Ratings and Reviews by unWinnable State
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You Will Select A Decision: an unWinnable State review, May 18, 2020I have selected many decisions. I have met many Victory Ends and many Death Ends. Yet there are still many decisions to select and ends to meet.
With You Will Select A Decision, Brendan Patrick Hennessy has created a fun and funny romp Soviet era mortality tale for children, translated poorly into English.
I laughed, I cried… out with laughter, I felt something deep inside, when my stomach hurt from laughing. Most of that is hyperbole, but I did laugh.
You Will Select A Decision‘s first decision is to choose which story to play, “Small Child in Woods” or “Cow Farming Activities on the Former West.” The homepage does tease (taunt) you with “Other Books in This Series,” particularly “It Is Very Good To Be The World Skateboard Champion,” which sadly does not exist.
I played through “Small Child in Woods” with my very pregnant wife. I mention that she is very pregnant not as a humble brag, but to show that You Will Select A Decision is safe for all, even those in my wife’s condition, which is very pregnant. We had a very much amount of enjoyable time with playing. (These are the kinds of sentences I want to write in this review but that would surely annoy the reader and is an entirely inappropriate style for a review.)
My very pregnant wife and I reached a number of endings in our play through. The best feature of You Will Select A Decision is the way the game makes it easy to backtrack and try different paths and discover new endings.
“Cow Farming Activities on the Former West” I played through myself and more thoroughly explored the options. The large number of endings is impressive. More impressive is the quality and entertainment value of all these endings.
Often, Interactive Fiction is a solitary experience, but with You Will Select A Decision I would recommend playing with a partner or even in a group. You can all take turns selecting a decision and laughing with your very pregnant wife.
You can find the SPOILER-Y portion of unWinnable State's review of You Will Select a Decision here.
The Wand: an unWinnable State review, May 18, 2020Arthur DiBianca’s The Wand is about a wand, and that’s pretty much it. Ostensibly there is a story about a wizard, challenge from said wizard, and cash prize, but really it’s just about a wand. A magic wand, sure, but still, just a wand. Oh, and there’s a dragon, too.
At it’s heart The Wand is a puzzle fest style game, and a damn fine one at that. You are limited to moving, examining, and pointing the wand at things, and with just those three actions DiBianca has put together a crafty series of puzzles. (Of course there is a little bit more than that but we are in the spoiler-free section of the review.)
One of my favorite aspects of The Wand is the way you progress through the game. You see a problem here, can’t do anything about so go there. When there, of course, you find another problem. This problem, though, you know how to deal with. Solving that problem gets you more information to solve the previous problem so you go do that. The Wand constantly has you going back and forth to get more information to solve more puzzles to get more information to solve more puzzles. The game world is compact enough that this is not a chore. In fact an “Oh, I know what to do there, now,” is a great reward mechanism.
The Wand is a definite recommend for anyone interested in a solid puzzle game.
You can find the SPOILER-Y, and much more personal, portion of unWinnable State's review of The Wand here.
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