There have been a couple of reviews of this posted already, but I feel like I have a lot of thoughts and questions after playing and would love to kick off some further discussion!
I loved the opening of this game - I had to take a break for real-life reasons after the first five or ten minutes and genuinely couldn’t wait to get back to see more as the opening was so evocative. The quality of the writing is absolutely on point.
I feel like the game needed to be about ten times longer to develop on all of the world-building and do justice to the various mysteries inherent in the premise. Of course, most of these mysteries are not mysteries to the PC at all - I’m trying to remember if there’s an appropriate term of art for this reverse dramatic irony and currently drawing a blank. I think this game is an excellent example of this kind of mystery executed well, but limited by the timeframe available within a relatively short game.
For example: the most pressing question presented in the first few rooms is what’s happened to Fiona. The moment when Jacob calls you by her name was one of those eye-widening “oh shit!” moments that I wish I could create myself. But all too quickly it seems like that part of the mystery is “done with” (the mechanics of how you take over another person’s body by getting them to consume yours are pretty much established shortly after) and the game moves on to posing more mysteries (What’s up with the Church? What’s up with the Blood? Why do some people experience time loops? Why is it so hard to leave the city?). I really wanted to know more about the protagonist’s relationship with Fiona: What led them to this point? Did she understand what was going to happen to her? Why did she want this? What was she doing in the period between eating him and the point where she “went away”? But the game more or less moved on to other things by that point.
I don’t think I fully understood everything implied in the backstory. There’s the Blood, which is think is taken from people like the protagonist - consuming just their blood confers immortality, while consuming their flesh means they take over your body? How much of this is understood by society at large doesn’t seem to be clear. And there’s the time loops, which don’t seem to be related to anything else - and a space war with giant mecha thrown in for good measure.
I guess with a world of this size and strangeness to try to showcase, it’s almost a knowing wink from the author that the scope of the game itself is limited to someone trying to get a cup of coffee?
also collecting my review, now that there’s a thread
my take on the game was that it was more interested in raising a bunch of fascinating ideas than running them to ground.
That said, I was definitely also v interested in what was up with the PC and Fiona. My guesses (with transcript quotes where I have them):
the PC and Fiona had a pretty close romantic relationship
(so you know her pretty well)
given that Luddum seems to have a whole anti-Blood movement, I take it society at large understands something about the body-taking-over process?
why did Fiona do it / did she understand? My take was that she probably understood she was not going to continue as an entity, and may have been basically depressed / suicidal
so this implied to me that the people defending the Blood and the status quo say that the system helps the lonely and depressed (by letting them commit suicide??)?
what was Fiona doing? - I’m not sure if she was doing anything in particular, I think eating the PC took days to weeks (to get through that much mass) and it seems like at some point the process “completes” and that’s when Fiona “went away”?
Hello! I’m the writer – just wanted to thank everyone that’s played through and reviewed the game so far!
Won’t comment much on the story stuff (since I feel like it’d defeat the point), but the general consensus seems to be that the gameplay is lacking – which I agree with. This was my first time using Inform. I ended up reaching some pain points with it, so I decided to try and keep things as simple as possible in terms of number of commands, which, in turn, evidently made things a little unintuitive! Sorry about that! Under normal circumstances, I would’ve probably stuck to Twine, but I felt like Inform was the best way to bring in the exploration aspect…
The nice thing is that the gameplay is lacking in the way that is easiest to fix:
-You already planned out a satisfying series of interactions
-There aren’t really bugs or typos or weird whitespace errors
-You’re only lacking synonyms for things people want to do
While you in no way have to do this, you could take either the transcripts IFComp makes or transcripts you request from people, and go through and implement whatever reasonable things they type. So if someone types ‘enter phone booth’ and you think that should have a custom response like ‘It’s too small’ or ‘It’s an open air booth’, you can add that). Then you could put out a new version later on. People don’t really play post-comp releases as much as the original game but it means that ‘legacy’ players in the future would benefit.
Even if you leave it alone the story is great, which many reviewers seem to agree on, so don’t feel like you have to do anything above! Your game is already cool and already of value.
I agree with @wolfbiter on the relation between the PC and Fiona. Here are two more quotes to strengthen that interpretation:
Bathroom
>x toothbrushes
The red one is – was? – yours. The purple one was Fiona’s. You’re not sure which one you’re supposed to use. Typically, you never got that close with your host.
>x shower
This was the last place you truly held her. You held her tight. You still remember her running her fingers through your hair.
Definitely agree. I’m glad you chose parser for this particular story.
Seeing that the game is going to be on IFDB for years (decennia, hopefully) to come, I like to hope that in the long run the majority of players will experience the postcomp version, especially for a game as good as this one. Whenever I’m delving into the IFDB vaults, I sure pick the latest version available.
@DWaM , thanks for the great game. I’ll be on the lookout for any new stuff you make. (EDIT: And I just found your page on itch.)
I played this game yesterday. I agree with other reviewers that the world-building would need a longer game, but I found the dystopian scenario interesting.
A question that occurred to me is whether parts of this game were inspired by the great “Blackwell” graphic adventure series of Dave Gilbert?
I was still early in the game when walking through the winterly and frozen town first let me think of the last Blackwell game.
Then I discovered Andrew Adin’s story of having been caught in a time loop. This does not happen in the Blackwell games, but instead a female ghost in these games gets stuck in “the universe” and needs to take harsh measures to flee from there.
Next, I talked to the woman on the bench and she said: “I’m wondering what would happen if I tried making her my new host?” - This strongly reminded me of the female ghost I just mentioned above, who in the games could have said just the same sentence (but “host” meaning the human companion of a ghost in these games).
So far, I found it a funny coincidence how, once having the “Blackwell” games on my mind, I could relate so many things to them. But when just a second later the woman on the bench introduces herself as “Madeline”, I stopped believing in a pure coincidence, since this is just the name of the female ghost in the Blackwell series!
So I wonder, is this just a coincidence, or was it a deliberate reference?
Thanks for your answer.