Wolfbiter reviews IFComp 2024 - latest: Uninteractive Fiction; House of Wolves

Competitions IFComp
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Yeah, the scene in question has Valerie being pretty awful… (I opened up the source to look back at it):

“And I still don’t understand why you brought L**** along.”

“Don’t be rude, Val,” Kristen snaps.

“Rude? I’m the rude one? It’s not like she wants to be in women’s spaces anymore, does she?!”

“I’m sure he just came along to see his friends again. He’s probably as confused as you are why he was invited here, specifically.”

“No, she’s not confused. Well, yes, she is, and subconsciously she wanted to come here because she knows it’s where she belongs.” Her voice is an octave higher now. “She’s been brainwashed. All this telling her she needs to pretend to be a man to be accepted. Mutilate all the parts she’s shamed for. Under that there’s still a woman!”
Kristen’s mouth hangs open. “What are you fucking talking about?!”

“You know what I’m talking about! The destruction of womanhood! Tearing us apart from the inside! Putting the men in women’s spaces and forcing women into men. They want to walk back all the rights we’ve fought for!”

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Yeah, that’s pretty awful. I definitely assigned some of that to another character in my head (a problem with my reading, probably not helped by playing that scene during a 3 am “woke up and can’t go back to sleep” window. has this taught me my lesson about that window? errrr).

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today’s theme, courtesy of the rng-gods: two games where you can have a sword

You Can’t Save Her by Sarah Mak
Playtime: 13 minutes (the blurb gave the surprisingly-precise estimate of 12 minutes, putting this well in the running for “estimated time closest to my actual time”)

The one where: your religious order wants you to kill your childhood friend

I enjoyed the operatic scope of the conflict and worldbuilding here. Magic exists! My monastery is into child murder! @BrettW said it feels anime, which sounds right. I wish there was more IF with an anime sensibility, but I digress. (And the music helped set the mood.)

There was some good lines:

And the page that was suddenly full of text after sparse previous pages had an impact.

I worried that, because of the short playtime, I wouldn’t care enough about the characters for the dilemma to make an impact, but actually, with the various flashbacks, I really did start to care about both of them and feel the stakes of the confrontation.

A few things I would have liked even more:

  1. If I had more to do as a player. I think it would be especially moving if I could make choices in the flashbacks (do I try to talk her out of it? How hard? Do I give her some token?) and then I could see that moment addressed in the present (did she bring the token, does she throw back whatever I said in my face, etc.) I felt pretty much like a spectator all game.

  2. I was a bit confused by the midgame plot / switch over. I saw some people interpreted it as two endings, one where blue kills pink and one where pink runs off. I guess I didn’t have the feeling that the killing actually happened (maybe it was a vision or something?) but nor did I understand what did happen.

  3. Ok this is minor but: can one toss a greatsword up in the air like a knife? I think not

Front matter
Could better set the table for the game Successfully sets the table for the game Successfully sets the table for the game PLUS

I realized later that the cover art is probably the only way I put together that the blue links and pink links corresponded to the two different characters. If this is intentional, it is very streamlined, but risky if some folks don’t / can’t see the cover art.

Overall, a quick, dramatic story about a high-stakes moment in a relationship

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A Warm Reception by Hetzel
Playtime: 34 minutes

The one with: castle. reporter. puzzles.

This game would be really excellent for those new to parsers, I think. It’s stripped down, with pretty much only a few plot-relevant nouns implemented. The puzzles are well clued and clear. And I think the choice to model the final conflict with a d20 is brilliant. It completely avoids the common issue where puzzle games are set up like series circuits, such that getting stuck on any one puzzle gates you out of the entire rest of the game. Instead, people can complete however many puzzles they want, and still enjoy the end-game content (with, err, perhaps some light save scumming). And completionists can still push themselves to get that perfect 20 through the puzzles. (For the record, I went in at 18 points, although I realized after that I could have thought harder about what to do with the cage of moths.)

I think writing a straightforward parser puzzler is actually much harder than it seem, so I think that’s a good achievement.

Taking the game to the next level might involve paying even more attention to the characters, descriptions, and writing to give more experienced players something to sink their teeth into. (I tried dropping the mirror before fighting the dragon, hoping for an easter egg, but it didn’t seem to make my rolls worse, for example. A few additional constructive comments:

  1. The instruction booklet at the beginning should be take-able. What if folks want to refer to the instructions later?
  2. Using x for most interactions (e.g., “x coin machine” to activate it) was a slightly awkward, though not sure that I have a better option that keeps the number of verbs limited. (Actually, I sometimes question the standard position disfavoring “use” in parsers. Sometimes players have identified the correct apparatus and there’s really one plausible thing they would want to do with it, but it’s a situation that could plausibly be described by many verbs (perhaps even a situation where people tend to use idiomatic language or regional slang). Wouldn’t popularizing one generic verb avoid guess-the-verb? Aren’t a lot of choice-based games basically offering a “use” equivalent all the time when they have a clickable hypertext item? In this essay I will-)
  3. Some of the game description text left me unsure if the PC had updated their thinking to understand that we were trying to fight a dragon, or if we were still only focused on getting dirt. I mean, obviously both can be true but it would have been entertaining to see that explicitly brought up.
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Bonus point for accurately presaging that the puzzles would not be a torment.

Overall, a frictionless puzzle sequence in an anachronistic castle

A Warm Reception wolfbiter transcript - Copy.txt (75.0 KB)

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You can also… John is pretty helpful, you can ENTER number ON SCREEN and then ask him what he thinks about it until he says it looks abot right to him.

Ugh. There are a lot of fun things in this game: the solutions I found are (mostly) not the ones in the walkthrough but I feel like I found basically all of them by sheer luck, trying random stuff and having something arbitrarily work instead of giving me an error message.

(i.e. you can STAND UP three or four times in the stroller until you’re successful, you can LICK SARAH, it seems like you can set sort of whatever sequence you want for the student driver and the cab driver, they just have to match? I have no idea what the fourth thing you can do on the bus is: I did find the same set there)

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today’s theme, courtesy of the rng-gods: two games where you have a one-on-one with the leader of an arcane organization (who is a separate person from your disapproving dad)

Miss Duckworthy’s School for Magic-Infested Young People by Felicity_Banks
Playtime: 38 minutes

The one with: well, a school for magic-infested young people

I really enjoyed this one. It’s just . . . highly enjoyable, like a book you don’t want to put down.

I’m a big fan of the way it gives the PC moments of competency where they can come up with and perform plans on their own, something that’s perhaps easier to do in choice-based pieces. It was a fun escapist fantasy to be able to (especially in the opening sequence) give the PC some direction and trust that they will figure it out.

I loved the whole opening sequence (Canadian car thief). It started things out with a bang and established a unique character voice that I wanted to spend more time with. (1) Their affection for cars was well written; (2) “Dad, I’m infected with magic.” . . . “I told you not to dye your hair!” - haha; (3) my mom is such a BAMF!

a bit more on character creation

I was a fan of offering a choice among a limited selection of pre-made characters—it felt like we’d be getting something well-written but we also had a bit of room to make a decision.

One note on the initial options:

The first one was the most interesting because it lists a profession / activity, which the other ones just . . . don’t? It was odd that they weren’t symmetric in that way.

I didn’t care which magic type I got, so I didn’t look before I played, but giving the option to get spoilers about that specifically seems like a good balance between letting people use a radio button to pick their magic type (kind of boring, and also in tension with the plotline about story archetypes) and surprising everyone with their magic type (disappointing people who really want to fly, etc).

The school section was also enjoyable, although I think not up to the same standard as the opening. I enjoyed the NPCs (Nushi is a nicely ambiguous character, I enjoyed my no-magic-magic-right-activist roommate, and the male romantic option has some good lines). But:

  1. the pacing generally felt off – the ending arrived MUCH sooner than I thought. I think I only attended 2 magic classes and explored 1 part of the castle, and scheduling those had felt uncomfortably trade-off-y already.

  2. Relatedly, a lot of elements that I wanted to get space were very crunched
    I would have loved to see more about developing magic (although, surprisingly, the magic classes I did attend were not the highlights of the game).

And I liked the plotline with Nushi, but we skipped some beats I expected to hit (Why is the PC so sure Nushi is a student? Who does the outside world think is in charge? This seems like the kind of thing that would be a topic of discussion. Does the rest of the world think this is a Lord of the Flies situation?)

And my sometimes-nemesis Jack . . . I thought there would be some explanation of why he thought I got him arrested, and maybe a resolution for that, but if there was it didn’t happen to me.

  1. some of the connections in the game play didn’t quite work right.

“Hannah” suddenly appeared in my dorm room and said one line, even though I hadn’t thought she was there and never saw her again.

On the night of the battle, the narration said I planned to go to Jack’s (to double cross him) even though from past game events that would not have been plausible, and that’s not in fact what my character did.

So I guess I’m over here chanting “more, more!” because there was a lot of things in this game that I was very excited about.

Front matter
Could better set the table for the game Successfully sets the table for the game Successfully sets the table for the game PLUS

I wish the cover art hit the “magic” note!

Overall, a highly enjoyable YA-feeling story in the choice-of-games style with a banger opener and a middle-end section that felt a bit rushed

1 Like
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Metallic Red by Riaz Moola
Playtime: 34 minutes

The one with: tarot in space!

This game makes very effective use of its relatively short playtime. Through well chosen details, the daily routine on the spaceship conveys a lot of worldbuilding and characterization about the PC, as well as establishes the pace and mood (deliberate, thoughtful, omenic). The specificity is very good at making the universe feel lived-in (the ability to plant things in the hydroponics pod, “Asics orbital tabis”).

This is a moody, literary game with references to tarot, Greek tragedy, and lettuces unknown to me. The writing was a highlight:

I think dream sequences are hard to write well, but this game does that, really capturing the unease of seeing someone act in a way you know they would not (and I really enjoyed the one with the dudebros metaphorically presenting their slide deck on how to avoid your prophecied death).

The game nicely sets up some questions about the PC, which it mostly then answers.

The ending is fairly open, the game doesn’t give a direct emotional resolution for the PC. I was satisfied with what we got though, (and it’s very thematically in line with the meaning the game provides earlier for The World card).

(This didn’t fit anywhere, but because I kept finding open tabs on the computer, but never opening any, I wondered for a while if the ship was trying to communicate with me, but I eventually decided the PC must be opening them “offscreen.”)

Front matter
Could better set the table for the game Successfully sets the table for the game Successfully sets the table for the game PLUS

Good to see the “esotericism” mentioned

Overall, a portenous, well-written character exploration with an open ending

Gameplay tips / typos
  • “feedd” should be feed in the description of the space elevator
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I am incredibly grateful to all reviewers but I believe it’s unwise to comment on specifics during the judging period. So here is a blanket THANK YOU for making the effort to review my game, no matter what you thought of it. You make the IF Comp so much more interesting by being a part of it.

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I figured this was because you let yourself get caught with the map to his safehouse in your pocket. Still doesn’t explain how exactly he knew that it was me though…

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Right, he definitely *could* have reached that conclusion (and could have been correct), I guess I was just expecting a scene where he laid out his reasoning and confronted me about it, and I could defend myself / apologize / something else.

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today’s theme, courtesy of the rng-gods: two games where you are unable to leave

The Maze Gallery by Cryptic Conservatory
Playtime: 1 hour 55 minutes
Cryptic Conservatory includes Paxton, Rachel Aubertin, Chrys Pine, Ed Lu, Toni Owen-Blue, Christi Kerr, Sean Song, Joshua Campbell, Dawn Sueoka, Randy Hayes, Allyson Gray, Shana E. Hadi, IFcoltransG, Dominique Nelson, Orane Defiolle, An Artist’s Ode, Sisi Peng, Kazu Lupo, divineshadow777, Robin Scott, Sarah Barker, TavernKeep, Alex Parker, Mia Parker, J Isaac Gadient, Charm Cochran and Ghost Clown

The one where: we’re trapped in an unusual art museum

This is a big, ambitious place with many authors. In general it was impressively integrated–there were overall systems for mapping and inventory. I didn’t spent a lot of time thinking about which pieces were written by separate people, but nor did I notice any inconsistencies of tone that grated on me

As I closed in on two hours, I did escape the gallery, although I did not try the foundations.

I liked the presence of the in-game map and goals list, which gave me some direction. Without the map I think looking for the exit would have felt overwhelming. (I wasn’t a huge of the “go to the bathroom” goal—it’s already reasonably hard to get anywhere, was additional torment necessary?) And of course, as expected in my culture, the exit is located through the gift shop. I also saw in the walkthrough after I finished that the directories allow fast travel, which I did not discover while playing.

The game delivers on the premise of odd, striking images. Among others:

  • the concept of exploring a shipwreck that turns out to be in someone’s living room aquarium
  • the ink blot of the bull protecting the flower
  • the recursive crank turners

I enjoyed the opening monologue which was fun and high-energy, and put me in a good mood to explore. (Still considering if I am mazed, though.)

The game was at its best embracing the sort of improvisational, dada feel:

Also the president who was flagrantly making up baseball words. (If you’re about to tell me those are in fact real baseball words, I refuse to learn.)

  • the overall concept

I felt there was some tension between the art gallery theme and the puzzle elements. I think the art gallery concept, and the absurdist tone of much of the art, suggested a sort of free play interaction. So it was jarring to feel I had to exhaustively explore an area for plot reasons, or to be told “oh, there was more to uncover.” Or, at times I felt I should move faster to make sure I “finished” the game in two hours. I wonder if a different frame (sketch in a sketchbook as you go, sign a guestbook on the way out, etc.) would have created less of this feeling.

As it turns out, leaving doesn’t require that exhaustive of an exploration, but I wasn’t sure if that was the case while I was playing.

  • I wanted a bit more freedom to play

To me, this concept calls for a sort of illogical play approach. I wanted to perform antics! In some ways the game enabled this behavior, but in some places I felt confined:

  1. Sometimes the game would tell me how the PC felt about something. This rankled, especially when I didn’t agree the PC would feel that way. There are types of games were I’m fine with the game characterizing the PC for me, but it felt out of place in this concept. For example, I recall looking in Bad Art at one point and then going somewhere else, and the description told me “it’s probably for the best to skip.” But I had no intention of skipping, I just wanted to do one of the others first. Similarly, when I wanted to go back to one of the rooms: “So much sand it blocks you from entering the room. Doesn’t seem like much of a loss.”

  2. Oh, and perhaps the example about which I am the most emotional—I don’t recall the exact language, but there was an in-game message in the cafe along the lines of “you might think differently about yourself now.” No, I don’t! I reject the game’s implied moral judgment! To retain what is handed to me, when mind controlled and forced to serve food against my will, is not theft! Perhaps it is possible for an employee to steal, but a slave - (am dragged off stage)

  3. Some of the actions that seemed pretty directly suggested by the game were not implemented or gated off. Ymmv, but personally I was eagerly hoping to:

    • put on the headphones and listen to the audio tour. I CAN HANDLE YOU, POTATO-ELECTRICAL-IMPULSES
    • buy the art that guy in the shadowy hallway thoughtfully made for me, specifically!
    • go through the mirror in Zizi’s room a few more times
  • technical issues

Similar to what others have mentioned, the game bugged out for me several times in the Hungry Room. I was very excited to do that room because I vaguely recalled that Zizi had given me something for the Blob but the game just stopped giving me any clickable options. This happened twice so I just left the Hungry Room without doing anything, sadly. I will note that I fixed this by closing the window and re-opening it (I had cookies enabled), so I didn’t have to restart everything.

I thought the concept of a transcript for a choice-based game was really promising (would make my reviewing life easier), but alas, that feature didn’t seem to work at all.

Front matter
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Overall: ambitious, big. (Maybe too big.) Stirred me up and made me think, but intermittently the stirring was in the form of annoyance.

Gameplay tips / typos
  • I got softlocked in the Hungry Room, and several others mentioned similar technical issues there and in the Gift Shop. (I was on Firefox). I was able to resolve it by closing the browser issue the game was running in, and then re-opening it again (I had cookies enabled). This took me back to the same room but a slightly different dialogue place / working. So maybe try that before you restart the whole thing.
8 Likes
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Winter-Over by Emery Joyce, co-written by N. Cormier
Playtime: 1 hour

The one where: we solve crime in an Antarctic research station using the power of RELATIONSHIPS!

Not that long ago, I played Fiasco set in McMurdo Station, so I felt somewhat prepared for the concept of murder in Antarctica.

Winter-Over is a semi-realistic investigative game. The play mechanic is mostly developing facts by interviewing the NPCs (not a lot of exploration of the physical environment or physical clues). Luckily I love interviewing people! It also has some relationship-simulator-adjacent mechanics–you can improve your relationships with the NPCs by doing activities with them, and, somewhat amusingly, as the PC you can force them to attend activities with you at any time (although they do not necessarily STICK AROUND after to be interrogated, alas). The game also lightly simulates the stress on the PC, calling on you to take time off and sleep.

I thought the mystery was well designed and executed. The NPCs were well written and realistic feeling “types,” and I was very engaged in going around putting together the pieces of the social network. This is a larger topic, but I’ve noticed I find this larger genre super compelling in fiction: any plotline where you (or the main character) have met a bunch of new people and must figure out who to trust. There’s something almost compulsive about how engaged I am, I think it’s channeling this-social-interaction-is-life-or-death-ness (dating back to hunter gatherer times?). But, back to Winter Over.

One thing that struck me as a bit odd—I don’t have a transcript, but as I recall the NPCs pretty much let me lead the conversation and bring up Daniel’s death. My brother just died in our shared workplace! Normally I would expect some “oh my god, I heard about Daniel, so terrible” / “I’ve been telling Bob for years that kettlebell rack was unsafe” (??).

There’s an in-game timer and plot events that seem to mostly happen regardless of player action. The escalation of the threats to the PC was well-done and scary.

I could tell that locating the different NPCs when you wanted to interact with them was supposed to be a challenge. Boy, was it! For example, I spent a long time looking for Amanda, after having a decent number of cycles doing activities with her, and I think after that I spent 2-3 cycles unsuccessfully looking for Gabby so she could finally open the phone. At that point the police arrived, so I never saw what was in the phone. Not that that stopped me from identifying the murderer, natürlich.

Hunting for people had a bit more friction than I really wanted it to have. I did recall the PC saying they were going to take notes, but never looked at the notes, and it sounds like from others reviews that might help you track where people are.

Also, this didn’t fit anywhere, but I somehow became convinced after the first night that there was a message in the scrabble tiles and I kept (unsuccessfully) checking if I could read them, but, alas.

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The blurb does a great job setting expectations, and the cover art is very moody and atmospheric!

Overall, a very engaging and well put-together investigation game. Would recommend!

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Thanks so much for your review!

This was an idea that we had considered but didn’t get around to implementing, so good eye! Maybe in the post-comp release…

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This is on our list for the post-comp release; it was brought up by playtesters but only at the point where it was too late to implement it. (It wouldn’t be a lot writing-wise, but needing to show that dialogue only the first time you talk to each person adds a moving-pieces/potential-to-introduce-bugs aspect that we didn’t want to risk at that point.)

Thanks for the review!

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today’s theme, courtesy of the rng-gods: two games with a very short playtime

Uninteractive Fiction by Leah Thargic
Playtime: 2 minutes

Front matter
Could better set the table for the game Successfully sets the table for the game Successfully sets the table for the game PLUS

Overall, I would have preferred if it were more interactive.

10 Likes
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House of Wolves by Shruti Deo
Playtime: 5 min

The one where: we dislike eating raw meat

This is a short fable about the pain of living with people (including yourself) who don’t understand something essential about your nature. (I’m not really marking spoilers here, if you worry you might be spoiled, go play the game, which is 5 minutes!)

The writing had some good lines:

and I liked the “Bite. Chew. Swallow.” sequences—evocative of the grim drudgery of dragging yourself through something unpleasant.

I found the game good at conveying the experience of feeling trapped and confused, thinking there’s something wrong with you when it’s your circumstances that are wrong. This is very much a sort of ugly duckling story where the cygnet and the cygnet’s family both think oh, you were just made wrong.

The game doesn’t explicitly state what it’s a metaphor for–based on the fact that the PC seems to not understand why the PC finds meat disgusting (and the dream where the PC has the transcent experience of eating cooked meat and realizing that, meat can be tasty, actually!) the best fit is something like a sex-repulsed asexual person being pressured into relationships despite finding the physical aspects disturbing, who hasn’t even realized yet that there might be ways to be in relationships that they would find not only not disgusting, but actively desirable.

I found the game pretty successful at conveying that specific pain. I thought the ending could have used some strengthening. As is, it feels a bit unearnedly optimistic. The two main options I see are:

  1. add some additional plot that provides tangible hope in the PC’s life circumstances (they’re going to go live somewhere else, etc.)

  2. lean further into the “no, the point is that nothing external has improved, but internally the PC has discovered an inexhaustible well of strength and resolve”—to be clear, I’m an absolute fan of this message!! I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul, etc etc!!–but I think to pull it off we need a specific realization in the PC’s internal monologue, or a gangbusters self-motivational speech etc. to sell it, not just “the PC decided they were still determined”

Front matter
Could better set the table for the game Successfully sets the table for the game Successfully sets the table for the game PLUS

Creepy cover art! I’ll just note, neither as a positive nor a negative, interesting choice to put the information that the PC is a human and the others are wolves in the front matter and nowhere in the actual game.

Overall, a compelling allegory for a certain kind of bad!conformity experience, ending could be more moving

6 Likes