Light into Darkness

by Christina Nordlander profile

Horror
2016

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Number of Ratings: 9
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1-9 of 9


- Edo, August 17, 2023

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
A short, dramatic game with some underimplementation, July 1, 2017
by MathBrush
Related reviews: less than 15 minutes

This game has an original story, good writing and a nice sense of drama. You play a mom having a terrible dream, and the next day the events of the day are eerily similar.

This game is good, but it could have benefited from more plot development and better implementation. Because the author only had 3 hours, though, it's good in its sphere.

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
Excellent Entry for La Petite Mort, May 21, 2017

I was pleasantly surprised at this La Petite Mort entry. It's dark enough to be a great EctoComp entry, but the violence and theme isn't gratuitous.

It is short, and the transitions between different planes of existence were executed quite seamlessly. It doesn't have much in the way of puzzles and is linear and straightforward, but does give the reader a modicum of control as to how they would want the ending to play out.

I must admit that I tried to do things way darker than the storyline intended :). The game didn't respond to these, but it was fun exploring them!

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- Something Moving Under The Bed, December 20, 2016

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
Short, disturbing parser game jumping between planes of reality, December 14, 2016
by verityvirtue (London)
Related reviews: melancholic

[Depicts murder/violence, gore. Time to completion: 10-15 minutes]

This short parser game does not make for light reading, but it's so short that to explain more about its premise would spoil it. Suffice to say that the initial setup reminded me of Ecdysis (down to the mental images it conjured) and The Baron.

The PC switches between planes of reality within a few moves, constantly keeping the player off kilter. I found this pacing just right for the size of the game. The writing is tight, too, wasting no time on extraneous details.

The game was built on a small enough scale that I couldn't get lost, and of note is one scene in which the actions you have to do to move the story on is indirectly shown to the player. For its size, though, it still let the player decide on the ultimate interpretation of the PC's actions.

Discretion is recommended for player murder and violence.

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- E.K., December 3, 2016

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
Very dark short work, November 27, 2016
by streever (America)

This minimalist parser work is competent, smart, and well-designed. Content is very dark, dealing with themes of family violence and possibly the occult, although I have questions about what happened and the reliability of the narrator. I replayed it multiple times, wondering if there was more: an alternate ending I missed, additional context, something else to provide a sense of closure. This isn't a negative, although I would have liked something more, although I can't actually name what I want.

The plot and pacing are well-done in this fairly minimalist work, and the implementation of rooms and objects is well-done although sparse. All in all, a chilling, dark piece which engaged and fascinated me, leaving me to muse over the themes and speculate about influences, inspiration, and more. I'd love to see a post-mortem on this, and I feel very optimistic about Nordlander's future works.

The competition this was entered into is quick and places considerable time pressure on entrants, so I was pleasantly surprised to find such a technically competent and complete entry. I would love to see this work fleshed out into something with more endings and complexity.

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- Mr. Patient (Saint Paul, Minn.), November 14, 2016

- Matt Bates, November 13, 2016


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