16 Ways to Kill a Vampire at McDonalds

by Abigail Corfman

Urban Fantasy
2016

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Reviews and Ratings

5 star:
(29)
4 star:
(50)
3 star:
(6)
2 star:
(3)
1 star:
(1)
Average Rating:
Number of Ratings: 89
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- GreenSkunk06, March 19, 2024

- Sarah Mak (Singapore), February 14, 2024

- Romana Inthevoid (Toulouse, France), February 13, 2024

- Edo, January 29, 2024

- itschloe (Texas), January 8, 2024

- Tabitha / alyshkalia, January 6, 2024

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
Curly fries on fangs., January 6, 2024
by Rovarsson (Belgium)

Seriously?

Your first night off in like, forever, one of the few times you have enough change in your pockets to treat yourself to some comfort grease-food, perhaps washing down this fight with Luke, taking time to chat a bit with the nice waitress, and there's one of those bloodsucking hypermosquitoes at McDonalds?

Can't a girl get some well-deserved rest for once?

Halfway through the hour or so I played 16 Ways to Kill a Vampire at McDonalds, an old math joke I heard once resurfaced:

>If an engineer wakes up because the trashcan in her hotel room is burning, she'll get the fire extinguisher and put out the fire, then call the fire brigade.
If it's a chemist, he'll cover the thrashcan with a tight lid, trusting the lack of oxygen will take care of the flames.
A mathematician will scan the room and go back to sleep once she sees the sink, assured that a solution exists.

I felt like the mathematician after a while in 16 Ways. I had successfully killed the vampire in 4 ways ((Spoiler - click to show)UV-light, Plunger Stake, Machine Gun Scripture, Holy Squirt Gun). While I was searching my surroundings and setting up preparations for these four (and a bunch of less prepared other attempts which resulted in death...), I saw many glimpses and clues for a bunch of others ((Spoiler - click to show)I think these would work: Call the Cavalry x 2, Garlic Fries Poison Bait, Holy Bucket Door Gag, Frame the Vampire, Close-up Cross Necklace). After going through the game about a dozen times, I put it aside, content with my four confirmed kills and satisfied that solutions existed for the rest.

After going around a few times, starting anew to get each kill-method set up just right began to get tedious. Exacerbating the situation was the feeling that I was being punished for being playful. I feel this game sorely lack an UNDO-button. A bunch of times I chose an obviously *wrong* option, just to see what would happen. While the resulting death/failure scenes were nice, their entertainment value didn't balance out the chore of restarting, even with the option to skip the intro.

About that: I feel the intro is by far the best part of the game. The narrator's voice, part internal monologue, part half-annoyed explanatory grumbling at the player, is funny and hints at a complex character. Add to this the glimpses of background worldbuilding and the fragments about the PC's relationship with her friends/colleagues and her mother, and the short intro proves to be an impressive and effective piece of writing. It does a lot of heavy lifting, placing just the right images and associations in the player's mind to create the impression of a full, real world and a rounded PC personality.

Fun game, good writing, nice for a quick dip, great for completionists.

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- RedRockRiviera, December 20, 2023

- Zachary Dillon, November 26, 2023

- Trant Heidelstam, September 27, 2023

- elysee, June 24, 2023

- egostat (1st Level, Abyss), May 4, 2023

- tonietto (Berlin), November 7, 2022

- Cerfeuil (*Teleports Behind You* Nothing Personnel, Kid), October 20, 2022

- Wanderlust, August 21, 2022

- VanishingSky (Nanjing, China), August 10, 2022

- flaxam, July 31, 2022

- Kinetic Mouse Car, July 27, 2022

- Titania Lowe, July 27, 2022

- Vivian Yi, July 7, 2022

- jakomo, June 17, 2022

- Shaduf, May 29, 2022

- Zape, May 26, 2022

- EJ, May 12, 2022

- penguincascadia (Puget Sound), February 24, 2022

- Rainbow Fire , January 10, 2022

- Ray Leandro (Philippines), December 24, 2021

- Malasana, September 16, 2021

- nezzquik (Paco's Tacos), July 13, 2021

- Minidoc, April 14, 2021

- autumnc, January 30, 2021

- TheBoxThinker, January 25, 2021

- zinze, December 9, 2020

- Ann Hugo (Canada), December 3, 2020

- rindy, September 23, 2020

- Marc-André Goyette, August 22, 2020

- Artran (Taipei, Taiwan), May 20, 2020

- airylef, March 15, 2020

- Victor Gijsbers (The Netherlands), December 27, 2019

- Xolotlll, December 9, 2019

- Karin Malady, October 30, 2019

- Jacob MacDonald, October 17, 2019

- Canswer, September 10, 2019

- Bartlebooth, July 20, 2019

- Brendan Patrick Hennessy (Toronto, Ontario), July 16, 2019

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
A delicious little game served hot with lots of ketchup, June 22, 2019
by deathbytroggles (Minneapolis, MN)

The first Twine game I played was a fantastic introduction to the system. About twenty years ago I played Will the Real Marjorie Hopkirk Please Stand Up?, a game about trying to find 100 ways to kill 100 clones. I was enthralled by the premise and disappointed it was a demo with only five solutions. So I was thrilled to finally get to play something similar that was less intimidating and more lighthearted.

I really appreciated that no significant knowledge of vampire literature is necessary as Corfman provides ample hints along the way if you're stuck. Some puzzles can be solved in multiple ways. And there's also plenty to look at and tinker with that explores the character outside of just her night shift job.

The structure isn't perfect; some playthroughs get repetitive (which was one of my criticisms of Galatea) and some paths of victory can be found by luck, though the game's brevity (and levity!) help alleviate these concerns. None of the puzzles are particularly difficult, but some are clever, and it never felt like I was mindlessly clicking on hypertext.

What shot my rating up to five stars was the game's three epilogues that provide the player with silly information about vampire stories, 16 more ways to kill a vampire (no puzzling required), and a Rashomon style section to view all your playthroughs via the eyes of one of the McDonald's employees. Corfman's writing is so delightful that I eagerly read everything and have now played this twice since its release.

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- RoboDragonn, May 22, 2019

- Greg Frost (Seattle, Washington), August 18, 2018

- X.W, July 6, 2018

- play_all_day, June 22, 2018

- Dominia, December 23, 2017

- oxfordarmadillo, December 22, 2017

- Squidi, December 5, 2017

- hollowaytape, October 6, 2017

- Julia Myer (USA), September 26, 2017

- jamesb (San Antonio, Texas), August 13, 2017

- hogart, July 26, 2017

- Spike, July 22, 2017

- mapped, July 3, 2017

- oakheart17, July 1, 2017

- lastplaneout (Boone, NC), June 23, 2017

- Simon Deimel (Germany), June 1, 2017

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
A complex and well-clued twine game about killing vampires, May 10, 2017

This game is by the author of Open Sorcery, one of the best Twine games.

In this game, you play a side character in a Buffy the Vampire Slayer-type world. You need to kill a vampire!

The game is heavily location-and-inventory based, similar to the other high-rated IFComp 2016 games Cactus Blue Motel and the Shoe Dept.

There are a lot of clever tricks, like testing you on how well you know classic texts, useful items hid among unuseful items.

The cluing is excellent; any one ending will give you hints on the other 15, and options that you should have thought of but didn't are greyed out.

It does have an unnecessarily large amount of profanity, though.

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- Wei Yuan Lee, April 29, 2017

- mangoduck, March 13, 2017

- Kaesa, February 28, 2017

- Serge Kirillov, February 23, 2017

- Ramona G, February 23, 2017

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
Funny and Interesting , February 23, 2017

I don't usually like Twine games, but I liked this game. Partly for the humour- the tone of voice the PC is quirky and funny, and it's interesting to observe the interactions between the PC's and the NPC'S. Another reason I really liked this game is because of the replayability factor- there's a lot of different paths you can try out and it's interesting to see the different results. The puzzles are interesting but not unfair - most of them are fairly easy to figure out, and if you've beaten the game once you can see hints as to how to achieve the other endings. Overall it took me about 2 hours to play through all of the ends.

If you're interested in playing a quirky vampire satire with lots of opportunity to explore different choices and see the affect on the game's environment and the characters, try this game.

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- Xavid, January 29, 2017

- audiolipbalm, January 19, 2017

- John of Thornwick, January 11, 2017

- ifwizz (Berlin, Germany), December 8, 2016

- E.K., December 4, 2016

- Robin Johnson (Edinburgh, Scotland), November 24, 2016

- CMG (NYC), November 19, 2016

- Doug Orleans (Somerville, MA, USA), November 19, 2016

- Mr. Patient (Saint Paul, Minn.), November 18, 2016

- Joey Jones (UK), November 17, 2016

- Liza Daly, November 17, 2016

- Sobol (Russia), November 7, 2016

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
Fun light puzzle game, November 7, 2016
by streever (America)

While a few of the implementations were a little foggy, this is an incredibly satisfying and enjoyable piece with fun writing, laugh-out-loud scenes, and a great deal of variety.

I enjoyed finding ways to kill the vampire--and occasionally get killed--and while a few of the solutions were a little obtuse, it always became clear what I should have done without any real head scratching.

Overall a rewarding and enjoyable piece which holds up through several playthroughs.

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- LayzaSkully (Italy), October 17, 2016

- Pegbiter (Malmö, Sweden), October 15, 2016

- Denk, October 14, 2016

- mr.jones, October 9, 2016

- hoopla, October 7, 2016

- Aryore, October 6, 2016

- Matt Bates, October 2, 2016


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