Reviews by Hobbsicle
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I waited 180 times…, June 22, 2023…and that didn’t end well.
So now that we’re sure it’s not a waiting simulator, I’ll say that I enjoyed the game pretty well. I almost skipped over it because I don’t generally enjoy the stress of a timed game, but this one kept things small enough in scope that it wasn’t too intimidating, although I did use a little bit of save/restore in one area to give myself more time to freely examine things. I had some parser trouble in a couple of places and had to consult the walkthrough once just for syntax, but it worked for the most part.
I actually thought the story that was drip-fed to you was pretty intriguing, and I would have liked to have had more revelations in that regard, but I gather that there’s more story to come in future games.
Mostly masterful, June 22, 2023A briskly paced and light-hearted heist story, Moldavia isn’t quite a masterpiece, but it’s a lot of fun. I appreciated the change-ups in gameplay from scene to scene as well as the playful, mostly failure-proof way of advancing the story while still making you feel the stakes of your decisions. I thought the conversations were especially engaging, with enough little twists to keep it fresh.
I suppose that my main reservation is with the characters and their motivations. There’s a jibe in the text about crimes committed by bored aristocrats, and at the end of the day, while there seems to be something like character growth over the course of the story, it’s hard not to feel that most decisions, including the theft itself, are made mostly arbitrarily by people who have little underlying goals in life. But that’s probably more of a criticism of the genre than the game itself.
Still, a lot of care went into this one, and I broadly enjoyed it throughout.
Forms and Substance, June 19, 2023Although I can’t say it inspires me to attempt to use this tool myself, it’s a very well-made thriller game on Google Forms, filled with photos and images and find-the-password puzzles. The story isn’t highly original, but the tension builds nicely, although I admit I didn’t manage to follow all the names and sequence of events. The puzzles are of an escape-room or puzzle-hunt style, some that feel a little forced, but overall fun, and I thought there were a few especially clever ones. I really recommend giving it a try, as it’s an impressive use of medium. Because of how the game requires you to keep notes rather than saving progress, I now have a lot of screenshots to go and delete from my phone…
Counting Endings, June 8, 2023A mundane start that spirals off in multiple wild ways with each path you pursue. The storytelling is fast and the humor is pretty good throughout. I was oddly compelled to find each ending, while I’m not usually interested in doing that, so that goes in the game’s favor. I also enjoyed the rewards doled out as you hit certain numbers of endings.
Space camp, June 8, 2023A campy sci-fi infiltration adventure with some pretty good parser puzzles. There wasn’t a lot to the story, but the banter between your player character Jones and her partner was a fun highlight. Some combat and stealth mixed in with more traditional inventory puzzles.
Delightfully familiar, June 6, 2023A solid and charming adventure as a crow in a fantasy setting that can peck, take things, and “caw” in all manner of emotional inflection. It’s fairly short and easy, being aimed at newer players who may not be as, er, familiar with the conventions, but it’s well-written and includes subtle but evocative illustrations. It was a pleasant play-through.
As dark as light gets, June 4, 2023What this game does especially well is the creation of dark and unsettling atmosphere of dread, long before any obvious danger appears. I found it a page-turner, if it had any pages, and there was an interesting use of light as a source of fear. While I'm not sure that the story or characters were ultimately as fleshed out as I would have liked by the ending I got, and perhaps there's too much agency given to the player to decide the genders of other characters, when there's no indication as to why it would matter, I still found the overall setting one worth experiencing.
It’s a Scream, June 3, 2023Fantasy comedy is a genre I’m not very interested in anymore, so I almost skipped over this one, but Im glad I didn’t, because I got some genuine laughs from it. Yes, it’s mostly a vehicle to poke fun of fantasy, and especially role-playing tropes, but the way many of the jokes were told felt fresh and funny. I didn’t necessarily feel the need to go scouring for different endings, but I enjoyed the particular journey I had.
Riddle Me This, Spock, June 3, 2023It's a game of essentially one riddle riffed on for a while. Not all of the solutions seemed to land for me, but I still enjoyed thinking over each one, and it seems like a game you could play in a group setting, especially if you enjoy the Star Trek references.
Humor Over Cohesion, June 3, 2023It's quite absurd, really, and impossible to grasp hold of anything, but once you learn to let go of any expectation of grounding, it's good for some laughs, and fun to tinker around with the different options, just to see what's around the next corner. It seems a good length for this sort of experimentation.
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