The Curious Incident at Blackrock Township

by Bitter Karella profile

Horror
2016

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Number of Ratings: 8
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1-8 of 8


- Simon Deimel (Germany), December 24, 2019

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
Interesting, but not really my cup of tea, September 22, 2018
by Froggy (UK)
Related reviews: Played 2018

I liked the concept and was interested by both the subject matter and the hyperlink format of exploring various story routes, but didn't find it particularly engaging, as it felt a lot more impersonal than the other IF games I've played, which usually put you in one of the character's shoes.

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
A pseudo-historical witch story, July 1, 2017
by MathBrush
Related reviews: less than 15 minutes

This was a speed-IF game for Ectocomp 2016 that is framed as a series of vignettes from historical documents about a witch.

I found the old-style writing charming; searching for one of the main characters (Ezola Midnight) has no hits besides this game, so I assume that this wasn't copied directly from source texts, and that some sort of fusion was going on.

Short, and interesting.

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- dreamsalad, January 5, 2017

- CMG (NYC), November 16, 2016

- Mr. Patient (Saint Paul, Minn.), November 16, 2016

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
A witchhunt narrated entirely through secondhand accounts, November 12, 2016
by verityvirtue (London)
Related reviews: choleric

The Curious Incident is a witch-hunting incident narrated entirely through secondhand accounts. One might draw an obvious parallel between this and Arthur Miller's play The Crucible, but where the play puts the reader (or viewer) right in the action of the moment, here we dip in and out, switching between narration and secondhand research. Historical records are interspersed with academic accounts, and branching points are incorporated similar to how The Domovoi did it. This indirect style works well, especially when one of the branches imply that the nature of the main character is ambiguous.

As another reviewer has commented, it is particularly ironic that the reader gets to choose how the story goes. Who's to say what happened? Who's to say who was truly to blame? In the end, does that really matter, if the outcome remains unchanged?

(Spoiler - click to show)One thing I feel would improve this game is pacing. There was scant buildup to the manifestation of the curse itself (not just the context of it) that the ending felt premature; I would have liked more detail on how the curse started manifesting, but this may be at odds at the matter of fact style of the rest of the game.

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- Pseudavid, November 1, 2016


1-8 of 8 | Return to game's main page