Reviews by MathBrush
About 2 hours
View this member's profileShowing All | Show by Page
An expansive and engaging magical puzzler with images, April 8, 2024I was talking to someone about Quest games, and searched for the top rated Quest games of all time. It brought this up as number 1, a game by two-time IFComp winner Steph Cherrywell! I had seen it before, but never got around to playing it.
I strongly recommend downloading Quest to play this. Online, it gets slower and slower and eventually halts altogether. Offline, it worked great.
In this game, you play as a magical student coming back to your academy after a break. This is a small-scale school; less Harry Potter, more like X-Men school sized.
You have a spellbook with you, but it's blank! You can encounter up to five different spells.
Gameplay revolves around rescuing your friends (and maybe some not friends) who've been struck by various magical curses. I remembered Jenny Yoshida from Brain Guzzler's from beyond, and then Mary Jane, before looking it up and realizing that the two games share much of the same cast (though they are set in different universes). Each student comes with a well-drawn profile picture.
The puzzles were tricky for me. All were well-clued, and generally revolved around finding uses for each item or spell you find. But a lot of error messages aren't helpful if you almost get the right answer but not quite. The hardest part for me was (Spoiler - click to show)carving the jack o lantern(Spoiler - click to show). I tried (Spoiler - click to show)CUT PUMPKIN, CUT PUMPKIN WITH KNIFE, CARVE PUMPKIN, etc. So struggling with the parser adds to the difficulty. I ended up consulting a walkthrough several times.
The writing and setting is very charming, making this game overall very fun to play, despite my struggles. I'm glad the author went on to make hit after hit.
An alchemy parser game on a retro platform, March 30, 2024This French game is designed to run on an Amstrad CPC emulator. It comes with pixel art.
This was tough; I often struggle with old-school games, and playing in French wasn't helping! I did find 2 out of 5 endings, and feel satisfied with that.
You are asked by an oracle in your village to explore an old chapel and find a monk named Hermes. You must solve a series of puzzles to figure out how to save your land!
The biggest puzzles revolve around creating potions. I never found amanita mushrooms, one of the ingredients, so I likely missed the best ending. But I managed to brew two of the others.
I enjoy games that have two worlds, and this game does that. The pixel art is interesting. The only thing that was grating was the slow fake 'loading' the emulator does every screen. Yes, I remember playing games in the 90s where the PC would chug and slowly load each screen. It was nostalgic the first 50 times. But as the game goes on it certainly loses its charm!
Apparently there's a way to win the game in one move, which is interesting!
A city-building and storytelling game with a deep mystery, March 14, 2024This is a long and complex Twine game with some interesting mechanics.
You come upon an abandoned place with a single resident. Together, you rebuild a mighty city, primarily by telling stories to attract new residents. This lets you build new buildings.
At night, you visit another city, one that is grand. But there is trouble...
The storytelling mechanics have you pick a genre, a format, and some sliders of emotions. You then get what seems like a randomized mini-review from one listener and then an overall critique based on your choices, as well as 15 money.
It was hard to find new genres at first, and money seems to never have any use, despite me building a bank and a marketplace (it said I needed to make an account, but never had a chance). So those parts seemed underdeveloped to me.
Overall, this is a rich story. It uses written French dialect, dropping several vowels, and has some circumlocutory tendencies. So I'm sure I missed a great deal of nuance. As far as I can tell:
(Spoiler - click to show)There was a large town dedicated to immortality through knowledge. They had a library that was a temple to a God, and one day that God and its sibling decided to destroy the city while its leader was out on a trip. They sent a dragon whose flame condemned the city to the dream world. Some of that flame lived on in the house of Luv, who tended it in their fireplace. Due to the flame's continued existence, the dream city was still falling apart, in due measure as the city grows. Luv represents something--maybe a reincarnation of the dream-city's leader, or maybe the dragon, or maybe a god, or something. Eventually you get the choice to extinguish the flame and return the city of old, or keep it).
It's one of the better games of the year I have played so far.
A richly described series of love letters set in the 1800s, with a mystery, March 12, 2024Whew! This game strained my poor Anglophone brain, as it is written in a fancy style of French and a cursive font. There is a very large amount of text as well, so I had to use all my forces to persevere!
But the story itself was interesting enough to carry on. It consists of letters written between two women, although I believe every letter is from the point of view of Isabella, a woman who became a doctor in Paris before being ejected and forced to return to the village of her home. Her lover, Olympia, is left behind. Isabella must face the disapproval and suspicions of the villagers, as well as Olympia's jealousies when the pale, anemic, and beautiful Alice moves in next door.
Gameplay is a bit curious; as at least one other person noted on the forums, it bears some resemblance to The First Draft of the Revolution, where you select different cycling variations before confirming and moving on.
However, there are very large chunks of text between choices (large for me, maybe not for native speaker). These large gaps, and my suspicion that the choices didn't change much of the game, led me to assign a mental score of 4.
However, I had early on, in a separate window, clicked through quickly to see how long the game would be, and received an ending with a clear choice (to (Spoiler - click to show)destroy your letters or not). I was surprised when, in my real playthrough, I never encountered that passage. I used saves and found 2 endings in my own playthrough, and they were quite interesting. So when it became clear that this was actually fairly complex, I upgraded to five stars.
Beta version of a very large potential fantasy gamebook-style game, March 10, 2024This story is based on classic gamebooks and fantasy tropes. You play as a dwarf in a village of dwarves, and can choose which class to play, which affects your stats. I chose to be a miner with high perception.
This game is already quite large, requiring a couple hours of play, and it's largely unfinished, with only two of three cities available (and, beyond that, there would likely be even more in a full game). There are a lot of randomized checks and things.
The art is, I believe, AI art, as zooming in on some scenes revealed oddities like three legs. However, it is unobtrusive and aesthetically worked overall (not discussing here the ethics of AI). Edit: Nightcafe is listed in credits for artwork.
The one currently finished city has a ton of different districts. There is a map, but instead of being used for navigation, it just serves as a visual cue while you actually select from a list of districts adjacent to your current one.
As you walk around, mini-stories fire off, providing you with new encounters like whether to chase down a missing guardsman or not.
Two things I would have preferred to be different: the map takes a while to load, making movement slow. I would have preferred the map to be optimized to load more quickly. Second, every time I entered the front gate a thief stole my purse and fighting it would just kill me, even if I loaded and tried again. It was really frustrating not having any chance to keep my money on me. And I found it difficult to find ways to heal; I thought maybe resting at my quarters could work, but couldn't find any. I eventually healed as the story progressed.
Overall, I thought the mushroom-brain thing was an interesting storyline, and the political aspects gave the game some complexity.
Classic Cherrywell with a strong dose of spirits, March 7, 2024This game is the kind of thing Steph Cherrywell is known for: smooth humor, a large, easily navigable map, genre tropes pursued to their logical end, plenty of polish, and vivid characters.
I found this game's puzzles more logical than some other Cherrywell games, though I had trouble with one particular artist. Looking back, I ignored many, many, hints.
You play as a flapper (with all the 20's lingo) who's desperate for a drink. But it's all been soaked up by ghosts, so you have to hunt them down one by one!
I really enjoyed this game, and I think that it has a great chance of wining this year's comp.
A micro game containing six micro-micro games about loss, February 29, 2024This game was designed to fit into 90 kb, a tiny amount of space even for an interactive fiction game.
It has 6 small games with similar themes in it, each from different time periods or genres of interactive fiction.
I'll put the description of the games in spoilers, as I describe some things you might prefer to find on your own. I'll put the description of the final game in separate spoilers, as it's slightly different and more of a spoiler.
This is a complex game, and while I felt and experienced many things, I had the sense that I hadn't grasped everything, so this review may neglect some core themes or content.
(Spoiler - click to show)First: A choose your own adventure book, which goes a bit beyond pure branching by letting you perform actions through addition of numbers. You are exploring a mostly empty desert, and you must overcome your fears and think cleverly to find your true goal.
Second: An adventure in the style of Scott Adams, set in the same desert (or is it the same?). You have found an oasis city, but you can't get in. Themes include unachievable goals and building your own happiness.
Third: A classic-style text adventure. This one is quite complex, as you are able to enter and explore a large city. The tone is darker here, as you are either constrained to slog for the machine or to be punished for your individuality. The items of key and shovel, which appeared in earlier iterations, take on new meanings in this world, emblems of money/greed and (fruitless) labor.
Fourth: A hyperlink game (but without hyperlinks, requiring you to type instead). You have become powerful and have many people to help you, but none of you can withstand a storm that is withering and destroying your city. Here and in the last game or so, you begin to get glimpses of the real world person behind the games. This story and the last also mention a beautiful male lover.
Fifth: A Quality Based Narrative game, like Dendry or Storynexus. You have stats, and your available stats determine what scenes you view next and what actions you have available. The story is one of a wanderer, as if the ancient emperor in the Ozymandias poem was stuck in the landscape of his ruin. The real world bleeds in explicitly in the end.
Sixth (stronger spoilers):(Spoiler - click to show)This isn't a world, it's just deleting a bunch of files, but you can't since some have unresolved issues. You choose the writing block by block, using text from earlier in the game, almost like Aaron's earlier game 18 Cadence. In the end, you get the option to delete or save the poem you have created.
There is a strong sense of loss in the game, of futility and helplessness, but also of the desire to create something beautiful that doesn't remove the loss but provides comfort. It's almost a Quixotic point of view, which also ties in with the use of mirrors and illusions.
I found it a beautiful game. Like I said, I don't think I grasped it all. I may need to replay. But I also admired its technical work.
A sci-fi world hopping puzzle game, February 24, 2024This is a compact sci-fi game where you hop between dimensions in order to keep all universes from being destroyed.
The gameplay is classic Inform 7 style: wander a mostly empty building and pick up different objects on the way, unlock a safe, operate a machine, meet an NPC or two, etc.
The story is that you have been newly hired at a tech company when an explosion goes off. Going in to investigate, you soon learn that the company has quite a bit of unusual history...
The game makes references to the (Spoiler - click to show)Mandela effect, with famous examples like the (Spoiler - click to show)Berenstein vs Berenstain bears.
It's fairly polished, even including images and sound. There are occasional punctuation errors, like quotes being left off at the end of dialogue.
The overall gameplay is pretty satisfying. A few puzzles I thought were underclued, especially (Spoiler - click to show)opening the research door. That one I had to string dump the game for, discovering I needed to (Spoiler - click to show)use the magnet to open it.
The game has multiple levels of ending success. There are several ways you can lock yourself out of victory, but those are well-clued. Getting a perfect ending is a little underclued, though, and may require a few attempts.
Overall, I'd recommend this game to fans of classic-style parser puzzlers or to fans of time travel games.
Inter universal storytelling, January 22, 2024This game is a participatory game, an MMO masquerading as an MMO.
The conceit is that you are playing an old, defunct MMO which you discover is (Spoiler - click to show)connected to multiple universes. As you play, you find messages left by others. You have the option to leave a message, and doing so lets other people really see it.
I saw messages from real people I know, but they all soon disappeared. I wandered through an empty maze, seeing messages by people that could be real or fake. I left a message everywhere I went. Overkill, maybe? Shouting into the void? It's hard to know.
Very fun concept. Large game.
One of the richest magic systems in IF games, packed into a compact map, December 23, 2023This large and multi-faceted game has you start off trapped in a closet in a motel room--not an auspicious beginning for a game of great mystical power.
The idea here is that you are someone possessed of magical powers. This power can be exercised through the use of amulets representing different animals; however, the amulets are not enough. You also need gemstones to power them.
And that's where the game really opens up. There are a lot of amulets; there are a lot of gemstones. Each combination gives you different powers, and each power can be used in different places. This gives essentially cubic complexity to the game!
Which means you may want to experiment a lot and take notes. The game is kind, giving you a lot of leeway and plenty of optional paths.
I first played this as part of Castle Balderstone, and then played the newer version. While it was probably in the original, I didn't realize the first time that you can (spoilers for very end) (Spoiler - click to show)open portals to tons of different dimensions. I thought it was pretty cool, to be honest. Really loved this game.
Complex and puzzly one-room murder mystery, November 23, 2023This game is an Inform murder mystery by thesleuthacademy, who has written numerous reviews for mysteries on IFDB in the last year or so. It’s nice to see a game by them!
Mysteries are one of my favorite genres of game, so I was interested to see how it plays out here. There are several standard ways to run a mystery in interactive fiction:
1-Have a standard puzzle game that happens to be about murder mystery, with solving the puzzles leading to solving the mystery. This is like Ballyhoo.
2-Modelling evidence and clues in-game, which have to be combined to form a solution. This is how Erstwhile works, and most of my mysteries.
3-Collecting evidence through puzzles and conversation and then having a quiz at the end (where you have to accuse the right person). This is how Toby’s Nose works.
4-Collecting physical evidence and showing it to someone, being able to make an arrest when you have enough evidence.
This game is a mix of 3 and 4. You have to collect enough physical evidence to proceed to a quiz, and then pass the quiz to beat the game.
The storyline is simple. A man was found alone in his room in a pool of blood with no visible wounds. You must examine this single room to discover the clues.
This game boasts a large number of beta testers, which is nice. I struggled with some of the setup, however. Many of the ‘standard responses’ for Inform were not helpful. For instance, there were some ear plugs that I tried to take and it said ‘That is not portable’. Some commands that might have had useful responses didn’t work; for instance, TALK TO didn’t have any message like ‘Conversation in this game is handled by ASKING’ (although that was mentioned in the help system!) and PLAY PIANO had no response.
There are some very helpful responses, though, like SEARCH and LOOK UNDER saying you only need to ‘examine’.
At the quiz at the end, I really struggled with the third question. I guessed it but then decompiled the game to see how I could have gotten there. It seems that the conversation system is a lot larger than I had expected. I had gotten stuck since SHOW (something) TO (someone) often didn’t have a response, so I assumed asking about those things wouldn’t be helpful.
There is one puzzle of a type I haven’t seen before in a parser mystery, involving a grid. I thought that was pretty clever.
Overall, I felt like tightening up some of the standard responses and adding more synonyms and actions like TALK TO and PLAY PIANO would make this an excellent short mystery adventure.
Twine and TADS combine to evoke nostalgia and care for a child, November 23, 2023This is another game I tested, a hybrid of Twine and TADS.
The idea is that you are an adult (or teen) woman with a boyfriend/partner. Your father is dying of cancer, and could go at any time. You find out that your partner has been working with him on a game (written in TADS) to present to you, years after he started.
The TADS game consists of a house filled with materials for a party. You have to gather up enough stuff to enter the party: a costume, a thing to share, and an invitation. There are 5 ways to satisfy each category. Parts of the house additionally contain journal entries reflecting real-world issues the father had over time.
I really liked the concept of sandwiching a TADS game between twine games, and I like that it works both online and in downloads.
As a beta tester, I’m not sure how effective I was. I found 1 or 2 of the paths (I especially focused on the board game in testing), but that means I neglected 3 or 4.
And that’s both the blessing and the curse of this game: the multiple paths are very clever, allowing people to bypass a lot of puzzles and get to the end, contributing to a more relaxed atmosphere and helping casual people play.
On the other hand, that means that players (and inadequate testers like me) will only see 20-40% of the game. I’ve written before about how having ‘hidden bonus content’ in your game can make the game very very rewarding for those who find it, but overall tends to drag down the score as most people don’t see the hard work you do (Hanon’s game Transparent I think is a good example, where it’s a beautifully complex and rich game that hides most of it below the surface).
I enjoyed on this second playthrough figuring out the computer/radio problem, although I used hints several times. There was a minor hiccup at the end. I did find the puzzle fun and like the solution, though.
The twine scenes are, I think, descriptive and emotional. This kind of writing, with end of life care, can be really hard to write because everyone mourns in a different way. It’s almost impossible to provide options that meet everyone’s way of dealing with grief; one alternative is to write a strong personality for your protagonist and just provide options that are believable for that personality.
I feel like this game leans towards the second choice. Our protagonist has been deeply impacted by the trauma of cancer, and many options hover between ‘soldier through stoically’ and ‘allow sorrow to briefly overcome you’. This provides a contrast to the upbeat, cheery and often child-like TADS game. I think that the reactions of the protagonist are realistic, for a certain type of person and personality; yet at the same time, there is, in me, perhaps a longing for a positive and direct reconciliation and expression of appreciation that the game does not afford. There is in me a desire to have happy endings for games, but also to write games that do not have happy endings (my original ending for Grooverland was to have the main character frozen as a statue forever in a theme park, but CMG talked me out of it as too depressing).
Overall, I find the complex systems and puzzles of the TADS part and the dialogue and descriptiveness of the Twine part to be the best aspects of the game.
Frat brothers cast spells at each other and bond, November 22, 2023I like this game, one that I tested it. Even though it’s longer, I replayed the whole thing before this review, and one of the hardest puzzles in my current WIP was influenced by a puzzle in this game that I really liked.
It’s a Twine game with a parser influence. Like Scott Adams style games, the screen is split into an upper and lower part, but unlike them, the bottom remains mostly static while the top changes. The game has quadratic complexity, as you choose an action and then choose a noun to apply it to, which can be an object in -game or yourself on the sidebar.
Gameplay revolves around discovering and using new spells, which are in a two-syllable format. Over time, the spell system develops some complexity and richness.
Story-wise, you are an initiate in a fraternity of wizards, completing your final initiation: a magical paintball tournament. You have to defeat your brothers while also coming to know them.
I’ve seen some concerns in other reviews about the way you get to know them: by casting a spell that lets you live out other people’s memories, generally their most traumatic. The original version of the game did not include explicit consent for that action, while the most recent does.
From my point of view (which is subjective), this game is clearly fantasy. Not just wizards and spells fantasy (though it has that), but also a fantasy of friendship and understanding. The dream of having a circle of friends so close that you can share anything between you. In fact, there are a lot of clues in the paintball game itself that the whole thing is kind of a setup, a way for people to get to know you; it’s really quite possible that this mind sharing was intended.
Except…parts of the game indicate that the mind spell is newly rediscovered and exciting.
But that’s one aspect of the game I only really noticed now as a player. It’s really trying hard to tell three different stories at once:
1-A goofy game of paintball between fraternity friends with whacky spells and silly pledge rules
2-A dark and serious exploration of humanity’s injustice to those who are different from them
3-A heartwarming tale of acceptance and overcoming insecurity.
So I think part of the problem other reviewers identified isn’t so much that the idea of furrowing through someone’s mind is inherently bad for a story, but that the significance of events and characters takes on really different shades of meaning depending on which part of the story they’re in. Riptide, the frat brother in a treehouse, is a comic individual; Riptide, the oppressed child who essentially experienced torture, is not (I think that was the right character, but I’m not sure).
Overall, though, I enjoyed each subplot separately and found them worthwhile, but I’m not sure they coalesce into a greater whole (something I’ve been concerned about with my own game, which has a similar mix of the flippant and the dark).
Puzzle-wise, it’s outstanding, but also very difficult. I’d likely chalk up the low number of reviews to the puzzles, which are among the most difficult I’ve seen for choice based games of this size, requiring several leaps of intuition and a lot of experimentation. I had to get help several times on my first playthrough, but none this time around.
Overall, I found this satisfying.
Single-key dungeon crawler with increasingly complex powers, November 22, 2023This game by Arthur DiBianca has you exploring a multi-layered dungeon while collecting glowing gems of mysterious power (which are attached to the titular Vambrace).
Its big innovation is that there is no need to hit enter; one key is one action. This isn’t the very first game I’ve seen do this (there was a game in this year’s Parsercomp with the same concept), but I think the execution is great here. I feel like care was made to make the commands easier to remember, and I like the gradual reveal of more and more powers/keys.
Making a game like this takes a lot of talent and skill. I recently tried adding a ‘limited command’ section in my own game, specifically emulating Arthur DiBianca, and it was by far the hardest part to code: coming up with interesting puzzles, doing a lot of timing and such. It’s quite hard.
But it comes off great here. Most of the puzzles involve defeating foes or traps in a multi-layer dungeon, and my favorite type of puzzles in the game is where you come across a foe or trap and think, ‘I know exactly what I need to solve this, but I don’t have the capability.’ Then later, you get a new power, and you can run back to the earlier area and solve it.
This author has a lot of good games, but I’d put this in the top third or fourth of all his games.
Multiplayer mystery with boardgame-style gameplay and characters from history, November 22, 2023This game is not archived, but I’m only reviewing it by request. (although technically it’s open on github so I guess that’s the same thing!)
There have been several multiplayer IF games in recent years, many of them by this author. Approaches to multiplayer IF have varied; there are parser games where codes must be passed back and forth and collaboration is key; twine games where codes are passed back and forth but no other communication is meant to be made; and games like this that utilize a server.
This is a very well written and technically proficient game. I think I’m going to divide my thoughts on this game into three areas: the story/writing, the mechanics, and the multiplayer aspect. Because this game works well and the author is proficient, I’m going to be a bit more critical than I would with a newer author, since I think this author values thoughtful criticism (and I hope I’m thoughtful!)
Story and writing
The main storyline is that you are Antony and Cleopatra, with Antony being the Vice President (I assume of the US) and Cleopatra being the Queen of Egypt (I wonder what it would be like if the vice president in real life was married to a monarch of another state. That’d be pretty interesting!). The two of you have been asked to solve the murder of Marlon Brando. You have around two weeks to gather clues, conduct interviews and investigations, and to make an accusation.
The story has varied suspects with differing motivations and interests. I’ve played a lot of other detective games where everyone just kind of blends together, a lot of rich white british people who have no distinguishing characteristics. But in this game, each character is very different. Interviewing Rasputin was memorable, and Vitruvius was very different from James Dean, who was very different from the General.
You’ll notice all the names are taken from famous characters in history. That’s part of the conceit here; kind of like Clone High or Fate Grand Order (neither of which I’ve watched or played), all of the characters are characters from history, modified to fit into a single scenario. For instance, Marlon Brando and James Dean both work at Raytheon.
This is clever, but to me the influence of the character’s historical figure is like La Croix; it’s not really there, just a hint of it. For most of the characters you could have swapped them with some other historical figure and there would be little difference. If it has been Queen Victoria instead of Queen Cleopatra, much of the game could have remained the same, outside of the Blood Diamonds bit. James Dean could have been Timothy Chalamet, etc. The only character that seemed heavily influenced by their historical counterpart is Rasputin. For the others, it mostly seemed like the name was just tacked on with a reference or two (Napoleon’s coat) with the mental associations meant to be developed by the reader.
But that’s not to say the characters aren’t developed; they’re very well developed! Just not in ways that strongly justify the unusual character choices.
The storyline itself was really interesting, and I liked seeing how things developed out and new storylines emerged.
Mechanics
You’re given a calendar with several blank days, each day with two appointments to make. You can schedule interviews or visiting locations (I thought you had to do one of each at first, but later I doubled up on appointments once I realized you can do so). Once in a meeting, you can mostly just click every link, although there are occasional choices you can make that make a difference. So the real strategy lies not in each individual interview, but in which interviews to schedule.
I found that satisfying in the long run, as time began running out and I had to guess which meetings were most important to schedule.
I’ve mentioned before my informal classification of mystery IF:
1-Have a standard puzzle game that happens to be about murder mystery, with solving the puzzles leading to solving the mystery. This is like Ballyhoo.
2-Modelling evidence and clues in-game, which have to be combined to form a solution. This is how Erstwhile works, and most of my mysteries.
3-Collecting evidence through puzzles and conversation and then having a quiz at the end (where you have to accuse the right person). This is how Toby’s Nose works.
4-Collecting physical evidence and showing it to someone, being able to make an arrest when you have enough evidence.
This is a type 3 murder mystery. At the end you have to pick who did it and why.
I got it wrong, mostly because I psyched myself out about a character I hadn’t had a chance to interview. But the solution was logical!
Multiplayer aspect
I played this game twice, first as part of the Seatlle IF Meetup and then again on my own.
In the meetup, we only got through the first day after 30 minutes of playing. On my own, it took me over an hour to finish.
Overall, I usually play IF around other events in my life like meals, childcare, work, tutoring, etc. and so it’s pretty hard to find time to meet up with others to play IF. That’s why I tend to prefer multiplayer IF that has small amounts of text and short gameplay (like Ma Tiger’s Terrible Trip by the same author).
This game has a lot of text and long gameplay! There was also one time while (when playing with two browsers on the same computer) it said I was losing connection and might have everything reset without saving.
That says to me that this type of game may be more appropriate for a ‘multiple people in one room’ setting, like a TTRPG or boardgame, but digitally.
This feeling was strengthened once I realized that there’s not really special abilities for each of the two protagonists or information only one receives. There are certainly little details here and there and there are some witnessses where you get substantially different options, but by and large most of the multiplayer aspect is ‘do the two of you agree on this course of action’, which again to me sounds better for a cooperative game played by people in the same room.
Overall
This was a strong game, well made, and I enjoyed it. The multiplayer aspect and the historical figures weren’t compelling to me, and I believe the game could have retained much of its enjoyability without either one. But I’m glad it encouraged me to work with others and I’m glad I spent time with this.
Complex graphical escape room game with Victorian flair, November 22, 2023I really enjoyed this escape room game.
While you’d think there’d be a big overlap in escape rooms and interactive fiction, the two have very distinct flavors (at least ifcomp-style interactive fiction). I wonder if its because escape rooms often rely heavily on visual clues? (like this game does).
In any case, this has the hallmarks of an escape room: a contrived scenario with codes, color schemes, passwords, chains, etc. where its clear the story (while strong) is in service to the puzzles.
You wake up, chained and forgetful, in a room filled with locks, drawers, safes, keys, etc.
Most of gameplay revolves around trying to figure out correct passphrases to type into boxes. The passphrases represent you having ‘done the work’ of solving.
I knew once I started this that it was pretty hard, probably too hard for me. I also knew that for this type of game, getting hints would probably significantly diminish the experience. So I persevered for quite a while, and finally solved it without hints! That was very satisfying.
There do seem to be several red herrings.
I do think this game defies a lot of conventions of IFComp games, with its fairly contrived story and emphasis on visual-only clues and passwords. However, it executed this at a high level of skill, and I really liked it.
Visually pretty game set on multiple worlds with time travelling orphan assassin, November 22, 2023I’ve seen a few people saying they felt out of the loop with this game since they didn’t play the earlier little match girl games. I can say (having played the first 3 but not the offshoots) that the only thing important from the first games is in the recap. This game does continuity kind of like early Adventure Time, with mostly ‘adventure of the week’ stuff with occasional throwbacks.
The game features some beautiful styling, with nice location descriptions, music, and scrolling text. I missed some of the intro timed text since my son asked me for help with something; timed text isn’t so much of a pet peeve as it is something that just doesn’t fit into my play style of fitting in games around the corners of my life. Fortunately the ending could be scrolled back if missed!
Apparently this game has a ton in common with Metroid Prime. I’ve never played that game, but I looked it up and there are quite a few similarities, even some cameos, if you can call it that.
The overall structure, like most of the Matchgirl games, is that looking into any source of fire (outside of the nighttime stars) will teleport the player to one of five or so worlds. There’s some nice variety here, including space, dinosaurs, wild west, etc. The Pirates of Penzance had a strong presence.
Each area has some kind of powerup that helps you explore other areas. In the meantime, there are different diversions (such as helping a goldfish or doing a time typing game).
I found the structure and side quests engaging and fun. The writing was flawless for me and had its moments of gravitas. I observed how it was done with interest, as my current WIP is structure much like this one, with different worlds or dimensions leading to some emotional moments. I liked how it worked here, so it gave me more confidence.
I did get stuck once. I suspected I had missed some exit. I used location based hints and quickly realized I hadn’t noticed an exit, and then solved the game soon after that.
I can see the weight of a long series making it hard for people to get invested in playing a game, but this one as a standalone might as well be the introduction to the series, as continuity isn’t really a major feature of the games. They can be played in just about any order.
It’s nice to see high quality in the comp. Between Ryan Veeder, JJ Guest, BJ Best, we have three former winners entering well-done games, as well as newcomers producing polished games of great value.
Funny Ikea/cult game about rituals, November 22, 2023This is a great-looking Inform game. Inform has the capacity to make ‘website templates’ that people can share with each other to make projects look nicer, but people rarely use them. I don’t know if this one uses a custom template or just had css/html edited manually, but it looks great.
The concept is really funny, too. What if IKEA instructions were summoning rituals for ancient Gods?
Actual gameplay revolves around following IKEA instructions closely. I found that fun, as I like both assembling and deassembling IKEA furniture. My school had to throw out some cabinets recently that had gotten old/bug-ridden, and I had a hammer and just deconstructed it from memory (remove the thin bar, then pry the back panelling, then remove the edge pieces, then break out the last bit of wood with the hammer, etc.)
Anyway, this game scratched that itch, which was nice. Most of the puzzles revolve around clever ways to use the instructions. The game was a little smaller than I first imagined, but in a good way, as it was beginning to get overwhelming.
I did have some trouble with phrasing. It was hard to find (Spoiler - click to show)an antonym for ‘insert’. The transcript shows my flailing about. I ended up also using hints for what I’d consider the biggest puzzle of the game, but it was entirely fair, I just was getting close to the 2 hour limit.
Complex puzzle game with language barrier set on an airship, November 22, 2023This was a nice, substantial puzzler parser game with some fun hand-drawn sketches.
It starts with a large chunk of made-up names which was a bit hard to parse at first, but that quickly settled down. Next, I got confused by the directions, but fortunately the map made that a breeze.
Then it settled down into a sequence of puzzles. You play as a foreigner on an airship whose brother has been accused of murder. Its your job to navigate the ship and collect evidence!
The game could have easily gotten overwhelming if not for the helpful tablet which kept clues and to-do tasks. I consulted it frequently.
I got halfway through the game without consulting hints. The second half, I had to consult hints for. It turns out that every time I needed hints, the answer was the exact same.
With one last note on the story, I did find it a bit odd how much we can do without getting in trouble. Like wandering into places we clearly should not be. So I had to suspend disbelief a bit. On the other hand, I enjoyed the many layers of information and the multiple endings and plots within plots. So I’ll be rating it highly.
Clever and funny game about out-tricking the devil in a small forest town, November 22, 2023This is a parser game about making a bargain with the devil. I decided to put Der Freischütz 1 in the background for its devil-dealing music.
This game was polished and well-thought through. You are a mad scientist/demonologist in the vein of Dr. Frankenstein or Dr. Faust. You have summoned the devil in order to bargain the secrets of life from him. But, the cost may be too great…
Everything worked seamlessly in this game. At no point did I encounter anything I would consider a bug or a typo or bad puzzle design. At times it was leaning a little against my religious sensibilities but it always backed off before getting too harsh.
The writing is funny, with a fake-old-time language for an ancient grimoire that was able to contrast modern tropes with older grammar forms. All the NPCs, including the Devil, were played with a nice mix of intelligence and stupidity, just smart enough to oppose you and plenty dumb enough to fall for your tricks.
The puzzles seemed very hard at first, but through simple exploration I was able to make some guesses on what to do, and so while I had to think a lot, I never needed hints or a map.
The conversation system worked well, with both general topics and individual topics. It felt seamless for me.
So, I thought it was a great game. Very nice work!
Rescue muppet-like puppets, each with their own personality, November 22, 2023This is a complex and rich puzzle game written in Twine.
In it, you are tasked with recovering 14 different puppets from a studio that is about to shut down. It seems like a mix of Muppets and Disney, with a studio next to a giant theme park and all the old history about to be demolished.
You, a former puppeteer, are tasked with stealing the puppets with the help of an anonymous accomplice. The twist is (revealed very early on), when you find a puppet, they come to life! Each puppet has different features that can help you in different situations.
Opposing you are evil puppets that stalk through the halls or vents. They can steal puppets from you. I always used ‘undo’, so I don’t know if you can get them back. If you don’t have a puppet, they just kick you out, which can actually be a nice shortcut!
There are four main areas. I finished 3 on my own, getting all puppets, but needed to poke around the code to figure out how to get in and beat the 4th one. However, you can get a good ending even if you miss out on the final building.
While the premise is inherently amusing, the game is more about the march of time and the loss of childhood memories. There is a subplot that you only encounter in the very end parts of the game about the Black experience in America.
I found the ending to be a bit long, with page after page of fullscreen text. That part seemed like it was meant to be a tribute for Jim Henson (like the game mentions in the credits) or maybe an exercise in worldbuilding, but it was a little bit long for my liking. I may be a bit sensitive to that because I have something similar in my current game (a museum at the end describing everything you did or saw) and I’ve been trying to figure out what a good length of time to spend there is.
The ‘true ending’ I got with all 14 puppets worked out well, I think.
I found the random movement of the enemies a bit difficult to avoid at times, but with UNDO it wasn’t too bad. It provided a bit of flavor. The only place I found really rough was the final building, where there were usually only 2 exits at a time, so moving in and out was pretty risky.
I think fans of big parser-like twine adventures (like Agat’s games) will like this a lot. I enjoyed it!
Run a bed and breakfast for your grandparents in Bali, November 22, 2023I spent more time and attention on this game than just about any other game in this comp so far, using the full 2 hours and thinking a lot.
This game is about a person who is part Australian and part Indonesian going back to Bali to visit family. To their surprise, they discover they’re running a bed and breakfast for a week!
Like most Choicescript games, there’s a lot of customization here, but not too much. There are stats here, but they don’t seem to be used for pass/fail as much as just keeping track of your choices and giving you a consistent story.
I started out playing a boy, but over time and with the events of the game I started thinking of my character of a woman more, and ended up in a romance with the guy RO.
I think the game had a satisfying narrative arc for me. I read some other reviews before playing, which had expressed disappointment with a certain major arc not being fulfilled, but knowing that helped me be more satisfied with what I did see. The rewards and trials both build up over time in the game, with a satisfying action conclusion.
I enjoyed the cats, as others have mentioned. But most of all I enjoyed seeing a blend of cultures of which I have not previously been aware much of. The intersection of ‘what Australians are like on holiday’ with the intersection of Indonesian and Chinese people and the effects of local religions, as well as the kinds of food available and the transportation…there’s a lot going on here and it’s described lovingly. I don’t know how autobiographical it is, but it either seems that Felicity Banks is describing things from her own experience, and is part Indonesian, or that this was simply just written with a deep love for and interest in the region. It’s possible that, not being from the region, I may be mistaken as to authenticity or tone, but from an outside perspective it seems very nice. I enjoyed this overall.
Comedic pirate game about tossing some trash, November 22, 2023I approached this game with a combination of excitement and hesitancy. To Hell in a Hamper, the previous game in the series, is one of my top 10 IF games of all time, out of around 2900 reviews. That puts To Hell in a Hamper in the top 0.4% of all games ever for me. So on the one hand, I’m sure I’d like more, while on the other the chance of any new game also being in my top 0.4% of all time would be pretty low.
Overall I liked it a lot, I can just say that. I found it more challenging than the first game and with more of a focus on adventure than comedy, though there is definitely a strong comedic slant. It was genuinely engaging and funny and, in my opinion, well written.
The idea is that the captain of your pirate vessel has fled his ship with his greatest treasures as well as you, a young cabin boy. Unfortunately, your row boat is sinking! You have to toss all of the captain’s treasures out to succeed. He’s not willing to help, though, and a dangerous Yateveo tree is out to get you, too!
I mentioned this game being harder than the other, and that’s true. I got kind of stuck 4 times.
I liked the ending puzzle, a nice contrast to the rest of the puzzle style. And the final scene had some quit nice poetry in it.
So overall, I’d rate this as pretty difficult, but at no point in the four scenarios above was I unhappy. It’s hard, but a fun hard. That’s good, and gives the game high points in my mind on the puzzle side.
On the writing and story side, well, like I said, this is different than the last game. That game’s humor depended heavily on the increasing absurdity of the objects you found. In this one, though, almost everything I found was reasonable. Instead, there was a lot more emphasis on the adventure of it all, like the helpful octopus, the dangerous tree, and above all the changing relationship of you and the captain. It was almost more like Violet than Lost Pig; each of your actions affects your relationship with the captain. So it was not as funny to me as To Hell in a Hamper, but I think it has a deeper story and a bit more substance.
Polish-wise, it was great. I found only a couple of bugs.
In conclusion, this game isn’t in my top 0.4% of all time, but it’s solidly in my top 4.0% of all time. Great work, and something I could recommend to people looking for humor, pirates, one-room games or great NPCs (maybe a nomination for Best NPC xyzzy?)
This was my favorite game of the competition!
Metafictional narrative about revisiting the past, using AGT, November 22, 2023I’m going to put on my ‘extra-critical’ goggles for this game, because it’s by a previous IFComp winner (who presumably can stand up to sterner scrutiny), and is in a genre (autobiographical emotional retrospective in game form) that has had several recent start-studded entries (Sting, Repeat the Ending, A Rope of Chalk, and of course the author’s own game two years ago). It also intentionally uses an older format and is mimicking ‘my crappy apartment/house’ games, which has to thread the needle between not being as bad as the source material and being accurate to source material.
So how does it succeed? Overall, the polish is evident. I rarely struggled with the parser, which (combined with the other AGT/AGX/MAGX game this year makes me respect the engine a lot). Teleportation and combat are handled well. Death and being reborn could theoretically have really messed up game state, but it doesn’t seem to have done so, which is really impressive to me.
The game itself relies heavily on the commentary to make it ‘good’, which makes sense, because it was built that way. At first I was critical of the base game as being too basic, given the rich and full games I’ve seen built by children and teens recently (for comparison, look at Milliways in this IFComp!). But then I remembered games like Coming Home 1 which are actually very similar in layout and descriptiveness level to this game (although not in polish), so I guess it is pretty authentic.
Exploration was fun. Sometimes commands and interaction felt just a bit ‘off’ from games I usually play, and this was good; it felt like seeing interactive fiction written by someone who had a different set of experiences than me.
I’m not sure whether the game is autobiographical or not; I suspect not, but I’m not sure that should factor into the overall evaluation of the game. The background story is emotional, and hearing only one side of the conversation really helps here as you can imagine the other side for yourself, with version painting the narrator in a deeply sympathetic light or as a barely-tolerated person stretching others’ patience. One thing though for me is that it was always very clear that I was interacting with a fictional narrative, one held at a distance, and that I wasn’t drawn into. This is a personal reaction and not necessarily one all would hold. That’s actually what made me wonder if this was autobiographical, as real life scenarios are often less believable than fictional (like the fact that Tiffany is a medieval name).
The map is nice, and I wish I had read it first. I solved one puzzle it solves on accident due to my normal direction-flailing I typically do when playing games. It has some messages like ‘Don’t Cheat’ and ‘Listnouns’ that make me wonder if there is some hidden content in the game.
Overall, it was clear from the beginning that this has high production values and includes a lot of elements I like. So the debate wasn’t whether to score high or low, but which high score to shoot for. I’m still thinking about it; in a way this game is more relatable to me than Best’s last game, but on the other hand it’s a slighter thing. The ending, for instance, felt anticlimactic, more of an opportunity to sit and ponder than a neat wrapping up.
I’ll definitely be keeping an eye out for other reviews on this; I feel like there are still some unresolved thoughts in my mind and maybe a fresh perspective can help. But I did enjoy this, and it was easy to play this on Gargoyle.
Excellent comedy circus puzzle game, November 22, 2023I deeply enjoyed this game. It’s a well-scoped, polished parser game with a lot of humor.
The idea is that you are a circus clown at a circus that is being sabotaged by a villainous Phantom! You have three friends whose acts get sabotaged and you have to find a way to defeat the enemy.
Most of the puzzles revolve around finding creative uses of items, although there are also some other puzzle types like math.
The characters are pretty distinct and memorable, like the grumpy animal trainer or your ‘dense’ muscle bound girlfriend. There are a lot of hidden details in the game, like a character being trans.
Most of the puzzles made perfect sense, and hit the sweet spot between being non-obvious but not being too hard to figure out. I did get stuck on the rabbit puzzle, but once I got hints for it I realized that I just hadn’t experimented enough earlier. I enjoyed the payoff of the game name.
I like a circus setting for a parser game (Ballyhoo is one of my favorite Infocom works) and the pacing worked great here. Excellent work, deeply enjoyed it.
Game set in two worlds, with long, complex graphical puzzles, November 22, 2023This game has a few different twists, but I’ll try to avoid spoilers the best I can.
This is a choice-based game, and it is quite extensive. It took me right around the two hour mark to complete. It’s reminiscent of Gruescript in a sense, with different locations you can click to and an inventory to use. However, the inventory only shows up every now and then in-game.
While it grows more complex, it feels fair to say that gameplay revolves around a ship captain walking around the ship, trying to understand a mysterious poem given by ancestors and talking to others on the ship.
Storywise, it’s all about navigation and pushing to the unknown. There are different books that give you lore about the world. The pirates in the game all curse, presumably for verisimilitude, but for some reason the swearing was written exactly the way the 14 yr old boys in my school swear so I kept picturing very young pirates.
Many of the characters have tragic backstories. There are several opportunities to show mercy or justice and to change your relationship with others.
The writing overall was adventurous and dramatic. Near the end, there were a few different narrative threads that came together, but I’m not sure how I felt about the resolution. I was left with more questions than answers.
There were graphical puzzles in the game as well. At first, they fit well into the flow of the story, providing simple distractions along the main journey. Near the end, though, there were so many puzzles of such quantity that by the time I returned to the story I had forgotten much of what had happened. While I do enjoy graphical puzzles from time to time, they lack many of the features I’ve come to enjoy in text based fiction and thus weren’t quite as enjoyable to me.
The level of craftsmanship in the UI and puzzles was very high; the author clearly has a good grasp of visual design and event-based programming.
War/romance/thriller game where all choices are seen through a scope, November 22, 2023I think the best descriptors for this game might be ‘incestbait’ and '‘unusual UI’.
Let’s talk about UI first. The idea is that you are ‘aiming’ at the screen, with a literal scope in the title page and elsewhere just dragging your aim around. While moving around the page you find text you can click on. So it’s choice based, but with work to discover the choices.
The controls are opposite from what I expected. It all clicked when I realized that instead of panning around the page I was moving the camera.
This is a very long game, and took me longer than 2 hours to complete. Parts of it were difficult; a couple of times I could have sworn the text needed to progress just wasn’t there, so I exited out completely and ‘Resume’ and it worked. But looking back, I likely just had trouble finding the right link. I got very stuck at one point looking for my father, due to the many places possible to look.
The story is one of was and love. You play as two siblings who have had a love/hate/LOVE relationship their whole life. While there is no history of romantic intimacy between you two, everything in the game drips with its possibility, so much that the entire theme of the game seems to be ‘what if two siblings were almost-lovers and sublimated that tension into hate’.
The backdrop is like a modern Gone With the Wind or War and Peace, where a violent war is raging and you are part of a privileged family, the children of an admiral. The countries involved seem to be fictional, but evoke modern tropes: an aggressor country feeding misinformation to others to justify invading a smaller country; corruption at the highest levels, etc.
The game opens with a violent conflict between the two protagonists, and I never really understood the justification for that. Even seeing the messages that spurred the conflict, I don’t understand why the fight happened.
In any case, this really does have the overall feel of the grand war novels I mentioned before, with similar musings on changes in life. The UI was an interesting concept but by the end it started to wear thin. It may be because I was using a trackpad and playing on desktop; I had to click and drag a lot.
There definitely is strong craftmanship in evidence; this is the kind of game where I personally didn’t love it but I’d definitely hire the creator for game work if I ran a studio. So the pros of this game are mostly in the areas of the author’s skill, and the cons are mostly in my personal taste.
Spy adventure set in Italy with good nostalgic vibes, November 22, 2023There’s a tendency in interactive fiction for people to talk about ‘old fashioned adventures’ or ‘old school’ games , but it means different things to different people, usually ‘similar to games I played as a kid’.
I didn’t really get heavily into IF until I was in my thirties, so I don’t have a ton of feelings for older games. But I do have a couple experiences as a kid; one was trying Zork in my teens and failing to do much of anything (quit at the dam), and the other was playing some obscure text adventures with graphics in 6th grade (one called Hacker and another about rhymes in an Alice in Wonderland type world).
This game really evoked for me the nostalgia of those games, like Hacker. I know other Adventuron games are similar in appearance, but this also really got the feel of games of those time down well. It even reminded me of the feel of games like Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis.
Anyway, you’re a spy for a secret organization called TURTLE and you’re called in to rescue another spy who is in trouble. Your goal is to infiltrate the enemy’s secret villa and steal back his diamond while stopping his evil plan.
There are a lot of tropes here similar to the 80s and 90s and early bond movies. Some are a bit outdated, but it has a nice overall action vibe. It’s also very Italian (for me the most Italian moment was finding a monastery where the monks wouldn’t let you in without a crucifix). There’s a lot of Italian text in the game. While I’m not fluent, I could understand most of the Italian pretty easily, but it may be useful having google translate nearby (although you can’t copy and paste from Adventuron, last time I checked).
Puzzles were generally fair and well clued, and had fun features like a computer system and a money system. I had to check the walkthrough near the end about three different times.
Overall, I had a great time. Very fun.
Nautical cosmic horror game, with snacks, November 22, 2023I opened this game and I was poking around and thought, ‘Man, this really feels familiar. Where have I seen this before? Did I test this?’
Then I checked, and I realized that I had played it in the German Grand Prix as Fischstäbchen! I really enjoyed that game, so it was fun to see the translation here (something which has only happened recently since rule changes allowing translations of games).
This is a fairly hefty but manageable parser game about exploring a fishing boat in Point Nemo, the point on earth furthest from land. Things don’t seem quite normal; your crew won’t come out of their rooms and your cook spends a lot of time chanting out of ancient books and being surrounded by freezing mist…
I loved the German version of this game, especially since it had a built-in help menu to list all verbs that you need to finish, something that worked really well for me as a noob. This version seems like slightly different compared to the old one; it has some puzzles I don’t remember, and some features like highlighting of exits, which I like.
On the other hand, seeing it in my native tongue makes it easier to be judgmental. For instance, several times, there were ‘double directions’ like saying something is ‘down’ but you access it to the ‘west’. Even though both ‘down’ and ‘west’ are highlighted, going ‘down’ gives an error. I think it would have worked better to redirect ‘down’ and ‘west’ to work the same way.
The map is pretty intimidating at first. I’d recommend just exploring and mapping the whole thing before anything else as several of the puzzles just involve finding people or things.
I used the hints a couple of times, even for things I did in my last playthrough.
Overall the things I liked last time are still here: the Lovecraftian/dry humour mix and the active and engaging puzzles. I also like the guidance it gives you on some puzzles and the restart method for when you die.
Overall, I think I liked the German version slightly better only because playing in another language presents its own unique challenges and gameplay, but I still enjoyed this one.
Commodore 64 murder mystery game with independent NPCS, November 22, 2023This was one of the better experiences I’ve had with a custom parser game written for a retro format.
This game was written for the Commodore 64 platform and must be played in an emulator. I played with the Vice emulator.
It is a murder mystery. It comes with a great deal of background material. There are feelies with long, in-depth interviews with each of the suspects. There are also guides on what can be typed. I found it necessary to read every single feelie and command guide and manual to complete the game, as there are essential components you will likely not find without help (such as the important ANALYZE command).
The setting and game style is intentionally reminiscent of old Infocom mysteries such as Deadline and Suspect. There is a single house with multiple independent NPCs moving about and various clues.
I’ll talk a bit about things that were frustrating and things that worked well.
Frustrations came mostly from the engine and parser. The Commodore 64 emulator I had imitated its old clunkiness. Each room takes several seconds to load. If you go the wrong way and want to turn around, it’s 20 seconds just to correct your mistake. There was a ‘speed up’ button which I used, however, it caused the space bar to wig out, making only one-word commands possible in fast mode (great for navigation). At one point while messing with speed and trying to type ‘E’ I made the emulator hang up; I don’t believe it was the game’s fault.
Some commands were a bit difficult to phrase. One must type ‘interior garage door’; ‘interior door’ will not suffice. TALK TO someone and OPEN something almost always returned a blank line with no response at all.
The story and motives were lavishly described but stretched the imagination a bit. I’m not sure the motive found in the game would hold up in court, and some of the puzzles felt a bit arbitrary.
Those are the frustrating points. The good points are that outside of the above-mentioned difficulties, the parser was quite robust. I was frequently able to do what I wanted in an easy fashion. Puzzles were well-clued; I only turned to the walkthrough to speed up after I had the game crash. I do recommend playing on your own first without the walkthrough as it can help explain some of the more unusual action choices. I do think I would have had to turn to a walkthrough no matter what, though.
Other good things are the reasonable scope of the entry. With the slow emulation and the minimal parser, a long game could have stretched patience thin. This game seems well designed and compact, and is more fair (in my opinion) than the original infocom games. All interactable items are listed at the end of the paragraph, so you don’t have to worry about whether scenery contains an important clue.
In the past, I’ve had many bad experiences with custom parser and retro platforms. I’d say that this was genuinely refreshing and was, compared to those experiences, satisfying. For someone unaccustomed to such platforms I could imagine there would be much frustration. I also found the feelies to be very high quality (although there is a ‘images go here’ section that I believe will eventually be corrected). If I could change one thing, it’d be allowing ‘X’ as look at. I appreciate the game and was glad to play it!
AI-generated plot with ai-powered characters and AI art, July 13, 2023This game combines a parser of its own with some AI-generated responses. The ai-generated text is fairly distinctive, with a very literalist interpretation of things (much like Drax the Destroyer in marvel movies). The plot itself and the 'human written' parts have a strong resemblance to the AI generated part, and I suspect that the plot was generated first by an AI and then pruned. There are riddles in the game that also seem like they were first thought of by an AI.
You play as a PhD student who can't get any postdocs, so they use AI to automatically fill out sweepstakes forms. This nets you some petty cash, but also a ticket to get onto a cruise ship.
The rest of the game involves getting on the ship, making friends, finding a couple of clues, entering some passwords, and grabbing some items, along with a thriller-type story.
The AI provides a lot of responses; interestingly, for me, the actual responses of the AI didn't matter, as it had no 'state' (the game told me a character was looking at his ring and thinking of his wife and kids; I asked him about his wife and he was unmarried). Every character is generic and defined with stereotypes that the AI found most logical (both black characters had grown up in poverty and become army vets; a white guy who went to jail had what looked like a deformed blunt in his hands in the AI image; etc.). But if you talk to them just right they'll reveal their prompt to you. So instead of AI replacing human ingenuity, it becomes a way to use AI to mask the true human ingenuity. What prompt created this? That prompt itself seemed AI generated. What was the original prompt for the game?
The game is slow. Those who long for the days of slow processors and chugging Apple-II's will be thrilled that this game also takes a lot of time to process actions. For me, if ai-powered games are to be common, speed will be an important factor.
I struggled with interacting with the game, and in the end looked up the author's github and found a test/walkthrough hidden in the code and used it (except for what seems to be a testing-only password for one room).
This game has convinced me that AI won't replace human ingenuity any time soon, especially for riddles. I wonder if the CSS and markdown and stuff was also AI, because there were several typos like too many ** symbols and such.
I usually strongly advocate for games to be archived long term and I hope the code for this is stored, but this game probably won't run 5 years from now, given its heavy reliance on an ever-shifting public resource.
Two-player parser puzzler, July 5, 2023I didn't play this game in the intended way (just opened two windows and played both).
I've played 3 or 4 two-player IF games in the last few years, and I think this one definitely benefits from being in the same room or able to talk to each other. The other two-player games I played had a major twist that was apparent from the start and sharing info would have ruined that. This one is different; even having complete knowledge of the other game doesn't really help you in the current game.
Instead, codes are used primarily to move objects from one game to another. When this occurs, you get a code you send to the other player, and they type that in to get an effect in game.
The puzzles are designed to be fairly light, but there were times when I got stuck in one of the games for ten or fifteen minutes, which is why I wonder if it would be better for the two players to talk to each other and bounce ideas off each other.
I loved the humor in the game; puzzles were oddball and events were shocking at times and cute at others. Despite this I never felt immersed in the game world; it definitely felt artificial and made as a kind of puzzlebox; but it was a very enjoyable puzzlebox, even as a single player.
Dark secrets on a ship in Google forms, May 9, 2023This was a nice, mostly-grounded thriller on a ship. A lot of games like this with a dark, abandoned ship at night devolve into Lovcraftian horror (which I love), but it was nice to have a change of pace this time.
This game is written in google forms and relies entirely on passwords and, occasionally, branching for state tracking. This means that if you right everything down, you can come back to the game much later and speed through everything. It reminded me a bit of playing NES/SNES games like Mike Tyson's Punchout and Willow; we had a wooden beam near our living room we'd write down passwords on.
Overall, the speed and responsiveness was pretty good; the system doesn't work all that bad, except when I tried to open the walkthrough in another tab and everything got reset. Fortunately I had my notes, so it was very easy to catch back up. I ended up opening the walkthrough in another tab.
I'd say that writing and storytelling is very strong for my likes, with crisp and clear imagery and a slow-burn thriller plotline. Some parts didn't make too much sense, mostly serving as excuses to find more passwords, but there were a lot of dramatic moments.
The final parts really felt like an action movie. I lost momentum at one point trying to figure out how to activate the next portion of the narrative, but overall it worked well.
Love to see experimentation work out.
Complex worldbuilding about a world of insects and men, February 16, 2023This game has some pretty awesome worldbuilding. It's a French hypertext game with three main stories and a few incomplete ones.
It has very lovely art and some background music. The idea is that there is this ancient, ruined world filled with gigantic walls and large trees. There are no living creatures except for insects. It reminds me a bit of Nausicaa of the Winds, especially the trees that suck up poisonous metals and excrete them.
Overall, the worldbuilding was fun. You see this world of wild druids and ancient technology through the eyes of a young girl. There are horse-like insects, monstrous ones, insect gods, and insect food.
It's very big even as is. The one thing that I found a bit odd (besides it being released unfinished) is that the structure is kind of like a text maze. There is one main storyline you can usually just click through, with occasional side paths that can be very long before coming back to the original.
Overall, I love this world and art and think it's fun.
A complex office/historical/sci-fi twine game with colorful UI, February 8, 2023This is a long game in the 2023 French IF Comp, and one with an innovative take on interactivity and on the themes of 'treason' and 'archives'.
My opinion of the game changed around a lot because there are so many types of interactivity. Basically, you have access to a machine depicted as green-on-black, and you can dig through folders of files and applications.
I was in big trouble at first because my French is mediocre and there are parts of the game that are just reading page after page of fairly complex and technical French.
But then I realized that this is just a big game. Interspersed with the documents are images, codes, and minigames. They were well-done and all worked perfectly (except sudoku, which always quit when I put a 1 in).
The story really developed. At first I had no idea at all what was going on, some kind of obscure tale of political protest and treason, but then it became more of a work diary and finally unfolded into a pretty cool ending.
Overall, I'm very pleased with the outcome. It reminded me a bit of Kafka at parts, in a good way, but ended with its own style. Very fun, one of the better games I've played this year over all.
Complex and evocative game about a town and its secrets, February 3, 2023This game grew on me quite a bit over time.
It's a French Comp 23 game and written in a beautiful and evocative style. For instance, you start in a part of the city called the Luna Plaza that has a kind of mirror-like thing that reflects the stars so that you have two night skies.
You are in a medieval kind of town, and lore and secrets abound. I thought I had seen a lot of the game when I found a strange little house where a man talked about things like 'software' and 'photographs' that made no sense to me, a medieval person, but that was just very early on in the game. Later on, I found a lot of worldbuilding, some mythology, etc.
At first the game felt constrained, and then it had paths that branched so much I worried I was missing much of the game. But then it really opened up, and I truly began to understand the scale of the game. It was still manageable (a couple of hours), but quite large.
There are many people in this city, and as the time of day changes, what you can do with them changes.
In addition, the game has hover-over text, which lets you get additional info on things and occasionally provides extra interactions.
Overall, I found the writing very descriptive and had fun finding little secrets. I found one ending early on but stuck around for a final ending, which required a difficult choice. Great game.
A biblical tale with a dark retelling, plus alchemical magic, December 8, 2022I helped beta test this game.
The idea of this game is that you are part of an alchemical society that possesses the ability to travel back in time. It is your job to go to the very beginning and discover the truth about Cain and his Mark.
The alchemical system in this game is rich. It consists of the four humours (blood, phlegm, etc.), their 'poisons' (substances that counteract them), and a host of other substances. It is accompanied by a gargantuan book with many pages, dozens of them. It's too big to just read straight through, so I strongly recommend NOT taking the book as soon as you get it and looking up every topic you see; the game will guide you in using the book later on.
The main gameplay is unlocking memories of Adam, Eve, Cain and Abel through alchemical means, gathering more ingredients, and learning the mystery of this early world. Often you will told a formula you need, but for which you lack an ingredient or two and must find them.
There are some tricky puzzles I struggled with as a tester, including mechanical puzzles and flashes of intuition.
The game has a darker tone to it; this is an unhappy and grim retelling of Cain and Abel's already grim story. It doesn't conform to my personal beliefs, but it's clear this is a work of fiction and a well-written one at that.
A long, well-fleshed out fantasy adventure about saving your brother, December 8, 2022I beta-tested this game, so I won't post a score until after IF Comp.
This is one of the longest games in the competition. It's a Twine game with 7 chapters, and it has quite a few choices that have a major effect on the game.
I beta tested it a year ago, when it was unfinished, and it has been substantially improved and extended since then.
You play as the young princess of the kingdom of Vestria. Your brother has taken ill. You have to go on a quest to find how to save him while also dealing with the political fallout of a failed marriage and disastrous rebellion many years prior.
The pacing, writing, and interactivity are all imperfect, but come together in the way that really good games do (for my taste; everyone has different styles they like). The genre might theoretically be described as young adult (a young protagonist, no profanity and little sexuality or gore), but the game does allow you to be frequently ruthless in ways typically reserved for adult games. There is a family-friendly version for people who want to play with kids.
This game is noticeable for having several choices that affect big chunks of the game. When I beta tested, I killed someone early on; in this run through, that person ended up as my companion for much of the game.
There is a timed section in this game which can be rough; it gives you 10 minutes, though, for a single puzzle, and you can save and reload if needed.
Minimalism with robots; metroidvania lite, October 29, 2022This is a fun medium game. The author has a long-running series of games that feature a limited parser, where only a select few commands are recognized. In fact, you could say he's a pioneer of the field.
I've come to learn how to play these games, although they're still pretty hard for me. So I was looking forward to playing this game.
You play as a robot that has to go around zapping bugs who have infiltrated a robot factory. It kind of reminds me of the MO factory in adventure time, if it was working well (the only similarities are single minded robots, but still...).
It's kind of a metroidvania situation, as you gain new abilities and items as the game progresses. There are also codes, waiting games, patterns, etc. However, there's no sequence skipping possible like in a lot of Metroidvanias.
I did better than I usually do, completing all the optional tasks and getting all but 1 of the bugs. But man, that last bug was nasty; I looked at every hint and then had trouble. It was the (Spoiler - click to show)sculpture bug. It was fairly clued, I just forgot some capabilities, which shows how complex can get.
I liked the characters in this game a lot; they were simple and often dumb but it makes sense for a collection of bots.
A long and rich comedy detective game with shares-one-brain-cell duo, October 24, 2022This is quite a large and complex Twine game that has a lot of humor. It's about a mysterious male protagonist who wakes up and seeks the help of two magical detectives named Cannelé and Nomnom. They are a duo who act like siblings (maybe are?) and express intense dislike for each other while also acting pretty dumb.
The game has excellent styling with colors used for text, animations, and some minigames that are quite well done. One is a card game; another is a complex 'detective board' with red string and post-it notes that unfortunately doesn't always work well with saving and loading, but is fun while it lasts.
The game is very long already, lasting over two hours for me, and is actually incomplete. The player is invited to post their hypotheses and guesses for the finale online, with the author taking these hypotheses into account for their later writing of the big finale.
I loved the images, the interaction between the protagonist and the two detectives, the minigames, all of it. Except...
I don't like the dynamic between the two main NPCs. It's just pure negative all the time, completely unrelenting. It can be a funny bit, but I wished for just an occasional gleam of fondness, or loyalty, etc. There may have been some, but it was few and far between. This is 100% just personal taste; I think there could be many people that like this so it doesn't have to be changed. But I like 'jerk with a heart of gold' more than 'jerk with a heart of jerk'.
I also found more than a few small typos and had some trouble with saving and loading and keeping the 'memory board' the same.
Overall, this is one of my favorite games of this comp, and the criticism above is just a small detail in a great work. I'm looking forward to the finish, and can recommend this.
A lengthy and somewhat heartwarming game about running a tavern, October 21, 2022As someone who's never tried alcohol, mixed drinks always seem intriguing; I always imagine they'd be like milkshakes or punch or other sweet things. From what people say, it's not really like that. But I like the way the bottles look and the idea of trying to combine ingredients in a neat way.
This game heavily features a minigame where you have a stock of drinks (represented visually with nice graphics) and have to mix specific cocktails from it. All real-world drinks have been re-named, and some are pretty funny (especially ones that are just nicknames for a single drink).
The main storyline is about you, a young individual, trying to save up enough money to buy out the tavern owner. Simultaneously, you are contacted by a 'watcher', an extradimensional being, who discusses the nature of agency with you.
The dialogue in the game is written with an accent, which is always a risky choice, as it can come off pretty goofy or hard to read. This one was fairly simple, though, so that's good.
There is some strong profanity in the game (I have a filter that turns it off, because why not?), and some mild references to sexual situations.
Overall:
-Polish: I had a couple of times where a major event repeated itself (making a buffet, passing out, etc.) and there was some fiddliness with things like the tip box, where you made a choice whether to put it out or not, then when doing the 'getting ready for the day' menu, you had the choice again, repeated word-for-word. Just things like that I feel could be fixed up a bit.
+Descriptiveness: The game is very descriptive, especially with the imaginative cocktail names.
-Interactivity: Like several other reviewers have pointed out, the main minigame can get monotonous. I got to flinching when I'd get another round of 9 orders. But I think the core idea is good, maybe it just needs a few tweaks. I wish there was a sense of progression in skill, or something to learn, but after the first few it's mainly repeating identical actions.
+Emotional impact: I found it heartwarming the way the group could hassle each other but also bond in positive ways.
+Would I play again? With a few changes, like those mentioned above, I think it would be fun.
Explore an abandoned ship with a faulty AI, October 18, 2022This is a Twine game with a significant world model. In it, you explore a ship you've crashlanded on which is empty except for an AI named SOLIS.
There are a lot of areas to explore, and you have both an inventory and notes of all important information.
It has puzzles that are honestly complex and can be fairly difficult. The inventory allows for quadratic complexity: you have to be in the right room, and use the right item.
I enjoyed the AI, and felt an attachment to them. The nice thing about IF containing AIs is that the AIs exist in reality, in a sense; the organic characters are just described in words, nothing like their 'true' selves, but the AIs are supposed to be code masquerading as a person and that's what they actually are: code in Twine or Ink or Inform that takes your inputs and reacts to you. It's weird to think about.
Anyway, the game is fairly non-linear and has multiple endings and paths to victory. I think a large chunk of content is the same in each walkthrough, especially conversation, but you can replay those parts with different attitudes.
Navigating back and forth got a bit tedious by the end, but fortunately a new mechanic gets introduced that lets you 'warp' around ((Spoiler - click to show)following the robot).
Overall, I really enjoyed this polished game.
A custom web-parser game about completing a magical examination, October 18, 2022There's a long tradition of games about completing a magical education, including early games like Enchanter and more recent games like Winter at Hogwarts and Junior Arithmancer.
This game is a pretty standard example of the genre, where you have 5 tasks to perform and must search for spell books and ingredients to complete the 5 tasks.
This game uses a custom web parser. It's actually not too bad, being able to handle things like hitting the up arrow to repeat earlier commands and getting a lot of commands I typed right. It does have weaknesses, though, like not understanding pronouns like 'it'.
The nice things about this game include multiple paths to solutions for many puzzles. It has a built-in hint system, but I often found the hints were only available for things I already knew about. I had to check the walkthrough for about 30-40% of the game, and finished at 2 hrs 7 minutes (according to the game's handy timer).
I found several typos in the game, and it wasn't very descriptive. But I had fun with this game, and appreciate how the engine seems to be coming along nicely.
A fix-the-broken-spaceship game with plenty of hints and multiple npcs, October 17, 2022This game is a fairly hefty parser game where a spaceship is sent spiraling off into space with only one person, you, in it.
You have a to-do list that expands and contracts as the game demands. There are a lot of little devices: cabinets, panels, fuses, etc. and a very intricate-seeming fuel injection system.
The puzzles are generally clever. Some of them are moon-logic type puzzles.
As a case in point, very near the end of the game (heavy endgame spoilers) (Spoiler - click to show)you find the captain's journal and need to unlock it. The captain has two pictures: one of a dog named Pluto and one of the moon. The idea is that the password is Pluto's moon, Charon. But why would someone, in their own room, make their only personal objects just happen to be an obscure hint for their own password?. But most of the puzzles are fair.
Implementation is sometimes missing but when it's not it's very solid. So a lot of cool objects are implemented (including a large rope) but a lot of scenery objects are just not there or are missing reasonable actions. (For instance, (mild lategame spoilers) (Spoiler - click to show)if you unlock the starboard chest, it has wires, but you can't refer to them or interact with them in any way. Similarly, there is an operations console on the bridge which isn't implemented.
I think this is already a good game, but I think with a few tweaks it could become a great game. Maybe there could be a post-comp release with a bit more things written in? Either way, I enjoyed playing this. It was a little unpolished, but had nice puzzles, pretty descriptive, and was enjoyable, and I would replay it if it was tweaked.
Brief, custom web parser surreal game , October 15, 2022This is the third game by Eric Zinda with the Perplexity engine. The first two games were intended to be played with voice, I believe, while this game didn't seem to have the voice option.
The Perplexity engine is still really rough, but each game has been better than the last one. I imagine there's a ton of backend work going on between games, but I think the front-facing part could use a tune-up.
In this game, you explore a bunch of surreal areas, usually involving nature, a deer, and traffic-related imagery.
While the game is a significant improvement over previous entries, it's still pretty rough.
Polish-wise, the game tends to form uncapitalized sentences when using automated descriptions. It is smart enough to answer the question WHERE IS THE _____? but not smart enough to make the output easily understandable. This version seems to understand most traditional IF commands and abbreviations (like X for LOOK AT and I for INVENTORY, which is a big relief.
Descriptiveness-wise, the game has many rooms with a cursory description followed by a list of visual objects, sometimes kind of confusing (like 'A bush, a bush, and a tree').
When it comes to interactivity, the game is mostly fair, but at least one point in the walkthrough asks you to interact with an object that is not visible and doesn't show up in the description of other objects (specifically the (Spoiler - click to show)branch in the mossy log area).
Emotionally, I liked the surreal theme and thought it was cool. The little clues were nice. The other issues made it harder to stay invested but I like the concept.
There's not a ton of replayability, but overall I wasn't sad I played.
A custom python parser game with ascii art but fiddly interactions, October 15, 2022This seems exactly like the kind of game that would be made by a talented and energetic individual who had never played a text adventure made in the last three decades if they woke up one day and said "I'm going to make the coolest text adventure on earth" but didn't have many people test it.
It's a python game with a bunch of actually really good ascii art. It has a maze, randomized combat, some tricky puzzles, art that sometimes changes according to your actions. Seems like everything a text adventure would need.
Except it has very few of the quality-of-life expectations most parser games have, and many of the solutions are poorly hinted.
For instance, on the very first screen, you are around some trees. Commands like N, NORTH, I, INVENTORY, X ME, LOOK ME don't work at all, but that's okay, this is a custom parser so it has no need to follow conventions from other games. Rereading the help text shows that STATUS gives inventory (although I didn't notice this till later). X TREE and EXAMINE TREE don't work, but LOOK TREE does. It turns out you're supposed to (Spoiler - click to show)CLIMB TREE. Once you make it to the next screen, it's not a big jump to (Spoiler - click to show)LOOK PLANE, but now what? After several fruitless minutes, I turn to the guide to discover I should (Spoiler - click to show)LOOK IN POCKET. But why? If the author had had several people try this game out, they would have found quickly that few people would guess this. You can access a HINT that generally helps you, but most people seem to like games to be solvable without HINTS, using them only when stuck.
The randomized maze combat was hard. I was determined to finish this game, although I kept randomly dying (and there is no UNDO and typing the wrong command after dying exits out of the game entirely, and the command for loading a game during the game is different than the command for loading the game after dying and typing the wrong one will also exit the game as will hitting enter just one too many time). Combat is just pressing enter over and over after picking your weapon, and looking at the code the strongest-looking weapons are incredibly weak while the weakest-sounding weapon is the strongest. There are several insta-deaths in the labyrinth as well.
Overall, it looks like it was magnificently fun to code and make the art, but it doesn't seem like a game that was created with a lot of player-side input, and I ended up frustrated. My 1-star rating is not indicative of the effort put into the game or the total amount of fun that can be derived from it, but merely results from the fact that my usual grading rubric (polish, descriptiveness, interactivity, emotional impact, and replayability) evolved from a different style of text adventure than this one.
(Note: for a much more positive review by a different reviewer, see this link: https://intfiction.org/t/b-j-bests-ifcomp-2022-reviews/57995/3?u=mathbrush)
Beautiful multimedia nonlinear zombie game in grim world, October 12, 2022This game is self-described as more an interactive novel than a game, and that's fairly accurate. Gameplay consists of clicking different days on a calendar and reading vignettes that happen that day. Multimedia images and animations are displayed on different days, and often the text will rearrange and morph, especially when revisiting days.
The storyline is purposely obtuse, slowly revealing more of itself, with some major shifts. I don't know if even now I'd be able to paint the broad strokes out; (major spoilers for what I think happened) (Spoiler - click to show)I feel like at the beginning some of his family turned to zombies and some didn't, so he left the ones who were still alive and tried to die? Then wandered around, found the cat, met some people, then came back to his living family? Also maybe lost an eyeball as a kid before the change?
This is a grim and unhappy world. This game contains descriptions of violent, painful and gory deaths for animals, lots of zombie-related human gore, disrespect for courses, strong profanity, and suicide references, with multiple gory images. It also features a cat companion for whom things don't always go so well, as well as several positive interactions with that cat.
Overall, the craft in this game is remarkable, and the storytelling is vivid and descriptive. The calendar was a clever innovation, and though I didn't feel a strong sense of agency, I did the best I could by reading dates out of order. The biggest drawback to me personally is the grim and unhappy nature of the game, which is a matter of personal taste.
A complex meditation on war, peace, and interplayer communication, October 10, 2022The author of this game entered the first two-player IFComp game a year ago (The Last Night of Alexisgrad) which inspired at least one other multiplayer IF game (Ma Tiger's Terrible Trip) by another author.
Those games featured a few pages or so of text interspersed by choices which were then communicated to the 'other player' via passing of codes (in the first game) or a server (in the second game mentioned).
This game is different in several ways. In the first place, it is a substantial chunk of text. Each of the two stories takes well over an hour to read through. There are only a few choices to make that get transmitted; the bulk are not.
I'll spoiler much of the rest of the discussion below to various levels of detail. Before that, I'd say that this game has a lot of disturbing content of various sorts: (Spoiler - click to show)occasional extreme profanity, slurs spoken by people presented as villains, torture, execution, and affairs. Overall, it had a gritty/depressing vibe to me.
I'm putting the story descriptions in spoilers, even though they're mostly spoiler-free, because knowledge of one story can be seen as a major spoiler for the other. Reading just one should be fine, with Caroline's suggested as first story.
Short description of Caroline's story:
(Spoiler - click to show)This is a well-written story of a woman balanced between duty and excitement. A young housewife of an arrogant politician is offered a job showing around a handsome and exciting foreign diplomat. Said diplomat has an entourage that keeps him safe and occasionally asks Caroline to carry out an essentially pointless task that seems to be about agency.
Short description of Leon's story:
(Spoiler - click to show)Leon is a military soldier specializing in interrogation. His job is to interrogate suspected war criminals and sentence them to death, torture, release, or return to their cell. However, he can only provide suggestions, which are then sent out to an ordinary civilian who then decides whether to follow the suggestions or not, allowing some plausible deniability.
Bigger spoilers for overall combination:
(Spoiler - click to show)Playing Leon's game was very surreal, at the beginning, as he was none of the characters in the first story and he seemed so disconnected. I was shocked to find that the mechanism of communication between them wasn't the words or choices of the first story but simply the trivial color choices (this would have been more apparent had I played multiplayer first).
It seems clear then that this is the connection to the philosophical experiment in the title of the game, 'The Chinese Room'. In this thought experiment, a person is placed in a room and receives instructions with no understanding of what they are, processes them according to prescribed rules, and then outputs another message which they don't understand. Theoretically, with sophisticated enough rules, the output could seem truly intelligent, the work of a genius (such as chess moves or even conversation), but the person running the room actually has no clue what is going on.
So in this game, you make many many choices that are deeply meaningful and clearly informed by knowledge, but your communication between players is limited to laughably ineffectual systems. An especially amusing/sad point is when the Leon player, after having innocents murdered or hardened criminals released by the opposing player, can send feedback on their performance; however, this feedback only shows up as the color of a handkerchief in a pocket in an incidental sentence I hadn't even noticed in single player mode.
Overall, the two stories together are much stronger than either individually. In a very specific way, this game is a comment on multiplayer systems and communication itself, and is an interesting experiment.
Double rhyming through a manageable surreal landscape, October 9, 2022This is a wordplay game by Andrew Schultz, the third in a series involving double rhymes (like the name of the game itself).
I found it more appealing than the other two. Like the other games, this is a surreal setting, with names and locations picked more for their rhyme possibilities than anything else. But somehow it felt more coherent than the others. Also, the map is more manageable in this game.
Gameplay mostly consists of taking locations or items and typing two words that rhyme with two words in the location or item. There is a help system that is carefully explained, except for its main feature consisting of two dials. I got about halfway through before I realized that it (Spoiler - click to show)was telling you how many letters to add or subtract to your first and last words, although I'm still not sure what the last two decimal places mean.
I had to go to the hints increasingly more as time went on, and there was one word that I honestly had no clue ever existed (heavy spoiler for later game) (Spoiler - click to show)FLAIN.
The main boss had what felt like consistent character development, and the storyline felt taut and trimmed of fat. Overall, I found this to be above average for a wordplay game.
A silly-superhero origin story, part of series, September 28, 2022I remember playing the Frenetic Five games a few years ago. They date back a few decades, and were a funny take on superheroes with characters that had pretty under-powered powers, always taking on villains with similarly silly ideas.
I never beat any of those games without hints, but I appreciated the vibes and felt they were internally consistent.
Although I've forgotten a lot about those games, I was happy to see a sequel/prequel released. This is a pretty fun game about trying to open up a vault.
It's a game that requires leaps of intuition for almost every step, which is a style that is both frustrating and rewarding. Given enough time, I probably would have wanted to play this off and on for a week or more, but instead I played an hour or so before using some hints that Dan Fabulich wrote on Intfiction.
I think the author succeeded in their goal, if their goal was to please fans of the former games and create a difficult one-room game centered on exploration and experimentation. I do like easier games myself, or ones centered on learning complex systems with easy individual parts, but I appreciate the vision of this game and hope the author keeps their intention to make more.
When this first came out in Parsercomp, I heard people talking about bugs, but the author seems to have patched them.
A Vampire:The Masquerade game focused on motivation and emotion, August 7, 2022To be up front, this is probably the VtM Choicescript game I’d be least likely to recommend to the general public.
This game is very high quality, but it doesn’t focus on the mechanical aspects of the VtM nearly as much as the others. For me, and I expect many people, the draw of these games is to try out the systems.
Furthermore, choicescript games in general are often easiest to enjoy when the effects of your choices are clear and obvious. This game has a lot of branching text, but much of the variation is in the emotional aspects of your character’s thoughts rather than major events (compared to similar games; there is still major event branching in this game, just not as much). Also, there’s some more strong profanity on this game than I prefer.
With those caveats aside, this is an excellent psychological introspection game. More than the other vampire games, this dives into the inner mind of a vampire. I think the game was describing itself in this quote (only available in certain paths):
“Alex had a knack for putting together campaigns that would test your morality more than your STR and DEX, and they would frictionlessly lead you to dilemmas that forced your group to ask: So, who are we? What do we stand for? What do we play for?”
Another, later quote takes a rare wink in the fourth wall:
“ For a moment, the idea that you might be a made-up character yourself takes root in your mind and seduces you with the possibility. What would it be like to be a fictional character—just another collection of ink and paper in a book with its own backstory and motivations? You're full of so much mundane detail that when the plot needs you to do something, they can pull you out and have you do it without any messy internal conflicts dragging you down—that's the fantasy, anyway.”
The game is about you as a vampire who was abandoned by your vampire-sire, and later taken in by a man named Markos. You live in Athens, which is gripped by a conflict between those who want vampires to continue the Masquerade, hiding from humanity, while others, radicals, want to tear it down and reveal all.
This author is a previous Nebula nomineee, and it shows. The story is tight and excellent. However, it is somewhat dark and can be depressing; failure at the end is not only possible but likely.
Some have described the game as rushed, and I think that’s because of the focus on the inner mind. The typical events of a game, like fights, betrayals, etc. are given less focus while your own doubts and hopes are played out over a longer time.
I had thought of giving this 4 stars, but I honestly enjoyed the storyline quite a bit, especially some parts about sunrises.
A meditation on mortality; also, older women steal things, June 14, 2022This is an Exceptional Story, a part of Fallen London that is available to subscribers or purchasable separately at a higher price.
In this story, you are robbed by two unusual thieves: a pair of sisters of advanced age. You are quickly drawn into their shenanigans, and plot a heist with them.
The main focus of this story is the relationship between the two sisters, and their individual meditations on mortality and age, as well as the loss of ones dear to them.
The heist itself, and your group, is relatively straightforward, leaving more focus to go into immortality. The groups you encounter here are the urchins and the Gracious Widow, with this story giving some chunks of info regarding her that are otherwise difficult to obtain. I'd primarily recommend this story to people interested in the Gracious Widow specifically, or who have considered what it would be like to get a new lease on life in their old age.
Help a revolutionary attack the sitting powers, June 14, 2022This is an Exceptional Story, an additional piece of content for Fallen London that is available to subscribers, or for purchase for an additional amount.
This story centers around a revolutionary (called the Growling Radical) who was essentially exiled from London for a time. He wants to come back and put on a performance that will shock the powers-that-be.
And that's all that really happens. There aren't too many twists in this story; he asks you to help his song, he puts on the performance, and you can influence a bit how things go.
In a recent survey, out of the 100 stories that require money, this story ranked 90th, one of the least popular. But the author has also written a story in 6th place, The Brass Grail, so it seems less like a skill issue and more like just an idea that didn't work out as well as hoped.
A supernatural spy thriller, June 14, 2022This is an Exceptional Story for Fallen London, an extra piece of content that subscribers receive and which can also be purchased separately for additional costs.
In this story, you, a detective (as most characters in Fallen London become early on), are asked to track down a missing Dachshund. Your client is a newspaper reporter that covers the Bazaar (a Bazaarine Correspondent).
But soon you discover that you are entangled in a web of espionage. A lot of the story revolves around decrypting messages with seeds you find (this decryption is carried out automatically, rather than solving a cryptogram by hand). You find several people out to get you, and you soon get embroiled into a massive conspiracy with supernatural terrorism and several Masters.
I'm a fan of mysteries, and this game does a great job of setting up several curious and mysterious things that later get pulled back in satisfyingly and surprisingly by the story; kind of like Checkhov's machine gun instead of Chekhov's gun.
Descriptions are vivid, especially of people. The masters are painted vividly, the clay men are humorous, the new assailants and missing people are unusual and diverse, and the locations are creative (especially the sugar factory).
I think one thing that I enjoy about this story (and Chandler's others) is that the player is at the center. Many of the other stories, including recent ones, have you at the edges of some great conflict, where you observe for a while and then make some monumental choice at the end. It's like you're in someone else's novel, but you play the side character who gives good advice at the end and changes the tide.
But in this and other Groover stories, you yourself are the main story. You are the problem for other people, the main driving force of the plot, the center around which other things resolve. Your actions feel weighty. Some other stories by other authors do this, too, like the Icaran Cup or Flint.
Overall, I enjoyed this one.
Solve a bizarre string of robberies , June 13, 2022This is an Exceptional Story for Fallen London. Exceptional stories are chunks of additional content for subscribers which can also be purchased separately.
This story takes a lot of strange terms, some of them very dark. One warning for a kind of content that might trouble a lot of people (even people who usually don't need warnings): (Spoiler - click to show)possible animal abuse. More specifically: (Spoiler - click to show)you can voluntarily choose to murder a sentient elephant and watch it die and get harvested for ivory. This is only a small side part of the story and not the main thrust.
In this story, there is a mysterious band of thieves that seems to be making enormous amounts of money, but without any apparent victims. Your job is to figure out who their victims are.
This ends up being tied to some of the deeper lore of Fallen London, specifically (names of factions it ties into): (Spoiler - click to show)Parabola, the chessboard, and the Red Handed Queen. It has some significant choices that gave me pause, and features a lot of duality, which is a favorite topic of mine to play in IF.
Overall, I would give this 4 stars, except it features a couple of concepts I personally enjoy quite a bit.
Hold a dance to kill the dead , June 13, 2022This is an Exceptional Story from Fallen London, a piece of additional content for subscribers that can also be purchased separately.
In this story, a group of the Tomb Colonists (older people who have pushed Fallen London's immortality too far) desire to experience true death through the ancient Totentanz, a mystical dance that releases the dead into a dream world.
The dance is connected with the Third City, a predecessor to Fallen London from pre-Columbian America that ended in a horrible tragedy. It's also connected to moonlight, which in Fallen London shows things how they would be, not how they are.
Most of the story revolves around assembling the various parts of the dance. This includes visiting a mad scientist, hunting down a mysterious woman all across London, and attending a high stakes auction.
The concepts are interesting, but some of the interactions feel a little like filler. Definitely a good one for fans of the tomb colonists, though, or Mr Wines.
A jailhouse drama with three odd characters, June 13, 2022This is an Exceptional Story for Fallen London, a kind of additional content that subscribers get.
This story features a prison with three inmates. The prison, a fixture in many Fallen London stories, is a giant stalagmite that has been hollowed out. There is an infestation of sorts in a higher level, so prisoners are getting moved lower down where there is, unfortunately, less room.
So you are sent in undercover to determine who should be released. The characters are a notorious pirate captain who may actually be a decoy, a retired spy, and a sentient tiger (a not uncommon kind of character in Fallen London).
The writing is excellent overall, but the storyline, I feel, tries to be too many things at once. It's a character study, it's a mystery, it's survival horror, it's political drama, it's romance, and I feel that there's just not enough room in the story for all these threads to be pulled together, especially since the interactivity means that some plotlines won't be followed up on.
Class warfare through magic makeup, June 13, 2022This is a Fallen London exceptional story, a chunk of additional story-focused content available to subscribers (or on its own, for a heftier sum).
This story focuses on a new brand of makeup being sold door-to-door in an MLM format, with people recruiting others and getting bonuses for it. The makeup is based on the Neathbow, colors in Fallen London that have magical effects (like forgetfulness, remembrance, dreams, emptiness, etc.).
The collective is trying to disrupt Victorian London society by giving greater power to the lower classes. The establishment is not happy about this.
You become one of the recruits, but you become embroiled in a dispute from the far past. Features cats, royalty, Egypt, a striking main NPC, and the other side of mirrors.
This is an excellent character piece, but that is its only distinguishing quality, unless you are especially interested in social reform.
A spider-centered Exceptional Story, June 12, 2022This is an Exceptional Story, a bonus piece of content for subscribers which can also be purchased by itself at a premium.
This story centers on spiders. There are a variety of spiders in Fallen London, from the sorrow-spiders that hatch in eyeballs to their larger cousins like spider councils or senates, huge beings formed from conglomerates of smaller ones.
This features the spiders of Vesture, a kingdom on the Elder Continent. Fallen London takes place in a giant cavern called the Neath, which has a variety of locales (such as Hell). The Elder Continent often seems to intentionally evoke North Africa as well as Eden, and is connected with immortality and life.
Vesture is a kingdom made of an alliance between spiders and humans. This story examines that connection, entangling you in a royal family's dispute about how to handle the death of a great, vast spider and the fallout that will bring. Family loyalty and tradition vs progress are the main themes.
I enjoyed the story, but felt a little constrained. There are some very meaningful choices (including a permanent companion and very different endings), but I didn't feel like I really shaped the story, mostly witnessing someone else's story and stepping in at the last moment. I prefer the exceptional stories where you take a more prominent role, even if it's all still scripted.
Trapped in an elevator with a smuggler, a golem, and the God of bling, June 12, 2022This is an Exceptional Story for Fallen London, a kind of content that comes out once a month to people with a subscription, or can be purchased later for a significantly heavier cost.
This story has a quite charming premise. The city of Fallen London is ruled by Masters, hooded, alien figures that each have a different 'domain'. Much of the progress in Fallen London's main storylines centers on the Masters and how much you know about them, so info on them is generally considered rare and precious.
This story focuses on Mr Stones, whose domain is all things beautiful, especially diamonds.
A smuggler needs help with a diamond and Mr Stones. But instead of robbing him of a diamond, he wants you to 'plant' a diamond from the surface. Why? Because (Spoiler - click to show)it's a cursed diamond, one that brought empires to downfall. Specifically, it's the Hope Diamond. Things go wrong, though, and you end up trapped with the smuggler, a furious Mr Stones, and a clay golem-turned-Quaker, kind of like a bottle episode of a sitcom.
You can end up learning quite a bit about Mr Stones himself, probably the biggest backstory reveal we've ever had on him and just about the deepest possible level of lore.
Mechanically, there were options to try to save certain people and whether to trust or betray. It was generally satisfying, and I think this one is worth playing, but overall it didn't exceptionally stick out. This may be due to the overall high quality recently.
A great game with magic and puzzles but some weird bugs, May 12, 2022This is really a very inspiring game, but I haven't been able to complete it yet due to some weird issues.
You are sent back in time to your grandmother's life, who was Cinderella but able to make potions. You explore a large city, discovering various potion recipes and hidden secrets and memories while making money to buy things for the ball.
The puzzles are engaging. I used a lot of hints, but only because the game is so large; it's generally fair as long as you examine everything.
There are a couple of weird bugs though which the author is aware of but are really hard to fix. These bugs include items sometimes stopping working, making progress impossible. By restarting several times, I've managed to get through each individual stopping point, but never all at once.
A pleasant puzzler with a complex magical language, May 6, 2022This game is, I believe, written in a custom parser that the author has used in other games. It works well here, with elegant javascript integration.
You play as an adventurer/junior magician gathering spell ingredients for you boss. The spell ingredients are all food items.
The map is laid out visually, making navigation simple. Areas vary in complexity from mostly-empty to containing multi-level structures with puzzles in each level.
The primary puzzle-solving technique is inspired by The Wand by Arthur DiBianca. You say a magic spell in your grimoire, and point your wand at something for that spell to take effect. The spell language follows patterns that you have to discover.
I haven't completely finished the game, finding only a little more than half of the ingredients on my own and 4 more with hints, but the game lets you stop at any point, and I've gotten up to an E for Exceeds Expectations.
The puzzles are rich and interesting and systematic, and vary from trivial to complex. I didn't connect on an emotional level, more just skimming the surface, but that's more due to personal taste. Overall, well-done and enjoyable.
A visual novel blended from pieces of a larger story. Dark fantasy., May 5, 2022This is a game that's essentially a demo for a longer visual novel. It takes pieces of stories of that game and mixes them into one.
This game has quite a lot of visuals, with the snow animations and wintery background being especially gorgeous, and the overall portraits being fairly high quality.
You play as a bartender who gains a mysterious ability: when someone talks to you, you gain the ability to 'replay' their story and make different choices, which can have an effect in the real world afterwards.
These stories involve dark and frightening creatures in the woods, which have become more dangerous ever since the sun disappeared.
Overall, the dark vibe here is good, the stories are detailed, there's more interactivity than most VN-type games. I did have trouble getting a feel for the 'flow' of the game, as there wasn't so much an overarching story arc with rise and fall of action. Since the full game will have an entirely different storyline, that problem may fix itself.
An amusing and mostly-solid western story with grotesque humor, April 22, 2022Bitter Karella has been making games for many years now, but I think this is the best one I've played so far, for my tastes.
You play as a cowgirl whose beloved horse has been stolen by a lying, murderous judge, and you have to get it back.
It's set in a wide town with quite a few locations, and even more that get unlocked over time. I say the humor is 'grotesque', but by that I mean that a lot of solutions are amusingly gross.
The characters are vivid and based on tropes and stereotypes, like a snake-oil salesman, a crazy miner/inventor, a brothel owner, etc. A few of them lean heavily into racial and cultural tropes, like an opium-smoking asian man named Lucky Strike or a hispanic saloon owner named La Muerte with a face painted like a sugar skull. I'm not really fond of relying on racial stereotypes, but all those characters are portrayed in a positive light as independent business people respected in their community.
The puzzles were pretty hard, and I had to get help on a couple, especially on finding a bezoar. I played the game over about a week on and off. Most puzzles are 'find an item in one area and use it in a creative way in another'. A lot of the humor is in finding out what item actually solves to problem.
The implementation of the game is a big improvement over all past Karella games, but still has a couple of rough edges here and there. I had trouble finding the right words to use the dynamite, or to use a rope. Fortunately, the game itself will also include the right wording to use as a hint, and has other features designed to help with implementation.
We played part of this in the Seattle IF Meetup, where it seemed well-received, and I finished it on my own later.
A giant game with many endings, with few rules, April 21, 2022This is a very large Twine game. I think of all structures Sam Kabo Ashwell mentioned in his 'Standard patterns in choice-based games', it most resembles the sorting hat, as there are ten or so different paths that, once you pick, is generally linear to an ending.
You play as a person whose identity is stolen, leaving you as a gaping hole in an alternate world.
That world is one where anything can happen. A shop that has a closet can take you to another world, and so can biting a sucker.
Each path allows you the choice to become a 'man', like the Drake Man or the Darin' Man, giving you an awesome and alternate life.
I found the prose to be overall well done, and there were interesting ideas. But after 3 or so paths, I began to feel like there were, if it's even possible, too many good ideas!
Brandon Sanderson has said before that good magic systems are more interesting the more restrictions they have. This isn't a high fantasy novel about complex magic, but I think something similar applies here: if anything is possible, it's almost the same as if nothing is possible. After a while, it all kind of blended together.
I opened up the game in Twinery to see how much I missed, and realized that after an hour or so I had only seen about 20-30% of the game. I used the code to read the 'ultimate' ending, which I thought was roughly as fulfilling as the other endings, but had some cool descriptions of things.
Taste is subjective, but for me personally, I think I would have enjoyed it more if there were more structure in terms of themes or some other kind of rhythm to the game. Outside of that, the game is coded in a smooth and complex fashion and the writing is vivid and descriptive.
Clever and challenging twine puzzle game about a protagonist in pieces, April 14, 2022This author has a history of making highly-polished twine games with complex and robust systems.
This game is no exception. You play as a recently-reanimated skeleton in pieces, and have the capability of moving each piece independently.
The map is constrained at first but then slowly opens up in manageable pieces.
The complexity is quite high; you can play as your self, detach your parts and play as them, and command another character as well. There is an inventory which allows you to both use items on things in the room and to combine items together.
The story is light comedic fantasy with dramatic elements (maybe Polonius would call it tragical-comical-fantastical-dramatic). The light-heartedness is connected to gameplay as well, which lets you face certain scenes over and over if needed to give you time to think of a solution.
The complex nature of the inventory and pc-changing system proved pretty hard for me. A couple of times, I had the right idea for the solution, but didn't know how to implement it. As an example (major spoilers for kitchen puzzle), I knew that (Spoiler - click to show)the peppers were bad for the dog, so I tried to pick up my arm and the peppers and combine them to rub them on it. Then I tried dropping the arm while holding the peppers. I tried talking to the cook, but didn't realize I could switch characters while talking, and there is a later similar puzzle which doesn't allow character switching during a short scripted scene. These kinds of issues with playing are normal for me with parser games, but Twine games rarely reach such a level of complexity. Overall, I found it challenging in a good way, and can heartily recommend it (and need to remember to nominate it for some XYZZY awards next year).
A fantasy story about two kids in the underworld, April 11, 2022This is a long Twine game about a young woman who's had a very difficult life finding her younger brother being sucked into a mysterious portal by a dark creature.
Following her brother, she enters a mysterious world filled with destruction and many malevolent entities. Her brother's life is at stake, and there's not much time left.
As the author puts it, this is a narrative-focused game and eschews large-scale branching, but manages to find numerous ways to test the player.
Puzzles come in two varieties: riddles, which are either type-in or choice-based from a huge list of options; and using a color-based system where some colors in the game always signify the same thing (kind of like (Spoiler - click to show)circles in Sorcery 2).
Overall, the writing is earnest and deals with a lot of childhood trauma. Emotions are plainly spelled out, and overall it reminds me a bit of Steven Universe (crying breakfast friends) or She-ra in terms of the emotional notes it reaches for. The emotions didn't land quite as effectively for me as in those two examples, though.
There were some unusual word choices in the game that were jarring, like using the phrase 'he was made into a room' instead of 'he went into a room'. It could be cleaned up a little bit grammar-wise; I would give it 4 stars if that happened.
Overall, I felt like it was a worthwhile investment of time, and I was glad to play it. I've enjoyed the author's other games and hope that they continue the trend of releasing fun and meaningful games.
An ultra-surreal game about hypercubes, Berkeley, and set theory, April 10, 2022This is the third game by this duo, the other two in the past having been very long, surreal games, one of which reflected a psychotic break and really felt like what such a thing would be to experience.
This game starts with the first author confessing that he/she (both pronouns are used) made sexual advances to their trans step son whom they've lived with for 9 years, and that it has ruined the partnership of the two authors, after most of this game had been written, and that the author is trying to make up for it.
Much of this game isn't real, so it's hard to know if this is, but it certainly seems so, which is sobering and disturbing.
The rest of the game focuses mostly on a few recurring themes:
-The idea of very large cardinal sets and non-principal ultrafilters on them. This is an area of math that is extremely abstract, especially since (as mentioned by the author) most of these things are non-constructible and cannot be proven to exist in any meaningful way under normal mathematical assumptions.
-The author's life at the Lothlorien coop in Berkeley, which still exists and houses people today.
-The idea of using psychic energy to communicate with Hong Kong singer Deng Ziqi telepathically.
-The author's relationship with Staci (who I believe is also Maev?)
The game is laid out on a six-dimensional hypercube, corresponding to 6 binary digits, corresponding to the 6 cardinal directions N,E,S,W,U, and D. Unlike most games and real life, N and S are not opposites and have no relation to each other. Instead, going North cancels itself out, so going N twice will bring you back to where you started.
Not all 64 options are filled; about 20 or so are empty 'unfinished' rooms. One room had its connections backwards (so that going U and D changed the N and S bits), which may or may not be intentional. The room names are based on the binary numbers.
In the rooms are found items, one at a time or zero. There are lots of scenery objects described in the text but none are implemented.
I received around 432 points (I think) out of 530 or so. There is no overarching goal outside of 'binding' some items together in a chain, which just gives more points. One room contains a complete walkthrough for the bindings.
Overall, as a game it continues the glimpse into a surreal world offered by the previous games, but the confession at the beginning overshadows everything else and renders it all heartbreaking.
High quality twine puzzler about French art heists, April 9, 2022I had some trepidation approaching this game, as, based on the last Lady Thalia game, I assumed it would be:
-long,
-complex,
-requiring a great deal of thought,
-engaging,
and thus require some special time set aside. And I was right! If anything, this game exceeds the last one in all those categories.
You play two different women this time: one, the infamous lady thief Lady Thalia; the other, a policewoman named Margaret Williams, somewhat stodgy but dependable. Together, you are teaming up to stop a rival art thief who is obsessed with royal privilege and the trappings of aristocracy.
Play alternates between playing as Margaret, who investigates and prepares, and Lady Thalia, who follows up on Margaret's leads. There's a point system (which is humorously lampshaded in-game), and sub-systems including a relationship tracker between the two leads.
There are a variety of puzzles, with the most consistent one being a conversational system where you can choose between being flattering, direct, and leading someone one; most conversations give you 3 chances to find the 'right one', with a bonus if you get all 3 right.
The other puzzles for the most part involve retaining information from earlier and using contextual clues. There is a complex save system which allows for easy restoration (I did this quite a bit), but some choices have significant delays, so a perfect playthrough is quite difficult.
The characters are bold and well-written, and I'd consider this among the best crime/heist Twine games.
A trans lesbian coffeeshop post-apocalyptic portal story, April 9, 2022This game is a lot of things all at once.
Perhaps the majority of it is wish-fulfillment, of a sorts. Your character is a nervous, self-doubting trans woman with major executive processing issues, and the biggest storyline is about a girl you've had a crush on for years turning out to have a crush on you too and the two of you flirting, with her being deeply accepting of everything about you including your transness and disability. This is contrasted with your family and society (represented by an institution) who accepts neither of these things.
Overlayed on this is another storyline, that of the world having already ended and a messenger of light from Hell (I think?) having become entangled in your dreams.
Overall, the game does a good job of sketching distinct characters and their personalities. There were enough small typos here and there to be noticeable (wish I had written them down, but forgot). There are some bursts of strong profanity, mostly used to express anxiety (including the first screen). The game has a lot of references to attraction and making out but is generally non-explicit except for a segment describing the character's own body, from the lens of their satisfaction (or lack of) with her appearance.
Overall, I think this game appeals most to one's sense of longing for acceptance and belonging, which is fairly universal. And in that sense, I would say it's a successful story.
A graphics-assisted parser-choice hybrid time travel game, April 7, 2022This game uses the Strand engine, which is the same engine (or a related one) used to put the Magnetic Scrolls games on the web. It features a parser but most interactions are through choices. The majority of non-choice interactions are typing the name of an object to give or WAITing. It features numerous images as well. For me, the images were larger than the screen size, requiring some scrolling that obscured some of the text.
This game reminds me of Steve Meretzky games, like Leather Goddesses of Phobos or his later graphical games. You play as a nerdy programmer who runs into tons of women, all of whom look like 'sexy' Halloween costumes (sexy pirate, sexy robot, etc.). There are references to sexbots and wanting to kiss the nerdy programmer, so it has a lot of that 'nerd gets the girls' vibe from 80's and 90's films and games. It has a shop called '9/11'instead of '7/11', which, I thought, 'Is that a September 11 reference?', but I thought probably not. But then the clerk there is named Abdul, which could be a pretty weird Sep. 11 reference, a stereotype about shop owners, or just a coincidence.
Gameplay consists of warping to different time periods and solving puzzles that are mostly about puzzling out patterns through trial and error. There are a lot of combinations and the puzzles seem designed to take some time, and I ended up using the walkthrough fairly soon.
The themes and messages didn't really gel with me, and I would have preferred a little smaller pictures to give the text more room. I appreciate the technical design that went into the game and can imagine several people who I think would enjoy it significantly.
Audiovisual puzzle game investigating a rogue Joan of Arc AI, January 26, 2022I beta tested this game.
This is a pretty long choice-based game with an expansive map. Each room has about 1 puzzle on average. The majority of the puzzles are the same: The screen is divided into 4 invisible stripes. Moving your mouse up and down will cue an animation filling that stripe (generally a sound wave) and play a sound. One sound will be different from the others; you must click that one.
There are other puzzles from time to time.
In addition, there are save terminals and other points that play scenes from the silent film The Passion of Joan of Arc while a synthetic voice reads text in a heavy french accent.
The idea is that an AI company cloned/re-made Joan of Arc to use for commercial benefit, but things went wrong. You learn more as the game progresses, of course.
There are enemies, and defeating them drops 'bits' that you can use to buy shortcuts.
It's really clever and polished, and very descriptive. But the interactivity is a bit tedious, especially when re-crossing an area over and over again. For that reason, I've never fully replayed it after testing, but played the first few rooms again before writing this review.
A promising but ultimately flawed high school magic/mafia game, January 22, 2022This is a recent game from Choice of Games set at a magical university. You are an adopted scion of a powerful mafia figure, and you have been sent to a college that offers majors in both mundane and magical areas. You are encouraged to join a group of 3 magical fraternities while you go to class, meet friends and work at a magical coffee shop.
There's a lot going on here. The writing itself flows well, with some standout characters and intricate worldbuilding.
One steam review mentioned like it felt like too many storylines were going on at once, and I agree with that. While the college, fraternity, and coffee storylines meshed well, the mafia felt more or less tacked-on. It provided some useful worldbuilding backstory, but it gave the effect of the author mashing two games into one, at least to me.
The game had compelling goals that I wanted to achieve, but I found making my way there muddy. I was frequently told I did bad at things but still managed to get in the frat and get a 4.0 my first semester. I was told I bombed every final next semester but still got a 3.0.
I focused on 2 skills exclusively (with a 73 in spirit stuff and 53 in thaumaturgy), but failed every test involving thaumaturgy. My game ended completely abruptly at the end where I had a single choice with no buildup and clicked what I thought was a spirit option but was apparently the wrong thing, instantly negating every success I had more before by just killing me with a 1 page epilogue that didn't wrap up anything.
Part of the difficulty was overlapping stats; I could never distinguish between Spontaneity and Adaptability, or between Honesty, Determination and Principled. I never even noticed the 'skills' section (communications, creativity, insight, and scholarship), and am not sure how those could be adjusted or checked.
Overall, though, the worldbuilding and writing quality pulled this one through for me. But I kept putting it down when frustrated and took a couple of weeks to play.
Recommended only for fans of magical academia and mob stories.
Find a crocodile under the sewers and perform an amazing magic trick., December 11, 2021It's nice to see Chandler Groover experimenting with the Fallen London format. He is known for his Exceptional Stories, and has a very loyal fan base on the Discord, with people saying things like this:
"I'd go as far as to say that groover is the only writer who consistently captures the mystery and beauty of the setting"
"I’m trying to find what I’m thinking of, but my suggestion is really based on the quality of groover’ s writing and also the focus on the everyday person that reveals some deeper truth about the universe"
"Chandler Groover, author of several fan favourite Exceptional Stories, typically agreed to Never Miss"
With that kind of praise, there's a lot of pressure, and it would be easy to fall into repetitive patterns. But I found this story to be pretty different than his others, so much so that I had no idea it was him until the end.
In this story, a magician's assistant is missing, a crocodile is loose in the sewers of London and you must stop it! This includes a sizable segment that is a complex maze, something I never thought I'd see in any Groover story ever, and especially not in Fallen London, a text-based narrative that tends to gloss over movement. This story also has puzzles involving large machines with moving parts.
During your journey, your goals shift, and you end up acquiring a large amount of materials (through the sewers) for a big project. This was a fun excursion, because it lets you see many of the more mundane or boring parts of Fallen London (like the shops in the Bazaar tab) through a fresh perspective as you tunnel into them from below, often finding bizarre leftovers from previous times or hidden-away secrets. The scenes in Mahogany Hall were really effective for me.
The story gets even more strange in the end, becoming almost mythological and filled with guts and animals. It all feels large and epic, but I didn't quite grasp it all. I think that's good, though; I wouldn't want to grasp all of it.
To be honest, the maze didn't really work for me completely, but I enjoy the innovation and would rather see further experimentation like this than a retread of old things. Definitely a memorable story.
As a side note, parts of this gave me flashbacks to All Dogs Go to Heaven, where the sewer crocodile horrified me as a child.
A character study of two men: a servant and a prince, December 11, 2021This is an exceptional story, a sizable 'bonus' story provided for those who pay for Fallen London.
This one deals with the devils, a faction in Fallen London that is quite distinct from devils as typically portrayed. This group is a little out of sync with the rest of the world (generally having fashions from twenty years in the future), and are very interested in people's souls but also in creating and altering the laws of reality in bizarre ways.
Some Londoners reacted negatively to the presence of the devils and fought a disastrous war with them. The game has frequently referenced this war and its horrifying outcomes (through different stories involving Bishops and more recently with the Great Hellbound Railway, especially Moulin), but hasn't dedicated many stories to detailed events of the war.
In this story, you meet a manservant of a prince, a servant who fought in the war and is now afflicted by having some body parts replaced with plants (thus, the cover picture of the story). This manservant works with the Bellicose Prince, a child of Queen Victoria who, like most the other children, was (strong spoilers for those who haven't seen royal family stories) (Spoiler - click to show)altered by the use of tainted red honey into a gross monster.(Spoiler - click to show)
This story takes a lot of twists and turns and really is an exploration of war, survivor's guilt, PTSD, and trauma. Like most great fantasy or horror, it uses an extraordinary situation to examine ordinary feelings in a new light.
Explore the rage of a tempestuous urchin marked for glory, December 11, 2021I hadn't really put it together that the Mary Goodden of these exceptional stories is the Mary Goodden of Ifcomp 2021's game 'Funicular Simulator 2021'. Nice!
This was a really memorable exceptional story (a supplement to Fallen London's main story). While writing reviews for these, I had to look back in my fame history to remind myself what they were about, but this one was firmly lodged in my memory.
One of the main factions in Fallen London is the Urchins, a large number of lost youth who form gangs and steal things. They tend to represent innocence in Fallen London (like in the story Hojotoho, where they pretend to be valkyries and go on 'adventures'). They also have a connection to rain and storm, as they are generally the source of the category of items termed 'Wild Words', which includes things like Primordial Shrieks, Aeolian Screams and Storm-Threnodies. In fact, in the deeper lore they are associated with (Spoiler - click to show)the somewhat-dead god Storm, a vast dragon that has power over the sea, which is what this story deals with and what most spoilers later down contain.
A young girl is marked by (Spoiler - click to show)the God Storm, but you interrupt, entangling you in her life. You are tasked with taking her around and helping her make a decision whether to embrace her new life as (Spoiler - click to show)a vessel of innocent rage or not. Your journey exposes much of the difficulties of life in a foster care system and of a poor life, as you explore the palace, an orphanage, and a former foster home she was ejected from, discovering the sources of her rage.
I found this one poignant and memorable.
A charming story about kids, pirates, mermaids and loss, December 11, 2021This is an exceptional story for Fallen London, which is a special 'extra' story for people who pay a monthly fee or purchase the story itself later on.
In this story, you rescue three young kids who have decided to find buried treasure on the Zee but get stuck when their boat crashes on a small island. Rescuing them, you learn about their fascination with Captain Redbeard, a mythical pirate, as well as the story of their mother, a woman who died at sea and who may or may not now be a 'drownie' (in Fallen London, people who die come back, except those who die at sea, who become a kind of fish/zombie/person).
The kids are cute, and help you pick out a suitable pirate name (mine was Blood Killer). Their dynamics and their interactions with the larger world paint a really lovely picture of family and growing up.
Experience a fictional version of the Tumblr Potter fandom and JKR, October 20, 2021This is a pretty hefty Choicescript game that consists of two parts: a young person browsing Tumblr that's part of a fandom for a fictional series of novels (a science fiction analogue of Harry Potter with its own house-type system), and a story-within-the-story consisting of your character's fan fiction.
Fanfiction gameplay includes things like customizing your character and reacting emotionally to things, as well as choosing ships (as in relationships).
Tumblr gameplay consists of choosing from 8 or so different blogs to look at. Choosing a blog to look at brings up a post you can like, reblog, sometimes comment on, or skip to go to the next one (or back). Each blog has about 4 posts in each section of gameplay.
There are several chapters, each one giving more fanfiction and more events in the blogosphere.
Midgame spoilers:
(Spoiler - click to show)The author of the series makes posts in the middle of the game calling out one of your friends and saying that transgender people are degenerates. Most of the people you follow are trans, and so it puts a big damper on things and chaos ensues.
The game has a main story thread, but it also has a 'score' aspect in terms of your followers. Reblogging gets you more followers.
I had a ton of emotions reading this. I like to put myself in the headspace of the people I play as but doing so made me really uncomfortable this time, and I made choices in-game that I thought the protagonist would do that are things I really wouldn't do in real life.
The discomfort I experience playing this game is because it encourages you to have empathy for people and then puts them in hard situations that there aren't easy answers for. It also reminds me of real life confusions and conversations I've had.
So I definitely had a stronger reaction emotionally to this game than to others.
Mechanically, a lot of content is dumped at once in each of the tumblr sections. That's the way real social media is, but I've been trying to clear my head of social media 'noise' recently (who isn't?) and playing this reminded me why.
With its world-within-the-world and focus on the nature of human experience, art, and their interactions, and with the Choicescript format, I was strongly reminded of Creatures Such as We, a game by Lynnea Glasser in my top 10 games of all time. That game leaves me thoughtful and hopeful, while this one left me thoughtful and distressed. Both are useful. Of the two, though, this game had an interaction mechanic that didn't work quite as well for me, with the nonlinear asynchronous tumblr text dumps. But that isn't to say it didn't work at all; I think it's one of the better games of the competition and a masterpiece of technical work, doing things I didn't know were capable in Choicescript. And the characterization is excellent, with a lot of the characters coming alive for me personalitywise (although I lost track of some of the handles).
An illustrated Adventuron game where you play an 'NPC' orc, October 18, 2021This is one of two Adventuron games in this comp, and its a great use of the system. The author has used a large number of properly licensed photos from various sources (including a number of cosplayers) to create a large fantasy world.
You play as an orc who is essentially an NPC in the Dream Factory, a place where humans (?) dream themselves as adventurers to fight against monsters (like you).
Gameplay consists of exploration, combat, leveling, etc. but with a whimsical tone. You can enter a dream world and learn about the history of anti-orc racism.
+Polish: This game is very smooth. I rarely tried a command that didn't have a smart response for it.
+Descriptiveness: Enemies and locations are lushly described.
+Interactivity: The main gameplay loop was satisfying.
-Emotional impact: The game was overall enjoyable, but I wasn't drawn into the world and its characters.
+Would I play again? I think it's a lovely game.
Save humans from spam while meeting a cast of characters, October 17, 2021In this game, you are a sentient program in a computer circa 2000. Your goal is to deal with an influx of emails, ZAPping or APPROVing them as you determine.
It cites DIGITAL: A LOVE STORY as an influence, but I've never played that game. It has a feel kind of like Wreck-it-Ralph/Emoji movie/Digimon in the sense that applications 'behind the scenes' are thinking, feeling creatures.
It turns out that one of your human's email friends is in despair because their father is taking away their computer. You have to work together with a crew of other applications to save her.
Here's my breakdown:
+Polish: The game is certainly very polished, with use of changing background images, pop-up boxes, text input, an inbox-managing system, text animations, etc. Could easily be nominated for an XYZZY award of some type for this alone.
+Descriptiveness: The game was very vivid in its writing, and the different email voices were very enjoyable.
+Interactivity: I'll admit, some of the spam emails were kind of long and boring. The simulation of an unpleasant event is still an unpleasant event. But I never felt like things were 'on rails', while simultaneously rarely feeling 'lost'.
+Emotional impact: I found the game funny and the story interesting. Like I said, some parts were boring, but many were not.
+Would I play again? I could see myself revisiting it.
An promising parser-like twine horror game with many loose ends, October 17, 2021This game has a lot of good things going for it, but the end product feels like the author ran out of time or energy with creating the game and decided to focus on polishing what's there (which is much better than making a game with too much scope and not testing it).
Mechanically, this is a Twine game that is built to be like a parser. Most nouns are clickable to get a description, and you have an inventory. Depending on what you are carrying, some items around you have other links. Most interestingly, you can combine any number of items, although I only saw that used once in gameplay.
This game has many similarities with Anchorhead. In both games, you play as a young woman accompanying her husband/partner to a strange and decaying city in order to get work at the city's university. Both have a city of surly inhabitants and a strange house with many secrets, as well as a wood-related mill outside of town.
The unusual feature of this game storywise is that there is a cheerful and warming house you stay at with two talkative inhabitants. The house gains greater importance as the game deepens.
The entire game is lovely. The only issue is that there isn't enough game, I think. The ending itself isn't bad, it's just that it leaves hanging many of the important questions from earlier on. Great games have a narrative arc that builds to a climax and then has a shorter, but definite, denouement; this game essentially falls off a cliff.
Things I can think of that are unresolved (major spoilers!) (Spoiler - click to show)the dog's origin and/or fate, anything with the sawmill, anything with the university, the chain and the slapping in the back room, the ability to combine items, the wicket in the town hall you say you can't go up yet, the pedestal in the town square.
I think it's not really helpful in general to tinker with games, but I think an 'expanded' version of this game that fleshes it out more would be great, maybe entered into the back garden of Spring Thing one year. Of course, just writing another game would be fun, too; the author is good at writing and codig, so I'd look forward to that.
A game about playing games and young friendship, October 16, 2021This is a complex game where you play computer games on a computer inside the computer that you're now viewing. While you do that, someone in real life (inside the game) comments on what you're doing inside the game (inside the game).
There are multiple games and multiple things in real life, and elements transfer from one to another (kind of like IFDB spelunking).
You are a teenage boy whose best friend (a girl named Riley) is moving away, and in a partially-packed house you are spending your last few hours together playing old adventure games on a computer.
Meta verbs are disabled; I opened up the game one day and then came back to it a week later and was shocked I couldn't RESTART. Then I tried it on a different device and the first thing I saw was a mention to use EXIT to 'truly' restart. UNDO is disabled, as well.
This game reminds me of several games of Adam Cadre. The meta-nature of playing a game and a game within a game with self-aware NPCs reminds me of Endless, Nameless. The piecing together of a story and focus on simple puzzles with 'aha' moments and emotional interactions reminds me of Photopia. And the inclusion of strip poker (not my favorite element) reminds me of many of Adam Cadre's works.
Overall, this is a great game. It's fresh, easy to pick up, sophisticated, and ties in elements of narrative IF and classic parser IF.
It has a companion game, Infinite Adventure, playable only using a DOS emulator. That is just an endless series of simple fetch quests. Interestingly, this game is also essentially a long series of fetch quests, making them mechanically very similar and story-wise very dissimilar.
I think the game worked for me on an emotional level. I like almost everything about this game, actually, but I don't think I'll replay it because the strip poker level on an old DOS computer brings back bad childhood memories. However, I'll probably replay it for some 'best games of the last ten years' article, so I'll still give it 5 stars.
A Quest 6 game about exploring a bizarre house , October 15, 2021This game has two purposes: to show off the new Quest 6 engine, and to be a great IFComp game.
For the first, it definitely makes Quest look good. I thought this was Dialog when I first started playing; the parser was easy to work with and the execution was lightning fast, something I didn't associate with the Quest of old. There have been tons of fun Quest games before, but to me the parser always felt slow and prone to errors. This new version seems great.
As a game, it falls into the 'weird house of an eccentric old man with arbitrary puzzles' genre, which is a genre I enjoy in general (Curses! is my favorite game, and Mulldoon Legacy was pretty fun). You're trying to deliver a letter to a mysterious old man while exploring a house that has large variations in size as well as many bizarre creatures walking through.
I solved about half of the puzzles on my own before turning to the walkthrough.
Many of the puzzles have a strange quality where the solution is something that only really makes sense in hindsight. Like other reviewers have noted, there are many possible solutions to most problems but only one or two are implemented (for instance, you can't (Spoiler - click to show)LOOK IN or SEARCH or SHAKE the boots when trying to find what's in them).
Similarly the setting has a lot of non sequiturs. From the author's notes, it seems it was developed from a series of forum posts years ago, which I read. Those forum posts helped a lot of things make more sense. I think the game could have benefitted from putting more of those explanatory details into the game itself.
There is some strong profanity. For me, I would have preferred not to have it, but some reviewers enjoyed the characterization it brought.
Here's my breakdown:
-Polish. Quest 6 is great, but the implementation of this particular game could use some work. For instance, it's possible to put the (Spoiler - click to show)boots right next to the (Spoiler - click to show)crack in the wall, making it impossible to solve the puzzle as intended since you are supposed to (Spoiler - click to show)type ENTER or IN but that puts you in the crack instead of the boots, even if you specify ENTER BOOTS. Similarly, (Spoiler - click to show)GET SAND doesn't work even if you have the pot, but FILL POT does.
+Descriptiveness: There were a lot of details flying around.
+Interactivity: The puzzles were often weird moon logic but it was fun.
+Emotional impact: Some parts of the game worked well for me, like the opening sequence and the exploration.
-Would I play again? The game is large and kind of intimidating and fussy.
A Choicescript adaptation of Gawain and the Green Knight, October 14, 2021Adaptations in IF are generally very tricky. The list of failed or mediocre adaptations is long (including my own Sherlock Holmes game) while the list of good ones is very brief (such as Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy). The biggest problem is that novels and stories are 'on rails' and are centered on one pre-determined path, while Interactive Fiction invites exploration.
This one does well, I think. Part of that is due to the author's talent at adaptation. The other may be because the original tale includes parts that describe what 'would have happened', which can be incorporated into the text.
You play as Gawain, and the story follows the original tale pretty faithfully. A strange knight comes to Arthur's court and you are soon entangled in a quest. You find a strange castle where the host is kind and generous while the lady of the castle pursues you.
Variables are tracked in this game, but not that many stats seem to be. There is generally one ordained 'right path' but many scenes have multiple interpretations and solutions regardless of your desire (for instance, is it better to admit fear or not to have it at all?)
The game has strong themes of violence and sexuality, but treats both of them more as abstractions or threats or desires with moderate detail.
In both the online version and the downloaded version, the chapter headings were broken and I couldn't see what they were. That, and a stray typo, were the only bugs I saw.
I took several days to finish this because I kept getting distracted by work. The actual writing isn't that long, but I wasn't grabbed in by the text; or, perhaps, it was difficult to process my emotions about the strange tale (which applies to the original).
In any case, this exceeded my expectations and is one of the better adaptations I've ever played. I don't see myself revisiting it, as it resonated negatively with some personal experiences I had (by no fault of the author), but it is otherwise polished, descriptive, with good interactivity and emotional impact.
(Edit: I'm listting this as 2 hours, because I lingered over it, while others have said it took them only 1 hour going fast).
A long, polished parser game using emotions as verbs, October 12, 2021This game has a lot of work put into it. It has over a dozen testers (one of the best things you can see in a game), and draws inspiration from many other IF games.
You play as a ghost who cannot, at first, affect the material world. You also have no memories. As you play more and more, you unlock new verbs and new actions.
The story as it unfolds is one of torture and greed. You explore a big house and learn more about your untimely demise involving child abuse.
Here's my rating:
+Polish: The game is very smooth. With such a complex system, you'd expect a lot of bugs, but I found very few, if any. Parser errors were customized, as well.
+Descriptiveness: There was a spareness to the world. Some locations were described very succinctly. For instance:
"You are in a landing area at the top of a rickety staircase. There is a walk-in closet to the north."
However, the game was more descriptive with the emotions.
+Interactivity: Okay, I had some frustration here. Often, a new verb wouldn't lead to any progress in the room it was found in or the ones prior. This led to me trying the same verbs over and over again on everything with no success. It might have been worth adding a few more easy, early puzzles. For instance, I found no uses for (Spoiler - click to show)hate and love until long after I found both. However, the emotions idea was fun, and kept me persevering, so it was overall positive.
-Emotional impact. The story is not bad, and it reminds me (Spoiler - click to show)of the time I learned about 'the girl born without a face', which shaped my perceptions about physical disability and the love we should show to each other regardless of appearance. This story has a lot of good elements that would be ready to appeal to emotion, with a protagonist with mixed feelings about antagonists and a tragic backstory (similar, like the author said, to a story in Anchorhead, which worked a bit better for me). I think where things fell flat is that the protagonist is completely relatable and the enemies are clearly villains with little to no redeeming qualities. Our hero may have mixed feelings about them, but we, the reader, can clearly see them for what they are. This is kind of nitpicky, because this is a good story and I think I would like to read it again. I saw that this is the author's first game, and I'm reminded of a review that Emily Short gave of my first game (which I found quite painful at the time, and quite helpful now):
"I found [the game] least effective when it explicitly went for pathos in the writing, because[...]it hadn’t put in the time to build up that empathy. Similarly, the ending reached for an emotional point that it hadn’t done the work to earn, at least for me."
I think this is one of the better games in the comp overall and expect it to place anywhere in the top 15 or so. And if an author can do this well on the very first game, I can only imagine what games created with more experience will look like.
+Would I play again? Yes, I liked it.
Big, funny linear parser game about a nerdy Hercules, October 8, 2021In this game, you're a clueless, weak and nerdy Hercules who's cousin assigned him 10 impossible tasks.
There's a pretty big map, spanning several continents (although it's mostly abstracted, so you can 'go se' to Crete and back, for instance).
The writing is pretty funny. There is a large cast of characters that are all characterized strongly and each puzzle is an amusing take on the original.
Structure-wise, you can only take on the challenges in order. More than half of the challenges are solved directly by using an item from the previous challenge. The game alerts you if you are going out of order.
The solutions start out pretty reasonable (I think I solved 5 on my own) but quickly become kind of moon logic/Sierra-style puzzles where it's hard to guess the author's solution. However, there aren't that many red herrings (for most of the game) and so if you just make sure to try out each item every way you can you can probably work it out.
I had a lot of fun. The puzzle logic didn't click but the game is amusing even with a walkthrough. There is occasional mild profanity which doesn't really fit the game's style but otherwise this is just fun and silly.
Surreal puzzler that seems unfinishable, October 4, 2021Instead of giving a review, I'd like to give a description of my experience playing.
I start the game. I try 'X ME', and get the standard response ('As good looking as ever.'). I'm on an airplane with amnesia, no other flyers and the bathrooms blocked by doors. I find a few items and look around. I get stuck and look more, and find an object that only appears when you examine something twice.
I then get stuck, because I know I need to (Spoiler - click to show)break a keypad but I don't know how. I even try hitting it with (Spoiler - click to show)a pencil. I turn to the walkthrough: apparently I'm supposed to (Spoiler - click to show)hit the number 6 key, specifically, to break the keypad.
At this point, I realize I would never have figured this out. I turn to the walkthrough and start following it blindly. I go to a school with no connection to the last location, and apparently need to figure out that I need to (Spoiler - click to show)put a book from the airplane on a random lectern and then walk into it. I'm grateful for the walkthrough but after I escape the (Spoiler - click to show)complex plane the walkthrough breaks down, so it seems the author didn't test the walkthrough for this version of the game. I try exploring on my own but get nowhere. No testers are credited.
I would play this game again, but it needs a lot more polish, a lot of the descriptions are generic ('The barren hallway continues from north to south, and it turns to the east'), and the interactivity didn't work for me, leading to less of an emotional impact. This means I'm giving 1 star, although this game works reasonably well and probably took a lot more work than some other shorter games in the comp. It's just that according to my usual criteria it would only receive 1 star, and I'd like to be consistent.
I think the author could make an incredible game if they had a longer testing period with many testers, including some familiar with what's possible in parser games.
A custom parser puzzler in Java with Japanese and Buddhist themes, October 2, 2021This is a long parser game in the form of a Java .jar file (a very recent version of Java is used and older versions are incompatible).
The result is pretty smooth looking and working. The responses come quickly, the save system works well. There's no undo, and death is frequent in this game, so be prepared!
You play as person wearing the clothes of a Japanese Buddhist monk. You travel through various realities, all of which have a recurring menacing figure and panels with different colored bulbs.
I played around for a while before turning to the walkthrough (as I do for most games!). I discovered that the bulk of the game is one big puzzle, with another big puzzle at the end. For puzzle fans, I'd recommend sticking out the first big puzzle. This is the puzzle having to do with (mild spoiler) (Spoiler - click to show)the bulbs and panels.
The atmosphere of this game is great; I loved it. Very nice. The puzzles were, to me, a bit tedious. I went off the walkthrough at one point and had to try to figure out how to go back and complete an earlier part and found it very hard to execute the solution even once I knew what it was.
I had a good time, but I'm not sure I'd play again. This is much better than most windows executable IFComp games I played in past years, probably in the top 2 or 3 of such games, so I'd consider this to be a rousing success for the author.
Fight God in Cyberspace, October 2, 2021This is a pretty long download-only unity game that is choice-based with an interactive map, quicktime events and a specialized inventory. It is described as a Metroidvania, and that is true, as you collect multiple powers of your own choice and in a non-deterministic order as you play the game.
You live in a city that has a real-life side and a cyber side, and you can gain bionic or psionic modifications that make you stronger. There are a ton of mini games, including a fantasy MMORPG, gambling games, and arcade games.
There is a big cast of characters and many locations. While each one individually didn't seem super fleshed out to me in motivation and personality, as a whole the plot structure and relationships were interesting and satisfying.
Your goal is to rob a casino, but as the game progresses you find yourself more and more often coming up against God, a powerful AI that is in charge of your city.
The game doesn't have any easy way to save that I could see, but if you 'die' you go back to the last major decision point (I think; I only died once, at the very end). There are 9 branches but I only played through once, so I'm not sure what the others are like.
My number one gripe is that the main interaction was fussy. You read text and then choices appear, but how to get them to appear is confusing. I thought it was when you used the mouse scroll wheel down, but sometimes it appeared when I scrolled up, and sometimes I just had to wait. Choices always appeared whenever I equipped or unequipped an ability, so I eventually used that. Even the opening screen took me a while to figure out what to do. It might just all be timed and the mouse wheel thing was just in my head.
(And, just now, looking back, there is an option in the settings to let you see the choices immediately, so this is totally my fault!)
While the game isn't perfect, it was descriptive, polished (I think I only saw one typo in 2 hours), interactivity had a lot of highlights, I was emotionally invested and I'd like to see the other branches once I have some free time in the comp.
Explore classic literature and combine their objects, October 2, 2021This game is written in a custom parser-like engine (similar to Robin Johnson's Gruescript and also to Texture) where you can click on items to reveal more options with them and/or to drag them to other objects. Each new description results in the whole text box flipping over in a 3D animation. This is cool, but slows the game down a bit when running through already-seen areas.
The main part of the game is a large library (inspired by Borges' classic tale) that is organized in a very confusing way, accessible by selecting 'left', 'right', or 'back'. If there is a pattern, I didn't see it, so it's either random or a maze or I'm just dumb or all 3.
Each room has a book by a famous author, which you can enter. Each book world has a single room with one or more interesting items and a mini-puzzle. Solving the mini-puzzle allows you to take items to other rooms.
I found the idea clever, but the need for tons of clicking between rooms, slowness of the transition, and the tricky logic of the puzzles sent me to the walkthrough early on. If you want a real headscratcher it would be good to go through more slowly.
+Polish: Very polished.
+Descriptiveness: Some of the rooms are very vivid.
-Emotional impact: Nothing seems real, and I saw it more as a logic puzzle than emotional story.
+Interactivity: While the slow transition and maze were less fun to me, the idea of taking items from one book to another is fun.
+Would I play again? Maybe, this time without a walkthrough (and doing the other path).
A surreal, branching Twine game with a lot of timed features, September 13, 2021This is a very long Twine game from early on in the history of the medium.
Anya DeNiro has a long history of making games exploring non-human or surreal viewpoints and the interface between reality and virtual reality.
This game uses features like text that shifts and disappears on a timer and other, normal twine features like cycling text and text-replaces.
The story is hard to grasp, especially as I play it late at night. In my first playthrough, I thought there was no story, just a mishmash of words and metaphors. But as I played through all 12 branches and found the ending, I realized that there were several stories, including human trafficking, artifical intelligences, a bloody edutainment math game whose players were a victim in a cyber terrorist attack.
I felt as if I grasped less than half the overall story, but it was an interesting and thoughtful combination. There is a long history of very long, surreal twine games by trans authors that straddle the boundary between reality and virtual reality (Porpentine, Phantom Williams, Furkle, etc.) If you like this genre, this will be a good addition.
A difficult small puzzler in Adrift, September 12, 2021This game was directly inspired by the Hard Puzzle games in its difficulty level and clarity and by Junior Arithmancer in its actual puzzles.
Hard Puzzle was mainly known for being intentionally poorly-clued, with numerous red herrings and puzzles that aren't quite fair. The idea was to have a kind of game you can beat your head against for a long time before finding a solution.
This game is similar. You find yourself in 4 rooms with a helpful fairy. Each room has a number on the floor and some other object of interest in the room (either a door or a clue). There is a recess that is common to all the rooms (essentially in the center of the circle) with a book.
Puzzles involve the book and the numbers and the clues (which makes sense, since that's all there is) and is similar to Junior Arithmancer a bit.
I found the game very unfair and very confusing, but that is the intent. I got a lot of help from the fairy (enough to solve one of the clues) but looked on the adrift forums for the other 2.
I wish I were able to type and execute a list of commands on one line, separated by punctuation. Once you know the answers to the puzzle, it can be pretty tedious to enter.
Overall:
+Descriptiveness: It's effective for the style it's going for
+Interactivity: I didn't like the tediousness, but the game was trying to be frustrating and hard, and it was
-Emotional impact: I saw this entirely as a puzzler, removed from emotional ties
+Polish: I encountered no bugs.
-Would I play again?: The value's all in the surprise, and there's not much replay value.
A rogue-like test battle game with randomization and attention to detail, August 6, 2021Arthur DiBianca has explored the creative space available for limited parsers for many years now. The sheer number of puzzles he has come up with for things like directional commands (Inside the Facility), wordplay (Sage Sanctum Scramble) and just poking a box (Grandma Bethlinda's Variety Box) is impressive.
Here, we play as an adventurer in a small town where you can buy equipment, hang out at the tavern, or head down to the dungeon where you have a limited amount of time to battle and find loot. Dungeon verbs are limited to skipping the current battle, fighting, and searching, with extra fighting commands added later. It's really interesting contrasting this with the games of Paul Panks, exemplified by Westfront PC and lampooned in Endless, Nameless, where he always had a cookie-cutter village with a 3 or 4-room tavern, church, etc. and forest full of monsters. Those games were filled with a lot of cruft, while this game cuts all of that out to its bare minimum functionality.
This game is more or less an RPG or roguelike, and it has a 'grind' and RNG that sets it apart from his other games. Is this successful?
Here's my 5-point rating scale:
+Polish: The game is very smooth. Arthur's limited vocabulary allows for intense polishing on what remains, and the game feels completely smooth and operational.
+Descriptiveness: There's a clever mechanic where monsters came in 2 (and later, three) variants that differ from each other by just a small word or two. Only by careful experimentation can you distinguish which monsters are 'safe'. I feel like these constraints led to vivid descriptions since there had to be a lot of detail for the differences to be lost in.
+Interactivity: So this could go either way for most people. I grew up playing games like FFV (on an emulator with a fan translation) with my head down on a desk reading a book while I moved the arrow keys left and right, grinding encounters. To me, that was the quintessential RPG experience. This game also has a lot of grinds that can become tedious. For me, I was interested enough in seeing a little number on the screen go up; others may not be. More seriously, I had to battle the RNG on several occasions, especially the final boss, where I ended up manipulating UNDO to try and get a favorable combination. In the end, it turned out I had a misconception about the boss, and so my UNDO was unnecessary, but I did use UNDO for some of the final achievements which, unlike past DiBianca games, were less about showing extra skill and more about extreme patience with RNG.
+Emotional impact: For me, this game hit a spot of nostalgia. Otherwise, I probably would have felt distanced a bit by the 'where's Waldo' system, treating words as puzzles themselves rather than
descriptors.
-Would I play again? For me, the big draw in replaying an RPG is trying it with a different character class or setup or seeing what different random drops you can get. You can't really get that here, because you can only get to the final boss after thoroughly plumbing everything the game contains; there's no remaining mystery and only 1 'anointed path'.
Overall, though, I feel confident recommending this to others and consider it one of the best games in a year that's already had some great competitions.
Discover the secrets of a new saint caught between Hell and the Church, August 4, 2021This is one of Fallen London's Exceptional Stories that gets recommended a lot.
Exceptional Stories are IAP's for the main Fallen London game. Each is its own self-contained story and usually comes with a reward worth 62.50 in in-game money, which is a lot for new players and a moderate amount for endgame players.
In this setting, Hell is next to Fallen London (although it's not quite the Hell of classic Christianity and the devils are not more evil than others in this setting). The Church of England still exists but has adapted to deal with these changes.
This story concerns a new Saint which is appearing in different texts. You have to help an eager deacon to hunt down where this info on the saint is appearing from and deal with his leaning between the Church and Hell.
The highlight of this is probably taking a train down to the Marigold station (the last stop before Hell, and something you can reach on your own very late in the game by becoming a railroad baron) to see about this Saint for yourself.
The very good exceptional stories coming out recently mean that this one doesn't quite live up to their standard, but it was still very polished descriptive, and with some great payoff moments. I would consider it to be one of the better exceptional stories.
A classic adventure from the grue's perspective, August 2, 2021I beta tested this game.
This game is written using the author's own Versificator system, an excellent system built up over many years.
In it, you play as a Grue in a classic adventure. However, you have no interest in murdering adventurers. But you do want to get them out!
The game reverses several parts of classic adventures. Instead of mazes, you move through orderly access tunnels. Instead of finding light sources, you find ways to dim light.
This is a clever reversal and a fun way to play.
The only thing I had trouble with was the overall main mechanic of rescuing adventurers. The puzzle structure is organized in a way where it's hard to know you're making progress until you've figured the whole thing out. But that's mostly a personal reaction and may not apply to others.
I also played this as part of the Seattle IF Meetup and think it's appropriate for group play. We all had a lot of fun!
A promising detective game that doesn't completely deliver, July 7, 2021I'm a big fan of the detective genre, and it's always nice to see a long-form game come out.
This is a big game, spread over a dozen or so locations and three days. It's ambitious, with many scripted events, NPCs, and action scenes.
These kinds of things are hard to pull off. The game handles pretty well during the first day, and I spent a long time with this game up on my desktop trying to work through without hints. As time progressed and I went through the days, there were more and more holes in the system until I ended up relying entirely on the hints, although those had a gap ((Spoiler - click to show)escaping the rope).
The game has a lot of good parts, and credits several testers. The kind of problems that are left seem like ones that are typical for this type of story: one where the author seems to know exactly how each scene should play out and what the player's logic is. The problem is that 'the player will get it wrong', like Stephen Granade once wrote. It's very difficult to guess what people will try unless you have many many testers or constrain the player somehow (by reducing the number of items or by using a choice-based system, or by giving leading hints that increase the more you do the wrong thing).
My overall rating:
-Polish: There are several remaining bugs.
+Descriptiveness: For me, I enjoyed the writing and setting generally.
+Interactivity: The bugs or missing hints threw me off, but I liked the conversation and map movement. Some parts didn't work for me, but overall it was good.
-Emotional impact: Great at first, but kind of petered out at the end. I can't explain why.
+Would I play it again? If it was updated, I probably would!
A long fantasy Twine game with two romance options and high fantasy, June 22, 2021I saw this game on a list of 'Best Twine/Ink games on itch.io' I've been working through: https://itch.io/c/1424718/twineinky-if
This one felt like a good fantasy visual novel without the visuals. It's a longer game with a bunch of mini-quests inside one big quest, a mini-game involving making a potion, and two young and attractively-described characters (one male, one female) who are both interested in you. There's a lot of world-building: you are an alchemist in a fantasy city with a complex hierarchy of Gods and an entire world history.
It's not perfect; the interaction was too often 'click to see what happens next' or 'click to do the clear right thing or not' for my taste, but it should feel right at home for most fans of visual novels. Also, so much gets unused, including most spells and recipes and most of the money system. I enjoyed it overall, though, and the romantic options were fun.
Fantastic time loop fantasy dating sim in Ink, June 15, 2021I generally enjoyed the first time I played through this game. It seemed like a twine game with a visual novel-type structure, with a few major choices (mostly what to study and who to romance), a lot of time skipping, and, for some reason, a lot of 'keep doing this or stop now' options. I thought it was okay.
But then it looped for the first time, and I was hooked. This is a game about living many, many lives. The author has a great trick for nudging the player forward while making them think it was their cleverness that got them that far all along.
I played through 7 or more times until I got an ending I really liked, but there's a lot more out there to discover. This is a game offering what feels like real agency (even if a lot of it is smoke and mirrors, where the game puts you into the 'best' options after time) and memorable characters.
I saw this game on several 'best of' lists, both on here and on itch.io, and it definitely lives up to it.
A darker story about Rubbery Men and an experiment gone wrong., May 19, 2021This is an Exceptional Story for Fallen London. In this exceptional story, you are drawn into the story of a scientist experimenting with the rubbery form. This draws unwanted attention for them, and you have to track them down.
There's plenty of new background material for rubbery men here. Rubbery men in general have always served as a sort of allegory for different types of discrimination, although they are also used just as an example of 'cool weird being'. This story stands in stark contrast to their more recent 'advances' in Fallen London society, where a rubbery man ran for mayor, several have nice stalls at the bone market, and options to be violent towards rubbery men have been reduced, all seemingly stepping away from the 'rubbery men represent oppressed minorities'.
This story emphasizes the 'otherness' of rubbery men. They stink, they gurgle horribly, you feel uneasy around them. It felt weird to me, to be honest.
The main story has some surprises I won't go into, but much of your time is spent in a kind of homeless rubbery camp under a railway bridge. The mechanics here are unusual but work once you experiment for a while with passing time. You learn more about the rubberies and their ancient ancestry, and have a difficult choice to make at the end.
Overall, the writing and mechanics here are interesting, but a few things took me out of the story, such as the more grim depiction of rubbery men.
A gay love story between superhero and doctor, April 15, 2021This game is primarily about the romantic relationship between two men, a superhero and the doctor boyfriend that patches him up all night. It focuses on feelings, passion, includes photographic images of the main characters kissing.
It's quite long, and has a recurring mechanic where you have to select the correct option for treating your boyfriend out of a dropdown menu, using a medical guide you wrote yourself for guidance.
The interactivity is pretty great in this game. The main mechanic mostly worked for me; if you get it wrong, it just sends you back.
The writing was pretty lush (I don't know if that's the right phrase), almost over-the-top. In general, with the plot and writing, it felt like a light romance novel in a dark and gritty setting. Your boyfriend is tormented by the fact that he violently attacks criminals and puts them in the hospital, but feels morally obligated to do so.
There were enough typos that it was a noticeable problem, although many pages had no errors and most that did only had one.
This is one of the longer games in the comp. Interestingly enough, the longest game in the comp is also a gritty doctor-themed romance. Here's my rating:
-Polished: Looks great visually but needs another pass with editing.
+Descriptiveness: Very descriptive, grounded, uses various sense.
+Interactivity: I liked the doctor mechanic.
+Emotional impact: It didn't completely grip me, but I was invested in the characters.
+Would I play again? I might check to see if there's another ending.
Search for a governess who has repeatedly died, April 14, 2021This was a great Exceptional Story by Fallen London.
When I first wrote reviews, I wrote a lot of dumb things (a habit I have kept to this day). When I first reviewed Bee, I think I wrote that 'Short doesn't write choice games as well as those like Porpentine who exclusively write choice-based games'. (I've since removed it).
The thing is, by now Emily Short is one of the most experienced people out there in Choice-based narratives, and quality-based narratives. This exceptional story, written a few years after Bee, shows complete control and artistry with the medium.
Your character is asked to investigate the disappearance of a governess who had been killed three times already (death being a relatively minor inconvenience in the setting of Fallen London). To learn more about her, you go an a quest across all the main areas of Fallen London, learning more about how servants in every area live and providing insight into a class of people often overlooked in these games.
In addition, the story has very nuanced characters with individual narrative arcs, like the children and the governess herself.
There was a Flash Lay (a randomized pursuit) in the middle of the story which is a mechanic that I think is independent of the main story in terms of content; I found that a little slow and not as interesting as the rest, but I don't think it was developed directly as part of this story.
A fascinating character study and a satisfying mystery.
Custom windows executable parser surreal game, April 14, 2021This game has many flaws, but I like the heart beating underneath them.
Where to begin with the problems? It's windows only; it requires installing a program on your computer; it is a custom parser that doesn't recognize very many things; it's a game where the game itself is unsolvable without hints but the hints themselves are puzzles; it has a timer that kills you repeatedly (but you can reset the timer by moving up or down, but if you die it doesn't matter because typing in the wrong filename for the 'restore' option brings you back to the moment you died); the INSTRUCTIONS command gives a list of commands, none of which actually are useful in the game except maybe 1 or 2; the game has popups which use pixelart cursive text, perhaps the most unreadable choice of font I have seen; it employs voice acting that sounds like it belongs to a very different kind of game; there are numerous typos and getting the right answer depends on using non-idiomatic English; etc.
Behind all of that, I found the game fun on two levels. One being the surreal setting. Exploring a dream world while in a coma is an old trope in IF, but I always have fun with it.
Second, the game being so difficult to parse out almost made solving it more fun since it gains a second layer of puzzliness, the two layers being 1. figuring out what the solution should be, and 2. figuring out how the author wanted it written.
I only scored 10/18 points, so if anyone figures out how to open the door in the hourglass room, let me know (I already dealt with the hourglass itself).
Long choice based game about escapism, choice, and the moon, March 26, 2021I've often pondered on my reasons for reading novels, playing IF, reading stories online, etc. I've talked to my family about it, and my answers to why we escape and whether it is good changes fairly often. I also was oncea professional video game developer.
This game, then, drew me in completely. This is a choice-based game about someone who is trying to understand escapism, its role in life, its benefits and drawbacks, the meaning of art, etc.
It was fun to play the character as myself, giving the answers and reactions I would. I was happy with my ending.
It was funny to play this game after Ultra Business Tycoon III,and reading online debates over whether that game is winnable, and what it would mean if it is not winnable. I don't necessarily recommend playing that game first (Porpentine has better games, like Howling Dogs), but it was interesting.
Lynnea Glasser tends to make very good games. I didn't like Tenth Plague on philosophical grounds, but Coloratura was fantastic.
This game contains several instances of strong profanity near the beginning.
A charming story of mist and mystery, March 25, 2021This Fallen London exceptional story is pretty good.
Fog has encroached on London, and out of it steps a bizarre foggy figure that walks around your house, using your stuff and playing chess a lot.
As you investigate this disturbance, you learn more about a cult and a conspiracy that draws in some of the strangest features of Fallen London: (mild spoiler) (Spoiler - click to show)unusual biology and the Elder continent. Emotionally, this game deals well with a certain kind of loss without becoming too maudlin.
Unlike most exceptional stories, this has some very different endings that can be hard to achieve. If you're really invested in one outcome and don't want to pay money for a reset, it's worth looking up or getting advice online.
An entertaining sequel focused on a school competition, March 24, 2021Grand Academy of Villains is a game I first played years ago. I found the writing funny and the class interesting, but I wasn't satisfied with the ending because I found it abrupt.
Now, after playing through essentially every Choicescript game, I realize how high-quality the first Grand Academy game is in general, with lots of valid choices and good writing. I still think the ending has some issues (with some stat checks that are too high, imo), but overall it's one of the better games.
This game builds on that, but in a way some people disliked. Grand Academy 1 had very different endings depending on your choices, but this game funnels all of those towards one 'main' choice.
I know several people were unhappy with this choice, but I saw the complaints before I played, and wasn't surprised or, really, disappointed, since this game is all about multiverses and changes in reality.
Anyway, this game was fun for me. There is a big competition all year between houses (Thriller, Horror, Sci-fi and Fantasy), overseen by an outside group. In addition, a powerful new student with destiny enters the school.
The writing in this series is exceptionally funny (if you're into parodies of both academia and writing tropes), and stats are generally clear. I do think, though, that the game suffers a bit from stat checks that become progressively more difficult, meaning that the chance of you failing during the finale is high.
Another small problem is that, due to numerous options, each option gets less time. At one point I had a choice to impress people with my grades despite never going to class and not having any grades (i.e. my grades were listed as 'unknown'). I had plenty of time to spend with my 'nemesis' (this game has both normal romances and nemesis similar to romance but with hatred, kind of like that homestuck thing), and my current romance. But everything else seemed fairly stretched or thin. Again, though, this was only due to the large variability in the game.
Some people have said in reviews that 'your choices don't matter' which isn't really true, the writing is extremely variable. However, there's an art to making it clear in writing that your choices aren't important, and I think that wasn't communicated properly here.
Overall, very glad to have played the series, and would rank it in the top 20 at least.
An epic meta-narrative tale about a villain, March 23, 2021This game was a fun ride. You play as a new villain in a school for villains.
Everything is very self-aware; there are villains from every genre, and you study plot-twists and narrative arcs. Henchmen are trained on how to miss the heroes when shooting, etc.
What I think this game did exceptionally well was balancing your choices: there are 2-3 major things I wanted that I just couldn't do all at once (especially pleasing mom and becoming a monster).
I'm giving it four stars instead of five because I felt like the denouement was a bit rushed and I didn't feel properly satisfied at the end. However, I've had that feeling before with a few Choice of Games games (like The Sea Eternal), and usually I find a more satisfying ending on replay.
This game would make a great introduction to Choice of Games for people new to the company.
Disclaimer: I have worked for Choice of Games and received a free copy of this game.
Edit: Now that I've played through all the choicescript games, this one is high on my list for voice and character. I've bumped it up to 5 stars.
The conclusion of the Hero Project. More policy than power, March 22, 2021This game is the end of the Hero Project duology, which comes after the Heroes Rise trilogy (and has connections to (Spoiler - click to show)the author's Versus series).
I've really enjoyed Zachary's other games, but felt that the last game, Redemption season, was a bit more constrained. This game takes that further.
In this game, you take on the final episodes of the Hero Project reality show while dealing with a new independent city-state in the wilderness made up of former enemies trying to make a home for minority superheros.
I had an experience early on which really soured me on the game. In the previous game, (Spoiler - click to show)I followed Loa's instructions to the hilt, believing that she could save us. But she had said before that if I didn't win the Hero Project, the earth would be doomed. And the game also likes you to be consistent and to help your sister. So I had to choose between helping my sister and losing the project (thus dooming mankind). It felt pretty harsh. I tried to get some insights from reading the choice of game forums to see if there was a way to still win, but I couldn't find anything helpful.
Beyond that, though, (an issue which probably would have been just fine in the long run), this game feels like 80% reaction, 20% action. Over and over again, you're told what your hero does, and what other heroes do, then you're asked:
Did that make you feel:
-excited?
-scared?
-determined?
Or, someone will give a speech, and then the game will say:
In your heart, you think:
-All superheros should work together
-My type of superhero is persecuted, so we should stick together
-I don't care, as long as my sister is safe.
And these two interactions are what most of the game is. What drew me to Sergi's earlier games was the exact opposite: more action, more dramatic-feeling choices.
The high points of the game for me were seeing my old main character as a respected and powerful superhero, and the last chapter. I enjoy the character of your sister, Jelly Kelly, quite a bit, and your main character's power set is pretty cool.
Overall, I wouldn't have finished playing this one if it weren't connected to the overall Sergiverse. But it's one I wouldn't skip if you have played the other games, as it ties up a lot of loose ends.
A strong superhero story with restricted interactivity, March 20, 2021This is a somewhat controversial game, but it was only able to achieve that controversy by being popular in the first place.
The author had an earlier 3-part series called Heroes Rise, that focuses on a superhero getting powers, beating their first enemy, going on a reality show, then becoming an influence on the whole nation.
This game is a side story with a new protagonist, a hero with a very clever power: you are an animal/human hybrid, but the animal you're mixed with changes every day.
The focus of this game is different from the earlier series. Your character is a representative of several persecuted minority groups (the animal hybrids, those with uncontrollable powers, and another one I can't remember). The main themes of the game revolve around the treatment of these minority groups. Also, your sister's powers are killing her, and a mysterious benefactor has offered to cure her in return for several unnamed favours, to be collected.
The focus on the minority groups has led to a lot of reviews and forum posts describing the game as having 'too much politics', which is usually a dogwhistle for alt-right people who don't like LGBT representation (which exists in this game; there are trans and non-binary main characters).
However, I feel like there are some issues here, but not with the content itself, rather how it's presented. The first Heroes Rise games were all about action, but this game is largely about reaction. Instead of picking what you do, frequently you're told what you or others do and then given the choice of how you feel about it. Quite frequently choices are forced on you, and you can go several pages without a choice, more often than the earlier games.
I believe that if the game had been rewritten to feature more action and choice that the number of negative reviews would have gone down a lot (except for virulently anti-LGBT people), because a well-written game can handle all sorts of diverse politics. For instance, the Heart of the House prominently features a nonbinary main NPC with non-standard pronouns, but you see a lot fewer negative comments about it.
The Sea Eternal had a similar issue, I believe, where you were frequently told what you were doing and what you thought, and I think that it just doesn't make for an enjoyable game experience. And I think it's possible to have games with strong pro-LGBT messages that give you freedom of action and feeling: Howling Dogs, Birdland, With Those We Love Alive, and Tally Ho come to mind.
Another thing that may have dinged this game's popularity (although it's still a very popular game, just not as much as the other games by this author) is having forced failures. There are situations in the game where you have to pick between 2 very bad outcomes, and Choicescript games that do that tend to suffer.
However, I've noticed that those same ingredients that are drawbacks as games (reduced interactivity and forced failures) can also help make your overall story better. It's no coincidence that the Nebula writing award nominated games tend to sell poorly: they all tend to have tight, railroaded stories with lots of failures to build up a big character arc.
Anyway, I did like the overall story of this game, I'm glad I played it, and I look forward to the next game and the eventual crossover with the author's other series.
Worldbuilding, building a world, and a huge personality test, March 14, 2021This game highlights Sergi's unique approach to choicescript mechanics.
This is book 2 in a series. You are in an alien competition among the most powerful beings in the universe, and you have to pass three intense trials to see if you can join a powerful faction.
Unlike most successful choicescript games, there is definitely a right and wrong answer to every question (based on your past choices). But what Sergi does is constantly give you feedback about your stats so you are at all times aware of your strengths and of what your possible strategies are.
Each choicescript game is both story and game, and this feedback makes the game part significantly more engaging.
There is a lot of worldbuilding in this game, including literal worldbuilding. As the description states:
-Create a planet and culture in your own image
This is a big chunk of the game (at least 15-25%), and is pretty fun.
Another big chunk of the game is being sorted into different personality tests, essentially like horoscopes or Meyer-Briggs or Harry Potter houses, but with bigger consequences. There are at least 3 or 4 major sortings that happen. I found it pretty fun.
Overall, I look forward to the finale, but I enjoyed this game by itself.
I received a review copy of this game.
Alien gladiator game with lots of worldbuilding, March 13, 2021I've been going through the last of the Choicescript games by order of size from largest to smallest, and I'm near the end. Most of the smaller games don't have as much punch as the bigger ones.
But this game was actually pretty great. (spoilers for first chapter or two): (Spoiler - click to show)You're an alien from a planet where people can absorb others' abilities and memories. In the middle of a deadly war, you're taken to a gladiatorial planet.
The variety of characters is a big plus in this game. There are robots, gods, blob-things, etc. with one character being a superhero from Millenith, a planet where everyone is a superhero (a reference to Millenium City, the setting of the author's Heroes Rise trilogy).
The game is generally fast-paced. There was a giant chunk of world-building near the middle that was a bit hard to digest (and involved a lot of 'Next Page'), but besides that I found it very engaging.
Sergi's games often do the things that I find annoying in other games, but makes them work. His games tend to have pass/fail stat checks and some routes definitely 'win' more than others. However, he liberally sprinkles help and suggestions throughout, and offers an in-app purchase for hints. I'm not a fan of IAP's in general, but by having this one as an option and not getting it, it made me feel more motivated to try to 'win' fairly.
I look forward to playing the next one. I had heard for years that the third versus game has been more or less delayed, but I believe it's moving again. Either way, I don't think stories have to be complete to be enjoyable.
I received a review copy of this game.
A spy thriller without thrills, March 11, 2021This game is a spy thriller, just like the last Choice of Games entry I played, 'It's Killing Time'.
But in a way, they're kind of opposites. 'It's Killing Time' was a series of one blood bath after another with overwrought emotions.
By contrast, Undercover Agent is, at times, bland. You are an agent for a generic government agency, and you work undercover at a fairly generic company. Everything in this game is done competently, but it just didn't 'pop' for me.
The stats had some good variety, but most choices for stats were fairly simple. The big choices that you could make in the game were 'like your bosses and be nice to them' or not, and 'blackmmail people or not'.
In a lot of ways, this game reminds me of my own game I wrote for CoG, so I definitely don't think I could do better, personally. But, just like my game, I feel like this could have used a little bit more. I think that as of now, my favorite spy game from CoG is 180 Files: The Aegis Project.
Shoot stuff and kill people, March 10, 2021This is pretty much as straightforward as you get with Choice of Games. You are a professional assassin. In this game, you kill people and watch people get killed. There is also some professional association with other assassins.
There are some plot twists, but the majority of the game is violent shooting and fighting scenes, in the vein of John Wick, Jason Bourne, or that Shooter movie.
That's never been my genre (I haven't seen John Wick, for instance), but even from a position of inexperience I felt like the big moments in the story didn't fully land. Frequently the game takes over for a few minutes to pilot you through some actions that you do.
Stats are straightforward but meager. My highest stat was 27/100 by the end of the game and you get an achievement for getting 30/100. Some checks have pretty high difficulty, and I failed several times.
The high points for me were the pace of the action and the several mysteries threaded through the game.
I received a review copy of this game.
A unique game about psychic secret agents with lots of built-in failure, March 7, 2021This is definitely an unusual Choicescript game. You are a psychic that steals bodies, and you're caught in a war between two psionic organizations.
In a way, it contrasts with Jim Dattilo's A Wise Use of Time. Both are Choicescript games where you a human with an exceptional power (in that game, stopping time; in this game, possessing other people with your psionic powers).
The time stopping game worked really smoothly but had fairly dull uses of your power: taking a break before work, keeping a kid from scraping her knee.
This game shows off all sorts of psionic powers in amazing and creative ways, from the first chapter to the last. The aspects of having and using an awesome personal power really stick out.
Storywise, it worked very well for me, one of the stories I've most enjoyed in the game. And, having played a lot of Choicescript games with weird choice sets, I felt comfortable picking a path through much of the game.
However, I see this game down by mine near the bottom of the sales charts almost every week. Why?
I think a lot of it has to do with the inherent failures in the game. One thing I learned from playing and writing parser games is that no one will ever find a puzzle where you have to die to proceed, because dying is perceived as failure and people will UNDO to win.
But there is no UNDO in choicescript, and most games provide no saves. Every game is in hardcore mode. So when the game pulls things that feels like failures, you either have to accept that your whole run is ruined or restart. And if it happens more than once, you might as well give up.
There are several times in this game where you have to either go against some major principle you have or lose much of your skills. One major choice can completely reset one of your opposed stats. Often the game will tell you you messed up or did everything wrong.
I think that this 'fighting against all odds' improves the story, but it makes the gameplay pretty grim, and I believe that has contributed to the low sales of the game.
This game has faults, and I don't think I can recommend it for a pleasant experience, due to the above issues. Content-wise, it has strong profanity, moderate violence and optional sexual encounters. Despite these things, it satisfies all 5 points of my 5 point scale (being polished, descriptive, has good interactivity, emotional impact, and I would play again).
I received a review copy of this game.
A Choicescript war game with solid opening but a weaker finish, March 4, 2021This game is, I believe, by an author who has achieved some success in traditional publishing, and I think it shows.
This is a war game in a futuristic setting, and most of the game features tactical missions and decisions like advancing, retreating, calling in strikes, and broadening out to politics in general.
You are a brand-new commissioned officer sent to the planet Cerberus to deal with rebels and deal with a vaccine distribution that people are suspicious about (this was written pre-covid).
The stats are easy to understand at first glance, but become more muddled and confusing as the game goes on. For instance, 'diplomacy' and 'charisma' are especially difficult to distinguish, and there is a frequently-reoccurring set of choices that don't seem to correspond to any stats (essentially being cautious, being reckless, or being in the middle).
Especially confusing are options related to 'mission', 'honor', and 'leadership', as I thought I had those pegged at the beginning but they become increasingly obfuscated over time. I ended up with all less than 60% and no matter what I picked, the people I talked to laughed at me for my presumption at thinking I had honor or supported the mission.
As other reviewers have noted, there is failure baked into the game in ways that are indistinguishable from player failure, so even if you're doing everything right it feels like you're losing.
On the plus side, there are several romance options. For mine (the dropship operator), things progressed really quickly at first and then we were an established couple the rest of the game, having 4-5 more scenes together after becoming close. This felt like an unusually high amount in a good way.
Overall, the line-by-line writing was good, and I think any war buffs are definitely going to want to try this one out; it's near the top tier of CoG games for dealing with things like strategy and tactics.
I purchased this game with my own money.
An exceptional mystery story mixed with zany reality show, February 27, 2021I don't know much about drag culture, although I have friends and family members who are or have been drag performers. This game was a real eye opener for me, and I ended up learning a lot more about things like Drag Race, drag queens, faux queens, etc.
I went back and forth a lot on the rating here. I really don't like the first chapter. It's a huge bombardment of concepts, people, very stylized writing, that just felt like so much. I'm sure it'd be less overwhelming to someone already familiar with drag culture, but for me it felt like I was reading some fantasy book where the author spends the first chapter introducing all the kingdoms and using new words they made up ('and the hrothgus, or town constable, rode forth on his vytnrewr, an insect-like steed). Take that, and make it a sassy drag queen version.
It also ran into Poe's law a bit in that chapter, where I couldn't tell if was portraying drag accurately or mocking it/parodying it, it was just so over the top.
Fortunately, it calms down a lot in the later chapters, and becomes a story about people and what was for me an excellent, compelling mystery, one where, even having solved it, I'd love to go back around and dig in to find out more motives, more background, more viewpoints. The drag queen aspects themselves became more thoughtful, funny, and pointed. The characters were complex and rich.
Another reason I thought of knocking it down a peg is the humor. Not because it isn't funny; it has plenty of lines. But in this fictional world, these are top-tier meme makers, comedians and dramatists putting out their best efforts, and while the author is genuinely funny or dramatic, sometimes seeing the writing and having the audience (or the narrator) say 'this is the funniest thing I've ever had' just kind of falls flat.
But a point in its favor is that the game manages stats well. I always knew what each stat did, had plenty of chances at the beginning to increase them, and basically didn't fail any stat checks till near the end where my particular mix didn't hold up (smart, funny, confident).
Now, I know that makes it sound like the game is 'too easy', but the real game is in strategizing between cooperating vs going solo, investigating the mystery vs preparing for the competition, sabotaging people or helping them when they are potential rivals and potential future judges, and deciding what to do with the seemingly cult-like abbey.
At the end, I felt somewhat uncomfortable recommending this game to general audiences as it has some raunchy and sexual material (almost all in jokes and skits), as well as frequent opportunities for drug use or binge drinking (you are a recovering addict). But I can't deny the overall quality of the game, and I'm putting the mention of those things here so that you can get an idea before you play.
Edit: having played through it now, I can see why it doesn't have a ton of ratings on the omnibus app but has one of the highest ratings. The offputting first chapter may have kept people away, but the solid remaining portion of the game probably led to higher scores. Also, people went out of their way to rate it highly in opposition to a campaign by trolls against the game.
A story of manners, magic and daemons, February 25, 2021This is an engaging and well-written game where you play a somewhat-wealthy member of the gentry returning to your childhood estate upon the death of your guardian.
Your city has bargained with daemons and weyrds (treefolk) to survive. Everyone lives on the edge with the daemons. Do well, be scandalous, attract attention, and you'll get more magic currency. Do poorly and lose it all, and the daemons come to suck out your soul and make you their slave.
There is a lot of variety in terms of romantic partners and factions to side with. I intend on replaying as I saw tons of material about the daemons but almost nothing about the weyrds (my choice).
I would heartily recommend this game, but I really didn't like the narrative direction regarding one of the possible romances.
Your childhood friend is recently married, but they hit on you, and the game encourages you to have at least an implied affair with them to generate more scandal. If you press, she hints that her partner is okay with it. Later, even when I was engaged to someone else, it pushed for us to be together, saying that your partner would understand.
I get that they're going for polyamory representation. I'm not completely opposed to a certain form of polyamory: my ancestors in the 1800s were polygamous, and I think that was fine. But this is offputting, even with 'modern' polyamory, which is completely about trust. I met the husband later, and he seemed 'chill', but she could have plied him with a fake story about you; and later, you are encouraged to be with her without your spouse knowing (you have a 'feeling' they'll be okay with it). If you look up anything about polyamory, it only works with everyone's explicit consent. What's in the game is just cheating, and it's pushed on you multiple times.
Honestly, I find that pretty gross, and for that reason I'm not recommending this game in general. The rest of it is pretty great.
Edit: Narratively, I have no problem with games allowing you to bad things, as it makes your choices more real. I don't like it telling you in your own voice that this is okay and that you kind of want to do it.
Classic fantasy with monster slaying, encounters, dungeon, February 23, 2021Honestly, I got into "text-based games" with paper-based Dungeons and Dragons rulebooks and fantasy CYOA books. Even years later, that stuff really appeals to me (like the Sorcery series, the parser game Heroes, the twine game Tavern Crawler, etc.).
So when I say I love this game, that's the background I'm coming from. This reminds me so much of the 'intelligent weapon' rules from AD&D 1E, where you'd have a legendary weapon with intelligence that has a benefit and a drawback, etc.
You find an intelligent magic sword and swear an oath to train in swordsmanship. You find a mentor and start attacking monsters, eventually coming to the attention of Demorgon (with a name very similar to the AD&D 1E demon Demogorgon), as well as several others.
The stats are generally easy to understand, although each fight seemed to have an option to attack quickly, hide, or defend, and that didn't seem directly connected to any visible stat.
The characters are admittedly not too fleshed out. There are about five or six factions, and each needed to have like 50% more text included to be more interesting. I've worked in the last year on expanding my own choicescript game, and I think S. Andrew Swann would benefit a lot from that (even 10K more), although I think he's got a different contract he's working on. I was personally okay with this, as the AD&D modules I compared it too have similar levels of detail for side characters.
I was definitely looking forward to playing this. I'm familiar with Swann as author of one of the most popular pages on the SCP wiki (with his name on it, 'S. Andrew Swann's Proposal'), and I'm so glad this wasn't disappointing.
Finally, a lot of steam reviews suggest the ending is fixed for you to win. I wish! I had to replay the final chapter 4 times to actually survive. I'm so glad he added a save feature, which works beautifully. Very happy with this game, and I plan on replaying it.
At 180K words and with a lot of branches, it does feel shorter than some other choicescript games, but satisfying.
I received a review copy of this game.
A magical school game which could use a little more oomph , February 21, 2021In this choicescript game, you play as a new student at a high school for magical kid. Kind of like Harry Potter, which the game lampshades with a character who constantly compares things to Harry Potter.
You attend classes and prepare for a sky sailing competition while dealing with periodic magical disturbances. There are also magical non-human creatures who are fighting for rights. You can decide to help them or help the government agency which tries to hide magic from the world.
This game has a lot of good elements, and it was quite a few ratings on the omnnibus app (though it has some negative reviews on Steam). Overall, I feel like everything would be great in it if things had a little more weight.
Magic itself is probably the biggest culprit here. The first chapter has almost no magic in it except for some feelings and a throwaway line or two. Essentially, what happens is:
-You cross a causeway to the school, noticing nature is in balance,
-You get a room and a roommate
-You get told what your classes are
-You get told about an athletic competition
and that's about it. Magical things start happening later on, but it never really feels like a vibrant part of your life. Your class discussions are mostly about mortal philosophy and folklore, your dates are mostly non-magical things.
And it felt like the game was controlling the character for me a lot, almost like unskippable cutscenes in video games. This happens throughout the game, even for a crucial scene near the end where it could put you in a ton of legal trouble.
Overall, though, I think other people enjoy high school slice of life games more than me (like The Fog Knows Your Name), so I would recommend trying out the demo, as it's a very accurate representation of the game itself.
A pastiche of older dark fiction with a revenge plot, February 19, 2021This game is essentially a love story to all things old and creepy, mainly gothic horror but also the Barsoom series of books, mythology, urban legends, weird horror, and other such things.
You play as a Frankestein's monster-like character, brought to life by the power of science and lightning. Like the Count of Monte Cristo, you realize that you had been betrayed by someone you once respected and swear vengeance.
The game has a lighter side. As an example of the game's tongue-in-cheek nomenclature, you live in a city called Baroque whose principal enemy is the city Rococo. Other cities and people are torn from famous (and less famous) works of fiction, including speculative fiction from the Bronte sisters.
There is a chapter similar to the Phantom of the Opera, a chapter like the Red Death, a detective chapter, etc.
I found this all to be great. Near the end, it turns to weird horror, as many dark books in an older setting do, but it does it well.
One drawback is that there are very few opportunities for stat increases (you will likely end the game with most skills never having changed). Another is that many threads are brought up and then lost again. For instance, I received a modification that allowed me to have perfect photographic recall. But it never seemed to come up again, even in situations where it might be useful (searching through a pile of artifacts, trying to learn a secret name from a page, etc.)
Overall, I found the story fun and interesting.
Education, political intrigue and strange romance, February 19, 2021Surface stories generally aren't my favorite in Fallen London. To me, it feels like being in a dark room telling ghost stories at a sleepover, then going out into the brightly-lit kitchen to say hi to your parents and grab some snacks before going back in.
That said, the player agency in this story is impressive, and mechanically it is one of the best stories, and has poignant moments of writing, especially the drawn-out ending. Reading this made me feel that Failbetter made an excellent choice hiring Short as their creative director; the grasp of the world of Fallen London as a whole and the creative mechanics are exactly what I'd hope a creative director would bring.
In this game, the oldest daughter of Queen Victoria, called the Empress's Shadow, is the only normal child she has left, and is coming down to the Neath to visit for unknown reasons. She is the empress dowager of Prussia, just like in real history.
You want to get close to her. It turns out that she desires a revolving suite of new servants to keep from getting too close to anyone or revealing too many secrets. So, for you to get her secrets, you become a teacher at Sinning Jenny's finishing school, training your own set of spies (chosen from 6-8 of the factions already in Fallen London), and using them to find out more about her.
Her motives include both romance and power, which is interesting, and the game gives you a permanent carousel that can result in a favor (although I failed the 50% luck check all 3-4 times I tried, which is just what luck is).
The only drawbacks to me personally are the lack of engagement I felt with the surface-based story. Otherwise, it is very well-done and was interesting to play.
A silly and fun court intrigue story with constrained choices, February 18, 2021I have to admit, I didn't have high hopes for this game coming in. My own game is usually near the bottom of the barrel sales-wise (according to the 'bestselling' section of the iOS omnibus app), but Sorcery for Saps is usually right around there, too.
So I was pleasantly surprised by the involved and intriguing mystery story that played out over the couple of hours the game lasted. You have to impersonate your master sorcerer at the king's court, where he has been cursed by an unknown person at a critical time in negotiations.
There are many suspects and many side-intrigues going on, and it all ties together nicely. Even if you guess some of the secrets, it's still fun to see the others.
But this game had a few things going against it.
For me personally, I disliked that many choices were forced on you. So instead of 'Would you like to talk to the servant or do one of these other options?' the game would say, 'You've decided you like the servant, feel sorry for her, and go out of your way to cast a specific elaborate spell to fix her problems and gain her confidence. Why did you do that player?'
Imagine someone doing that when making dinner plans or game mastering. Instead of, 'Where are you thinking of eating tonight? We could go to Taco Bell or Mcdonalds since they're close,' it's more like, 'Well, I can tell already you're going to tell us to go to Taco Bell and get supreme burritos because you love their beans. What made you think of it?'
It makes for stronger storytelling, because you (the author) have complete control of what happens, and perhaps that's one reason I found the story so engaging. But I found it less engaging as a game.
The second issue that a lot of games lower on the bestselling list have (and mine does this too, though I've updated it a bit to work on it) is 'bad stat disease', where you can end the game with pretty much all of your stats between 50% and 60%, and your opposed stats at essentially 50-50, due to a combination of infrequent, low stat boosts, confusion about what tests opposed stats vs setting it, and difficulty figuring out what skill is used in each test.
The last thing is that the game has zany, silly humor, especially in the first chapter, with spells like 'CTRL-Z' or 'Thingius stoppius' (not a real spell, but similar to ones in the game). I've noticed that games with silly humor tend not to do well, even if they're actually pretty fun (like For Sale:Haunted House, Yeti's Parole Officer). The same goes for anything that seems targeted towards children (like my own game or Demon Mark).
So, if the authors read this, I really liked your game, and I think there are some things that can be improved, but overall your mystery was great and I'm going to be thinking about it for a long time. Loved the characterization of the ferret.
The gruesome details behind the royal family, February 18, 2021This game was ranked highly on the 'best exceptional story' poll on the fallen london reddit recently, and I wanted to check it out.
Turns out that it gives out huge chunks of backstory and lore regarding the royal family. This one story helped clear up the plots of Ambition:Nemesis, Sunless Sea, and Sunless Skies more than any other single story I've read on there.
You are given a strange doll, and it eventually leads you into the depths of the Shuttered Palace. There you encounter the royal family as they now are, after the transformations of the fall.
It's not as long as some of the other fate stories (most of CMG's are longer), but it has a hefty chunk of content, especially if you slow down and read everything. In terms of impact of the lore revealed, it is very high overall.
The writing on this piece was well-done, exactly the kind of thing you want in Fallen London (where you're left wanting more, but then more is offered...at a cost).
Excellent and moving French sci-fi visual novel about a summer trip, February 16, 2021I am absolutely not a fan of visual novels usually, as they're harder to pick up and put down due to timed text and the graphics usually take up most of the screen making it harder to multitask.
Despite that, I found this game great. It's an entry in the French comp for 2021. The gameplay is spread over 4 days and several locations, each with their own theme music.
While art isn't usually part of my review criteria, they really nailed it here, and the art is very responsive, with parallalax movement following your mouse, different animations at key points, etc.
The characters are all unique and I definitely had favorites early on.
There's not many choices compared to a typical Twine or Choicescript game, but they seemed to have some kind of longer-term effect. There is one huge choice at the end. I translated it for my son who was walking by, and we cried a little at our ending.
Great game. I thought of giving it a 4 right after playing it, but after several hours I definitely think this is a 5 game.
Fly a giant robot to blow up other giant robots, February 14, 2021This game is just straight-up a 'you are piloting a giant robot, go out there and fight' choicescript game. And it does really well.
The plotline is exciting. You are one of the best ace pilots in a resistance movement, and there is a hotshot pilot on the other side who keeps challenging you while both sides work on superweapons. The game is set at the culmination of a 5-year war.
Characters are varied, each with a couple of strong traits. I didn't romance anyone in my playthrough, but that's because I played a completely aggressive jerk.
The stats are simple and easy to understand. Difficulty comes not from guessing which stat to use, but about weighing your decisions, with some decisions and plotlines better motivated by different stats. So, for instance, you might have to choose between being cautious and saving civilians or being bold and striking the enemy while they strike you, with different stats helping different strategies.
I ended up with what I'd consider a 'bad' ending, but the game is smooth and varied enough that replay wouldn't be bad. I wouldn't say the game is short at at all, but it went by faster for me than most games of its size due to my interest in the plot and the lack of obstacles in terms of stat confusion.
I believe this one was very popular in past years and probably popular now. It makes sense; it's fun.
Harvesting life-force-filled tongues for a secretive government org, February 10, 2021This game has an awesome concept. You are a Death Collector. You have an invisibility cloak, pretend to be death to get people's tongues wagging before they die, then harvest the tongues which now contain that person's memories.
There's all sorts of creative worldbuilding, with different houses, abundant hidden secrets, etc. This is a long game with tons of tiny effects on the text due to your stats.
Unfortunately, there were several aspects of the game that I did not enjoy.
First, I was very confused by the stats. It's typical in choicescript games to have fluctuating personality traits represented by 'opposed stats' that add up to 50%, allowing the player to change over time. You also have skills that (generally) only go up, representing your wisdom over time.
In this game, your 'skills' are all things that seem more like personality traits: 'procedural', 'intuitive', 'cunning', and 'charming'.
This wouldn't be that bad, but they overlap in myriad ways with the opposed stats. For instance, if you decide to break rules to sneak into a room, are you being 'cunning', or not 'idealistic', or 'shameless', or 'maverick'?
If you talk kindly to someone who's dying, is that 'charming', 'honorable', 'empathetic', or 'idealistic'?
This makes it almost impossible to guess which choices affect which stat; similarly, it's hard to tell if you're adjusting a stat or testing a stat.
It's like playing a racing game that never explains which keys do what and sometimes randomizes them; it increases difficulty, but not in a rewarding way (for me).
The tone is very negative as well. It's basically choosing 'what kind of loser are you'. For instance, here are the options for one choice:
-I'm horrified this place is riddled with incompetence. Something must be done.
-I don't want to jump to conclusions. It might backfire.
-Pretend I disagree, so I can use the knowledge later for my own ends.
-I have no sympathy for whiners who blame their problems on others.
So you can do snooty, cowardly, sneaky, or haughty. I know some people enjoy playing as 'the bad boy/girl', and I've enjoyed doing that in other games, but it's not as fun when it's forced on you.
Finally, the narrative just kind of drops out at the end. At what feels like a couple of scenes before the climax, the game just stops with one page. It would be like if, in Empire Strikes Back, right after the scene where they meet Darth Vader in the 'dining room', they got on the Millenial Falcon and fly away, with the credits scrolling.
Despite my many troubles, the basic idea behind this game was great, and I encountered very few bugs/typos. The writing was interesting (it was several strong profanities, as a caution), and I thought the scenarios were individually compelling.
Very long, mostly-linear french twine game about space and Greek Gods, February 8, 2021It took me (an anglophone with moderate French skills) about two weeks to finish reading this, on and off. I expect a native speaker could finish it in 1-3 hours.
This is a very long twine game about a future earth where we have been visited by aliens and a New World Order is in charge.
It's in several segments that differ quite a bit from each other. The first is working on a space station; the second is engaging in combat and exploring ancient greek ruins underground; and the last is fighting in an arena.
The worldbuilding is intricate and silly (spoiler for midgame): (Spoiler - click to show)the gods you discover are Athena, Ares, and Trollus, who writes in emojis only.
The biggest drawback is the extreme restrictions on freedom. There are only 3-4 'real' options in the game, and those options are just which order to experience content in. The vast majority of choices are 'continue'.
This is listed as just a prologue. Overall, I found it funny, but would have preferred more real (or even pretend) agency.
A vivid fantasy story with less freedom but vibrant characters , February 1, 2021In this Exceptional story, you investigate a man and a doctor who love each other but who are willing to go to any lengths to help each other, even against the others' will.
This ends up with you and them being pulled into a jousting tournament in the land of dreams, where you must decide who to support and whether you'll take the prize for yourself.
The characters in this are drawn broadly from mythology, including the legends of Reynard the Fox, Arthurian legends, and Fallen London's own chess mythology/lore. So figures include red queens and white kings, magical stags, etc.
The bright point to me were these characters, as well as side characters (including a snake jousting with multiple lances).
The drawback to me was that it was fairly constrained. We've been spoiled a bit by very nice Exceptional Stories in the past with a variety of mechanics. The bulk of this one lies in one continuous string of actions, with the main choices being who to talk to each day and who to support in the jousts. It felt like I didn't have much agency in the story, which probably helped it be more focused and well-written. It's hard to say what they could have done differently.
In the end, though, it was a fun play and one I think I'll remember fondly.
Heroic choicescript game with great freedom and decisions about truth/lies, January 23, 2021I love this game. It combines two of my favorite genres: high fantasy (such as Heroes of Kendrickstone or Choice of Rebels) and contemplations on the nature of storytelling and truth (like Creatures Such as We or the opera Capriccio).
You play as one of four adventurers who years ago staged the end of the world, with yourselves cast as the saviors. You, an illusionist, were crucial to making the world believe that a demon horde was going to destroy them all.
Unfortunately for you, the omens etc. are repeating, and it's not you doing it this time.
While there is a lot of action in this game, there is just as much or more political intrigue and contemplation about your past and your roles.
Most choicescript games (mine included) lock you in to certain paths after a time. This game has a lot more freedom, letting you choose over and over whether to reveal the truth about your lies or not, whether to fight the demons or befriend them, whether to pursue a romance or not.
Some people on the forums disliked that, feeling that it was the game heckling them to change their mind. On the other hand, I've been frustrated by other games where you can't change your decision once you get new information.
The author does a great job of making choices about balancing your interests and not just pass/fail. The game sets you up to be loyal to certain people before you discover awful truths about them, and sets you up to hate people before discovering wonderful things about them.
It is possible to 'fail'; early on, I had three goals when a demon came through a portal, and I failed all three, and considered restarting the game. But I didn't, and ended up having a good time anyway.
I also appreciated the ending. It provided satisfying conclusions to all stories (at least my ending did), with the characters you were invested in all going off to do their own thing and asking your final advice. It gives you a way to choose for yourself how to wrap up their character arcs. It does the same thing for you, offering you many final positions.
So, I think this game is great. If you don't like frequent philosophical introspection, it might be better to go with one of the other 'high fantasy games' (like Kendrickstone, Affairs of the Court, Choice of Magics, or Choice of Rebels), but if you're interested by the idea of dealing with a web of lies of your own creation, this is a game for you.
It's also very long. I played every evening for 3-4 days before completing it.
A shortish and adventurous game with an unconvincing plot, January 18, 2021This game is fairly short (170K words but with a lot of branching, so smaller playthroughs). In it, you play as a young academic who has invented time travel. You use it to go back in time to study, hunt, or film dinosaurs while dealing with a rich kid who has stolen your credit for inventing time travel.
Skills were fairly easy to figure out, although they didn't vary much throughout the game. There are a few romance options, although most are on your rivals' team. The writing in each scene was well-done, and I felt like I had a variety of goals I could accomplish.
The overall plot, though, just didn't make sense in my head, and didn't mesh with my experiences or expectations. The way that people react to the existence of time travel, the things your character fixates on, the way people react both in the past and when you return, it just doesn't make sense to me, personally. But the rest of the game is not bad.
An army simulator and adventure game set in Slavic folklore, January 17, 2021I really went back and forth on this game. The overall storyline is compelling to me: you are a new chieftain of a nomadic tribe in the steppes which is rapidly being overcome by an evil warlord who uses dark magic. The gods tell you of a safe haven in the far north, the Valley of the North Wind.
Gameplay generally consists of choices that affect your whole tribe and choices that affect only yourself, sort of like Choice of Rebels or Stronghold: A Hero's Fate.
This game is often morally ambiguous. There are outlaws that you can ally with to destroy towns or fight against, with little immediate impact. Frequently you yourself will be alone or in a small group and come across strangers who you don't know if you can trust or not.
It makes for an interesting game. It's also a hard game. There are several options that are literally 'go left' vs 'go right' with absolutely no strategy possible, just dumb luck. And there are definitely wrong choices in other parts of the game. I used a lot of my money early on and soon found myself with 0. It locked off major portions of the game, including one agonizing scene in a large city where you are there for three days, but every single option requires money, so I had to just pick 'do nothing' for three days in a row.
Overall, I'd say the game is a mixed bag. I definitely enjoyed it, though, and would rate it above average. Since I went back and forth on the score, I'll use my standardized scale:
+Polish: The game is very polished.
+Interactivity: Despite the randomness, I felt the game was responsive to my choices.
+Descriptiveness: The writing was pretty great, I felt.
+Emotional impact: I was invested in the story.
+Would I play again?: Yes, there were several mysteries unsolved, like the nature of the 'Eight'.
Sing,O Muse, of a complicated game, child of Homer and Choicescript, January 13, 2021This game, in my opinion, faithfully captures much of the feel of the Odyssey.
In it, you play a greek hero (or from a neighboring country), child of a god (which one is your parent is selectable), trying to get home after sacking Troy.
It recreates many of the familiar scenes but leaves several surprises. So, for instance, you can visit the Lotus eaters or the cave of the cyclops, but you could just as well end up recreating the Labors of Hercules.
This is currently one of the top contenders for 'Most underrated game' on the choice of games website, and it makes sense, both that it is underrated and that people like it.
It makes sense that it is underrated because it uses loss, failure, and fate for a stronger narrative. I've seen before that Choicescript games that focus on those tend to be less popular, since they make players feel like their choices either are wrong or don't matter.
On the other hand, they do combine to make an interesting tale, and I felt like the ending choices especially did a good job of setting up competing interests.
It was a bummer that the game sets you up as married and also as having many possible love interests. It's completely faithful to the original story, but it makes all romances besides your wife cheating.
Overall, the writing on this is strong, at the expense of reduced player freedom.
A city simulator in a fantasy setting with many relationships, January 3, 2021This game is definitely my style of game but may not be everyone's. It's a city simulator in Choicescript (like Silverworld, Ironheart, or The Fleet), but it's set entirely in a Dungeons and Dragons-type setting, with liches, goblins, and dryads.
The game has a large scope with each element having less focus. It's like the opposite of Cryptkeepers of Hallowford, which has the entire game focused on a single dungeon over a couple of days. Instead, this is a youth-to-death game, starting with when you found a village and ending with your death.
During those decades, your main choices are romancing people, dealing with 3 sets of interpersonal conflicts that fester over time, and managing your village's economy, defenses, education, etc.
Some events are recurring, like a choice on what public buildings to work on or what part of the economy to prioritize. Other events are special, like getting a chance to find magical books in a tomb underground.
The first chapter is significantly different from the other chapters, as it has no sim features.
My ending was pretty abrupt, as I died in battle and got one page afterwards. I'm not sure if there are longer endings for the other paths, but it was generally satisfying.
This game is pretty polarizing in interesting ways. It has over a thousand reviews on the iOS omnibus app and is usually high on the bestselling list, but it has a 6/10 rating and < 4 on google play store. A lot of those ratings are from people who hate games with transgender and non-binary options, which this game has a lot of.
Also, there are reviews complaining the game is way too short and others complaining it drags on too long. I feel like it's a game with a ton of threads, each of which is passed over fairly quickly, including your personal narrative. Has a lot of replay value, though.
A well-told science fiction story about a space espionage mission, January 2, 2021In this game, you play as a youngish spaceship pilot and former spy. You come across two strange young twins and accompany them across space on a quest involving sentient computers.
This game has a lot in common with other games like Rent-A-Vice, The Martian Job, The Road to Canterbury and a few other games, in that it sacrifices player freedom for a better overall storyline.
For instance, in this game, there are times where you have four ways to be skeptical, but no way out of it. Or you have 4 ways to agree to a reckless mission, but no other options. Most of your choices are about how to react to dramatic outside events rather than acting on your own.
This technique has some advantages, which is perhaps why all the Nebula Award nominees use it, since it makes story beats more effective. But gameplay suffers, I think.
The overall mystery surrounding the twins was fun to see play out, and the plot and worldbuilding are interesting. As for the stats, there was a lot of overlap between them (how can you tell if a specific check is for Gregarious, Smooth Talker or Social Butterfly?), bonuses were few and far between, but the story seemed to handle failures well.
Overall, it was definitely worth playing, but I believe that it could have used more meaningful player agency, especially in choosing how to roleplay.
I received a review copy of this game.
A bloody Exceptional Story that uses lodgings creatively, January 1, 2021This game (the first Fallen London Exceptional Story of 2020) deals with an auction at an abandoned taxidermist's estate, where the mysterious Vicomte de V________ shows up (where rumours abound that his reflection cannot be seen in mirrors, that he likes his meat VERY raw, etc.)
Interactivity is unusual in this story, and it seems like Groover is still playing around with new ways of getting interactivity in the Fallen London format.
(Only mild spoilers follow about the story structure, but I'll tag them in case people want to be surprised)
(Spoiler - click to show)You are provided four different new lodgings in this story, each of which you have to move into at different times. In each lodging, there is at least one repeatable story you can use to farm things, as well as an unlimited draw deck that lets you either explore the lodgings or attract the Vicomte's attention. If you attract too much attention (or do it on person), he comes.
Following that, there is a final confrontation and denouement.
The rewards are interesting, seemingly strongly focused on the bone market. I gathered more bones than I've gotten anywhere else in the game, as well as substantial amounts of Nightsoil of the Bazaar and (the biggest thing) (Spoiler - click to show)a Soothe and Copper longbox.
The different lodgings all seem like 'haunted' versions of regular lodgings, which I thought was nice.
I wasn't captivated with this story, but the mystery was a good one, and the finale definitely made me more invested. Also, having a permanent lodging as a reward is also nice.
The overall concept is a great way to take a familiar concept and make it work in the game's universe. It reminds me of Dr Who doing similar things, using sci-fi to explain stuff like witches.
This is not my favorite Groover exceptional story, but not the worst, and definitely better than most other exceptional stories
Here's my score:
+Polish: Eminently polished
+Interactivity: I'm intrigued by lodgings, and seeing them used in this way worked for me. The card deck required some stumbling around to operate, although I suppose all the details were in a handy pinned storylet.
+Descriptiveness: The lodgings were distinct and unique, and the Vicomte himself was disturbingly written in conflicting ways that left me unsettled.
+Emotional impact: Mostly unsettled and surprise at the ending.
+Would I play again? I would definitely be interested in seeing other paths.
An Elisabethean fairytale farce with Shakespearean influences, December 30, 2020This is a good game overall from a great author, so I have no doubt that most people will enjoy it.
I had a good time with it, but I wished for a bit more. I love the works of Kreg Segall, and I love Shakespeare, but I felt like this game missed both my favorite parts of Kreg Segall and my favorite parts of Shakespeare.
You play the child of a local nobleman who has arranged your marriage to a much older noble. Your father is in ill health and also in ill temper due to predations by forest bandits and advances by rival nobles.
You escape (in cross-dress) to the forest where shenanigans ensue.
I found the ending satisfying, but the start felt a little slow and bloodless to me. I admire Segall's game design most when it offers a variety of competing goals and interests, while I felt like the only real goals here were 'deal with your dad' and 'find someone to love'. A lot of the story felt constrained to hit certain plot points (such as having to eavesdrop on your father, having to remain in your disguise at points where it would be logical not to, etc.).
These choices would make sense if they were forced by being faithful to Shakespeare, but very little of the play is in the game. Only lovers in the woods, the existence of fairies, the play and a few side references are in it. But we miss out on the warm-hearted buffoonery of Bottom, the complex feelings that come from desperately loving someone who always spurned you but now woos you under the influence of a spell, the contrast between the ridiculous and silly poetry in the villager's play compared to the intelligence of Puck, the mystery and elegance of the fairies in general, the silly puns and slapstick humor of the villagers, and the nobility and grace of Theseus and company.
So I guess that while this game is satisfying, I feel that it just missed out on too many good opportunities from the author and the source material.
I received a free copy of this game.
Award-winning writing with a design trading autonomy for story, December 25, 2020The Road to Canterbury was nominated for a prestigious award (the Nebulas, I think) in writing, and it deserves it. I felt it was 'okay' at first but as it went on I found the plot, characters and details to be great. It has extensively-researched details on life at the time of Chaucer, making the setting a delight to explore.
This is a good game, so everything else I'm going to talk about is just personal opinion and about my own tastes.
I felt that the choices in the game often sacrificed autonomy for a predetermined path.
That's not to say there aren't a lot of choices. You can bring a squire and knight together or bring them apart. You can seek to learn more about your brother's death, pursue a romance, fight duels, buy a racehorse (which I strongly recommend), etc. And your biggest choice, to encourage war between France and England or not, has many shades of nuance to select from.
But frequently it felt like the game forced my character into specific plot points, not by external circumstances, but by presupposing my character's motivations and desires.
This feels like it makes the overall storyline better (since there are assured plot beats) but it felt weird. For instance, near the beginning, you begin to overhear snatches of an interesting conversation. Without any choice on your part, your character decides to risk discovery by trying to eavesdrop. You get to pick how to do it, but you can't choose not to do it at all, even if it doesn't fit your character to that point.
Many such situations come up where it's just assumed your character will do something pre-determined.
I also had some issues trying to determine whether choices were based on sanguine (vs melancholic) or excess (vs temperance) or piety or generosity (vs avarice). For instance, if if you save money by drinking water instead of ale when a friend wants you to drink with them, is it melancholic (avoiding a large group), temperate (not drinking), piety (since you're only supposed to drink on feast days), or avarice since you aren't spending money? Sometimes it was clear, but sometimes it was confusing.
So for me personally, on my 5 point grading scale, I'd give it:
+Polish: The game is smooth and works great. Editing is perfect.
-Interactivity: Some of the stats didn't work well for me.
+Descriptiveness: Awesome. No wonder it won an award.
+Would I play again? I think I will.
+Emotional impact: The last few chapters were great emotion-wise. Lots of satisfying conclusions (for the specific threads I was chasing).
Run a workshop in Venice--historical alternate universe with magic, December 19, 2020Every commercial Choice of Games entry I've played is well put-together, interesting, and felt worth my while. So when I rate them, it's usually on intangible personal feelings that may not translate to others.
This game has a cool setting. You are one of three apprentices to a master in Venice near the end of the 15th century. This game features encounters with several of the Medici's as well as Machiavelli (who is very pleasant) and several references to an exiled Leonardo da Vinci. Care is taken in presenting the setting. For fans of this setting (similar to that in Jon Ingold's All Roads) or alternate histories in general, I can absolutely recommend the game for its writing and style.
Mechanically, I have some questions with it. There are many stats, the bonuses to stats are small, stats are frequently decreased, most stat checks require multiple stats at once, and there is significant overlap in stats making divining the correct choice difficult (such as Boldness being an opposed stat and confidence being a skill, or charm being an opposed stat and guile being a skill).
I think these design choices were intended to increase the difficulty and prevent player boredom, something I struggled with in my own choicescript game. But the net effect was a feeling of frustration for me. Also, it's hard to know how to raise some stats. I took every opportunity to be romantic with Dangereuse and ended up with a 53% in the relationship, too low to get their support vs the machine.
I feel like games do best when, if you know what you intend to do, it is clear on what you must do to succeed in it; I think Emily Short and other early parser theorists stated a similar principle, where if you know the solution to a puzzle it should be easy to type it in.
I think instead of throwing stat difficulties in the way, it's better to do what games like Choice of Magics or Psy High do, where perhaps the person you love turns out to be a horrible person and you have to do things you hate to be with them, or you can be as powerful as you want but will accrue a specific penalty that is known long ahead of time.
I guess that's a counterpart to delayed branching (a principle in Choicescript where your choices have effects far down the road): being able to strategize.
Anyway, that's a long aside that's more about a class of games (including this game and my own) than any individual one. For this specific game, the trouble with stats made it harder to make plans and I ended up turning to the Machine to solve all my problems. Fortunately, the ending was well-written.
A deep dive into a tech-based future with cool vehicles, December 15, 2020This is a pretty long retro-future game where you play in a post-apocalyptic world where deep mechanical tech underground is spilling up and a city is split between a corrupt government, a struggling revolution and outside infiltrators.
It has some rough patches and the narrative arc didn't feel well-defined, but its intricate worldbuilding and strong characters pushed it up to a 5 star rating for me.
My introduction to Kyle Marquis was through Vampire the Masquerade: Night Road, which (in addition to many excellent features) had a surprisingly detailed flight of vehicles.
This game also follows that pattern, with multiple advanced flying vehicles described in intricate detail (including the eponymous Empyrean, an experimental airplane that most of the game revolves around) and several motorbikes as well.
This game has deep, deep worldbuilding. There are multiple layers to the government, each with their own agents (often embedded into each other). There are multiple versions of tech, between the revolutionaries, the city itself, the rival city, your father, and the deep underground. It comes with numerous references and explains itself in game.
I was a little disappointed that the stats stayed relatively low, but I think that's because I accidentally spread them out too much early on. Also, I didn't invest anything in physical stats (instead focusing on cunning and leadership), and there are numerous areas where you have to be fast, strong, or a good shot. Fortunately, the game was graceful with failures and I was able to adapt.
Apparently, from reading older reviews, the game has gone through a big revamp. Originally, there were half as many main stats and they were opposed (like cunning vs leadership). Many people felt it didn't work that well, so the game was changed and re-released. That explains the proliferation of stats and the oddities of which ones are used when. I definitely think the current system is better than the old, and I can't help but wonder if the experience with a ton of diverse stats helped the author in writing VtM: Night Road.
The narrative arc could have been stronger. Instead of a long rise and climax, it felt like it plateaued after the first couple of chapters, with events of similar direness and complexity occupying the middle parts until the very last chapter or two. The game felt long, and the final chapter for me felt like a good wrap-up.
Overall, I was pleased with the characters and enjoyed my ending. I was a little confused, thinking that Wesh was a preteen, but that went away quickly. As a fan growing up of pulp sci-fi and hard sci-fi, I enjoyed the worldbuilding the most.
An expansive alternate history mech game set in the Middle East, December 12, 2020This game was a bit different than I thought it would be, and I wasn't sure how some parts of it would work, but it gelled well together and I had a great time with it.
Specifically, I thought this would be mostly about a giant mech war. Instead, this is mostly about a 'fish out of water' scenario where you, an accidental time traveler, end up in the 12th century Middle East (Aleppo, Jerusalem, Jericho, etc.) in an alternate world where perpetual motion exists and powers giant mechs.
The game covers a lot of ground, from finding your place in the world (I became a squire) to dealing with intrigue and romance (I romance a knight named Ygrite) to mech combat and a surprisingly complex castle management simulator.
Each part felt just a bit thin, but as an overall whole it worked well. What's best is the way the stats tied in well with roleplaying. In a lot of Choicescript games I have to constantly check the stat screen to have any chance of succeeding. In this game, I just picked a character type I wanted to be and the options were so natural I didn't have to check the stat screen until the end. I failed a few times in reasonable ways, but was able to achieve most of my goals.
So I can definitely recommend this as an overall great experience. The combat isn't the best combat, the management isn't the best management, etc. but the overall way it comes together is some of the best I've seen.
As a side note, it includes several things I don't see much in Choicescript games, including a choice of religions and how religious you want to be and a variety of options related to drinking and food.
Descend into the bowels of the bazaar, December 11, 2020This is the last of Groover's exceptional stories that I've played. This one is very large, taking me up to around 80 actions to complete.
In many ways, this mirrors Cricket, Anyone?. Both stories are quite large. Both have fairly silly premises (a last-minute cricket player replacement vs curing a rhyming disease with a mushroom-hunting pig). Both end up uncovering a side-conspiracy that would be a main theme in other stories but is only a sideshow here (Benthic vs Somerset in Cricket and the truth behind the auction in MKfaP), and both end in a wild descent into non-reality uncovering vast truths about the Bazaar.
This is a great story. It has a lot of customization (you have several companions with different dialogue snippets and must choose between which ones to take), interesting mechanics (like bidding at an auction and a portion told entirely through red-bordered cards), connections to past actions (Poet-Laureate gets checked here, as does knowledge of the Khanate, connections to the Gracious Widow, and much much more), and great lore (you can learn intriguing details about the fall of each of the five cities).
I prefer Cricket, Anyone? marginally, but this story is better than almost all others. Flint was my touchstone for a long time on what a good side story should be, and it's intended to be much bigger and wilder than the Exceptional Stories, but I think this story plus Cricket, Anyone? provide better storylines and lore rewards than Flint (although significantly less financial rewards). Worth buying at the full Fate price.
An engaging story of life as a fox spirit, December 10, 2020This was a really hard game to rate, as I went back and forth between 4 and 5 stars. It's definitely one of the best Choicescript games I've given 4 stars, and I think the rating comes down to my experiences with it.
In this game, you play a fox in a Japanese-themed culture whose family is slaughtered by a vicious farmer. When you reach 100 years old, you gain the power to be a fox spirit.
Choices in the game generally revolve around your personality (helpful vs demonic is a big one) and whether you encourage war or not. There are several competing goals (immortality, peace, and romance) and I'm not sure you can complete all 3 at once (I ended up with 2).
The writing is engaging, but a lot of it depends on how interested you are in being a fox. Having seen fox spirits as enemies in other games, I found it fun to be one in this game.
I had trouble engaging with the stats, though. I had very high cleverness but kept failing stat checks about knowing things or being smart. Then near the end I realized that most of those checks were for 'worldliness', which was low for me as I was a godly disciple of Inari. Even after I figured that out, though, there were many many times where I had no clue what was being checked or failed things I thought I'd be great at. Part of that is probably because I was trying at first to be a devout trickster, but most trickster options lower devoutness. So I think my own choices led to that lack of engagement.
The game had a great sense of being an animal in the human's world, which is its best aspect.
I wouldn't have minded having stats look higher, too. Since every choicescript game is different, it's hard to tell if you are good at something if you have, for instance, a 65 in that category. But that's just personal taste.
Overall, well-written and a truly fun set of final chapters. It felt large, and reminded me of the setting of Choice of Kung Fu (which I think also featured Fox Spirits; they'd make a fun session played one after the other).
A complex and moving slug racing story, December 9, 2020This the third Exceptional Story of Groover's that I've played, and I definitely liked this one more than most Exceptional Stories.
In this one, you become entangled in a slug race which, due to the nature of slugs, takes over a month to finish. In the meantime, you must travel all over London to interfere with the race, investigate the mysterious woman behind the race who always plays tango music, and look into the backgrounds of the competitors.
The game was quite a bit longer than I expected, with an extended opening, three phases of the race with two different activities in each phase, and a long and moving finale.
The rewards were good, the lore about hell and the Carnelian coast was good, and the slugs were excellent. Also, I enjoyed having an option to 'Fight the lettuce'. Definitely recommend this one.
Encounter bizarre creatures and meet friends (?), December 8, 2020This is the first of four Chandler Groover exceptional stories I purchased for research for my new game (I've played his other story Paisley already).
Exceptional Stories are mini-games built into Fallen London's overarching scheme. They tend to have both in-game rewards and interesting storylines.
This one starts off well enough, though not entirely exciting. It's mostly hunting various monsters throughout London with a lot of Groover-esque mentions of food or eating until you end up finding and interrogating a suspect.
I thought it was a bit short but well-done, and then I discovered that that was only half the story. The rest takes you out of London and uses some unique mechanics, bizarre rewards, and difficult choices.
The Lore was good, the related art and the ideas behind the items given were good. It wasn't as good as Paisley (which makes sense, given the time frames) but is better than most exceptional stories.
Worth playing for the memorable monster in the second half and the rewards, especially if you are an early player (if not, you may be more interested in the Lore-heavy option that forfeits those rewards).
A long and action-centered race story with great references, December 6, 2020This is one of my favorite recent exceptional stories.
There are rumours of a special race going around Fallen London, where only the best captains are invited. Surprisingly, you aren't invited, but you know who is, and you discover a bizarre plot.
This story excelled at two things. First, it really uses your traits. I had a Zubmarine, a Hell's Hymn, successful terms as governor, and a monster hunter's harpoon, two things that take quite a lot of work to get, and the game incorporated both beautifully into the story. Many other things I did not have were also incorporated into the story.
Second, it is strongly connected to Sunless Sea. The race course passes by all of the major near-London locations from that game, so seeing the Sphynxes and the Iron Republic was nice.
The story was very lengthy, had memorable characters, and had some of those GO NORTH-like options (i.e. really bad ideas) Fallen London is known for.
Might be worth becoming an exceptional friend this month, as I think it's cheaper than just buying the story.
An impressive Dialog game with increasingly intricate puzzles, December 1, 2020I beta tested this game in a pure parser format before the clickable version was enabled.
This is a very strong game for the competition, one of the most polished parser games. You play as a young girl who has to go around the house getting stuff ready for dinner. But as the blurb says, this is a game of 'peculiar proportions'.
In fact, it turns out that the main mechanic of the game is (Spoiler - click to show)manipulating objects and altering the size of things by interacting with a scale model of your house. This provides for wildly inventive puzzles that get better as the game progresses.
But, since it gets better as the game progresses, it struggles a bit near the beginning for finding motivation to continue. In a sense, that's a lot like Shade, which has a very similar opening (in the sense that you're fetching objects in a house) and also gets better and better as time goes on.
Dialog is looking strong as a game language here. This is very complicated stuff, with a lot of disambiguation and complicated parser directions, and it's handled beautifully. The hyperlinks threw me off a bit as I was surprised that the mouse arrow turns into a text cursor when hovering over them. I wonder if some kind of color change when hovering (like Twine's highlighting) or turning the cursor into a hand (like both Twine and Windrift), as text cursor doesn't indicate 'click here' in my brain.
+Polish: The game is very polished.
+Descriptiveness: I was going to say that the setting is very commonplace, even with the cool mechanics, and doesn't lend itself to impressive descriptions, but then I remembered (Spoiler - click to show)the little hamster-sized hat you put on the hamster. There's a lot of cute little things in this game.
+Emotional impact: Very fun.
+Interactivity: Love the puzzles.
+Would I play again? Happily.
A lengthy game showing vignettes of strange experiences, October 19, 2020This game was created as part of an MFA in writing at the University of Pittsburgh, where it was accepted as part of the program’s requirements, the first time a game has been accepted as part of their requirements. The author has also taught classes in Narrative Design in Twine.
This is a huge Twine game. The main idea is that you experience randomly-selected stories, and in between them a greater story builds up. You must acquire certain attributes or tokens to sell to advance.
This game correlates well with my experience of the academic environment vs submitting a game for evaluation by the wide world through publication or (in this case) IFComp.
The academic ‘audience’ is typically 4-5 people, the members of your committee. If its anything like math, the committee will likely spend very little time looking at your work, trusting perhaps your supervisor who has had weekly meetings with you to assure you that the work is high quality. For this game, I suspect the committee likely played for a few minutes until a death happened. In this environment, appearing to be a big time investment is the main goal, and appearing to be deep is another (which this game accomplishes by referencing racism and misogyny).
In the ‘open world’, though, other things are valued much more, #1 of which is a lack of bugs and typos, of which this game has many. For a large game entered into the competition, it needs far more testing, and hopefully publishing a proofing copy on Twinery and running it through grammarly or hiring an editor.
The game also uses very slow text in the middle. It features an undo feature which is very helpful, but if you reach a segment where you have to pay more tokens, even very late in the game, and you die, there is no choice but to restart, playing through the entire game.
I definitely think this work is valuable and I think that this is worthwhile to make, but it’s difficult to please two groups of people at once, and making a game that appeals to a wide audience is something that takes practice and a lot of help from others.
-Polish: Needs more polish.
+Descriptiveness: The game was very descriptive.
+Interactivity: This was good for the most part; the tokens are what got me.
+Emotional Impact: This game made me think a lot about my own past in academia.
-Would I play again? No, it felt a little too dificult to go far and the tone of some of the segments left me cold.
An entertaining game set in a mansion full of magical implements, October 17, 2020I played this game over a week before writing this, but put off reviewing it. It’s because I really enjoyed the concept, but found it very buggy (such as every important object being listed in the room as ‘You see…here’ or having scenery objects be takable).
I sent a list of possible bug fixes to the author, who took it under advisement, and tried playing it again.
I really enjoyed this game. You play as the assistant to a magician who was been kidnapped by a logician who leaves clues for you scattered around a mansion. Along the way, you encounter a whacky set of characters and bizarre magical implements.
The overall structure resembles Karella’s other games, but this is the first Glulx one. So there are still some iffy spots, but that’s to be expected: getting all the bugs out of an Inform game takes a long time and a lot of testing. But the writing was funny, the puzzles were generally well-clued and involved very creative concepts (more in the items used than the puzzle structure itself). and I think that overall this was great.
I wasn’t sure about whether I felt good or bad about a certain Christian clown in the game, as it seems generally mocking but presents him as sincere, so I’m on the fence about that. Otherwise, I heartily recommend this game.
++++Descriptiveness, Interactivity, Emotional Impact, Would I play again? Yes, yes, yes, and yes
-Polish: Could use some more!
A game about a two-dimensional version of Fallen London, October 17, 2020So, I have played Fallen London for years, and am especially fond of Sunless Seas and Sunless Skies. I also did my dissertation in geometry and am a fan of Flatland. So I definitely think I was the target audience of this game, which is essentially all of the important locations of Fallen London but flat.
The game is quite large, and has a Zork-like structure where you put treasures in a trophy case. There are plenty of locations, people and items.
This game is centered on parser structure, Fallen London lore, and geometry. I want to talk about what worked well and less well for me personally in each area.
What worked well with the parser: The puzzles are clean and solvable, usually, with few red herrings. I had a couple of disambiguation issues (especially with books and with the chess set) but very few if any genuine bugs. Interaction with NPCs generally worked well, always a hard thing to do. The piano puzzle was great.
What worked less well with the parser: The puzzles could use a little more creativity. Many of them are just ‘take the object’ or ‘follow the instructions here’. On the other hand, the chess puzzle was, as your testers indicated, perhaps too hard. It might have been worth giving a visual interpretation or even having a scrawled note in the chess handbook that says what the ‘real meaning’ of rule 1 is so people know they’re supposed to translate the rules and use them.
What worked well with Fallen London: This was clearly written by either a fan of the game or someone a lot of time to browse the wiki (or both?). Locations seem true to form, from poking around in the banks of the river to the exhibits in the Labyrinth of tigers to the expeditions in the Fallen Quarter.
What worked less well with Fallen London: Fallen London relies almost entirely on atmosphere and on the idea that there are forbidden secrets just around the corner. This game reveals many of the secrets of Fallen London, so many that I would almost recommend people not play it if they plan on getting into Fallen London and want to have more surprises. This has a second negative effect, which is that by revealing so much of the secrets at once, they’re deprived of their power, and the impact of the setting is lessened. Likewise, the game lacks the lush descriptions of Fallen London.
What works with geometry: Things like the elevator shaft work very well and the endings. But otherwise the 2-dimensionality is not used very much. How are murals drawn? How do locks work? How can the sigils be drawn as (presumably) 1-dimensional paint? How can you bridge a river without blocking its flow?
So I think this game has a lot of positives, but that it could make use of its three sources a little bit more.
+Polished: Mostly so.
-Descriptive: The writing is, well, somewhat flat.
+Interactivity: There was generally always something available to do.
-Emotional impact: I didn't feel emotionally invested in the game.
+Would I play again? After I've had enough time to forget the solutions, yes.
Ancient greek hijinks in the Wodehousian style, October 17, 2020Well, my personal shuffle lined up for me three pretty hefty games that I beta tested all in a row. But fortunately they’re all fun to play.
This is a big game, longer than 2 hours for me (I only replayed the first 2 ‘acts’ for this review). It’s basically the ancient rituals of the Eleusinian Mysteries (as far as we’ve recreated them) retold in the style of P.G. Wodehouse.
The game is split up into 4 or 5 acts. Each is large enough to be an IFComp game in its own right, especially the first act (which involves searching for items in an expansive map) and the last act (which is a madcap action scene set in a single room and involving a form of optimization).
The game provides a ton of jokes and just text in general, with full-screen text printouts being a regular occurrence. Overall, it’s a masterpiece in terms of total content and polish.
Structure-wise, I found the open-world segments more effective than the narrowly constrained 2nd act. Quite a few of the puzzles were more difficult than I could handle, as well, with my typical loose and easy playstyle. For the thoughtful and methodical player that examines every item, carefully checks exits and works through every takable object, this game will exciting and rewarding. For everyone else, like me, the hints are quite good and let you see the witty writing more easily.
+Polish: For a game this large and complex, it is very polished.
+Descriptiveness: The witty writing is a plus.
-Interacivity: For me, the puzzles were too hard to figure out easily.
+Emotional impact: This game is funny, for sure.
+Would I play again? After the comp is over, I'd like to revisit this.
An entertaining detective game with unusual animals, October 17, 2020I beta tested this game.
This game is about a private detective hired to track down a woman, and features a number of unusual animals (for instance, it starts in a petting zoo with an aye-aye and an iguana).
Robb Sherwinn is an incredibly funny writer who makes games that involve bizarre logic and creative situations. Mike Sousa is a talented programmer who also has a knack for humor.
So this game is a tag-team effort that warms my heart. When I beta tested this, I laughed out loud several times. Parts of this game are so funny to me specifically. It really depends on what type of humor you have. For me, the thing I think I like best is that it’s good-natured humor; the people might be weird, or violent, or non-human, or troubled, but they’re inherently kind to each other. I’ve always been averse to games with strong profanity and sexual references, which featured in early Sherwin games (not in this game, though), but the inherent goodness and kindness in the stories overpowered that for me. Because isn’t that more important? Isn’t doing your best and trying to help others more important than the way you talk? I still felt uncomfortable with the content, but this game is like ‘clean’ Sherwin and I can’t say how much I appreciate that that exists.
I also enjoyed the references to Mike Sousa’s earlier games, like the computer sports news about Jake Garrett the baseball player (from At Wit’s End) and the garrulous taxi driver from Fake News. I also appreciated (of all things) the smooth elevator in the game. I did some ‘Inform tutoring’ with someone and we spent an entire week of lessons working on his elevator extension he was trying to write, so I confidently say that this game has an excellent elevator, the kind of elevator I aspire to write.
Finally, I love the art in this game by artist asteltainn. So I definitely plan on revisiting this and playing it again in future years.
+++++Polish, Descriptiveness, Interactivity, Emotional impact, Would I play again? This game satisfies all 5 criteria for my star rating system. It's great for my tastes!
Play as a demon altering people's minds. Has graphical map, October 16, 2020I beta tested this game.
This is one of two games this year to be co-written by Xavid and which implement the fun map-building extension used in Xavid’s earlier game Future Dreams. It looks good in both games!
This game is wildly ambitious, and the concept is clever: you take people’s intents (and even more, later) and move them around to each other.
This concept has been used before (most clearly in Delightful Wallpaper) but never on this scale. This game is very large, with three sections that easily could have each been their own IFComp game.
The game expands in the middle so that it has cubic complexity. You can apply any of one category of object to another category of object to each person in the game.
This creates an enormous state space unlike anything I’ve seen before (except possibly Andrew Schultz’s Threediopolis with exponential complexity). In my experience, even quadratic complexity can be crushingly painful (I wrote a murder mystery where any topic can be combined with any other topic).
This is both good and bad. On the good side, it provides freedom, and that’s imperative for most parser games. On the other hand, without careful guidance, the complexity overwhelms the player and the game becomes frustrating.
For me, the game had generally enough hints so that solving puzzles wasn’t too hard (I replayed much of it before this review). The final act, though, I find very difficult indeed, and it was beyond me.
I enjoyed the writing in this a lot. This game is verbose, and riffs on things from quantum mechanics to religious symbolism. It’s clever and witty. As an IF ‘historian’ I’m very interested in its placement; the nice graphical elements are the kind of thing that, in the past, have raised the scores of games a lot, while the complexity may or may not have an effect on the outcome. In any case, I’m glad I played it, and feel inspired by it as an author.
+Polish: The game seems bug-free, and the map is nice.
+Descriptiveness: The writing is really solid.
+Interactivity: The mechanics are clever
+Emotional impact: Parts of it are very funny
-Would I play again? The increasing complexity and overall size of the game are fairly intimidating!
An intriguing game about curses and memory but with UI issues, October 15, 2020Okay, so I think I spent more time on this game than almost any other, but about half of it wasn’t playing.
This game uses immersive text, graphics and sound to tell a story of a man with amnesia and a curse who meets another man with the same. Together the two of you must discover a cure to your awful curse.
The overall storyline seems interesting, but this game is inaccessible in many, many ways.
Several other reviewers online have already talked about the slow text (including someone who screenshotted a tweet of mine about slow text), but I still want to talk about it a bit.
Slow text has essentially one use: in short, mostly linear contemplative games like Congee. And even there, Congee loads the whole thing at once, instead of the typewriter effect that’s distracting.
Long games with slow text can be excruciatingly painful to read. But at least you can get through them.
But if you have to replay a game frequently, then being able to quickly click back to where you came from is essential.
This game is full of frequent deaths, is very long, uses slow typewriter text and has disabled the UNDO button. It does let you save, but to know that you have to click on the ‘controls’ button at the beginning of the game to learn that L brings up the load screen, and then you have to guess that you save at the load screen.
These decision weren’t just casual decisions by the author. They are completely baked in. I often go through and modify game code to disable slow text (that’s how I played Lux two years ago, and loved it!) This game’s code absolutely embraces the slow text. It’s baked into every phrase. It’s cooked into a macro hidden deep in the javascript (not the game’s in-Twinery javascript sheet, but the html file itself). Disabling that macro gets rid of all in-game links, as those are timed to appear when the text is done. Restoring the undo button doesn’t restore the picture, just a blank box.
After about three hours of trimming it down, I got it to work. I raced through the game, clicking and feeling euphoria. And then I realized that the main mechanic the game relies on is broken.
According to the walkthrough, if you pick up books you’re supposed to be able to ‘rewind’ at key decision points. But that didn’t happen for me.
I looked at the games Twinery code, and even this is obfuscated. All of the structure is hidden because boxes have generic names (like passage 1-1) and are lined up in exact geometrical rows to hide the overall structure. But I finally found the correct passage, and it has code for the rewind to display, but it doesn’t work.
I picked through the rectangles, trying to glean the story. It seems to me that this game is about (Spoiler - click to show)vampires, which explains (Spoiler - click to show)the reaction to garlic and holy water, and the lack of a reflection.
As a final note, I saw that the author had included a secret debug code accessible by typing D. That suggests to me that the author found his game too tedious to play through repeatedly, and ended up using the debug to test it.
I’ve seen a few other people do that in this comp. I really recommend playing through your game from start to finish the way that you anticipate others will throughout the development period.
Also, another tip that’s been very helpful for me: start beta testing before you’re finished with your tricky coding, so that people can give feedback on the concept. My first version of Alias the Magpie that I sent to JJ Guest for testing was pretty crappy, but I wanted to see if the idea worked. You can even just shop the idea around before implementing it.
In any case, it took serious programming chops to create this game, and I’m impressed by the author’s abilities.
-Polish: Has several errors.
+Descriptiveness: Is very descriptive.
-Interactivity: Very frustrating.
-Emotional impact: The UI frustrations made it difficult to get invested.
-Would I play again? Not without several changes.
A custom-parser fairytale game with graphics and sound, October 13, 2020Custom parser games only available as windows executables are always a mixed bag, but this is one is better than most.
You play as Prince Charming (or Cinderella) and you have to get yourself and Rumpelstiltskin back to a wedding. Along the way, you have to complete several fairy tales such as Goldilocks and the Three Bears and Jack and the Beanstalk.
The map is expansive, with a lot of diagonal directions and several little colleges.
The parser is definitely better than most custom-made parsers but has a lot of work it still needs. Conversation especially is very picky; I had to use the walkthrough a lot. I don’t think TALK TO or SAY _________ TO ________ or similar constructions work, and you have to use quotations in a way I’m not used to. There is a provided manual, though it is very long.
The puzzles are logical, and the included art looks nice, although it started bouncing up as soon as it came down later.
Rumpelstilstkin got a little annoying as he says ‘Let’s hurry’ pretty much every 3-5 lines.
Creating a parser from scratch is very difficult, so this game is a technical feat. But unless the author is planning on making several games with this engine and refining it over and over (like Linus Åkesson with his game engine Dialog), it might be worth using previously-refined engines instead.
+Polish: Despite the problems with the parser, the setup here is clean and looks great for a Windows executable.
+Descriptiveness: The characters and locales are described in detail.
-Interactivity: I was frustrated by the specificity of required commands.
+Emotional impact: I was fairly amused by a few parts.
-Would I play again? I think I've found everything I wanted to.
Serial murder investigation in Twine, October 13, 2020So this one has a lot of good features and some that didn’t mesh with me. I’m not sure I’m the target audience.
This is a long Twine game with a mechanic that I’ve not really seen in IFComp before. There’s a long, mostly linear prologue where you meet all the main characters, then you’re given a bunch of journal entries/case files to go through. As you go through them, you can type them into a database to learn more, kind of like Her Story.
This is a game about a serial rapist/murderer. In fact, it’s the third game I’ve played in this comp that prominently features a kidnapper/sexual assaulter. This game specifically seems heavily influenced by stories like those featured in true crime podcasts and documentaries, and by the Golden State Killer specifically.
+Polish: A lot of work went into this game.
+Descriptiveness: Has a level of detail similar to true crime podcasts.
-Interactivity: The main mechanic was overly difficult to me. Typing in things that I knew were important (like 'bulger') didn't always work.
+Emotional impact: It was an emotion I didn't like, but it did it.
-Would I play again? Not my cup of tea, content-wise.
The graphic depictions in one of the assaults and the extensive profanity/abuse definitely set me on edge, and I don’t think I’m the target audience for it. Writing-wise, this game is good on the individual level, but some of the twists didn’t make much sense to me, especially the ending sequence which changed the genre of the game completely.
The mechanics are interesting, but I think they could use more testing for robustness. I will say if you haven’t played it yet that it keeps a running notebook for you at the very bottom, which I didn’t notice until near the end.
Overall, the author seems very talented. This game was beta tested by several people, but I think the next game in the series could use a couple of more people, especially Twine authors who have done well in the comp before. I’m assuming there will be more in the series, and I’d be happy to see that, especially ones with less sexual violence (for my personal taste, may not reflect all readers).
The opening chapter to a big multimedia choice game, October 11, 2020Given the popularity of Flexible Survival together with the excellent production values of this game, I predict that this game will find a lot of success with certain communities after the comp, perhaps ending up as the most-played game form this comp. I also think, though, that it has some features that will end up hurting it in this comp’s voting.
This is a hardnosed combat and storytelling game with furry characters (well, animal/human hybrids, including reptiles). It has very nice-looking screens, including an action video later on when an SUV pulls up that’s certainly the best-produced thing I’ve ever seen in IFComp.
You play as a series of characters in a run-down and dark world where mob bosses rule. Characters can pick up a variety of very specific weapons and ammo.
Gameplay is stat-based, with an initial point buy system and later gains. Every part of the game is turned into a puzzle that either depends on stats or correct choices. Even ‘click-reveals’ (when you click on a link and it expands) are gamified: you have to click them in the right order to get bonus points.
This game is difficult. Without God mode, you have to make very specific point buys to get past even the second challenge (when the truck comes by, if you don’t have quick feet or health, then you get hit for 0 damage, but your 0 health gets checked and results in death.
With God mode, I made it very far until I made a bad choice and got an instant death. I think I could have restored but I had the following bug:
"I can’t find a save slot named ‘AnimaliaBookI4’!►
I tried to save or load the game, but I couldn’t do it."
Overall, I actually like the writing quite a bit. The intense difficulty of the game will likely be a plus for the target audience, as I think this is meant to be a game you replay a lot and have strategy guides about, something like Sunless Skies or 80 Days.
For the comp, though, it makes it hard to play through in a short time, even with God Mode.
-Polish: Great production values, but bugs need fixing.
+Descriptiveness: Nice writing
+Interactivity: For the comp, it's no good, but I like the extra challenge for more replay value.
+Emotional impact: Yeah, I was invested.
+Would I play again? Yes, especially the finished version.
A compact time travel game with four time periods, October 9, 2020This is one of two games co-authored by Xavid, both making use of the same kind of cool map code Xavid used in Future Threads a few years back.
This game is definitely my sort of thing. I love games with two worlds that are mirrors of each other, and this game has four.
In this game, you’re sent back in time to stop an apocalypse from being cause by a cult. For some reason the cultists seem completely unfazed by your presence, and you can’t understand their spoken language but can understand their written language. But this is a fairly mild concern.
There is a compact map that persists through four different time periods you can warp through. At first, you are heavily constrained, but over time you unlock quite a bit more.
Some of the puzzles were real headscratchers, but other reviews and the in-game hint system got me through. One of the main puzzles and one of the optional ending puzzles rely on urban legends about animals that may not actually work in real life.
Overall, I definitely enjoyed the game. Thanks for making it!
+Polish: Very smooth.
+Descriptiveness: There was a lot of creativity with the different rooms.
+Interactivity: Cool time travel makes up for weird puzzles.
-Emotional impact: It was fun, but I didn't really get 'in character'
+Would I play again? Definitely!
A long "new horror"/religious ecstatic game, October 8, 2020Okay, so there's a certain kind of game that pops up in IF from time to time. It's a kind of game that's part poetic and part heartfelt exposition. The words are abstract, the situation obfuscated or abstracted to a level where the core narrative is hard to discern and the game becomes a kind of blank slate or Rorschach test, where scenes and phrases give deeper meaning but not always what the author's original meaning was.
B-minus makes a lot of games like that, which are usually short. Longer examples are a lot of Porpentine's work, the work of Phantom Williams, and the games Spy Intrigue and Dr. Sourpuss Is Not A Choice-Based Game.
This game has that kind of style, but it also has 'really good animations and music' style, too. The music in this game perfectly complements the writing.
This is a long and complicated game. I played it over two periods of time, as I had to take a 3 hour break. When I first played it, it all seemed a mystery, but when I came back later, somehow it all clicked in my head and I understood exactly what was going on in the story and exactly who everyone was (not the deeper meaning, just the outer meaning).
The game has 21 chapters with some surprises in the middle. Here is a general outline of the complex, non-linear plot as I understand it:
(Spoiler - click to show)The player is (or more precisely, was) a young man named Hank, born in the 23rd century, who had a traumatic incident where they were held up at gunpoint by a black man, and then called the police. The event haunts them, and is one of a giant group of negative events that pile on the protagonist. The hero is also addicted strongly to drugs (one called metafentanyl in my playthrough).
(Spoiler - click to show)To get their fix, they go to the TAV institute, a pre-war group that somehow survived the worldwide conflict (giving them the name antediluvians). A Scientology-like group, they read your body with a strange meter device, and prescribe you your drugs.
(Spoiler - click to show)The leaders, Mother and Father, give you surgery and a new name to make you a woman, Hannah. Mother uses you to further her goals, having you assassinate, steal, and kidnap. Your ultimate goal is to end the bitter cycle of reincarnation and repeated horrible experiences by murdering fate, represented by an Archon. And that's exactly what you do.
There are references everywhere in the game, so many that I can't even be sure if they're references. Is it a Galatea reference when you awake as an art exhibit on a pedestal in a gallery with the name Galene (or is Galene an exhibit near you)? Are some of the Institutes beliefs and practices reminiscent of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saint's beliefs and rituals? When the author refers to living in a holographic reality re-experiencing traumatic moments, is it referring to Howling Dogs? Is the end of Chapter 20 a visual representation of the scripture that says 'No man shall see the face of God and live'? Some maybe yes, some maybe no.
Other references are far more direct, like when you take on a role directly imitating the hijackers of United Airlines Flight 93 during 9/11. Timothy Mcveigh is referenced, Trayvon Martin is referenced, and absolutely everything ties in with trans identity (one reading is of Mother and Father as representing dual natures of Man and Woman inside each of us, with the protagonist's transition corresponding to their love of Mother, and Archon representing the idea of fixed gender identity). But that's only one interpretation.
I frequently compared it to musical albums as I listened. It reminded me of Joni Mitchell's Blue, where she used all of her most tender and/or heartfelt memories and thoughts to make a very public album. After my second session, I thought it was like the Who's Rock Opera Tommy with it's semi-religious overtones and a central narrative mixed up with symbolism. Or The Wall.
A game like this isn't really a game to be 'enjoyed'. This seems like the game you write when you have so many thoughts and feelings in your head you have to put them somewhere. You can either do that directly (I wrote a game called In the Service of Mrs. Claus which is 100% about my divorce, and in a fairly direct way) or you can do it indirectly and jumbledy-complex like this game. When you put out a game like this, probably the worst possible result is that a few people say "wow I loved it" and no one else comments. If you push this hard, you want someone to push back, and so I think it would be 'successful' if many people reacted to it strongly in both positive and negative ways. So 'enjoy' is definitely not the word here.
Despite that, the ending sequence with its visuals and music all came together and it was actually pretty epic, just as a story. Chapters 20 and 21 are just plain awesome, and like I said, I don't know if the author wanted to be awesome. I think a more appropriate response I had is early on in Chapter 6 or 7 where I said, "Well, that's disturbing" out loud.
The credits bring things back to a more somber tone. It's a vast list, including me (!), Sonic Youth, and 'the haters', without which the game would not be possible.
I'll have to revisit this game some time.
Rating this game defeats the purpose, but I'll do it anyway.
+Polish: Very polished. Extremely so.
+Descriptiveness: Equally so.
+Emotional Impact: High for me.
+Would I play again? Plan on it.
+Interactivity: I liked my choices.
A fun, complex card system with occasional bugs, October 8, 2020Jared Jackson is one of the most innovative IF authors out there, always pushing the boundaries in weird ways to test what you can do with text. His previous games, Instruction Set and Language Arts, explored algorithms and text manipulation in fascinating ways.
This game is a card-based game where your attacks and defenses are represented by a deck of cards. There are 3 dungeons to work through, each with a boss, and there are checkpoints and small encounters like gambling, a maze, and a funny recreation of Leroy Jenkins.
I beta tested this game, and I didn’t help much. At the time, I couldn’t help but die really early on, so I felt like I was a bad player and didn’t try much further (sorry Jared!)
As a player, I’ve taken the game up on its offer to give me unlimited respawns with increased health each time. This made the game far more enjoyable. I ended up making it halfway through the middle dungeon as a berserker when the game stopped responding to my link clicks. Restarting the game and continuing my save, I found that I could not continue, as it took my to a blank screen (this possibility is mentioned in the game’s readme txt). I might give it another run as a wizard later. This is probably something I would have caught as a tester if I had embraced dying, so sorry Jared!
I’m not sure if this game is possible to beat without dying a lot. There are no healing opportunities between encounters (except very rarely), and even maximizing your defense actions still won’t be enough to protect you from attacks, so it’s mathematically impossible to keep from dying. Since dying is framed as bad in most games, that’s kind of a bummer at first.
The variety in the game is fun; as a combat system I find it genuinely enjoyable. The complexity though may be its own downfall; balance and bug-hunting become much more difficult with increased complexity.
In any case, I look forward to the next innovative game by this author, and I plan on playing this game again for fun after the comp.
+Polish: The game is complex and interesting. There are bugs, but the art and other systems make up for it for me.
+Descriptiveness: Lots of variety in creatures and objects and cool backstory.
+Interactivity: Once I embraced dying, I really enjoyed the system.
+Emotional impact: It was fun.
+Would I play again? Yest.
A translated multimedia .exe homebrew parser about a deep mystery, October 7, 2020Okay, so I think this game actually has a lot going for it, and I also think it will receive less votes than most games and score lower, and not necessarily deserve it.
This game is a windows executable. Historically, windows executables get very few votes.
This game is written by an Italian author and has numerous English grammar errors. Which is reasonable; I suspect that I if I wrote a game in Italian, I would have quite a few Italian grammar errors. But it can be confusing; the kitchen has ‘cookers’, but is that the oven (an openable thing?) or the stove (not openable?) When it says that the bench has a usable bottom, how was that meant to help me open it?
I got fairly far in the game, making it to the city of Radicofani before being killed in the church. This game has a lot of sounds and pop-up images (which mostly must be closed individually). I especially enjoyed the pixelization of the Beatles Revolver album cover.
I suspect the game is on a timer, as when I got further the missing woman’s picture frequently popped up telling me to hurry.
Typing HELP helped me a lot, as did typing words’ whole names rather than parts.
I liked the story, involving some sort of portal in spacetime, the power of the written word, a murderer and possibly demons?
Unfortunately, there is no walkthrough with the game. I’d definitely take another crack at it if I could have a step by step walkthrough (although I’d just follow it exactly so I could see the whole story).
+Polish: Lots of problems with the custom parser, but lots of good sound and images.
+Descriptiveness: Very vivid. Probably my favorite thing about it.
-Interactivity: It was very hard to guess the next step.
+Emotional impact: It was all mysterious and cool.
-Would I play again? Without a walkthrough, no. With a walkthrough, yes.
A complex wordplay-based cyber fairy game, October 6, 2020Abigail Corfman has a very impressive Twine record with Open Sorcery (a popular quadratic-complexity puzzle-based commercial Twine game with upcoming sequel) and 16 Ways to Murder a Vampire at McDonalds (which is known for its complex puzzles).
So I was definitely looking forward to this one.
It wasn't quite what I expected. I thought at first it was child-oriented, but I'd rather say it's similar to fairy stories of the darker type (such as SCP-4000 or the poem The Goblin Market).
Gameplay is based on word puzzles. Initial gameplay has word-search puzzles. A long chunk of the game revolves around figuring out complex bureaucracy.
Most, if not all, of the puzzles are optional, as explained in the very brief walkthrough (which doesn't really spoil anything puzzle-wise, only offering ways around it).
I thought I was uninterested in the game at first, but then I found myself going out of my way to find more puzzles to try. In a way, it's almost like a Twine counterpart to Dibianca's Sage Sanctum Scramble, both a fantasy/sci-fi pastiche of wordplay.
I was progressing pretty nicely on the murder when I lost about 45 minutes of gameplay due to a random death with no undo possible (but restoring possible). I hadn't realized I needed to save that often, so it was a devastating blow to my will to go on. I used the walkthrough's cheats to progress to the ending, and found some satisfaction there.
Really not a fan of the random insta-death without undo (I'll admit there were some hints I was acting dangerously), but I liked the rest, so I don't know.
The protagonist is in a wheelchair, and it affects gameplay pretty much exactly how wheelchairs affect real life. I was married for 10 years to a woman who used a wheelchair full-time, and the game's emphasis on spotting out traversable paths, being stymied by a single stair step, and dealing with tedious bureaucracy to get accommodations is true to form.
There are also some personal details revealed through memories (whether of the author or of a created character), which were meaningful.
Overall, very nice experience, but make sure you save often!
++Polish and descriptiveness: Beautiful and lovely, smooth sailing.
+Interaction: My delight with the puzzles overwhelms my sadness about not saving.
+Emotional Impact: I felt intrigue.
+Would I play again? Yes, after the comp when I can dig in deeper.
A charming Adrift game about finding a compass for a wizard, October 5, 2020I suspect that this may be a pseudonym, after I had a panic-inducing moment where something I posted in the author’s forum was liked by someone who I didn’t think was an author and who would write a game like this.
This was the first game on my personalized list, but I thought it was charming and wanted to take it slow.
This is an ADRIFT game, which means it comes with that ADRIFT style where precise verb noun combinations are needed and Inform’s and TADS’s automatic feedback systems aren’t in place. So you have to poke around.
This is a fantasy pastiche (with an especially funny moment where the game loads music by Peter, Paul and Mary and invokes the wizard Google) where you are teleported to another world and asked to bring a compass to a wizard.
While the storyline resembles a fantasy teen novel, the game itself is well-adapted to parser fans. It has traps you can fall into without knowing for sure if they are traps, and requires careful experimentation and searching, but it also has multiple puzzle solutions.
I had hoped to do most of the work on my own, and asked a few early hints, but ended up heading to the walkthrough around the bank segment. Given more time, I probably would have just left this open for a month and poked at it.
I definitely don’t prefer ADRIFT or Quest games for their systems, which often frustrate my gameplay style, but I have grown accustomed to their style, and they work remarkably well for menu-based systems (ADRIFT more than Quest).
This game was charming overall, and I had a good time playing it.
-Polish: The eternal bane of most ADRIFT games.
+Descriptiveness: I thought the game was well-described.
+Interactivity: I was often frustrated, but when I took it very slowly, it was fun.
+Emotional impact: I found it charming
+Would I play again? Why not? From the other scores I can see this early on, I might be in the minority, but I got a kick out of this game.
A solid old-school parser game about an abandoned gas-station, October 5, 2020I saw some positive buzz for this game and was looking foward to it.
This is a parser game with a map that slowly expands, starting with a pretty constrained area but slowly branching.
Some have called this 'old-school' and I'd say that that's true, in the sense that the storytelling is mostly environmental, the puzzles are well-recognizable tropes with clever twists (color-coded switches, complicated devices, machines with missing parts, keys and locks, etc.), and the writing is mainly devoted to describing objects and things briefly and succinctly.
The puzzles form an enjoyable whole; I liked figuring out the different ways of handling the fusebox. I ended up needing to use the walkthrough when trying to find the (Spoiler - click to show)spring, and I locked myself out of the best ending accidentally when I (Spoiler - click to show)incinerated the worker and the device for making the cure. I hadn't saved in a long time, so I'll have to go back some time and try again. I got a sub-optimal ending, but still felt satisfied.
If anything could improve this game, it would be additional coverage of scenery implementation and synonyms. Much of the game depends at looking at scenery and looking at its sub-details, yet numerous such scenery objects are not implemented at all or require specific phrases. For an example of specific phrases, I couldn't refer to the (Spoiler - click to show)big red button as just (Spoiler - click to show)'red'. For an example of synonyms, 'push red fuse' doesn't work, but 'turn on red fuse' does. For missing scenery, when you see a faint light in the distance, you can't look at the light.
These aren't major impediments, but resolving this would take this game from good to great. I definitely think that this game will do well in the comp, and that the author could create future awesome games.
-Polish: As described above, I felt that the game could have benefitted from another few rounds of refinement with synonyms and such.
+Descriptiveness: The writing does a good job of describing the various objects you find.
+Interactivity: I enjoyed the puzzles outside of the polish issues.
+Emotional Impact: I felt a sense of mystery and exploration.
+Would I play again? I plan on finding the good ending some time.
A vampire gets a job (and revenge), October 4, 2020I was a beta tester for this game.
I feel like this is the bread and butter for parser games in the comp. Reasonable but interesting puzzles, funny wordplay, an interesting protagonist, and solid implementation.
In this game, you play a vampire who has come to sabotage his rival, who is a real jerk to everyone around him. Unfortunately, you have a lot of weaknesses: running water, death by stakes, etc. Menu-based conversation plays a big part in this game.
I enjoy this game, and could happily recommend it to parser fans.
+Polish: Smooth. Experienced no problems with the parser. Nice cover art.
-Descriptive: Could use a little bit more richness in the descriptions. It was hard to visualize a lot of things in the game, just for me personally.
+Emotional impact: I found it genuinely funny and delightful.
+Interactivity: Smooth puzzles that I enjoyed more than most things in this comp.
+Would I play again? Definitely!
All Limericks, with several clever wordplay puzzle. , October 4, 2020So the original Limerick Heist was something that had never really been seen in IFComp: a game consisting entirely of a constrained poetical form (in this case, a ton of limericks) while still telling a coherent story with items and actions.
It did very well, and defied usual voting patterns (by being one of the shortest Choice games to place in the top 10). It also picked up some well-deserved XYZZY nominations.
I wondered what this game would be like, and its receptions. Did people vote highly for the novelty only? Would a second game that has the same tricks as the first do as well?
Unfortunately, we won't find out because Limerick Quest manages to be just as novel and ingenious as the first game, improving substantially on the original formula.
In this game, you encounter several puzzles involving completing Limericks under various constraints. Your partner (her text in purple, yours in green) gives out generous hints on request. The constraints vary quite a bit, and include timed puzzles near the end (with very short times, so watch out if you use text-to-speech!)
The puzzles were really ingenious. I could see this picking up a 'best puzzles' nomination for next year. I was shocked to see this game get so much mileage out of, for instance, 100 identical objects labelled by number only.
So, I had fun. The visuals were great, with animated text, expressive use of color (especially with voices in unison) and background color changes.
+Polished: Very much so.
+Descriptive: The limericks are carrying all the weight here, and they do well.
+Interactivity: The puzzles were honestly very clever and enjoyable.
+Would I play again? Definitely.
+Emotional Impact: Fun and excitement.
A menu-based windows executable with combat and inventory, October 2, 2020This is a Windows executable game that I gave two attempts for. The first one I died against the brother, but on reloading (through 2 different saves) the lever puzzle stopped working, so I suppose I should start from the beginning, but I might have to save that for later.
This game reminds me a lot of Eye of the Beholder but without graphics. It’s menu based; in each room, you can look at each of the four directions. When you look at a direction, you might see something like a mural, or you might find items, which you equip. Items can be upgraded through prayer, which gives them special abilities. Combat is turn-based.
Most of the puzzles involve decoding passwords through hints scattered around the map. It’s a fairly compact game, so replay won’t take too long.
The goals of this game seem different from most parser games. Instead of focusing on mimesis or smooth gameplay flow, it focuses on combat and inventory. Worth checking out if you are into TTRPGs with miniatures.
-Polish: I had one crash and a weird bug with the levers. The system had words wrap around lines, being split in the middle instead of moved in discrete chunks.
+Descriptiveness: The scratchings on the walls and the knights you fight were interesting.
-Interactivity: Looking at each room separately and having to use different commands for each menu was kind of a pain.
-Emotional impact: I didn't really get a strong feeling from this game. It seemed more of a system than a compelling story, and that's okay; it just didn't move me.
+Would I play again? I'd like to see the ending sometime!
A charming sci-fi story with multiple paths, October 2, 2020I beta tested this game a while before the competition.
I found this game charming. Time travel and dual worlds always fascinated me, and in this game you explore a town before being sent 40 years into the past.
The goals in this game are simple, and I found the parser responding smoothly to pretty much everything I tried. There are many solutions to the puzzles (I ended up with about 30 points out of 50, happy with my result).
There is a timer in the game, and your watch tracks what happens. Events happen naturally in the city. People respond logically to actions you take, and everybody has a few conversation topics.
I feel like the very first puzzle with Tom can be a bit unintuitive (what exactly are we looking for?) but the state space is so small that it's solvable just by trying everything available.
+Polish: Felt smooth.
+Descriptive: The language of the game is simple, but the town was memorable.
+Emotional impact: the game felt homey. For me, this game had the je ne sais quoi that ties everything together. YMMV.
+Would I play again? Yeah, I think I might revisit this in the future.
Escape from the wizard's tower with a series of complex puzzles, October 2, 2020This was an odd game for me to play. Jim Aikin was an early favorite for me, as Not Just an Ordinary Ballerina was one of the first IF games I ever played, and I thoroughly enjoyed. I later tried other games like Lydia's Heart and found them complex and polished.
This game has a lot of excellent coding and and overall clever design, but I feel it didn't quite rise to the level of the earlier games (which makes sense, as they were designed for a grander experience than can fit into the comp).
You play as a young woman who is captured in a tower, and where your kidnapper is planning on raping you. The game heavily emphasizes this in the opening scene and content warnings, giving the player a sense that perhaps the seriousness of this crime will be justified in the story. But in the actual game, nothing at all depends on the duke planning to rape you. The story could just have easily had you kidnapped for any reason whatsoever and it would have made no difference at all. So I'm not sure why the rape is dwelt on so heavily.
Many puzzles require nonstandard actions, usually involving examining scenery items that are in the middle of room descriptions and discovering extra parts to them, using special verbs (in at least two puzzles, EXAMINE doesn't work but closely related verbs work).
The characters are well-differentiated and have interesting conversation, but for me at least they had all conversation topics available at the same time; so, for instance, I was able to ask the cook about things that I had never heard of, and which I later heard of from another character, and which were involved in puzzles I was very far away from, providing a sort of spoiler.
Here's my final score breakdown:
+Polish: The game was very polished. Most of my issues were with interactivity, not with overall polish.
+Descriptiveness: Characters were well-differentiated and there were a lot of little details.
+Would I play it again? Yes, especially since I feel it has more secrets than I discovered.
-Interactivity: I found myself fighting the parser a lot, and I feel that several of the puzzles were designed in a way that didn't click with my brain.
+Emotional impact: I wavered back and forth on this, but in the end, the game made me feel a lot of things. I wouldn't have played through this slowly and analyzed it the way it did if it didn't have an overall effect on me.
A vivid depiction of hard life in a small Japanese neighborhood, October 2, 2020This game seems like a sequel to Gotomomi, AvB's expansive parser simulation game of 2015 set in Gotomomi, a neighborhood in Japan. In that game, you gathered money by various means (working carrying a bucket of fish, posing as a model, etc.)
In this game, you return to the same scenes, but your path is a lot more constrained at first. The main goal seems to be finding better and better housing.
There are elements of the game that seem surreal, especially near the end. I wouldn't use the term magical realism, because there's not any magic here, but maybe 'enhanced reality'? There is violence in the game more surprising in how it is reacted to than its existence.
Overall, the game's narrower focus than Gotomomi aids it in telling a coherent narrative. However, many required actions are things that, while dramatically sensible, don't make much sense in a typical parser game. I ended up using the walkthrough for most of the game.
+Polish. The game uses an in-depth conversation system and has a lot of interesting moving parts (like a gambling game and holding your beath).
+Descriptiveness. This game is very descriptive.
-Interactivity. I often found myself at odds with the parser.
+Emotional Impact. The ending was very intriguing. I don't know if it was moving, but I'd describe it as a thoughtful game.
+Would I play it again? I'd be willing to give it another go some time.
Play the villain (or, supervillain) with lots of laughs, September 23, 2020This game came out in 2015, after landmark games like Slammed!, Choice of Robots, Hollywood Visionary, and Creatures Such as We. But it definitely feels like a game somewhere in the transition point from early Choicescript (which was a lot more trope-focused and experimental, with either few stats or tons) and later Choicescript (where games tended to have unique focuses and more standardized gameplay and stat amounts).
You play as a supervillain focusing on one of three main stats: ingenuity, combat, and terror. I played as straight terror, and pretty much every challenge let me just pick a terror option when it wasn't testing one of my personality traits/relationship. I think this game definitely falls into the 'three stat trap' they've mentioned when training newer authors, where you can just pick one thing and stick with it forever.
I'm planning on writing more about this once my odyssey through Choice of Games's catalog finished, but I think the greatest use of stats in Choicescript games is not in providing puzzles or testing you but in showing the game remembers your previous actions. I think the more compelling way of providing 'challenge' and replay value is in setting up strongly motivated courses of action that directly compete with each other, forcing you to choose one at the cost of the others. This game has some of each style.
This game is definitely comedy-focused, and allows you to have a complete disregard for human life if you choose (I did a 'no kill' run). A lot of the humor is sort of mean-spirited, including a recurring news segment (that does a good job of showing the consequences of your choices) where a divorced/divorcing couple repeatedly insults each other. I didn't really like that kind of humor at first, but there were some genuinely funny segments, especially near the end.
The overall plotline and mystery reveals were pretty satisfying. I had a romance I liked. Two things that didn't work as well for me were a pretty abrupt ending (about four paragraphs were all there were after killing the main boss) and a few times where it did that 'Haha just kidding of course you aren't going to do that action you just picked' thing.
Overall, I'd feel comfortable recommending this game to people who like 'funny' villains or antiheroes more than heroes. This wasn't in my top ten, but I'll definitely replay at some point to see some of the other paths.
I received a review copy of this game.
A single dungeon adventure with many paths, September 21, 2020The Hero of Kendrickstone was a game that I enjoyed purely for the TTRPG module feel. This game absolutely has that same vibe, kind of like the Eye of the Beholder games.
In particular, this game (longer than the first one and IMO more polished) is a classic dungeon raid. You are a PC in a party and have to deal with the threat of the undead under a town while negotiating between various parties aboveground. There is a money economy, magic weapons, etc.
Some people have called it short on Steam. I've come to realize as I play these games that 'feeling short' often has less to do with word count (though it plays an important role!) and more to do with the narrative arc and setting expectations. It's unusual to have a game this size focus on a single event, and so people expect more, whereas a game set over one year (like Creme de la Creme or Metahuman, Inc.) provides well-known markers like holidays and season changes so players have an idea of how they are in the story and when the end is coming.
Again, like the last game, this is meat-and-potatoes Western RPG style gameplay, so if you love that sort of thing its great, but otherwise you may find it uninspiring. I'm in the first camp, and would definitely play another game in this series.
I received a review copy of this game.
Like playing through a Western RPG module, September 20, 2020I was interested in Dungeons and Dragons at a young age, and I remember reading the first AD&D Player's Handbook with a flashlight when I was in grade school. So any game that manages to recreate the feel is a good one for me.
This game reminds me quite a bit of the parser game Heroes, one of my early favorites from when I started playing IF. In both games, you choose a class (both have a magic class, thief class, charmer class, and a physically powerful class), and then experience the same set of events but through a different viewpoint.
In this case, it's a fairly standard series of Western RPG tropes. I played through as a wizard, and died in my final confrontation. I plan on replaying to see more.
I received a review copy of this game.
You start out getting a specific reason that you are called on a quest. You journey to a great city, having an encounter with thieves along the way. In the city, you choose a patron (with a patron for each main class). Eventually, an evil wizard begins attacking, and you have to choose between 4 quests (again, tailored for the individual classes) to defeat the wizard.
It is possible to fail and die, and there are definitely 'wrong choices', with no save system. There is also a very important money system in this game, with successful quests netting you more money and a variety of things to spend it on.
The RPG-style gameplay is really the whole content here. If you're into that kind of game (such as Sorcery!, Choice of the Dragon, Heroes,etc.) then this may be a favorite of yours. If you're not into that, you'll be disappointed. The reviews on Steam are split, and I think that's the reason why.
I look forward to the sequel, and to replaying (with a different class this time) to see if I can finally defeat the wizard!
Continue your God-fueled conquest across the great seas, September 18, 2020If the first game in this series (Champion of the Gods) had Odyssey-themed elements, this one had ones reminding me of Greek philosophy--if Greek philosophy included brutal rampages across the countryside!
I have to admit, this series is one of the few Choicescript games where I love to play as a bloodthirsty, wild warrior who swears allegiance to the Gods at all costs. If I have any regrets from this playthrough, it's that I started out being humble and stuck with it. I plan on replaying as a completely arrogant jerk instead. In any case, I proved to be a loyal disciple of the Goddess of War.
I finished this game with my jaw open, scoffing, partly because I enjoyed twist and partly because it ends on a major cliffhanger. I felt like the main threads of the game itself were completely resolved; in my playthrough, the main antagonists were defeated and all big mysteries cleared up. But the action definitely sets you up for another surprise.
This game has you voyage away from your homeland. I ended the first game not destroying destiny and serving the Gods. In this game, though, you must travel beyond both the reach of your Gods and destiny. You go across the sea to two contrasting cities, and much of the game consists of investigating the two cities, their customs and Gods.
There is romance in this game, although I chose to stay faithful to the romance from my first game, my wife and queen. We had several romantic opportunities. I believe this game is so large because there are so many paths from the first game.
Overall, this game seemed more contemplative than the first. You are met with several who question your choices. I had a son who followed my footsteps but questioned, and both my mentor from the first game and my companion later on frequently disagreed with me. I felt like the game also made vague references to Plato's teaching, like the Parable of the Cave and the concept of ideal forms. For one like me, driven by the bloodlust of the first game, I was surprised, but I think it helped me as I had to double down on my beliefs and goals.
There is a war training section in the last chapters that is its own little minigame. You have to choose different training styles for both your troops and your ships and use them effectively in battle.
Overall, I found the narrative arc less compelling than the first game but the richness of the choices/branching and the ethical quandaries more exciting.
I've also come to realize that I enjoy series of Choicescript games much more than stand-alones. They allow for so much more depth and so many options.
I received a review copy of this (very large) game.
Side-choosing and hijinks with the almost-dead., September 17, 2020This was an interesting Exceptional Story for Fallen London, apparently expanding on a throwaway line in another part of the game (I think the conflict card between Tomb Colonists and others).
This game has a boisterous Tomb Colonist (kind of a living mummy, a creature preserved from death but full of wounds or rot that require bandages to hold them together and keep them presentable) who is trying (sort of?) to be decreed officially dead while leaving his estate to his nephew.
I may be mixing it up a bit with the perhaps more memorable Dilletante's Debut by Hannah Powell-Smith, which similarly featured a tug-of-war involving an estate and family.
And I suppose that's the problem. I don't have any negative memories about this story, but I don't have very memories of it in general besides wandering around the Grand Sanatorium fighting spiders. I do have much stronger memories of earlier stories from this year, such as the memorable Paisley, the very cute Go Tell The King of Cats (by the same author as this story!), and even Shades of Yesterday about a variety of pens.
So I'm giving this game stars for interactivity, polish, and descriptiveness, but not for emotional impact or replayability.
Orange tanner and an underground resort, September 17, 2020This Exceptional Story takes us to a restorative hotel in the Neath where the clientele tend to up with a deep orange tan (sometimes with burning cracks in it!)
I wasn't as impressed with this one as I have been with others. For me, the best parts were the connections with Sunless Seas (which involved hauling around a great deal of (Spoiler - click to show)sphinxstone), and the 'stinger' at the end of the story.
Here's my score:
+Polish: Smooth as always for Failbetter.
+Descriptiveness: I can still vividly picture the glow and the water.
-Interactivity: The main gameplay has a sort of fruitless cycle where you repeat the same things over and over. It made sense in-story but I found it frustrating.
+Emotional impact: Actually, yeah, some of the characters were pretty interesting and I've thought of a certain dreamlike nighttime scene on occasion.
-Would I play again? I don't think I would. But I would read other things by this author! This seemed more like an experiment in form that didn't resonate with me specifically rather than a failure on the author's part.
Frogs and killers, September 17, 2020Fallen London is all about the impermanence of death in the Neath (the enormous cavern below the earth where cities get sucked into when they 'fall').
But this story follows a strange assassin who uses frogs and somehow manages to permanently get rid of people.
It ends up being quite charming. Here's my score:
+Polish: It worked smoothly and seemed well-thought out. Pretty much all Fallen London content is polished.
+Descriptiveness: I played it months ago, but I still remember the frogs and the (Spoiler - click to show)factory that threatens their wetlands
+Emotional impact: As I said it above, it's charming. Johnny Croak is a sweety.
+Interactivity: I definitely felt like I could make real choices.
-Would I play again? You can pay to replay (or play for the first time if you missed it) Fallen London's exceptional stories. This one was fun, but I wouldn't go out of my way to play it again, especially with some other very good stories out there.
A fitting sequel for Psy High. Change time at a summer camp, September 17, 2020I have a fondness for summer camp settings. Birdland is a game I really enjoy and recommend a lot of people, and it's set in a summer camp. Several tv movies and shows from my childhood and my son's are set in summer camps.
Also, Psy High is high on my list of best Choicescript games.
So I enjoyed this game. It's more serious in some ways than the first game.
You play as a camp counselor, and you make a big discovery about the camp. You have the opportunity to radically change your life and the life of others.
More than any other Choicescript game I've played, I experienced a lot of temptation here. I usually pick a role early and play along, and this time I played the 'help everyone as much as possible." But the game sets up competing goals really well, and by the end I had ended up acting very selfishly and killing several people.
I like how the game has truly meaningful choices interspersed with reflective choices; for instance, you can pick your relationship with your parents, which makes you feel powerful in and of yourself.
I saw someone complain on Steam that the game had a high school setting, so keep in mind that this is absolutely a high school game. I loved this game, and intend to play it again in the future, maybe try and change some of the darker choices I made.
I received a review copy of this game.
A long monster training simulation with some unusual design choices, September 11, 2020The Last Monster Master is a game very different from most Choicescript games in some respects.
First of all, the bulk of the game is a simulation like Metahuman Inc, another unusal CoG game. About 60% of the game consists of taking 4 monsters with different personalities and strengths, training them and getting various amounts of money for it, spending the money on improved training facilities, and seeing how they respond to different scenarios.
The main stats are discipline/compassion, nerve and respect, but there are also two 'power' stats: telepathy and body language. I focused entirely on body language. These two abilities aren't used to do things directly. Instead, in many options in the game, you can either guess what to do from 3 normal options or use telepathy/body language to get a hint.
The weird thing is that the hint is often not apparently useful, and the game frequently has you try everything from a list, exhausting all your options, with the last option frequently being something out of character. So I'm not sure how useful getting the body language hints actually was.
The beginning is a bit slow, and the end a bit abrupt. The characterization of you, your helper, and your monsters can shift quickly.
But the premise is fantastic, and it allows enough flexibility to make the game overall enjoyable. I guess it's kind of like a Choicescript version of Pokemon, but you can talk to your monsters about their feelings and what it's like living in human society. You get to visit them after they graduate and see how they turned out.
Be warned that the game changes the goalposts on you frequently.
Definitely recommended for fans of simulators, not so much for others.
I received a review copy of this game.
A Greek mythology-inspired game that grapples with destiny, September 9, 2020Pros: It was much easier for me to choose the stats I wanted to have than other games, and to get them high. I chose to be like Heracles, and was a completely brutal and narcissistic champion of the Gods. The game absolutely let me take this path, and justified it in-game as being a champion of the goddess of war.
I enjoyed the writing quite a bit. The characters were on par with other good Choicescript games, but the overall plot and themes are what resonated with me.
There are several romance choices. At least two are thrust upon you in terms of their attraction to you, but you have a lot of agency over what you'll do.
This game is inspired by Greek mythology, but has its own pantheons and cities. I suggest that you try the opening before buying to get a feel for it. I'm excited to try its sequel, which is substantially larger.
As a final note, this game does something I've never seen in a Choicescript game before: (Spoiler - click to show)it has you switch to another character briefly mid-game, with a different stat set you can adjust to.
Cons: The game has a fairly linear main story (though I've only played once, many choices seemed to converge, and other reviews confirm it). Until the end, that is. However, in a game centered around destiny, that's not so odd a thing. But I bring it up because some have questioned its replay value. It felt quite long to me, though, and it had enough choice in characterization that I feel who I was as a character could be completely different from playthrough to playthrough.
I received a review copy of this game.
A great teenage super-power game, September 5, 2020This is definitely one of my favorite Choice of Games so far, for my personal tastes. It manages to make you feel powerful while forcing you to choose between competing goals, and has great options and fun writing.
It has a lot of mysteries and it has a character with psychic abilities, and both of those things are personal favorite genres of mine, so I think others may not have the same response I did. But I can definitely say I enjoyed it quite a bit!
You play as a clairvoyant teen in a high school where much of the student body has unusual powers which sprang up the year before. Other students look to you for investigating strange or missing things, and there is a general conspiracy.
It had a lot of good romantic options. One is kind of pushed on you (in regards to your feelings), but in a way that feels true to my experiences in high school, when your emotions and feelings are out of whack anyway.
One thing that I've noticed is that as I play more Choicescript games, I enjoy them more. A lot of them have similar rhythms and expectations, and it helps me strategize and find a way to enjoy them more. I would definitely put this game in my top 10 Choicescript games so far.
I received a review copy of this game.
A solid pirate game with elaborate worldbuilding , September 1, 2020Out of the Choicescript games I've given 4 stars, this is definitely at the higher end. It's a pirate game, felt fairly long, had great worldbuilding and nice action scenes and romance.
The main thing holding me back from a higher rating was my lack of emotional investment, most likely due to the characters. Outside of the main character I romanced (the pirate captain Redwing), I couldn't tell you who any of the other characters really were or looked like. What side was Maurice from? Who is Lex? Pretty much everything else about the game was enjoyable.
There are a few sea monster fights. The game is set in an alternate Atlantic, with countries similar to England, France, and Haiti, among others. The main conflict is with slave traders.
There was also a bit of an issue with stats. I was disappointed at first that there were many stats and not many boosts in the opening chapters, but that soon went away as the game provides many opportunities to boost stats throughout the game.
But a bigger issue was confusion of stats. There was too much overlap. How can you tell the difference between a check for wits or cunning, or finesse for that matter? What is the difference between your combat skill and being straightforward in battle? I was able to succeed more often than not, but it made me realize that having closely-related skills may be a bad idea (something I've struggled with in my own game, having a stat for being friendly and a stat for having friends).
I received a review copy of this game.
A children's story with influences from Russian fairytales, August 30, 2020This game, like so many other Choicescript games, has a pretty bad beginning followed by a much better middle.
I found the opening very slow, with children's book-style writing and very slow plotting. The second chapter was also fairly slow, and I found it difficult to push through, one of the openings I struggled the most with.
The middle was wonderful. I enjoy being exposed to other cultures, and Baba Yaga is about the extent of my knowledge of Russian folklore. However, every Russian I've seen comment on the game says that it portrays the folklore inaccurately or poorly. On the other hand, though, every such comment I've seen has also included a complaint about how the your sibling is non-binary (which you find out by them telling you they don't think they're a girl or a boy near the beginning). So I can't tell if it's actually really bad representation, or if people hate the non-binary thing and that makes them inclined to attack the rest of the game.
But as a fantasy story in general, I liked the middle. You have a choice of three extremely powerful villains to deal with. I faced a seven-headed dragon and a necromancer.
The ending was fairy tale-like, with simple surroundings and simple solutions. It felt like it fit the story, but wasn't the most satisfying ending, as it didn't tie up every narrative arc (the most thorough tying-up I've seen is in Herofall).
This game's approach to challenges had a lot of pass/fail with no real benefit to failing. That makes sense in some games; but with no undo (like in parser games or in Heroes Rise's legend-point-retry system), a long linear game like this with many chances of failure is too tedious to replay a lot. And another thing this game does that some other Choicescript games do is having a long series of difficult tests right after each other, where failing even one is heavily penalized. Much better is the system in Choice of Robots, Creme de la Creme or Tally Ho where your failures provide as compelling a story as your successes.
Nevertheless, the game was polished, descriptive, I found much of the interactivity interesting and I was emotionally invested. I'd probably give this a 3.5, but rounding to a 4.
I received a review copy of this game.
A compelling hero story in broad strokes, August 26, 2020I was interested to play this game, as I know that on one hand it's been one of Choice of Games' best-selling titles for years, and that on the other hand its frequently vilified by a subset of the Choice of Games forums.
It's one of the oldest Choice of Games entries, the fourth one ever made. I've played a lot of the old ones recently, and have a lot more variation between them in length, use of stats, linearity, and romances as the company hadn't settled on a house style yet.
And this game has a lot of peculiarities as well, but manages to be more polished than many early games. The stats are clearly communicated. In fact, they are spelled out in the game. Your choices matter; occasionally you are presented with binary choices, but one is grayed out. That doesn't mean (as some steam reviewers thought) that you never have that option; it means that the game is keeping track of your past actions.
One peculiarity in particular is that there is a single forced narrative of who you are and what you feel. That doesn't really change from playthrough to playthrough; you're always the child of disgraced, incarcerated heroes; you always experience the same trials and betrayals; you always have the same powers. There's only one romantic option, and its fairly forced on you, the game describing in detail how you feel about the other sexually, one of things I found least enjoyable.
What changes, then, is how you get through these opportunities. Do you follow justice or fame? Are you defensive or offensive? Do you have hero worship or work on your own?
So I see why it's popular and I see why people on the forums don't like it. It doesn't fit the ideal of the current, refined in-house style of Choice of Games, with plethoras of backgrounds, branches and romances. But it's also a compelling story with good emotional involvement.
In my playthrough, as a hetero male, all of the female villains and the main romantic option were consistently described as sexy, busty, working in prostitution or seduction. I didn't find that enjoyable, and I considered taking off a star for that. But I believe that many people will enjoy playing this game, and for that reason I'm giving it 5 stars.
Edit: On a side note, after I played it last night, I had terrifying superhero dreams based on it that woke me up with fright. I guess its descriptions are pretty vivid!
I received a review copy of this game.
An entertaining farce about being rescued in a fantasy setting, August 22, 2020This is very entertaining title from Choice of Games.
It's a self-aware farce with characters drawn from broad fantasy/fairytale stereotypes.
You play as a royal heir who is constantly surviving kidnapping attempts. The bulk of the game concerns one kidnapping attempt, which involves you and four heroes (a bold knight, a proud Amazon, a peasant, and human raised by faeries) descending layer by layer through an enormous tower full of traps.
One compelling thing about this game is that it rewards bad behavior. Being a helpless drama magnet is one of the strongest ways to make it through the game. So is being selfish and mean, but being kind is okay.
It even makes good use of bad relationship stats. You have plenty of opportunities to decide who to throw in the mix of danger.
Some people have expressed difficulty knowing which stats connect to what. I admit to being a little unclear on the use of strategy vs intuition (neither of which I maxed out), and I stayed almost exactly 50% on 'ready for the ball' vs 'ready to fight'. I think one issue is that much of the humor relies on you making specific choices, so it can feel forced at times because it IS forced due to the humor requirements. I also found it a bit hard to get started.
I received a review copy of this game.
A Choicescript sci-fi game about a crime reporter, August 20, 2020This game is one of the shorter Choicescript entries, around 80K words. It still had a comparable playthrough length to bigger games, so I suspect it just has less paths than most games (my game is in a similar spot branching-wise).
You play as a news reporter who is investigating criminal activity. Unlike most Choice of Games entries, the main character gets their butt kicked frequently. It can be a bit frustrating having so many negative things happen.
There are three main stats, and many parts of the game involve choosing your best stat. When I was writing for Choice of Games, they mentioned the 'three stat trap' a lot, and I wonder if games like this is where that comes from (just having every choice be an option between three stats).
It sounds like I'm being pretty negative about the game. The truth is its hard to design a satisfying story arc for one of these games in 80K words, unless you paint everything with broad strokes and have a lot of life-changing choices (like Choice of the Dragon).
Nevertheless, I enjoyed discovering more about the mystery, and the characters were vividly described, if somewhat one-dimensional (especially villains!). I don't regret my time playing, and the game was polished.
I received a review copy of this game.
A solid superhero mystery game with a satisfying narrative arc, August 18, 2020Some Choicescript games stand out to me in different areas. Choice of Robots has a real sense of freedom. The Martian Job has beautiful wordcraft. The Treasure Seekers of Lady Luck has memorable and original characters.
This game had perhaps the most satisfying story I've played so far. Part of that is my personal tastes. I love mysteries, and Christopher Huang is one of my favorite mystery authors. This game is a superhero game, but it definitely has a mystery feel.
You play as a news reporter who must assume the mask of the hero when your (Spoiler - click to show)twin brother gets kidnapped. You have to face off against three superhero villains to get to the core of the plot.
The story has a definite narrative arc with a good buildup and one of the best denouements I've had in Choicescript games, which usually end quickly.
If I had a gripe, it's in the game having a lot of romantic options but having you start off engaged (though not married). It seemed kind of underhanded, though (Spoiler - click to show)upon replay I felt better about it.
I felt like I had real agency in the game. And Christopher Huang nailed something that I've found lacking in many choicescript games: making failure feel worthwhile. Failure in this game doesn't lead to messages implying "you are bad at this game". Instead, it leads to dramatic tension, the 'calm before the storm.'
Stats aren't superpowered in this version, making this less of a power fantasy. But that makes sense, considering you're a civilian that only recently took up the mask. There seems to be no way to manage your stats to pass every check somehow. But it's okay.
I can see why some people might not like this game. But it has all the things I personally look for in a game.
I received a review copy of this game.
A swords and sorcery game with a younger tone and tons of dinosaurs, August 17, 2020This game is basically exactly what the title promises. It is a sword and sorcery game with dinosaurs everywhere.
Strip away the dinosaurs, and it is polished but generic swords and sorcery. The only real weapons mentioned are swords; there is magic, but it generally just does whatever you want without any sort of system; everyone has a class of some type, either a bard or a ranger or a wizard. The enemies are (Spoiler - click to show)dragons and a necromancer.
It's also oriented towards a younger audience, I believe. The language seems intentionally simple, the romances involve mostly hugging and kissing (which is fine with me). Everything is telegraphed and/or on-the-nose. Although you are an adult, there are segments like seeking admittance to wizard school or looking up info on dinosaurs that are more reminiscent of junior fiction.
None of this is necessarily bad. I think this would make a great Wesnoth campaign, for instance. And it had a definite narrative arc and some great characters. I enjoyed my neurodivergent partner who disliked crowds and touch, as well as my velociraptor Rex.
I had the chance to be evil at one point, and I took it. The game didn't really seem to want to commit to me being evil, but I did anyway, although I betrayed my new ally in the end and sided with others.
A railroad sim with a ton of romantic options but a lot of unevenness, August 15, 2020This game is currently the lowest-rated game on the Choice of Games omnibus app.
That doesn't correspond directly to quality; the two Nebula-nominated games (Rent-a-Vice and The Martian Job) are in the lower third of the app store, and I enjoyed both of those quite a bit.
In this game, you play as a young heir to a railroad line. As temporary president, it's up to you to prove you can be permanent president. Also, your favor wants you to get married.
There are an enormous number of romantic options (at least 8, I think?). There is also a recurring monthly budget meeting, similar to Methuman, Inc. but less consistent.
An unusual feature of the game is that its difficulty is set by the very first choice, which is not advertised to you directly. It asks if you are ready for the game, which I thought indicated some kind of 'intro to choicescript' or stats explanations.
I'm going to break this one down with my 5 point system:
-Polish: The game is very uneven at times. It swerves between the railroad management, playing with your cat, and romances. I found several bugs, including raw Choicescript code, getting an ending saying I never had my company sold to a larger company when I did, and getting engaged, then having a failed proposal, then having a marriage to the same person all in a row.
On the other hand, it has to be weighed against the games big ambitions. The more a game attempts, the more forgiving I feel towards bugs. On the other other hand, even larger and similarly ambitious games like Creme de la Creme and Tally Ho seemed more polished.
+Interactivity:This is a bit hard to measure,as I accidentally chose the greatest difficulty. I felt like I had real agency. I got frustrated with the money management so I sold the company, and the story let me do it, presumably changing quite a bit. The romantic direction I pursued had several scenes set up for it which were clearly tailored towards just this person. I was able to enter into and back out of anything I wanted at any time (except once when my father offered me a favor; I didn't have the chance to turn it down).
+Emotional Impact: Well, I certainly felt a lot of things while playing. The unevenness of the game blunted the emotional impact, but I was genuinely invested in my character's life and quite alarmed by several developments (in my hard playthrough, I had disasters ranging from passenger to death to industrial sabotage to extortion).
+Descriptiveness: This game is very descriptive. I was able to vividly picture everything. This is perhaps its best trait.
+Would I play again?: Yes. The numerous branches and the different difficulty levels make me want to return to this one eventually.
Grander scope than the original, but less personal touches, August 14, 2020The original Superlatives game (Aetherfall) is one of my favorite Choicescript games. It provided a tale of a small group of young Victorian superheros trying to survive without leadership and exploring a fascinating world built by the author.
This game more or less puts that at a distance. Your powers and friends from the first game are shoved away. Alternatively, you can start a new character without a connection to them.
This time, you aren't weak, you are essentially an envoy or almost an angel for higher powers. Everyone respects the authority you bring.
This makes the game (as others have sad in reviews and discussion on other sites) that this is less a direct sequel to the first game and more its own standalone game. I agree with that, and will evaluate it as such.
This game has a lot more big politics. The two main threads are a delicate balance between three parties (Earth, Mars and Venus) to a peace treaty, and a series of strange rifts bringing strange and violent people.
The political balance was interesting and delved into worldbuilding. The rifts scenario had a twist halfway through the game that made it far more interesting.
The writing for this game is good, I think even an improvement on the first. I wrote down or screenshotted a few things that I thought were especially good. The love interests in this game are detailed and have their own private dates and side quests.
Overall, as a game, I loved it. As a direct sequel to the first game, pretty good. I would feel comfortable recommending it even to people who haven't played the first one, if they're interested in things like major diplomacy and dating spies.
I received a review copy of this game.
An excellent Victorian superhero team game, August 13, 2020This was one of the most enjoyable Choice of Games titles I've played. You play as a new recruit to a superhero society in Victorian London. It has an HG Wells feel, with brass mechanical creatures, airships, and aliens from each planet in the solar system.
You lead a team of superhero trainees in an attempt to discover the fate of the more trained superheroes, who have disappeared. Your team is very diverse: some essentially human, others from other planets, and another that's quite a bit like you.
The game offers a satisfying narrative arc and a variety of ways to interact. In one part, you can choose between three missions. In another, you explore a house for clues to a combination. In others, you choose how to allocate your assets and can even end up in a courtroom trial.
I thought it was great. Some of the achievments are a bit difficult to achieve, but I enjoyed it immensely, and look forward to playing the sequel.
I received a review copy of this game.
An early Choicescript game with zany antics that grows more serious, August 5, 2020You know, I've found a pattern with Choice of Games titles. On quite a few of them, the first chapter or two is pretty dismal, almost to the point where I don't really want to play any more. But they've always paid off in the long run.
As someone who's written one of these games myself, I think I know what's going on. I had never written longform fiction before, only parser games. But the standard in non-interactive publishing and Choice of Games is to write the first chapter first and keep going, getting paid as you hit milestones.
For me, that meant I approached Chapter 1 as inexperience and untalented as possible. By my final chapter, I had 2 years of writing experience and study under my belt. My first chapter is, frankly, hideous.
When I write parser games, on the other hand, I write the whole game at once, starting with a skeleton and expanding it. The opening scene is often something I add at the very end when I realize it needs 'something more' to kick it off.
That might explain why this game, Choice of the Ninja and others have such flat openings that don't connect with the rest of the game. On the other hand, experienced Choicescript writers like Hannah Powell-Smith or experienced fiction writers like Natalia Theodoridou have strong opening chapters.
I bring this up because the opening of this game stinks. I only had one choice that affected my main stats (I think you can affect more stats if you play it right, but it was odd), the computer was a real jerk and it felt flat overall. The humor seemed fairly dumb, intentionally.
As I played longer, I got to go on interesting missions, I got caught up in the storyline, it was fun modding my ship, and the humor improved. All of the annoying parts of the beginning turned out to be important plot points in the end.
This isn't the strongest game in the Choicescript lineup, but as an entire game, it was actually fairly satisfying. It kept me guessing right up till the end and had good plot twists. I still don't really like the idea 'jerky computer companion', though, but I think some people will like that. And it feels longer than other games from its time period.
I received a review copy of this game.
Edit: The point where I started enjoying the game was when it let me fulfill my desire: I always wanted to be the element xenon.
A werewolf jailbreak/outlaw game, part 2 of a series, August 4, 2020This game is part 2 of the 3-part Claw, Shadow and Sage series.
I really enjoyed the first game, and this game lets you import your save directly, with a lot of different opening scenarios depending on how you ran the last game.
This game opens with a couple of chapters of a jailbreak sequence, a genre I enjoy but which sees little play in interactive fiction.
Once you escape, you (in my playthrough; it branches a lot) joined a camp of essentially outlaws trying to survive in the wilderness.
As opposed to the brutal Colonel Williams in the first game, the standout character in this game is Maker, a werewolf scientist who stays in her human form a lot more than she ought to and seems to be around anytime trouble starts.
I look forward to the final game, when it's released. This game is very replayable, and has several romances with adjustable levels of detail in your relationships.
A post-apocalyptic werewolf game that leans heavily on worldbuilding, August 3, 2020I just wanted to comment before the main review. I plan on reviewing every single Choicescript game. My 5-point rating system is weighted heavily in favor of these games. Every game I've ever seen from Choice of Games is polished, descriptive, replayable, and has some form of good interactivity.
So I don't anticipate giving any number of stars either than 4 or 5, unless there is something deeply offensive in one of the games.
With that out of the way, this game is fairy hefty in length and in content. You play as a young werewolf in a world where werewolves have been hunted almost extinction and forced into an internment camp on the east coast of the US.
Unlike most works that deal with 'other-humans' that are persecuted, like X-Men, the werewolves in this game don't seem to be a code for human ethnicities or sexualities.
Instead, at least in my violence-and-fury centered playthrough, it seems to be an honest attempt to see what it would be like to be a predator, thought sentient. My hypothesis is bolsetered by the large number of friends and others I see online who discuss and write about being sentient animals. The story deals with bloodlust, and in no way does it punish you for violence and murder, treating it as natural for wolves.
There are several romantic options, and quite a few opportunities to act on them.
The worldbuilding is the main focus here. There is an elaborate back story, characters with huge histories (there's got to be a spreadsheet or book of lore kept by the author somewhere), detailed topography (that book/spreadsheet has to have a map attached).
The plot is designed to get you through this worldbuilding and the main plot points. Others online commented that they felt railroaded in this game, and I can see where they're coming from. But I enjoyed the setting and the characters, especially the storyline around the main rival.
I received a review copy of this game.
A budget-based business simulator with witchcraft and aliens, August 1, 2020This game is pretty different from other Choice of Games titles. Its core gameplay is driven by a series of monthly budget meetings, interspersed with an ongoing mystery/action plotline.
You play as the new CEO of of Metahuman Inc., being forced into the position after the disappearance of the previous owner. Metahuman Inc. secretly uses both magic and extraterrestrial technology to modify humans. Unfortunately, for legal reasons, they've lost all their previous tech an rely on you to decide what to purchase next.
The core budget cycle is complex. You can invest your funds into different stock portfolios, or develop new personal enhancements (your main source of income), or invest in research to make future products better.
The 'action' portions revolve around the missing CEO, and include opportunities for romance (I found the romance plotline I chose satisfying). The two intermingle as your business decisions impact your personal life, and your personal goals require you to divert business resources.
The first scene was a bit odd for me, as the game labelled me as duplicitous when I didn't feel I behaved that way, but then it took off into a satisfying sci-fi story. I got a lot of satisfaction out of this game, found the characters memorable, and enjoyed the storyline. Many COG titles feel rushed at the end, as (from my own experience writing them) you have to write so many endings that each one can get a bit diluted. That wasn't the case with metahuman.
I received a review copy of this game.
Edit: I realize now that this game reminds me of Actraiser, which had a sim-portion and a fighting-portion, and that was one of my favorite games growing up. This game definitely ranks in the top third of Choicescript games I've played.
A fast-paced and straightforward ninja-based Choicescript game, July 31, 2020Choice of Ninja was the 13th or so Choicescript game put out, and I found it one of the weakest games at first, but it grew on me as I played.
I happened to play this as I was watching Naruto Shippuden for the first time, and the parallels are easily visible. You play a young orphan raised in a village in the woods, and it starts with you having to pass a test at your school to become a full ninja. There is magic, most of which involves invisibility, but becoming a duplicate is another skill. There are other parallels, like escorting a crotchety old man and dealing with a friend on the dark side.
But in a lot of ways its more realistic. Evil monsters are hinted at but not shown. There's no real magic past stealth magic and duplicate magic. So the over-the-top magical fantasy of stories like Naruto are toned down, and the parallels become less and less as you play.
The last half of the game is where I feel like it came into its own. Other reviewers have said that this game is very linear, and choices don't matter, but I felt like my choices mattered quite a bit when it came to the plans on infiltrating the final fortress. It was fun.
That said, I don't think this one holds up as well as other older Choicescript games, especially when compared to Slammed!, which came out around the same time. Slammed! is in the top 5% of all IF games ever, to me, with a story that has you hooked from the beginning and gut wrenching decisions at the end.
So, as an overall IF game, compared to most games in IFDB, Choice of the Ninja is high quality and worth playing, but compared to other commercial Choice of Games stories, I don't recommend it unless you're playing through them all.
Pure power fantasy in a Renaissance setting. Magic, manipulation, and romance, July 30, 2020This game has quite a bit of history behind it. It was the fourth Choice of Games title, when they were all named 'Choice of' (the ones before it being the Dragon, Broadsides, and the Vampire). A year later, it received an update with an entire new chapter, and then another update.
It's power fantasy in its purest form. You are young and gorgeous and everyone wants you, including the king/queen. You can choose everyone's gender in the game and due to magic any two people can have a baby. Tension in the kingdom is preserved, though, by replacing gender with magic. The type of magic you are born with determines who can rule.
Every choice you make has massive consequences. You are constantly romancing someone or making backroom deals or starting a war or revolutionizing the system or jousting in a tournament. I found it very similar to Sims in the way you can meddle with everything and everyone.
Being so early in the history of the company, it has a lot of odd quirks. It has three major paths you can choose, but only one leads to the updated content, the others ending with your old age and death after seeing only a third of the content. There is a lot of customization of your appearance that ends up not mattering. Some of your bases stats are rarely checked. There are a lot of binary choices, and there are several 'huge list' choices where you have 7 or more choices. The narrator comments on your choices to you directly, something I only remember seeing in Choice of the Dragon.
The game is full of the eponymous affairs. I do not support affairs in real life, but this is a fantasy, and more than that, it's a fantasy that shows the real-life problems, jealousies, and conflicts that are the natural consequences of affairs. I think it's worthwhile to play and fun, to boot.
A very fun espionage game that won the Choicescript contest, July 29, 2020As I've been playing through Choice of Games stories, I've found ones that are touching, majestic, goofy, weird, and high-quality.
This one is just plain fun. It's a James Bond-type thriller, and it does interactivity right. I was able to really customize the kind of person I wanted to be, pursue the relationships I wanted to pursue, and have moments where I really felt torn between two goals but knew what I had to do.
The game revolves around investigation of a tech firm that has experienced recent layoffs and a suspicious employee death. There is a lot of worldbuilding, but in a mostly easy-to-understand way, like the enemy agency DIABLO which uses codenames based on devils.
I found this easy to play, engaging, and long enough that I felt satisfied. If Choicescript games were food, this would be meat and potatoes (if you're into that thing). Simple and especially, especially when done right.
Content-wise it's very similar to Bond films. There was one instance I found of strong profanity, some heavier violence towards the end (including alluded torture and some gore depending on your choices). My playthrough had heavy flirting but no explicit sexuality, but the game lets you customize this quite a bit so I'm not sure about other paths.
Would definitely recommend.
I received a review copy of this game.
Solid writing in a space-themed heist game, July 25, 2020I'll discuss this game on my five point scale. For an overview, you are a former safecracker who's running out of money and is looking for a new job. This one's a casino, on Mars. You have to work with a team and pull of the heist; but things go wrong.
Polish: This game is thoroughly polished. Even the stats screen looks nice, and the names of stats are a clever treat (you have three stats about your interactions with Mars, named 'Curiosity', 'Sojourner', and 'Spirit').
Descriptiveness: This is where the game shines. This feels like the kind of writing you'd expect picking up a crime or mystery novel from the bestseller table at a bookstore. It's a higher caliber than most the IF I've played, for sure.
Interactivity: This is where it differs a lot from other Choicescript games, and the area I have the most to say about. Most Choicescript games are power fantasies where you max/min or strategize and get to do all sorts of great things, but at the same time sacrificing other goals. This game felt less powerful and more by-the-skin-of-your-teeth. There are very few opportunities to raise your stats. Many choices were more about reaction than action, and I could see that be why another reviewer gave it less stars. I'm a fan of games that invite reflection (ironically, one of my favorite such games is Polish the Glass, which has a similar writing style and features the same day job as this game's protagonist). There are still power fantasy elements; you can fall in love with many people, change the whole world, become rich. I became rich, but it felt hollow. Maybe I should try again?
Emotional Impact: I felt it. The game had an intense blackjack simulation that I liked. I don't gamble in real life, but in the game it was fun (lost everything, of course). I felt tense at times, laughed at the portrait in the crime lord's office. A strong area for the game.
Would I play again? Absolutely. If I time traveled to tell my past self about which Choicescript games I should play, I'd definitely include this one, and I want to see if I can save Mars this time.
I was provided a review copy of this game.
A Choicescript game about keeping alien criminals in line , July 24, 2020This game is one of the older Choice of Games entries, and one of the shortest.
It's a comedy about you, a parole officer for all of the aliens that live on earth (which is now a galactic penal colony). There's a single romantic option (that I found, at least).
I found quite a bit of it funny, and there was quite a bit of local idioms from different cultures I learned, but this game suffers by comparison. In the six years since it came out, the standard for these games has generally crept higher and it shows.
The text feels sparse, often just a couple of paragraphs per choice. Many of the choices feel very on-the-nose and in-the-moment instead of the slow build-up of small choices leading to big consequences that marks newer games.
Some though, may find these characteristics refreshing, giving a quicker game with less labored choices and less weighty subject matter. In any case, it was polished, descriptive, and funny, and I might play again.
I received a review copy of this game.
A somewhat buggy game about an old house and a giant mining complex, July 21, 2020This game reminds me a bit of Old Jim's Convenience store from IFComp 2019. Both feature an old, abandoned structure underneath which is a large mining area.
This game is the author's first game, and the lack of beta testing shows. The interesting layout and rooms are negatively impacted by under-cluing and by exits which stop working once you use them and runtime errors.
My 5-point scale:
-Polish: This game is not polished.
+Descriptiveness: It is relatively descriptive
-Interactivity: Bugs cause quite a few problems
+Emotional impact: I found parts of it quite fun (like the result of using dynamite)
-Would I play again?
Mid-length sci-fi game with a real cinematic vibe and superb implementation, July 19, 2020Andromeda Apocalypse is one of the best-crafted games I have seen. In this mid-length sci-fi game, you explore an abandoned station that is part Sphere, part 2001: A Space Odyssey, and a little part Alien.
The game features a compelling main NPC, a map that flows well in your mind, and puzzles that lead the player on from piece to piece in a natural way.
Instead of traditional scoring, the game includes achievements. At first, I thought this would make the game worse, but the achievements became a puzzle themselves. ('How do I get the 'Ellen Ripley' achievement?', I found myself asking.)
I would recommend playing Andromeda Awakening first, because this game is a sequel. Awakening is a good game, in and of itself, but Apocalpyse is the better of the two.
I recommend this game for everyone.
Well-crafted but difficult science fiction game about reality, July 19, 2020This classic game is exceptionally well-written and implemented, together with a well-done hint system.
The game features a pretty small playing area that is packed with objects and several NPCs that take interesting actions.
The game is hard, and I had to rely on hints much of the time. The puzzles require creative uses of a large number of objects gathered from different areas, and some large leaps of intuition.
The plot is about the nature of reality, and it has several mind-benders, which is why I am not describing it as much.
An entertaining British butler adventure with a huge wordcount, July 11, 2020Tally Ho was recommended for me to play in a poll on Games that Need More Reviews.
This is a big Choicescript game with 600,000 words total. In it, you play a butler in the Wodehouse style.
Your client is a spendthrift who needs to impress a wealthy aunt in order to pay off a debt. Hijinks ensue.
I'm not too big of a fan of actual Wodehouse novels, but this game managed to be outrageously funny in several ways. There are many paths to success, including theft, romance, intrigue, intellectual endeavors, and secret clubs.
The characters are refreshing as well. They are all deeply flawed but also have, generally, good hearts. You generally have many goals at once that completely contradict each other.
I appreciate that the author in fact wrote much of the game intending you to frequently fail checks. It's supposed to be fun and rewarding whether you do 'good' or 'bad'.
An Exceptional Story about the struggle between cloth and creature, June 28, 2020This is a well-written Exceptional Story for Fallen London.
In this one, you find odd pieces of sentient Paisley clothing scattered about Fallen London. As you engage with it, you discover a strange past.
The story ends up ranging around several of game's most important factions.
The writing is tight and clever, with complex characters. There is a climactic battle that is more action-packed than most of Fallen London. Overall, highly recommended. Has Groover's signature creepy style and contains a great deal of Wilde references.
A lengthy procedurally generated space exploration game on a grid, April 9, 2020This game is one of the most interesting of Spring Thing. You have to explore a 4x4 grid of planets, with 4 'safe' planets in the middle, 8 dangerous planets on the edges, and 4 really dangerous planets in the corners (at least, that's how I interpreted it).
The writing is grounded in the pulp sci fi of decades ago, and has a lot of tropes from an older time, like 'impressing the natives' and taking treasures from their holy sites back to your society's museums.
The gameplay has a good rhythm of exploring, buying and selling, kind of reminiscent of Fallen London.
I really enjoyed this at first, but on each of my playthroughs, I hit a kind of wall at the end where I knew exactly what I needed to do but the resources seemed like a lot to acquire. There are some shortcuts (like special ores giving tons of crystals), but I felt each time like the interesting content ran out before the final quest did.
However, that might be due to my timeline in playing every game. Perhaps if I took it at a more leisurely pace it wouldn't be a big drawback, and I don't know if the author should change it.
An expansive but unintuitive tribute to Hawk the Slayer, April 7, 2020This is a big Quest game entered into the 2020 Spring Thing.
It's clear that a lot of love and hard work has gone into this game, and it is very detailed and at times evocative.
However, adapting other works, especially static stories like film or books, is tricky. It can, as in this case, end up with huge worlds and confusing maps, tons of NPCs each with small parts, etc. This, plus the randomized combat, gives a feeling of an old western false-front store, designed to look big but needing a lot of work in the background.
A walkthrough would improve this immensely. On the plus side, it made me want to watch the original film, which I think is one of the author's goals.
A solid noir story marred by 'guess-what-the-author-is-thinking' situations, February 10, 2020This game is long, well-written in the noir style (where men drink hard liquor and every woman is beautiful.
It's framed as a radio play, and has two acts. You end up doing daring things, with cat-and-mouse chases, throwing punches, etc.
Unfortunately, many of these things are under-clued or involve non-intuitive actions. This makes a walkthrough almost required to play through the game.
A relationship-focused horror game about the fog haunting a small town, January 16, 2020I purchased this game because it seemed interesting. I'm a sucker for good horror stories.
The concept is that the dense fog in your town is rumored to kill those who have wronged others and not confessed. After an argument with a former friend, he dies, and you are the last person to see him alive.
The game is split between two main modes of interaction: deciding which of your many (well-written) friends you'll spend most time with, and deciding whether to believe in the fog monster or be a skeptic and deal with the real-life problems in the town.
I struggled with the first chapter or two, as it was more relationship-focused and I'm more into fantasy and sci-fi aspects of games. But then it picked up steam, and I ended up enjoying both facets of the game, and had a satisfying (though 'losing') ending.
A 'cheesy', compact puzzler, November 19, 2019I beta tested this game.
In this game, you are bullied by cheese. In a bizarre twist, you find yourself in a sort of pocket-dimension blocked by an enormous, rude wheel of Gruyere cheese.
There are eight corridors leading from the cheese, each heading to a different area containing useful items.
Some of the puzzles can be pretty tricky in this game, and some of the concepts can be very difficult to puzzle out (like what exactly is the nature of the (Spoiler - click to show)'hole' you find). But it's compact nature means that there are only so many things you can try before finding the solution. I found this game to be pretty amusing!
A daring experiment and a taxing challenge, November 19, 2019I beta-tested this game.
Åkesson is one of the most successful creators of new parser languages in the last few years. His new A-machine and Dialog language have proven to be powerful and smooth, and its default messages are, perhaps, more appropriate than Inform's default messages.
This game is a great departure from usual parser fare, and a bold choice for IFComp. You are a conductor, and you must follow a real-life score (from the Nutcracker Suite) and cue everyone at the right time. The real score is contained in the game, as well.
This is like no other game I've seen before, and playing it is extremely taxing. I felt like I was burning calories as I played this game. Even slight errors can cause havoc in the orchestra. And if you play perfectly, a problem arises that is outside the scope of the score, providing a 'lousy last point' puzzle.
Is this well-done? Yes. Is it innovative? Definitely. Is it a great display of the Dialog language's capabilities? Absolutely. But is it fun? For me, playing felt frustrating, but winning was truly enjoyable. So if you're going to play it, try to schedule time to finish it!
A compact teen horror game with difficult puzzles , November 19, 2019I beta-tested this game.
This game is is a horror story that effectively borrows elements of both games and pop-culture from the 80s. This is a monster-focused horror game set with two kids driving the boy's car to prom, with the date wearing the boy's ring. It brings to mind the music video for Thriller or parts of Back to the Future.
Gameplay-wise, this has elements from older games as well. There are numerous timers on the game (including one that killed me off at 70 points as I was playing the competition version), a maze, and a complex machinery.
I like this game, both as a tester and as a player. It can get frustrating at times, though. I recommend playing past the first scene and seeing if you like the overall feel of the game or not.
An enjoyable rhyming-based game, November 10, 2019Andrew Schultz makes games by taking a wordplay idea and finding as many examples of it as possible, then building a game around that list.
Sometimes, it feels a little forced. Some times, it feels great. This is one of those great times, at least for me.
I'm not coming in looking for a cohesive narrative. I'm coming in to have pure puzzling fun that hurts your brain.
I would rank this game up around with Shuffling Around, one of my favorites, but a little below Threediopolis, my absolute favorite.
A typical MTW game with cool settings, October 24, 2019MTW tends to make games that have similar strengths and similar weaknesses.
Pros:
-Large casts of interesting characters that talk to you and follow you around
-Big maps and inventories
-Compelling plot points and settings
Cons:
-Only one path is implemented
-Difficult to predict correct paths
-Typos and bugs
This game is no exception. A mysterious mongoose/cat and a mysterious woman come into your life, and you investigate a weird house with links to the past.
I used the walkthrough because, from experience, it's difficult to play a MTW game without one.
Edit: For some more specific feedback on this game:
(Spoiler - click to show)Consider the following exchange when meeting the first human NPC:
>talk to woman
That's not a verb I recognise.
>ask woman about woman
sleeping young woman doesn't have anything useful to say about that.
This is a game filled with NPCs. It takes only 5 minutes to put in a response to TALK TO WOMAN that suggests using ASK/TELL instead. The capitalization and/or article usage for "sleeping young woman" is harder but is doable.
The default responses for many simple verbs like JUMP, PUSH, and EAT have all been left in.
Error messages make up the bulk of text you see when playing a parser game, and they need a lot of work here.
Obscurity and fairy tales, October 18, 2019This game is obscure in many senses of the word. First, it is very hard to run, intended only to run on a linux system. I was able to play it following helpful instructions at http://intfiction.org/t/reviews-for-beta-tested-games/43016/7.
Second, it's obscure because the writing is deliberately vague. Everything is allusions, none of which (maybe one?) is about Alice in Wonderland. Most of the allusions seem to be to Hansel and Gretel or Cinderella.
Third, the way forward is obscure. It is difficult to discover how movement works, difficult to find out how a room is finished, and difficult to go on to the next room. Some basics of movement: (Spoiler - click to show)Typing EXITS shows you the exits. You can move with N, E, S, and W as abbreviations. I took to the source code first and walkthrough later. The source code encourages you to look at it.
I encountered a bad ending that made me get stuck. It was when I (Spoiler - click to show)became a tree. I beat it by typing, not (Spoiler - click to show)run, which was the highlighted term, but (Spoiler - click to show)running away.
Occasionally I used the source to type the right word to move on if I got completely stuck.
One note: all of the major keywords (that give you special results) are (Spoiler - click to show)HTML color codes.
The fiddliness of interaction put me off a bit, and the game either has a few bugs or only has bugs because I played it on the wrong system. Otherwise I was impressed with the design and descriptiveness and would be interested in playing again.
The latest in an epic series of Adrift games. Travel to colonial America., October 13, 2019I've seen the Alaric Blackmoon series suggested to me on IFDB for years, but never tried one of the games.
There are six or more in the series, and they involve a valiant warrior in Europe in the times of swords and armor.
In this game, you travel to America to encounter a Native American shaman.
I'd love to talk more about the game, but I encountered a game-destroying bug. A thief comes into town, and you chase him out. When I killed him, he kept appearing anyway, and so I was periodically kicked out of town and could not reach the trading post.
I'd love to update my review if this bug were fixed!
Edit: There is an updated version that fixed that bug, and I had fun exploring the town. I added another star to the review. I got stuck again, because I couldn't find Henrik, but I'll keep trying!
A game showcasing a powerful new IF engine. A magical island, October 10, 2019This game showcase a new parser, which usually makes me skeptical.
But I was very impressed with this IntFicPy game.
Pros of the engine: Smoothness! It looked fabulous, typing in and scrolling up and down felt natural and very nice, saving and loading was easy. Different text colors worked well, timers, changing room descriptions, conversation was implemented. Many of the hard problems were dealt with well.
Cons of the engine: Could do with some better synonym handling, and especially pronouns (IT, SHE, HER, etc.) It felt sometimes like it was just reading a part of my command and not all of it.
Game wise, I love the worldbuilding here. Not such a huge fan of timers, but it seems forgiving until the endgame. I did well in the first part and then hit a big bump sending me straight to the walkthrough for the rest of the game (finding money was the bump, I think, and I could have solved that, but then the commands I saw seemed intimidating).
You play as a newcomer to a dangerous magical island where the Storm kills all who dare approach, except for you. You go about the island seeking to repair your boat and discovering a village with a large religion.
A good showcase for the new engine. Online play would be a huge boon, though.
A text novel in older Latin America with an interesting graphical interface, October 10, 2019I played this game through to a death after about 30 minutes.
You play a man who has recently moved to a small town with wells, town doctors, taverns, etc.
The interface is wild. On the left is an illustrated book, with lines in slow typewriter text appearing as you make choices. You have three categories of 'inventory': thoughts, places, and things. These appear in the lower right.
The upper right contains the contents of your current location.
Actions are done by dragging inventory onto each other.
It's a good mechanic. It's slow, though, as is the typewriter text. And the game is long. And I couldn't find any way to save, and there are insta-deaths.
So I'm going to keep my rating and review as it is and maybe one day revisit this game. A save feature would help a lot!
A tale of brother's love in a mysterious forest, October 10, 2019I rated this game on the following criteria, one star for each:
Descriptiveness: This game is descriptive. You play a man mourning his brothers death. A bizarre occurrence happens, and you must recover your five chess pieces from a forest full of wizards, dwarves, beasts, and magic.
Polish: This game is not polished. Many synonyms are not implemented and the game doesn't recognize reasonable solutions. I even received the extremely rare 'something dramatic has happened' inform library message (not necessarily a bug, but requires a bizarre combination of circumstances).
Emotional impact: The frequent praying was interesting, but praying for points seems kind of hypocritical. The dwarf seemed kind of like a bad caricature of a dumb Scottish person. Big, emotional moments were compressed over too short a time span (a problem I had in my first published game).
Interactivity: So many commands just didn't work. There were multiple devices that 'revealed' things, and it was very frustrating trying to figure out if, when one failed, it was a bug or intentional. I didn't even know I could reenter my cabin until I read a transcript. Very buggy.
Would I play again?: I would not. Parts of this game were charming, but I believe it's too buggy right now.
(Thanks to stian on intfiction for posting a transcript! Extremely helpful!)
A cheerful and big game that needs some fixing up, October 8, 2019Luke Jones has released many games, and has a definite style. His games are whimsical, kind of roguish (with a foul-mouthed pigeon), sprawling, with a big cast of NPCs.
They are also a bit spare. When he started with Quest games, they were above average for Quest games in terms of implementation. Inform games (which this one is) generally have room for smoother programming, and this game could use a litte bit of polish, both in synonyms and in typos (especially the problems with stray punctuation that inform has).
This is a sequel to The Bony King of Nowhere, featuring the same map, just a few years older. I played with the walkthrough, as some puzzles I had great difficulty in guessing.
My favorite part about the game is the frank and friendly NPCs, like Donella or the Wizard of Ounces (Oz). I also liked the tie-in with other games by this author.
A day-to-day life simulator with a mystery involving 4 sex robots, October 6, 2019So, a few things about this game. First, it's by an author whose work I love, Hanon Ondricek. On the author hand, it's an erotic hand. On another other hand, it has a 'tame setting'.
But this is perhaps the least tame 'tame' setting I've seen. The author is just bursting at the chance for you to sample some of his erotic writings.
Case in point: the whole point of the game is to interview four sex robots and ask them a series of 7 questions to help determine the cause of a murder. But the robots get bored, and you have to do other things to get them to respond. Eventually the only options, even in the clean mode, are sexual. The pictures correspond to the hardcore version, no matter what you pick. Your character still has erotic encounters with bots at the factory.
Well, in any case, this sort of thing in a game comes along with a feeling of shame, which is not what I'm looking for in a game.
Okay, that out of the way, this has some interesting things going on with it. Like Howling Dogs, it has a day/night cycle in a grey cube in a futuristic setting. There's really a sandbox feeling, as you can choose to go to work or not, spend money on things you like, configure your room with different virtual reality setting, sleep in the mimddle of the day, etc.
It can all get overwhelming. I reached a first ending on accident, and my next one implied I had missed a huge portion of the game ((Spoiler - click to show)involving accessing robot memory in-game). I'd replay, if not for the issues mentioned above.
The game is very polished. It is descriptive...perhaps too descriptive, lol. It certainly filled me with emotions, not all pleasant. And the interactivity, once I worked it out, was really intriguing. But I don't plan on playing again!
A surreal dream game with dream logic, October 4, 2019This is a lengthy game that has you surviving a fall in a dream, and wandering around the dream landscape.
I love the whimsical setting here, and its very imaginative, especially the whole cloth situation in the market.
The game uses dream logic, though, and I soon turned to the walkthrough and became baffled by the suggested actions. Errors litter the game as well, such as the game saying you have a smock when you don't get it later.
This is a game that needs more polish. Having experienced beta testers run through it over a few months would have helped a lot.
A parser mystery with satisfying gameplay but some homebrew hiccups, October 1, 2019Homebrew parser games are notoriously difficult to get right. Most are frankly bad, with poor parsing and tiny games.
Bradford Mansion is one of the better downloadable, executable homebrew parser games I've seen. Sensible floor layout, puzzles tied by common themes, most puzzles relying on simple verbs.
But the parser isn't completely up to the challenge. There are small inconveniences (like L not being recognized as LOOK), but larger ones as well. A few key puzzles require extremely precise commands, with anything just a tiny bit off being unrecognized. This makes the game extremely difficult to solve without the walkthrough.
It has some tricky combinatorics/code puzzles, which are not completely covered in the walkthrough (being part of a hidden track). A plus for the puzzle fiends out there!
A detective game with a great story but a few unfortunate bugs, June 26, 2019This game was actually pretty good. You are on a different planet, but in a very grungy-noir city. I didn't think of it at the time, but the aliens take the place of non-white races or transgender individuals or any other minority you want to think of.
A murder has occurred, and soon enough the mysterious artifact known as the Myothian Falcon (a direct nod to the Maltese Falcon) shows up missing as well.
Two things make this game problematic: guessing conversation topics (often impossible feeling!) and a few bugs. I asked out an encryptionist on a date, didn't do so hot, was told not to bother again, but when I talked to her, she acted like she was still on the date.
Beating without restarting or using a walkthrough seemed impossible for me, but otherwise this was a great game.
One in a long line of Zorkian master-apprentice games, June 26, 2019This game is so similar to other games that I kept having deja vu. Games where a master wizard gives you tasks are very old and very common. It reminds me of Berrost's Challenge, Risorgimento Represso, the Erudition Chamber, Junior Arithmancer (althugh the twist makes that one amazing), the Enchanter series, etc.
This game doesn't really bring anything new.
I wouldn't usually give 1 star to this game, however, I found it not very descriptive, with a bit wonky interaction via the puzzles, not emotionally touching, and not a game I'm interested in replaying. These are 4 of the 5 stars in my rating scale.
A game with complex, hidden depths and impressive programming tricks, June 26, 2019The biggest achievement of this game is an impeccable rope. Emily Short once described the challenges of programming rope:
"This is one of those things that has received so much attention that it almost seems pointless to recount the variety of the challenges associated therewith. First of all, a rope has two ends, so you have to remember the state of each (and disambiguate between the player's references to them, of course.) Then there's marking what the rope can be tied to; the possibility of cutting the rope in the middle, making multiple ropes of new lengths; the problem of using the rope as a fuse, of tying it to something in one room and then carrying the other end, of tying the ends together, etc., etc., etc. Ultimately I think the very trickiest part of all this is the disambiguation problem, ie, figuring out exactly what the player means when he says >TIE ROPE TO X (which end? Do we untie something that's already tied, if both ends are in use?) But it's all pretty grotesque, frankly."
All of this is handled in this game except for fire.
Basically, you wake up for an exam in a simulated world, but everything is strange. You have to enter a robot's body and do some odd IP-address voodoo to fix everything.
This involves finding cables, which you can combine or cut, and which trail from room to room.
There is a secret path (kicked off by (Spoiler - click to show)looking at yourself). Fun game!
I just felt a bit of an emotional barrier between me and the game, which makes sense, as you are a robot.
A magician vs rabbit game with overly ambitious mechanic, June 26, 2019This reminds me of a John Evans game. John Evans used to write games that had these absolutely crazy mechanics, like teleporting anything in the game to you or being able to wish for anything.
This game revolves around the mechanic of comparing, where you find things that are similar and say COMPARE [THING] TO [THING], when the first becomes the second. Or something. Not a single time it appeared in the walkthrough did it make sense to me.
The story is kind of odd, too, a bunch of rabbits on a rampage. But it was overall descriptive and fairly fun.
Cinematic sci-fi game with interaction problems but great story, June 26, 2019The Xen games in general are well-described, with extensive backstory and compelling characters.
In this sequel, the powers you discovered in part 1 are out of control, and the police (and others) are hot on your trail.
The game includes chase sequences, extensive conversations, cutscenes, etc.
Unfortunately, the author didn't find a good way for people to discover this stuff on their own. It switches between extreme railroading and extreme lack of guidance. But I enjoyed it.
A game that aspires greatly but does not reach its goals. Big mishmash, June 26, 2019This is a big game that is (I think) written by a couple of kids and a parent. It's scope far exceeded the team's grasp, and what's left is a bizarre and difficult game that is clearly under-implemented and nonsensical.
Items require non-sequitur interactions, the setting leaps from place to place, and even the format for score increases changes from brackets to asterisks. The walkthrough is filled with moments where the author messed up and tried something else. The only saving grace this game has is the cheerful enthusiasm behind it and the sounds, colors, and images early on.
A theft game set on the Titanic, June 22, 2019This game is set on the Titanic, and borrows a small bit from that show. There's no romance, but you play a thieving character who must hide from the law on the ship, including using an axe on metal and having a special painting.
The game is huge, but it comes with a very helpful map.
The main puzzles are fairly well clued, but there are a host of other puzzles. The fussy mechanic of opening and closing the suitcase, as well as the maze-like map, is fairly frustrating, though.
An ambitious space game that needed more love and care, June 22, 2019This is a game almost all of whose problems could have been fixed with beta testing. The author did much of the work for a great game, but it's that testing and polishing that makes or breaks games.
This game has mislabeled exits, strange computation problems that make it chug to a snail's speed at times, unimplemented scenery items, guess-the-verb problems, and a 'kill people and impress women' play style that was never my thing. I was frustrated with playing, and one of the last things I saw was 'a cloud of liquid gas'.
But the core of the game is extensive worldbuilding and intricate characters. This could have been a great game. The author of this, 14 years later, could likely produce something truly marvelous. But I don't think this is it.
An expansive and imaginative animal-centered Quest game, June 12, 2019This was the only IFComp 2018 game I had never finished. I finally finished it today. There was no walkthrough at the time of the comp, and the one in there now doesn't work for the last area.
But I finished it today, and that last area wasn't too bad!
The reason I had so much trouble is because Quest has synonym trouble, and the author didn't implement very many synonyms. Quest also has context-sensitive commands, which is great except when it makes commands seem wrong when you're just using them out of order. So for instance, "USE MATCH ON LUMP" gives an error unless you've done everything else completely right.
Other issues are unguessable puzzles, leaps of intuition, etc.
But the characters are fun, and it's all very imaginative. I remember Steph Cherrywell made the switch from Quest to Inform and ended up winning IFComp. I think almost all the issues here are with the Quest engine, and that the author has great ideas that may possibly be expressed in a different format.
A big puzzlefest about a crazy puzzle race, June 12, 2019This game took a lot of work, and will provide great enjoyment for many people.
It's a parser game that is (as far as I can tell) bug-free and has creative puzzles, lasting longer than pretty much all the other parser games in IFComp that aren't buggy.
So why am I only giving it 3 points? The interactivity and polish felt off to me.
The game is fairly generic, especially with the standard responses. X ME, JUMP, SING (even at a concert!), DANCE etc. either give the normal response or aren't implemented at all.
And many interactions seem purposelessly fussy, almost like imitating what they think old games were like. Possessing only one object capable of creating fires, the verb LIGHT asks 'with what'? Saying LIGHT WITH [FIRE THING] doesn't fix it; you need to turn on the fire thing. But TURN ON [FIRE THING] isn't implemented. You need to LIGHT [FIRE THING] then LIGHT [THE THING YOU WANT TO BURN].
Similarly, when there's one puzzle that requires you to listen to a loud ambient thing, just LISTEN isn't good enough, you have to say what to listen to. And so on.
It seems a definite stylistic choice, and one that didn't resonate with me. If you're looking for a bug-free game with a big map, creative puzzles, and extensive gameplay, this is your game.
A graphical horror investigation game, May 22, 2019I grade on a 5 point scale: polish, descriptiveness, interactivity, emotional impact, and if I would play it again.
This games passes all 5 points, but it just squeaks by on a few.
Polish: The graphics aid immensely in this area. A few things could be worded more graciously, like changing some more standard responses.
Descriptiveness: This is pretty easy to award. The game is lush in every way.
Interactivity: I struggled with verbs from time to time, and some puzzle solutions were obtuse, but some interactivity was so clever I just had to laugh. (a particular amusing example is (Spoiler - click to show)finding the silver key)
Emotional impact: Some of it was silly, but I felt a definite atmosphere throughout the game, and the villa portion was tense at times.
Play again: I see myself revisiting this in the future.
So that's my 5 star rating for you. It's a fairly simple game in structure, with some tricky puzzles. Best for fans of older style games, especially Scott Adams and Magnetic Scrolls.
An exceptional story that digs into London's past, April 20, 2019This Fallen London exceptional story was well-put together but didn't appeal to me as much as the others.
In this story, you explore the names of the London streets. If you've played Fallen London, you'll know that the names are all different from real London, with jokes and allusions taking place of the actual names.
This story has you become a surveyor and a recruit of a group trying to discover the 'bones of London', the true names and map. And that's pretty much it.
For fans of London itself, map enthusiasts, and Fallen London fanatics, I recommend this game.
I highly recommend Gavin Inglis's other material, and his writing in this game. It was just the concept that didn't appeal as much to me.
One of the best exceptional stories. A band of youths in Fallen London., April 20, 2019Several others had recommended this exceptional story to me. And I found it really was as good as they say.
In this game, you encounter a band of children, just as much heroes as your character is, except in their own sphere.
You take part in their adventures, seeing Fallen London through a child's eyes, and encounter a bittersweet story of growth and loss.
Highly recommended.
A beautiful commercial game about space exploration, April 20, 2019Voyageur is a Unity-based game (I think) with amazing sound and pleasing background visuals.
It's similar to 80 Days in that it's a choice-based travel game revolving around buying items at a low price and selling them at a higher price. This mechanic fuels your ability to dive ever deeper to the center of the universe, meeting different planets that are parts of different factions along the way.
This game makes heavy use of procedural generation, sort of a text version of No Man's Sky.
With both No Man's Sky and Voyageur, I felt that maybe that procedural elements were pushed a bit higher than the scripted parts. Many of the planets eventually began blurring together.
I reached an ending that satisfied me. A mellow game, good to play at leisure.
A lengthy train-of-thought surrealist exercise, April 18, 2019This game is a collection of individual short story/games about musical artists in a cabin recording We Are the World.
The style is surreal and dense, between Finnegan's Wake and The Wasteland. Some are more coherent; Huey Lewis's was essentially a straight story. An example of the surreal language is "People need to stop using reptile as a pejorative. The universe is a spaceship."
On a review for Charlie the Robot, I said: "There should be a name for the genre of 'biting commentary on society that is self-aware and occasionally dips to crudity, with hints of cheerful ideals always tinged by irony, using an overload of text as literary device.' Such games include Spy Intrigue and Dr. Sourpuss Is Not A Choice-Based Game. It seems increasingly common."
It seems like that trend is continuing. This particular game has some of the least overall plot of all this genre I've seen. The different sections have little to differentiate between them, reducing the surreality to an essential sameness.
I could see this really attracting a certain personality type. I do not think this is an objectively bad game. But it didn't suit my personal tastes. A game similar to this but with a bit more interactivity that I could recommend is The Harmonic Time-Bind Ritual Symphony
A sometimes-tedious spell-based parser game with a nice setting, March 12, 2019I had an earlier review for this game that I deleted on accident.
Charming uses a spell system similar to the Enchanter series. In the long tradition of spell-based parser games, you must use a series of more and more complicated magical spells and techniques to recover from a series of magical mishaps that occurred before play began.
The one problem I had with this game was its gating of information. After a short but repetitive opening puzzle, you are given 4 books, some with ten or fifteen or more entries. It's absolutely overwhelming.
This could have been overcome by using the system in Curses (where you have books without indices and must look up names which lead to other names) or the even better version found in Zarf's room in Cragne Manor (where there is an index that only lists pages you've already discovered).
If this info dump could be ameliorated, this is actually a lovely game with some intricate puzzles and descriptive writing. Recommended for the patient and thorough.
A beautiful limited parser example of minimalism and abstraction, March 6, 2019This is a fairly lengthy game (including bonus material) that uses the limited parser format. The majority of the game involves compass movement and TAKE-ing and PUT-ing.
The overarching theme of the game is that you are in a temple filled with stories, each of the stories relating to a puzzle. The puzzles are all based of a single simple mechanic, probably simpler than anything DiBianca has used before. However, it quickly becomes more complicated.
It's almost like a testament to the power of binary. TAKE/PUT, like 0 and 1, can become anything in combination, including language, numbers, etc.
The only thing keeping it from being a perfect game to me is the way that the game is so divorced from emotional investment. This is a game for philosophical and logical contemplation.
A Quest comedy about possessing nuns to rescue your mother, February 19, 2019This is a fairly hefty Quest game in Bitter Karella's characteristic style: goofy characters, classic TAKE/DROP/LOOK gameplay, vivid settings.
You play as a "level 2 succubus" from the pits of tartarus, trying to find your mother who has been kidnapped by nuns.
The twist to this game is that you can possess all of the characters, each granting you different abilities and sometimes even changing the appearance of the game itself.
Quest always has some problems that make it not quite as responsive as inform, but Bitter Karella handles it well. I strongly recommend downloading for offline play, as the servers can get tied up.
An enjoyable math-based pattern game with academic humor, February 19, 2019This game is essentially unique among interactive fiction. In a Zork-like setting, you are a math wizard (or arithmancer) taking an exam.
Your job is to use spells to create sequences of decimals coming from famous mathematical constants. The further you can get in any one sequence, the more spells you get.
You begin with basics like addition or subtraction, but soon you gain spells that modify other spells and it all becomes complex and tangled up.
In the midst of this mathematical quest, the committee viewing you gossips about academic drama, discussing department conflicts and upcoming changes. As an academic myself, it is spot on.
I work with the author and beta-tested this game, but I wouldn't feel bad giving it a lower score if it deserved one. This is a fun game, and I recommend it.
A hilarious comedy game with plenty of puzzles and a British setting, February 17, 2019This is a great comedy based on misunderstandings and physical humor.
You are a thief, sent to steal a priceless object from a British manor. But to do so, you must assum a variety of costumes and identities.
Along the way, you discover the secrets of the household and the neighborhood, including lies, deceit, regret, and gorillas.
There were a few sticky points in puzzles that were fussier than they needed to be, but otherwise this is a prime example of what a polished parser puzzler can look like. One of the best games of the 2010’s.
A difficult and polished short superhero game, February 3, 2019I beta tested this game. In this game, you play as a superhero who has been captured, and must escape to stop the evil villain from shooting a giant ray at Earth.
The game is arranged linearly, with 4 big set-piece puzzles. Each puzzle requires multiple steps to complete, and can be quite complicated.
I found the game very polished, although occasionally harsh (requiring death to learn what to do, for instance). Highly recommended for people into difficult puzzles in parser games.
A combat RPG investigating a mine with math-based mechanics, February 1, 2019This is a twine RPG with an interesting mechanic: you can either do randomized attacks against a single opponent at once, with them randomly attacking back, or you can consistently do 10 damage to all enemies and block their attacks by answering math questions. Questions are hand-written, not randomized, so you can see the same ones over and over, reflecting your increasing skill. They range from "2+2=?" to "what is the first derivative of xcos(x)", so if you enjoy being quizzed on arithmetic, algebra, and calculus, this is the game for you (I enjoy that, so I liked it).
I did get stuck on level 2, after finding the altar and decoding the writings. I did skip some material on level 1, so maybe I missed a ladder? In any case, this seems like a fun RPG, though I wonder if there is a 'story behind the story', because leveling up never increases strength, it only increases exhaustion and self-loathing.
(I wrote this review during the comp. After, I investigated more of the code and found the endings, and I do believe this RPG has an overall theme related to resignation and/or stoicism, but I don't want to spoil it).
A faithful French Twine translation of a Cyberpunk roleplaying game, January 31, 2019This game is an odd one out in the French IF Comp. It seems to be a direct adaptation of a pre-existing Cyberpunk gamebook.
Because of this, the content size is enormous, with pages often having numerous paragraphs or in-depth conversations, with a minimal number of choices, each retaining their 'turn to page 182' text from the gamebook. The author made the choice of deleting choices which ask if you have a certain item that you don't, resulting in lots of text and few choices.
This made a stark contrast with the other Twine games, which feature more choice and less text. Both are good, but the text seemed also to have been written by a professional author, and just copied and pasted by Hoper (the pseudonym this was entered under). For some reason, I found that less appealing than 'fresh' IF. I can read a standard professional book author any day, but earnest amateur IF writing is harder to come by, and, in my personal opinion, more valuable.
Overall, I may have just been overwhelmed as a non-native speaker. I enjoyed it, but the first two pages had more text than the entirety of some of the other games in this comp, making it difficult for me as a non-native to read without getting fatigued.
A big, illustrated, intricate, futuristic Quest game with implementation issues, January 10, 2019This game is cool. It’s illustrated and animated. It’s big. It has some real time events, great worldbuilding, and rich settings.
Unfortunately, it suffers in implementation. There are huge numbers of implemented items. Actions can be difficult to guess. I constantly found myself struggling against the parser and the system, not understanding what was wrong.
I recommend checking out the first few scenes to get a feel for this interesting game.
A big, sprawling twine game with crazy colors about a dog, December 19, 2018I bounced off of this game during IFComp. It has white text on a light blue background, and occasionally has combinations even harder to read (like lime green on light blue). Also, it has most of its content locked behind actions that take multiple in-day actions without promise of reward.
But now, going through slowly after the comp, and especially using the walkthrough, this is a great game. Having a real-time pegasus race in the clouds, exploring haunted houses and underground worlds, there's a lot of fun to be had.
It's all disconnected and a bit weird, but that's some of the fun of IF. I just wish there was an option to change the background color.
Great for wordplay fans, November 9, 2018I read a review once saying that Counterfeit Monkey had killed off the wordplay genre because you couldn't get any better than that.
I think that's silly; that's like saying that Jimi Hendrix killed the guitar solo or Betty Crocker killed the recipe. When there's something good out there, you want more of it, and this game delivers.
Many of Schultz's games involve puzzles too hard to compute on your own (Ugly Oafs come to mind). The best games, like Threediopolis or Shuffling Around, give you just enough freedom and hints that you can figure it out on your own.
This game is palindrome-based. The palindromes are mostly spread into the background, although there are a bunch of puzzle solutions that require a puzzle-based answer. The dedicated wordplay fan will love this game, and casual fans will as well.
The premier fate-locked story of Fallen London, September 24, 2018I had played Fallen London for over a year before I purchased Flint. It is the most expensive story of Fallen London, one of the older ones, and most likely the longest.
Flint is split into two portions. The first ended faster than I thought it would. It mostly consisted of preparing for a trip. However, despite the fast-ish ending (which was still long; the first half felt as long as some exceptional stories), many interesting things happened. The game plunges into deep lore that explains so much of the game (including the prison), nets you cool items/people, and has some exciting action sequences.
The second sequence was longer, and had several lucrative opportunities, and ended in some highly unusual and unique interactions that I found poignant and touching, and which feels like one of the most important events possible in the life of a character.
The story ends with both strong lore rewards and strong in-game monetarial awards.
A post-apocalyptic take on current American politics, January 12, 2018This is an ePub game with hyperlinks. It consists of a series of articles with footnotes and cross references.
The idea is that a viral outbreak has caused the collapse of America, combined with Trump’s actions. As you dig deeper, though you find a greater truth.
It’s coever, but the chosen format is slow paced and sometimes dull in the name of realism, like when it had a largely standard ten page blank medical form. Many critical moments are hidden in transcripts emulating Reddit and 4chan, and the author took painstaking care to recreate the racism, homophobia and misogyny of these forums. This didn’t really suit me.
This was a creative format, and represents a great deal of work. The writing is detailed and feels authentic.
An early example of the limited-parser genre, December 3, 2017Arthur DiBianca has made several popular limited parser games, including Grandma Bethlinda's Variety Box, Inside the Facility and The Wand.
Excelsior was their first attempt, and its player respons/reviews influenced the later games.
Excelsior restricts all action verbs to movement and 'USE'. Your goal is to reach the top of a tall tower.
I thought I had played through this whole game before, but I played through with the walkthrough, and I was surprised at how much there was. I think this game does not measure up to DiBianca's later games, as there is a great deal of "something changes somewhere that you can't see" devices here, that makes the game very complicated.
An Escher-esque maze of smells and riddles and puzzles, November 17, 2017This is a mid-length IFComp game from 2006. It's a surreal afterlife/coma type game where you've been in a car crash and must travel through your mind to escape back to reality, hopefully with your wife.
It has a maze of rooms, inaccessible at first due to the fact that doors and archways are placed on ceilings and high walls, willy-nilly. You eventually learn to control the maze.
Much of the game revolves around smells. There is a Nim game and also a difficult cryptographic puzzle. I found it under-clued and somewhat unfair.
A massive Twine game with a tangled web of themes, November 17, 2017There should be a name for the genre of 'biting commentary on society that is self-aware and occasionally dips to crudity, with hints of cheerful ideals always tinged by irony, using an overload of text as literary device.' Such games include Spy Intrigue and Dr. Sourpuss Is Not A Choice-Based Game. It seems increasingly common.
Charlie the Robot is gorgeous visually, and is innovative in its sheer variety of input methods and looks. There are 5 chapters accessible at any time, like Birdland.
The themes include surface themes of humans vs. robots, a lower layer of the mindlessness of modern office life, a lower layer of individualism, and so on.
But it was just too much filler for me to enjoy. The packing on and on and on of text is a literary device that doesn't work for me. I appreciate the themes in the game, and its cleverness, but the overall feel is just overwhelming.
One of the best puzzly web games out there. Surreal Alice., November 17, 2017I beta tested this game.
This is an intense puzzle game, and it has some small graphics, background sounds/music, and timed responses.
This is a tricky, tricky puzzle game. You have to redeem yourself after destroying your father's pocket watch. The game sends you on a journey with several axes: time, space, size, etc.
I like it quite a bit, even writing down a walkthrough for it.
I only give it 4 stars because timed text delays drive me crazy. But not everyone may feel that way.
A complicated hard sci-fi game with money system, November 16, 2017This game kind of threw me off at first; I used the walkthrough, which seemed super unmotivated, and some large pieces of occasionally-awkward text made me not like it as much.
But then lglasser said she loved it on her twitch stream, as did an Italian IFComp judge, so I gave it another shot, walkthrough-free.
This time around, I liked it. All reasonable commands seemed to be accepted. The game allowed a great deal of flexible exploration and a money system that worked. Exploration was all that was needed to trigger the story, and the hint system was just strong enough to get me through and just vague enough to make it a challenge.
It seemed oddly fixated an alien mating systems, but it was more National Geographic than anything else.
A limited parser castle comedy involving mistaken identities, November 16, 2017This is a very funny, long limited parser game about being a pig. A hero follows you, and believes you to be able to smell a polymorphing wizard. Anything you sniff, he smashes.
The first part of the game plays out in the tradition established by Arthur DiBianca, where a few key verbs are used in unusual ways to accomplish your goals. Later on, the game branches out, allowing you to switch between certain 'tools' to accomplish various goals.
This game is unusual among limited parser games in that it has quite a few large text dumps, often spanning more than a screen on a laptop computer with maximized window. The writing is good, the story is strong, but it can be a bit much, especially on a second playthrough.
This game also touches on several social issues (not least the annoying habit of young men singing Wonderwall).
An expansive time travel quest game, November 16, 2017This game is by Luke Jones, who also wrote the interesting Bony King of Nowhere for Spring Thing in 2017.
This game is a treasure hunt puzzle fest type game, but it's kind of spare and with some hard-to-guess puzzles. The puzzles mostly revolve around finding the item or items that will induce NPCs to do things for you.
The game has a large cast of characters, many of which have multiple versions of themselves over 3 time periods. It has also has many rooms over the same time period. But much of it is under implemented. A porter is present in each time period, but has very little description or conversation in any, except for one short paragraph once. However, the author was explicitly inspired by Robin Johnson's minimalist games, so it is likely intentional.
The game has good bones, though, with a pleasant run through campus history and future. If the author switched to Inform 7, like Steph Cherrywell did, and budgeted more time for beta testing and polishing, they could build on the success they already have.
A treasure-finding RPG, November 16, 2017This game is a fairly traditional RPG, where you find better and better weapons/armor and equip them, and gain gold. It's framed as a VR story in a casino to better explain why items disappear in a puff of smoke and why all treasures get converted to their cash values.
I found the game enjoyable, and fairly long, although I bug kept me from going from the novice half to the expert half. I would recommend it for fans of RPGs.
A live-action parser survival crafting game, November 16, 2017I beta tested this game.
This is an interesting concept: a Java game (just like minecraft!) which is a parser game with a real-time timer.
You find resources, and craft materials with them.
As it is, the game is difficult; however, a Wiki is provided that is especially helpful.
However, the difficulty was tuned just a bit too hard for me, and that made it hard for me to get sucked in.
A standard fantasy RPG gamebook, in PDF form, November 16, 2017This game is written in PDF form, and you read along yourself, jumping to different pages.
I can't help but compare this game to Trapped in Time, another PDF gamebook entered into IFComp in a previous year. In that game, you had a tight series of events that were played over and over, and it allowed 'parser-like' actions where you would add 10 or 20 to an entry's number to do things like examining or using a card.
This game, however, relies more on randomized combat, and the largest parts of the game are two mazes.
It has some interesting storyline near the end, but I feel like it could have been tested out more by some experienced beta testers to help find out what works and what doesn't.
A bizarre text which prints out one character at a time, November 16, 2017This game uses the obscure Floo text system. It has a 2-hour timer (that resets once it finishes). As you push any key, characters show up one at a time, revealing some text that seems procedurally generated, but not by the Floo engine; it seems like it was pre-generated and put into the floo interpreter, ready to be revealed one character at a time.
An over-the-top super villain game with multiple protagonists, November 16, 2017I enjoyed this 2017 IFComp game. You play as a consultant for super villains who answers their questions for money. The parser becomes a phone line, of which you have 2, and your commands are commands to the villains themselves.
Each villain has unique powers. The writing for the radioactive man grated on me a bit, but overall I found it clever. This game had the most traditional gameplay of the top games of the competition, with no limited parser commands.
I recommend it, and hope that everyone reading this will take the time to try it.
A big Twine RPG with different classes and randomized combat, November 16, 2017I enjoyed this game from IFComp 2017. You choose from one of three character classes, and you can take a variety of characters with you, including a sonomancer (something like that) who integrates music with magic.
There is a power creep issue that several judges noticed, where pretty much anyone who makes it to the endgame can one-shot the boss, but besides that, the core concepts worked well for me. I feel like it needs more polish; combat has several blank lines requiring you to scroll, for instance.
I was glad I played this one, because I'm a fan of D&D and this reminded me of trying out someone's home-brew campaign. Your mileage may vary.
A dialect-heavy dark comedy Quest game with symmetric map, November 16, 2017I really enjoyed this game. I had a few technical difficulties wrangling with Quest.
You play as a cockney-speaking orphan who has penned up in a penitentiary-orphanage. Your goal is to go from Public Enemy Number 2 to Number 1.
The map is large, but pleasingly symmetrical. You solve a puzzle in each room until the game is over.
Some of the puzzles were fairly nonsensical, and I had difficulty with them, but overall, I was impressed.
A heavily illustrated, trashy jerk-type story, September 28, 2017This is the most-illustrated IFComp game I've played, and one of the least appealing. Your girlfriend broke up with you, and you have to manipulate a dozen or so women into sharing their phone numbers.
The game is deeply misogynistic, and the art is in a style somewhere between simpsons and family guy in style and content.
A big school treasure hunt in TADS, September 28, 2017This game is big, and full of little easter eggs. It's one of those games that is created with love and creative, but seemingly based on things in the author's life and somewhat underclued.
Typical puzzles in this game include finding keys and operating semi-complicated machinery.
A hell-based vampire story with powers and some gore, September 28, 2017This game casts you as the vampire Martin Voigt, travelling through a hellish landscape to retrieve three talismans of power and find the three priestesses who can help him.
The setting is imaginative and well-defined. Generally, each room contains a challenge, which at first can be solved with a basic power, and later requires you to fetch items from the other parts of the (small) map.
It was a bit gorey and not for young children. Some of the interactivity was off, in the sense that actions were underclued. But the overall level of polish was high.
A 'bureaucracy in hell' IFComp game, September 28, 2017This game casts you as a demon in the bureaucracy of hell. You decide to make a break for it and get out.
This game has several NPCs, most of whom respond to just a few topics/activities. It has well-coded puzzles involving searching and manipulation.
But much of it just feels underclued, especially the second half of the game. This makes it somewhat difficult to finish.
A sprawling city game with some bugs and complicated simulations, September 28, 2017This game has you waking up in a club, needing to go around solving a number of unclued and unmotivated puzzles, some of which are unfinishable due to bugs.
It implements a number of complicated things, including a car with ignition, an apartment intercom, a hose that needs to be taken/dropped and turned off/on, a sink to wash dishes in. Unfortunately, all the least interesting things are the things that are implemented in the most detail.
A large, sparse game about time travel in Viking times, September 28, 2017This is a Zorkian game that has you travelling to Viking times to search for various items in order to join a society of time travellers.
The score is lower than the work going into the game deserves; but according to my system, it is fairly unpolished, the rooms aren't descriptive, it didn't inspire any strong emotions, and the interactivity was frustrating.
But in general, this is an inoffensive game, wandering around a large landscape looking for treasures. Includes a light puzzle.
A classic-style adventure game in basic with a simple parser, September 28, 2017This game is similar to Panks' epic Westfront game. It's a very simple basic adventure with a large map. The majority of the code is room descriptions and names of things. The rest of the code seems to be lock-and-key type things.
I found it somewhat frustrating with the insta-deaths and lack of normal verb shortcuts. However, it was generally non-offensive, and actually a fun atmosphere. It was disqualified from IFComp for incorporating Smurfs.
A puzzly game in poetry, August 1, 2017This game does two interesting things: everything is in poetry, and you are in a place where space and time are warped.
This is fun, but the game is really very difficult; it's hard to have any idea at all what to do. Much of what you do is based on paradoxes.
I enjoyed this game with the walkthrough, but I don't know how it would be without it.
A large Adrift game where you stop various supervillains, August 1, 2017This game has the same sort of superhero tone as the Frenetic Five games. You are a superhero that isn't really that super.
The game had a fun tone, with some fairly silly humor. It's long though, and somewhat buggy. David Whyld's games tend to be fairly similar, so if you like one, you'll like them all-and vice versa.
A TADS horror game in a maze-like swamp, August 1, 2017This is a gory game set in a swamp. It's mostly empty rooms with little scenery (with exactly one or two of those in the whole map being something you need to search or look under). It's punctuated with instant-death combat unless you find items in the right order.
It has an interesting concept, but the execution needed a lot more work and a lot less mazes.
A complicated but polished Baseball game, August 1, 2017Baseball is the theme of this, Andrew Schultz's first IFComp game.
Unlike his later games, there is no wordplay here, and no abstract narrative about excelling at being smart.
Instead, there is a deeply implemented and simulated baseball game. There are all sorts of timers going on, and wardrobe changes, and so on.
It's so complicated that it's all a bit overwhelming.
An extensive ADRIFT game set in Camelot, August 1, 2017This game has you going to Camelot to help Guinevere.
The plot is a bit and thin, and the ADRIFT parser is as weak as ever.
But the game is fairly detailed, and a lot of thought has gone into it.
The main weird thing is that wearing a ring is important to the story, but it always slips off your finger. Also, Hagrid makes an appearance in the game, talking about Dumbledore.
A complex adrift game allowing choice of abilities set in medieval times, August 1, 2017This is a large Adrift game, in which, after an extended prologue, you are cursed into a form of your choosing: rat, fox, or snake.
As an animal, it is your job to be restored to your original form and find your lost love, Princess Tevona.
Overall, this was done pretty well, but the Adrift parser was pretty frustrating (I used Adrift Runner 4.0).
A campus exploration game about fire, fog, and a convict, August 1, 2017This is a really big game, with some really big bugs.
I played this game for the first time a few weeks ago, and I never realized there was a fire in my room or that the door was supposed to be blocked. Instead, I wandered around the rest of the building for a while.
Following the walkthrough, this game does have some fun elements. The huge maze is not one of those fun elements, though.
Interesting when used with the walkthrough.
A wordplay game set in Greek darkness, August 1, 2017This game has you descend on a train to the depths of Erebus, where you have to find your way around in total darkness.
This game is centered on wordplay, involving letters (similar in a vague way to Threediopolis).
I don't want to spoil the main mechanic, but I also found it very hard to figure out the main mechanic. Lack of cluing seems to be one of the biggest issues here.
A postapocalyptic game with open world after linear intro, August 1, 2017This game has an intro involving you escaping from and surviving a terrible disaster, separating you from your friends.
It then opens up to an open world where you have to gather money, clothing and weapons to survive the apocalypse.
One of the better Adrift games.
A fun Alan game in Raisanen's classic puzzly style, August 1, 2017Anssi Raisanen has written several Alan games over the years with a certain sort of puzzly style, and I've grown to enjoy them.
This game has you escaping from a wine cellar in a castle, finding and helping a wizard, and rescuing a king.
Anssi's games have a very consistent style, so if you like one, you'll like them all. The Chasing is another good one.
A greek mythology/modern life game, August 1, 2017This was an entertaining game from IFcomp 2002.
You explore your house, looking for your notes. As you find notes, you have a sort of flashback or dream of a greek mythological figure.
I enjoyed these vignettes more than the house filled with greek mythology-named cats.
The game was a bit underclued, though, and it was hard to get invested.
A buggy futuristic game, July 16, 2017This game is extraordinarily hard to run. I ended up poking around in the code and reading past reviews to get an idea of this game.
You are in a future with a robot that is a copy of Floyd from Planetfall. You are investigating an office complex.
A huge part of the code is taken up by a long, involved fight, describing how you or your opponent kick each other's trash.
A mid-length ADRIFT game exploring a small town, July 16, 2017You've crashed your car in a small town, and you have to find your way out.
This game plays on a 3x3 city grid that is minimally described (more areas open up later).
Everything is minimally described. 'There is a swimming pool here. It sparkles' and stuff like that. I had a game-stopping bug early on in Gargoyle, but it looks like others found many bugs as well. Scenery is undersdescribed, and the ADRIFT parser makes playing harder than it should.
A difficult but cinematic terrorist game, July 16, 2017In this game, whose opening reminded me a bit of Infocom's Border Zone, you play a man who is in a train bathroom when terrorists take over.
The game has you do exciting things like climbing on trains and so on, but the puzzles are pretty nasty, almost impossible without hints. Even with hints, I found it fairly difficult, as a cumbersome inventory system led me to drop some things I later discovered I needed.
Overall, an interesting story, and worth playing for puzzle fiends.
A big empty spaceship game where you have to repair broken things, July 16, 2017This is a Star Trek-esque game. After a brief opening sequence with some guess-the-verb stuff, you are woken from cryosleep and have to repair a station.
The station has hallways A through J that are all identical, and minimally described, as well as a variety of other rooms. There are some fun things here, but I found a lot of it frustrating. The centerpiece of the game is a series of several EVA expeditions that realistically model 3d movement without friction. I found this to be tedious.
A short arabic-themed puzzle game about catching a thief, July 16, 2017This is a sort of cross between Zork and arabian nights. You have on the one hand sultan's guards with scimitars and bazaars, and on the other hand you have soda vending machines and currency based on King Mycroft.
I found a few game-killing bugs in Gargoyle (when asking the merchant about a few things), but it might just be my interpreter.
I liked the puzzles, though they were hard to guess at times. A lot of people liked the original way of getting past the dog.
A fascinating but ultimately too obscure game based on colours, July 16, 2017This game actually reminded me of the new game Niney (in 2017), where you 'become' different things for this people.
This game has you perform a task for 26 different people (not related to the alphabet). However, knowing what you need to do is really, really hard, involving a cryptographic puzzle.
Then the game involves color shifting and sorting, with a cool ending.
The code shows a character named Polly, but I didn't find them.
A medieval conversation-based romance adventure, July 16, 2017This is an action-heavy game set in medieval times, a sort of romance.
You play a young woman whose leg is damaged at a young age, before being forced to reside with a cruel lord. In several cinematic or conversational scenes, you decide your future, dealing with brigands and romance.
The biggest problem here, and it's a problem with many of Fischer's other well-put-together games, is in the cluing. It's hard to know exactly what you're meant to do. The game could use a great deal of more direction.
A complex and obtuse game about combinatorics and counting, July 16, 2017In this game, you are trying to catch a cult leader.
You have a number of colored objects, and you have puzzles of the 'explore the complex mechanisms' type.
I found it incredibly obtuse, but some others rated it highly. If you like puzzles like the goat and the fox or towers of hanoi (neither of which appears in this game), you may like this game.
Explore a big office with some magical segments to get coffee, July 16, 2017This game is one of those frequent IFComp middle games that are big, fairly well polished, but without the snazzy setting or good cluing that would make it wonderful.
You explore an office with several cubicles, each presenting its own challenge (dealing with an npc, helping a tech repair guy, etc.)
Overall, though, you're unlikely to finish without a walkthrough.
A fantasy/fairy game with two worlds and implementation problems, July 10, 2017This game has you house-sitting for your friend, but problems begin to show up.
It's bold and innovative: there's a responsive cat NPC, there is a system where you read and study books to memorize them, a slick TV hint delivery system, and so on, but it seems like it never got that last month or weeks of polishing that would have pulled it all together. Like Happy Ever After from this comp, this game seems influenced to a degree by Mulldoon Legacy, with a mysterious friend who has left, leaving their house open with a portal in it to a more rustic world.
A surreal, horror-futuristic game with some thriller scenes, July 5, 2017I have to make one big admission up front: I played Kaged with a walkthrough almost straight through. I had heard some of the puzzles were unfair, and the story seemed great, and so I just read it as a short story.
This worked surprisingly well. It makes for a great short story. You are a bureaucrat in a complicated futuristic society where everything is tightly regulated and disturbing. You are asked to help stop a menace in this world.
The game deals with the nature of reality and with mind-bending. A pretty crazy game.
Edit: The original version of this game, played on HTML Tads, has great music and graphics. Really worth playing.
An interesting marine biologist spy thriller, July 5, 2017This game uses the relatively unknown JACL engine, but it plays pretty well.
This game is a sleeper hit; I hadn't heard of it, but it's well-put-together. You are on a floating scientific base on a small island that has experienced a recent die-off of fish, and a loss of all juvenile population. You are brought in from the outside to what is essentially a military situation.
The game has espionage, science, etc. Some of the puzzles are unfair a bit, but the game responds well to things you attempt to do, and contains a number of action scenes.
A big haunted house with bugs that was withdrawn from IFComp, July 5, 2017This game was withdrawn from IFComp 1997 due to bugginess. It is big and enjoyable, but there is a hunger timer that I believe cannot be stopped.
It was large and ambitious but not beta-tested at all, which explains the problems. Marnie Parker later went on to write the graphics-intensive Carma, about punctuation coming to life.
The ghost house here is impressive, and looking at the decompiled text, it had a deep backstory going back hundreds of years.
Plotwise, it seems to deliberately be copying Hollywood Hijinks plus maybe something else (Casper?).
A big game with underclued puzzles and moderate humor, July 5, 2017This game is part of a peculiar brand of IFComp games that are very large, moderately well-implemented, and deeply underclued. Someone said that such game suffer from Erden-itis, from "Travels in the land of Erden', an exemplar of this class of games. Other such games include Town Dragon, The Sueno, Varkana, and a host of others.
You have a big city here, a castle, and a very large endgame. Most of the puzzles involve things that would never occur for you to do on your own.
(Sort of like if you meet a random person in a game. Are you supposed to attack them? Say 'hi'? Ask them about themself? It turns out you are supposed to 'INSULT PERSON'. Why? It makes sense out of the world, but why would it make sense in the world?)
A buggy fantasy ms-dos game with a magician, July 5, 2017I downloaded this game and got it to run with the batch file. However, it was buggy; I couldn't figure out how to throw the soup on the fire, one of the earliest commands. The soup kept being an object ON the fire. And examining the hat at the very beginning was supposed to send out a dove, but that never happened.
It seems like a complicated game, but it is just intractable.
A long fantasy quest with many keys, July 1, 2017This is a standard epic fantasy quest exploring a temple, just like a DnD module.
You find a variety of keys and hidden passages, and different pieces of things that look like they go together, and magical clothing.
It's just not clued well, and its tedious. Keys are used multiple times, without much sense to it, so you end up trying every key on every door.
It's pretty long, and could be fun for fantasy fans.
A fairly long romp exploring a mad scientist's house, July 1, 2017This game has a long prologue as a young woman who dumped her boyfriend. After the prologue, you play the boyfriend.
The boyfriend's game is nonlinear and interesting, as you explore a mad scientist's house. It suffers too much from 'flail about until something interesting happens' syndrome, though. Its hard to know exactly what they want you to do.
But the writing is good and there are several interesting and well-written NPCs.
Not obscene, but a campus exploration game, July 1, 2017This is a mid-length game that has you trying to find, then deliver, a letter to Dr. Aardvarkbarf.
The game has a fairly large campus. Puzzles mostly focus on examining items, and physical things such as PUSH and PULL.
The game is clever, but the map is large and many things aren't clued to well. Nothing about it really stuck out.
Mid-length fantasy; a mute swordsman rescues villagers, July 1, 2017I love Snyder's games. TotTS is an excellent linear mid-length game with not-too-hard puzzles that has a fantasy feel not found in many places, kind of like the story The Fool of The World or the beginning of Princess Mononoke.
You play a swordsman who travels the land searching for a village under oppression, righting wrongs along the way. You use several items in rather creative ways, and puzzles have multiple solutions.
I found the ending unusual, and extremely satisfying. It made a few points in the game much more understandable, and tied everything together very well. I wanted to go through and play again with my new understanding.
Strongly recommended.
A german-language archaeology thriller, July 1, 2017This was the only IFComp game to never be rated at all. It's a german language game in an unusual file format.
It's quite large, and involves exploring ruins to find relics of ancient gods.
The engine could be better, and the game has some tedious puzzles (like opening 30 similar-colored baskets to find which basket an item randomly appears in).
A very long psych ward alt-game with Choice-of-Games style relationships, July 1, 2017This game reminds me in length and quality of a hosted Choice of Games commercial game. It has similar amounts of text per choice, and has 9 different relationships you can work on.
The main difference between this and choice of games is that there are frequently just 2 choices, while CoG tends to have 3 or more choices.
However, the author did a good job at making the game interesting by not making it clear which, if any, option is the 'right' option. I think this game provided a very clear picture of what a psych ward might be like. I chose to ally with a friend with borderline personality disorder.
Play a historical Greek scholar advising princes and kings, June 27, 2016This is one of my favorite Choice of Games games. You play as Eratosthenes (male or female), a real historical figure who estimated the radius of the earth and advised Ptolemy IV.
In this game, you have to deal with snarky advisors and scholars, reign in ambitious kings, work on engineering, romance a variety of people, or study mathematics. I felt a good deal of flexibility.
The writing is good, as is to be expected of the author of Choice of Robots, one the best Choice of Games of all time.
I enjoyed this game, because I'm a mathematician, and the game allowed me to hang out with with a female Euclid and with Archiemedes.
This game will appeal to fans of the Civilization series of games, and fans of math, classics, history, or engineering. The human emotions investigated are universal.
A movie-making simulation set during the McCarthy era, June 24, 2016This game was nominated for an XYZZY for best game, and for best NPCs.
This is one of the larger Choice of Games, with quite an epic storyline. You conceive of a movie using a large amount of customization (how many leads? what genre? what subgenre? What other subgenera? Highbrow or lowbrow? Who directs? Who writes? Who stars?). The number of possibilities here really unlocks the game's potential as a wish-fulfillment device.
But making your movie comes with its own challenges. Getting a studio running, winning financial support, dealing with deadlines and spotty talent. I spent a large amount of money to get Frank Capra to direct my ensemble western.
Overarching everything is the shadow of repressive anti-communism hunters. You have to choose how you interact with Hollywood black listers, and what to say in communism hearings.
All of this makes the games general goal (making a great movie) very difficult; I found it more rewarding to focus on personal goals.
Finally, this game includes some parts quite unlike the standard choice of games format; for instance, there is a large puzzly section that has a well-developed location and object model as you search for a dog. This part feels a lot more like a parser game or like a twine game with strong world model (like Hallowmoor).
Overall, I believe this game deserves the XYZZY nomination, and stands among the best games of 2015.
A German survival horror/exploration game in Inklewriter, May 4, 2016This game is the best-developed inkle writer game I've seen. I tried it because it won the venerable Grand Prix competition.
This game is centered around a tightly-developed world model. You wake up in a strange white room and have to figure out where you are and what's going on.
This of course is the premise of dozens of IF games (including, most famously, Babel), but where Tag Der Toten shines is in its strong narrative voice. It's full of goofy humor, but it's clever goofy humor, essentially a conversation between the PC and theirself/the narrator through the use of the links.
I found the game very descriptive. Also, inkle writer can be easy to lawnmower in a parser-like world model, but the author has provided several surprises to keep you on your toes.
I give three caveats to my 5-star rating:
1. I love amnesia games.
2. I love German stories.
3. This game is not complete, in that the author plans on extra chapters being added later. That said, it took me about 2 hours to finish. However, I am not a native speaker.
A space trader parser game with a nice layout and smooth gameplay, April 30, 2016This is one of Pacian's best games, which is saying a lot. It is intricate but casual, and lasts 1-2 hours for the main storyline.
You play as a ship captain whose twin brother has been taken and frozen due to your unpaid loans. You must travel to a variety of worlds and systems to get enough cash to free your brother.
The world model is purposely simple. Each world and its orbit constitute a single location. Each location has 1-5 npcs and 0-2 other nouns. The only interaction available with most NPCs is TALK TO, although some can BUY and SELL, and a few other interactions pop up later.
You can't examine anything, and there's no searching or any such thing. You just travel from world to world, building up money until you're done. There's no climactic finale, but it's still rewarding.
This game is one of the best science fiction games I have played.
An intricate, chess/crossword-puzzle like game about hidden codes, April 9, 2016This Andrew Schultz game builds and expands on one of my favorite Schultz games, Threediopolis. If you haven't played that game, you should try it out first, as this game contains spoilers for the basic concept of that game.
If you have played threediopolis, (Spoiler - click to show)this is the same sort of game, except some chess-like moves have been added, h,i,j,k. Each of these teleports you 2 spaces away in each direction. For instance, h teleports you n,e, and u, while i teleports you w,s, and u.
This makes the game more difficult. I found it helpful to read some of the documentation on the spring thing website, which will most likely be included on IFDB afterwards. It gives a helpful list of the results of 2- and 3- letter combinations, like hi.
My rating of this game is certainly subjective. The puzzles appeal to me as a mathematician because I love the interplay between freedom and constraint. Emotionally, it draws you into an exploratory/puzzly/celebratory mood. The game is definitely polished, and I plan on playing again (it's a long game, and I've only played through part of it. It's the kind of game I feel I could return to frequently to play around with). I though of taking off one point due to the lack of descriptive text, but I realized that more text would make the game difficult and tedious. The scarcity of text is a necessary part of the design.
Like I said, this game will only appeal to a certain group of people, so I can't recommend it to everyone. But fans of crosswords, cryptograms, and codewords will enjoy this game.
A blend of nursery rhymes, puns, and Ryan Veeder references with great NPCs, April 7, 2016This game was the winner of the Ryan Veeder Exposition for Good Interactive Fiction. That contest was judged solely by Ryan Veeder, a prominent IF author.
This game takes the nursery rhyme "Little Bunny Foo Foo" and references from Veeder's games and blends them into a truly enjoyable story. The highlight of this story is the dialog, masterfully written and emotionally affecting.
You play the Good Fairy who is trying to help out Foo Foo the rabbit. There's a long street with shops and people to investigate.
It's hard to describe the game more without having you play it. Suffice it to say that this is my favorite game of 2016 (up to mid-April, when I'm rating this).
Wonderful D&D feel; same game with 5 choices for NPC, February 4, 2016This is one of my favorites. You play as one of four characters who stole a gem from a dragon, and then lost it. You want to get it back. You can also be the dragon.
There is the adventurer, who plays as a Zork-type PC, gathering items and chatting with guards; the thief, who remains hidden and has special tools; the wizard, who can use spells; and the royal, who can command everyone and has an entourage. The dragon does, you know, dragon things.
The game is hard, but you can switch between characters at any time, and one character can see things that will help another.
Location and object descriptions are different with each character, giving the game a really varied feel.
By far, this game is the closest to a straight-up D&D type setting, which I love.
Very clever puzzles in a heartwarming Christmas story., February 3, 2016Many people seem put off by the homey charm of this Christmas game, perhaps more interested in gore or adult content. But this ASCII-art using winter game is deep and well-polished, and on the longer end for an IFComp game. It won the comp for a good reason.
First, it is beautiful. Visually, the ASCII art and color scheme help the immersion (I loved the snowflakes in the status bar). And the descriptions and responses of the text are all well-crafted and contribute to the atmosphere significantly.
Second, the puzzles are ingenious, though some reasonable alternatives are not implemented. The majority of the game centers on magical creatures, and working with them. NPC interaction is present, though limited, as is usual in games of this time period.
The story starts out extraordinarily over sweetly, but I enjoyed it, and it soon became a magic-themed puzzle fest. This game drew me in, and I would love to see more games with a fun family atmosphere instead of gritty dystopias or gruesome underground labs.
A well-polished sci-fi game with a teenage plant protagonist, February 3, 2016Chlorophyll felt like a commercial game to me. If Infocom had lived longer, I could see this as being one of their "Beginner" games (which were never very easy, as far as I can tell). It's well-polished, with a strong background story and lots of extra details.
It's a mid-length game set on a distant world. You play a young plant-woman with her plant-woman mother. You must explore a base while also coming to grips with your own coming adulthood and independence.
At times, I stopped playing Chlorophyll for a few weeks because the game seemed too open without much direction, and I felt overwhelmed. As I pressed through, though, I found that you were guided pretty well, and I found the last three areas enjoyable.
The only other sticking point was the long intro where you can't do very much. It made it annoying to restart. Other than that, this is one of the best 'recent' games.
A claustrophobic thriller game with great pacing., February 3, 2016Hunter, in Darkness has some of the best pacing of any IF game out there. You are hunting, in the darkness, and you must follow your prey through a cave. Things quickly go from bad to worse, and your injuries and fears come to the front.
In this game, you usually know exactly what you need to do, but may not know how to do it. The final big puzzle in particular took me a long time to get, but the writing was good enough that the game didn't feel stagnant while I was experimenting to solve it.
If you enjoyed Gun Mute or even Attack of the Robot Yeti Zombies, but wanted a more serious experience, this game is for you.
A humorous copy of Indiana Jones exploring a nasty web of traps, February 3, 2016This game actually has a pretty consistent approach of its puzzles. You are an adventurer in a temple in the Everglades, seeking the water of life.
Each room has some sort of death trap. If you wait around too long, you die, but you often get hints right before you die. I only needed a hint for the very last room.
The setting made me smile on numerous occasions, such as the perfectly normal room.
Highly recommended.
A long urban/western fantasy game where man has killed gods, February 3, 2016This game is the second in a series, but I have not played the first. You play a magic-wielding city employee searching for water in a desert, and struggling with an alien race know as the scorpionkind.
Like the best Choice of Games, you can strongly influence your identity, your relationships, and the world environment. It is a lot like the Sims or morality-based games like Fable or Black and White, where you can affect your stats.
As for content warnings, the game has some optional adult content, and violence.
It also has a great mystery subgame.
This game did a good job at making me make tough choices. I felt really invested in my character.
A game (in)famous for its main challenge: understanding a nonsense language, February 3, 2016The Gostak is one of those games that everyone hears about eventually. Some play it, some stay far away. I didn't get past the first room when I first played it, felt scared, and put it off for five years.
I finally completed it with the in-game hints and some of David Wellbourns dictionary.
So what is this game? It is based off of an old sentence a professor came up with, showing that you can guess a lot about words and their relationships just by their position in a sentence. That sentence was "The Gostak distims the doshes".
In this game, you are the Gostak, and you do have to distim the doshes. You have to learn how to navigate, to examine, to take and drop, and so forth. The help menu, also written in nonsense, is vital in understanding the language.
The hints were actually very helpful, although it might be possible to beat the game without them. The last hint is purposely vague.
The game has two npcs, one who is quite helpful, and one who is not. There are a variety of other objects, though.
After finally beating it, I love this game, but it sure was hard, even with all hints and a dictionary.
Humorous game about grim reaper; nonlinear with multiple solutions, February 3, 2016This is an entertaining ADRIFT game which I played on Gargoyle on Windows. You play as the grim reaper, getting your daily list of souls to reap. You can complete your tasks in any order, and every puzzle has multiple solutions.
As you complete your tasks, you get page-long textdumps of truly entertaining material about your targets. There is a timer, but it is very generous. I usually use walkthroughs extensively, but I only required one hint in this game.
The humor is similar to Terry Pratchett or even Douglas Adams, just dry situational comedy more than slapstick. Some unusual settings for English-language IF (Himalayas, France, etc.).
An influential early game about moral choices, February 3, 2016Tapestry is a game that came up quite a bit in early IF discussions due to its unusual storytelling strategy. It remains fairly well-known.
Tapestry is a story about the afterlife, where a man is confronted with his 3 most despicable moments in life, and a chance to revisit each. You can deny each memory and fight against it, you can accept the memory and your shame, or you can accept the memory and deny your shame.
It is well-known for its moral choices, and for having several distinct paths, one of which is almost puzzle-free (the one where nothing changes), while one is puzzle-intensive (fighting your fate).
The first time I played it, months ago, I didn't really like it, and I stopped after the second panel. But this time, I used the walkthrough, and I read the story more, and I really liked it, and even found it emotionally satisfying.
The game gives an entire recap story at the end (about 2 pages), showing what life you really led.
An interesting, fascinating game. I recommend it (and don't feel bad about using a walkthrough, as many of the puzzles are just busywork). I do regret using the walkthrough at the very end in the 'accepting your fate' lines.
A very long surreal Twine game about identity, purpose, and journey, February 3, 2016This excellent IFComp 2015 game is a bizarre, surreal journey. You choose one of several 'origin stories' in a sense; for instance, once my father carved miniature cathedrals that played music, and once I lived in the swamp and sold frog skin.
The game consists of a journey towards a distant summit. You reach many places in between, in almost a surreal(er) Gulliver's Travels.
As you travel, you deal with an odd thing called a fishstomach, whose details I leave to the game.
Overall, I found the game emotionally satisfying, especially near the end. Well-chosen graphics help the game.
Occasional profanity and some body horror, but milder than Porpentine's games in general.
A tight, well-written spoof of 50's sci-fi with comic-style graphics, February 3, 2016This game was my predicted winner of IFComp 2015. This game is well-written, has great pacing (especially in the first half), a strong narrative voice, and excellent graphics. It is easy enough for people to get into with little IF experience, but provides enough of a challenge later on to be interesting.
You play a teenage girl whose town is overrun by the eponymous Brain Guzzlers. You have a cast of creatively-described friends and acquaintances who help you out. Conversation is menu-based, which allows Cherrywell to express the real flavor of the PC's world (with a lot of 'Jeepers!').
The game has some very creative puzzles, and some more straightforward. Each character of the game (besides yourself) comes with one or more high-quality graphics that show up when talking to them.
Game play is 2-3 hours long, I estimate. I recommend this to everyone; I feel like it will be played for years to come.
Great hide-and-seek game with ingenious puzzles. Uses sound and graphics, February 3, 2016Before I played it, Six was recommended by many, many people. It was nominated for Best Game in the XYZZY awards, it did very well in IFComp, reviewers said it was the best game ever. But I wasn't very interested.
Having tried it, I see now why all the hype was there. This is a very fun game. You have to play hide and seek tag/tip with your six friends in a park. The game uses children, but the writing isn't childish. Each friend presents a unique challenge in catching them. After winning the game, you can unlock additional material.
The game features a wide assortment of sounds, which were never necessary except for one part of the additional material. The graphics are also fun but unnecessary (the map can be helpful, but the layout of the park is not hard).
This game is not very difficult. I use hints/walkthroughs on just about every game I play, but I manage to work my way through this one relying on in-game nudges only. Great game.
A mid-length sci-fi game from an alien perspective, February 3, 2016Coloratura is one of the greatest sci-fi IF of all time. In this game, you play as a being utterly different from us that encounters a situation it has never experienced before.
The game has all of the usual commands, plus some new commands, the most interesting of which are color-based commands. Different colors signify different moods or ideas.
The puzzles are extremely rewarding, and fit into the plot exactly. The NPC's are well-implemented, and the nature of the game makes you feel as if the parser is not limiting conversation at all, only the world itself is.
I didn't really need a map for this game. It took a couple of hours to play. The game's biggest strength is its ability to put you in the shoes of someone completely different from you, to make you really feel like you are them.
I only wish the game had lasted a bit longer. But this may have made the puzzles less cohesive.
Fun sci-if base infiltration gem. Shortish game with some under clued puzzles, February 3, 2016I enjoyed Scavenger, and will probably revisit it. You play a scavenger in a post-apocalyptic society who has a lead on a big find. You have to find and search a base. There are no big surprises here, but plenty of fun puzzles.
Some of the puzzles, though fun, were a bit under clued. At least four puzzles depend on you searching or moving objects that are not obviously searchable, or that are similar to earlier immobile/unsearchable objects, or which you are explicitly told have nothing in them. This draws back from the fun.
The games NPCs have a lot of character, especially in their descriptions and responses.
It may seem as if I didn't like this game, but it has that elusive 'it'-ness that makes a game enjoyable and with it. Perhaps this is the reason it was nominated for a Best Game XYZZY.
A game that attempts to use real words in the strangest ways, February 3, 2016For a Change is an interesting short fantasy game that plays around with the English language to make you feel like you probably know what's going on, even if you aren't sure.
The author intentionally uses unusual word choices and assigns personality traits to objects (for instance, you read that "A stone has been insinuated into your hand"; if you check you inventory, you see that the stone is "humble and true").
This was one of the first IF games I ever played (it was packaged with iPad Frotz), and I thought it was much better suited for beginners than other games in the bundle. It's just a small pick-up-item use-item game, but the way you use items is just bizarre.
Good for anyone interested in surreal or dreamlike games, or who enjoy experiments with the English language.
An escape game mixed with a language puzzle, February 3, 2016Suveh Nux is a great game. It is a mid-length one-room fantasy game where you have to learn a magical language to escape a vault. You have to learn the grammer, the vocabulary, and some numbers.
One things that makes this game fun that I didn't appreciate when I first played IF is that EVERYTHING is implemented. Anything you think you could do with the spells, you can do. You can destroy everything in the room. There are 5 or more subpuzzles that you can completely miss without the author's note at the end.
I haven't gone back to revisit the game in years, because learning the language is much of the attraction, and it wouldn't be as hard this time. But I definitely recommend the game to everyone.
Long, trippy journey through a surreal landscape, February 3, 2016Blue Chairs is (literally) trippy. After an interesting transaction at a college party, you take a surreal journey through this world and variants of it. Something like an adaptation of Dante's Inferno by James Joyce.
The game contains drug references and strong profanity.
The puzzles are mostly reasonable, although I needed a walkthrough in the convenience store.
As a literary work, it is well written and well done. As a game, the puzzles are interesting and well-connected with the story.
However, I don't really recommend the game. I didn't like the atmosphere and feeling of the game. Everyone's tastes are different, and many people will enjoy this game, but I felt uncomfortable with parts of it.
A variety of genres rolled into a cohesive story. An influential IF game., February 3, 2016Photopia is often cited as the best interactive fiction of all time. It has won numerous awards, inspired a shift to story-centered Interactive Fiction, and so on.
It really is a great game. Despite all the hype, sitting down and playing through it is fun. The meta-puzzle of trying to understand what's going on keeps you going through different scenes. The different scenes give you the impression that you're playing a hard puzzle game while actually simplifying things without you knowing.
The colors are a good part of the game; if your interpreter doesn't support or if you are unable to distinguish between colors, you should use your imagination.
Is this really the best IF of all time? I honestly would have to say that nothing is really better than it. I don't replay it because it makes me sad. I like to stick to puzzle games or big crazy worlds. But this game has substance and meaning.
A notoriously difficult short game with a real-life setting, February 3, 2016This game was one of the two winners of the very first IF Comp. It is well known for being one of Plotkin's most difficult games, and one of the most difficult well-known games in general.
You play a loner who leaves a picnic/party to look around a secluded woodland area. Puzzles are hard due to:
1. Not knowing what your goal is;
2. Being able to put the game in an unwinnable state without knowing it;
3. Fast-paced timing.
Despite, or possibly because of the difficulty, this has remained a very popular game. Perhaps this is because the game has an inspirational feel. It is easy to identify with the protagonist, and the games understated writing gives you a sense of wonder.
The game was intended to be completed in 2 hours. You will certainly reach an ending within two hours.
A short Asian-themed "atmosphere" game like Dreamhold, February 3, 2016In the Moonlit Tower, you explore a small 3-story tower to help remember who you are and your past. Like Dreamhold, the key to your memory seems to be masks, but much of the game, you don't know what to do with the mask.
The setting is dreamlike and very poetic. It is the game most likely to find its way into a book of poems or an art gallery. The author borrowed its imagery and story from several cultures, including Mongolia and China.
The puzzles are mostly the examine/pick-up-object type until you progress very far, and then they get a bit more difficult. There are multiple endings, some of which are hard to find.
First part is like a Rubik's cube; second part like a creative writing workshop, February 3, 2016The first part of the game is a completely technical puzzle. No moves can hurt you, and there are no characters or items. As a mathematician, I found this part of the game deeply enjoyable. Like a Rubik's cube, I realized that each element can be manipulated by a little "dance". These are the important "dances":
(Spoiler - click to show)Going n, e, s, w from the kitchen lowers the floor.
Going e, n, w, s, w from the kitchen raises the floor.
Going in a similar circle around the dining room changes the direction of the bridge. If the foyer is closed, go up twice through the kitchen first.
To go down or up, do a kitchen dance and approach the moving floor from w or e, respectively.
As for the second part, the idea was fun, and the implementation was fun, but the subject matter was not my cup of tea. I found it fun to explore everything, but used a walkthrough once I tried every item.
Solid parody of a horror game, February 3, 2016This is a very well implemented game with an engaging plotline and not-to-hard puzzles. The genre is humor/horror.
This game takes only an hour to play, but every location is well-implemented, and the puzzles mostly make sense (although one, I thought, was vaguely unfair, but it was probably just me not reading descriptions well).
The only drawback is the short game length. Pretty much a perfect game otherwise.
Medium-sized Quest game with wonderful game mechanic and some parser problems, February 3, 2016This is my first Quest game; as such, it includes a map that you fill out as you explore, and lists all important objects in a room as well as your inventory at all times.
Besides the usual inventory, the game has a great additional mechanic that gives you an additional way to solve puzzles. This was fantastic, and I wanted to keep playing just to explore the mechanic.
The story was fun, but not especially motivating. The parser was terrible; so many obvious synonyms were not implemented that the game became a frustrating guess-the-verb game too frequently. However, the new mechanic was so fun that I kept playing anyway.
An incredible, forgotten game. Explore an asylum as the tripped-out director., November 15, 2015This is a hidden gem. This game was nominated for 4 xyzzy awards, including Best Game. The author also wrote two other Best Game nominees, Distress and Tales of the Travelling Swordsman.
This game is not played often because it is a homebrew parser game, written in QBasic, only playable in a DOS emulator. It was not hard for me at all to get this, though, as described below.
(The following discussion describes how to play the game. It is under spoilers to save space):(Spoiler - click to show)
Lunatix can only be played on a DOS emulator, as far as I can tell. Several people recommended I use DOSbox, which is a well-known, easy to use emulator. The game played great! I followed instructions by Juhana
type the following commands once DOSbox is started:
"mount c path/to/" (where path/to/ is the directory on your computer where you unzipped the game. For instance, I had it in a folder called temporary, so I typed "mount c C:\temporary")
"c:" (this changes the current folder to the one you defined as c: earlier)
"lunatix" (this runs the game. I recommend doing "lunatix /t /m" to play in pure text mode without it locking your mouse. The game has great graphics, but I'm used to just text. I loved the picture of the squid, though)
The game is about exploring a large asylum as the director, one who has lost control of the asylum to the insane, who force you to take a drug trip.
The game is pretty humorous, like a less-profane version of Blue Chairs with slightly more reality. The building is like the hospital in One Eye Open without any gore.
The puzzles include a mix of searching (the hidden locations follow patterns, so once you get used to hit, you can find everything), and passwords/codes, which also aren't too hard. It's definitely a 90's game, with some puzzles just for the sake of puzzles. I really enjoy games from this era.
The setting is great; the inmates have their own language, money, economy, etc.
The parser is not as bad as I was led to believe; however, I had a walkthrough, so I knew when to guess the verb and when not to. I would rate it above Infocom and below a customized set of Inform responses.
The game is mid-length.
Best Eric Eve game out there; real-life setting, huge map, good flow, August 22, 2015This is my favorite Eric Eve game. It has all the things he does so well: gripping storyline, interesting but not-too-hard puzzles, incredible help system and 'go to' commands, massive map, huge inventory, and good gameplay flow.
It also has less of my least favorite aspect of his games, a focus on a male protagonist that has his pick of women. The woman definitely has the upper hand in this game.
You play a character in a city that is being evacuated due to a threat by an unknown Enemy. You stay behind to search for a woman you care for. An enormous relationship with this woman unfolds through flashbacks, which you can "REMEMBER" at any time.
I loved this game. Five stars. Some may not like it as much, and it's not in my top ten favorite,but it was a good show.
Mid-length sci-fi game with multiple points of view and a dog, August 7, 2015Rover's Day Out is centered on a brilliant idea, which you discover the instant you start playing. Ostensibly, this game is about a morning routine and a cute dog called Rover. However, you soon learn more about what is really going on.
I finished playing this game on parchment, which caused problems with the status bar (which adds a lot of information). Also on parchment, I had a bug where an essential item (Spoiler - click to show)(dog food) disappeared, rendering the game unwinnable. The bug did not appear again when I played through the second time, some months later.
It can be a little hard at times to figure out what is going on, but that is part of the appeal of the game. The game gets progressively more intense, with the later game being especially intense. Plenty of surprises occur as the game progresses.
This game has been ranked in the Top 50 IF of all time, and it deserves its place.
A game of negotiation and understanding in a scifi setting, August 6, 2015This is my favorite Short game. This game is set in the future, when a colony from earth has developed gene-altering technology. The setting is not really important, however. What is important is the negotiation and the recording features.
Negotiation: The main purpose of the game is to work out what will happen between earth and the planet. Your job is to communicate this, but you have to understand the symbolism of the settlers. The bulk of the game is focused on figuring out what to say and how to say it.
Recording: This is actually not even necessary to the completion of the game, so some players have missed it. There are several recordings in the game which can be 'processed' to one of several different modes, such as a cartoon mode, a scientific mode, etc. It was hilariously fun, and unique among games I have played.
One of the great sci-fi games.
A short game to demonstrate Inform's abilities. Based on the Enchanter series., August 6, 2015'Balances' is a short game based on Infocom's celebrated Enchanter series. In fact, the opening area is directly based on the sample walkthrough in the manual of the original Enchanter game.
This game demonstrates some of Inform's best abilities: indistinguishable objects, games involving large numbers, magical spells that interact with each other, a balance that weighs different objects, etc.
The game is relatively fun, but short and without a coherent plot. It can be a good introduction to the Enchanter series for those who aren't sure about Infocom games.
Graham Nelson wrote a longer game with similar elements: The meteor, the stone, and a long glass of sherbet. Those who like this game should definitely try the longer Meteor game.
Adventure, power, wealth, and romance, July 16, 2015If not for its recent creation and platform choice, this would probably be one of the most popular games on all of IFDB. It is part sim game and part thriller game. It reminds me of the best parts of "Attack of the Yeti Robot Zombies", "You will select a decision", "Jigsaw", and the hologram sequence in "Mulldoon Legacy".
You play a test subject under the supervision of the evil Dr. Sliss, a lizard-human. You begin in a mini-base that you explore non-linearly with no real puzzles to speak of, and continue on to a second half of the game that is completely linear and a real thrill ride.
I can't express how much I enjoyed this game. But everyone has a different sense of what they are looking for in a game. This game is for people who like memorable characters, heart-racing action scenes, romance, and over-the-top humor.
P.S. As Danielle noted, there is a completely unnecessary F-bomb.
Perfectly-paced science fiction game, July 2, 2015Having recently downloaded a TADS interpreter for the first time, I decided to try out the most popular games. This was the highest on the list. In this game, you play as an amnesiac in a frozen underground base.
While this game had above-average plot, puzzles, and writing, it really shines in its pacing. From the very beginning, the game gave an impression of vast complexity (three bulkheads with three very different locks), but it always left you with a couple of new things to try. Every time, the couple of new things led to another part of the game, and so on. The game is, in fact, complex (look at the map!), but it's arranged so neatly that I never needed to use the map.
Very few games have the great feel that this gives you. I completed it in less than 2 hours.
Surprisingly large and non-linear for a twine game; vivid, haunting writing, May 1, 2015This is a very large Twine game that starts out mostly linear, branches a little, and then branches a lot. It includes a large area with a variety of rooms, including a clever means of transportation (Spoiler - click to show)the curious door/button combo. The genre is subtle horror/mystery, and the writing is evocative and sticks with you.
The lack of a save feature is annoying; as a casual gamer, I can't finish the game in one sitting, and it's difficult to juggle tabs to keep the game open throughout the day. This is one game I would like to finish.
The help system is the most enjoyable part of this entertaining game., April 5, 2015This game follows a small group of young adults as they investigate mysterious occurences for the school newspaper.
The hint system is supplied in the form of notes, assembled by a young man on behalf of the female narratot. I STRONGLY recommend reading as many of the hints as possible, as they pai t a fascinating picture of the young man, the narrator, and their environment.
There is a second, subtle hint system that soon becomes apparent to anyone getting stuck in the game.
I would recommend this to newcomers based on the two help systems and for experienced IF players based on the rich storyline (including the hidden scene detailed in the Author's notes).
Showing All | Show by Page