Ratings and Reviews by deathbytroggles
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Thinking fourth dimensionally!, June 11, 2022"The encounter could create a time paradox. The results of which could cause a chain reaction that would unravel the very fabric of the space-time continuum and destroy the entire universe!...Granted, that's the worst-case scenario." -- Doc Brown, Back to the Future 2
And such is the world logic of All Things Devours. The inventor of a time-travel machine, Natalie Williams comes to the same realization about paradoxes and sets out to destroy the machine. However, she soon realizes that her plans have been taken and she must find them so that the machine can never be made again. And soon the player realizes that time travel is necessary to find those papers, and there's a total span of nine minutes in which to work to avoid the guards, avoid your present self, and avoid creating a paradox for your present self.
Toby Ord crafted an incredibly tight puzzle box that is a delightful gift to unwrap, with Natalie's insight and foresight the present (and the past!). There is a lot of learning by dying as you get to know what Natalie already knows about the facility as well as the game's internal logic about time travel. The logic, as with all time travel stories, breaks down if you think about it too much; however, it is consistent within the story. I took extensive notes while playing, detailing the exact time of each move I made, and then after destroying the universe with another paradox, adjusting actions ever so slightly the next time around. Normally, learning by dying eventually exhausts me, but because every death here taught me something new, I never stopped having fun.
Despite the incredibly tight timeline, there is still a little flexibility with decision-making as well as multiple solutions to several puzzles. Some of those solutions require knowledge it would be impossible for Natalie to know without dying first, though there is a path through the game that is plausible if you care about that sort of thing. My only critique is the final solution only insofar as I thought my alternate solution should have worked!
One of the best uses of time travel I've seen in a game and a treat for those who enjoy a complex puzzle.
A light comedy adventure best suited for children to play with help from another, June 11, 2022To start I want to say I love that the Aurora Public Library created and hosts this game on their website. Just a great opportunity for children to be exposed to interactive fiction in a very welcoming manner.
Escape from the Wizard's Castle is a short and simplistic adventure that holds your hand throughout the game. You play a generic adventurer who discovers a castle that is trapped in time, and to succeed you must solve five spells the wizard cast prior to him inexplicably forgetting how to break them. He wants you to succeed, however, and will provide constant encouragement in the form of terrible puns. There is also a raven who wants you to succeed as well and who can provide strong hints if you're stuck.
The game provides a tutorial on how to navigate a Twine game and the goals are always obvious, making this non-threatening to newcomers. Each room comes with a pleasant hand-drawn art style reminiscent of your typical hidden object game and serve well as a visual aid to the text. While you are frequently picking up everything not nailed down, you never have to manipulate your inventory to solve a puzzle. For example, if you find a key and then come to a locked door, all you need to do is click on the suggested hyperlink to open the door. In fact, the inventory is more of a log of your progress than anything. When you check it, the game lists the items you have and then says, "To look at these items more closely, you'll need to go attempt their puzzles."
The puzzles themselves are separate from the main narrative. When a puzzle is present, the game will prompt you to solve the puzzle by taking you to another screen. These puzzles are the highlight of the game, as they all require either logical reasoning or interpretation of symbolism. The game description warns that small children may need help with some of the puzzles. I can attest that a full grown adult who solved All Things Devours without hints may have also needed help with some of the puzzles. One of the answers was fairly obvious in retrospect (but would be impossible for visually impaired players), and one I still didn't quite understand even after solving it.
The main critique I have for the game is that given the basic story and simple punnery, the audience who would thoroughly enjoy this game is probably limited to elementary school-aged children, while the puzzles seem to be more for a middle-school aged audience. This would be fine if playing with a parent, but I am worried the intended audience would get frustrated at times if playing alone.
Overall, this is a solid effort. I enjoyed a couple of the puzzles, and I smirked a few times at the wizard's running commentary. And even if young players are not enamored by the game, I imagine it could be still inspire them to get into the medium.
Perfect puzzle. Not so perfect implementation., June 10, 2022I was a senior in college when this game was released and played it the moment it dropped. I took copious notes while playing and brought those notes to my classes, occasionally ignoring my professors to hammer out this puzzle. No regrets.
The conceit--building a dungeon worth of death traps as a contract to hire for a perverse king--is brilliant. Despite the dungeon having 16 rooms and there being 17 traps to purchase, there is only one solution to killing off the prisoner; as such, Lock & Key more than any interactive fiction feels like solving a logic grid puzzle from a games magazine. As the prisoner continually foils traps, you must determine what traps are completely worthless versus what traps slow him down (and in the best order they slow him down).
Naturally, there is much "learn by dying" as you take notes on why each traps fails and why. And, unfortunately, every time the prisoner escapes you have to start over from scratch. So every play through involves a tedious resetting of doors and resetting of traps. There are some shortcuts implemented to tackle this and if you are confident in your door layout or some of the trap layout you can create a save file to save you some time. But even while taking advantage of both, I was beginning to resent the game a little before I solved it, which in turn took some of the joy out of the triumph.
If you're a fan of dark, witty humor (which a game like this requires in order to be palatable) Cadre provides plenty with nearly every possible action. It certainly takes a little bit of the edge off the tedium.
Just another guy in another galaxy, June 1, 2022The Elysium Enigma is a competently made game that easily drew me into its world of intergalactic politics and subterfuge and I eagerly rushed through it. Unfortunately, the story and plot turns were unsatisfying and I felt like a spy left out in the cold.
As a diplomat checking in on one of the Empire's remote planets, you are presented with the choice of following your basic orders and bringing the game to a swift and boring ending, or defying your orders and getting your hands into the planet's affairs. Defying your orders essentially leads you to doing text adventure things: talking to others, exploring, picking up everything, and shooting stray dogs. You know, the usual. It becomes quite clear, quite early, the motives of the game's three NPCs. And then the rest of the game is solving fairly rudimentary puzzles to uncover somewhat interesting but nonewhat surprising information.
I certainly had fun pulling back the curtain one puzzle at a time. But ultimately I was left not caring about any of it. The PC is never not incredulous, except when faced with blatant evidence contrary to his beliefs. He is never not classist, even when shown repeatedly the problems of his culture. He doesn't grow in any way no matter what choices you make. So the "winning" ending doesn't feel much different than the default ending. Not only do we not learn much about the PC, we are not given any reason to root for him. In fact, I wound up rooting for everyone else but our hero. There was ample opportunity for deeper NPC interaction and character development that sadly never materialized.
The game plays well, with fair puzzles and a layered hint system. While some of the puzzles are directly related to the story and fit well within the world, others are there for pacing only. For example, an optional puzzle involves having to make a fishing rod to catch a fish to give to a cat to get the cat to move off of a box. I just wanted to throw something at the cat.
If you're looking for a fairly easy and fairly short puzzler, spending a couple of hours with The Elysium Enigma could hit the spot. Just don't expect much more than what you see on the surface.
An uphill fight, May 22, 2022>hint
That's now how life works.
And so sets the mood for A Change in the Weather: dark, dreary, and unforgiving.
I tried this a couple of times in my youth and could not get into it. I think knowing going in that you could lock the game out victory near constantly kept me from immersing myself in the world. I just gave it another shot and I'm glad I did.
The atmosphere really is lovely. Despite the prose being fairly terse, Plotkin does an excellent job heightening the senses. Even the faintest change in the weather is felt and gives the player a sense of urgency I think is necessary for this game to work. And despite given no goal other than exploring, I was plenty motivated to solve each puzzle simply by the nature of rushing against the weather. The fox serves to amplify the setting while also giving the player an extrinsic motivation to keep going.
Losing to the weather and the frequent restarts and restores didn't negatively impact my experience at all. There are only six locations and a limited number of things to interact with, so it never felt like a chore to try things over again. The game's downfall, sadly, is that some of the puzzle solutions don't feel intuitive or logical. While mapping the hill is fairly simple, it's still difficult to get a sense of how exactly the landscape is formed. This ultimately kept me stuck for a long time in the second half. Specifically, (Spoiler - click to show)I never thought to use the boulder to slow down the torrent of water. For one, there is no indication that the boulder can be pushed in a direction, as the default way to push it is the wrong way for no apparent reason. Secondly, I just couldn't picture in my head where the boulder would land and somehow help me. On the other hand, using the sandbags was intuitive. Unfortunately, if you drop even one of the sandbags by the wildflowers (despite the fact that it works just as well there to slow down the torrent), this will prevent the fox from guiding you to where to dig to divert the water. Ultimately, while I was able to essentially reach the finale on my own, I was forced to succumb to a walkthrough to fix some of the details.
So I will offer an unusual recommendation. Play A Change in the Weather to experience the setting and have a walkthrough handy. But only use the walkthrough once the game has you exhausted. The struggle is what makes it beautiful. That's how life works.
Competent but underwhelming sequel, February 26, 2022I fell in love with New Haz and its universe while playing Sherwin's Fallacy of Dawn. The story in Necrotic Drift occurs mostly in a nearby town with an entirely different cast, though frequent references are made to the events in the first game. And while this entry into the series is more focused, I unfortunately found myself missing New Haz and its citizens.
You take control of Jarret Duffy, a D&D and fantasy buff who is in his 20s and aimless (a Sherwin staple). You are introduced to your mostly grade-A lowlife friends and your incredibly patient yet frustrated girlfriend Audrey. She comes dangerously close to being a manic pixie dream girl: kind of quirky, attractive, always available to Jarret despite their numerous breakups and his utter lack of maturation, and her existence here seems mostly to highlight the protagonist. We barely get to know anything about her despite a lot of opportunity. And we are continually told that Jarret is the only guy that has made her happy, even though we are never really shown (or told) why outside of his ability to make her laugh with referential humor. We get to know her a bit better in the epilogue as a person outside of Jarret's world, but it still winds up being framed around his journey.
Drift has a slightly more mature story than its predecessor, though it plays like it was already written (dialogue and all) and then puzzles and conversation trees were shoehorned in anywhere and everywhere. The game is divided into four chapters, and the first three are more or less on rails. There is very little to do outside of talking to other characters and picking from very limited conversation topics. Objects highlighted in room descriptions or the game's pictures are routinely not implemented (e.g. the pictures in your bedroom). And during this time the characters we get to know the best are incredibly disgusting and are then never mentioned again.
So I was inpatient by the time the fourth and final chapter rolled around and we finally got to the game's plot: a seance gone wrong at the mall where you work has dumped a horde of fantasy genre baddies in between you and the exit. Using your fists and your wits, you need to dispose of each creature in succession.
While I love this idea, the execution is really lacking. Jarret and his friends mostly underreact to the Pandora's box around them, showing brief flashes of emotion before just sort of moseying around some more. Ergo, the tension that should be there is non-existent. While Audrey and your friends occasionally chip in with advice or support, it's pretty much the Jarret show as he gets to save Audrey again and again while she gets a bit turned on. The monsters don't interact with each other and generally stay put, allowing you to look around for the obvious key that unlocks their death. For example, you are explicitly told that a wraith can be killed by silver, and in the same room you encounter the wraith, the only object not locked down is made of silver. Puzzles do get a bit better as the game goes on (I especially like the solution to defeating the poltergeist), but by that time my interest had waned. And there's a soft inventory limit that, while not a significant barrier to anything, is difficult to gauge and does nothing to serve the puzzles or the story.
Sherwin certainly made improvements with this game. I didn't discover any bugs while playing. There were no confusing room exits. The parser understands more commands. And puzzles are better clued, if not overclued at times. And I likely would have forgiven the game's faults if I had been entranced by the writing. While Sherwin characters have always been acutely clever (and do a lot of their self-reflection in parentheticals), it gets too much for me even at times. Admittedly, I am not a fantasy genre fan and have never played D&D, so the characters didn't speak to me like the 80's video game buffs in Fallacy of Dawn. But more than that, the characters rarely have genuine moments as they're too busy trying to out-clever one another, and it gets exhausting. That being said, the writing is still above-average. I laughed out loud a few times and enjoyed the turns of phrase. My favorite example is when Jarret describes Audrey as having been in "various states of flabbergastation with me."
The ending and epilogue really push hard for the genuine moments (with some huge text dumps) that were barely present in the main game. But as I wasn't really invested in the characters, I wasn't moved like I was with Fallacy of Dawn or Sherwin's most recent game, Jay Schilling's Edge of Chaos. Your mileage may vary, especially if you are familiar with and enjoy the fantasy genre. Meanwhile, I look forward to playing Cryptozookeeper, the final game in the series.
Walk a mile in another's shoes, March 10, 2021As a white, cisgender, straight male I am in the dominant group in almost every conceivable way and have been the transgression of microaggressions too many times to count. I have had to continually educate myself and be intentional on how my words and actions perpetuate acculturative stress, systemic racism, and impact my relationships with my peers. Fobazi Ettarh does an excellent job of allowing the player to experience this stress in the day to day life as either a gay male or a disabled, black, female.
With either character you choose, you are continually bombarded with realistic microaggressions and are asked to make choices as to how you would respond in that situation. The common theme throughout is how exhausting it is to be around well-intentioned people who are constantly hurting you. Indeed, I have played through this a few times now and have been exhausted every time. And I don’t have to live it.
While there are a couple of minor visual bugs, play is smooth and each time through takes no longer than twenty minutes. If I could change anything about the game it would be to make some of the microaggressions even more subtle to really hit home how easy it is for well-meaning people to be hurtful. That said, Killing Me Softly effectively does what it wants to do.
I work for a mental health agency and made this a part of a team training exercise; it was well-received and the discussion was quite robust. For those inclined to do the same, please give BIPOC and LGBTQ staff the option of opting-out as it is not their job to relive the pain in their daily lives and educate the dominant group.
And all I got was this lousy Heechee medallion, January 25, 2021Science fiction is at its best when it is used as a tool to explore the human condition. Science fiction games have an extra hurdle of not alienating players by making the sci-fi overly complex; to do so can disengage the player from the story. Gateway mostly succeeds at both before faltering in the final act.
As the story's hero, you play a prospector hoping to gain fame and fortune by going off on solo space missions to collect artifacts from the mysterious Heechee race, whose equipment you are immersed in but barely understand. Half of the game is learning how to use and manipulate the various Heechee tools and machines you come across, and half the game is solving standard fare adventure puzzles. Thankfully, learning the alien technology is often a fairly simple exercise in interpreting basic symbolism or at worst guessing and checking. And for the most part the rest of the puzzles are only moderately challenging. I required only a few hints for the duration.
The game design is identical to all the early Legend games, with the option of playing the game as a straight text adventure or using a graphical point and click interface reminiscent of the frame hell of Geocities websites and requiring the user to choose from a list of every possible verb the game understands rather than the standard eight from LucasArts games of the time. While I can't imagine any sane person strictly using the mouse to play Gateway, the verb list is occasionally helpful for reference and the still pictures are helpful in visualizing puzzles in addition to being gorgeous.
The plot itself is engaging, slowly unraveling while allowing the player to tackle one of several puzzles at any given time. This was a huge relief as sometimes I just needed a break from one puzzle; several times when I came back to a tough one the solution became clear. The alien worlds you visit are for the most part captivating, each with their own technology as well as flora and fauna. The most satisfying areas of the game for me were the puzzles surrounding the beast (with unexpected drama with every step) and the world where you find a stranded prospector (as every puzzle has a moral and immoral solution). I did find one, uh, bug involving a spider that required some finesse. And there is no way to put the game in an unwinnable state unless your only save is during one of the game's few local time limits.
Unfortunately, the end game is a disappointing mess. The sci-fi becomes Inception level confusing without the dramatic appeal, and the puzzles become more obtuse. In particular, the puzzle involving the goblin takes some guess-the-author's-mind wizardry, and the final puzzle involving (Spoiler - click to show)the VR manual is a disappointing whimper. The ending itself sees the player in a passive role and is also lacking a satisfying resolution. Still, I'm quite glad I played Gateway and look forward to playing the sequel.
Rough around the edges, but honest and endearing, November 27, 2020While I do enjoy a good character study where the players talk way above their station (e.g. Mamet Speak), I am more comfortable when the characters just act and talk like run-of-the-mill boring humans. While the writing here isn't always up to par, Lance Nathan creates a sympathetic boring protagonist in Perry and plops him into an electric situation. The entire game takes place at a college party that Perry is entirely uncomfortable with; in that sense, he reminds me a lot of myself. In the following paragraph, Nathan demonstrates his strengths and weaknesses all in one:
How does your roommate know these people? And how does anyone get this drunk? For a moment you pause to wonder if there's a connection, before realizing you really don't care and would rather not think about it. Plenty of time to think about it tomorrow, you tell yourself bitterly, while you're cleaning up.
The first two questions say a lot while saying very little. Our protagonist is likely an introvert. He's usually sober, and likes to have a sense of control over himself and his surroundings. He also has a contentious relationship with his roommate but is not confident enough to confront him. The resentment is growing and will likely simmer for a long time. But then the paragraph just goes on as Perry's thoughts and feelings are dissected (replete with an adverb) and thrown in our laps. We learn nothing new. This happens a few times throughout the story, the author not trusting that the player will pick up on the characterizations.
That said, I'd like to point out another strong introduction to the story's hero, Andy:
Sometimes it could be aggravating; you got mad at him over nothing in eighth grade and the two of you spent a month not speaking to each other, until one day he sat down across from you at lunch again and you started complaining about the meatloaf and everything was back to normal.
I can't speak for anyone else, but I have lived this exact situation and I imagine many others have as well. Nothing quite like shoving resentment down without talking about it and being glad things feel okay for a while.
The story is on rails, which is ideal here. However, occasionally you will read a conversation that happens between characters, then click on a hyperlink to observe something else, and then when you return you get the same text dump you saw before. I encourage the author to brush up on if/then/else for future games in order to avoid this continuity issue.
Despite my concerns, I did enjoy this story. The characters are fun and the ending is bittersweet. I look forward to any future offerings from Nathan.
Historical science-fiction with little science, November 1, 2020A potentially charming paradox experiment where Sir Isaac Newton must restore the timeline when modern folks somehow forget the laws of physics due to Einstein not being able to build on Newton's work.
Unfortunately, there is little interactivity as the game actively encourages you not to explore or talk to anyone, and many rudimentary actions are dismissed as Isaac not being interested. There are also only a couple of novice level puzzles and neither of them have to do with time travel or science; essentially you are just guiding Isaac along the story path until you reach the ending.
It was an interesting choice to use past-tense and third-person, and given the lack of interactivity it worked. I wish more time had been spent on world building. The actual science is given superficial treatment and I learned very little about Newton or his theories.
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