Reviews by autumnc
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A mixed conclusion to the trilogy, February 4, 2021As the conclusion to the Lost Heir trilogy, Demon War contains a mix of positive and troublesome developments. On one hand, it has some of the most interesting and unique narrative segments, and further advances characterization and worldbuilding. On the other hand, the ending has a ridiculous sequence of stat checks that could easily lead to a bad ending if you didn't optimized a number of previously underutilized stats.
The previous game ended with either a pyrrhic victory or a defeat that nevertheless left you, the lost heir, as the last one standing. Your task now is to defeat the evil demon summoner who killed your parents and reclaim your kingdom. This is divided into a number of distinct story sections. It is kind of strange to see a putative monarch do jobs like pretending to be a student at a school. But overall, the new scenes are fun; I thought the ocean voyage and mysterious island chapter was rather memorable. There are also some cool moments when selecting a prestige class, and interesting character-focused scenes with your party. I feel like the quality of the writing has improved with this iteration.
The ending is where things start to come apart. You are forced to rely much more heavily on physical stats, when they were rarely used in the prior two games and even in the earlier parts of this game. Thus, unless you knew about this change, you're basically doomed. All the preparations, all the kingdom-building didn't matter if you don't have enough agility and stamina. I only succeeded when I was using a guide, on my third playthrough or something like that. You basically have to plan for the final scene from the beginning of the first game, which was kind of impossible if you played the games when they were released.
I felt like I enjoyed this game more when playing with a guide (and with a save that used a guide in the previous two games).
Magical academy adventure, February 4, 2021Keeper of the Sun and Moon (or KotSaM) is a comforting game for me. This is in spite of the fact that it contains quite a deal of violence and dangerous situations; I think it's just because of a sense of familiarity, both from playing it a lot and from its use of familiar tropes. It is a very tropey game, taking place in a modern fantasy-kitchen-sink setting, with a hidden society of magical/supernatural beings. You play as a newcomer from a seemingly normal human background, who is discovered to have latent magical ability and is enrolled in a magical college. There, adventures start that involve life-threatening school exams, conspiracies involving the magical government, and potentially romance. The game follows the typical choicescript formula by offering a lot of character customization and numerical growth, a branch-and-bottleneck structure, and a lot of romance/relationship options.
From the description above, the premise resembles a number of quite popular YA literary franchises. But I feel like KotSaM implements the tropes well, and does enough to distinguish itself within its genre. As this is a college setting, the characters are all adults, and the courses and residential system are based on American universities. One of the fun parts of the game is deciding which species of supernatural creature you are; there are tons of possibilities from the gamut of mythological fantasy. Also, this is a setting that mixes modern technology with magic; mathematics and biology come into play a few times.
In general, KotSaM is one of the easier choicescript games, as it's hard to die and I don't think there are "bad endings" (or are there?). The stat checks are usually well telegraphed, but sometimes it's hard to tell how difficult a check would be. Failing stat checks might lead to lower grades or getting injured, but it's not that hard to stumble into a path to moderate success without really designing a specific route (kind of like college I guess). For min-maxers and guide-makers, there are secrets and achievements and hidden romance routes.
The writing is functional for the most part; some of the characters came off as a bit hard to distinguish from each other, and some of the scenes felt a bit vague. Still, the story was easy enough to read, and I generally enjoyed the character interactions. The resolution of the mystery and the reveal of the villain felt a bit anticlimactic. But it sets up for the sequel, which I'm rather looking forward to.
Autobiographical interactive poem, January 30, 2021This sort of thing is hard to "review" or discuss; it feels like something deeply personal, as if my presence is an intrusion.
As far as the narrative goes, it's a sequence of poetic vignettes about becoming a parent, and the ongoing fear for future generations as a result of global warming. The title refers to a former land under the current North Sea, a land that submerged as a result of climate change after the Ice Age. What did the people live there think as the land faded away? There are digressions on rural poverty, healthcare, and life changes. The story is very short but dense, about five minutes for me.
As often the case with Anya DeNiro's stuff, the writing has an incredible economy, and interactivity is used to full effect, with a lot of mutating text and cycling links. I absolutely love the way the text is presented, even if the mouse-over effects could get to be too much at times. There were images whose symbolic meanings I didn't exactly understand.
Anyway, it was beautiful and I wanted to cry. It was as if the author could beam a certain mood straight into my brain.
Better in retrospect, January 30, 2021I first played Creatures Such As We a few years ago, and I remember that I didn't think much of it back then. But, after playing it more recently, I've come to appreciate it a lot more.
Creatures Such As We is a metafictional (am I using that term correctly?) story about video games that functions as one of the video games it discusses. On one level, you play as a tour guide on the moon, guiding a group of visiting game developers through various touristy activities. On the other level, your character is playing a game-within-a-game, which happens to be developed by the same group of aforementioned game developers. This game-within-a-game had a highly controversial "bad" ending, almost akin to the original ending of Mass Effect 3 (the author denies it as an influence). The player character suddenly has the opportunity to ask the game developers about the ending. Of course, being a Choice of Game, there is romance here: you can pursue a romantic relationship or friendship with one of the game developers, and you might stay in contact even after they leave. There is a bit of stage magic here; the dramatic life-and-death moments always happen to your chosen romance option. The characters themselves are all well-realized and unique, but they feel sort of like tokens, both demographically and for their particular viewpoints.
All of this is all used as a backdrop for a series of philosophical conversations. The author leads us through "meta" discussions like the role of the author vs the viewer, representation in media, and escapism, and more general philosophical discussions on death and life and stuff. I think this worked better for me now than when I first played this because I have more experience with both making and playing interactive fiction, and I can relate to the issues being discussed more. It felt interesting and engaging in a way that "philosophical discussions in video games" usually don't for me.
Then there's the theme of corporate malfeasance. Your employer cares more about good appearances than the well-being of its employees or the safety of its customers. The visitors to the moon base are regularly put into life-threatening situations with little backup or real information. You are overworked without much free time, and it's clear that there are people even worse off. Then there is a subplot where one of the tourists has a flu-like illness that is covered up; it's obvious that this was made in pre-covid times. At the same time, an EA-like giant gaming corporation is seeking to acquire the game developers, who are somewhat ambivalent about the deal (I don't know if you-as-the-tour-guide can change the outcome here).
Overall, I feel like the setting, characters, game-within-a-game, and philosophical discussions all meshed together really well. I appreciated the meta moments where it felt like the game was critiquing itself.
Mysterious and mesmerizing, January 19, 2021Anya DeNiro is one of my favorite authors of interactive fiction. This, along with Solarium, are two of my favorite IFs. From the presentation to the writing to the interactive structure, it all feels so right, all components fitting together to achieve a singular purpose. It is very much what I would imagine "hypertext literature" to be, if it ever escaped the bounds of academia.
We Are the Firewall is a dystopian story taking place in the near future of 2XX3. The world is on familiar modern cyberpunk territory, with surveillance drones dealing out "less lethal" violence, an addicting VR game that subsumed the educational system, and the cascading effects of climate change and social inequality. The tropes themselves aren't entirely original, but in this story they feel fresh and real, which is a credit to the extremely good writing. There is a large number of protagonists, displaying a broad swath of society, all connected by a conspiracy relating to the aforementioned VR game. Each character feels distinct, not just in their written voice, but in the way their story segments are organized. The security officer has his links as a to-do list. The "struggling musician" has cycling links that show the distinction between what he says and how he truly is.
Structurally, We Are the Firewall is a hypertext with a spoke-and-hub structure in much the same way as Solarium. From the beginning, it is possible to navigate to a number of different story segments corresponding to different perspectives (in any order), and each of these perspectives are necessary to complete the story. To make the story easier to navigate, completed story segments are crossed out. Dynamic text is used heavily, including gradually appearing and disappearing text, link replacement, and a lot of cycling links. Unlike in many other games that use timed text, it didn't bother me here, because it's used sparingly and with purpose.
Connecting structure to theme is one of my favorite twine mechanisms (Howling Dogs, Spy Intrigue, lots of others), and not many twine games do it as well as is done here. The patches of seemingly random text and shifting words reflect the chaotic and messy world in which we find ourselves. Text disappears and changes, as characters mount self-justifications for their atrocities. As mentioned before, the organization of the individual story segments reflects the characters' goals and worldview. Some are organized and methodological, others are desperate and frantic. The dynamic text both reveals and conceals as the mysteries compound.
There is an air of impenetrability to this story, which is more apparent at the beginning. There are often long lists of seemingly random phrases with a few highlighted links. As soon as links start getting crossed out, it starts to become manageable. The final ending depends on a time-sensitive link which is onscreen for less than a second (thankfully, it's mentioned in the in-game guide). In it, the mysteries behind the story are revealed. As usual with big reveals, it's a little disappointing, and weakens the mystery pervasive in the rest of the story.
Beyond that, the story is just really emotionally moving. Maybe it's just the 2020 effect, but I felt really sucked in by a story that felt like it was about the current moment. There was suffering, of course, but also hope, that at the end there will be something worth living for, even if it ends up being (Spoiler - click to show)a bunch of AIs made to look like mice living in a VR world. Like many of the best stories, this one burrowed into my brain and embedded itself into my mental fabric.
Deck-building combat RPG in Unity, December 31, 2020I played this using wine on linux. It seemed to work perfectly fine on my computer. The only issue I had was that I felt the UI and font were a bit small and hard to read. I think there were a few bugs; there was one card which was supposed to allow you to draw any card, but it only showed cards that were already in your hand.
This game felt like kind of an odd or at least atypical fit for ifcomp. It is essentially a Slay the Spire-like, a deck-building RPG. In a comic twist, the player character is a character in an RPG game-within-the-game being told by a pair of siblings, who has been brought into the "real world" which is still a part of the same RPG session. It's a pretty fun story. The gameplay itself consists of battling enemies by drawing cards which represent attacks, defenses, or abilities. Defeating enemies allows you to get new cards, and there are opportunities to gain items which give stat bonuses. Throughout the story, there are choice-based segments where you choose (mostly blindly) where to go next or which monster to fight next. This includes a maze segment.
This game may have been experimental for IFComp, but for me, it shifted in my mind from being in an IF space to more of a general videogame territory, and in that territory, it does not necessarily compare well. The deck-builder had a surprising amount of depth, and the game is pretty well constructed (save the bug mentioned earlier), but nothing on an IFComp development cycle will be able to match commercial production values (Slay the Spire had years of early access and essentially thousands of testers). However, there are advantages of IFComp stuff; it can experiment with new mechanics, tell stories without worrying about commercial appeal, and so on. Plus plain text can be a highly effective medium when used well. I enjoyed this game and the puzzle of deck-building/optimizing battle tactics, but I feel like this game didn't exactly utilize IF's advantages over more mainstream videogames. It imitates Slay the Spire too closely in my opinion, complete with text describing what the card images should look like.
I didn't manage to get to the end; I died a few times to the hydra before I stopped playing.
A philosophical short story, December 31, 2020This is a philosophical short story about free will and AI, told through a poker game. Despite the short length of one playthrough, this game is surprisingly deep, with a lot of paths through the story and some replayability.
You play as a robot casino worker who has also been employed as a sex worker. The game takes place entirely within one round of poker, with a few flashbacks and optional digressions. There are at least 8 possible outcomes of game.
The cards that are dealt can differ between playthroughs, and this affects the outcome of the story. At first I thought it was random, but it actually depends on your first three choices in a pseudorandom manner, as described in the spoilers below. It feels like a commentary on free will and the nature of "randomness".
(Spoiler - click to show)
- recognize, answer yes, deal the turn: 8 of clubs -> get drink for sunglasses man -> 10 of clubs -> girl with hood wins
- recognize, answer yes, don’t deal the turn: Jack of hearts -> Ace of hearts -> man in sunglasses wins
- recognize, answer no, deal the turn: 2 of hearts -> husband asks for water -> 2 of clubs -> husband wins
- recognize, answer no, don’t deal the turn: 7 of hearts -> 2 of hearts -> wife wins
- don’t recognize, answer yes, deal the turn: 3 of hearts -> kiss the singer -> 7 of hearts -> older woman wins
- don’t recognize, answer yes, don’t deal the turn: 5 of spades -> 4 of spades -> newcomer wins
- don’t recognize, answer no, deal the turn: Queen of spades -> wife discovered cheating -> 8 of diamonds -> singer wins
- don’t recognize, answer no, don’t deal the turn: 7 of diamonds -> man cursing -> Jack of diamonds -> slot player wins
I like how the choices (or lack of thereof) interfaces with the themes of the story. This game makes a great use of the forced choice technique: you can choose to not deal a card, but you’ll always be compelled to deal eventually. Your programming as an AI leaves you no choice but to fulfill the directives that your employer imposed upon you. There’s also a lot of talk of binaries. Humans always think in binaries. You as an AI are programmed to work in binaries. And there’s always at most two choices, until the very end.
Also I liked the writing style. The diction seems “robotic” and unemotional on the surface, but there’s always the sense of deep internal turmoil. The robot’s programming controls her internal thoughts/analyses as well as actions, but the writing creates a sense that there’s something going on inside her mind that was unanticipated by the programmers.
If there’s any criticism I have for this game, it’s that the game is much too short, and re-playing feels repetitive. With only one playthrough, it’s easy to miss a lot of interesting content. And the open ending, while it makes sense from a thematic point of view, is unsatisfying if one is more interested in the character or story.
There’s some uncomfortable content here. The robot protagonist is often the victim of violence, especially sexual violence (there are also references to domestic violence not involving robots). Robots in this world have become receptacles for the worst of humanity. As often happens with can-robots-be-human stories, there are parallels with working class experiences, especially in the women-dominated service industry.
Well-made story, but I'm not sure how much I got, December 31, 2020The Cursèd Pickle of Shireton is an excellently crafted story. There is great art, music, complex and mostly bug-free mechanics, and fun writing (especially in the "meta" portions). There is a lot of stuff here. However, I feel like I got stuck too much, and at some point didn't really desire to continue and discover the game's secrets.
This is a parody of the MMORPG genre, which is itself implemented in a text-based simulation of an actual MMORPG, presented as a fallback version for a graphical game. There are NPCs and fake PCs. There is a support forum where players discuss the game and share mods. Beneath each scene there is a chat screen showing the players' interactions in the area.
The problem is that the gameplay wasn't really fun for me. I get that it's *supposed* to be unfun, a simulation of a genre that I never really enjoyed, but plenty of genre parodies manage to make the gameplay decent in of itself (or, in IF, limit the mechanical aspects and focus on the story). I did a ton of delivery quests, sending mail from one part of Sameytown to another. The combat was particularly annoying to me. It was tedious to have to click the words in order, and I didn't like that the turns were on a timer (I discovered the slow time mod thanks to the forum thread). I actually felt like I enjoyed the combat in A Final Grind more than this. And there was the haunted house where everything permanently lowered your level??? I stopped playing in the town after crossing the desert because I couldn't get a sense of how to advance. I did enjoy the Crossing the Desert puzzle, though.
Reading some of the other reviews and discussions, I got a better sense of what this game contained, and how much I missed. I never played The Baker of Shireton by the same author, which apparently has a lot of shared content with this story. I think the key is to not approach this as a typical RPG, and just go hog wild.
Underrated twine RPG, December 31, 2020I think this was one of the more underrated games in its IFComp batch. The game is crawling with bugs, and contains some rather bizarre design choices, but I still enjoyed the game for what it was.
"A Final Grind" belongs to a similar genre as games like The Forgotten Tavern from its year, and The Cursèd Pickle of Shireton and Tavern Crawler from 2020. It contains dungeon-crawling RPG mechanics built in twine, and its story is a parody of typical RPG tropes.
I was surprised at how compelling I found it to be. Part of me wants to say that this game is the inverse of Undertale, but that would be only correct insofar that every game is the inverse of Undertale. It’s hard for me to describe what makes this interesting; perhaps all the grinding got me addicted. The quality of the writing was good throughout, especially given that this was gameplay-heavy.
The game has a sparse aesthetic, and takes place in a standard Dungeons and Dragons-style fantasy setting. The protagonist is an adventurer trapped in a mine, the last survivor of their party after a cave-in killed the rest. He is a death seeker for unspecified reasons, who wants to go down in a blaze of glory saving other people. The mine is the domain of monsters; they’re just living there peacefully, and you humans had the gall to invade their space, and when they attack in self-defense, you massacre them. Even more so, humans constantly “dehumanize” the monsters and treat them as an unintelligent, uncultured, indistinguishable mass, regardless of their reality. Eventually you have to kill their king. As you approach the king, the monsters are terrified of you and run away. I've never played the "genocide" route in Undertale, but it's familiar from what I've heard.
Much of the game involves mechanical combat, where you can choose to use attack, parry, or magic. Using the ‘parry’ action involves solving math problems randomly selected from a pre-written bank, from “5 + 5” to derivatives. The game says don’t use a calculator, but most of the problems were solvable in my head. Does using pencil and paper count as cheating? The only confusing part was that it required decimals instead of fractions. So I just used parry every time, so I never took any damage or exhaustion. Given how many random combat encounters there were, it got tiresome, but I memorized the answers.
Problem: I ran into a bug fairly early on. After visiting the foreman’s room and trying to break the safe, I was unable to continue - there was a “Continue” link, but it wasn’t clickable. After restarting, I worked around this by just skipping this room, and continuing onwards. Going back to that room after I got the key worked. There are also a bunch of other bugs in this game, mostly syntax errors with incomplete passages. Also literally the last line of the game is “Double-click this passage to edit it.” which is... surprisingly apt given the path leading up to it.
Like with a lot of Twine RPGs I’ve seen in IFComp, this game is not really “balanced” in any way. My level got ridiculously high, but it didn’t really mean anything. I never knew what exhaustion does because I only ever used parrying.
Translations of the goblin text:
(Spoiler - click to show)
Shrine:
MONSTERS HAVE BEEN DRIVEN FROM EVERY LAND
BUT GHIDORAH UNITED US INTO ONE TRIBE
WE PRAISE HIM, LORD OF THREE FIRES
MASTER OF THE WORLD BENEATH EARTH
MAY HIS REIGN BRING PEACE TO THE WORLD OF MONSTERS
AND IN HIM MAY WE FIND A HOME IN WHICH TO THRIVE
Password prompt:
WHO IS GHIDORAH, KING OF MONSTERS?
Final text:
I WISH IT COULD BE DIFFERENT, HUMAN
Twine + Bitsy space adventure, December 28, 2020Superlunary is one of the coolest things I've seen in recent-ish twine. I love the look of the interface, the art, and the way different forms of interactivity are mixed. The story itself is pretty interesting; it takes place after a revolution that brought a government which seeks to end wars by destroying all remaining weapons. You play as a team of three people, led by a member of the disarmed military, who go around space trying to dismantle old weapons and help random people. Much of the story focuses on the team members' complicated relationships with each other, and their personal histories.
This game uses both the twine and bitsy systems. Bitsy is a simple game engine which basically allows for 2d walking simulators. Through bitsy, the game includes visually navigating around outer space and walking around a planet. In twine, the game includes clickable images, dialogue, and messages. Since apparently twine and bitsy don't share variables, the only way the content between the engines is shared is via passcodes provided in bitsy, which are then entered in the twine UI when they are learned by the player. I just thought it was pretty cool.
I don't know if it would work well from an accessibility standpoint though. Is bitsy usable with things like screen readers?
One complaint I have is that there isn't really much interactivity in the sense of making "meaningful choices". The dialogues are all click-to-advance, and the bitsy portions are basically linear corridors. The player choice basically consists of deciding which order to visit the planets. But I don't really mind as long as the story is interesting, which it is.
Anyway, this is apparently the first chapter of a hopefully greater story. I'm really looking forward to it.
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