Ratings and Reviews by Passerine
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Hauntingly beautiful source code, September 4, 2023There's a beautiful simplicity to Inform code, and Antique Panzitoum uses both the phrasing and the features of the code to evoke a sense of place and inspire the imagination even though interactivity can only be imagined. The repetitive nature of the code makes the world seem even more epic, and I just thought it was really cool.
I also enjoyed playing the game itself before knowing what the code said, because the helplessness of not knowing was beautiful in its own way.
An expansive life simulator with magic school, August 31, 2023When I first played this game, I’d forgotten what I’d heard about the gameplay, so the main mechanic was a delightful surprise. I recommend playing it that way before reading any more about it (including the rest of this review).
What I love about games with this mechanic is that they give the story a sense of perspective that’s otherwise hard to convey, and not easy to stumble upon in daily life. Stay? has a heartening perspective on the human experience, both from a broad vantage point—whether looking back on a decades-long struggle, journeying to faraway places, or comparing the distant outcomes of different life choices—and from close enough to smell the flower petals on graduation day.
At first the world seemed oddly empty, with large chunks of the player character’s story omitted and certain characters missing the expected dimensionality. But as it looped and branched, the exponential growth of the story made it feel like this world—and probably also our world—was infinite. That sense of awe gets me every time.
Not every time loop game does this, but Stay? manages it with smart design choices: It includes less and less detail as you loop—because you only need to read the same paragraph so many times—but then starts adding in new details that would naturally become salient as you developed into a weary time traveler. New random asides felt perfectly timed for emotional impact, and new choices appeared just when the old options were getting stale. And there are kindnesses like offering a recap at the beginning of each loop, and rewarding the player for trying new options, even the boring ones like “no, I don’t want to hang out with anyone right now.”
Also, the story just felt good. Things are very wrong, but get to know the people and the world around you and you can learn how to put them right. It’s a powerful message, and it’s told through gameplay rather than, say, clunky dialogue.
When a game fundamentally changes the way I see the world by expanding my perspective, however briefly, I will give that game five stars even if it’s filled with bugs and typos. This game has a few, but it’s fine. They just provide further evidence that this game was written by someone who very much understands what it is to be human.
A mood and a message, May 11, 2023Of all the games I played from Spring Thing 2023, this one got stuck in my head the most, for a lot of reasons. In a genre that often leans on tropes, the story felt original. I really enjoyed the writing, which truly made me want to escape that horrible place. And rather than just being creepy for creepiness' sake, the game had a lot to say, too. It’s not easy to balance the choices and pace the suspense effectively in a story like this, but Etiolated Light hooked me from the beginning, made me think carefully about my choices, and kept things moving until the end, at which point I immediately wanted to play again to see if I could do better next time.
The thing I like most about this game is that it has a strong point of view. It made me think about the consequences of casually sacrificing others for our own benefit, about the illusion of light and whiteness representing safety, about the advantages of working together to upend an oppressive system. (I haven’t figured out if it’s actually possible to upend this particular system, but someday I’ll find all the endings and know for sure.)
Being able to choose the gender of some characters was also interesting: You don’t know what the consequences will be yet, so you’re as unaware as the player character in the opening scene. It also meshes well with the theme of an ongoing cycle that keeps drawing in new people, leaving everyone vulnerable. And in my case, the pairing of the first two characters ended up subverting the expected dynamic in an interesting way.
I ran across a few minor bugs and typos, but nothing game-breaking. The main thing I found myself missing was a little guidance on how to find the remaining endings—though I did enjoy untangling the story branches by attempting to make different choices.
In short, I think this is a game worth playing. All the endings I found were suitably grim, and some of them made me think about the story and the themes a bit differently, so I think it’s worth replaying, too.
A retro JRPG but it’s a text adventure, March 7, 2023I was a playtester for this game.
All of the Little Match Girl games follow the titular little girl on a delightful quest through time and space, and I look forward to them every year because they’re so adventurous and funny and surprising. But this one takes the series in a completely unexpected direction by adding a full-blown turn-based combat system, with party members and equippable items and everything. Usually I’m not playing IF (or any games) for the battles, but this game brought back the exact feeling of sitting in front of my little TV in 199X playing SNES with my brother, and it’s honestly amazing that a text adventure can do that.
The combat system is so robust it has its own instruction manual, but the gameplay is pretty straightforward even if you don’t read it (though it definitely helps, and there are some useful options you can toggle). It’s not really violent—this is a good-hearted story with the little match girl as its reluctant hero, after all. And anyway, there’s a lot more to this game than just fighting battles: the story is weighty and wide-ranging, there are strange items from various worlds that you can find and experiment with, and you get to team up with (Spoiler - click to show)a cool-ass mermaid for goodness’ sake. It's clear a lot of care went into every detail, right down to the pitch-perfect barks.
There’s so much going on in this game that it doesn’t feel like it could possibly work, but somehow it does, while carrying on the charming tradition of the first two LMG games—which, if you haven’t played those, I recommend starting there and then reserving a couple hours on a cold winter’s night for this one.
A grotesque, disorienting, engrossing story about basically everything, January 9, 2023This game is not like anything I’ve encountered before. I haven’t stopped thinking about it since I finished the final branch weeks ago, in a good way—and yet it’s easy to see why it’s so polarizing. The story is shocking, at times downright repulsive, in ways that I usually would not appreciate. The humor made me laugh, but it also made me wince. The writing is self-aware and full of asides (which I enjoyed, but not everyone does). It’s long, like novel-length long, and there are only a few choice points. Sometimes it almost felt like the game was challenging me to stop playing it so I wouldn’t get far enough to see the vulnerable parts below the surface. But I wanted to know where the heck this story was going. And then right around the time I got to that one scene deep into the first story branch—a horrifying moment that I never would have imagined in a lifetime of ideating—something shifted and I was along for the ride.
It felt like art.
Challenging parts aside, I really enjoyed the story and the way it was constructed. The premise—that the world had ended and a new humanity was born in the distant future, with a reverence for the ancient rapper Pitbull—doesn’t sound very serious, but it’s mined for both comedy and drama (and horror, romance, etc.). Underneath all the blood and guts, this game has heart, and plenty of important things to say. Even without many choices to make, I felt like an active participant, because the static parts periodically check in with the reader and leave room for reflection. Choice and self-determination seems like a major theme, and the fact that the story branches hinge on (Spoiler - click to show)relatively trivial decisions like what side dish you choose struck me as both funny and effective. The structure and ideas reminded me of other stories I’ve loved despite their roughness, like the Zero Escape series, House of Leaves, the work of Vonnegut or Saramago.
So, I’m in awe. I could never have written this game. I think the experience of playing it will make me a better, more vulnerable writer. For me, the difficult parts were rewarding in the end. And the end was really beautiful.
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