many other people who played seemed to get by without asking for hints online, so I persevered. Overall, I enjoyed the atmosphere of this game the most out of this comp, and think this is an outstanding use of Adventuron.
A pleasant game about reaching a train. Has two perspectives, August 2, 2021This game opens with a spooky pixel art world and story, then transitions to a generally pleasant, somewhat magical real life world with photographs.
It has 3-5 puzzles. All are simple, and most are well-clued. One involving a fish felt a little arbitrary to me, but overall it was nice.
The game felt smooth and polished. The writing gives hints of interesting worldbuilding. Overall, like others have noted, the game feels a bit disconnected between its two sides, but both sides are individually well put-together.
A bite-sized chess puzzle, August 2, 2021I generally enjoy games by Andrew Schultz, and this was no exception.
It's a small game on a 5x5 chess square with a few short chess puzzles. Using knight moves, you must move around the board to achieve your goals.
+Polish: The game was very smooth. I kept trying to type SUMMON instead of CALL but that's entirely on me.
+Descriptive: I actually like the writing in this more than almost all other Schultz games. It goes in a different direction and I like it.
+Interactivity: The puzzles appealed to me.
+Emotional impact: Genuine enjoyment counts as an emotion, right?
+Would I play it again? Yes, I found it satisfying.
I don't everyone would like this all the time, but I think some people would like this some of the time. If you'd like a brief logic-based brainteaser that wraps itself up nicely, try it out.
A Nickolodeon-based game made by a kid, August 1, 2021This is an unpolished but complex and amusing parser game made by a kid.
It's strongly based on different Nickolodeon series, starting with the Loud House.
Here's my rating:
-Polish: For a kid making a parser game, it's great. Otherwise, it has numerous problems, most of which could be solved by time and practice.
-Descriptiveness: Most of the details are left out, relying on your knowledge of the shows or of classic tropes to fill in the details.
+Emotional impact: I thought it was fun and funny, especially the slime's riddle solutions
+Interactivity: It was straightforward but manage to cook up a lot of surprises. Some bugs but intfiction hints helped me out.
+Would I play again? With my kid, yeah
A charming short treasure hunt on a grandfather's farm, August 1, 2021This game is, I believe, a late entry to the recent parser competition that was for 2-word introductory games for kids. It's a simple Adrift game that is generally very polished, with a tutorial available, music, a few pictures, and some text effects.
Here's my rating:
+Polished: The game is very smooth and well-done.
+Descriptive: The game is sparse and, as part of the competition, can only put a couple of lines in each description, but the author manages to make each room interesting and to serve many purposes. It could have been easy to throw in a bunch of empty rooms to fill up space, but every is nice and compact.
+Interactivity: The puzzles were generally fair and interesting. I set the game down for about an hour in the middle, and forgot an important clue and had to look at the pdf, but if I hadn't wandered off I would have remembered.
-Emotional impact: While the game is generally charming, it never garnered a strong emotional response from me.
+Would I play again? Maybe I'd show it to my son.
Pick-up artist training simulator as a small parser game , August 1, 2021Danny Dipstick is a compact, polished puzzle game where you play as an uncharismatic man who is desperate to get a girl's phone number.
This game is based off on an older game by a different author. Much of my reaction to this game is based on my feelings about this variant of date culture in general, and may not reflect the author's own attitudes.
In my opinion, the central tenets of this game (that being able to easily persuade women to date you is desirable, that the barriers between you and 'random woman you just met' are all superficial things like appearance that can be easily corrected, etc.) do not hold up. In the past, almost all people met their partners through mutual friends, and now according to modern research the internet is even more common. For me, Danny's story didn't seem authentic and didn't resonate with me.
Like someone else mentioned, the depiction of the store clerk seemed inauthentic as well. He's described as scrawny, undernourished, with an almost unintelligible accent. According to statistics, the median Indian household is much wealthier than the median white household, and English is a first language for many in India. This corresponds with my own experience; in Texas, where I live, a huge chunk of my everyday coworkers and friends are Indian, and almost half of my wealthy tutoring clients are Indian. I'm sure scrawny, undernourished, unintelligible Indian people exist, but they're certainly outliers.
Mechanically, I was really pleased with the compact puzzles and their unity of purpose. The puzzles were simple but it contributed to the overall feel of the game.
A space colonization parser game with a fun opening sequence, August 1, 2021I remembered this game when I played it during the competition, but I couldn't remember where. Was I a beta tester? No, I wasn't in the credits.
Then I remembered that this was entered into Introcomp! The author has certainly improved the game since then. Back then, it only had the opening and then an empty crater.
This game has you play as a colonist arriving on a planet. The opening sequence is pretty brilliant, similar to the Ian Finley game Gris et Jaune. Unfortunately for both games, they get a little buggy later.
This game has few big bugs in it, like if you type REMOVE [something] it gives an error message with a space missing.
The game is ambitious, though; even though it's not super long, it has changing time, major modifications to locations, an autonomous NPC, and a (Spoiler - click to show)change in perspective.
If the bugs were fixed, I would give this game a 4 or 5, and I think the author didn't something great and should continue coding.
A work-in-progress horror romance Twine game about a supernatural agency, July 11, 2021This game is part of the list of great twine/ink games on itch that I found here.
This game has a setup that is partly a personality test and partly an intro to a supernatural-themed version of the SCP foundation (complete with the motto 'Observe, Learn, Protect'). You are handled a big sheaf of background world-building and given a test to see 'what kind of agent are you?'
Then there is a narrative section about you returning to your hometown, which the player quickly realizes is very anomalous.
The game cuts out quickly after that. Everything up to this point is great; the trouble is that the 'core gameplay' hasn't really been shown yet, which means that we haven't really seen how romance, combat, or investigation will work. In my experience, this makes such games more difficult to complete, so I wish the author all the best. Either way, I'd definitely play more games by this author.
A small game with clever mechanics: swap any similar objects, May 17, 2021This game is complex and rich for a small game written for a jam. You are a djinn and have the power to APPRAISE objects to see what they're made of, then to SWAP similar objects.
John Evans used to write games with similar powers a couple decades ago, and those games didn't have many restrictions on what you could swap or summon or create, so it often ended up buggy and a mess.
This game gets around that problem by putting very tight restrictions on what you can and can't swap. In fact, there was only a single pair of objects I found in the entire game that I could swap, although I'm sure there are more out there. Overall, I found the game well-implemented and fun.
A small, underimplemented puzzle game with some intriguing backstory, May 17, 2021This game takes the basic premise of the PunyInform jam (starting in a pub with a knife through a note in the wall) and take it in some fun directions. I enjoyed seeing the author's backstory developed for the main character.
The puzzles generally aren't too hard once you know what you need to do, although, like most of the games in the jam, it would benefit the most from more beta testing.
The main idea of this game is that you are a sort of revenant or mummy that can be resurrected over and over by use of a mystic knife. You have to speak with an inspector to help solve crimes. It's mostly a prologue of a longer story idea.
A sprawling and bare game made in puny inform exploring an abandoned city, May 17, 2021This game has you exploring an abandoned town after exiting the broom closet of a pub.
Most locations are described in little detail. Puzzles are fairly dependent on searching, but past that the puzzles involve some tricky wordplay/intelligence test-style thinking.
The game has some good moments but overall felt a bit frustrating. It was not polished, but was fairly descriptive. The interactivity didn't work well for me, and I don't intend on playing it again. However, some parts were satisfying to figure out/complete.
A shortish pub adventure with one brilliant puzzle, May 17, 2021Having now played several punyinform games in a row, I now realize that many design features I thought were poor choices are actually 'baked in' to punyinform: specifically no UNDO and pedantic phrasing for disambiguation.
It also seems that most games in this PunyInform jam were written by newish players who aren't part of a culture of intense beta testing or familiarity with recent parser games.
So that puts a lot of things in perspective. Given this background, this game isn't that bad. I had to look at the itch page for some hints on how to proceed from time to time, but besides that it's fairly straightforward. You have a few chores to complete before your boss arrives, and much of the difficulty is figuring out the right commands to fulfill the actions required.
The one thing that elevated this game for me was an excellent puzzle involving cigarettes. I've never seen a puzzle quite like this and I think I might nominate it for an award next year, if I remember.
A short and simple adventure assembling a cocktail, May 17, 2021This PunyInform game was made by a parent-child team, and it's pretty complex for a game made that way, but not as complex as most finished games made for competitions are.
Your pub has been cursed by a ghost until you make a drink for them. Each component of the drink is found by solving a different puzzle.
The number one thing the game could use is more feedback from testers, who could have caught things like undescribed objects, exits not listed in the room description, variations for trying to figure out what to do with the shaker, etc.
A short and fairly buggy geocache hunt, May 17, 2021I tend to be very positive in reviewing but almost every interaction I had with this game was troubling.
Leaving the first room puts you immediately in a losing position, where you have to answer a question or die. I only figured out what to do by googling, hoping that it was an obscure reference, and I found out that it was (I read the books years ago and loved them, but I didn't form a strong memory of this particular creature).
After the first room, most reasonable directional commands don't work, requiring the use of 'ENTER ---' instead. An object that is essential to the game is undescribed and can't be interacted with most verbs (that describes several objects). The main way of gaining points is a verb that is nowhere indicated in the game. And the final puzzle of ending the game requires an exact, non-idiomatic three-word phrase ((Spoiler - click to show)BOARD SHIP REALLY).
Fortunately for the author, all of this is avoidable in the future by having more testers. If this had been tested by a few people who could give good feedback, it would be just fine, and so it casts no aspersions on the author's skill.
Edit: Also, UNDO is disabled, despite having insta-deaths without warning.
A compact game with reasonable puzzles and interesting characters, May 4, 2021This game pulls off a difficult feat: there are 3 characters you can play as and you can swap between them at will. That's fairly difficult to pull off, but the game does well.
Puzzles are reasonable, as intended for a 'tutorial'-type game. The story is kind of random, but the characters are well-defined, have distinct personalities and see and interact with the world in different ways.
Your friend ends up locked in a strange compound after a tour and needs help escaping. You have to go and save him!
Overall, I didn't feel a real emotional investment in this game, but it was pleasant, one of the smoothest to play out of this game jam.
Cute inform/vorple kids game about eating magical plants, May 3, 2021I beta tested this game.
In this vorple/inform game with illustrations of plants, you play as a young creature eager to eat every magical plant you can get your hands on.
As per the text adventure literacy jam rules, you are expected to only use 2-word inputs and have simple language.
Caleb is a great author, and this game shares features with his earlier work, Starry Seeksorrow. It is intended for kids, but I enjoyed the puzzles, and I especially appreciated that solving them all is not necessary for winning. When I beta tested, I missed a couple the first time around.
Somewhere between the time I tested and the time it got put up on itch, the vorple framework seemed to get weird (maybe from itch interactions?), so that each image only shows up halfway until more text appears underneath it (such as when hitting enter).
It's a simple game, but I'm giving it a 5 as I found it polished, descriptive, enjoyed the interactivity, felt an enjoyable emotional impact, and would play again (and did play again!)
A very solid graphical treasure hunt game that requires careful attention, May 1, 2021I found this at first to be one of the best games in the Text Adventure Literacy Jam, and one of the better games released this year, but I got a bit worn out by the end.
The game handles the narrator/pc split of parser games well by having you, the player, command a robot. The robot goes around measuring scientific things like light levels and oxygen percentages, and collecting specimens which are hid all over.
The graphics are great, the puzzles are interesting, I really like this game. But I got a bit overwhelmed. There are so many different specimens to find, I got kind of worn out by the end. Perhaps if I had approached this over a longer period of time and played with another, it would have been perfect.
Creative, short adventuron game about dealing with an unexpected cat, April 30, 2021This game has a cute theme: you wake up with a strange cat on your chest and must deal with it.
The name of the game changes: it starts with 'don't wake the cat' and goes on to other names, each hinting at the required action.
There aren't pictures, but I found the puzzles fun, as I had to think outside of the box a few times. Unfortunately, there were a few times I knew the solution but didn't know how to word it (especially with the front door). Overall, love the idea but could use a few tweaks here and there. If you like cute pet games, though, definitely check it out.
A fun bite-sized exploration game with graphics and sound, April 30, 2021Someone's been talking on the IF forums recently about games that don't have involved puzzles or deep narratives, and I think this is a good example of how to make a successful game without worrying too much about these things.
This is a small adventuron game with a compact, 3x3 map. There is pleasant music, pixel art with lots of abstract triangular textures, reactive NPCs, a variety in types of interaction, and some fun responses to player actions.
It's a simple game, designed for the text adventure literacy project, and I think it's done really way. I don't think it has much in the way of replay value, but other than that it is a rewarding and fun short game.
A collection of random genres and puzzles with some fun parts, April 30, 2021This was part of the Text Adventure Literacy Jam. It starts off in a creepy, horror-type room, then moves into more fantasy or abstraction.
Each room has generally forgiving puzzles, and overall I generally enjoyed the atmosphere. However, there was no real connection between anything, and there were a few odd bugs (for instance, a door in one room affected passage between two other rooms in what seems like a buggy way).
I don't think a game has to have a coherent narrative to be fun, and a game doesn't have to have clever puzzles to be fun, but I feel like this game could use something more than it has now before it is entirely enjoyable.
A detective game that could use some more bug fixes, April 28, 2021This is a game for the text adventure literacy project. It has some nice art and is written in adventuron.
I struggled a lot with this one. To begin with, LOOK doesn't work, but only LOOK AROUND does. Since LOOK usually works with adventuron, I can only assume the author intentionally disabled it.
There is a strict inventory limit of four items, although almost all items in the game are pretty small.
Many commands that should work are not recognized. The game has a helpful tutorial mode, but many of its suggestions do not work. There is a walkthrough provided on the game page, but much of the walkthrough is incorrect.
At one point, following the walkthrough, I forgot something, so I tried to get back to the office, but locked myself out of victory with all items inside the castle. I was frustrated, but replayed to the end.
There is a second day available, but the first story was complete, and as the second day has less bugfixes, I'd rather not play it until it's more tuned-up.
The game does, though, have some fun art.
Find 5 reflections in a cozy puzzle game, April 28, 2021This game is part of the Text Adventure Literacy Jam.
You are tasked with finding 5 reflections of yourself. There is a helpful tutorial that's optional.
There are about 10 locations, and the game has some graphics that add quite a bit to the charm of the game, and to its utility, with the map.
The puzzles are fairly simple but hard enough to be rewarding.
I had a few hiccups here and there. The game wouldn't recognize commands like X RED, only X RED CRYSTAL. Overall, I found the game charming and with a few fun surprises.
A straightforward mysterious mansion game, April 26, 2021This Adventuron game was designed for the Text Adventure Literacy Project, and it seems designed to be safe and simple. Only two-word commands are used.
It has a fairly large map with around 20 locations (?) and a few puzzles, including a combination safe, keys, and examining puzzles. The idea is that you are exploring an old mansion and discovering its secrets.
There aren't a lot of surprises here, except perhaps the ending. There is a light puzzle that was kind of interesting, though.
Sci-fi exploration with a map, April 22, 2021I beta tested this game.
This is a Twine game with great multimedia. You are exploring a derelict space craft under the auspices of an evil capitalist organization. Something is following you.
There is a map on the lefthand side, different uses of text coloring and some impressive animated pixel art.
Gameplay consists of moving around the map, picking up items (you can hold one at a time except for a few special items) and learning more about the spaceship.
I find the writing funny and the art well-done. The map and the sense of movement makes this at times a fairly difficult puzzle game.
One thing I could have wished was for more items with easily apparent uses. Other than that, this is a fun, funny, replayable game.
Nice engine, fairly straightforward murder mystery, April 17, 2021This game is written using the Strand Games engine, a nice and smooth interface that was developed to 'restore' the Magnetic Scrolls games from a few decades ago.
I like the way it looks and moves, it feels very smooth. The voice acting option (I think it was different text-to-speech readers, at least for some of them?) are a nice change of pace after how hard it is to get sound working in Inform.
The game itself isn't quite as alluring. It's a collection of fairly tropey characters in a fairly tropey setting (a major, a dilettante child, a butler, etc. in a manor). And the puzzle seems to consist in just asking who was where and figuring out which one person was lying.
A quick 2-room parser game about walking the dog, April 17, 2021In this game, you have to get your dog to go outside and take a walk, solving a few puzzles on the way.
It's an inform game, and I believe it's the first one by this author. There are a lot of things here that are common to first games: a detailed depiction of mundane tasks in a familiar setting (here, an apartment/house), some white space errors, puzzles that are interesting but perhaps underimplemented.
I feel like the author's writing voice has a lot of personality, and I bet that the feedback from this game will help the next game be even better. Right now, though, there's just not much there.
A tale of two lives in 6 acts of Twine, April 15, 2021This game seemed at first like many, many other Twine games I've played where someone reflects on their childhood and a person they had a major crush on, only to revisit their feelings as an adult.
But this game turns out to be different in several good ways. First, it's nice visually, with well-thought-out font use, colors and spacing. the writing is descriptive and interesting, with few typos. And the choice structure is actually meaningful, the game putting real stakes on its choices and remembering them (although I encountered a bug where (Spoiler - click to show)I decided not to cut the bike tires but Luke remembered me as doing so). And the relationship with your friend is kept completely real and easy to visualize while also being ambiguous and interesting.
If I had any complaint it's that I thought it ended in act 4 and then had 2 acts after. I think having either a progress bar or other indicator of time passage, or having more of an emotional rise, climax, and denouement might make that easier.
This game has timed text, which usually is a major problem in games, but this game's text was pretty much exactly in sync with my reading, so it didn't bother me.
Purely exploration. A twine game about an abandoned home, April 14, 2021This game takes on a social problem: America has millions of empty homes but the homeless aren't allowed to live in them.
In this game, you play a homeless couple who breaks into an ultra-mansion. There are tons of rooms, and you can explore them for a long time.
Almost all interactions are choosing which room to see next. There are some fun self-referential moments (like finding a CYOA book and talking about how much you disliked them when younger), but the vast bulk of the game is marveling at the excess and poor taste of the rich owners.
It's hard to sympathize with the PC as they seem more motivated by envy than by higher ideals.
There were a few minor typos here and there (I think there was a stray 'a', like the phrase 'the a'). Overall, though, the writing was vivid. While this game seems to be a complete idea, I wouldn't mind spending more time with these characters in this world.
A brief metaphorical Inform game, April 13, 2021This short game has you on a narrow roadway with obstacles on either side, and you have to find a way to get free.
You are carrying several metaphorical objects (a hope, a fear, etc.). There is a single NPC to talk to, and two (that I found) possible endings.
I like the idea of this game, but I didn't feel satisfied with specific elements of the implementation and the writing.
Implementation wise, it seems it just needs a little more polish, like the formatting of the ending text or the whitespace at the end of some of the paragraphs.
Writing-wise, for me personally it was a little too abstract. I have the same feeling with many games, including some of Andrew Schultz's work, which deals with similar concepts of overcoming personal challenges and regrets. For me, it's easier to grab onto more specific examples and wording than to universally applicable truths.
-Polish: The game could use a bit more polish.
-Descriptiveness: I felt that the game could use more specificity.
+Interactivity: I liked the gameplay.
-Emotional impact: For some reason, the situations in the game didn't resonate with me.
+Would I play again? I played through twice just to see a different ending.
An intro to an autism travel game/visual novel, April 13, 2021I've had a lot of friends and students with autism, and they're all different, so it's nice to see a well-described point of view from a new author.
In this visual novel, you play as a sort of guiding friend/telepathic connection to a young adult with autism who is travelling alone to a concert in Hungary.
Interestingly, the visuals respond to the PC's feelings, turning more colorful if you navigate situations well.
There are some good explanations of Spoon Theory and features a lot of things that I've seen in other literature by and about autistic people (like using sensory inputs such as music or textured objects for soothing).
Storywise, I felt like I had some action, the varying amounts of detail in the pictures was fun. This game is incomplete, but I'd like to see it finished.
A short game about getting the courage to begin writing, April 11, 2021I found this game somewhat stressful, as it reminds me of writing my big novel.
In this Twine game, you sit down and have to focus and begin typing your grand novel, kind of like Violet, where you have to sit down and type out 1000 words of your dissertation. Also like Violet, the main goal is to overcome your distractions.
The similarities end there. This game is fairly short, and the main gameplay doesn't have the puzzle (although the hints in the download show (Spoiler - click to show)how to solve a hidden puzzle to get a true ending).
The struggle of writing is real, and a lot of this game is relatable. Although it focuses on how hard it is to get started, for me, it was hard every day to pick up where I had left off.
While I found the game well-done, with a nice opening animation, there were some things that could be improved. Some paragraphs were spaced apart, while some were not, for instance. And, overall, it felt like it needed just a little more 'something', a 'je ne sais quoi'; I know that's vague, but that's the only way I can put it in words.
A purely branching Quest choice game with fun art, April 11, 2021This game has some great art, and played smoothly in the downloaded version.
This is a pure time cave, i.e. a game where every choice gives a different branch and none of them ever converge.
In fact, the first choice between 3 characters gives entirely different games with seemingly no connection to each other (I got 1 ending for the first 2 and 4 for the last one, and didn't see any connection).
They're mostly about heartfelt and kind coming-of-age stories in a fantasy world with a lot of fantasy races and animals.
+Polish: The game was polished. Occasionally the text would glitch then fix itself, but I think that was just a loading thing.
+Descriptiveness: The story, setting, and characters were distinct and vivid.
+Emotional impact: I thought the game was cute.
-Interactivity: The branching structure gets exhausting after a while, because more and more time is spent re-reading the same text.
-Would I play again? I didn't finish getting all the endings and don't feel like I need to.
A branching Twine game about a robot apocalypse, April 10, 2021This game is written in Twine, and features you, a programmer, working on a secret government project when things go wrong.
It uses colored text for emphasis. The structure for much of the game is a small section where you pick 3 options in any order, then moving on, sometimes with a branch when moving on. The branches are big, with no coming back together in the end (essentially a 'time cave').
The overall storyline isn't bad, involving a kind of robot apocalypse.
There are several errors. One of the largest is that in the Twine code, many of the sections check the 'history:' feature of twine to see if you've visited a passage, but types the names of the passages wrong, so you never get to proceed unless you load it into twinery and proceed by yourself.
This, connected with the semi-frequent typos, leads me to believe that the other never played through the finished game or had testers try it. Having someone play through your game from end to finish really helps when submitting to a competition!
I agree with the other reviewer that this game's protagonist has problematic views. They're part of an overall bigger issue, which is that he is more or less a jerk. I've noticed when looking at choice-based games that while many people like being a 'bad guy', very few people like being a jerk.
-Polish: The game has gamebreaking bugs.
-Descriptiveness: The game's text was most interesting when describing the robots, but was otherwise fairly vague.
-Interactivity: The bugs threw a wrench in things.
-Emotional impact: I felt disconnected from the protagonist.
-Would I play again? Not until it's polished a bit.
I would definitel bump up the rating if the major bugs were resolved!
A multimedia wonderland of a game. Spy thriller, 4th wall breaking, April 10, 2021This game has truly great multimedia. I had some troubles with it (mentioned later), but I've never seen a Twine game at this level when it comes to video usage.
This spy game has constantly changing background animations that preserve a high degree of readability. There's a great score, and the videos/animations are just so crisp and readable.
The puzzles are honestly very clever, but again a technical mishap got me.
These were the things that I had trouble with:
-When I first opened the game, I had no sound.
-I restarted the game, but that popped up several javascript/Twine errors
-Then I restarted again, and the audio worked, but then....
-The AR thing seems to require a very specific set of technology that I could only solve with weird finagling. I had to (description of partial solution of this puzzle) (Spoiler - click to show)scan a QR code, so, since I was playing on the computer, I used my phone. But that took me to a twine game with a constantly moving link to click. That just straight-up doesn't work in Twine on mobile safari. So I copied the url into my email and sent it to my computer. Once you solve that Twine, you get sent to an AR. But the AR requires motion tracking, so I again had to email the url to myself so my phone could do the AR. This could all be solved by removing the text movement portion of the twine minigame you get sent to when you scan the QR code and replacing it with a different cool thing.
The storyline broke the 4th wall a lot but was honestly genuinely funny. There are some great lines here, and the audiovisuals and writing put together are very impressive. The tech troubles I had are the only thing keeping me from 5 stars.
Features strong profanity, some gruesome violence.
An incomplete Python game set in a theatre, April 9, 2021I rarely review a game without playing it to completion. To explain my omission in this case, I'd like to describe my play experience.
This was the second python game I played in this competition, so I had a better idea of how to get it running than I did on that one.
There are two ways to compile it: command prompt or web version.
I first tried command prompt and found it very slow, so then I tried the web version.
The web version has a several seconds pause between each line of text. This is somewhat frustrating, but not too bad. But the web version also blanks the screen frequently, and on a timer, so important text gets overriden by incidental 'flavor' text, making the text sometimes too slow and sometimes too fast.
The slow text, while a drawback, would have been manageable if not for the fact that:
-the same text pause happens when you make an error
-the game doesn't recognize most standard parser commands
For instance, you can't LOOK AT, W means WAIT instead of WEST and N means NEXT instead of NORTH. TALK TO is also not recognized. There is a HELP command, which lists helpful things to do, but in the web version sometimes typing HELP just gave me the environmental text, and HINT never worked.
So, much of my gameplay consisted of trying commands, getting errors, trying other commands, getting errors, all at a fairly slow pace.
The main game concept seems like it could work, but I can't proceed right now.
A heist game in 3 acts with puzzles and conversational mechanics, April 9, 2021This game does a lot of good things, and really drew me in.
You play as a nouveau-riche socialite who is also a catburglar/art thief.
Gameplay revolves around two mechanics: conversation and puzzles.
The conversation consists of choosing one of three attitudes: Friendly, Direct, and Leading On (?) (I can't quite remember what they stood for). Most conversations last 2-4 choices and you have to use the feedback you get from the NPC to determine if you are making the right choices or not, so there is some allowance for mistakes.
The puzzles consist of both strategizing (often the choice is between being fast and risky or quiet and slow) and text-entry. I liked the last puzzle quite a bit.
I found the Gwen character a little annoying, but enjoyed the MC a lot. If you're a fan of Alias the Magpie, I think you'll enjoy this too.
Note: The many save files available were great. I decided not to try and get a perfect game, but I did use one save once to recall what someone had said many turns earlier.
An Ink game about saving a mining town after an earthquake, April 9, 2021This is a Spring Thing game written in Ink. In it, you play a young man in a mining town where a disaster has struck. There are several chapters, each of which has 3-4 binary choices to choose from, with several paragraphs of text per choice.
I'm going to rank this on my five-point scale:
+Polish: I could have sworn I saw some typos but not sure. Game looks nice, generally polished.
+Descriptiveness: I quite liked the descriptiveness in this game, the characters were interesting and the mine scenes were excellent.
-Interactivity: This is a hard one. It's better than many games I've seen, but in general it's very hard to figure out what kind of effect different choices might have. It branches wildly, but seems generally forgiving. In a perfect world, I would have hoped for choices that have some kind of pattern, so I could make a plan, but unexpected surprises, so I'd have to adjust that plan.
+Emotional impact: I really got into my character and my feelings for the town.
-Would I play again: Even though it branches a lot, I didn't feel a strong desire to replay. Glad I played once, though.
An unfinished demo for a long twine game set in world of Cyberpunk 2077, April 8, 2021Like many of the Back Garden Spring Thing games, this is a demo for a much longer game in the future.
As in Bez's other games, the writing here is well-done, and the characters are well-defined with distinct personalities (for me, at least). The audiovisuals were excellent, although I didn't see any easy way to mute the music (for, for instance, taking a phone call while playing).
The idea is that you work at a store in the background of Cyberpunk 2077 (a game I have never played, so I may be missing some nuance here). You have a boss that literally monitors your thoughts and docks your pay when you step out of line.
I feel like the game suffers in how its message translates into interaction. The game has a good message which is completely reasonable (the use of surveillance tools by employers and other features of a police state are bad). But sometimes it feels like the game looks like it offers a choice but not really; your character is asked about your feelings but you are also told your feelings. I feel like it might be better to have one or the other: have no choices about how you feel but a lot about your actions (the way Howling Dogs or their angelical understanding does), or allow choices about how you feel and let the player stick with it, even if the consequences are dreadful (like Lore Distance Relationship). As one older author wrote, you can't act unless you're enticed by two contrasting things, the sweet and the bitter.
A python-based diner game, April 7, 2021I don't think I would have played this game if I hadn't been committed to reviewing all the Spring Thing games. Downloading Python 3 was tedious and frustrating, having to type exact commands was rough, and restaurant sim's not my favorite genre.
Still, I was engaged by this game and played through till the end. You run a diner on the moon (or Mars, although I didn't try that diner), ordering food, finding what customers want, making recipes, serving it up, then taking care of the diner or hanging out with a friend.
I enjoyed the little narrative snippets when hanging out with my friend the good Doctor. She gave me lots of cool trinkets and talked about space.
Auto-complete was a lifesaver, although I have to ask, why go to the trouble of using autocomplete but then have so many customers whose names start with O? It'd be way better to have every customer name have a distinct letter, or at least spread them out roughly uniformly (unless, by a cosmic joke, they were uniform and I just got 'O' tourists over and over again).
This game was okay, but I felt like I was fighting the system all the way. The question is, what's next? If the authors were trying to learn python better or demonstrate their use of python, then that's great, this is a cool program. If their goal is to create awesome IF, I would ditch python and go with a specialized language like Twine or Ink.
A short spy game with fun puzzles but a bit undercooked, April 6, 2021This game describes itself well on the Spring Thing page, where it says:
"I’ve entered it in the Back Garden section because it is
not very large, it has had insufficient testing and consequently has some rough spots. It should anyway be playable through and hopefully provides some enjoyment along the way. A walkthrough is available in a separate file. Have fun!"
I found the puzzles pleasant and the overall atmosphere light and breezy, but there were several typos or bugs.
Overall, you're trying out for a spy type job and have to infiltrate a house. Puzzles are presented one at a time, generally, with each solved puzzle giving a clue to the next one.
The hints could definitely have used some fine-tuning, but the author seems well aware of that. I had fun, but could have had more.
An incomplete murder mystery texting game, April 5, 2021While this game is unfinished, I found it a pleasant surprise. In format it reminds me of Lifeline, a once-popular game where you were texting with an astronaut and guiding them around a planet.
In this game, you have a nosy mother who is very interested in the death by fire of her neighbor. You give her advice as she learns more about the death and investigates.
I found the characters well-depicted and funny. The writing needs polishing, but it might be fine as-is since it represents the way the characters talk in real life.
The text timing and animation could use a little tweaking. Something about it seems a little off, making it hard to read.
Overall, I'm looking forward to the finished version! If possible, I'd love the final version to have controls for text speed, audio, and saving.
An unfinished game about competing hackers, April 5, 2021This seems like it will one day be a complex game about 4 different games competing in a simulated hacking competition.
For now, though, it is incomplete; all paths I checked stop when dice are rolled for the first time. There are sentences missing, fragments of code, and notes like 'TODO: add GRU and NK later'. The text that is available has typos.
What is available looks to be interesting and deals with a subject I'd love to learn more about: American election security and vulnerabilities that other countries can exploit.
The game is descriptive, but its incomplete state meant that, for me, it was limited in its interactivity, emotional enjoyment and polish, and I wouldn't play it again at this time.
If it were complete and polished, I would certainly give it a 4 or 5.
A game that wants you to hate someone really bad, April 4, 2021I am so, so glad I played this game, but not for the reasons the author intended (unless it's a cool reverse pscyhology thing, then it turned out perfect).
I've played some games before about topics that were good and I agree with (like caring about trans people or not being racist) but which seemed like they forced on an opinion on you or hard rigid black-and-white morality. I thought those techniques weren't effective, but I felt bad writing a criticism since I agreed with the game's principles.
This game is about something where absolutely everyone on earth can agree it is good (the game is about opposing (Spoiler - click to show)kicking puppies). But it is railroaded so hard it sucked out all the fun for me. It showed me that no matter how good the cause a game promotes, forcing the player to adopt renders it meaningless.
The game sets you up to hate your boss as much as physically possible, and it just assumes your intent at every step. It's like the game thinks it knows exactly how you would feel, like that one coworker (thankfully I don't have one at my current job) that's always try to schmooze you and assume he knows you.
I didn't have fun, which I think is essentially the game's point. The game was shooting for an emotional impact of being annoying, and it worked perfectly, I am now annoyed. It was very descriptive. But the interactivity didn't work for me, and I don't think I'll play again. It was very polished. So, according to my rating system, I'm giving 3 stars, but I genuinely disliked playing this.
The epitome of truck stops, April 3, 2021I am still a fairly prudish person, and happy with that choice, but growing up I rarely left the house and just read books most of the time, and went to school and church. I had some vices and saw friends and family doing extreme things, but it all felt distant.
So for me, when I stopped at a truck stop across the Wyoming border on a trip for the first time, it seemed like a frightening place filled with evil and temptations. Pornography magazines, tons of kinds of alcohol, t-shirts with wild slogans or charts comparing breast sizes, everyone smoking or buying chewing tobacco, tough-looking truckers. It blew my mind.
This game brings back a lot of those memories. You're a truck driver (who, as you discover, has recently [early spoiler about character] (Spoiler - click to show)undergone some major changes regarding gender), and you're about to drive over Devil's Taint, one of the most dangerous roads out there (which also reminds me of driving to and from Utah). You have to get help from biker gangs, a 'lot lizard', a smoky waitress, and more to fulfill your dreams and get ready to brave the mountain range.
The author used to write in Quest but has switched over to Inform, and I definitely prefer it. There were a few errors here and there (mostly in trivial things), but it was generally pretty smooth.
I still haven't recovered from my childhood shock, and, frankly, fear of the scary mountain truck stop. But this was a medium-ish, fairly entertaining piece of entertainment.
A musing, contemplative game waiting for a tram, April 3, 2021This Twine game is about chilling waiting for a tram. There are several things to explore in a world that's kind of a mild fantasy/tech blend, like FF7 or Zork.
There are a few minigames and things to explore, like gambling or buying equipment. There's a lot of fun unexpected consequences.
Overall, I enjoyed the idea. The game could use some more polish, maybe throwing it through Grammarly could help get rid of some typos.
The game doesn't really have anything tying it all together, which I think I would have appreciated. But it is a good game for meditating and feeling peaceful.
I played through twice.
A short scientific fiction puzzle game in Twine, April 2, 2021This is a charming little game, partly poetic and partly puzzle.
You are an alien on your home planet and a creature has crash landed. There are 4-5 different locations you can go, each of which allows you to sleep and look around.
Time passes, and it's important to the game. Some events only occur on certain days. There is a nice graphical change when this happens.
The puzzle involves doing the right thing at the right place, and requires a fair amount of travel.
Unfortunately, this game makes the crucial mistake of combining slow text with gameplay requiring repetition. This means that if you need to check a location really quick, you have to wait several seconds to travel there, several seconds to click on a link, and several seconds to click back. If I were the author, I'd update the game to remove the pauses, as I've never seen a review praise slow text in games and many against.
But as it is, this was fun. The puzzle is simple but satisfying, and I enjoyed the ending.
A miniature, procedural pirate infiltration game, March 25, 2021This is the only game out of Choice of Games 123 existing titles I've played that I'm giving 3 stars to. Most titles are the result of years of work and careful oversight by a large crew of editors, copyeditors, testers, etc. that result in a game that is at minimum polished, replayable, descriptive, and having some kind of emotional impact or good interactivity, which are the criteria I judge games by.
This game is the smallest game made since Choice of the Dragon, is experimental, and is buggy. The size is due to it being one of the free (with ads) mini-size games available to anyone playing on the omnibus apps. Unlike the other mini games (Zip! Speedster and HMS Foraker), this one seems like it was written to be me small, with a new kind of gameplay not seen before in Choice of Games.
As an experiment, I'm not sure the game works. It has some randomization (so, for instance, going to the stats screen and back can change what day you're on). Each day is a journal entry, presenting a choice with yes/no options. These are either 'what faction do you favor' out of 3 possible factions, or 'do you try this beneficial thing that checks which of your stats are good' or a combination of the two. In this way, it kind of reminds me of Amazing Quest, a controversial tiny game entered in the 2020 IFComp.
If any of the three factions hates you, you die. The game is supposed to let you restart that day, but a game-breaking bug instead sends you back to the beginning of the game, leaving some of your stats intact which causes a couple more errors.
The randomization and binary choices make the game pretty difficult, with the bug rendering the game permanently in 'hard mode'. I did get to an ending.
I enjoyed the character Lookout and the two different machine animals I had on different runs (a copper snake and silver wolf). I love all the rest of Marquis's games, so I enjoyed getting more lore here about Empyrean, and the captain's mysterious locked room reminded me of Bluebeard, one of my favorite characters (I've sometimes considered Duke Bluebeard's Castle my favorite opera).
So, while this has many redeeming features, I can't give this 4 stars due to the fairly severe, easily reproducible bugs and with my dissatisfaction with the interactivity. But I think Marquis can handle it, as he's an amazing writer with some of the best games out there (like the Vampire Masquerade game).
I'm also looking forward to his next Pon Para game!
A gory horror/demon parser puzzle game with illustrations, March 1, 2021This Adventuron game combines high-quality art with fairly interesting puzzles to make an entertaining game. It's about 30 minutes long (for me) and features a lot of location art and a pretty big map.
It's not huge, and I generally knew what I needed to do. I felt like several times the implementation got in the way; this isn't too unusual with Adventuron games, not because it can't be programmed in, but because many Adventuron authors emulate an era where 'smoothness' wasn't as valued. (although looking at the author's itch page, they mentioned not being able to do more than VERB NOUN, which explains why a lot of my attempts like USE NOUN ON NOUN or VERB ADJECTIVE NOUN didn't work).
The game is definitely a gore fest, mostly through text (the images, even when gory, tend not to depict the bodies themselves). Lots of dead and mangled corpses are described.
You are late to a birthday party and discover a demonic ritual gone wrong. There are multiple endings.
Overall, here is my rating:
+Descriptiveness: The writing is vivid and clear. The cleverness is a good part of the game.
-Polish: see next
-Interactivity: There were some rough edges with interactivity, knowing what I had to do but not getting it able to work which was a bit frustrating.
+Emotional impact: Definitely creepy
+Would I play again? Yeah, this was a great Adventuron game.
A mid-length french inform game about an abandoned space station, February 22, 2021This french game is written in Inform and reminds me a bit of Starcross, as you spend the first part in a spacecraft while approaching a cylindrical space station.
The game alternates between linear, exposition-based segments where people tell you things and unusually difficult or illogical puzzles, where being illogical is the point.
The game seemed well-implemented, and the writing was interesting. The author went to a lot of trouble to implement a ton of different responses.
I guess if I could change anything, it would be that the conversation near the end was no conversation at all, just hearing one side of everything. I wonder if some kind of menu system might be good here, since it would fit with the theme of that section. Anyway, I'd be interested in seeing the finished game.
I used the walkthrough the entire time, as there were a lot of words I didn't know!
A bizarre and poetic french choice game about an old robot, February 22, 2021In this French comp game, you are a robot that wakes up to be greeted by a cute little helper-AI that has a little emoji face.
In this Moiki game (a relatively new and complex engine for choice games), you have to explore everything around you to see if you can be repaired and fixed, as you are close to dying.
Everything you see, though, is rendered in poetic language, as someone has hacked you. A supermarket becomes a body, where you explore the heart, the colon, etc. and a repair shop has become a church.
I probably missed a lot of figurative language due to not being a native speaker, but the concept and execution worked really well. It can be gross at times, but is more often funny or charming. Great game.
A French gangster sim, February 21, 2021This game is a money-based procedurally generated French twine game.
You take the role of a leader in the mafia who is in debt. You go on missions (each giving a certain payout, lasting a certain amount of time, and having a certain downtime, while requiring a certain number of gangsters), get money, and either die after 24 hours (which usually happens), or, if you made enough, win. Your debt and your savings persist from round to round.
It's a pretty short loop, and you'll see the same text a lot. There is some variety, and things change as the game goes along, but I think the main story just wasn't very compelling for me.
It was polished, though, and had a distinctive 'voice'. I spent a while looking at the code after, and it seems very complex.
A twine game about a sailing ship with some looping, February 6, 2021This entry in the 2021 French Comp is a Twine game where you are in a kind of random loop for most of the game.
So you sail, then you can check your inventory or scrub the deck, then you sail, and you can get drunk or raise the sails, etc.
After a very long time (seeing every scrap of text 4-5 times), a big event with another boat happens, which can have several endings.
The randomness looks complex and the concept is interesting, but in execution I felt it was too tedious. I would have reduced the main loop to half its size or less so the action could happen earlier.
An educational CYS game about covid with math tests, January 23, 2021This game from the CYS website is a difficult, branching game about Coronavirus. I found it surprisingly informative and I learned some things I didn't know before.
You play as a professor recruited by the government in the early months of Covid to help them understand the spread of the disease and to make recommendations about it. If you do well, you have the chance of moving up and influencing public policy.
Part of 'doing well' includes doing well on difficult math questions about things like exponential growth and infection transmission.
This kind of math test hasn't always done well in IF before, with games like #vanlife and A Final Grind inserting frustrating calculations in the middle of otherwise normal stories. But in this game, the choices are fair, and undo is available at any time. It uses math to teach instead of punish.
That being said, it's pretty hard, and the questions involve policy as well. In my best run, when I thought I was very successful, I only ended up with 14/50 points!
+Polish: The game is generally well-polished.
+Interactivity: I'm not usually interested in 'only one right path' games, but it's fair and gives you a chance to try again.
-Emotional impact: The topic and mechanical approach left me feeling distant from the story, making the whole thing a thought exercise (though a welcome on).
+Descriptiveness: Especially good at putting difficult concepts into understandable language. I swear a lot of people should try playing this to understand coronavirus better.
-Would I play again? It was interesting, but it more made me interested in looking up what it said to understand it better rather than replaying.
A mid-length French Ink game with art and animated logic mini-game, January 20, 2021This is a game in the french comp which is very technically proficient and uses figurative and descriptive language (which left me running to Google Translate more often than not).
You are a bestselling author who ends up on an island looking for inspiration for his next book. You have a phone with little minigames on it that remind me of Lolo on the SNES (mostly involving pushing sliding blocks around).
The island is fairly small, and soon bizarre plot twists happen.
I believe there is some branching in this game. In my branch, I found a minigame where you use a radio to solve a maze and another minigame where you visually push blocks around (like the cellphone puzzle) to open a door, but Jack Welch said he found a Towers of Hanoi minigame, which I did not encounter.
Overall, the story was interesting and it was complex, but I'm not sure how well the disparate elements tied together. Overall, though, it was polished, descriptive, compelling, and had good interactivity.
A complicated present fetch quest in Adventuron, December 26, 2020This is the last 2020 Adventuron Christmas Jam game I played, and it was pretty good.
There is a large map and several independent puzzles to solve, as well as many red herrings that add to the interactivity instead of taking away.
You are an elf who has to find a present Santa lost before catching up to all the other elves on vacation.
Everything was competently coded. I had a little trouble occasionally guessing verbs but not a great deal. The art and writing are good, but I feel like everything was 'good' but could go even further somehow to be 'great', like it's missing some final ingredient. But I'm impressed over all!
Compact christmas puzzler with hidden achievments, December 26, 2020This is a smaller game with about 4 rooms but a lot of tiny puzzles.
The girl you're baby sitting has gone missing and you have to find her. On the way, you find that Christmas needs your help! But just for a second.
The puzzles are fairly small and mostly well-clued. The game makes it clear that searching things in various ways is the path to success.
The achievements are perhaps the best feature, basically puzzles that would otherwise be unfair are not part of the main story, instead giving you achievements to reward your curiosity.
A medium-length humorous Adventuron game about pigeons, December 26, 2020This is an Adventuron Christmas game where the Reindeer are knocked out by your 'special potions' that Santa keeps in barrels. You have to recruit someone else to help!
The art is superb here, adding a lot to the game. The puzzles are a mixed bag, including a logic puzzle and a visually-based minigame where you have to guide pigeons across windy terrain.
Overall, I found the writing to be funny. The whole thing felt a little light, which makes sense since I suppose additional time went into crafting visuals. But it's worth a fun and silly 30 minutes, and I didn't run into any implementation issues.
A minimal parser game with graphics about trapping Santa, December 26, 2020In this brief Adventuron game, you have to set a trap for Santa to make him give you a present.
In writing, graphics, and gameplay, this resembled nothing more to me than a single puzzle (or maybe two) in a Scott Adams game. Everything is stripped down bare, and you have to get things exactly right for the game to recognize your answers.
It works overall as a puzzle, but here is my score:
-Polish: Everything is bare-bones.
-Descriptiveness: Same, the writing is minimalist and mostly just lists of present objects.
-Interactivity: I found the main puzzle frustrating, not in figuring out what to do, but in figuring out how to communicate it to the parser.
+Emotional impact: Despite the above, I found it fun to solve.
+Would I play again? It's brief enough that it could be fun to check out next year.
A charming parser game with detailed graphics and constrained gameplay, December 26, 2020This is a great game. I went back and forth on a 4 or 5, but there are so many great little details that I'll definitely go with the higher score.
This is an adventuron game with a detailed life sim. You have to keep up your hunger, happiness and energy bars. In addition, you have to solve little puzzles that your wife (or partner?) Pel sets for you.
There are numerous illustrations, especially for the puzzles. The writing is solid.
The story isn't completely original (what is?) but is executed well. The life-sim is a bit easier than it could be but fits narratively. The puzzles are all in constrained environments and occur one at a time, but require ingenuity and creative thinking.
Definitely worth trying out. It does require the graphics as an essential component of the puzzles, though, making it difficult for visually impaired players.
An espionage Adventuron game with multiple graded endings, December 26, 2020This is an interesting setup for a game.
It's an adventuron game with pixelart illustrations of a dystopian future (presumably referencing Cyberpunk 2077, which I haven't played). You are a futuristic version of an elf in a timeline where Santa has sold out and delivers anything to anyone, no matter what side of the law they're on.
There are one or two puzzles at a time, and it requires careful exploration, but the limited verb set means that you should be able to figure out what you need to do, even if you have to think a bit to solve it.
The main puzzles involve codes you have to solve, which I found enjoyable.
I received a B ending, with a few ideas of what I might need to do next. It was fun, but I don't feel compelled to try again.
A solstice-themed Christmas adventuron puzzler with code, December 25, 2020This is another entry in the Adventuron game jam.
It features some nice pixel art of a small village near a lake. You receive a dream message from a mysterious figure requesting your help.
It's a small game, with six or so locations and about a puzzle per location. The highlight for me was a cryptogram puzzle using symbols that you had partial information on, making it different than the regular cryptogram puzzle.
I felt like a few of the puzzle solutions were somewhat unfair, especially finding the book in the library, which dampened my enthusiasm a bit. But it was a fun short play overall.
A cute Adventuron game about preparing the 12 days of Christmas for your love, December 25, 2020This game was entered in the Adventuron Christmas game jam.
One of Adventuron's weaknesses is its parser, which, while strong, hasn't caught up to Inform, Dialog and TADS. This game neatly sidesteps that by making it a limited parser game, with the only commands being TAKE, DROP, EXAMINE, and LOOK.
There are only three rooms: a 'hub' room with a Christmas tree, a storage room containing almost all the gifts (including lords and ladies anxiously waiting around), and a kitchen with materials.
The entirety of the interactivity is picking up one item and dropping it in the right spot, hoping it interacts right. Technically, you could just take everything and dump it together (and I admit I took that course occasionally), but it's too tedious to do that without trying to analyze that ahead of time, especially since you have a carrying limit of 3 items (one of the few games where I think that limit enhances gameplay).
The rainbow colors and sound cues were nice.
+Polish: The game is polished;
+Descriptiveness: The descriptions of the gifts is fairly amusing
+Interactivity: This particular setup worked for me
+Emotional impact: It was heart-warming
-Would I play again? It was fun, but was a bit too long for the main gimmick for me.
A short surreal game about a pilgrim stopping at a shrine, November 13, 2020This is a short game written in 4 hours in which you stumble upon a shrine on a journey.
It reminded me or Caleb's Cannonfire Concerto, which is perhaps the Choicescript game that personally affected me the most. The surreal atmosphere (which is similar to his earlier games released this year) is splendid.
-Polish. As is expected for a 4-hour game, there is a lot that is not implemented or otherwise confusing with the parser.
+Descriptiveness: A lovely and vivid world, if dark.
+Interactivity: The puzzles felt directly connected to the narrative and lent it more emotional impact.
+Emotional impact: The twig-pilgrim was my favorite part.
+Would I play again? Yes, I like this game.
A game heavy on worldbuilding with a sense of decay and wonder, November 11, 2020This game reminded me of Princess Mononoke crossed with Hybras from Sunless Skies.
You are essentially a gig worker trespassing in a national park to scavenge various psychotropic mushrooms which have properties far beyond the ones we have in real life. Normal mushrooms give you 1 cent a cap (fairly consistent with real gig jobs like Amazon Turk), while the King's Breakfast could pay off your rent.
It seems that worldbuilding by far is the biggest part of gameplay. More than half of my play time was spent reading the guide book, and it could have served just as well in static form, but it made finding mushrooms later on more fun.
It's weird to say, but I think that later gameplay reminded me of nothing more than the original Zork. I remember playing Zork as a kid and finding some weird stuff and thinking "I have no idea how this all connects", and getting the idea that there was way more out there. I later went and looked at the code of this game and found that there was way more out there, but the effect still persisted.
I don't know if that particular combination of deep lore dive + unpredictable trip in the woods worked for me interaction-wise, but I appreciated the polish, descriptivenes, emotional impact and replayability of the game.
Translate Latin on a spooky evening, November 10, 2020This is a charming short parser game in which you read a text in Latin in your room at night, translating each line as you go (provided with a dictionary and grammar that you can LOOK UP things in). You must frequently match adjectives with nouns that share their declension, so for language fans this is heaven.
The atmosphere in the game was quite nice as well.
+Polish: This kind of thing is pretty tricky to program; I'm impressed!
+Descriptiveness: The Latin itself provides most of the flavor
+Interactivity: As a language fan, it's great.
-Emotional impact: It was fun, but I didn't get creeped out as much as I might have.
+Would I play again? I think I definitely will come back to this at some point for fun.
A meaningful story about lockdowns and aging, November 9, 2020Like Will Not Let Me Go, this story is a well-written long Twine game about the effects of old age and Alzheimer's/dementia on an elderly man and those around him.
It plays out over ten days and ten nights. You struggle as a young at-home attendant for an elderly man named Carl who wavers between lucidity and violent forgetfulness.
At night, you have 4 tasks, the same every night. On the fast version, you do these once, but miss out on some important plot points. On the slow version, you do them 10 times every night, but they're tricky and shift around in very plot-relevant ways.
The 10-times version is hard but rewarding the first night. By the third night, though, I misclicked five times in a row (which restarts the night) and had to stop. It's hard because the image pushes all the text below the screen, so I had to scroll down for each image on a trackpad laptop.
The images are gorgeous and really contribute to the game. I wonder if, for the nights at least, it could have helped to put the image to one side and the text to another.
In any case, the story was meaningful to me, especially talking about divorce and changing relationships with one's spouse. I loved it, and appreciate the author writing it.
A well-designed, timed Twine game about social anxiety and more, November 9, 2020This game in the Grand Guignol part of Ectocomp 2020 was pleasant to play and looked good. It's written in Twine (I assume), but it's been heavily styled with colors and background graphics.
The design is tight and there are real choices with long-lasting effects. You have a specific deadline and a lot of options.
In this game, you're a werewolf that is at a college-type party trying to fit in, have fun and leave before you transform in an hour and a half.
The lycanthropy can easily be read as anxiety (especially given the name of the piece), and I've had the feeling many times of being at a party and trying to stay just long enough to feel comfortable leaving.
The one thing that keeps this from being amazing for me is the signalling of choices. My favorite choice-based games allow either deep characterization of the protagonist or strategizing, and it was hard for me to do either one here. I feel like having more hints about the possible effects of choices could fix that, but it may just be a personal design choice and not something that needs to be 'fixed'. I had fun either way, and played through three or four times.
A speed game about contemplating your sins, November 4, 2020This was an odd game for me. It's very possible that it being in Spanish affected my interpretation of it, because I found it difficult to read due its large number of obscure words (you're essentially a grisly warrior fighting heretics in a fantasy world).
This is a short parser game, probably a speed-IF. You're in a room with a few clothes and some empty containers, and...that's it. There's a door, but it's locked. If you look close enough, you find that key. But the door has no keyhole! But again, that's all there is, right?
I looked at the source (very happy the author provided it!) and it seems that progression through the game involves doing specific actions several times, including (Spoiler - click to show)dropping the key and some actions that I've never really done in an IF (like (Spoiler - click to show)peeing in a jar).
So for me, I liked the descriptiveness and it felt spooky, but the interactivity and polish felt lacking. If this was a speed-IF or first game, it's actually pretty good! But it doesn't measure up to longer parser games.
A medium-length Ink game escaping from a Dino Park, October 19, 2020This is a medium-length Ink game where everything breaks loose at a dinosaur park.
I saw this game with one of the authors guiding us through it at the Seattle IF Meetup. I appreciate the witty humor and the world model that lets you travel around.
I think there are a few things that need to be ironed out. There are instant deaths without undo, but it does have save points to help you restart. A bit more troubling is that there is often not any indication of what path is most likely to lead to success. This was typical of CYOA books, but those books allowed instant undo and instant traversal to any page at any time. I’ve often thought that successful ‘puzzly’ IF is based around making the player feel smart, so giving them hints to pick up on is really helpful.
The other thing that I think could be improved is the story pacing. I think the big moment in the middle needed a bit more buildup. It’s possible that there were more clues hidden in some of the options, but as Emily Short has recommended in the past, if you’re writing a branching game make sure that it’s impossible for the player to miss your story. If a beat is essential to understanding what’s going on, make sure that story beat is hit in every playthrough.
Otherwise, I found this game fun. I couldn’t get to an ending (in the Frogger version, the best I got was rescuing a guy out of water before dying, and in the lab, I got in a weird repeated cycle where I kept getting ‘sneak’ and ‘distract’ and one other option, and I couldn’t figure it out). Glad to see Ink being used!
-Polish: There were a few typos (like helicoptor) and the laboratory ending with the dinos seemed off somehow.
+Descriptiveness: The writing is full of interesting descriptions of things.
+Interactivity: Even though I was frustrated, I felt like I had real options near the end.
-Emotional impact: I felt like there needed to be one or two additional scenes for buildup before dramatic sections (that set up the feeling or more tension)
+Would I play again? I'd like to find a successful ending.
A very well-written story about Halloween and college life, October 19, 2020This game reminds me a little bit of the IF game Eurydice in tone and opening setup.
This is a longish Twine game that is almost entirely choiceless. It consists of several pages, each long, containing a detailed story, with some click-replace links and a few 'asides' (where you read them and come back). An early segment allows some options in the order you explore three scenes. It's styled with orange-on-black text, and is set at a 1999 Halloween party.
The structure of the game means that this game depends entirely on the quality of its story, and I think it excels there. There's real tension, especially if you read the content warnings ahead of time. There are surprises throughout, and I think overall this is some of the best writing of the comp. In a way, that made some of the links a little more frustrating; I didn't want to miss any of the good writing, so I just clicked on everything in order, going back and forth on the asides. I wonder if I 'notation' system like Harmonia's would have worked better.
If the author reads this, I loved the story. Very meaningful!
+Polish: I didn't see any errors.
+Descriptiveness: Great writing.
-Interactivity: I was a little frustrated by it.
+Emotional impact: I teared up a bit after.
-Would I play again? I liked it, but I think it will stick well enough from 1 playthrough.
A short branching Twine game about a universe and a cat, October 18, 2020This is a cute game, and I had fun with it.
You’re a subatomic particle in a universe that’s constantly getting destroyed and recreated by a great cosmic cat.
The structure is basically the Time Cave type, where branches can take you down divergent paths. There are 5 permanent endings and many restart endings. It’s short enough that replay is easy.
The graphics for this game are bright and bold. Your cursor can turn into different animals. Your background can get filled with different pictures of the universe.
Worth playing since, if nothing else, its fun-to-length ratio is so high.
+Polish: The game is very polished. Graphics are a nice addition, although they can be 'busy'.
+Descriptiveness: The universe has a lot of detail and variety.
+Interactivity: The short length makes playing through a couple of times worthwhile.
+Emotional impact: It felt charming.
-Would I play again? I think that a few times through was enough. I'm not completely interested in seeing all endings.
+Descriptiveness:
A collection of short tales in the style of Rudyard Kipling, October 18, 2020This is a series of short stories inspired by/based around Rudyard Kipling’s Just So stories. Each story is told over a small number of pages, and there is one or two choices per story. These choices lead to massive changes between replays, to the point where it’s basically a choice between two separate stories.
The writing is good, similar to the original. The poetry was amusingly intentionally bad.
I appreciate the thought that went into its game, especially its sly twist near the end. I wasn’t really a fan of Kipling’s Just So stories before playing this game, and I think that influenced me not really getting a big emotional impact from this. But this game shows the author knows how to plan, write and program an interesting Twine game.
+Polish: The game is immaculately polished.
+Descriptiveness: The writing has a distinctive voice.
+Interactivity: Having the choices make an impact was nice.
-Emotional impact: The game was interesting, but I wasn't invested in the characters.
-Would I play again? I think once was enough. It'll stick in my brain though.
A leveling-up game about evolution, mushrooms and minigames, October 17, 2020So I’ll just say that this is a great ‘first attempt at an IF story’, as the author put it. I’ve developed theories over the years on what parser games do well during the comp, and they’ve worked pretty good, but recently I’ve been coming up with theories on what makes choice-based games successful. One of the biggest things, in my theory, is allowing a great deal of freedom, either freedom of characterization of the PC or freedom of movement, as well as allowing the player to come up with and execute plans. Having a rhythm or pattern to the game can help too, where similar events repeat with a buildup to something big (like the days in Birdland or the memory episodes in Will Not Let Me GO).
This game has a lot of that freedom and it has that rhythm. You are a cave man, basically an ape, naked in the forest. There’s a small ±shaped map that you explore over the course of the game, gathering brown mushrooms. Each time you find one, you ‘level up’, which increases the verbosity of descriptions, the kind of tasks you can complete, and the mini-puzzles (of which there are three) that you can access.
The mini puzzles are well-done, and Mancala looks fun to play in real-life.
I’m pretty skeptical of the hypothesis of the game (sounds like Lamarckian evolution) but this game is definitely presented as fun and not as an evolutionary biology text.
The two things that hold it back from greatness, in my opinion, are the relatively small scope (although a shorter game is nice during such a big comp!) and the fact that you can only work on one task at a time, lowering the difficulty and making it feel railroaded. But outside of that, I think this is a very strong first game and would love to see more from this author.
+Polish: Mancala and tick tack toe were really cool.
+Descriptiveness: The several layers of intelligence in the writing works great.
+Interactivity: The gated structure doesn't work for me, but the games and combat work well for me.
-Emotional impact: I don't know why, but although I enjoyed the game, it didn't impact me on an emotional level. Not sure what the reason was.
+Would I play again? Yes, I think I would, taking notes.
A game about fishy religious computers, October 17, 2020In Contrast to much of Chandler Groover’s earlier work, this game is written in unity, with Tom Lento providing art and programming.
As someone who’s been working on a Chandler Groover-themed amusement park parser game for years, my initial thought was ‘Where do I fit this in?’ (maybe the food truck?)
Beyond that, though, this game definitely fits into the pattern for Groover’s recent IFComp entries, which tend to be much more experimental and less formulaic.
In this case, we have a complicated UI system that involves dragging and dropping tiles while a Clippy-like goldfish provides helpful tips in the corner. Doing so unlocks additional tiles with additional features, which raise and lower stats by various amounts, with the goal of reaching an arbitrary number for three of those stats.
Having played through most of the comp by now, my mind brought up umprompted comparisons to other games. The drag and drop visual system reminded me of Saint Simon’s Saw and its unity card system, also involving dragging rectangles into rectangles. The complex mechanics and arbitrary number goals reminded me favorably of Ascension of Limbs. The fishy religion reminded me of Call of Innsmouth. And the overall elaborate strategy guide and overly helpful fish reminded me of the controversy surrounding Amazing Quest.
So maybe this game lies at the core of the whole comp in a weird sense that oddly ties in with the game’s own themes. The main idea here is some kind of bio-mechanical-theological construct that is malfunctioning and emitting brine, and which you must patch up through various rituals which have an unintended transformative gestalt effect (just throwing random words together here and hoping they mean something).
Is it a good game? Is this complex combination of art, interactivity, words and design actually fun?
Well, it really annoys me how the top 2 boxes are almost the same color, and that on the little save disks the colors are switched. I finally realized that I could hover something over the middle box and if it looked ‘transparent’ due to the colors matching then it matched. I’m not sure the little disk’s middle color was the exact same shade as the big stack’s top color or not.
I don’t know, you can throw together all sorts of things and little UI decisions can matter more than all your careful preparation. But after I got over that hump, and once I realized that brining could be good, I enjoyed the game and actually quite enjoyed the ending. I was assigned a specific ending style (dominant), but since there’s no guide to endings and I’m not sure how I could play differently (except maybe brining myself to death or completing the rituals in a different order?) I think I’ll leave it right now. This isn’t my favorite Chandler Groover game if, for nothing else, the fact that I admire quick text games that can be resized in any window and allow blindingly-fast play (some of my reasons for preferring parser and non-timed Twine games), and this game doesn’t have those things. I don’t view moving from text to unity as a positive progression for my own personal interests, but I can 100% say that this is the best use of Unity I’ve seen for telling a narrative.
+Polish: Eminently polished
+Descriptiveness: Many, varied and unusual micro-stories
+Interactivity: By the end I liked it
-Emotional impact: Not really; the game structure and UI mechanizes the gameplay and alienates the player from the story, I believe intentionally.
+Would I play again? Not till I'm done with the other games, but I want to see if there are more endings.
A mid-length linear horror game with references to other games, October 12, 2020This is a parser game with several grand ideas but rusty implementation in creating them.
It’s a sequel to Two-Braids Girl, a game I had never tried before today but decided to check out. That game was a creepypasta game similar to No End House or The Holders series, but with poor grammar.
This game is a direct sequel to that by another author. It starts right where the last one ends off, then moves through, as others have said, a Shade homage, then wraps things up with a simple puzzle in the end.
There’s nothing wrong with a Shade homage. When I wrote my game Color the Truth, my original idea was to have 4 mini games during the police investigation with each mini-game borrowing from a famous IF game, and one of those mini-games was going to be a Shade homage.
But I took it out because I eventually came up with my own ideas after testing and playing.
And that’s what this game needs; testing and replaying. There are a lot of things to criticize, like linearity, but the truth is that random sequences of events in a linear fashion with only a thin plot to connect them can still do well as long as its really tested. Sorry for talking about my own games a lot, but that’s what I did with Swigian. It placed 22nd, but it was just a random string of linear events held together by one idea.
I think that this game could do at least that well if only it were tested. Tested early, tested often. The best way to test a parser game is to have someone try it and every time the game says ‘you can’t do that’, go back and make it so you can do that. And get rid of bugs. It takes a long time, but it’s worth it.
-Polish: Lots of bugs.
+Descriptiveness: This is probably its best trait.
-Interactivity: I struggled a lot, had to use other people's transcripts
-Emotional impact: Too distracted by the other issues.
-Would I play again? Not right now.
A multimedia retelling/spin on the Phantom of the Opera, October 10, 2020This game gave me all sorts of different reactions.
First of all, it has nice visuals and sounds chosen from a variety of operas and symphonies.
The text is slow during musical portions, but the game overall is relatively short.
This game is a retelling of the Phantom of the Opera, where you can customize it in 6 different ways depending on the time period and the way you perceive the story of the Phantom.
However, on replay, choosing entirely different options, I found myself with almost the exact same story. I checked the code of the game, and all the stats affect at most one or two paragraphs each.
The writing is interesting and makes for a good retelling, with narrative twists. I felt that the characterization of Christine as seductress was surprising to me and didn't really gel with my version of the character, and then later events further differed, but I suppose that's the variety in retelling a story.
So I honestly don't know. This is in no way what I would consider a bad game, but it has a lot of unusual choices that I need to sit and unpack for a while.
+Polish: Everything worked well from the get-go.
+Descriptiveness: The characters and locations were vivid to me.
+Interactivity: Despite the small effects of choices, I felt like it was interactive, especially the first time.
+Emotional impact: I'm a Phantom of the Opera fan, so it was fun to play it in Twine form.
+Would I play it again? I don't plan on revisiting this.
A difficult energy management simulator, October 9, 2020I think this game is too hard.
It's a combination energy management simulator and basic electrical engineering quiz game.
You are a young single adult who is living in a solar-powered van trying to make a living. Earning a living and being happy require electricity, but use too much and you die.
I started this game on the easiest mode possible. Each day I made choices to get money or be happy as it required. When you use electricity, the game quizzes you on how much electricity it will use through simple voltage/power/wattage/etc. calculations.
I'm a math teacher, but always struggled with engineering, and I didn't find the calculations part enjoyable or edifying. I think in the long run you're supposed to get good at estimating, so I guess if I stuck further? But after a few days, I didn't estimate right and died from too much electrical use.
The game suggested restarting and paying more attention to my panels. "My panels?" I thought, not knowing what it meant. I looked all over and couldn't find them.
Then today I tried again, and noticed a small arrow on the left-hand side that opened up to an enormous amount of choices, incredibly specific ones, which detail every single part of the solar panel system.
I was overwhelmed. I just decided to buy the most expensive of everything. Confident, I started the game. On my first choice, with 100% battery and fully upgraded system, I decided to use my laptop for 8 hours.
I died on the first choice, and I gave up.
The graphics are cool, the interactivity is cool, the platform is interesting. But this is too hard for me.
+Polish: This game is very polished.
+Descriptiveness: The game is fairly bare in its descriptions, except for the electrical components: that is incredibly detailed.
-Interactivity: I found this game too challenging for me to handle.
-Emotional impact: This game didn't compel me emotionally.
-Would I play again? I'm too afraid to.
Murder/kidnapping Ink game with some rough edges, October 8, 2020This was an Ink game, longer for me than suggested (listed as 15 minutes, I took around 30 to get through), but I think the greater length worked for it.
In this game, you play a woman kidnapped and thrown in a cage by a cruel, murderous man. Gameplay is linear at parts but others felt like it could make a major difference; I'd have to replay to find out.
The game is somewhat visceral. Its content warnings are completely appropriate: " Gore, sexual harassment, physical assault, graphic violence, blood" (not that sexual assault itself isn't in there). It also contains frequent strong profanity.
It lacks polish in parts. There are frequent spelling/grammar errors, mostly capitalization. I thought it might just be an author technique, but a typo in the final line of the game (for my playthrough) made me think that perhaps the game wasn't completely checked for bugs ahead of time.
The action sequences of this game were intense and descriptive and the main NPC has a well-thought out personality and set of actions.
-Polish: Some typos and grammatical errors.
+Descriptiveness: It was easy to picture what was going on.
+Emotional impact: I definitely felt more on edge.
+Interactivity: It worked pretty for me. Options were logical and I could strategize, whether it affected the game or not.
-Would I play again? I think once was enough.
A simple broad fantasy game with maze, October 8, 2020This game reminds me a lot of the games the teenagers made in my interactive fiction summer camps.
It’s got a broad, wide open map with generally one item of interest in each room or less. The puzzles are simple and represent broad tropes: find a key, talk to an NPC, kill a monster, buy an item. There are direct references to both Animal Crossing and Minecraft. The writing is spare and simple.
There are several typos in the game (like ‘Mine if I’ instead of ‘Mind if I’); in the future, you can type CTRL+G in the Inform IDE to do spellcheck (although some always slips through!)
Implementation is spare as well. I see that the author posted their draft of the game on the forums in May, and got some responses, but I think that the game could definitely use some more thorough beta testing (although that effort definitely did happen).
Honestly? This is simple and clean. The maze wasn’t my favorite (it looks like it was created by drawing a 9 by 9 grid and connecting rooms with a big squiggly path, and has no special features to distinguish it from other mazes). But I’d much rather play a simple game where everything works than a game full of complex systems that fail miserably. This game, though, could do a lot more to distinguish itself.
-Polish: The game had several typos.
-Descriptiveness: The writing was bare and relied on tropes for your imagination rather than its own ideas.
+Interactivity: The maze wasn't the worst thing ever and I like playing through clean simple games.
+Emotional impact: The game was fairly flat, but at least I had some fun.
-Would I play again? I think I've seen enough.
Procedurally generated prose created by the author's own works, October 7, 2020**You Will Thank Me as Fast as You Thank a Werewolf by BJ Best**
I beta tested this game.
In regards to the scenery and trimmings of this game, it's polished and nice-looking in the Chapbook format or lookalike (I remember I asked about the format while testing but can't find my correspondence anywhere). It has good music and flows naturally.
Writing-wise, this is GPT-2 (a procedural generation/ai tool). I usually really dislike GTP-2 because it just regurgitates whatever's put into it. Most popular uses of GPT-2 involves scraping other people's content without attribution and then spitting it out, with most of the 'best results' being word-for-word copies of the original input.
But in this case, the person using GPT-2 is the person who made the original content, so that makes it more interesting. I guess, then, that this is like a procedurally generated mirror. It lets the author see themself, and it lets us see that vicariously.
There are fun parts in the writing (the line 'You count the days until Christmas. I count the days when we didn’t know each other’s last names.' reminds me of Arcade Fire lyrics). Overall, it's an interesting experiment, and reveals a lot about the author.
+Polish: The game is smooth.
-Descriptiveness: It's made of interesting chunks, but they don't flow together in larger picture.
+Interactivity: It gives the sense of interaction, a weird sense of pseudo-agency. The footnotes help.
+Emotional impact: For me it was curiosity about the author themself.
-Would I play again? No, one run through seems enough for me.
An Indiana-Jones style game with complex puzzles and a secret, October 6, 2020In Adventures in the Tomb of the Ilfane you play as an adventurer who is running from Nazi scientist Doktor Chirlu while you break into the tomb of Ilfane, ancient Autarch of the Teresten people. You have access to a beautiful mural of Teresten history, a Dais that represents the planets, and a sarcophagus covered in strange runes.
Below is a spoiler that may help those who didn't see the blurbs and cover art in IFComp 2020:
(Spoiler - click to show)Check out
"Incident! Aliens on the Teresten!" by Tarquin Segundo and
"Terror in the Immortal's Atelier" by Gevelle Formicore
and return here if you get stuck after that.
Below is more spoilers for people who've seen the first spoiler.
(Spoiler - click to show)I'm clumping these three games together because they have remarkably similar presentations. The titles all use quotations, their cover art has similar themes, and they all contain the phrase:
"Remember, no knot unties itself. You may need to seek aid from an unusual place."
in their blurb, in addition to using the same names for different characters in their blurb.
In case it's not clear, these games are part of a set, and in particular, they are all parts of the same game.
I've seen some people speculate about this on the forums. This is strongly reminiscent of the Hat Puzzle (see the second-to-last section of https://intfiction.org/t/what-makes-a-best-puzzle/46852).
The large amounts of worldbuilding and lore in each game can be overwhelming. It's descriptive and interesting, but I wonder if we could have gotten by with more names like 'the Knot' and less like 'Willershin Rill', not because they're bad but because it can be difficult to parser, especially since the first game contains several many-page books.
Fortunately, the author(s) foresaw that and put anything that you need to know in flashing lights with the words 'you need to know this' and puts them in an ordered list.
As you can guess from the similarities, the games are all the same game. Once you know that, the puzzles become easy: search everything you can for a password. Find out which game it belongs to and input it there, getting the next password. The final puzzle has the credits.
Overall, I'm pleased with these. I definitely think this works better than the infamous Hat puzzle which was not discovered without hints. The styling (especially on the runes and star chart) is nice while I usually despise slow text, it went quickly and much of it is skippable on replay.
+Polish: This game is definitely polished in appearance and effects.
-Descriptivenes: The proper names were a lot to deal with, and I couldn't picture things vividly.
+Interactivity: Great puzzles. Love it. Maybe XYZZY Individual Puzzle nom?
+Emotional impact: I felt excitement upon solving the tomb and the fade-to-white almost gave me chills.
+Would I play again? I'll check it out again in the future.
A science fiction game with complex passwords and some surprises, October 6, 2020In Incident! Aliens on the Teresten! you play as a member of the starship Teresten which was attacked by an evil horde called the Ilfane after your scientist Chirlu experimented on The Knot. You have a computer that can unlock the knot if you can chart a correct course on a grid, as well as a dictionary for alien runes and a beautiful planetary logo to look at on the wall.
Below is a spoiler that may help those who didn't see the blurbs and cover art in IFComp 2020:
(Spoiler - click to show)Check out
"Adventures in the Tomb of Ilfane" by Willershin Rill
"Terror in the Immortal's Atelier" by Gevelle Formicore
and see my review of 'Adventures' for more detail.
+Polish: This game is definitely polished in appearance and effects.
-Descriptivenes: The proper names were a lot to deal with, and I couldn't picture things vividly.
+Interactivity: Great puzzles. Love it. Maybe XYZZY Individual Puzzle nom?
+Emotional impact: I felt excitement upon solving the star chart and the fade-to-white almost gave me chills.
+Would I play again? I'll check it out again in the future.
A fantasy game with complex passwords and some surprises, October 6, 2020Terror in the Immortal's Atelier has you fleeing an evil sorceror named Chirlu, Autarch of Telestren, who has stolen the Knot and placed it in the container called the Ilfane, which you have to open. You have 4 books telling you about magical creatures, and a huge table full of reagents you can mix and match in any order.
Below is a spoiler that may help those who didn't see the blurbs and cover art in IFComp 2020:
(Spoiler - click to show)Check out
"Adventures in the Tomb of Ilfane" by Willershin Rill
"Incident! Aliens on the Teresten!" by Tarquin Segundo and
and see my review for Adventures for more detail.
+Polish: This game is definitely polished in appearance and effects.
-Descriptivenes: The proper names were a lot to deal with, and I couldn't picture things vividly.
+Interactivity: Great puzzles. Love it. Maybe XYZZY Individual Puzzle nom?
+Emotional impact: The evil version of 'The Giving Tree' was honestly pretty great.
+Would I play again? I'll check it out again in the future.
A short, replayable board game-like Twine about insulting John Cage, October 6, 2020So this game is something pretty rare for IFComp. It's laid out like a board game, with four different rooms and three independent characters who move around.
Discovering what this game was and what it's rules are was a great difficulty in and of itself. When the game begins, the only options you have are to wander around and insult John Cage. The only things you can do in other rooms is to turn the stove off or on or take a watch (which puts a timer up on the screen).
John Cage starts walking around, and sometimes you can ask him about events that happened. I learned that he got a message from a lawyer, and that was about it.
After dying, I read that I could get hints by clicking a book in the bookcase. But I didn't see any bookcase!
I finally turned to the hints, and discovered that the game requires very precise sequences of events and conversation to unlock more things. Many of those things involve a large group of identical objects, and you have to pick the right one, but the info on which one to pick is randomly given in different playthroughs and most playthroughs won't give you that knowledge.
The writing is sparse and terse, suiting the board game setup. The main goal of the game is antagonizing John Cage, which isn't motivated. Before IFComp, I was playing through all the Choice of Games published titles, and I noticed that games where you could be evil were popular, but only if motivated. Being a jerk without motivation is something very few people find appealing in a game.
This is heavily-modified Twine, and the visual presentation is the best part of the game in my opinion.
+Polish: The game is very polished visually.
-Descriptiveness: This game is terse and sparse.
-Interactivity: I had great difficulty in discovering how to engage with this game.
+Emotional impact: I felt annoyance during the game, but a lot of it was intentional by the author, so it succeeded in its goal!
-Would I play it again? I peeked at the possible endings, and I'm not sure I'd like to keep playing.
A small one-room game centered around a cool tech interface, October 5, 2020I tested this game. When I tested it, it didn’t have its flashy index page, which I thought was pretty cool, especially the worldbuilding elements and the cool animation. I had trouble at first though because I thought it was text-entry and not links.
The game itself is small and simple, a one-room game. The main feature here is that you have an app on your cell-phone that lets you connect to items by their ID and manipulate them through reading and writing. There are multiple endings, one normal and one which lets you be a hero.
There are a few niceties missing here and there (you’re told that everyone is working, looking at their screens, but can’t X SCREEN) but given that I was a tester I can’t really complain, can I?
If you like this game, you should try Michael Roberts’ immense game Return to Ditch Day which includes a lot of testing ports and running cable to access devices. Other games for gadget/tech people/fans of oldschool interfaces include Rover’s Day Out and Final Exam.
+Polish. The cool file system makes up for the implementation.
-Descriptiveness. The game is pretty sparsely written, and most objects described are generic.
+Interactivity. Great system!
+Emotional impact. Mostly wonder for the phone access.
-Would I play again? Doesn't have a ton of replay value, but that's okay.
A shortish game big on worldbuilding and branching, October 4, 2020I remember playing a game by Skarn a few years ago about an alien in t.he future, and so I was definitely interested in seeing what this one was about.
Mechanically, this game is very impressive. You're part of an underpaid, understaffed community group who needs to take care of three magical problems: decaying magical protections, dangerous magical books, and finding herbs for werewolf potions.
You have 9 characters that you can split up for these different tasks, with diverse options like Cheshire Cats, golems, centaurs, etc. One person is pre-assigned to each task, and then you choose the other 2. Each task then lets you pick who does what, each with their respective text.
This is a combinatorial explosion like Animalia, although shorter in each runthrough. The fact that the author was able to code in so many special combinations (and even ones that interact with each other!) is absolutely amazing.
I don't know if the tone of the writing matched the game, though. The tone is crisp and businesslike, told at a distance, while the content it is describing is wondrous and magical and deals with people's inner thoughts and feelings and interpersonal relationships. But I doubt that will be a universal reaction.
I'd definitely be interested in playing through this one again to see everything! The cast of characters and the worldbuilding is excellent.
+Polish: Pretty smooth.
-Descriptiveness: The game is quite descriptive, but as I said above I felt a mismatch between tone and content.
+Interactivity: I was impressed by the many options.
-Emotional impact: I felt a distance from this game, emotionally
+Would I play again? Definitely. Got to see all the cool options!
A short and poignant game about breaking the speed of light, September 18, 2020This game was nominated for the XYZZY awards, and was one of 2 commercial games I hadn't heard of.
This game is based off of the lyrics to the song "Pushing the Speed of Light", which I looked up after playing. I think they add to the gameplay.
This game branches into 3 paths and each of those paths has a success and two failures, I believe (one for too slow, one for too fast). The three paths you choose between give you different backstories and goals.
I thought the writing was well-done, and my opinion of it improved as I replayed. I especially like the 'singing' path. It reminds me of a lot of the sci-fi in the 60's to 70's. It's not necessarily poetical or lyrical all of the time, but it places humans in a situation impossible in our present reality and uses that to give insights into our nature.
Here's my score:
-Polish. The game uses the standard Twine styling, and paragraphs have no line between them, making reading a little bit hard for me.
+Descriptiveness. This is one of the highlights of the game, the detailed descriptions of the technology and its effects, as well as your feelings and the crew's.
+Interactivity. Wildly branching games like this only work well if it's short, and this one is. Does what it's supposed to.
+Emotional impact. Hmm, it's kind of back and forth for me. I liked it but didn't really identify with any of the characters, and I feel like identifying is important for this piece. I'd give this 1/2 a star for emotional impact, but I round up.
+Would I play again? I've already replayed it several times.
Treat this game as it is: an experiment in removing the save/restore safety net., August 19, 2020This game treats a really important aspect of interactive fiction: the save feature. Most games, despite any sense of urgency they may try to instill, become slow, measured-out puzzle games with the heavy use of save and restore.
It is almost impossible to overcome the habit of save and restore, probably because most games intend the reader to use it.
This game was designed as a full-throttle, jump-out-of-the-airplane experience. You should absolutely not undo, save or restore this game; in the Club Floyd transcript, one of the users hit undo out of habit, when it seemed that all was lost; but they then undid the undo, and promised to finish the game together, and it was worth it.
This is a short game, and a fun game. I would give it 5 stars in its genre, but 3 stars as a generic interactive fiction game. As it is, I'm leaving it with 4 stars.
Game centered on a short loop, with use of video and sound, August 1, 2020This game has you working in a call center with 99 calls to finish. There are only a few options, including going to a cafeteria or looking out the window, before you go back to the main loop.
It uses video a lot; it seems to be autoplaying youtube videos that are so enlarged the youtube gui is off the screen (only autoplaying after you click a link, since Chrome disabled regular video autoplay, I think).
It's very abstract, and the game slowly changes. I played before looking at other reviews, but later sought ought more in case I was missing something big. I thought this game reminded me of Degeneracy (a parser implementation of the same concept), and I saw that Emily Short said the same thing years ago.
I rate games on a five point scale.
+Polish: A lot of effort went into this, and it was smooth.
+Descriptiveness: The sounds, videos, and text made the message clear.
-Interactivity: I was left wondering if I was missing something, and so it didn't work well for me.
-Emotional impact: I bounced off the high level of abstraction.
+Would I play again? I might; it was interesting, and I would try different paths.
Memorable creepy Twine game with great use of repetition, July 19, 2020At the time I first played it, this was the only Twine game I'd played through multiple times. It takes less than 20 minutes to play, with some very mild puzzles. The genre is creepy horror (as opposed to grossout or Lovecraftian).
The writing is well done. Of the four main areas, I felt one was weaker than the others, but on the second playthrough, I found it even creepier than the others.
The reason I enjoy this game is something others may not care about. I enjoy it because it almost feels ritualistic, like a Greek mystery play about life. The format, the pacing, the repetition, is very successful, in a way different than Porpentine's use of the same elements. I see myself revisiting this game every now and then for the fun of it. Others may have different responses.
Wonderful short fantasy game with compelling writing and interesting format, July 19, 2020This was one of most vivid games I have played. The story reminded me of some of my favorite books I read as a teenager. I'd rather not spoil any of it here, though.
The implementation was very interesting, using a combination of standard inform commands and keywords for conversation.
The puzzles were simple, and written in such a way that you always knew what you should be trying to do, even if you hadn't figured out how to do it yet. The game seemed thoroughly tested, with multiple endings.
I'm giving the game 4 stars instead of 5 purely because of length. As a shufflecomp game, it is among the very best I have seen.
A well-written society story with horror roots, June 16, 2020Exceptional Stories are odd games. They are framed within the larger Fallen London game, which takes months and/or years, yet they themselves can often be completed in an hour or two. They have a really, really big wordcount though compared to what it feels like, especially since they often branch significantly.
This one was good. There is a struggling family trying to re-enter society. You can support them or their snooty cousins. All along, though, the butler has his own plans.
I'm not opposed to society machinations, but they're not my favorite. I like Jane Austen but prefer the Brontes. This game has horror depths that I like, but the particular genre didn't grab me as much as it could. Hannah Powell-Smith's excellent writing skills makes it worth playing, though.
A heartfelt tribute to an Emily Short game, May 25, 2020Emily Short's game City of Secrets is a relatively-hidden gem. Started as a commercial project for a band, it's a sprawling city-based game that has much of the liveliness and intrigue of her later Counterfeit Monkey.
This game takes that same layout and room descriptions, but includes an 'Easter Egg Hunt' where you have to find 10 gems (and 1 super gem I didn't find) scattered throughout the layout of the game.
It does what it set out to well: encourage people to see and appreciate Short's setting and descriptions.
I had some difficulty guessing words (I'm used to Inform's synonyms like SEARCH being the same as LOOK IN), but the game had several hint systems, which was very useful.
A short one-move tribute game with some entertaining responses, May 15, 2020This game was entered in the Emily Short Anniversary Contest.
It's a sequel of sorts to Pick Up the Phone Booth and Die, Aisle, and Pick up the Phone Booth and Aisle.
Like those games, this game is centered on having silly or weird responses to individual actions you can choose. These games usually require a ton of different actions to see all of the content, but this game isn't quite as expansive as the others. There are a few references to Emily Short and the contest.
A great first parser game that needs a lot more polish to be a finished work, April 16, 2020This is an introspective parser game set in the world of the paintings of Caspar David Friedrich, one of my favorite artists. It revolves around exploration and small, one-item puzzles in the classic Zorklike mode.
I've seen many first parser games (including my own, a game I never released), and they are almost uniformly buggy and unfinishable.
This game has surprisingly few, if any bugs, which is a welcome surprise. However, it is lacking a lot of polish. I had to decompile the game to find the ending. Some suggestions for the next game:
1. Having one or more beta testers can alleviate almost all problems, if you implement their feedback. Intfiction.org is a good place to find some.
2. Room exits should be listed in every room unless finding the exit is a (hinted) puzzle, like a maze.
3. It's good to have either everything have a description or nothing to have a description. It takes a long time to describe everything, but it's often worth it.
4. Some puzzles may need cluing (like the magpie puzzle). Having a beta tester or two can help here.
5. Having instant deaths and disabling UNDO is a pretty frustrating combo. There's been a lot of debate over the years on whether disabling UNDO is worth it, but it's worth knowing that some interpreters have built-in UNDO that works even if you try to disable it, so some players will always have UNDO.
Overall, I think the author is capable of creating truly great parser games given enough tester support. I'd love to see more!
A clever and complicated collection of poems in interactive form, April 14, 2020This twine fiction has 4 poems presented in different ways.
One offers choices that don't seem to change the story, instead indicating how you personally feel about your choices.
Another uses some kind of randomization to present a series of tiny vignettes with random names. You can move backwards and forwards in time during the vignettes.
The third uses a grid of text, and you can reveal more or less of the grid.
The fourth is my favorite, with a physical space you can move through and some interaction.
The writing has evocative moments, but the choices of interactivity distance me from the text more than drawing me in. I felt more alienated than invested.
This reminds me of a lot of early works by people who are now well-known/professional IF authors, so I'd love to see where this author goes next.
An in-depth and fancy-looking cyberpunk crime game, April 7, 2020There are two cyberpunk mystery games in this Spring Thing, and there were at least three last year in IFComp. It's a good genre; Delusions did it back in the 90s, and there have been some other good games in this field.
This game is definitely creative and unique, though. It features some really nice retro-looking UI and some flashing graphics.
The story is about investigating the memories of a deceased individual who had a bionic bow implant on their arm. You're working for the police department.
It focuses on the experience of surveillance and on the way that humanity can be degraded by a police state.
I didn't find deep emotional fulfillment in it, but it gave me a lot to think about.
An Ink game about managing a group of 100 people, April 7, 2020This game is written in Ink, always a smooth-looking choice for an engine. The styling is good.
Some of the language could admittedly be more polished. The author admits that English is not their first language, and it shows.
The interactivity is fairly satisfying but not all the way there for me. The same actions might save you or not in different playthroughs. Is it random or stat-tracking? It's hard to say.
Overall, it's interesting.
A young orphan gets tangled up in a fairytale amid a difficult life, April 6, 2020This is a long Twine game entered into Spring Thing. It has a long storyline about a boy who's orphaned and ends up taking care of a younger child while older friends take care of him. He gets involved in a fairy story in a way. The game has long linear stretches with some 'dynamic text choices' and a few binary choices that do seem to affect the storyline.
I grade on a 5 star scale:
-Polish: This game is not polished. There are many typos and other grammatical errors, due most likely to the author being a non-native speaker.
-Descriptiveness: This game is very descriptive, with characters having distinct personalities and voices.
-Emotional impact: I got into the story, so I'm giving a star here as well.
-Interactivity: It was hard to know how much I affected the game, but I affected it somewhat and didn't feel locked out.
-Would I play again? Probably not.
So I would give this 2.5, rounded up to 3.
A slightly confusing Exceptional Story about the colors of the neath, April 5, 2020I found this exceptional story rather confusing. It seems to mostly relate around an elaborate pen show. You begin to discover that the seller is using the colors of the neathbow, a set of colors used throughout the game and featured prominently in Sunless Seas. Colors like Irrigo, which brings forgetfulness, or Violant, which fixes things in memory.
There is a love story and a confrontation, but this story never really gelled in my mind. It was my first exceptional story in years, so perhaps I had just forgotten how to read them, but it's hard to say. The rewards were good, though.
A cute exceptional story about a cat reviewing a life ill-lived, April 5, 2020I recently started up my Exceptional Friendship at Fallen London again, and this is the second story I played.
You discover a cat that wants a new start on life, but to do so, you must provide character statements from their old friends. The cat wasn't that great of a person before, so the statements are fairly offensive, and you have to decide whether to share what you learn with the cat or not.
Overall, this was charming for an exceptional story, with some good lore here on Parabola and the King of Cats.
Food-based horror, love and rituals and an ASCII map, April 4, 2020This is a twine-based game with an ASCII map where you leave little footprints as you travel across the map.
This is food-based horror, a theme that occurs fairly regularly in Groover's repertoire. But it's a bit different this time. This time, you are food: you're jelly, and you're crossing the landscape, trying to get ready for a picnic, and trying to understand what was lost.
It's a live-die-repeat game, where you have limited turns to accomplish your goal. Surprisingly, your actions before death linger, letting you make lasting changes to the landscape.
It's gross, with flayings, immolations, and a lot of devouring, but it's definitely not the grossest Groover game you've ever played.
The final puzzle was beyond me (I didn't realize a certain ordering was different than I thought), but the copious hints smoothed that over.
Weird, and fun.
A first parser game with a surreal world and vivid imagery, April 3, 2020This game is made by 1/2 of the team that made the excellent rabbit-based game Ürs a couple of years ago. It's a first try at making a parser game.
Programming-wise, it has a lot of things covered: edible food, rideable vehicles, conversation, active animals, devices, untouchable objects and other things difficult to program.
I was looking for more cohesiveness in the story or setting, though. I felt like the individual elements were interesting, but as a whole it didn't gel together. Its sparse, linear, fantasy setting reminded me of the Bony King of Nowhere, but it didn't have the common thematic elements that tied that game together.
There is one puzzle in the game which I only discovered by decompiling the source code. The author mentioned how no beta testers discovered it, but that the solution should have made sense.
This is an interesting point. The puzzle involves selecting one object out of many and using it in a location far from where it was found with little indication of any connection.
I've found that 'good puzzles' typically come from either:
-learning a complicated system with learning tasks followed by complex tasks
-setting up expectations and then subverting them, or
-providing a set of rules that players can strategize with.
The author framed this as a kind of learning exercise, and has shown great skill in programming. I believe that with practice, they could create truly great parser games, and look forward to any games they create in the future.
A good first-effort murder cyberpunk murder mystery in Twine, April 3, 2020I love a good mystery in Interactive Fiction, and I was excited to see how this one would play out.
There a lot of ways to do mystery in IF: have the mystery play out linearly or as a results of puzzles (so the gameplay doesn't involve the actual mystery); hunting for specific clues; and actual deductions by either the player or the character.
All versions can be made into very engaging games. This game does pretty well, but it didn't quite reach the level of pure satisfaction.
This game, according to the author, is "a small project I made to learn Twine and experiment with Interactive Fiction in general", and it's much better made than many other first efforts.
Story-wise, it's a cyberpunk mystery where you have to search people's memories (or engrams) on the 'net. Gameplay-wise, you're hunting for a motive, means, and murderer.
A well-written sci-fi tale about belonging with non-linear narrative, March 22, 2020When I was a kid, my dad had tons of sci-fi books from the 50s and 60s, and my grandmother had huge boxes of Star Trek books. I read Asimov and Clarke and all the others.
This story reminds me of a lot of sci-fi from that era: humans and aliens trying to understand each other. I guess that's always been a huge genre, even now with shows like Steven Universe exploring the same thing.
In this story, you play a human in a future version of the universe where aliens have established diplomatic relations with earth. You have tried to renounce your identity and become an alien, and humans are in an uproar over it.
The story is presented non-linearly, with custom-made graphics to take you from section to section. Generally, you can choose to see another cutscene before or after the one you're in. However, going forward and then back doesn't bring you back to where you were; it seems like you always see new material.
I enjoyed the story, and found it polished, descriptive, and emotionally satisfying, but I don't feel an urge to play again. I'm satisfied with the story I found.
By repetition, gain the power to change the story, March 12, 2020In this French IFComp game, you see (in a linear hyperlink format) a teenage couple who are checking out the moon with a telescope.
After one playthrough, you earn 10 points that can be used to go back and change the story at 4 critical points, for a total of 16 possible endings.
The writing is well-done, but as another reviewer noted, it is repetitive, especially since you only get 10 pts per playthrough and any choice you make spends that 10 pts. You'd basically have to play the game 4 times with no choices in order to play the ending that uses all 4 point spending opportunities.
An intriguing take on Celtic mythology (in French), March 6, 2020I love the story of Cuchulainn. I remember learning about it in college, how he can get enraged and have his feet turn backwards and his face puff up with only one eyeball and all sorts of weird things. Then he appeared in FF12, which was cool.
This is a game about Cuchulainn, and it's also a game that largely consists of an unfair labyrinth. Basically, you can go left/right, etc. and it doesn't give you any hints about what's coming up. I would take off a star for that, but Cuchulainn adds it back, so there you are.
I only played to one ending, because it's in fairly complicated French (harder for me to understand than the other French games in this comp). I might try it again though. Interesting game, and I think it's in Ink (plays like it, at least).
A truly clever concept with some rocky implementation, March 3, 2020This murder mystery is fairly compact and has some intriguing characters. It also has extra-fancy design. It's written in Ink, and works by clicking text (with links not receiving any special formatting).
It has lovely images of the murder suspects, whom you can learn about one at a time. You play a police commissioner (I think?) attending the 'big reveal' of a professional detective.
Slow-text didn't really work for me (and I never really like to see it), although it contributes in a minor way to the overall puzzle. I was also confused by the fact that sometimes the same action would result in me being called an 'imbecile' while at later times in the same playthrough it would work. After seeing the solution, I think I get it, but I'm not sure that was a good design decision.
Overall, the French IFComp continues to lead the IF world in technical innovation. I'm excited to see what comes out next year.
A game about getting points in the cycle of Karma, February 6, 2020I like the idea of this French IFComp game. You have different stats, and you are constantly reborn, changing your stats. You try to gain Karma during each lifetime, eventually ending the cycle.
I found it a bit opaque (although it was not my native tongue!) Each binary choice would affect your stats, and sometimes you'd have big non-interactive sections affected by those stats, some of which would give you karma.
It was pleasant, and I enjoyed the writing, but I didn't feel like I could strategize despite the UI heavily suggesting strategizing.
A short French potion-making game, February 1, 2020The theme of this year's French IFComp is cycle and/or revolution.
In this short Ink game, you are in a looping timeline where someone knocks on your door, demanding a potion.
You have a grimoire with two potion recipes in it, alluding in a riddle-like way to different herbs. You have to select the right herbs like a combination lock.
Not being my native language, some of the clues were difficult. Also, one very particular path in the opening sequence gives you, in a non-intuitive way, an extra helpful book.
So it was fun and looks nice, but was a bit frustrating.
Daily grind as an RPG-can you survive 62 days? I couldn't, January 29, 2020This game is kind of a blend between micro-text RPGs (like the Twinyjam game 'RPG-ish') and Fallen London (except instead of random cards you get fixed cards with random-ish effects).
It has some actually pretty good 8-bit music and a custom display. You are trying to survive 62 days, keeping your esteem, family, health, and stress at healthy levels.
I liked the conceit, but 62 days is really long. I died around round 39, and had seen a lot of repeated text. Maybe that's the point? Maybe you're meant to die?
I had two different encounters with sexual content, roughly as explicit as a PG-13 comedy in the US.
Edit: The game has been updated, including trimming the timeframe down substantially. Check it out!
A media-rich space exploration game, January 14, 2020I really enjoyed the presentation of this game. It has background music, and an animated star background.
It has a different emphasis then most space sci-fi, almost like a space retelling of some fairy tale. The worldbuilding is good, with weird creatures. The writing was evocative and clear, although there were a few tonal decisions that I think might have come from the translation. I got stuck on the main puzzle for longer than I had thought I would, but I finished the game in about 15 or 20 minutes.
There's an itch version and an e-reader version, which is nice for people looking for more interactivity on the Kindle.
A SpeedIF ADRIFT game made in 4 hours. Make your meeting, or explore a city, November 26, 2019This game has a lot of good writing and layout, but it suffers from the 4 hour time limit. Very few actions are implemented, even ones close to correct. ADRIFT is especially poor at using responses to incorrect commands to guide the player toward correct commands, and this is no exception. Even consulting those who've won, I haven't been able to complete it, only getting to the (Spoiler - click to show)Runic Doorway in the icy plains while holding the book and wearing the costume. Then I'm stuck.
I enjoyed the writing, but much of the game is difficult to discover. Well-done for a speed-IF, though.
Schultz's second rhyming pair game, this time with a spooky theme, November 26, 2019Like Very Vile Fairy File, this is a game about rhyming pairs, where you must type in the correct rhyming pair to progress forward.
Like the main game, I found this one enjoyable. The map is short, with 5 or 6 rooms. Some of the rhyming pairs were hard to guess, but unlike the main game, the constrained atmosphere kept guessing from getting tedious.
The Halloween theme was also appropriate, and I feel like the rhymes all made sense.
The use of the word 'queer' in the title would seem to indicate some kind of connection with queer sexuality, but seems to be used in its older sense here of 'unusual'.
Haunting sci-fi horror involving plunging into a new world, November 24, 2019There's a specific kind of story I really enjoy, where people travel to an alternate, darker version of our reality. Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, the Dragonlance Test of the Twins, the IF game My Evil Twin, Stranger Things, etc.
In this well-developed Twine game (which has nice styling and graphics), you play as a Diver who enters various breaks in reality, trying to reach a specific location that will allow you to rescue a real-life runaway.
It's not too long, about 15-30 minutes. Most of the choices seem flavor-based, which was just fine with me.
A branching short story about returning on the Day of the Dead, November 20, 2019This ChooseYourStory game is short but offers real consequences to actions. You play as a recently dead teen who comes back on the Day of the Dead and discovers the truth about their death.
There are 7 endings advertised, of which I found 2. I would consider both of my endings failures, but they were interesting failures.
The writing seems a little off here and there but it's descriptive enough to make up for it. Overall, I found it to be a compelling tale.
A difficult pie cooking game with a gorgeous aesthetic, November 20, 2019Visually, this game is a treat. It does for a parser game what has been increasingly common for high-end Twine games over the last few years: custom fonts, background images, special styling (here marginal notes). I love it, and, having tried for a long time to style my Quixe games, I know how hard it can be.
Gameplay-wise, this is polished for an Ectocomp game. You have a ghost that randomly curses things, and a big recipe sheet that tells you how to cook things.
I didn't do too hot, getting 42 on my first attempt and then (undoing for more chances but messing up) getting a 0.
A clever ghost game with good Twine programming, November 20, 2019This is the kind of thing I really like to see in Ectocomp: an experiment that stretches the boundaries of IF in interesting ways.
In this game, you play a Japanese ghost who frightens people by removing its face. There is an expansive map with different locations to visit and numerous NPCs.
What is clever here (and which I like) is that you have a to-do list you can visit at any time that tells you what your next steps are (without telling you how to accomplish them) and gives hints of what else lies in the game (with obfuscated 'Bonus' achievements).
It also includes a text-entry puzzle, which seems to be case-dependent (since an answer I tried with lowercase turned out to be the right answer when written in uppercase). The game does provide progressive hints, though.
I think the concepts in this game are interesting and worth trying out in a larger Twine game.
A very descriptive speed-IF game with a timer and pretty gross ending, November 19, 2019My reaction to this game was "Wow!" followed by frustrated noises followed by "Ewwww".
This is a speed-IF, so programming and grammar bugs are here, but I was so impressed with the vivid writing and setting as the game began. A mysterious ragman comes into your house and gives you 5 heartbeats (or game moves) to give him what he wants.
But it doesn't tell you what he wants. I spent a long time guessing many different things, and I was frustrated.
The solution was, frankly, gross. Not that I think (Spoiler - click to show)breastfeeding is gross, but the fact that (Spoiler - click to show)the monster would desire it. It's written fairly similar to rape, in the sense that a man is demanding use of a woman's organs.
A unique way of telling a horror story, November 14, 2019I think this story (and the generally similar piece The Curious Incident at Blackrock Township) shows Bitter Karella's range. Most Karella games are light-hearted dark humor Quest games with characters that are exaggerated, sometimes even caricatures.
This Twine game goes to the opposite end: it uses stately language, academic and poetic, and is built around mimesis. The game is framed as a translation of a German poem, with academic footnotes attached. (Spoiler - click to show)I was unable to find any of the references in real life (i.e. outside of the game). But it was so convincing that I felt I had to find something on some of them. The 'translated folk poetry' bit was really convincing, too. Overall, it gave me a better idea of Karella's range.
The academic process of hunting through footnotes is close to lawnmowering, but I found that it really helped the main idea of the game ((Spoiler - click to show)presenting the narrative as real).
As for the content of the poem itself, I found it really well-done. It reminded me of Gawain and the Green Knight or Der Freischutz.
A Halloween first game based on a song. , November 13, 2019This parser game is surprisingly well-done for an author's first game. It's basically an implementation of a world based on the song "When He Died" by Neil Cicierega. You are a forensic photographer, and the gameplay is actually very similar to Hanon Ondricek's underrated game Transparent, where you take photos of supernatural events in a mansion.
Here is my ratings scale, one star per category:
Polish: This is the star I'm not giving. There are some issues, like repeating the description of the staircase in the first room, and it could overall use some more beta testing to find synonyms and things to implement. Overall, though, the implementation of a camera is impressive, and the game handles several complex commands and interactions in a smooth manner.
Descriptiveness: This is lovely. Many of the good ideas are taken directly from the song, but I've learned from experience that turning good material into a good game is not trivial. Nice background for the PC.
Interactivity: I turned to the hints once, but otherwise I was pleased with my agency in this game and felt like my actions mattered.
Emotional Impact: Again, the best parts come from the song, but they hit home for me. Had a lot of fun here.
Would I play again?: I'd be interested in revisiting this in the future.
If this is the author's first game, I can only imagine what a longer, heavily-beta tested IFComp game might be like. Very good!
A very randomized glulx game that invites you to peak into its code, October 11, 2019This game consists of a randomized layout of areas, each containing random pieces of decor, some of which benefits you, and randomized deadly encounters.
As a straight-up game, it has flaws. The text has many grammatical errors, the scenery can become repetitive, and it's hard to know how to strategize.
But an an experiment, I like it. Like many people, I've thought of writing a randomized game, but I've never really gotten around to it. This game shows how it could be done, and I think it would be worthwhile to tinker with the code here. I appreciate the author letting us see the code!
A short slice-of-life travelling from UK to Germany, October 11, 2019Katie Benson has a specific style to her games. They are always kind of low-key and chill, focused on a specific aspect of life, with a 'main' path and one or more side paths, and a lot of little exploration choices in the middle for flavor.
I'm always happy to see one, and I find it pleasant. This one isn't quite as developed as her others, but still gives the same enjoyable vibe. 'Flygskam' (or shame of flying) refers to the movement that tries to avoid the use of airplanes to avoid pollution and energy wastage.
This game adds a new feature where at times you restart the whole game. It would have been tedious, but the game is short enough that clicking quickly takes care of it.
A dramatic game about your past and a public trial. Great music, October 11, 2019This game attempts to pull off something big: to take an extremely serious topic (pedophilia) and to say something deep about it.
This is hard. People that try to deal with heavy topics often veer into extreme heavyhandedness ("Do you suppress freedom, or give people liberty?") or into almost celebrating the issue at hand (as sometimes happens with self-harm).
This game manages to have strong writing and good pacing. While pedophilia is constantly portrayed as bad (good!) It doesn't make it super clear how we're supposed to feel and act when someone we once knew is accused. The choice here isn't between 'support pedophilia or not', it's between 'seeking punishment vs seeking truth', and 'retreating within oneself vs exposing yourself to harm).
Still, it can get very heavy, but the music is a definite bonus here. There is a credits section, and I tried watching it a few times (it slowly fades in), but I kept missing the music section, so I don't know who did it.
There's a lot of slow text here but it's manageable. Give yourself a good 30-40 minutes to play it, though.
I'm not planning on playing again. The game is good, but it's not enjoyable in the literal sense.
A highly branching funny Twine game with pencil and paper activity, October 10, 2019This game is fantasy game where you, Lord of a torture dungeon that is not serving its original purpose, must go on a quest to unsee terrible things.
There are many branches, and many variables. Instead of the game tracking the variables, you need to write down on a personal Adventure Sheet. It's possible to cheat, but the game does a good job of checking!
This is a funny game. It has some raunchy humor, but more in a 'nudge nudge wink wink' way than anything explicit. I found it enjoyable, if a bit silly and short.
A D&D-esque party plunder a tomb, October 9, 2019This game is strongly D&D-inspired (possibly through intermediate inspirations like Diablo or CRPGs).
You're in a party with a mage, a barbarian, a cleric and a thief. You're plundering a tomb, and you have to choose which of three paths to take. Taking them in the right order with the right strategy can grant you success!
The formatting could use work. All the paragraphs run together, and they need more line breaks (I think you can do that in Twine by adding a completely blank line between paragraphs).
The only woman in the party exists only to be an object of affection, which is disappointing.
This game isn't really trying to push any boundaries or grow beyond its sources, but it it has many of the essentials of a good D&D adventure.
A lovely-looking game that falls apart logically, October 9, 2019The programmers and artists did a great job on this game. We have a smooth interface with lush, hand-drawn designs.
The story is not really salvageable, though. You play a judge in death-penalty-era England, and you are asked to review death row cases. The following facts are true in this game:
-You can only appeal one case
-The ones you don't appeal are executed
-You have no choice about these rules
-Your wife acts like you are killing people
and...
-The people you free (Spoiler - click to show)are sent back so that all but 1 die.
So much of this doesn't make sense. And the text is very trope-y and short, almost like a distilled ideal version of truth. The entire courtroom transcript is boiled down to two paragraphs, including "The defendant said 'I didn't do it!'".
The tension with your spouse is not reasonable. These people were all going to die. Your job lets you save at most one. If you didn't do your job, they would all die. So you're literally doing the opposite of what she says; you're not killing anyone at all.
I think games focused on political issues can be amazing, but I feel like this one doesn't quite reach the goal its hitting at. Love the interface, though.
A Scottish horror story in the days of horse-drawn carts, October 9, 2019This game satisfies my criteria for 5 stars:
Polish: This game has been well-tested, includes achievements and stats, has a pleasing choice structure.
Descriptive: The mother, Macleod, the protagonist, and especially the horse were vivid characters.
Interactivity: I felt like I had real choices that could affect the game, and saw the effect of some of those choices.
Emotional impact: I was drawn into the story and could identify with the protagonist.
Would I play again?: I would definitely revisit this. Lovely game.
In this game, you play a young girl who suspects that there is something unusual about her neighbors new horse. She's drawn into a web of tales and choices, and has to decide whether to obey her mother or follow her own mind.
A Groundhog's day scenario with a troubled man, October 9, 2019This game is translated from Spanish, and has some definite language issues.
But the underlying story shines through, and I think it's a fine example of the time loop tale.
Your friend Beto has recently passed away, and you don't feel very good. Nervous and fearful, you are convinced you will die.
The story ends up taking some loops, and doesn't last too long, but I found it to be effective and enjoyed some of the symbolism. It painted a strong picture of the protagonist.
The final link is broken, but it's just supposed to reload the index.html file.
A not-quite-there game about a magical girl on an island, October 9, 2019This Twine game places you in the position of a young witch-girl that gets marooned on an island with an interesting cast of characters.
The beginning of this young fantasy game is pretty promising, but the conflicts begin and end fairly quickly. I found the ending abrupt. In my playthrough, I (Spoiler - click to show)openly defied a powerful wizard with a tiger pet and just found a boat, and the game was over.
I found a passage that was completely blank ((Spoiler - click to show)offering to let Corbin live with you).
I think all of the issues could be addressed by increasing the game length and a little bit more beta testing.
A space colony simulator in Ink, October 8, 2019This games is pushing a bit higher than 4 stars, maybe 4.1 or 4.2.
When you put effort into an Ink game, it looks good. This game has nice crisp scrolling and nicely-chosen images from Unsplash. It looks good!
Structure-wise, it seems like it's written by someone with no real IFComp experience, and so it's a sort of new thing not tied down to overused IFComp tropes. This is a good thing; if anything, it reminds me of Ayliff's Seedship game.
You have a growing colony with a lot of stats (resource use, pollution, etc.). The major decision you make is which technologies to import from the earth first. You also have occasional binary decisions to make regarding strategy.
The story is about two people who love each other very much sending letters and images back and forth. There names are of Arab origin and the images seem to be from Africa, so the setting seems to be somewhere in North Africa.
The game has a few problems. I swear I saw a few typos like stray punctuation. The science in the game is grossly oversimplified (a colony of 400 people can create enough incidental pollution to affect the entire planet's climate over a few months) and the 'check stats' link can be overwhelming.
But it was fun, and the story made me think about life. I believe the author achieved the goals he had when making this game.
A tribe simulation game with a recursive nature, October 7, 2019One star may seem harsh for a game, but here are my five criteria:
Polish: This game has visible error messages every few screens. This is probably all the same error, but it could have been caught. Links to images are everywhere, but are deleted because of copyright. If the author is reading this, try Pexels! Plenty of free images in their public domain section.
Descriptiveness: Everything in this game is bare-bones, functional writing.
Emotion: I didn't really feel a connection to the chieftain or the tribe
Interactivity: The game is very slow in its accretion of resources, and bugs made my choices not work
Play again: Without more bug testing, I wouldn't play it again.
A cute and wicked RPGmaker game about a bad witch, with multiple endings, October 7, 2019Is this Healy's first full-length game? I know Healy best for the many years of starting IFComp prediction threads, so it's fun to see them in action.
This game is in stark contrast to Turandot, the last IFComp game I played. That game was very self-aware, while this game just oozes sincerity. Turandot overturned tropes and cliches, while this game leans on them somewhat.
This game uses RPG maker, so it's very graphic heavy, but that doesn't take away the 'interactive fiction' aspect for me. RPG maker is fairly generic, so the grpahics melt into the background and let the choices and text take front stage.
Basically, you're trying to be bad. So you do bad things. If you get enough bad things, hopefully you can impress your boss. There is one strong profanity in the game (fitting for a bad, bad witch). There are nice little knowledge puzzles.
And there are choices. This game is short (which is the biggest reason for 3 stars out of 5, I don't think it explored its themes enough), but even in that short time, you have true agency. You can have two walkthroughs to two different endings that share almost no text between the two of them and which represent diametrically opposed choices. And that's pretty rare in a text game!
I like this kind of game. Papillon made a game like this decades ago, but it was buggier. If only RPG maker had been there back then! Hopefully, Healy will continue to write. I look forward to more!
A mother/daughter relationship told through paintings and pain, October 4, 2019I'll admit, I'm a big Astrid Dalmady fan. From her earliest games like You Are Standing at a Crossroads, I've found her writing comforting and cathartic.
So this game, I ate it up. It's not big on traditional interactivity. You just explore everything, then move on to the next step (on the surface, at least. In truth, the game tracks state and has many endings, but it doesn't appear like it).
What I like about it is the story. The label I'd like to apply is 'magical realism', although that's a subject I'm not an expert in, so I might be using it wrong. A day to day story with fantastic elements brought in that are treated matter-of-factly, for the most part.
What happens is you are the night guard for your mother's paintings, and (Spoiler - click to show)they begin to come to life. You must gather items for a ritual to summon back a lost painting.
You have options. Some choices cause you pain, and others cause you sadness. There are many endings.
Overall, I found it almost like a cleansing for the mind. The deep discussion of the mother-daughter relationship helped me think about my own relationships, and the ritualistic structure was like a form of meditation.
A short and earnest real-life tale in parser format, October 4, 2019Okay, this game is not a comp-killer. It's short, the puzzles are very easy, the plot is linear.
But it's just brimming with honesty and earnestness. This is a real-life tale of friendship and tribute. The protagonist doesn't sound like me; grabbing a 24% THC stash in Colorado and downing draft beers with buds isn't me. But that's okay; the thing I like about this game is that it's a window into another life, a window into a period of bonding and experience. The author has put his real self on the page (or at least made it look like that!) and it's so rare to find something like that.
And the simple game design makes for less bugs. There are some rough spots, but it wasn't too hard to get out of.
Here's to friendship!
A mid-length light and carefree parser game under the ocean, October 4, 2019This game is pleasant, and has a simple map and friendly, talking animals.
You are exploring an island and its surrounding reef, looking for treasure. Along the way, you solve some riddles and help out some new friends.
It's all very pleasant, and it boasts numerous testers, but I feel like the design has some issues. Some puzzles (like Morse code) work great.
But others have trouble. One that comes to mind is the shovel. When we use it, we're asked where we want to use it. It turns out the answer has the form DIG PREPOSITION NOUN. This is a really big space to get the answer right in. Do you dig NEXT TO THE SEA? IN FRONT OF THE TRUNK? When you open up the parser to three-word puzzles, it makes things more difficult.
This happened later for me with the flat stone. You need to use one thing with another thing to affect a third thing. There are just so many ways of typing it, and I had to turn to the walkthrough.
There were a few other things that were similarly open-ended (like the riddle), and so I kind of bounced off that portion of the game and didn't become invested.
Overall, I found this fun, with wonderful imagery.
A beautifully illustrated and orchestrated game with only one choice-or is it?, October 3, 2019I think I would give this 4.5 stars, but I am rounding up.
Provodnik Games made their debut last year with Railways of Love, a sci-fi game set in a future Russia where you were locked into one path which later opened.
This game is somewhat similar. It is set in the same future (both feature 'spikeheads', robot transmitters). Both games are illustrated, the former in 8-bit pixel art, and this one in gorgeous, smoothly animated black and white art.
The writing is good, with some English hiccups here and there. A son in a lonely outpost needs to enter the real world by choosing a job. There are two job choices, and the choice gets made over and over.
Near the end, you finally break free, but it's tricky to find. The final screen, interestingly enough, shows a breakdown of what final choices people made. Only 15% of people made my choice, which was a partially hidden ending, but apparently there's an even better ending that 1% of people found.
I'm not afraid of choice-deficient games (I loved last year's very linear Polish the Glass), but I feel a bit odd giving this 5 stars when it's more of a computerized book. However, the constrained interactivity does serve a purpose, and reflects the constrained options of the protagonist. On the other hand, this kind of constraint-as-story as been done many times before. On the other hand, just because something isn't new doesn't mean it's bad. So I go back and forth between 4 stars and 5, which is why I've given it a score of 4.5. I'd love to see more from Provodnik!
A small nugget of a puzzle game, October 2, 2019This author has been writing for almost two decades now. His games are compact, with small settings allowing for experimentation.
This game is no exception. We have a very constrained situation at first, which opens up into a somewhat larger area. We're investigating our uncle's abandoned gas station which we have now inherited.
It took me a while to get the gist of the game. I missed the big twist because I tried (Spoiler - click to show)look under newspapers instead of (Spoiler - click to show)look under cardboard, but a peek at the walkthrough sent me on my way.
The writing is brief, reminiscent of Adventure and other mainframe games. The programming is mostly polished, my favorite feature being that the game remembers your past solutions to transversal puzzles and repeats them for you after you've done it once, like Hadean lands.
There's nothing bad here, I just wish it was more exciting and longer.
A cyclical, surreal twine game with many bad endings and one good, October 2, 2019"Stop me if you've heard this one before," the game says. Well, I have heard this one before. The game replies, "Oh, you have heard that one? Well, okay. Well, I guess you'll just have to trust me on this one. After all, what's the worse that could happen?"
Well, the worst that can happen is that I can have a bit of fun doodling around with this cyclical game before finding the 'good ending'.
The game is very aware of its reliance on tropes. The 'you are in a room, escape and weird branchy stuff happen' is an old one, perhaps best expressed in J.J. Guest's enormous, decades-in-the-making Escape From the Crazy Place. This game is much smaller, possibly created in response to a school assignment (a credit thanks a professor).
None of it is bad, but it doesn't push the boundaries at all. All of the links work correctly, but the styling of the text is standard. There is some timed text, done better than most. The branching interactivity works well with the small, cyclical nature.
I'm a fan of soothing, small, cyclical surreal games (like Astrid Dalmady's early work). If you are too, I recommend this.
An amusing over-the-top noir story about solving a mystery, October 2, 2019This game emulates the Clickhole type of games, which I haven't played very much, but they are generally very over the top, the kind of writing you'd see in Mad Magazine twenty years ago.
You are a hard-bitten detective trying to solve the mystery of the mayor's death. You have three suspects to investigate to discover the murder.
This game and the clickhole games borrow more from CYOA books than from the overall Twine genre. This means a moderate amount of instant deaths, encouragement to back up an option, and one right path hidden among many others. It's not my favorite organizational style, but at least it does it well.
The writing is funny. It's very wink-wink fourth-wall-breaking stuff, so I found it amusing but difficult to become invested in.
A sci-fi game about VR that guides you in thinking about political issues, October 2, 2019This is a conversational game, a difficult genre to do well. I was pleased at how this game handled the difficulties.
The game puts you in the role of a 'dependency evaulator' who must decide if people are unhealthily addicted to VR or not.
Each of the three people you discuss has strong opinions on political issues that are important to us and exacerbated in their future. Climate change, privatization of police and military, and war have made their mark on this world.
You are not required to feel any particular way yourself. If you hear someone go off on an opinion you don't think is justified, you can put their file in the 'bad' bin. The game doesn't judge you. It doesn't comment.
I liked it. Parser needed some touching up, especially dealing with names and their possessives (for instance, "Brian" wouldn't be a synonym of "Brian's file").
Conversation is usually hard because its either too linear or the state space grows too quickly. This game restricts the state space by telling you what to start with and that all new topics will be nouns in previous replies. Wonderful! Similar to Galatea in that respect.
A clever and witty crime game based entirely on limericks, October 2, 2019This game is a crime game where you assemble a team to pull off a heist. Absolutely everything is in limerick form, even the choices, which are all first lines of limericks.
I give stars in 5 criteria: polish, interactivity, emotion, descriptiveness, and if I would play again.
This game is both very polished and very descriptive. The limericks are clever, and the game uses color very effectively.
It's funny, I'll admit, but the sheer number of limericks was wearying by the end. I often feel this way with poetry (I've never finished Paradise Lost), so I didn't feel very emotionally invested.
The interactivity was a sort of gauntlet style where you could lose at any point in the story making the wrong choice. It makes for less writing (which makes sense with so many constraints!), but I wasn't really into the overall structure. There are some paths that do branch and recombine, though.
And overall, I would play again, and I would recommend it to people looking for something quirky.
Collaborative coding mixed with computer dystopia, October 1, 2019This game is clever. It is a python notebook with code that you can run. You are assigned tasks to do, altering the code and running it.
The code is obfuscated, with a large portion of it hidden in a huge string array. Making the code changes suggested in the text portions reveals 'secrets' in the code. Some secrets are a lot simpler than others.
This game is complex and creative, but I found it a bit confusing near the end. The first 'subversive' instruction was difficult for me to follow (especially 'put it in the parenthesis'. Put what in which parenthesis?)
Overall, I was glad I played and love the innovation happening here.
Effective in any language. Chilling., August 26, 2019This game is the French translation (by Hugo Labrande and Monsieur Bouc) of Shade. I found it very useful to use Emily Short's French IF manual (translated by Eric Forgeot).
The translation is implemented very well, with many synonyms and verbs allowed. Due to my difficulty in completely understanding the French, I appreciated having the to-do list; it made completion much better (I had never used it in English; some of the lines made me chuckle).
A worthwhile play, both for Francophones and for others trying to learn French.
A speed-IF based on A Christmas Carol, August 25, 2019This game takes place ten years after the original Christmas Carol story. Scrooge is very happy now, and things seem to be going well.
But then a wrench is thrown into things, a murder plot is brewing, and you have to speak with the ghosts again.
The game is descriptive for a speed-IF, but it suffers from the usual speed-IF implementation flaws. I liked the story, though it was on rails. A fun little Christmas snack.
A short little 'what could go wrong' game about gardening, August 24, 2019This is a speed IF, so it has a lot of rough edges, but the mid-game is pretty fun.
You are a gardener who just can't handle all of the problems going on. You start out with a nice checklist of things to do, but it soon dissolves into chaos.
A lot more synonyms and actions could be implemented. But that sort of thing is exactly what separates Speed-IF from regular IF, isn't it?
A short drama parser game with sounds and images., August 23, 2019This game has good production values. Background colors, images, sounds, real-time text, etc.
It's a drama. You play a police officer involved in a dramatic incident years in the past. Now a disturbed individual is on the loose and you have to stop them.
The story is very drama-heavy, with flashbacks, dread implications, and so forth.
The effort is here, but some of it could have been redirected in other areas. More synonyms, better hinting. And the emotions are kind of hammered in, something I've had trouble with in my own writing.
A variety of mechanics involving possessions, August 21, 2019This game began as an experiment in different Twine mechanics. It is a game in five parts, with backgrounds and sometimes sounds.
Each part deals with your possessions, which are similar through the five parts. The people you play as seem quite different, though, unless your character is interested in both men and women and has numerous relationships, swinging back and forth between pessimism and optimism. It's possible, of course, but unlikely.
I enjoyed the game, but it felt a bit bloodless. All of the characters seemed kind of distant emotionally. But all of the scenarios are ones in which characters themselves are removed emotionally from their immediate surroundings, whether through shock or relief.
Finally, some of the background images made the text hard to read. But there is certainly something appealing about the game.
A gritty and vulgar but descriptive superhero game with battle system , July 30, 2019This was Sherwin’s second IFComp game. It toned down the sexuality, but there are still quite a few inventive vulgar descriptions throughout the game.
This is an intense story (using a menu based conversational system) about superheroes in love and revenge. There are quite a few superheroes in this game, including some old familiar ones (an ice-guy) and also some innovative ones.
Outside of the vulgarity, the story is intriguing and even touching.
Sherwin's earliest IFComp game. Sordid shallow life simulator, June 30, 2019According to my rating system, I'm giving this game 2 stars. Here are my criteria:
-Polish. This game has several holes in implementation, enough to be annoying.
-Descriptive. This is where this game (and all of Sherwin's games) really shines. The game puts as a shallow gravedigger who only thinks about picking up women and digging up graves. You are extremely shallow and the game depicts that well.
-Interactivity. I think the game does well here. I felt like I hide control.
-Emotional impact. I didn't like all of the sex, and it made it harder to enjoy the rest of the game.
-Replay. I don't intend on replaying.
Intentional boredom simulator--football edition, June 27, 2019This game shows the life of a football kicker. Which is super boring. You are on the sidelines for about 120 turns, and you are called on to kick a few times. In the mean time, no one wants to talk to you and you can't do much.
It's supposed to be that way, but that doesn't make it any more enjoyable. The game is really well polished, though, which makes sense given its constrained play area.
An early CYOA dealing with a medieval Arabic setting and femininity, June 27, 2019This game contains erotic themes, but you’re told you can avoid anything explicit. I found that to be true, and played to two pleasing endings without encountering anything shocking.
Papillon was a prolific author around this time, producing several excellent games before moving on to visual novels.
This game involves you, an Arabic noblewoman, experiencing violence and oppression in the city. You are required to enter a brothel in the game (although one early ending doesn’t require this), providing most of the opportunities for erotic choices (which, again, you need to choose).
The main drawback I felt was that the game felt like it could have developed more. It would have done better as a Choice of Games novel, but such tools were limited or unavailable at the turn of the millennium.
A small comedy biblical game about a sheep, June 26, 2019In this game, you experience a biblical scenario: one of your sheep has escaped.
The game consists entirely of chasing the sheep, with a couple of puzzles.
The map is small, with 5 or so important rooms and then a sequence of minor rooms. The main puzzle is pretty hard to guess, even if you think of the old-testament related clue.
A very small game with extensive conversation, June 26, 2019This game has two characters in locked room. You have a few items around and you can talk to them. There is one puzzle, with multiple stages.
It’s not a bad concept. A problem that arises is that the number of topics is large, and they are all dumped on you at the same time (well, most of them are). If it was gated at the beginning more, I’d give this another star.
But the whole game is bloodless. What makes it all tie together? Nothing, as far as I can see.
I believe the author went on to make some other, great games.
A dark religious romance game with constrained parser, June 26, 2019This game is completely CYOA. However, to make your choice, you must type it in.
This is obnoxious and wasteful. But, on the other hand, it makes choices more meaningful as you must type them out.
I went through 5 chapters, and reached some white text that faded out after a fairly-explicit romantic scene. My game didn't work after that.
I didn't really connect with this game, and the interactivity left something to be desired.
An in-depth look at entertainment life and multiple relationships, June 26, 2019I avoided this game for a while because I thought it was just a polyamorous sex simulator. But, trying it, I found that sexuality played a very small role in it, and even less if you chose not to.
Instead, it depicts what life would be like in a polyamorous lesbian relationship. I can honestly say that it made me feel like that kind of relationship would be a ton of work and not worth the intense cross-connections.
Secondly, it was very satisfying dealing with the work-related portion of the game. I spent the first half as a workaholic obsessed with my career, and eventually realized that fame as a singer was crushing my life, so I purposely torpedoed my job to find freedom from the old ball and chain.
Polished overall. A lot of pages in linear order, but mixed in with enough choices that it didn't feel overwhelming. I don't plan on playing again, as I'm satisfied with my choices.
A poem combined with a combat simulator, June 26, 2019This is an odd little game, and the lowest-ranking game of IFComp 2015. In its own sphere, it's great and wonderful, but it's just not what most people are looking for.
What it is is epic, obscure and symbolic poetry about trees planted over ancestor's graves coming to life to take revenge on their descendants for blasphemy. There is an intentional emotional distance between the listener and the author.
The battle system is similarly opaque. You can attack. You can pray. What do these do? Is not knowing an essential part of the experience?
It starts with Choice of Games-style choices establishing stats before diving in.
Interesting game. To get it to run in modern python 3, open all the python files and change raw_input to input.
Standard Panks game, got disqualified from IFComp, June 26, 2019This game is just a regular Panks game: a village with a central well, with a two-story tavern and a cross-shaped church with altar in a different direction, forest and monsters outside of town.
It's a commodore 64 game, so you'll need an emulator.
This one was disqualified from IFComp due to being released early.
A harboiled occult detective story with a CYOA/parser hybrid structure, June 26, 2019This game is very similar in theme to David Whyld's previous IFComp game, as they both involve a tough guy with a beautiful blonde who conspire against the woman's necromantic former partner.
Again, this game focuses for some time on the male gaze towards the woman, although there is no explicit sex or too much gore. It relies pretty heavily on the 'people can get knocked unconscious frequently without any adverse consequences).
The storyline, that of a detective having a client who comes in requesting an investigation of her own murder, works well. I didn't reach a perfect ending, but the third or fourth ending I got was good enough for me.
It's mostly CYOA with occasional parser-focused segments.
A thoroughly depressing grimdark space amnesia homebrew parser game, June 26, 2019This homebrew parser game from 2006 works a little better than others. It has easily readable source, which helps, especially when divining what verbs are allowed. It doesn't do disambiguation well, but everything else is passable.
You wake up in a space station with amnesia, discovering logs and evidence of what has come before.
This is a grimdark game, with mentions of topics like (Spoiler - click to show)frequent contemplation of suicide and enforced rape. It's pessimistic and sad.
A short, polished adventure through a segment of Greek mythology, June 24, 2019I put off playing this game for a couple of years because I thought it was a sexual game. It mentions a few things here and there, but is quite a bit tamer than I expected, with almost all salacious material at the beginning. If Shakespeare is acceptable, this has about the same level, or Don Quijote.
Anyway, this fun adventure puts you in the role of Ariadne (THE Ariadne from mythology), engaged in a wasteful and promiscuous lifestyle, who receives a wake-up call from her aunt Circe (THE Circe). Most of the game is fairly linear, with TALK TO being the main interaction, but its well-oiled and polished. This is a great little game.
A long CYOA/parser hybrid about a torrid affair, gritty violence, and mortality, June 22, 2019This game definitely is not written for children. From the opening few paragraphs:
"I've slept with high class dames and drug-snorting whores; professional models (even a couple of top shelf centrefolds); nurses and secretaries; yet none of them, even one, came close to Stephanie Gamble in terms of sheer physical beauty."
to the scattering of heavy profanity, this game is adult-oriented, which isn't really my thing.
But the interactivity and story work well. It's about 75% a CYOA game with numbered selections, kind of like Choice of Games, with an emphasis on conversations and making plans. The rest is limited parser, with most actions being movement, looking, or talking.
The story is about a plot you have to off the old, rich husband of your girlfriend.
A slightly better sequel to the broken original game, June 22, 2019Santoonie Corp. was an interesting group in the early days of IF, and there are debates about whether the games released under their name are really there's or not. Suffice it to say, the games released under their name are poor quality.
This one is better than the other Amissville's, but still dreadful. There are TADS errors I've never even seen before for trivial actions. There is a fairly expansive map with some interesting scenes, but the scenes are built into the text description, so typing 'look' will repeat large chunks of action.
The story is nonsensical, something about hiding out in the woods and looking for weapons for your friend while being on run from the cops. Half of items are portable, the other half (often identical things to the ones you can carry) are 'too burdensome to carry'.
This is not the worst game I've ever played.
A highly polished game hidden in menus with wild branching, June 13, 2019This is a clever concept. You right click on a picture, and the menus are huge, with enormous branching.
Some do relatively nothing, or are just dumb jokes taking advantage of the menu structure. Others have functionality: turning off the whole system, or allowing editing.
An interesting feature is a text adventure in the 'games' section with nods to Leather Goddesses of Phobos and to Adventure. It tracks state and allows revisiting locations, but it is easy to lose your spot.
Overall, it's funny as an idea, but too tedious to explore fully, and tedious even in medium exploration.
A complex, innovative multimedia work about NYC mediaites , June 7, 2019This hypertext work uses Undum and Raconteur to create a relatively rare system for IF (I can’t really think of any parallels to it). The premise of the game is technology allowing you to interact with memories of the past. (Bizarre corporate emotio-tech is a theme in a few Morayati games, like Laid Off at the Synesthesia Factory and Take). The mechanics of the game are selecting from a frequently-refreshed menu of questions followed by curating everyone’s responses (asking for clarification or rejecting the comment).
These mechanics are opaque, and intentionally so. You are meant to get a feel for the game through experimentation. I’m still not sure quite how it works after several playthroughs, but rejecting everything vs rejecting nothing certainly has an impact. Certain characters take on strong personalities once you begin picking them out.
The story is a sort of decadent ironic self-gazing thing, something you could imagine bored aristocrats writing about their hobbies a few weeks before a brutal revolution toppled them. Wealthy New Yorkers (here meaning ‘people who actually have somewhere to live in NYC due to their job) have a party where they trash a historical(ish?) building, are cruel and vapid to each other, and basically act like upper class jerks.
It gives a glimpse into another world. But I vaguely bounced off the interaction and setting, as I always felt like an outsider. Although that may be the whole point.
Essentially a twine version of a vampire table top RPG module, June 1, 2019This game has all the hallmarks of a D&D or Vampire: the Masquerade boxed adventure. A short backstory about why you’re seeking revenge, a quest giver, a maze-like dungeon, NPCs for battling and talking with, a vampire boss, traps, treasure and magical items.
This isn’t typical of most IFComp games, but it’s what I played around with a lot growing up, so I had a nostalgia factor while playing this.
Going back to the same parts over and over again was a bit frustrating, and it can be difficult to strategize. Death and failure are easy, while success is not.
Overall, I see this as a successful game.
A self-referential game that is choice-based. Made with Vorple. Urban fantasy., May 27, 2019This game is a response to the 2017 game The Dragon Will Tell Your Future Now, a sort of troll game that promised an ending that never came, despite it's clever writing.
This current game, Re: Dragon, an unauthorized sequel, purports to tell the true story behind the earlier game. Like the first game, it dabbles with a blend of modern-day language and esoteric magical and astrological terms.
It is presented in a novel format using Vorple to create a false e-mail inbox. Other games have used other methods to do this, both before and after Re: Dragon (including Alethicorp and Human Errors). This is a particularly complex version, with several inboxes, timed messages, and mutating formats, as well as some pictures and sounds.
Overall, the one area I found a bit lacking in the game was emotional investment. It was presented with such irony, absurdity, and complex language that I felt more like an outside observer than an earnest participant.
A funny and drama-filled zombie parser game with innovative mechanics, May 27, 2019I beta-tested the French version of this game, and played the English version during IFComp and now.
This is a funny game in a very particular genre: the 'gain powers by eating' genre. Other games in this genre include portions of Spore and the Adrift game Mangiasaur.
Using Vorple, En Garde replaces the parser command line with colored buttons. These buttons are, at first, unlabeled. This represents your mental state. You begin this game as a weak, unintelligent creature, but quickly become more intelligent and powerful, and your options change accordingly.
This game is short and not too complex, puzzle- and story-wise. However, it's value is boosted by its amusing dialog between various species and people., which elevates it from a 4 star game to a 5 star game for me.
A story cobbled from great pieces but lacking in cohesion and pacing, May 20, 2019This story is an interesting mix. So many of the concepts it has are great: how do men and women with power like Gods of different elements find a way to defeat someone who is almost impossible to reach in their domain?
Betrayal, love, power, it's all here. A mysterious library, a maze to navigate.
But there are a few key flaws that I believe the author could improve on for the next game. If they fix these kinds of things, I think they could make truly awesome stories.
First, the pacing is off. The things that break up a story are compelling plot twists and choices. The most boring part of the game is first, and it's marked by a single choice in a sea of 'continue' style links. Incredibly momentous events are marked and gone in a moment, but a long march with stats and a maze search take up a large chunk of the game.
Second, cohesion. Are you a tender romantic or a ruthless conqueror? Both. Do you seek the favor of your partner or destroy their world? Both. Is your brother a power-hungry madman or a gentle friend willing to step aside for you? Both.
I feel like these problems could be solved simultaneously by adding significantly more choices. These choices wouldn't have to branch the game; the author has already showed the capability of writing such choices (like flavoring your brother's personality, affecting stats, or navigating). You could even have meaningless choices that have a small paragraph in response but don't affect anything else. Then you could react to crazy stuff and make those moments longer.
A political game about censorship and dystopia, May 2, 2019I'm giving this 4.5 stars, rounding up to 5 on IFDB.
Ostrich is a multi-day Twine game set in a country similar to modern-day America.
In this story, you play the role of government censor, deciding what does and doesn't pass into the news (and later, branching out into further works).
The interactivity has a nice pattern to it: an ongoing saga in your daily commute, with choices remembered over time; your actual job which is graded and performance mentioned; and your evening rituals, which gain importance as the game progresses.
The first few times I played this game, I had the impression that it was fairly linear, but after multiple replays, I've realized that it has quite a bit of freedom. I felt like it did a good job of balancing hard choices in some bits.
There was something just a bit missing from this, though, that would would have made it a classic. I can't identify what it is.
I recommend this author's other games, as well.
An excellently polished short sci fi game with multiple endings , April 25, 2019This game by Victor Gijsbers contains many of the best elements from his former games, including an examination of player agency and strong NPCs.
You play as the commander of a mech, complete with manual and custom parser messages. Unfortunately, your visual components are damaged, so the on-scene pilot Lemmy has to do the talking for you. But Lemmy's quite the character, making life pretty difficult.
The parser is constrained to those verbs recognized by the mech, and even by the nouns which Lemmy 'tags'.
This game is shorter than I would like, but it's pretty good when my main critique is that I want more of it.
Contains some strong profanity in some paths.
Complicated puzzle game involving combinatorics, April 20, 2019This game is similar to David Welbourn's classic 69105 keys. You search through piles of keys divided by adjectives, trying to find a unique key. It includes some innovations over the previous game, including multiple game modes, a different kind of randomization, and an anti-game for finding the 'worst' key.
There seems to be a bug with the second half of the game that lets you instantly win, but otherwise this is a nice to game that goes from 'banging your head' to 'oh I see'.
A game designed to explore academic writing concepts in game form, April 19, 2019This game was designed as part of a class in game history. It's one of the most successful games I've seen done as part of a course, since most such games are very timid in their scope. This one is decently-sized.
The author decided to feature game history and critique heavily. Something happens in the game, and then you get a quote relevant to what you just experienced.
I found that an enjoyable premise. It did suffer from implementation issues, which are the bugbear of parser games in general. For instance, there is a telephone which cannot be referred to at at all.
Overall, it's a valuable addition to the niche of 'games about games'.
A complex relationship sci-fi Twine game with heavy themes , April 12, 2019I can't tell if this game is genius or just confusing. But I like it.
It's a pretty hefty Twine game at around 30K words, with much of this tied up in different relationship tracks.
You play a worker in a futuristic San Francisco that seems to be on the edge of apocalypse. You've suffered intense losses, including the recent passing of your mother, and most of the game deals with reflection on your relationship with her.
The game has excellent media usage, including a skyscraper that scrolls up and down as the player moves, and heavy usage of a beeping watch alarm.
The writing style makes heavy use of inference and allusion, making for a confusing read. It also employs non-linear narrative, so this is a pretty complex game.
A completely smooth but sparse space puzzler, April 11, 2019This game is pretty interesting. It reminds me structurally of Infocom's first sci-fi game, Starcross. Both deal with cylindrical space stations with a variety of components and pieces that must be dealt with. Both are highly polished in terms of implementation and bugs.
Those interested in parser games primarily for puzzle-based reasons or for the 'parser feel' will certainly enjoy this game, and I found enjoyment in this area.
Writing-wise, it's very sparse. Every message is custom, but the custom messages are sterile and non-descriptive. This aids in the abandoned space-station feel of the game, but I felt emotionally detached from the game. Starcross had alluring alien ecosystems and evocative descriptions of strange technology. This game doesn't have to be starcross, but I wished for something exciting or unusual in space.
tl;dr Solid small puzzle game with top-tier implementation but standoffish story.
A shortish Twine game about a bird's life throughout the season's, April 9, 2019This game has an interesting structure: part stat-based, part poetry, and part dynamic fiction.
You play as a bird who has suffered a violent attack, and must make several choices over the next year or so.
The writing is lovely and descriptive of the various seasons.
You make about one choice per season, with one text-entry choice and all others binary. The binary choices have various effects later on.
After your choice, each page is just a sentence or two that you click through to get to the next season. This is the poetic/dynamic part I referred to earlier.
The game was overall enjoyable, but the format just seemed spread thin. Being stat-based but only making 1 or 2 stat choices seemed odd, and more of a 'win by remembering what you did' sort of thing.
I'd like to see more games by this author, and will keep an eye out.
A nice mid-sized Twine demon simulator with stat tracking , April 5, 2019The author bills this as a 'small' game, but it's pretty hefty (about 20K words). Most of that is in branching paths.
The writing is witty and on-point. You are a demon in hell, and you are given the opportunity to tempt mortals. Each character is painted with distinct personalities and mannerisms, and there are numerous jokes (I enjoyed being paid in 'exposure' at one point).
You have six chances to influence mortals with various conversations. Your conversational choices impact the deals you can make. Each conversation ends in a deal of some time.
Your stated goal is to obtain a ton of power, although there are other paths in the game. This game is pretty tough, but fair. I definitely would like to play again to try out other strategies.
Overall, this is excellent. The interaction was a little bit finicky from time to time, where it seemed like a some lawnmowering was necessary, but I couldn't really tell. Fun game.
An incomplete demo of a dating game related to mental illness, April 5, 2019This game is incomplete, which is why I've given it a lower rating for now.
This is a dating simulator visual novel. This is a genre which I'm not very familiar with, but this game seems to follow many of the tropes.
You play an office worker who encounters five women, each with differente mental disorders. You have the choice to date any of them and learn more about them.
Only one of the women is implemented right now, and that one is incomplete.
The writing was fairly descriptive and the women are all very different. I was surprised by the heavy focus on physical appearance (the male gaze, or lesbian gaze, depending on how you think of your main character). The one path we see has the character eager to please us, and us eager to comment on them.
I think this is normal for dating games (as far as I know), so the main content of interest is the mental illness. It's hard to tell how exactly this will be handled in the full game, but so far it seems to be trying to raise awareness of mental illness in healthy ways. As long as it doesn't end up with the character 'curing' one of the women I think it will be okay!
A Bradbury-esque robot story about independence and free will, March 31, 2019This game involves a series of vignettes that can only be completed in one way, followed by a long open sequence of puzzles and choices with consequences.
You play as a robot managing a household for 3 humans. You learn about the humans and the world in general over time.
Nearer the end, you gain the power to significantly affect your world and the world of others.
I feel like the choice structure was a bit weak in this game, with the majority of the game (including a late puzzle sequence) solvable by lawnmowering. I think it could have benefited from more tradeoff-style choices and delayed effects.
However, the lovely worldbuilding and vivid descriptions make this a worthwhile game to play.
A text-heavy gamebook with an innovative polynesian setting, March 5, 2019This game has some beautiful styling and good mechanics.
You play as a Polynesian woman on a quest or rite of passage. You meet a strange group of islanders hiding secrets of their own. You have to investigate, with gamebook-style gameplay (finding inventory items, exploring with some time-progress elements).
The biggest obstruction to full enjoyment for me was the huge chunks of text, especially near the beginning. But, if you have time for the reading, and are a fan of gamebooks or Polynesian culture, this is a good read.
Has several well-done illustrations.
A gut-wrenching horror game with flawless execution, February 18, 2019It's rare when an IF game is presented exactly right, every portion designed perfectly well to give a uniform presentation. Liza Daly's Harmonia is sort of the standard for this type of presentation.
I think Bogeyman has achieved that level of quality. The layout, fonts, sound, and color scheme give gravitas and a haunting sense of dread to the story.
And the storyline fits the presentation, with interactions that lead you to believe that you can identify with your character, followed up with choices that pit your beliefs against themselves.
An effect, but disturbing, game. One of my go-to games when introducing IF to people.
A fun high fantasy mystery romp, February 13, 2019This game has a lot going for it. Fun images, a strong character voice, and nice, descriptive writing.
The setting is similar to D&D, with gnolls and dragons. The main character gnoll has caveman-like speech despite his intense intelligence, kind of like the narrator in Lost Pig and exactly opposite of the birds in Birdland.
It's a mystery game, and relies on the 'notice clues then pick the correct answer at then end' method of mystery writing. This isn't my favorite method, but the game's writing suits this style really well, as the clues are all based on worldbuilding.
The greatest flaw for me was how short it is. I wish that this game had been significantly longer.
A shortish, well-polished series of vignettes related to women's choices, February 3, 2019I found this game touching. A short game (5 chapters or so, each with 5-10 choices), it moves you through different phases of life and talks about women's reproductive choices, the expectations of society, and the consequences of these actions.
The styling is well-done and understated, a good backdrop to the ongoing storyline. As a man, it gave me a lot to think about.
A meditative twine game with some puzzles, February 3, 2019I beta tested this game.
This is a visually well-polished Twine game, with images, colors, and fonts used to enhance the presentation.
The game itself consists in a vertical tower. The player spends some time in each of the rooms, which are described in rich prose. Some rooms have puzzles, others are more poetic.
There is also an overall puzzle that ties everything together.
An old-school (in a good way) compact ADRIFT game, February 2, 2019I beta-tested this game. This is the best ADRIFT game I've seen in a while. It feels like a nice little slice taken from a Zork-like universe, with lamps and stone dungeons and a troll and little people and so on. There's conversation, treasure, and a satisfying map.
A lot of time Adrift games seem to be trying to get you to do something specific but won't let you actually do it without struggling for the right command. Thankfully, that didn't happen here!
It's like a nice-sized slice of old-fashioned game, not too hard, not too easy. Worth downloading ADRIFT for.
A classic-style murder mystery in Twine, January 30, 2019This game is a straightforward implementation of classic Golden Age-style murder mystery. Each page has several paragraphs of text. You investigate 3-4 locations, 3-4 murder weapons, and 3-4 people, then guess the murderer.
The details are generic enough that they could fit in any detective story from Holmes to Poirot. If you like murder mysteries, it's worth playing, but I wish it had more spice to it. The author has proven they can make a complete and coherent game, and I'd be interested in seeing more work from them in the future.
A small game with a custom parser about magical dreams, January 6, 2019Despite my low star rating,this game succeeds in (what I believe is) it’s authors’ goal. It seems like their intent was to write a complete parser game from scratch that had an interesting storyline, and they’ve done so.
This game is pure fantasy, with mysterious ailments and amulets. It’s very short. The parser lacks almost all conveniences of modern parsers, such as standard actions and abbreviations and robust keyword detection.
The game is short, but has some puzzles I personally found enjoyable, as well as some nice dream/star imagery.
For the IF player used to playing Inform games, I would not recommend this. But as someone who has tinkered around with parser programming, I know how hard this was to make, so the authors did a good job.
A short dark fantasy game about an ancient religion, December 25, 2018I beta tested this game.
Devotionalia is a shortish but replayable fantasy game that is all about atmosphere and contemplation. It is a choice-based game, but not immediately recognizable as Twine, due to the extreme customization: graphics, music, many variants of link types, and more.
The game comes with a helpful instruction page. Essentially, you are a priest of an ancient religion, the gods almost forgotten. You wish to learn from them, and thus you make your devotions.
There's not an action-driven story or a big cast of characters. It's a somber reflection on life. If you've ever seen the painting "The Monk by the Sea" by Caspar David Friedrich, this game is essentially the interactive fiction version of that painting.
A gauntlet-style illustrated game about troubleshooting magical tech, December 21, 2018This game is listed as educational, but I found it to be amusing and well-written as well.
You play as a character being asked to repair a sort of magical computer, with a crystal ball instead of a screen and an abacus and magic soup as part of the internal units.
The style seems more like old CYOA books, with most paths leading off to death. I think a 'back-up' button or more cluing could make this less frustrating. As it was, I was put off by the frequent deaths and didn't finish the game. But the writing was enjoyable, and the illustrations were very well done.
A word-puzzle game involving breaking a word up into syllables, December 19, 2018This game is a sequel to an earlier IFComp game, Dream Pieces.
Both games consists of rooms where you are given a few highlighted objects. These highlighted objects are words that can be broken up into their syllables and recombined.
This game centers on creating and using doors and other exits. I found it clever and interesting. The Quest engine was a little blocky and chunky (for its own reasons, not the game's) and I didn't feel emotionally invested in the game, but as a puzzle game it was effective and fun.
A complex conversational game about spies and relationships , November 30, 2018Intelmission is primarily a long conversation, with an introductory segment.
You and another spy are captured together and have to talk. The game features many many topics, and makes you aware at the end of how many you explored. You can choose what to discuss, or allow the game to choose for you after a certain time.
In a way, this game reminded me of Mirror and Queen. Both are conversational games with a ton of work behind-scenes to provide many topics and allow for user flexibility. But in both games, that flexibility gets communicated to the user more as mirroring what you choose rather than gaining new information. There were few surprises, narrative twists and turns.
I did enjoy this one though, and Mirror and Queen.
A riff on the Stanley Parable, set in a school, November 24, 2018This game is based off of the Stanley Parable, which I've never played. This version is set in a school.
It's short, and deals with ideas of autonomy, player/author relationship, and meta narratives. I don't know if the enjoyment is higher or lower for those not familiar with the Stanley Parable.
It seems, though, like someone thought, "I like this popular game, so I'm going to adjust it to my circumstances and make a Twine version of it." The writing and structure of this game make me think that if the author tried a new game after this based on their own ideas, that it would be pretty great. I hope you write again!
A racy space comedy, November 24, 2018This reminds me in an odd way of a more optimistic and gender-swapped version of In The Friend Zone from a few comps back. In that game, you explored a world that was a giant woman.
In this, you are aboard a giant male-shaped spaceship. It is a riff on Star Trek and general science fiction tropes. In style, it reminds me of 80's college humor movie.
The level of explicitness is similar to Leather Goddesses of Phobos on Safe Mode.
It's polished, descriptive, and amusing, although I didn't personally care for the subject matter.
An illustrated book-like game set in a fantasy circus, November 21, 2018This game is by (I think) a commercial team that had a different approach to IF than most of the authors in the competition.
This game is lavishly decorated as a book, with occasional beautiful illustrations.
You play as a wolf who is friends with a young child.
It has essentially one choice per 'chapter', with the later chapters having the strongest effects. This is in contrast to most twine-style games, which encourage frequent irrelevant choices or gradual choices. This game's style is exactly what I would expect Netflix's choose your own adventure shows to be like: long segments punctuated with individual, large-effect choices.
A complex many-variable bilingual game about love, November 17, 2018This game was featured in IFComp 2018. It has a beautiful custom interface featuring pixel-art animations, and includes sound.
Basically, love goes wrong on a train. The sequence of events just interrupts everything.
But, you have a chance to go back and change that sequence!
This is a wonderful premise. By going back and changing the order of things, you can unlock 7 preliminary endings and then a final ending.
However, I found the choices opaque. Instead of being able to strategize, it came down to more or less random guessing. There are some hints in the text (changing options, for one thing), but even with the walkthrough, I never reached the final ending on my own. I saw what it said, though, and I thought it was beautiful.
Because I struggled with the interactivity, I didn't receive the full emotional impact of the game. Other than that, I enjoyed it.
Edit: With help from the forums, I finished this, and I loved the ending.
Where I got stuck was (Spoiler - click to show)Forgetting to confess for the 'love' ending.
Dynamic fiction about the perils of obsession and family secrets, November 17, 2018This was an IFComp game that I liked quite a bit more than, it seems, many of the other IFComp reviewers did.
This is almost purely dynamic fiction, a style of interactive fiction where you mostly read a linear narrative, with different special effects adding to the atmosphere and some scattered choices. "My Father's Long Long Legs" is a classic example of the genre.
This story is about a woman whose mother tended a bar and was obsessed with 'polishing the glass'. It's a story about growing up in a broken household, coming to grips with our parents' problems, and the spiral of obsession and addiction.
There's probably a metaphor here, but it's abstract enough not to be clear on what the metaphor is, which makes this game much more effective for me.
A gorgeously illustrated medieval-looking cybertext game about an abbess, November 15, 2018This game is lavish, with a medieval-looking font and scattered illustrations and capitals.
Presented like a book, interactivity is done by either turning the page or by selecting between binary choices.
There are quite a few paths in this game that you can take, and I found it overall impressive. My 3 stars is because I didn't feel an emotional involvement in the game, being put more at a distance by the elaborate presentation. I also didn't feel an inclination to play again, due to the energy required in poring through the text.
A horror game set in an abandoned school, November 6, 2018I was impressed and a bit frustrated by this game.
The bad: the text is a bit hard to read. I had to bulk up the page size a bunch before being able to see the fancy-font white on black text. Also, possibly due to the font, I felt weirdly discombobulated while playing and had trouble focusing.
The good: this is a genuinely engaging tale about a girl and her friend meeting up with three guys to explore a haunted school. The true horror is in the relationships here; I had several honestly surprising and unsettling experiences with people in the game that wasn't based on supernatural horror at all.
I actually feel like I love this game, but I wish it were easier to read and didn't have that sort of vague procedurally generated feel (it's not actually procedurally generated, but it has multiple paths, so some of the text is vague to suit several scenarios). I want to play this again.
A long exploratory Twine game about a Frankenstein scenario, November 4, 2018In this game, you play a patched-up person made up of different people's parts.
It comes in three acts, two of which are exploratory, and the third of which is mostly a coda.
In the first act, you explore the house of yourself and your master, spending several days or weeks in-game exploring, thinking, learning, and solving some puzzles.
In the second act, you have the chance to interact more with the real world.
The styling was nice here, with Harmonia-like spacing and margins. Options are greyed out to indicate places you should explore more.
This really worked well on a lot of levels. I found the exploration tedious at times, but I don't think that there's an easy fix, and the game is good as-is. My ending was touching.
Frankly amazing story about trying to give a powerpoint presentation, November 4, 2018Sometimes Twine games just click for me, and sometimes they don't.
Two ways they can fail is to either encourage/require you to just click everything, or to have trivial choices that clearly don't effect the story.
This gave really gave me the feeling of strategy. Even if it was an illusion, I felt like I could play a specific kind of character and have it matter.
The game contains some highly unusual events, part of which gets explained near the end of the game. I don't think everyone will love this game, but I know many others who also like it. For me, this is the kind of Twine writing that very few people get right: Hennessay, Dalmady, Corfman, Lutz and Porpentine, a few others. Welch can write with the best!
A short horror romp, like a music video, November 4, 2018Playing this game felt like being in the video for Thriller or some other sort of famous creepy song.
It's largely linear, with a series of obstacles and strong hints on what to do (except at one point where I completely failed multiple times in a row at what turned out to be the last two puzzles of the game).
Some of the content of the game wasn't really up my alley (you follow a girl out of a bar because she's so attractive), but it was coherent, and everything meshed well with the opening.
The third in a voodoo-based parser series, November 4, 2018In this Inform game, you are a private investigator who is haunted by strange phenomena. It has a large cast of characters and expansive geometry.
However, due to its nature as a fairly quickly written game (for Ectocomp), it suffers from a lack of implementation that makes it difficult to play without the walkthrough. I took my time, examining things, in the opening scene, and missed out on all the triggers that would have led me to discover more.
Best experienced with a walkthrough.
This game gave me rabies and leprosy, November 3, 2018In this Ectocomp Grand Guignol game, you play as a masked reveler in a sort of grim fantasy realm.
This is a substantial game, bigger than most IFComp Twine games (though I think this is a proprietary system, not Twine). There are at least 13 locations, an inventory system and economy, various sicknesses you can acquire.
It seems like an Italian horror version of Carneval, with decadent displays by comedians, dancing, buffets, etc.
I found a satisfying ending after exploring about half the map, and felt content. Styling was rich and gorgeous. I think this is even better than Devotionalia, the author's IFComp game.
A humorous and horrifying collection of short Halloween games, November 3, 2018This game is framed as a collection of friends sharing tales. After an intimidating wall of opening text, you begin playing the mini-games in random order.
You can, at any time, excuse yourself to go to the bathroom to skip a tale, which opens up a small segment of the game.
The stories were fun, and in a wide range. One was essentially a one-note joke; one was a deeply disturbing exploration in three parts that was frankly horrifying; another was like a fairy tale; and the fourth is a fun riff on metaphorical games.
I found this game truly enjoyable. Its one defect for me was the difficulty in finding the right actions/verbs on a regular basis. However, that may be part of the charm. But when I saw a pattern on the wallpaper and couldn't X PATTERN, or couldn't get a response for cutting it with one of two items present in the game, I got frustrated. SHOUT could work more often, TALK TO isn't implemented. But I don't know if it's worth it going back to spruce this game up, since the fun's already there.
A debut for a part of Spirit AI's new character engine, November 2, 2018First, it's fun that Spirit AI is putting out a Halloween game.
This is a unity game, and it's big: 140+ mb. It has graphics, courtesy of Tea Powered Games, and text, courtesy of Emily Short.
The basic framework is a nice wallpaper-y background with a visual novel-style character you're speaking with.
You have three forms of interaction:
-selecting a topic (I found 3 topics in my playthroughs). Different topics allow different conversation options.
-selecting emotions (up to 6 or 8 or so, each an on/off button). These are independent of each other, so I could, for instance, choose to be curious, open, angry, sad and hungry. These alter the conversational options in a procedural way, sometimes unlocking more.
-the conversational options themselves. Some, with an exclamation mark, have a greater effect on the game.
You play a ghost who is haunting an old house. At first, you have great difficulty in speaking, but that is gradually relieved (unless you mess up like I did on my first play-through.)
This game has many endings and quite a few topics.
Overall, I was impressed by the flexibility of the engine. I could see this being integrated with 3d Unity games, with physical location or costumes being a fourth way of influencing topics or replacing one of the methods above.
The procedural text had pros and cons.
At its least enjoyable: clicking a radio button on and off rapidly would cycle through the options, changing words like 'abject' to 'inconsolable', for instance, exposing the guts of the game.
At its best: when used as intended, the proceduralness lets the game respond to your intentions in a pleasing way that would be horrible to write as an author.
So you only really see it when lawnmowering or experimenting. But in this game, I found it easy to get lost, as I frequently had trouble guessing what the effect of my actions would be. So I ended up seeing a lot of the 'guts'.
As a demo of the system, it worked very well. As a story, I found it interesting and worth playing several times. I'm glad this was in the competition, and I hope a lot of people sign up to try out the engine (I know I'm interested, if I can find the time!)
A quest game written for EctoComp with multiple paths and riddles, October 31, 2018This is a Quest hyperlink game written for Ectocomp. It was written in less than 4 hours.
You play as a vampire masquerading as a newspaper delivery girl, visiting different areas in the city.
The game had nice styling and art, and I appreciated the apparent depth. But there were some translation issues that made the puzzly parts of the game hard for me to understand, and several typos.
Tricky location-based puzzle, October 31, 2018This Ectocomp Petite Mort is a tricky little pentagram puzzle.
It took me a while to understand what I needed to do. The game had a fairly entertaining framing story which (especially the latter portion) elevated the game in my opinion. Even though I didn't necessarily agree with its message, I respected it.
The main puzzle consists in placing objects on a pentagram (with both inner and outer pentagons). I thought for half of the game that I could only walk on pentagram lines themselves. Certain objects repel each other, and the game encourages experimentation.
A short, rocking Hawaiian game, September 25, 2018This game drew my attention when I discovered that the 'provided map' is just google maps centered on the island of Kauai in the Hawaiian islands.
This is not my favorite Veeder game, but it was enjoyable, both when I played on my own and then later at an IF meetup.
The game as-played seems to have two phases: an exploration phase, and an action phase. I found it necessary to google some locations in the game at different points, and google provided information that helped in some puzzles.
The game offers several methods of interaction, including one that may be time-limited.
If you like this game, I recommend Crocodracula. If you hate this game, I recommend An Evening At Ransom Woodingdean House. If you haven't played this game yet, I recommend Taco Fiction and this game.
An intriguing short story about a missing woman in Japan, September 19, 2018I played this game because it has been one of the most-rated games this year. It's a short-to-mid-length Twine game set in Japan with three endings.
I gave this game/story 5 stars based on my criteria:
-Polish. The writing is smooth, the images add to the story, and the structure seems thought-out.
-Interactivity. I wanted to pursue the main thread of the story but feel like I had some investment. This game is fairly linear and branches in some "do you want to win or not win?" kind of ways. But it worked for me.
-Descriptive writing. This story is vivid and very descriptive.
-Emotional impact. I found the story effective from two angles: one about a man showing concern for a fellow human, and another angle where the protagonist is a deeply concerning example of a man believing that he has the privilege to become obsessed with and interfere with a woman's life.
-I would play this again.
A sprawling absurd Twine game with a tangled and deep backstory, August 21, 2018Escape from the Crazy Place is a sprawling, labyrinthine Twine game with significantly more content than games such as Birdland. It's absurdist, surreal, dreamlike, and ridiculous.
It's history is almost more absurd (parts of this may be inaccurate; play the TADS version to see more). It began as a physical handwritten CYOA book in school over 30 years ago, passed around by students and added to over time. That copy was lost, rewritten from memory.
It became an online html game before anyone was doing much CYOA html, then it became TADS in 2006. Now, years later, it's been redone in Twine.
It has dozens of authors. It has parts that are clever and exciting.
But it also has parts that are less exciting. One reason passing around a physical CYOA book in school is thrilling is because you can see the heft and size of it and think, "oh man, this puppy is huge!". Flipping through can give you an idea of its contents.
Escape from the Crazy Place is online, though, so you don't really know what you're getting. And the first passages are the oldest, by those with the least experience, referencing 80's and adolescents. The first about also loops around itself somewhat, making it even harder to get a grip on the size of the game.
I kept pushing through (playing with my 6 year old son) and we found a lot of really great content. That experience made me think that this is a good game to play collaboratively, just as it was written.
A dreamlike dark fantasy in service to the empress, June 10, 2018This game is one of Porpentine's best games, by her own admission and the acclaim of others.
It has music and takes the unusual tack of having you draw symbols on your skin as the game progresses. I chose not to do so, but many who have played have done so, and you can search for some of their images.
The game casts you as an artificer for a massive, insectoid alien queen. Isolation and body change are themes, as you wander a city and castle and spend time on yourselves.
The game has music and interesting styling. The story includes friendship and love and bizarre, alien history.
An illustrated multi-stage game about controlling information to Trump, May 8, 2018This is a Twine game that features a number of people surrounding Trump, especially John Kelly, Stephen Miller, and Jared Kushner.
The game makes use of multimedia, with links to real-life articles, various illustrations, scrolling text aimations, and sounds.
The plot is fairly simple: you play as an intern thrust into the role of providing positive information for trump. Different factions try to tell you what to pass on, but you must choose between them.
The game has a few bugs listed below that should be easily fixed. Also, I felt like something was off with the links. I found myself frequently scrolling up and down to read the text after clicking a link, and had some trouble when coming back from aside-text (as everything became reset on the original page when I returned).
I was glad I played, as it was amusing. On a personal note not factored into my rating, I don't agree with its demonization of Stephen Miller as the evil behind the throne. Many people have been posited as the true evil behind the throne for some time in the Trump administration, and I think that shifts responsibility away from the President.
One bug report for the author:
(Spoiler - click to show)On the page near the end referencing constitutional crisis and WWIII:
The (link-reveal:) command should be assigned to a variable or attached to a hook
Also, the very last page seemed to have an error, as it showed a 'fire mueller' tweet as a graphic, while having a written text that said:
(Tweet text: "After hearing the words of my celestial grandchild, I have decided to rescind my order to fire Robert Mueller and will be resigning from the Presidency. I hope that once I am gone, we can begin to heal.)
A fairly polished joke game by Santoonie Corporation, May 2, 2018Santoonie Corporation was a group that sprang up in the early 2000's promising a very advanced game called Amissville that never materialized in completed form. They went on to release a series of games, including Delvyn and Zero, and, finally, Lawn of Love.
Each of these games has an ambitious opening scenario that is mildly under-implemented and contains some sort of offensive or bizarre standard responses before eventually petering out in a section that cannot be finished.
This game is no exception. This game has an opening picture, a preface, an introduction, and a prelude. It features an opening scenario with conversation and detailed rooms, but with basic features missing (like when moving in an unavailable direction, where no text is printed. Apparently a sound was supposed to ping).
The story involves you meeting a pair of interesting young women, neighbors, one of whom plays a game with you. The game peters out shortly after.
If you find this interesting, try Delvyn, Zero, and the TADS Amissville.
A short mini-game about Jack and the Beanstalk using ZIL, April 28, 2018This game was written as a learning sample of the ZIL language. It was written over just a few days.
As such, it is small and lean. But Welch has managed to put a few clever puzzles in.
I was unable to solve this without a walkthrough the first time I tried it. After the walkthrough, which is very detailed, I felt like the game required a number of fairly mean actions, but with suitable rewards.
I find this game most interesting as an example of the ZILF language. I wonder how many of the standard responses were hand-coded, and how many part of the language.
A cruel puzzle of a maze and an unusual one, too, April 28, 2018This game is highly unusual. It is a text adventure maze implemented on an emulator of an old type of computer.
The setup is fairly simple: a maze that reveals its shape to you once you fail to complete it, and which regenerates randomly each time. A single item, of questionable utility, is found in the maze each time.
The solution to the maze uses a trick I have never seen before in interactive fiction, and which is very cruel.
A mid-sized Twine puzzler with color-coordinated puzzles, April 28, 2018In this game, you have jumped down a hole into a central hub-like room with multiple color coordinated rooms branching off.
Puzzles follow a sort of game-logic, where mysterious machines and illogical creatures and locations abound.
Parts of it seem forced and/or rough. The machine that merges birds with items is fun to tinker with but some of the results seem hard to guess.
The writing takes a major downturn during the whale segment, where it begins insulting the player and taking a negative and small view of life. This is isolated, and weird.
Overall, I can say with Dwight from the Office: "A lot of the evidence seemed to be based on puns."
Love and pain in an endless world, April 18, 2018I love reading creepy stories and sci-fi stories, and one subgenre of both of those that I like is the time loop story. While such stories can be played just as a puzzler (get this sequence right to fix the machine, like Fingertips:Fingertips), I especially appreciate the ones that focus on human thought and feeling.
This game is well-written and focuses on character and depth. It is, as far as I can tell, completely linear (or completely cyclical, I guess I could say). It's like an endless roundabout with occasional exits that lead to the same roundabout. But it does have an overall narrative arc.
It contains some dark themes, and isn't really appropriate for children, I would say. I found it meaningful and well-done.
This uses slow text, which I usually dislike but found appropriate here (and not too slow). It also used music which I didn't listen to.
An intricate conversation about family, history, relationship, and love, April 11, 2018I beta tested this game. This is an ambitious conversational game with a parser that recognizes sentences in addition to keywords.
This increases the complexity of possible inputs to a great extent; just typing in topics isn't enough, you have to add extra words.
I beta tested this 2 or 3 times, but I never beat it until after it was released. When I beat it, I was shocked and surprised at what I hadn't seen before.
This is a well-written and interesting game, but I found the complexity of the possible inputs overwhelming.
A meandering, symbolic tale in poetry, April 11, 2018Adam Brendenberg has written several interesting poetic games in the past, including War of the Willows (a fighting game in poem form) and Fallen Leaves (a procedural poem generator).
This game has a sort of puzzling aspect. You wander a physical space, including what seems to be a labyrinth with mysterious controls. It's all written in Twine. The topics of the poetry include the game itself, a meditation on video games in general, and Donald Trump in a boat.
A sort of confessional or mirror or personality test in fantasy form, April 10, 2018This game has you read through 5 sort of interviews in Twine. Each one has a background character from a fantasy (or science-fi or both) tale explain to you how they feel about life while you react.
Each ends with a choice, which you must explain via text entry.
Reading all 5 stories unlocks a sixth story.
I liked the interactivity of it, the text entry and so on. But because the game seems designed to be a mirror for the reader, a lot of the text was bloodless and generic, designed to apply to as many situations at possible.
It covers some fairly controversial topics, including a dedication to a notorious American criminal.
Another Tangerine House Undum game with two views, April 9, 2018The Marino family has released several Mrs. Wobbles games over the years. This one is fairly long, and features two different protagonists.
All of these games feature a heavily costumized and illustrated Undum interface, like Twine but with a single, unbroken page of scroll. Text appears and disappears, stats are tracked, and there are several images.
This game seemed to have more depth than the other Tangerine House games; it offers two paths through the game, and a complicated inventory and even an economy.
A short and difficult eastern monastery game, April 7, 2018I'm a fan of Anssi Raisanen's games, and this one in particular was interesting, but it lacked a few key features that other games from this author have.
It had one particularly clever puzzle involving an extra image included with the game, one maddening guess-the-verb puzzle, and one short and sweet puzzle. Overall, it was shorter than most Raisanen games, and with somewhat less good implementation.
But if you're playing through the author's whole collection, I wouldn't skip out.
A short, lonely Quest game in a futuristic setting, April 6, 2018This is an odd little game with some major implementation problems.
You start out in a room with a tree and a mysterious force. Exiting this room proved too difficult for many IFComp reviewers in 2006. Evidently, it requires an action that is explicity denied by the GUI. This seems to be an oversight, and not a puzzle.
The rest of the game involves exploring a series of generic rooms. There is a minimal walkthrough, but it seems to leave out several interesting portions of the game. I was intrigued, but unable to discover more than a few hidden set pieces.
A compelling twine game with two worlds, one Porpentine-esque, April 2, 2018This is a surprisingly good Twine game from Spring Thing a few years back. I say surprisingly, because I never hear anyone talk about it.
It uses graphics and background colors to distinguish between two different worlds: one, a porpentine-like world with beings of slime and technology, and the other the human world, where a father is struggling with mental illness.
It has puzzles; at one point, there is a long sequence involving the food chain. I found bits of this fiddly, but interesting enough that I was happy when it was done.
The overall storyline was great, and that's what I like best about games. So I recommend this one.
A short doing-homework simulation, March 31, 2018This is an odd game. The author coded up a little puzzle where you find answer to homework questions and then type them in, together with one or two little fetch quests.
They then spent a great deal of time polishing that game and adding extra frills. But the core game is brief, and the means of completing it are clunky.
This is certainly a unique game.
An unplished made game about visiting exotic locations, March 21, 2018This game purports to be the eleventh in a long series, which is a clever gimmick. The game has several clever parts.
However, it has a lot of little bugs that add up to a good deal. It's self-aware about it (the game's most accurate line is "Oh boy, you sure hope these generic messages don't mean this puzzle is bugged!").
Overall, it was interesting, but I wasn't able to complete one of the three core puzzles, the one belonging to the error message above. I did read the ending after decompiling, though.
A polished and complex short cooking-based game, March 21, 2018I beta tested this game.
This is a unique concept for a text adventure. You are pitted in a Chopped-style cooking challenge against three other chefs. Your goal is to cook a certain recipe in twenty minutes.
Unfortunately, your competitors have their own ideas, and you have some trouble on your own.
This reminded me of Varicella, both in the numerous autonomous actions of others, and in the time constraint. It also left me feeling like there was more for me to discover that I hadn't figured out.
A media-heavy short terror story about sleep paralysis, March 17, 2018This story uses media in unusually good ways. It has audio, graphics, animation and text effects.
The game is creepy on two levels. On the first level, it has overtly 'horror'-type text, almost over-the-top. On the second level, it serves to illustrate what something experiencing sleep paralysis could encounter, and I found that much more disturbing.
The story had a narrative twist that I found lessened my enjoyment of it as a game, but heightened my appreciation of it as a piece of art or a means of communicating thoughts. Because I think the artist intended it more as a story or art, I've considered it as such and given it 5 stars
Uses slow text, but in an appropriate way. I usually hate slow text, but it makes sense here. The whole piece is well-considered and designed as a whole.
A tricky take on the classic logic problem, March 8, 2018I expected this game to just be a straightforward implementation of the classic logic puzzles (involving getting a fox, a duck, and some grain across a river. Other versions have a wolf, a goat, and some cabbage, and so on).
However, the author assumes that everyone already knows this puzzle. Instead, each step of the classic solution is hampered by a different difficulty.
I felt that most of the solutions were of the moon logic variety, or like late Sierra point and click games. Also, the implementation was at times spotty with the rope, which is a notoriously difficult thing to code.
An old, short IFComp game about science fiction, amnesia, and families, March 8, 2018This is a fairly short science fiction game with 5 or 6 puzzles.
As the other reviewer noted, it was under implemented, with several locations having no description at all. There were other things that were strangely over implemented, such as a certain action in the first room having more than a dozen responses.
The idea was clever, overall, but the game has a real penchant for attacking the character with strong profanity and insulting many things that you do. It has a narrative purpose, but it seems like the sort of thing a young author thinks is intense and meaningful before they begin to get more experience.
I would have given 2 stars, but the puzzle bits were satisfying, so I gave it 3.
A chain of disconnected, silly events, February 5, 2018This game is a sequence of surreal puzzles. You've woken up in a world where Half-Life 3 has been confirmed, and this is a clear indicator that reality has been warped.
The setting is goofy and charming, but this quick game doesn't have the author's usual polish and guidance. Puzzles, including the very first puzzle, rely on some very unusual logic, making the game more difficult in somewhat unfair ways.
The character descriptions were good, though.
A try-die-repeat game with oddball knowledge-based puzzles, January 26, 2018The original Lurking Horror was one of my favorite Infocom games, so I was interested in seeing Veeder's take on it.
This game is closer to Captain Verdeterre's Plunder than to any of Ryan's other games. Like Verdeterre, this game has a tight timer that sends you to your death, and you must play over and over to beat it.
This game exploits that structure for the story in amusing ways, though. You pick up in G.U.E. Tech (from Lurking Horror, itself inspired by M.I.T.), stuck in a time loop caused by the awakening of an Elder God. You are very aware of your previous iterations.
Progress is similar to Hadean Lands, in that you progress by gaining knowledge that your later iterations use. But instead of being tracked in-game, the knowledge is stored in password-like spells. The spell names include mangled versions of the author's name and a scrambled name of a D&D slime demon.
I enjoyed this game quite a bit; the solutions were generally very reasonable, and there was a nice 'power boost' or two near the middle of the game, with the end requiring you to tie everything together. I got impatient with one puzzle in the middle, when I had half a dozen unused spells and the same number of unsolved rooms and I couldn't figure out which ones went together. I decompiled to get past that stage, and didn't have any trouble after that.
An innovative drag-drop game with a cyclic structure, January 20, 2018This game seems like an advance upon the simple structure of Texture. In both game systems, you drag keywords onto other words. But in this game, you find the keywords, drag them into an inventory, and can pull them out whenever you like. A four-item inventory limit causes pressure in the game.
I like the system. The story is generic hack-and-slash, but I like generic hack-and-slash, so it wasn't bad. It was deeply implemented for all reasonable responses, though.
With a larger inventory, this could support a long and complicated game. The interactivity in this particular game though wasn't quite what I enjoy; it was mostly a try-repeat-again game, and it was frustrating losing at the end due to choices I made at the very beginning.
A current issue repainted in a fantasy world in Twine, January 13, 2018This game was inspired by the debates in America surrounding the law passed in North Carolina restricting transgender individuals from using bathrooms besides those of their biological gender.
This game isn't really an allegory, as exactly the same things are happening in this world as in ours. Rather, it reframes the discussion using fantasy techniques to give events a greater emotional impact.
I played through one branch to the end, and rewound a bit to get three different endings. The Twine styling and coding was beautiful, with links represented by +'s for links that furthered the study and *'s used for asides.
It took less than 25 minutes for me. The interactivity was interesting, because it spells out the consequences of your choices in an in-game way.
Fans of DeNiro's other works or of topical commentary will appreciate this game.
An intriguing slice of life game with troubled implementation, December 5, 2017This game has a great premise: you are a trolley driver on a monotonous route who has a plan which is only slowly revealed to the player.
This has all sorts of potential, and the game throws in some interesting characters and narrative twists.
But it has two main issues: one is a lack of synonyms and other implementation errors; and the other is a lack of in-game guidance.
Other than that, I found it a pleasant game, with a surprising ending.
A revenge murder story like Taken, November 17, 2017This game is mid-length; it has you play as an assassin infiltrating a house to avenge their daughter's death.
I have to wonder if this is a troll game. It is over-the-top, and includes a random adult scene (in metaphor form), and involves toilets and superglue as weapons of death.
There were several bugs and the writing wasn't especially polished.
A thoughtful game with use of graphic backgrounds/animations, November 17, 2017I beta tested this game.
This is a unity/Ink game which takes place over several weeks in an apartment as the main character deals with life and with dreams.
Most of the choices are about how you interact with others and your view on life. The story is very malleable; your choices have strong effects on the outcome.
It turns out that the story is based on (and is an implementation of)(Spoiler - click to show)a personality test. Finding this out tied the whole game together for me. But I felt disconnected during the game, and I wish I had more idea of where my choices would take me.
A sci-fi culture clash game in journal form, November 17, 2017This game is one that I changed my opinion of over time. When I first played it, I skimmed it quickly, and I sort of dismissed it. I liked the sentence-shortening puzzles, but the text was confusing.
After reading several good reviews over the course of the competition, I'll admit, I revised my opinion due to popular opinion. In this case, I went through, and re-examined the writing, and I realized that it was a good depiction of a character that I disliked, rather than dislikable writing about a bland character as I had initially assumed.
For me, this places the game in the same category as Savoir-Faire, which had a similar roguish protagonist.
This is a high quality game; I'm giving it 3 stars only because I didn't connect on an emotional level. I feel like others will enjoy it even more than I did.
A cheerful fantasy game with dark undertones, November 17, 2017This game strongly reminds me of Owlor's pony-based games, even though the game never says that the protagonists are ponies (or humans, for that matter).
Your sister has sent a curse at you, and you have to cancel it out somehow. This is a navigation-based Twine game, and you have an inventory of sorts (you can pick different birds to follow you, and so on).
This game was pretty enjoyable; I would give it 4 stars, but it has some glaring errors, like Twine 'if' errors that post big messages on pages that occur in every playthrough. If those were fixed up, I'd bump up the score.
A fun little color-based mathematical puzzle, November 17, 2017This is one of my favorite Andrew Schultz games. It has you in a world where pseudoscience is real and real science is pseudoscience.
You play on a giant colored cube, and have to manipulate some transponders using a mood ring.
There's a second puzzle later that I did have trouble with, but overall, I liked the concept, and the game.
A trip through time at a magical library, November 17, 2017This game has you play as a father and daughter travelling to a real-life library (in Harvard, I think?)
You meet a goofy pair of twins that are mysterious and magical. And you discover a special moss that allows you to visit other times.
I felt like the game could have done more with the premise. But what's there is fun; I felt like I learned something interesting.
A short quest game in a magical house, November 17, 2017This short Quest game has you go into a mysterious house. In that house, you have to solve a few short puzzles and meet a stranger.
This game felt insubstantial to me; I wished for more: more puzzles, more backstory, more descriptions, more conversation.
This feels like the seed of a bigger and better game. I could see a 2.0 version of this game being very enjoyable.
A funny short TADS game where you seek out a dozen or so endings, November 17, 2017I beta tested this game.
This is a TADS game where you are on a spaceship, and anything you do (for long enough) results in a different wacky ending.
The author keeps you from meeting too many error messages; if you try to do something usually not allowed (like going down when you shouldn't) it justs adapts the game (like having you burrow through the metal). It even includes a battle-ship type game.
It made me laugh, it is pretty descriptive, but it's not polished in some sense that I have trouble grabbing hold of; and I felt confused without the hints.
An odd mix of underimplementation and clever ideas, November 17, 2017This was a strange game. It has some great ideas: extricate yourself from a pile of rubble (which reminds me of an old comp game where you start in a pile of dead bodies and have to crawl out). You then explore a small underground complex with a Lovecraftian vibe.
But the game has a lot of implementation problems, leading to numerous judges missing out on big chunks of the game.
I didn't have too much trouble getting out of the pile, like some judges did, but I didn't even so the cabinets or the slicing machine.
Worth trying. I wish it were expanded.
A literal walk in the park, with some teenager-ish issues and few goals, November 16, 2017This game is pretty aimless; you are on a bus that runs into something on the street, then you go around the park.
I think this part of what 'slice is life' is defined to be; there are no real goals. You can buy soda, talk to an old man, take Tylenol (which has very different effects than the Tylenol I'm used to. Unless it's Tylenol pm; maybe that makes more sense).
I found two different endings.
A blend of creepy pasta, wikipedia, and detective work, November 16, 2017This well-done game presents a murder mystery/creepypasta through a series of faux Wikipedia pages.
By clicking on link after link, you slowly come to realize the scope and depth of a deep plot. Unlike a normal murder mystery, this one has creepy pasta vibes, similar to SCP or the Russian Sleep Experiment, except more grounded in reality.
I found it interesting and compelling, although I felt it was a bit pulpy, and occasionally became tedious finding the links. It's the kind of game I wish I would have thought of.
A haunting Finnish tale of a young witch, November 16, 2017This game is chock full of atmosphere, with compelling story and writing. Many 2017 IFComp judges found it compelling, and I predict it will receive at least one and probably several XYZZY nominations.
You play as a young witch in a Finnish village whose mistress has died. A dream has haunted everyone in town: a fighting force of strangers is coming in boats.
The game is fairly short, but well-done. There were a few guess-the verb spots, though. Overall, I recommend it.
A longish Twine game about anorexia with a few bugs, November 16, 2017This game is purposely modeled after Depression Quest. Instead of Depression, it models Anorexia, and was constructed as part of an academic sort of study.
This game is fairly long; if you load it up in Twinery, it has a huge amount of nodes and more than 5 endings.
However, the game often felt detached to me, and I ran into several broken pages that I had to back out of.
A rhythm-game interactive fiction in the magical realism genre, November 16, 2017This game has you tapping the space bar in rhythm to simulate swimming. As you continue to swim, the game's story progresses. If you stop swimming, you get an alternate version of the story. By progressing between swimming and not swimming, you finish the story.
It's a magical realism story centered on one moment in time, as you swim from one beach to another. I found it effective, but the interactivity wasn't quite what I liked.
A history-based game about exploring an underground WWII factory, November 16, 2017This game has you exploring a fairly minimalist underground factory. Each room has one thing in it (except for a complicated office with several things), and most things are undescribed.
There are 3 or 4 puzzles, which are pretty good, but could use significantly more synonyms programmed in.
I liked it in general, but found it frustrating. The release notes were good.
A short, polished game with angels and a Christmasy feel, November 16, 2017This game is about a relationship between you (the angel Gabriel) and Demeter, a human man.
It’s a 2-room game, and the main object is to find objects of various colors to complete a rainbow. The game cheats a little by hiding colors in meta ways, but I found the color hint reasonably fair, well implemented, and fun.
A mid-length cybertext game about orcs, rage, and peace, November 16, 2017I beta tested this game.
In this game, you play as an orc monk who has sworn off violence. However, your monastery has been attacked, and you are the sole survivor.
The game tracks several stats, including rage and health, and you have the chance to visit three different locations on your way to the grand finale. There are several endings.
I enjoyed this game, but I wished it were longer. I felt like there wasn't enough material to grab into a story with as much background information as this one. What was there, was good though.
A hyperlinked essay on Christianity and the LGBTQ community, November 16, 2017This is a lengthy essay in 4 or 5 parts about what it means to be Christian and LGBTQ.
The author describes their coming to grips with being a non binary person.
I found it interesting, and it was polished and descriptive. But I felt like it didn't benefit from its interactivity.
A clever premise involving source code, with mixed execution, November 16, 2017This game has you open up the source in the infirm compiler, so that you can see the source and the compiled game simultaneously. The source becomes a short story, with comments, and is a companion piece to the game.
It’s a clever idea, and I enjoyed the melodramatic story the game had. But the constraints needed to make th source code readable made the game overly simplistic and under implemented.
A home-brew parser horror game with graphic sexual violence, November 16, 2017This game was entered into the 2017 IFComp. It is plagued by bugs and translation errors, and it uses a home-brew parser that is missing some of the capability of a standard parser.
The story has you searching the house to make sure your friends and family are all right after a ghost haunts the house. It has several graphic depictions of sexual violence in a crude sort of way.
A graphics-and-image heavy game with few choices about murder, November 16, 2017This game was one of three translations of Qiaobooks games entered into IFComp 2017. I helped organize people to test this game.
It has a really interesting technical concept: text is typed out on timed intervals with changing backgrounds and timed sound effects/music.
However, some of the execution falls down; the translation, even after a few revisions, is off, as is the typesetting (apostrophes especially have problems). The graphics render the text difficult to read.
More troubling for me is the storyline of this game, which features a fairly sexist protagonist.
I enjoyed the other two Qiaobook games entered in the competition more, although this one was the longest.
A shortish Lovecraftian horror game set on an airplane, November 16, 2017I beta tested this game.
This is a short parser game in the Lovecraftian tradition. It takes place mostly on an airplane.
The game is interesting both story-wise and mechanically. Story-wise, it features a protagonist that isn't just a standard anglo-saxon. Mechanically, it features 3-dimensional movement in multiple environments. 3d movement is something I worked on in my game Ether, and I think this game handled it well.
However, the interactivity was iffy, as it was difficult to know what commands would work.
A fun compact RPG game written in ADRIFT, with music, November 16, 2017I helped beta test this game.
This game meets my niche interests well. It is a combat random combat RPG in a fantasy setting, where it's mostly puzzle-based; most monsters are extremely difficult to defeat until you solve another puzzle, than become generally easy. It allows for some variability, though, as you can sequence break or die in an easy fight due to randomness.
I thought this was fun. A couple of times I felt thwarted by not knowing what to do, though.
A short but branchy self-aware Twine game in a fantasy setting, November 16, 2017This is a short Twine game where there are many branches (around 60 endings), but each play through is very short.
There is no distinctive CSS styling, but the game is written in a consistent voice.
I downloaded the file and opened it up in Twinery to see the code, and I think I know what happened with the development of this game. It seems to be a classic case of "What's fun for the author isn't what's fun for the player."
The Twine code is lovingly organized and garnished, with little extras here and there, either private jokes or Easter eggs for code-readers. The code branches all over, and has little Easter egg chunks like a map of the author's house, a little section on self-harm, asides, the chance to fight the narrator, etc.
The problem with this structure is that the player never sees it. As is common in this author-centered style, the cool content is hidden in branches the player is unlikely to take. The most normal branches are the shortest and the most straightforward. An author tends to think, 'Ah-ha! The player will try the first few branches, realize that something is off, and try the elaborate branches!'
But what tends to happen is, the player thinks, 'I've seen a lot of short, under implemented fantasy twine games. I've played through twice, and that's what this seems like, so I'm out of here', never seeing what lies beneath.
Another issue is that, because each play through is so short, most of the work is on content the player will never see. Cat Manning had the same issue with Crossroads in the 2015 IFComp, and later worked to retool her style with Invasion, which had longer playthroughs.
So, this is a lovingly-crafted, well-written game, but if you want to see all of it, you need to put in a lot of work.
A three-act Twine game with inventory management and maps, November 16, 2017This game is a mid-length Twine game (30,000 words in 214 passages).
It's about a rough, one-eyed monster hunter named Jacobi. He's carrying out various tasks for the king in return for help for his loved one.
The game has you face three challenges, each with a map and combat. They become darker as you progress, with the title referring to thematic darkness.
I actually liked this game's interactivity (moving, fighting, buying and selling), but there were several typos, and I was turned off by the 'grizzled unhappy war hero make dark choices' theme. I like those themes in general, but only lightened by a great deal of heart. This game has some (with Elias and Cassandra), but for my personal tastes, I would have liked more balance. This is definitely a personal thing, and others may wish it even darker.
'Skyrim in text'; a demo of a combat engine in an rpg game, November 16, 2017I beta tested this game.
This is an ambitious concept debuted here in a demo game. It is an rpg game with procedurally generated text and spinning wheels indicating combat.
I liked the system quite a bit; the styling was good, and the graphics nice. I felt a bit dissociated from the story; like real RPGs, the story was in service to the puzzles.
There is hidden material here; despite beta testing and playing again later, I didn't find the sword or defeat the giant monster. Worth checking it out to see the system.
A compelling fantasy tale with a few minor issues, November 16, 2017I enjoyed the story in this game quite a bit, more than just about any other game in the competition.
You play as a magical crow who is fleeing a destructive sentient firestorm. You have to hop from town to town, trying to warn everyone while fighting a bad reputation.
I enjoyed the characters and setting; it was generic fantasy, but not swords and sorcery generic fantasy, more of Diana Wynn Jones or fairy tales.
There were some noticeable typos, though, which detracted from the experience.
A short murder mystery translated from Chinese, November 16, 2017I helped to beta test this game, which is one of the three Qiaobook translation entries.
In this game, you play as a young man who wakes up in bed with a dead body.
You have to play through a few times to identify the killer.
The game is developed with background images and sound.
I like the general 'find the killer' concept, but I found it difficult to wait for the typewritten text.
A humorous collection of vignettes based on fake news, November 16, 2017I beta tested this game, and I found it very funny.
Mike Sousa has written many past IF games, and the polish of this game is testament to his experience.
This game is tied together by various real-life newspaper headlines. You are having a pretty crazy day, and you hop from sequence to sequence trying to deal with mistaken identities and rogue celebrities.
There isn't a lot of direct interactivity in the traditional sense, but there's a lot of room to play around in each scene, with plenty of coded actions.
The most Ryan Veeder game yet. A short mystery., November 7, 2017It's hard to conceive of a game that is more Ryan Veeder-y than this one. This is most likely due to the support from his Patreon, which was started (according to its home page) because he wanted more reasons to include complex irrelevant subsystems in this game.
And this game has them. There's not that much you have to do in this game, but a lot you can do. Random mini quests and red herrings abound. I spent around 2 hours on this game, but the main pathway can be finished in 20 minutes or less.
There are two characters to pick from, but the choice is inconsequential...sort of. And sort of not. I felt rewarded for playing through with both.
I read a paper on humor theory once that talked about the 'incongruity-resolution' theory, which is that we laugh when we experience something out of the ordinary, that doesn't make sense, and then have it resolved suddenly. This game is built on nothing but incongruity-resolution. Everything in the game is a mix of useless and semi-useful.
I liked this a lot more than the Roscovian Palladium, or any other of the short random games that he makes every few months. A nice game to play if you just want to burn time and fiddle around with stuff.
A very clever game engine with an unpolished horror game, November 5, 2017This game engine is creative; it's like Detectiveland, in that you click on nouns and then verbs. It's multiplayer, and even allows different players to simultaneously play in different languages, with chat.
I wasn't as impressed with the game. It has a certain sort of forward crassness, reminiscent of Trump's 'locker room talk'. The story revolves around your deceased wife and your new girlfriend.
Due to the 3 hour time constraint, this game has some problems with grammar and typos.
Overall, I like the engine, but would prefer to see a different sort of game to show off the engine.
A fun little wordplay game about constraints, November 5, 2017This is the second Schultz game I played this Ectocomp, and I like it quite a bit!
There are four rooms, and you have to do something special in each one. The language is constrained, in a way reminiscent of Ad Verbum.
This was implemented impressively well for an Ectocomp game. There were a few verbs I thought should work, like (Spoiler - click to show)attack, amass, and insist, but this could be fixed later. A nice little snack.
A worthy successor to Lime Ergot with a bit of fiddliness, November 4, 2017This game is ingenious, as creative as Lime Ergot was, with a touch reminiscent of Midnight. Swordfight.
You play as a washed-up seaman who has escaped a wreck and ended up on a plantation.
The navigation system is deeply unusual.
I had one big of trouble, with the game's only locked door. I had tried the correct action in different rooms, and discovered it didn't work, so I didn't try it in the right room. I ended up decompiling to find the answer (as the game has some speed-IF bits, like no hint system, so I didn't trust it completely), but I could have figured it out with more experimentation. I felt like it drew me out of the story, though. Otherwise, this is a wonderful game.
A mid-length horror game with stats and challenges, November 4, 2017This game is actually quite extensive for an ectocomp game.
Written with Ink (I think), it has you travelling up a river that is completely infested with monsters of various kinds, mostly zombie-like creatures and ghosts. You are in a sort of alternate Victorian era, with enormous factories and electrical equipment and such.
The game heavily advertises its stats-based nature, with money, fuel, tea, and health being tracked. It took me around 30 minutes, and I played to a non-satisfactory ending. Recommended if you're looking for a more stats-based approach to Ectocomp.
A Russian-influenced transgender ghost tale, November 4, 2017Grozny has some of the best writing in this ectocomp so far, with 'dripping with the waters of SHEOL' standing as a good description of the text itself.
This is an intrinsically transgender story; every detail of the game is about being transgender, living with a transgender partner, and reassuring each other about being transgender.
It's also a strong tale about disability, both mental and physical. Your character has left their alt-history 1800's house in shambles, with clothes and dishes all over, most likely due to depression. You have to take numerous pills, you have intrusive thoughts, your joints ache (I somehow imagine a combination of arthritis and fibromyalgia), and you are walking a narrow tightrope with regards to your faith.
The entire game (which does have a ghost story, but only in service to the overall themes) feels like a house of cards which has been delicately set up but is constantly on the verge of collapse.
A semi-graphical horror game in space, November 4, 2017I actually had a rather frustrating experience with this game. In this year's IFComp, there were three games submitted that were download-only, had the text slowly spool out without an option to advance, and had white text on a light background photo. They were heavily criticized for these three things.
That's why it's surprising to see an experience IF author (with access to this information) make a download-only game with slowly-spooled out white text on a light background photo/animation. I had to increase the font size significantly to see the game. I also had to look away for something on the last screen, and the text faded away before I was sure what it said.
Despite that, I enjoyed the game. It has strong parallels to one of my favorite short stories, The Judge's House, as well as System Shock (which I've only experience filtered through Cyberqueen).
The game manages to develop a great deal of backstory without slowing down the game too much. The ending is strongly foreshadowed, but this only helps to build tension.
The non-linear presentation combined with image changes gave the game some more interactivity as it requires you to puzzle out how it all fits together.
A graphical pony-based horror game about creepypasta, November 3, 2017This is the second elevator-game based Ectocomp game I've played this year. Both are effective in their own way, but while Going Down derived it's effectiveness from understatement, The Elevator Game is much more in-your-face.
Like Owlor's other games, this game is loosely based on My Little Pony (in the sense that the characters are ponies with a similar art style), but otherwise the mythology and other world building details are different.
The game is fully illustrated, with some of Owlor's best work here, particularly in a sequence when you watch the elevator game taking place through a security camera and 'pausing' the camera reveals hidden objects.
I think that, for what Owlor is going for, this is a real success. But I found the horror to be a bit too over-the-top to be really effective; I'd like more moments where things were left to my imagination.
A creepy elevator game with great graphics and sound, November 3, 2017This is a game that should be enjoyed at a slow pace, even though it's not too long. The slow-burn is the point, and it's good! I also recommend sound.
A friend of yours wants to play the 'elevator game', a creepypasta-esque game where you have to go to different floors in different orders, and you are supposed to end up in an alternate universe.
The elevator is mimicked here with muzak, elevator bings, and gentle use of graphics. I liked it! But it's hard to rush through.
A short dialogue-based game with incredible graphics, September 28, 2017This game was entered in IFComp 2016, but disappeared shortly thereafter.
However, lglasser recorded multiple playthroughs, which completely shows the gameplay, as it is a disjoint collection of sequences/videos triggered by clicking on labelled items on a screen.
The game is graphics-heavy, with pure white silhouettes against hand-drawn backgrounds. It also comes with music.
After hearing good things about the game, I was surprised how angsty and profanity-laden the game was. There is a whole genre out there of shocking confessions, which isn't my style, but this story is well done in that genre.
A turn-based version of the arcade game Asteroids, September 15, 2017This game is a variant of the arcade game Asteroids. It has a backstory, and then has you flying through a two-dimensional grid, letting you change your direction and fire at will.
I liked it, but it was too fussy. I think I encountered a bug, too; going off the edge of the grid said I was getting sent back, but the truth was that it didn't send me back.
An entertaining concept.
An intense alien war game, September 15, 2017I thought this IFArcade game was by Cadre, but i guess I was wrong. This is an intense alien war drama, copying numerous movies/books in that style (Aliens, Catch 22, Starship Troopers, etc.) It has violence and profanity.
It's based on the arcade game Centipede. You land in a swamp with several marines, and you are in a field of poisonous mushrooms with ticks, scorpions, and centipedes attacking you.
It's incredibly difficult to win.
One of the better all-rhyming games; short Ectocomp story, September 15, 2017Most games written in rhyme have terrible poetry. This one was pretty fun; its poetry is utilitarian but entertaining.
However, it can be pretty hard to guess some of the commands.
This is an Ectocomp speed-IF game about a witch defending herself from angry villagers and searching for a lost friend.
A fairly buggy Ectocomp adrift game about an evil chicken, September 15, 2017I've heard rumors of the 3d in this game, but I have yet to find it. I haven't found anyone who's actually finished it. I was able to get to the end by the use of Adrift's Debugger.
It's a fairly amusing game, after a long text dump. You need to kill an evil chicken, but it's hard to find the right tool.
Great small game for Ectocomp about brain-changing parasites, September 15, 2017This game has a great plot for a 3-hour ectocomp game.
You are one of the few remaining members of society after parasites from space have attacked everyone. At a SETI outpost, you try to survive with a friend.
The implementation was buggy, as could be expected from a Speed-IF game, but the writing and story were excellent; would make a good TV episode.
A 'hunt the wumpus'-type game in Twine, September 15, 2017I actually played this game backwards on accident. There is a major event you're supposed to encounter early on in one of the first rooms, but that ended up being the last room I entered.
Most of this game is navigating a house while a mysterious being also does so. You have to avoid, destroy, and escape.
Over all, it was well done, but I never really got into it. The room descriptions were fairly amusing.
Agatha Christie meets Dracula, September 15, 2017This game is similar to both Murder on the Orient Express and Dracula.
You awake from your coffin on a train to discover that a passenger has had their blood drained--and not by you.
This game has many of the usual speed-IF problems (undercluing and underimplementation), but it is in the top 10% of all speed-IF, and quite enjoyable.
A clever Twine maze based on a They Might Be Giants song, September 15, 2017This is a sort of word maze based on the lyrics of the nanobots album song Lost My Mind.
Every word leads to other words, going around in a cycle. There is a secret to solving the maze, but it's fairly complicated to finish it even if you know the secret; but if you keep trying, it should work out. I thought it was fun.
An eery slice of life Twine game with 5 endings and a non-trivial length, August 28, 2017This game surprised me by its quality. I can't vouch for the writing quality; as Spanish is not my native language, anything written in it sounds nice to me. But the concepts were really beautiful.
You play as a young person on a bus home, when things take an unexpected turn. The situation you find yourself in is at once relatable and deeply uncomfortable.
The game made good use of text effects, switching colors of the background and text, using different font sizes, etc.
There was some overarching Thing which I didn't get because of my poor Spanish, something about (Spoiler - click to show)graduation and getting covered in floor and eggs?
It seemed fairly linear to me, but a second replay had about 40% new text, so I was impressed. I would have rated this game somewhere in the 7-9 range in IFComp. Well done. My only wish is that there was some more consistency in how mid-game links were handled, as it was hard to know what clicking on different texts would do. On the other hand, given the general feel of confusion the game evokes, it may have been an intentional design choice.
An intentionally poor surreal game, August 17, 2017This game, according to the author, was intended to come in exactly second to last place, which required (he said) surreal puzzles, misspellings, and a barely interactive NPC.
This may be tongue in cheek, but they have truly created a terrible game here. It is bad on many levels, including dumb implementation errors, undercluing, and misspellings. The author has truly succeeded at their goal.
A goofy game about an evil cow... or is it?, August 15, 2017This is an ADRIFT game from 2008, and like most ADRIFT games (especially from that time), it has quite a few bugs.
It's not terrible; it has some fun moments as you wander around a bizarre, goofy landscape. But eventually, the bugs pile up and it gets too hard to play.
A small game about a student and about mourning, August 15, 2017This is a game of the same sort of Wrenlaw, but smaller and less well implemented. You try to examine a variety of objects in your college dorm to unlock memories about a former love
It is not polished, but I enjoyed playing it, and it didn't overstay its welcome. If you like On Optimism or A Moment of Hope, you'd like this.
A minimalist moral tale of bullying told with the wrong engine, August 1, 2017This game is a short, linear story in a windows executable file where you mostly just click 'next' over and over again, with one or two choices you can make.
It's about a young boy who is being sent to juvenile detention after killing someone. It is very short.
It is in an RPG engine with hit points and so on. The author has the hit points represent ages.
A shortish fatasy game about giving people what they want, August 1, 2017This game is a short fantasy game set in a castle. I thought it was building up to something bigger, but most of the game is just wandering around equipping yourself.
There were many missing synonyms, and the game implied a robust conversation system that just wasn't there.
It had one fairly funny NPC in the armorer, though.
A crazy drug-and-violence story set in Australia, August 1, 2017This shortish TADS game has you framed for murder at a biker bar in Australia.
It uses garish colors and the writing is choppy and strewn with profanities.
It's an on-the-rails mystery that has a good base story but implementation issues.
A typical Santoonie game about a goblin, August 1, 2017Santoonie was a fake game company that would make really obnoxious games, occasionally for IFComp.
This is one such game. Like the others, it gives just enough of a level of implementation and thought that you think it might actually work and be fun, and then it slaps you with an unfinished game. It's like the Charlie Brown and Lucy football routine, over and over.
Has a sidekick with strong profanity.
A short, violent game with odd responses, August 1, 2017This short game has you escaping from a prison cell.
The walkthrough encourages you to do some very odd things.
The game is short, mostly about things like finding keys and opening doors.
I think it could have been better without the strange responses.
A homebrew parser game about fixing a broken spaceship, August 1, 2017This game has you waking up in a closet after some drastic event. You need to save yourself and the ship.
This is a homebrew parser, which is fine, but it is also a homebrew parser that tries to implement the trickier parts of parser like conversation, which is not as fine. Simple shortcuts like 'l' and 'i' don't work, either.
It's not too bad, in general, but the parser causes too many problems to ignore.
A buggy small game about six different lives, August 1, 2017This game is a sort of metaphysical ladder.
You have different choices to do the right or wrong thing. Doing the right thing reincarnates you as something 'greater', and the wrong thing makes you lower.
The game is so buggy, though, that it is very hard to go 'down'.
A fun game making and breaking words, August 1, 2017I played the most recent version of this game.
It's a fun wordplay game in Quest, where you click on different items to take and break them.
Breaking an item splits it up into different letters. You combine the letters to make new words.
It's fairly short, but I enjoyed it. There was some slowdown on textadventures.co.uk
A fascinating journey through the London underground and memory, August 1, 2017This game reminds me for some reason of Michael Ende's Momo.
In any case, this is a quest hyperlink game that has you travelling on trains. You are on a subway line, you can wait or get off at each station, then travel on a new line in a new directions.
There are a dozen or more lines, with quite a few stations.
As you play, very good text effects begin to show up. A metastory appears.
There is unnecessary strong profanity; however, on Chrome, profanity filters filter it out.
A DnD-influenced short game about fantasy racism, August 1, 2017This game is a bit shaky but has a great storyline about fantasy racism. The main character is dark-skinned, female, and can see in the dark, and everyone hates them.
This game was startling in its originality. It was also fairly buggy, with big typos that were missed.
It contains some combat and puzzles, with the interactivity at times just too underimplemented.
Contains some strong profanity.
A surreal game on a train about a foster child, August 1, 2017I liked this game, though it was cut short and was buggy near the very end.
You play as a foster child sent to another world, where they look for their brother Ben.
You explore a wild fantasy world, primarily inhabited by robots.
The game uses interesting cinematic techniques like intruding italics text from the real world.
I liked it, but it stops right in the middle.
A game with large geography about loss and memory, August 1, 2017This is one of those games where you wander about, having recollections come to you (like Wrenlaw).
The game has a sprawling geography; outside of the first area, each movement can take you through different climates.
It is short, a bit buggy, and kind of quickly put together, but I enjoyed it. It has MIDI music that I did not hear.
A fun little spoof on adventure games with intriguing puzzles, August 1, 2017This game is very good, similar to Ad Verbum, although I found it underclued and a bit frustrating.
There are three rooms with three challenges (after a brief intro). In the first room,... well, it might be more fun to play through.
Suffice it to say, it's almost like a test for adventurers based on standard IF tropes such as room descriptions, object names, and so on.
There was a sequel in 2017 with similar puzzles, which were also good.
An interesting multiple choice system, mostly in German, August 1, 2017This game is written in its own multiple choice system, which allows you to check inventory at any time.
This game is almost entirely in German. I like German games, so it's not so bad, but in my version of windows, the umlauts display poorly, making the German not as easy to read.
Overall, the game is not as well developed as the system is.
A short, purposely dumb game involving urination, August 1, 2017This game has a homebrew parser that doesn't recognize most commands. In this short game, you have to work very hard to keep from urinating yourself.
It has several bugs and overall just doesn't make much sense, except for the anti-Barney rhetoric.
A survey game with a hook about childhood, August 1, 2017This game starts out with you answering several survey questions about music and its role in your life.
Then it has a major shift, and ends up employing some interesting narrative techniques and text styling tricks to make some unusual points.
I like the trick, but I found it hard to pick choices that reflected the persona I wanted to put off.
A short spy thriller set in an office, August 1, 2017This game, which I believe is the author's first published game, has you disguising yourself as a repairman to enter an office and steal some data.
The author went through several cycles of writing and revising this work, improving the puzzles considerably over the original. The result is a smooth, short work.
As Jesus, fight and convert disciples, August 1, 2017In this game, you play as Jesus. You wander around a map, converting disciples, and occasionally fighting centurions.
Part of the game is purposely blasphemous, which I didn't like. But somehow the game is more sincere than Jarod's Journey or The Bible Retold.
I kept being killed by the centurion, and didn't finish.
An early web CYOA game about an alien invasion, August 1, 2017This was a good twinelike game before Twine was popular.
You go to the bathroom in a bar, and everyone is gone when you come out.
This game is mostly pure branching, but has a clever puzzle or two, several images, and some sounds.
It was a bit hard to install and get running, but it's very interesting, especially if you're in to IF history.
As president, travel over the whole world, August 1, 2017In this game, you play as the president of the united states, and every room is a country of the world.
It was quite entertaining to see that I could travel to Mexico to the south and Canada to the north.
The writing and implementation was a bit spotty, though, and it was hard to guess what to do next.
A mishmash of 20 different scenes, August 1, 2017This game contains a wide variety of scenes that are not related to each other very much, except by a small thread at the end. It includes things as diverse as Dr Who and fantasy as well as American history.
Only the main thread of the game; anything else was not implemented (for instance, you can't PRAY at Mecca).
It was interesting, but ultimately incoherent.
Moving and confusing, detailed and short. A memory game, July 22, 2017This is my final review for the Official Ryan Vedder Weekend Review Contest with guaranteed prize, giving me a score of 8 (due to having reviewed the other games earlier). Due to lack of publicity, the contest has been extended until Monday night at midnight Moscow time. Just post your Veeder reviews on ifdb (the Veedercomp games also count). 2nd and 3rd place winners get something too.
This game confused me at first; I didn't Get the mechanic that advances the game until my second playthrough.
You are in a park, looking for a geocache. There is a satisfying trash minigame.
I found it touching; if it is a parody, they say that parodies of extremism are indistinguishable from extremism, so the extreme schmalziness is something I enjoyed.
I love this game, but it was too hard to figure out how to progress (it's probably my fault for not reading the text after a major hint in my first playthrough, but oh well).
A game about a tiny rat in a big world, with creepy museum things, July 22, 2017This review is part of the Official Ryan Veeder Weekend Review Exposium with Guaranteed Prize.
For some reason, when I saw this game, I didn't want to play it. Then many people reviewed it, and I still didn't want to play it. It seemed like it would be confusing with a lot of red herrings.
Then I tried it, and stopped, because I am overwhelmed by red herrings and use walkthroughs on every game.
Then I had to write a review for this exposium, and I played it. The writing is great. Unplugging the router was a joy in itself, despite its lack of gameplay effect. The juxtaposition of the wooden caterpillar with the other objects in its room frightened me (I think I thought it was on the bed?).
The combat was satisfying once I worked it out, and conversation was surprisingly good.
This is a good game, but it stressed me out due to my gaming style.
A Robin and Orchid spinoff as a tutorial, July 22, 2017This review is part of the Official Ryan Veeder Weekend Review Communal Effort with Guaranteed Prize.
This is a spin-off of Robin and Orchid. You are investigating a haunted house, and fall down a hole.
The best part of the game is the demonstration of the three main methods of conversation.
The least best part of the game is the hinting. While it is generally good, there were times where the hints just kind of kicked out at important moments. The inexperienced adventurer that I was playing as got frustrated at not, for instance, knowing how to get through the door.
I enjoyed the ending considerably, though.
A short game with well-implemented NPCs and a layered story., July 22, 2017This review is for The Official Ryan Veeder Weekend Review Tournament with Guaranteed Prize.
This game is a prequel to The Statue Got Me High, but you don't need to have played the latter game.
It contains classic elements of the Veeder mythos, such as red herrings, consumable food, actions that seem simple but maybe take a little longer to type than the other anticipated but you never know, and NPCs whose tone of voice is in direct contrast to the content of their conversations.
This game makes a 5 on my scale, but only barely. According to my criteria, it is polished (no bugs here), descriptive (why not?), has an emotional investment (I hated Edward), the interactivity is okay (I had to decompile it once, but I wanted to decompile it, so that's something), and I would play it again.
But it just scraped by in each category, so it might not be as good as a 4 star game that did great in one category.
A briefly earnest parody of an earnest scary story about a bunny, July 22, 2017This review is part of the Official Ryan Veeder Weekend Review Competition with Guaranteed Prize.
In this game, entered in the Haunted House Jam, you play (in 3rd person) a (winsome) character named something with an SH that I forgot.
There is a small map, and a puzzle involving a stick (which was listed as a rope in the inventory) that failed to draw me in.
However, the quality of the writing was par, and the experience with the dark figure and the other experience with the empty bedroom were vaguely similar to experiences I've had. I would play it again.
Has substantially more French than the original, July 22, 2017This review is part of the Official Ryan Veeder Weekend Review Contest with Guaranteed Prize.
While I was alarmed by the 'vitesse alarmante' of the 'eau' entering my ship, I was able to escape towards 'la poupe'.
While the addition of extra French improved the game considerably, it had no effect on pre-existing French. I would have preferred seeing Capitaine Earthworm or some other variation thereof.
A chilling game that becomes an intriguing puzzle, July 16, 2017This game was quite creepy and icky at first, until I realized my true purpose.
This game is a play-and-replay game that was brilliantly coded in 3 hours or less, and provides more gameplay than most Ectocomop speed IF. Recommended. I can't say much more without spoiling it.
A little combat simulator running around a house grabbing poetry, July 16, 2017In this game, you run around a 3x3 house filled with independent hostile NPCs who chase you. You need to evade or shoot them and find four treasures hidden in the house.
The randomized combat can be hard, but if you expect it coming in, it can be a lot of fun. I found 2 poems and ran, and I was satisfied with my ending.
An intricate correct-sequence tiny horror puzzle, July 16, 2017This was a fun but frustrating little puzzle. You are a parasite in a human and you want to get out.
There are 7 steps to getting out, but you have to do them in exactly the correct order. Timing is essential. The game allows you to take several incorrect paths at first, so you can't just go through the options systematically, you have to read the failure text and respond.
I liked it.
A small game about escaping your wife, July 16, 2017You're King Arthur, and can't leave because Guinevere won't let you.
This is a short game, yet still frustrating. The many actions you have to do are hard to conceive of before doing them.
The author said on rec.arts.int-fiction that they wrote this game in 3 days, and it shows. It's not horrible, because the scope was small enough to allow for some polish, but it doesn't sparkle.
A tiny but tricky humorous parody of Indiana Jones+Zork, July 16, 2017This is a fairly entertaining parody of Indiana Jones that has some implementation problems. You are at the end of a long adventurer, and already have thousands of points, but you just need to get the jewel and go.
This game borrows some text from and parodies Francesco Bova's The Jewel of Knowledge, and credits that author.
I liked it, but it was annoying trying to figure out the correct syntax and logic of the three main puzzles.
A vampire hunting game with some bugginess, July 16, 2017This is a big grid of a city which you stalk as a vampire.
The game is winnable but the author ran out of time, making many of the locations underimplemented. I was able to complete the game, but only by asking the doorman about various things in the magazine.
It has some violence and sensuality, but both written so blandly as to have little effect.
A touching memory of WWI soldiers with very difficult interface, July 16, 2017This is a very touching game, whose ending gave me shivers.
You play a variety of characters, many of whom are (I believe) Canadians sent to fight in WWI.
The game jumps from character to character and situation to situation in an interesting way, likely influenced by the previous year's Photopia.
However, the interaction is given by choosing an action from a drop down menu of 3 to 4, and then guessing the exact words the game wants you to type. This is essentially impossible without the walkthrough.
An incomplete cinematic Lovecraftian horror game, July 16, 2017This game is a well-written and programmed Lovecraftian horror game set in the time of slavery and wooden sailing ships.
You wake up, bound and gagged in a fascinating sequence, before landing on a mysterious island.
This game does a good job of being disorienting and horror-filling. It is grotesquely violent at some points, and has some non-consensual and non-explicit advances by one character.
A multilinear game about the ocean, July 16, 2017This game has you wandering around a beach, just exploring and experimenting with life.
This game has around 40 endings, some after a very short time, and some after a very long time. It has some fairly complex NPCs.
As a beach game, there are several references to babes and illicit activities under boardwalks, and some fairly non-explicit scenes involving such. There's also a touching scene with a toddler.
A ridiculous small game based on a webcomic, July 16, 2017This is a wacky/goofy game with humor typical of the early 2000's (think Strongbad-era).
You are a penguin and have to do a variety of bizarre things. The game is a one-room-at-a-time game. You can experiment, but reading the hints is probably the best way to go.
An excellent, short surreal game by the author of deadline enchanter, July 16, 2017Deadline Enchanter was one of my first games I ever played, and still one of my favorites and a strong influence.
This game came before deadline enchanter, but shares its same feeling of utter bizzareness.
You are the ruler(s?) of a kingdom that has been ravaged by a ghost. There is wearable honey/history, and all sorts of other interesting things. I love this little game. It plays on gargoyle.
An old adrift game with spooky music but bad implementation, July 16, 2017This is a game with a big map but only 2 or 3 puzzles. You explore a creepy house (with some timed text effects at the beginning, creepy music/sound effects, and a popup image in the middle that's not supposed to be scary).
I ran this on Adrift 3.9. Like all adrift games, it has major problems. This game also has big text dumps.
An Adrift game dreaming about Will Crowther and Adventure, July 16, 2017In this game, a female college friend gives you (a male) a disk of Advent 550 to help you over the blues.
You end up playing the game, and falling asleep with your friend on the couch. You have a trippy dream involving will crowther.
The Adrift parser isn't that great (I used 3.90), but the game pulled some clever tricks for the game-within-a-game. I actually enjoyed this, but I had to put it in the Adrift Generator to find all the necessary tasks.
A purposely irritating short game with a bunch of tiny tests, July 16, 2017This game uses the Adrift parser, which is inherently problematic.
It is a sequence of small rooms with really unclear puzzles, including a sound puzzle. The puzzles are really irritating.
However, this game did not come last in the competition. It's possible that hardcore puzzle fans may enjoy this game.
The first IFComp Quest game; short and buggy quest for love, July 16, 2017This game is the first Quest game ever entered into IFComp.
You wandering in the first to give a flower to a girl. Then more stuff happens. It is really a teenagerish game (male, specifically), from the plotline to the poor spelling and bugginess.
At least the author was bold by going out on a limb, entering the first Quest game ever.
A competent TADS game about finding your past in an old town, July 16, 2017I like the atmosphere in this game. You're in a town on the Gulf Coast, exploring a town and an old wharf.
The game isn't large, so it doesn't take too long to finish. But it could be much better-clued. Without clues, this game is like playing monopoly for the first time without instructions.
There was one action required at the end that I found unusually gruesome, but somewhat logical in hindsight.
An intriguing game based on amnesia, waiting in a very long line, July 16, 2017This is a somewhat kafka-esque game which is translated from spanish. It was later retranslated as 'dead reckoning' (which can be found at the Olvida Mortal page, not the other game also titled Dead Reckoning
You wake from a sort of fugue in a very, very long line. You can't remember why you're there.
The game was essentially fair, and had great atmosphere, but it had one really, really bad 'guess the sentence' puzzle involving the SAY TO WOMAN "something something" type command.
Has some brief strong profanity.
An illustrated TADS game reminiscent of The Little Prince, July 16, 2017This game has you exploring a little abandoned islet. It really reminds me of the little prince with its illustrations, especially a sheep, a snake, a desert, etc.
It has a music-based puzzle (without sound) that was nice. It was all very light, though, and had you take some actions that are rather unguessable. The pictures were pleasant, though.
A minimalist game made with a primitive parser. Locks and keys, July 16, 2017This game is just a light puzzle plus a series of locks and keys. The keys are bizarre; a weapon, a jar, they can all be keys.
This just seems quickly programmed in an old an bad language. I wonder if the author wrote it years before and spruced it up for the comp. It does have some nice Ascii art, and some fun ideas, but it needs a lot of work.
A short, enjoyable medieval German game, July 16, 2017This game has three main puzzles, and is a cinematic game with nice background descriptions.
I struggled a bit with the game, as I didn't speak german. But it is very short, and the medieval background was really fun.
I've provided a small walkthrough:
(Spoiler - click to show)To get over the wall, jump then pull yourself.
For the forest, stick sticks in the ground.
For the man, alternate fighting and talking, with a lot of talking.
A scott-adam's esque spy thriller, July 16, 2017In this game, you are in a facility that is wired to blow. Most rooms are empty, except for some with one item. Like Scott Adams, it has a two-word parser.
It was fairly fun, but it could have had a greater depth of implementation, and there was some 'guess the verb' stuff going on later. It also had an annoying maze.
Fun for those looking for a quick snack.
An early Quest superhero game, July 16, 2017The early Quest engine had a number of issues, mainly that you had to define each action separately, and it didn't do synonyms well. So much of this game is 'guess the verb'. I downloaded an old version of quest to play it, as gargoyle was having some problems.
You play a woman who becomes a superhero after a mysterious hilt comes into her life. The game goes from scene to scene. I couldn't finish one scene due to a bug (I think I had the wrong interpreter yet again), but opening the quest file in Notepad++ revealed the ending, as the game is completely linear.
A well-written short story about a chance meeting in the future, July 16, 2017This was the first TADS 3 game entered into IFComp.
You are someone in the future who meets a woman at night, knowing she would be there.
You then have a flashback to how you got to that point.
I had trouble guessing one of the very first commands (pointed out in David Welbourn's walkthrough).
It's a fun game, but learning more about it is what makes it enjoyable.
A darkly atmospheric game that does interesting narrative tricks, July 16, 2017This game casts you as an unusual 'we', with unusual descriptions of rooms and a bizarre atmosphere.
I am surprised this game is not discussed more; however, like most little-discussed games, this is likely due to the lack of cluing.
The game is reminiscent of some ancient dark ritual, of Beowulf or Peer Gynt.
A short, mostly bland but well-clued space game, July 16, 2017This game has you teleporting to a moon base to investigate a disappearance and stop a monster.
It has an instant death puzzle, but thankfully no mazes or light source puzzles. The game is well-clued, and its fairly easy to know what to do at all times (except right near the end).
The game has numerous spelling and grammar errors, but otherwise could be dressed up to be a fun game.
An html-TADS Christian game that is perhaps a subtle parody, July 10, 2017This game purports to be an exploration of the Christian faith. You are the son of the centurion who stood on Golgotha, and you are sent on a quest to explore various cities.
In each city, you explore different areas, and see NPCs, but you don't have to do anything.
As you leave each city, you are given a choice of three directions to go in corresponding to 3 beliefs. You have to choose the correct belief to progress.
The game seems to me to be a subtle parody. The graphics are at times ridiculous (the meditating shopkeeper); the character is very excited at how clean the angel is; your character ends up suffering quite a bit, but is grateful that thieves left him his shoes; it all seems a sort of fun-poking 'from the inside' the way that Jacek Pudlo troll RAIF 'from the inside' (where you pretend to be a fan of what you hate, and then say things that other fans are embarrassed by).
A game about an introvert interested in an extrovert, July 5, 2017This game is about a typical introverted boy with a long ponytail and an interest in computers and fantasy-type things who matches in an online dating program with a vivacious and popular girl.
This just kills (metaphorically) the boy, who can't handle the intense polar opposites of excitement and nervousness.
The game was well-written and pretty well-programmed, and it produces some real emotion with its intense, up-close-and-ugly examination of the young adult brain.
A surrealist game about your inner self, July 5, 2017This is a shortish, underclued but interesting surreal game where you explore the inner workings of your own mind. It reminds me of Blue Chairs, but shorter and less humorous.
This game is has elements similar to Mikko's last game. Both games were written in a couple of weeks. It contains some juvenile bot non-explicit references to nudity.
I found it difficult to know what to do next, but the walkthrough was helpful. It has a very clever puzzle involving mutating words that accounts for many false attempts.
An implementation of Planetfall's sample transcript, July 5, 2017This game is a straightforward implementation of Planetfall's sample transcript. A few things are different, since the Inform and Infocom parsers have different responses.
The original transcript ends in a premature death. This game does not; however, the new ending sequence is barely there, a matter of a few moves.
It's well-done, but very small. The smallness is even smaller when the game informs you that portions are blocked off because its not finished by the author.
A very hard-to-use homebrew parser with a bland game, July 5, 2017This game uses a home-written parser for a story about travelling to work.
Hardly anything is implemented, like X or compass directions or inventory or disambiguation. You travel to work, passing several obstacles in the way.
The writing is really unusual, and I kind of like it and kind of don't. It's really, really overblown, something like "You stand here with your beautiful, gentle wife, basking in the happy glow of home life in your kitchen.."
The game's biggest merit is that must have been hard to program.
A great little nugget of a homebrew parser. Small fantasy land, July 5, 2017This is how homebrew parsers should be; and it makes sense, coming just 3 years after Inform was created and making new parsers was less intimidating.
This is a compact fantasy world, with only 7 or so locations. It has a gnome, a toadstool garden, and a mad scientist. It has good cluing, and fun, open mechanics including potions/chemicals you can try on things (nothing complicated).
The only thing I found difficult was that one important room exit was only mentioned once, in one event, with no way to read that text again once it scrolled back. So its important to read everything carefully.
A breathy, heartfelt longish twine game about inner demons, July 1, 2017This game reminds me a lot of creepypasta: intense writing with something of a neglect of proper writing techniques (such as grammar and some other things that careful testing could fix). However, it has an intensity of emotion that makes it more enjoyable than a polished, bloodless game.
You play someone who has a dark secret inside of them, which affects them throughout their life. Eventually, you must journey to your own psyche to confront this secret.
It's fairly long, with choices that felt mostly meaningful. It features combat. It has some profanity and violent sequences.
An early hugo game about survival after a catastrophe, July 1, 2017This is a short, loosely timed game about waking up after some sort of accident and then trying to help yourself and others before time runs out.
The writing is interesting, and the game feels fairly polished. However, it really suffers from 'guess what the author is thinking' syndrome. Some of the actions are completely unmotivated. However, playing around on my own was fairly fun.
An intriguing little game that devolves into juvenilia, July 1, 2017This game starts out pretty cool, and basically consists of a linear series of challenges in a surreal prison environment.
I would give it 3 or 4 stars, but it just gets dumb, involving marijuana quests and another interaction involving a statue that could only be conceived by a teenage boy.
An intense, surreal game about becoming purified, July 1, 2017This is a short surreal game that swerves from scene to scene with intense emotion. You confront hell, satyrs and nymphs, and so on. There's extreme pain, and you can see your collection of spells by typing Spells.
Some of it is fairly juvenile, though, especially the parts with nymphs/satyrs and the general breathless feel.
A short fun game about gathering inspiration for IFComp, July 1, 2017This is a relatively short game. You play a programmer in an apartment who is trying to get IFComp inspiration.
As you continually attempt to write your game, you begin to get trippy dreams...or are they dreams?
The game is over relatively quickly, but its enjoyable while it lasts. Has a couple of puzzles.
A fun graphical mini-puzzle with a twist, July 1, 2017This was Andrew Schultz's 2016 Ectocomp game. The author has made a mini-game, kind of reminiscent of one of the hat puzzle games (maybe Playing Games?) with a sort of maze you need to trace out, through 5 different levels.
The fifth level is different than the other levels. It needs a special command to finish it. The more times you replay it, the more hints that you get as to what the command is.
A humorous shortish twine-like game with an impala, July 1, 2017This game has you playing Vlad the Impala, whose identity has been stolen by the vampire Vlad the Impaler.
It is hyperlink-based, and has you going around collecting inventory items of a sort to turn on a device to destroy the Impaler. It has some plot twists.
The humor was actually pretty good, but there was some 'guess the link' issues with underclued puzzles. But with this and Dr. Sourpuss, the author has made some good games, and I hope they make more.
A great multimedia creepy twine-like experience about consumerism, July 1, 2017This game utilizes a nice animation of candles that changes throughout the game.
You play a sort of medium who contacts the ghosts (or memories) of a family in a house that is slowly sinking.
The writing is good, and deals with a good deal of capitalistic consumerism, but at heart this is a good creepy story. It didn't draw me in emotionally, but otherwise was enjoyable.
A 'goofy and silly' entry about waking up without amnesia on an island, July 1, 2017This game is purposely wacky and silly. This would be fun, but it has numerous implementation errors, and a game-ending bug that prevents you from leaving a room as a scene fires over and over.
The author knew the game wasn't that well put together, so they threw in some funny stuff. The spirit guide that follows you everywhere is bizarre. The author has a lot of imagination; this game could be a lot of fun with more work.
A short humor game about making a stink bomb to save your house, July 1, 2017In this game, you play Adoo, a college student come home who discovers it's going to be sold. So you decide to set up a stink bomb based on half-remembered ingredients your dad mentioned in a dungeons and dragons-esque tale.
This game has great ideas but is lacking in concept. It has many guess-the-verb problems, typos, and scenes mis-firing. But the writing is humorous and friendly.
A short horror based on My Little Pony, July 1, 2017This was an Ectocomp 2016 speed game. This is set in a MLP-type world, similar to Owlor's other games.
You are a hardened and vicious magic-using pony out for revenge. You need to go an a quest to find the ingredients for your potion.
This was relatively straightforward, and fun, with good cluing, until I got stuck on one ingredient for a long time due to misunderstanding a description.
It is unpolished and didn't draw me in, but that is due to it being a speed-IF.
An illustrated Twine game about bullying, July 1, 2017This is a shortish alt-game about bullying and abusive relationships. It is illustrated with various hand-drawn illustrations.
You play as a character who is in a sort of abusive relationship, and who doesn't fit in. You have to deal with this relationship and how it affects the rest of your life. It can get intense, with some strong profanity.
It gave me a good sense of the emotion involved in the game, but it felt like it could use more polish.
An interactive years-long diary about children and cruel interactions, July 1, 2017In this game, you are reading through diary entries of a young child going through several years of school. It's a twine-type game, and it has a large scope, going through several years at a fast space.
You have several friends you interact with, with mechanics keeping track of the relationships, but I found this fairly opaque; I wished I had more feedback on my choices. One nice feature was that choices you were not able to make due to past choices were crossed out, showing you 'what could have been'.
The game treats very serious subjects, including sexual assault. The biggest drawback to me was having trouble seeing how my choices relate to the pages you reach.
Effective mind-bending Twine game about two friends with many endings, June 27, 2017I was a big fan of My Father's Long Long Legs, so when I saw this game by the same author, I was intrigued. However, I found the name off-putting, thinking it would be a video game fan work or something similar.
It' s not; it's much more like Shade with conversations and in Twine (which would be an effective format for Shade, in my opinion). You are at a sleepover with a friend, who has a mysterious uncle that works for Nintendo. As the night progresses, strange incongruities arise.
Michael Lutz is an excellent storyteller. The author's notes at the end of the game are fascinating, and include a discussion of how the game accidentally relates to GamerGate, the controversy surrounding a group of mostly male gamers who attacked female journalists over trumped-up charges.
This game is among the very best Twine games, and in the end, is uplifting.
A moving kinetic game about death, May 10, 2017This game shows, like Stone Harbor, the power of a great story mixed with good physical and visual interaction. Both games are strongly linear, with fewer interactions, but with a great effect.
Ash tells the story of the death of the authors mom, a lingering death in the hospital. There are some interesting choices in the story with subtle effects later, but it's mostly linear. The beauty comes from the tight writing, the smooth visual effects, the appropriate font, and the way that the choices seem to reflect thought and intent more than actual decisions. You are choosing how to feel, not what to do. This worked well for me.
I finished both times with goosebumps all over my arm. This game is on the opposite end of the also great Cactus Blue Motel in terms of world model and interactivity, but both are great. Neither game resembles the super-branching wild stories that the lower-placing entries have. I love this game.
A polished mid-length fantasy twine game in a fantasy setting, May 10, 2017This game has some good graphics, excellent styling and a convenient user interface with saves and achievements. This is a great setup for a Twine game, especially one like this with more 'game'-y features.
The story was a good read, too. You are cast out of a village and left 'to the wolves', but you make a new life for yourself. Your interactions with the villagers and yourself are up to you.
The mechanics were a little opaque, and the endings didn't quite click for me, but overall, Highly recommended.
A slick and smooth mid-sized game about judging a science fair, May 10, 2017This game is Hanon Ondricek at his best. There's a million moving pieces: a book-selling minigame, events on a timer, mobile NPCs, in-depth conversational trees, easter eggs, crowds, a million little easter eggs, non-standard parser responses. It's a great game.
It's fairly short, but I think it was designed that way intentionally to allow all players to reach an ending. You just wander around, looking at everything, talking to the kids and parents, selling books, and then you pick a winner.
Highly recommended.
A visually rich Texture game about feeding grim animals, May 10, 2017In this game, you play as a zookeeper for a queen.
This is a texture game, which is good for mobile and desktop. You grab a few nouns at the bottom, and drag them above; in this story, they nouns are mainly keys and food.
Your job is to feed the animals. This game is about exploration of the universe; your choices matter, making replay enjoyable.
The game is visually well-developed as well.
Highly recommended.
Excellent parser/choice hybrid about Inuits and magic, September 15, 2016In this game, you play as a young Inuit native (I believe; it never says, but you live on the ice and eat seal meat). You can summon beings from the Stars by placing runes on the ground that describe them, two runes at a time.
This game uses a parser/choice hybrid, by having a variety of nouns at the bottom which, as you click them, provide verbs to act on them with, usually two or three verbs at a time.
This system took me a bit to get used to at first, but I ended up enjoying it quite a bit. The runes become an alphabet of sorts that, like the alphabet in Ingold's adaptation of Sorcery!, allows for a great deal of variety and difficulty in a parser hybrid.
The story was slow to start for me, but grew on me. I strongly recommend this game. It took me about 40 minutes to play.
A fun short, creepy game about running out of light, September 10, 2016In this game, you are trapped inside a small shop with a grue (a creature from the Zork series). Just any connection with Zork makes a game more silly, but that's not a drawback here.
You have to move through the darkness with limited resources. As you do, you find different sources of light and other surprises. You're just trying to survive.
I had to replay a couple of times to get it right. It has some nice ambient sounds and good use of images and backgrounds.
I really liked it, and recommend it.
Excellent sci fi game about rebirth , August 20, 2016This is a mid length Twine game set in a post apocalyptic world. You awake from a long sleep, not knowing who or what you are, but knowing what to do.
The game has only a few locations, but each one is packed with detail. The other characters in the game are vivid.
I found the general setting and characters to be very compelling. A must-play for sci fi fans.
A charming fairy tale about a quest for a lost love, August 20, 2016This twine game takes a lot of well-used tropes and works then into something special.
This is a 10-20 minute game with 9 endings. You seek a loved one in the fairy woods, and face a sequence of 2-3 choices at a time when finding them.
The game takes classic fairy ideas like fairy rings or greedy trolls and somehow gives them a sense of realness. The NPCS are all thoughtful.
The styling is individualized for this game and uses occasional special fonts.
A haunting multimedia Twine about an inuit legend, July 21, 2016This game uses many full-color illustrations and background music to tell the story of a young inuit child, her relationship with outsiders, and an inuit legend.
The music and sound effects are well-chosen to establish the atmosphere. The illustrations are nice, too, with a couple of cool tricks with them.
The pacing of the twine story was effective for me, with appropriate use of fade-ins and repeated links.
Overall, a nice short creepy story.
A tightly-paced and well-written ghost story, June 9, 2016Ryan Veeder is known for tongue-in-cheek, polished games. This game is well polished and paced, but this time it's a creepy ghost story. Like a campfire tile, it is spooky, and dark, but has a vague hint of a smile at times (which may just be my interpretation).
I found the game to be effectively creepy, banking on anticipation, slow changes in writing, and gradual, creepy, realizations.
I strongly recommend this game, especially for fans of campfire tales.
A spooky, visually beautiful Halloween game with sound, June 9, 2016This game is genuinely creepy in many of its parts. It has gorgeous css and html styling, with nice background music.
You play a police officer investigating the disappearance of a shut-in. As you enter his home, you discover more and more about his history and his solitary life, as well as interacting with a variety of candles.
Everything worked well for me in this game; it was effective and well styled.
Anarchy in a grungy magic world, June 6, 2016This games, an entrant in last year's Spring Thing, is an Undum game (meaning you can click on links to advance the story, graphics are included, and the story can be scrolled back to see what came before.
The story is about a small group of anarchists rebelling against an oppressive hierarchy. While the game uses magic, it feels more like a stand-in for power that allows the author to discuss class struggle in an attention-grabbing way.
I feel like this game has something to say, and does so in a way that deserves attention.
A rare game that is goofy in a good way. Save your village, May 24, 2016This is the author's first Twine game. It uses no styling, and is based on goofy, crazy humor. These are usually signs for disaster, so I was skeptical when I saw it was highly rated.
But this game has a lot of thought and some actually pretty funny humor. You play a villager sent on a quest to find a magical item that can save your people from a tribe.
The narrator frequently talks with you, and the game discusses the balance between choices and story and free will and so on, but only in a goofy way.
I enjoyed this story, but I had low expectations. People expecting it to be great may be less impressed, but this is a long, funny Twine game.
A branching narrative about a maiden and hunting unicorns, May 8, 2016This game is set in an unspecified fantasy setting. You play as a poor young woman, who, unlike most poor young women in fantasy stories, is very ugly.
You have been coerced into things that you may not want to participate in, but your actions remain your choice. There are 8 or so endings depending on what course you decide to take.
The writing is well-done, with rich descriptions and a well-conceived plot. The game is polished and smooth, and includes some text effects and images.
Overall, recommended. This was I believe the author's first game, and they have gone on to win several competitions. This first effort was a sign of things to come.
A brief, well-written light horror about staying the night in a haunted house, May 8, 2016In this game, you play a medieval character who has been dared to spend the night in the house of a deceased nobleman.
This game is divided into a couple of parts, the first of which is figuring out just what is going on. The game has three inventories, including one for things worn and one for memories.
The memory mechanic works well for me, as does the big last puzzle at the end.
Overall, this is a light treat, lasting 15 minutes or less. The writing is very descriptive and gameplay is definitely polished.
A shortish, story-driven parser game about dueling magicians at an exposition, April 7, 2016Chandler Groover has put his characteristic mark on the magician genre. The game is similar to "An Act of Misdirection" in tone and concept (where the player is forced to perform magic tricks without completely knowing how, in a grim setting). However, the focus is on atmosphere over puzzles. I felt on the edge of my seat the whole time, wavering between fear and mild disgust.
The game is about dueling magicians who will go to any length to disrupt each other. This part reminded me in a good way of The Prestige, especially as the magicians use new tricks to upstage each other and try sabotage.
The game is thoroughly polished, and credits a lot of testers for a compact game, which helps explain its smooth gameplay. I encountered no bugs, and the parser was very well-stocked with synonyms. Playing this game was like watching a thriller, with the parser so slick that it essentially disappeared, leaving the player to interact directly with the story.
An immersive submarine experience. Twine game with 3d world model., April 6, 2016This game is generally about exploring in a submarine. You catalog new species you find, you can descend, ascend, or go left or right.
Perhaps the best thing about this game to me is the ability to make and execute plans. I had an idea from the beginning of what I wanted to do, and the game let me do it very well. You are constantly presented with choices to explore, to go deeper, to chase something, to return.
You have an air meter that goes down when you make choices. The beginning is more linear than the midge me and endgame.
I only played once, but it seems to be highly branching.
An amusing journey through a massive winter storm, April 6, 2016This game begins with a fun text-effect introduction, teaching you about the background of Winter Storm Draco.
You then begin to try to get home from the grocery store to your house. You will encounter a striking variety of puzzles, including classic-style puzzles, combat, and conversation.
Overall, the writing is amusing (although the game clearly states that it is a serious documentary, and not intended to amuse).
This is a short parser game, and I strongly recommend it.
An all caps, minimal Speed-IF homage to Adventureland., February 4, 2016Adventureland was the first commercial adventure game, written by Scott Adams. It was all caps, with short, simple sentences and basic verbs.
This game is a homage to that, a Speed-IF with 7 treasures, an interesting map, and several enemies.
The game is actually very appealing; people haven't changed in the last 40 years, and there is a reason that adventureland was appealing back then. Pure minimalism really stokes the imagination. I got the same sort of feel I have talking to characters in the original Zelda game.
It's short, but difficult. With the small number of combinations possible, however, it should be possible to beat it. Pretty fun!
A 3-verb minimalist parser game about a fun-filled puzzle cube, February 3, 2016This minimalist parser game feels like it learned a lot from the success of Twine games, and responded by making a stripped-down straightforward puzzle box. I really liked it.
The box has different moving parts you have to interact with (using the single command U for USE or UNDERTAKE TO INTERACT WITH, according to the author). As you do, more and more pieces show up. You are taught how to use some pieces that you have to remember later; other puzzles require leaps of intuition or timing. I finished without hints, which is very unusual for me.
A metaphorical Twine game set as a retro video game. , February 3, 2016King of Bees is short, with a braided storyline (where choices temporarily affect the storyline before converging again.
This game reminds me a bit of Endless, Nameless in its visual design,with a combination of types.
You play a space knight, who is sent to kill the king of bees. The game has several layers of meaning, and it is hard to know what the ultimate message is ((Spoiler - click to show)for instance, is the heavy-handed environmental subtext meant as part of the ultimate message, or is it presented ironically?).
I recommend it.
A one-action game with over a hundred endings, February 3, 2016Aisle is a well-known game with a strange mechanic; you are inside a grocery aisle shopping for food, and you only get one action before the game ends.
One-action games such as Rematch or Pick up the Phone Booth and Aisle started appearing soon after Aisle's publication. It became a mildly popular genre, and still is.
What makes Aisle successful? Part of its success is its specific details; you're not just in any aisle, you're by the gnocchi, and gnocchi remind you of your trip to Italy; the woman by you isn't just a stranger,or is she?
Another reason the game is fun is that the endings contradict each other; the story of who you are and what your past is actually changes based on your decision, so that your one action generates an entire past.
The third reason I think many people enjoy it is the wide variety of moods in the endings, from pathetic to hopeful to violent.
This is a game that everyone should play at least one time.
One of the few games to truly frighten me (because I thought it wouldn't), February 3, 2016Shade is a surreal game. It is an almost one-room game, where you are trying to leave your apartment, but encounter more and more difficulties.
Shade is one of the most well-written short horror games available on IFDB, and has been sold as an iOS game.
There were two points in the game that I wasn't expecting and deeply unsettled me. I won't list them here. Unfortunately, this whole review is a bit pointless, as nothing is scary if you are told it is scary. The scariest story I ever read was NES Godzilla, and it was only scary because it was such a ridiculously stupid story that when it actually got scary, it surprised me. On the other hand, I was told The Lurking Horror was one of the scariest games of all time, so when I actually played it, I was pretty disappointed.
So your best bet is to forget this and the other few reviews, wait a few months, think, "Oh, what game is this?" and then play it.
Most of the game, including the ending, was not that scary. Just a few moments stuck out for me, but they were big moments.
Short, medieval, edgy psychological thriller, February 3, 2016This is a game kind of like the stories Ethan Frome or the Yellow Wallpaper, where you have a kind of growing sick feeling in your gut, not from gore or sex or anything like that, but from a disturbing psychological predicament.
This game is set in medieval times, and deals with faeries and the fey. Or does it? It's hard to tell. You are outside gathering eggshells, and soon you discover what purpose they are for.
This game has stuck with me for a very long time. It creeped me out. I don't want to give away too much, so suffice to say that you can make strong moral choices.
Incredibly effective use of Twine as a horror story form, February 3, 2016My Father's Long, Long Legs is essentially a publishable short story, as good as Stephen King or Dean Koontz.
This doesn't mean that the Twine format feels too confining. The story branches and recombines at various points, and the illusion of choice increases the feeling of powerlessness.
Also, some of the more advanced techniques of Twine are used in the last scene to improve play experience.
I recommend it strongly to subtle horror fans.
A small slice of life game from 3 perspectives , February 3, 2016This game is a short 3-act play of sorts. You have to live through a single evening through the eyes of three people. I found this story to be compelling because it asked me to identify with people I usually would not have identified with.
In each subgame, the actions are relatively basic; I did not have to use hints or a walkthrough, which is unusual for me. Eventually, the game will hint at what you want to do.
Stephen Granade is one of my favorite authors, with the ultra-hard Losing Your Grip, the comedy Child's Play, and the mid-length escape game Fragile Shells.
A quite effective horror story about a group of friends in a cabin., February 3, 2016This game won the first ever unrestrained section of Ectocomp, which was traditionally a speed-IF until 2015, when it was split into a speed-if section and an unconstrained section.
It is a sort of psychological thriller, when 6 friends (or former friends) visit a cabin to carry out the wishes of a dead friend. Everyone has something to hide. One of the highlights of the game is a drinking game about truth, where you decide how to play.
The game has violence and strong profanity, which is not something I generally recommend, but I enjoyed this story, and I have to admit it. It set a high bar for future Ectocomp games.
A nature hike without puzzles. Very peaceful, February 3, 2016This game is a peaceful, calm exploration of nature, the way She's Got A Thing For A Spring or A Change In The Weather would have been without puzzles.
This game was a Landscape entry in the IF Art Show, so the emphasis here is on detail, setting, the five senses, and so on. I loved the nature feeling here.
There are multiple paths you can take, but I just played through once. There are some exciting random events, and some philosophy.
Recommended for everyone.
Highly interactive Undum game about a play and sexism, February 3, 2016This is CYOA at it's best: incredible writing powered by a long sequence of choices whose effects multiply so rapidly that lawnmowering (repeatedly trying every option) becomes or seems difficult.
This game presents two stories; the first is a play that is being rehearsed, while the second is the mental dialog of the director. There are three actors and a stage manager you work with, and you keep track of their moods.
I avoided this game for some time because it seemed really long and complicated, but each playthrough has just the right amount of choice (about 8-12 big options). Your choices are usually to help the play or help the performers, but it's more nuanced than that.
All of the paths include discussion of sexism. Several of the paths feature it very prominently, and develop a big backstory for the protagonist.
I loved this game. Amomg the best of CYOA, and of IF in general.
Enjoyable, repeatable optimization minigame, February 3, 2016This game would work great as a text adventure (which it is), a point-and-click, a sidescroller, and frankly just about anything.
You are stuck with a rat captain and have to get out of sinking ship as fast as possible, grabbing whatever treasure you can. There are some mild puzzles (and probably some harder ones I couldn't figure out), but mostly you just try to figure out what's worth saving.
This is pretty fun. I enjoyed spending a ton of turns trying to get an obscure object only to discover it was completely worthless. Sometimes things are not what they seem (diamonds in the rough) and sometimes they are what they seem (dirt clods in the rough).
Lots of fun, and super short (to maximize replay value). I recommend a few playthroughs for fun.
A parser experiment in constraint, surrealness, and linear stoytelling, February 3, 2016Deadline Enchanter was one of the first IF games I played, 5 years ago. I remember that it's bizarre atmosphere and self-awareness really attracted me to IF in general because it showed me what was possible.
You play someone in a magical city that has appeared in Detroit. You've been given a message from the Folk, a magical race, and the message is a parser game. This game has a walkthrough. So you walkthrough.
The beauty of this game is seeing the story unfold and seeing the guts and edges of the parser. The world it paints is beautiful. When it came out, it was very controversial, but since the Twine revolution, I believe this game can be better appreciated. In facta, the author has moved on to Twine, making great games like Solarium.
Like I said, this is one of the games that drew me into IF and established my perceptions of the whole genre, together with Curses! and Not Just An Ordinary Ballerina.
Semi-graphical teenager romp, February 3, 2016This enjoyable game is more story than puzzle, although it uses a parser. You play a teenager with access to an online community. Actions are strongly limited, mostly TAKE, LOOK, and SHOW. You investigate an abandoned house, and have to entice others to come with you.
What made this game work for me was the contrast between your friends online personas and their real-life selves, including yourself. Chris and Maximus gave especially funny contrasts.
The game in the end works as a slice-of-life story. There is one significant choice, and unfortunately it comes at the very end of the game, with no opportunity to save, which prevents lawn-mowering (i.e. trying every branch).
A short sci-fi game about wonder with some interesting choices, February 3, 2016This game exemplifies the original feel of Star Trek. To explore the universe, to travel through the worlds, to understand the un-understandable.
The game is much shorter than I expected, given the other reviews. This is not really a drawback; the game has a fast pace and feels like an adventure. You explore various planets and stellar objects, with almost all motion achieved by manipulating "sails".
The gameplay diverges from Plotkin's usual games in that it is not very hard, and the focus is on fun over puzzles. The most similar game of his that I can think of is Dual Transform, which I also really enjoyed.
I recommend this game to absolutely everyone, as the enjoyment-to-time-requirement ratio is so very high.
A short-to-mid length Twine game with a reputation system and many endings, February 3, 2016This Twine game centers on a woman with a special ability who visits a town. She has many choices regarding the use of this ability and the flow of her conversations, which results in a large number of endings.
The writing is well thought-out and supplemented by several graphics, but it never really drew me in. Therre is a content warning on the site about a graphic sex scene which is easy to avoid; there is a similar violent scene. I decided to check them out and regretted it immediately, skipping through quickly. Next time, I will listen to warnings.
I played through it twice to try some variations on the reputation system. As I said, I did not find the story compelling, but it was based on some song lyrics as part of a competition, and did well in bringing them to life.
A bizarre anthology of three point-making philosophical games, February 3, 2016This is a game of mini-games. As the author says, each of the three short games are unrelated except by concept. Each game strives to make a philosophical point by putting constraints on the user.
The games vary in enjoy ability. One of the games was actually quite enjoyable, with dynamic constraints. The other two were not very exciting.
The writing is melodramatic; it really reminded me of what you might expect if you told a university English class to "write something deep". It's hard to tell, though, if the author is doing this purposely or not, which is a point in the game's favor.
There is unnecessary profanity in the first game, a strange departure from the tone of the rest of the game.
For those who have played through all three games and read all of the author's additional notes and material:
(Spoiler - click to show)There is a fourth "endgame" which, I believe, is what the author refers to when he says part of the game is inspired by House of Leaves. At first, I really enjoyed this game, but then I began to realize that the game seems to place the new staircase only when a large percentage of the map has been explored, and then places it in the unexplored spot closest to the entryway. Because of the House of Leaves reference, I do not believe this puzzle is intended to be solved.
Short non-linear Twine game with goofy atmosphere, February 3, 2016This Twine game takes place in a forest as you try to scrounge up enough change to catch a bus. The game takes about 30 minutes to play.
Unlike many Twine games, there are a few actual puzzles here, but each one is not that hard (one was just hard enough to be fun). The writing is choppy at times, but it fits into the game's "hey, let's be goofy and have fun" atmosphere.
An academic exercise in archaeological interactive fiction , February 3, 2016This is a Twine-based game that consists of a set-up phase where you personalize your character, followed by a standard Twine game where you choose from a variety of sequences to achieve one of numerous endings.
It is a medium-sized, puzzle less game that is meant to be a sort of academic essay. It was submitted as a dissertation, I believe, and parts of it read like one, but it is not completely dry, and manages to have some fun.
The authors seem unaware of the field of interactive fiction. They describe this as a proof-of-concept of "ergodic fiction", which is defined by the 1996 book Cybertext as fiction that requires human participation and choices to shape the experience. It is clear from the book's definition that almost all of interactive fiction is ergodic fiction, and in fact most interactive fiction is "cybertext", which is ergodic literature requiring calculation.
Mid-length Twine with a tense story and great use of color, January 10, 2016Thanksgiving was my first Hannah Powell-Smith game, but I'm going to play her other games now. Before I talk about the story, I have to mention my favorite part of this game: the use of color on links. I think everyone should copy this: cycling text is one color, expanding text is another, and branching text is a third. This makes it so much easier to know how to explore. I really support this.
As for the story, it was one I haven't seen done before. As you go to Thanksgiving with your boyfriend, you come under pressure due to your hidden past. It's hard to say more without spoilers, but this game made me nervous in a good way.
A clever game with a sci-fi setting, August 6, 2015Fail-Safe is my absolute favorite Jon Ingold game. The game has an unusual plot device which you discover quickly. I won't talk about it in this review, because the game is strong enough without it.
The game is set in a damaged spacecraft that must be explored. The difficulty and fun lies in trying to figure out how the spacecraft actually worked.
The game has some timed events (which are fun but hard) and some hard-to-find exits (which is annoying but fun if you can find them).
This game can be played enjoyably multiple times and has a several, interesting endings.
Another good game by Astrid Dalmady, July 11, 2015That sinister self is a great, linear, short-to-mid length twine game dealing with body image. Like Astrid's other stories, I found my heart racing a bit.
There are multiple endings and some mild language.
The game incorporates some special effects which lend it much of its appeal.
Twine game with unusual format and interesting use of Twitter, May 10, 2015This game contains excellent writing, but that is easy, because more than half of the text comes from the writings of Lord Dunsany, a fantasy writer predating Tolkien and Lovecraft. The writings chosen are about the world wars; it may have been picked as something "dry", but I was actually very interested in the text.
The material surrounding the text is somewhat less well written, relying on some stock ideas common in the 2010's. The visual format is very interesting, trying to mimic a folder of html files (well, I guess it really is a folder of html files; isn't everything?), and then incorporating more and more material.
There are some parts where it is difficult to read due to (Spoiler - click to show)every letter being turned around. It was a little frustrating.
The game incorporates twitter in a fun way; unfortunately, I did not want to use my twitter account (due to it being very public), and I did not want to start a new account, so I didn't get to try it out.
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