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Number of Reviews: 5
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1-5 of 51 of
1 people found the following review helpful:
Good layout and interesting story *spoiler*, December 30, 2015This is one of the most visually appealing stories made in Twine. If you have difficulty reading due to certain fonts or text layouts, as I do, this format works so well. Color choices, placement of text, and length of passages were great.
As to the story itself I found myself getting really invested in "Your" well being. The depiction of mundane existence is aided by text appearance and passage structure, so that you feel the way mundane choices weigh in your mind. Another example is the path of angering your boss. You see the anger build and I found deep satisfaction in the choice to literally just walk away and leave him standing there like an idiot. Most stories would have "You" cowering, but it felt so empowering to just have that option. What is in the story is great and makes for a fascinating read.
However other reviewers are kind of right. Despite the pros of the writing and the nice way passages are written there are issues. What most stands out is some choices in the text are kind of arbitrary, which on one hand serves to reinforce the importance of every day decisions. However, a fair number of those choices seem so minute, but have a massive impact on the story directions. At the same time some major decisions simply don't matter. What compounds this is while the game says there are ten endings after six play through most of them only differ by where you die and I got many of the same endings twice, and I wasn't quite sure what to do different, by the sixth play through it seemed like all the endings were leading to basically the same sort of ending, so I kind of lost interest. That being said the endings I did see were well-written, and I particularly liked the more abrupt "teddy" ending, but even that was brought about by arbitrary choices.
That aside it was still satisfying, and held my interest for a while. I will probably try again to get the endings later.
2 of
2 people found the following review helpful:
Slightly dull "My Life is Boring" game, unfortunately, December 29, 2015You are Tara Sue and, simply put, you lead a pretty boring life. However, things are about to get more interesting...
MNiTS follows a kind of time cave structure, which allows it to be highly branching despite it being so short; of course, the length of the story and early branching allows for easy replay. The scenarios are slightly outlandish, especially towards the end - a whim of the author's? - but veer towards the grim.
The joy in such 'boring work life' games is discovering the secret whims and fancies of the PC which lie behind their urbane exterior, but MNiTS didn't establish much specifics.
Worth mentioning is the rather attractive layout and scrollback formatting, which made the final story readable as a conventional short story.
Ultimately, MNiTS made use of a mundane concept which, ironically, could stand to be more interesting.
2 of
3 people found the following review helpful:
Do My Choices Matter?, February 22, 2014I'm a little confused by this. The writing was fine, but the story never really took off; it seems promising at first but never really blossoms into an actual story. It's possible I'm missing the choice that will send me off into a different, more exciting branch, but there's not much incentive to keep hunting for it after a bunch of attempts have ended up in roughly the same spot -- and, frankly, the choices are so opaque it's hard to feel any sense of agency at all.
Even when deliberately trying to avoid the paths I'd already explored, I still ended up with the same game ending event happening in roughly the same way on every play through. (Mild) (Spoiler - click to show)You could make the case that experiencing the same event from the same POV but in different locations counts as multiple endings, but with no epilogue or explanation, it seemed more like padding than anything else. (Major) (Spoiler - click to show)Is there really enough of a difference between walking to a cafe and dying in a pool of vomit outside it vs going home and dying in a pool of vomit to count as two endings? So I'm assuming I only saw two of the ten endings ((Spoiler - click to show)I also managed to die at my desk before vomiting), but I really couldn't figure out how to access any others.
And even when my choices were clearly very consequential, or should have been in the game world ((Spoiler - click to show)opening an email revealing my sister's been kidnapped versus deleting it unread), they didn't seem to make much difference to what happened or to be reflected at all in the ending.
That said, I'd play another game by the author, assuming the setting were more interesting and something exciting happened in it.
1 of
3 people found the following review helpful:
Solid Twine, January 9, 2014Aesthetically pleasing and interesting. Captures the office vibe pretty damn well! There are 10 endings too, although I haven't played them all. My first 2 playthroughs ended the same way even though I tried to get a different ending. Give this pretty little Twine a play, it's well worth your time.
5 of
5 people found the following review helpful:
Clever bit of writing and good use of the medium, November 20, 2013This is an interesting game with clever narrative clues--expect to play it more than once to find the good ending.
I do think this game could benefit from an undo system. Ultimately, some of the options and choices feel arbitrary, and it'd be nice to be able to rewind if you choose one not realizing the real implications of it.
The writing is good, and the attention to design is appreciated: many web-text games feel a bit overwhelming, but the author has condensed and laid-out the type in a way that invites reading and experimenting.
The theme here is simple, and immediately relatable to most people interested in computer games--you play as a woman torn between the tedium of her white collar job and a sense of adventure.
I enjoyed this game--where the play mechanic felt weaker, the writing certainly kept me going.
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