With Those We Love Alive

by Porpentine profile and Brenda Neotenomie

Surreal
2014

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Reviews and Ratings

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Number of Ratings: 101
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- SLane, January 25, 2017

- Augustus (Manila), January 24, 2017

- Aselia, October 7, 2016

- Novbert, September 14, 2016

- Jenie, August 18, 2016

- Horace Torys, July 27, 2016

- LayzaSkully (Italy), July 16, 2016

- Dhary, June 16, 2016

- xandros, May 2, 2016

- Aryore, April 21, 2016

- gotchderby (Amherst, Massachusetts), April 21, 2016

- kala (Finland), April 13, 2016

- chocolatevamp, April 5, 2016

- Ivanr, March 29, 2016

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
the best homage I can think of is that it inspired me to write, March 26, 2016

This is going up front in the hopes of helping someone else - I managed to utterly, utterly miss the point of the game's central mechanic, in which the reader is invited to actively participate by drawing symbols onto their skin, thus dissolving the distinction between player and character. It's implicit in the text, but I'm so used to the experience of a game being purely virtual that I entirely overlooked this, and therefore missed out on an intriguing manner of interactivity. Someday, when the memories have faded, I intend to come back and experience this properly. (Spoiler - click to show) ... And maybe I'll be lucky and met this fabled slime kid, too.

With that said, the game I experienced on screen was so rich an experience that it seemed complete to me. The worldbuilding is deeply, richly apparent, better so than many SF stories I've seen. One is is imbued with the fascination, trauma, and frustration the protagonist finds in - carefully limited - explorations that make up the story's heart.

(Now I'm having a go at Twine myself - my first finished game will have a "makes reference to" credit to this one - and I'm finding that one doesn't appreciate all the subtleties of coloured links and backgrounds until attempting to code. That's the kind of art that works by not drawing attention to itself, and Porpentine is a master at it.)

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- Steven (Honolulu, Hawaii), February 6, 2016

- Hannah Powell-Smith, February 4, 2016

- nopetastic, February 2, 2016

- branewurms, December 20, 2015

- gaite, December 19, 2015

- Brendan Patrick Hennessy (Toronto, Ontario), December 8, 2015

- chugblood, November 3, 2015

- BRSanders (Denver, CO), October 4, 2015

- IFforL2 (Chiayi, Taiwan), September 9, 2015

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
Liked it, made me feel and think things, July 3, 2015
by openmedi (Berlin, Germany)

I liked this one very much. There are bunch of reasons, but mostly because of the shared intimacy that comes with drawing on you own skin. I also became very aware how different genders manifest their reality and get manifested (if that makes sense) in very different ways. This leeds to very different ways of talking about our bodys "and using them" for world building. These are all pretty naïve points, but than again I'm but a naïve human… I liked that it was more of an experience than a skill based game. (Spoiler - click to show)And it made me kind of emotional, although the end came a little abrupt.

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