Ratings and Reviews by Malk
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Depression Quest, with more lectures, March 11, 2021If you liked being lectured in school, you'll probably like this.
This game is an extremely didactic and over-the-top game about microagressions. Because it's created with a political goal in mind, without a mind to things like character and plot, the experience is something akin to a school lecture, or one of those old "Very Special Episodes" you see on TV. Not my thing.
If you played Depression Quest, you'll be familiar with the mechanics of this game. You have, essentially, a sadness stat that builds up over the course of the game, and precludes you from selecting the "good options" and resigns you to select the least advantageous ones.
Amusingly, for a game supposedly about the real world, I noticed something funny: no one in this acts like a real person. Seriously. The story lost me when my coworkers started showing up to work in blackface and no one saw what the big deal was. If you showed up in blackface to work you would, at the very least, be fired immediately.
Also, the game seems to paint a portrait of the most hilariously fragile human being on Earth. I chuckled a bit when my character was shaking with stress from the effort of putting on nice clothing.
Gross , March 10, 2021This is a mediocre choose-your-own-adventure. You will only find any value in this if you're into the author's bizarre fetish. I am not, and found it to be a tedious and grating experience.
Look, I'm not some shrinking violet. I'm not even against the idea of interactive erotica, necessarily, even though that's not something I'd ever be into. But this is genuinely nasty. It's evident throughout that the author can only get off on violent degradation of women.
In no particular order, here are the endings I received. Spoilers:
- I became a human urinal
- I was raped repeatedly by my co-workers
- I became human cattle in a bizarre, Auschwitz-like milk factory
Also, everyone in this game is pathologically horny. All the time, every day, no turning it off. It's like their descended from bonobos or something, seriously. It destroys the ability of narrative to have an engaging plot or characters, which, of course, is the whole point of a CYOA.
I rate it 2/5 only because pathologically horny weirdos who hate their moms may enjoy it.
After seeing this listed here, it does kind of beg the question: why do the mods of IFDB allow a story like this to be listed, but not a CYS game made for children? Maybe they're cranking the udders at the milk factory too.
Fuck this game.
Absurdly Charming , March 7, 2021One of the finest games CoG has to offer. In my opinion, Tally Ho is eclipsed only by its excellent sequel, which you should also play.
In general, I am not really one for romance, and I can't say I have ever been particularly interested by upper crust society of Interwar Britain. I am somewhat of a traditionalist, and expect a certain amount of swords and magic in my interactive fiction. I adored this game, however, despite the lack of swords and magic. It is so charming and whimsical that I did not even notice the lack of wizards and the undead.
The actual minute-to-minute experience of playing Tally Ho is extremely pleasurable. The narrative voice is perfect throughout; I had a smile on my face almost the entire time. The game frequently snarks at the reader and makes meta-textual winks to itself.
The characters are vibrant and extremely memorable, which is an Achilles Heel for many CoG games. I agonized over my decisions, because I liked these people so much that I couldn't stand to choose one over the other. The romances were extremely well done, and I replayed the game several times to explore different romantic options. Generic romance is another CoG pitfall that Tally Ho manages to avoid.
Buy this game. Just do it. Do it now. Buy the game. Buy it.
No longer available, March 7, 2021Disappointingly, the author turned out to have been engaging in inappropriate online relationships with minors. She was banned from the website, and chose to delete her games.
From memory, though, I can tell you that you are not missing much; it had an irritating inventory system and paper-thin characters.
A giant game in every sense , December 30, 2020This is a totemic CYS game. It clocks in at over a million words, so it's a significant investment of time. Accordingly, it's one of the best games on the website.
It is the most engaging zombie horror IF I've ever played. All the statistics and inventory are hidden from the player, allowing for total immersion. The author thought of basically every option I could think of in a given situation.
If you have time for a game more than four times as long as Moby-Dick, can't recommend this one enough
Great , December 30, 2020Far and away one of the most literarily sophisticated IF games available, and it's available for free. It's done by an amateur writer (like everything on CYS), but it's still so engaging and its themes and characters are so rich and enjoyable that you don't really notice the odd comma splice.
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