Reviews by autumnc
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A great sci-fi short story, March 14, 2021I first played this game during IFComp 2015, and recently just re-played it. I think it holds up pretty well, especially when seen as a part of Anya DeNiro's greater body of work.
Compared to the author's other works, I feel like this story is more straightforward, less literary for the sake of being literary. And that's really saying something, because this story is plenty complicated, at least at first. It starts out taking place within a (Spoiler - click to show)VR video game, a survival game kind of reminiscent of Rust. And then things gradually get weirder. Your identity is called into question. Until it ends with a scene explaining the entirety of the premise.
People have said that the game has very limited interactivity, and that's basically accurate. But compared to DeNiro's previous stories, this story has greater agency in terms of embodying the player character. Solarium and We Are the Firewall are basically hypertext fiction, with no player-embodiment agency to speak of, but they seem more interactive because there are more links, more bells and whistles on the page to play with. This game follows more of an adventure format. For most of the story, the player character is deliberately disempowered; they don't have much control over their own life or actions due to outside forces and being placed in an unknown situation. This at least gives some justification for the lack of choice.
I really enjoyed the writing. Some of its cyberpunk-esque story elements are kind of reminiscent of We Are the Firewall, but here they're presented in a much more straightforward way. There's a meditation on personal identity and even some nods to trans-ness.
At the end, a character basically tells the entire backstory to the player (on ending 2). I'm not sure if this was the right decision, as I would have preferred for some sense of mystery to be preserved, or to have the chance to figure out the mystery on my own (which is part of what I loved about Solarium and Firewall).
An environmentalist family mystery that happens to have werewolves, March 12, 2021Heart of the Forest (or HotF for short) is one of a recent series of works set in the World of Darkness tabletop universe, along with two Vampire: the Masquerade visual novels (Coteries/Shadows of New York), VtM - Night Road from Choice of Games, and some other games I haven't played probably. Those games were about vampires; this game is about werewolves. The mythology and continuity are taken very seriously (I would guess; I'm not that familiar with WoD).
The most ready comparisons for this game would be the aforementioned VtM visual novels and Night Road. Like the VtM visual novels, this game really excels at atmosphere. The art, the music, the sounds, and the writing all cohere to create a deeply creepy atmosphere. It works extremely well at transporting the player to the forests of the werewolves, at instilling the game's desired emotions into players' minds. As a game written in Ink, it is more interactive than the visual novels, but somewhat less so than Night Road. There is a simplified version of the Werewolf: the Apocalypse character sheet (as opposed to the full character sheet in Night Road and none in the VNs), with delayed branching based on stat checks.
The game is a little short for a commercial game (much shorter than Night Road and slightly shorter than the VtM visual novels), and you don't really spend a lot of time being a werewolf; it's only in the last third that you transform. The politics of environmentalism and family history are the primary themes of the pre-werewolf story. And that story is really good! It has interesting characters, complex political conflicts, and an engrossing, potentially supernatural mystery that all fall by the wayside when the werewolves show up. In fact, I would almost have preferred a whole game in that vein. Discovering that you're "just" a werewolf destroys some of the mystical aspects of the story; it slots you into a rigid classification system with highly specified rules and logic (thanks to the TTRPG). I feel like the authors just wanted to write a story about the Puszcza Białowieska, and had to add werewolves to satisfy their investors.
But the werewolf story is pretty good too. I didn't know much about the WtA universe before, and I feel like I do now. The most interesting parts to me were when you first transform, and go into a frenzy without knowing what's going on. And then you're introduced to the werewolf classes and subclasses and factions and have to take a test to pick a class. And then that's it; you get an epilogue after picking a faction. I kind of wish there was more, but I don't know how it would continue.
A mythology of American politics, March 11, 2021This was an interesting piece of interactive fiction. The writing on the prose level is excellent, and despite the topic, I was really engrossed playing it (the music and graphics are excellent). But I have mixed feelings about some of the ideas presented here.
So, this is a story about a loosely fictionalized version of the 2016 US presidential election. The protagonist is Abigail Thoreau, a mixed race lesbian who, for whatever reason, decides to work as a campaign staffer for the analogue of the former US president, here named Truman Glass.
American Election is a story about the narratives we create for ourselves, and the narratives others create for us. The key to the game is the reflective choice: what do you believe, why are you doing this. Because your actual choices have already been decided; Abi is already doing what she’s going to do. But why does she support Glass? Is it about 9/11? Is it about her breakup with her girlfriend, or her falling-out with her father? Is it out of actual ideological support or just to become someone who matters? All of this is about constructing a narrative around Abi's personal history, creating a sense of who she is as a person. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter; they’re all self-serving justifications. The narrative Abi creates for herself is implicitly compared with the narrative Glass creates for the American people, and the one he has created privately for himself. All of these stories are self-serving; all contain lies to some extent.
One of the most important scenes to me is when (Spoiler - click to show)Abi visits her deceased father’s house with Glass. Glass is spinning a tale about her father, about how he was a patriotic left-behind American who waves the confederate flag, and then Abi has a choice to just walk away. Abi knew her father as an abusive man, who hated what she became; they ended up cutting each other off. I'm not sure if this is an actual choice or a false choice, or what would have happened if she stayed by his side. But leaving felt like the most narratively coherent thing to do, given the reflective choices I made up to that point.
I feel like the game falls prey to the mythologies surrounding the former president. Glass is a much better, much more polished speaker, and is much more actively ideological. The game psychologizes Glass’s support base too much, falling prey to the conventional wisdom surrounding his seeming success (and of course neglects the role of turnout and voter suppression). It gives too much power to Glass's narrative, and not enough to the complicated mix of factors that lead to any real-life political victory by any party (there was this one xkcd that said that sports reporting is about building narratives from a pseudorandom number generator; the same can be said of politics). In this, the game perpetuates what it seemingly criticizes. But this game is not about data or demographics. It's about stories. It's a mythology, not a history.
There is at least one British-ism I noticed: “hired a boat”, when it probably should be “rented a boat”.
Save the world, or try again, March 9, 2021Stay? is a game with a time loop as its core mechanic. You'll go back in time over and over in order to save the magical world of the game from a comet that will destroy everything. Each loop took no more than 10-15 minutes, shorter on repeats since you don't have to re-read text, but there might be a lot of loops.
Within each loop, the world can change a great deal. Your choices affect the entire shape of the plot, which runs for a period of 10 years, from entering magical college, through adulthood, until the destruction wrought by the comet. It's kind of a life simulation, where you play through key moments in the player character's life, and skip over years of "boring" stuff. There is a lot of branching; you can win, lose, or avert a war, enter into any number of relationships, pick one of at least three different professions, and either fail or succeed in stopping the comet. By exploring the different branches, you gather information, and eventually can craft a path that allows you to stop the comet's impact. But even if you succeed, you might still redo the time loop because you failed to save a key character.
I really enjoyed this game. I liked the balance between a lighthearted and more serious tone. I enjoyed the relative sparsity of the prose, which belies a lot of complexity and worldbuilding. I liked the depth of characterization; all of them have hidden aspects and secrets that might only become apparent on multiple playthroughs. There is a lot of depth to this game in general.
It took me almost 15 loops to finally defeat the comet, but there is still a lot of content I missed.
I'm not sure if this is intentional or unintentional, but this was a darkly funny game.
So, I trained my way up to the Olympics, got a silver medal at the Olympics at age 18, became a pro in Nigeria, and on my first pro fight, died. RIP Sakura. She never had the chance to retire and breed :(
This game can be painfully slow sometimes, with a lot of timed text, and grinding by repeatedly reading generic inspirational quotes by everyone from Mahatma Gandhi to Chairman Mao (you have to wait until the stat upgrade flies in or it won't change your stats). Not getting into the disturbing implications of grinding endurance and "rockstar juice" via "booty calls" (you start at age 15), but it is a thing that happens, and it is your only interaction with other people besides combat and training for combat. Yeah. Beneath the hood, there are a lot of stats, grouped into "mind" and "body". Somehow, these stats affect your chance of victory in fights. The larger the numbers, the better, of course. Victory also probably has a random component. I've noticed that the longer the bar is, the more likely I am to win, but I don't know how the bar is determined.
The main form of entertainment in this game is to watch numbers go up. This is the heart of all management games, and with interactive fiction, you can see game mechanics distilled down to their very essence. It is almost impossible to strategize about where to click because of the opacity of the mechanics. But the more you click, the more numbers go up. The more numbers go up, the more you win. The more you win... well, I don't know what comes next because Sakura died, and I'm not going to replay this to see.
A dog's one-way journey into space, February 15, 2021Space Adventure Laika is a rather short (10-20 minutes) twine story written about Laika, the first dog in space. It chronicles her upbringing as a subway-riding Moscow stray, to her capture by scientists, and her suffering as she's placed into a tiny capsule and rocketed on a one-way journey into orbit.
This game is really good at imagining the dog's perspective. The story is divided into present and flashback segments; the present is when Laika is in the space capsule, and the flashbacks show her life as a stray dog. I like the space of possible actions in the "present" scenes; it's a parser game-inflected style, kind of reminiscent of howling dogs, that's effective at conveying a sense of Laika's confinement and her suffering. The flashback segments were well-written and interesting to read; they provide a loosely historical overview of a part of history I didn't know much about. There's some interactivity, but it all leads to a foregone conclusion.
There's recently been another twine game Laika about the same dog, which is more of a fantasy. Playing both games, I think that I prefer this one because of its more historical focus.
A choicescript dark superhero game, February 15, 2021This is one of the numerous superhero games originating in the choicescript ecosystem. Similar to the Heroes Rise trilogy and Fallen Hero: Rebirth, which was published a year later, Paradigm City leans towards the darker, more "realistic" side of the genre, towards what TVTropes would call "deconstruction". I enjoyed playing the game, but it isn't as successful for a number of reasons.
Paradigm City takes place in a world where superheros are an accepted part of society, working for governments and organizations as part of their forces. The player character is abandoned as a child to a superhero academy, and later ends up working for a UN (I think) superhero agency called SOLAR. They are sent to the titular Paradigm City, an isolated city run entirely by superpowered individuals, to solve a series of crimes. Of course, things become more complicated. The worldbuilding isn't as extensive as some of the longer choicescript superhero series, but it gets the job done well enough.
The game's writing felt overly vague at times. A lot of events were glossed over or barely explained; to me the most egregious was (Spoiler - click to show)Dawn's death, which jumped straight into the funeral with implications of conspiracy, but wasn't ever explained or resolved. But maybe I just picked the wrong choices? The fight scenes were impressive, but there were only two of those (and one training exercise). The investigation scenes felt like lawnmowering, just picking all the choices until reaching the conclusion. The mysteries weren't all too interesting to me, but mysteries in the usual choicescript stat-based style are hard to do. There is romance and relationship-building, but it feels like an afterthought solely due to the choicescript style. I thought I had started a romance but there was no content afterwards.
Early Choice of Game about mecha battles in space, February 12, 2021Mecha Ace is one of the Choice of Games I've enjoyed and replayed the most, but I'm biased as a fan of the mecha genre. It was one of the relatively early choice of games, from an era where most of the games were genre pastiches. This is a pastiche of the mecha genre, taking the most obvious inspiration from the Gundam franchise (the name options give a pretty good idea of the story's inspirations). The backstory is based on a rebellion of extraterrestrial colonies against the rule of the Earth-based Empire; you play as an elite mech pilot for the rebellion through a few key battles in the war.
There are a lot of things the game does really well. The pacing is impeccable, with a careful balance of action and quieter moments, and a great climactic scene. The plot is well-developed, with interesting twists and developments despite the somewhat familiar setting. Fighting scenes are hard to write in interactive fiction, but Mecha Ace pulls it off as well as anything I've seen. The choices are usually pretty transparent in what stats are being tested, but it's possible to get into a situation where none of your well-developed stats are useful, or to get in a bad situation from picking the wrong decisions much earlier in the game. Getting the "best" endings took multiple playthroughs for me to find a path that worked. It's very easy for side characters to die with little warning, and one might die even on an otherwise ideal ending.
On the other hand, the characters are basically archetypes from similar media (but they're still well-written and have interesting moments), and the romance options were kind of sparse, as if the author were just trying to match the choice of games style. Sometimes, my romantic interest would die and my character would have no reaction. Unlike most choice of games, the stats page doesn't explicitly show the character relationships (but they are being tracked). Romance is not why I'm playing this game.
Overall, for the things it does well, like plot and combat, the game does them very well, and it sometimes elides the more character-driven aspects of other choice of games.
Unleash wasp chaos, February 9, 2021Okay, so, I feel like what I write can't really do justice to this story, so... please play it first? As with a lot of other Porpentine stories, major content warnings here for body horror, discussions of trauma and mental healthcare. And insects. The story was about 30 minutes long for me. As with all of Porpentine's stories, it's incredibly well-written and vivid, conveying a ton of information in small bits of text, but confusing at parts. There are cool visual effects, including changing backgrounds and colors, and links exploding in four when moused over.
The world of this story is basically a world where, instead of covid, we have a giant swarm of wasps. Every time people go outside, they have to put on a full-body rubber suit to protect themselves from the wasps. Also this society is a cyberpunk-esque late-capitalist hellscape, but that's a given. The protagonist is basically someone who is so alienated from society that she has more empathy for the wasps than any other humans. She partakes in rituals where she drinks fluids from the wasp queen (who is some kind of sexy anthro wasp?) because it gives a kind of meaning to her life. Meanwhile, she has an ambiguous relationship to a therapist who is the embodiment of the commodification of emotional connection, a surveillance-enabled agent who is really good at outwardly displaying empathy and sympathy for the protagonist (but maybe just wants control and conformity), but is also the protagonist's only connection to other people. The wasp queen leads the protagonist to commit basically a terrorist act that kills bystanders.
Most of the hypertext links in the story are exploratory until the very end, where there's the choice to either accept the therapist or try to escape and join the wasp queen (I'm not sure if it actually leads to different endings; I've only played through once). Ultimately, it's kind of a false choice, because both choices are a surrender of sorts, whether it is to mainstream society or the wasp hive. Both of these options involve the loss of individuality and a subsumption into a greater whole, it's just that one feels viscerally good.
This is another of those stories that hits differently in the post-covid era. It probably clouds my judgment of the protagonist and her actions (this is unfair, but, like, she's literally pro-covid??? is she an anti-vaxxer or anti-masker??? it is *extremely* a stretch to call this a sympathetic portrayal of an anti-masker, but like...).
Randomized sci-fi trial simulator, February 6, 2021Star Court is a brief twine game (a playthrough is probably less than 10 minutes) with a lot of randomized elements. The conceit is that you're on trial for a crime you may or may not have committed (it doesn't really matter), and you're supposed to try to prove yourself not guilty as well as just survive the trial. It has a whimsical sci-fi pastiche setting with a comedic tone where nothing's really taken seriously. The writing is pretty fun, and I enjoyed playing through the game. Insofar that there is a deeper message or social commentary, it's about the unfairness of the judicial system for the poor, but it's too wacky to really leave much of a message.
In terms of gameplay, there are a few standard phases: pick your lawyer, plead guilty or not guilty, cross-examine the prosecution's witnesses, and call your own witnesses in defense. Then there's a break where you can try to escape (and usually fail), before the trial either concludes or restarts. A lot of the result is randomized (although more expensive witnesses usually give better results). I think eventually I figured out a strategy to win most of the time.
This game is fun to play through a few times, to see the different ways the trial could go. There's a lot of content and replayability, despite the short length of each playthrough. The crimes are randomly determined (it doesn't matter what the crime is). I've seen at least five different "Ancient Rites" (the trial by cat was my favorite), and many different prosecution's witnesses.
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