Amanda Plays Petite Morts and Writes Things About Them

OK, so I’m going to play all the English language Petite Morts and say a little about each one. I love seeing how much people can do in 4 hours, and the different things they focus on. It’s very difficult to write something in such a short time, so I’m always amazed at what people accomplish.

I won’t be picking on things like formatting, grammar, spelling, etc, because if you write a game in only 4 hours, it will have a couple of problems, so I’m letting all that go. Playing in the order they are served to me by Itch.

The first 5:

1.) Narthex by Wilem Ortiz (couldn’t find a handle here)

The simple graphics in this are just adorable and are the star here. It’s a very brief game of few words, so suffice it to say you meet a cute little thingy called Narthex and go places with them. Definitely play this one so you can admire the artwork-- and hear some music.

2.) Forevermore: A Game of Writing Horror by @bakerstewart
Poe is having a moment with IF writers right now-- first Jim Nelson’s game that won 4th place in IFComp, and here’s a comedy about a very cranky Poe writing The Raven. There are some really funny alternate lines, and old E.A. is just a pompous ass. I laughed out loud a few times with this one.

3.) The Depths of Madness by @Jacic
This is a Lovecraftian dream of sinking down towards the monsters and the madness. The prose is appropriately purple and it’s a fun few minutes. The text is VERY small, though, so have your reading glasses out if you’re over 50. A lot of writing for such a tiny amount of time.

4.) 39 Trillion and 1 by @MiloM
It should surprise no one that Milo wrote a body horror game because Milo is a master of writing about the awful. And this is gloriously awful. I’ve heard lots of people say they hacked up a lung, but this game takes it literally. The blood and pus and vomit are dialed up to 11 here: it’s so gross that it approaches camp, and Milo sure can get a lot written in a few hours.

5.) Jumpscare Manor by @DamonWakes
The game’s name tells me what’s going to happen, so I thought I was ready for it, but I still nearly died of fright. I hate how susceptible I am to jump scares but I’ve never gotten any better about it, so I doubt I ever will get better.

A really promising start! All of these were really enjoyable.

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Thanks so much for the review @AmandaB! :grinning:
I’m so sorry the text was so small (it’s what choicescript wants to default to- sorry!) The setting is unfortunately a bit hidden, but you can increase the text size via the menu-> change settings-> then select the make text bigger box as many times as needed if playing games in choicescript in the future for QOL :slight_smile: .

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The next 3 (all very juicy):

6.) You promise by @pieartsy and Jake Gardner (handle?)

This was fun. A Faustian bargain for more money… what could go wrong? It does of course go wrong very quickly. There’s one real choice that leads you down three different paths, so there’s a ton of writing for the time limit.

7.) The Abandoned House Down the Lane by EldritchRenaissanceCake (no obvious handle)

Explore a spooky house with a couple of puzzles. This is one of those Petite Morts that actually feels like a complete game, which is very hard to pull off. Make sure to examine everything! One oldster complaint: I had a hard time with the font, which was dark red pixelated cursive on a black background. Another one to get your spex out for.

8.) The Column by @malacostraca

How the HELL do people get so much done in 4 hours? This is a zippy story, smartly told, with the first chunk of it lacking interactivity so that the author could focus on laying out the narrative. You’re part of a team exploring an island with an archaeologist, and of course you find something. The second part is interactive, with meaningful choices that feel high-stakes. And it’s a complete story, which again is hard to accomplish in the timeframe. I really dug this one.

All 3 of these were impressive in what they accomplished in 4 hours.

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no handle for jake, he’s not on the forum! thanks for the thoughts!

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How’d you make it through Smile 2!? Some have been saying it should have been called “Jumpscares”. Others have said they thought it had the loudest jumpscare audio ever.

-Wade

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By zinging around in my seat and yelling “EEEP” a lot. I threw the popcorn in the air and had to leave a giant tip for the server because of the mess. Tom jumpscares me by accident every day-- I’ll be sitting there reading, completely tuned out of the real world, and he’ll speak and I scream.

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OK, this one deserves its own individual post.

9.) Roar by @Hatless

This game was impressive and fun and charming and funny on every level. Hatless, my hat is off to you. First, the format is great. The choices, the arrows moving you forward, the graphics with each chapter… the gameplay format was novel to me and I loved it.

And the story is so zany and engaging. Humans are at war with the animal kingdom. All of the animal kingdom. It’s a desperate mission to save humanity. I laughed many times at the writing and enjoyed myself immensely. Here’s just a snippet of the hilarious writing:

“Dear god,” Simmonds whispers. “Even the pangolins. We have lost.”

HA! AHAHAHA. It’s all like this.

The amount of writing is jaw-dropping for a game written in 4 hours. It’s a complete game. If this author can do this much in 4 hours, I want to know what they can accomplish in 4 months. Unfortunately, the author’s itch page lists only this game, so I couldn’t find anything else by them to play. Their oeuvre is in our future, and hooray for that.

And I was so happy to discover that at the end, I had been Michael Biehn in Aliens all along!

A real treat. Go play it.

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10.) SPILL YOUR GUT by Coral Nulla (no handle)

I’ve played a couple of the GUT games now, and this one is sort of a “where are they now” sequel with a really cool structure. Each member of the band (plus the manager) has a different path you can go down. The three band members all have similarly structured narratives: text boxes as rooms in bright-colored spaces, with doors in many directions, or only one direction, all with fragmented thoughts on the world and their place in it. I spent a long, long time chasing down fragments of text in different rooms, on different floors, and never got bored with the experience of finding the bits of the story. A lot of the writing is thought-provoking and jarring. I have 2 complaints about these sections, neither of which would matter at all if I hadn’t been so invested in finding all the bits. First, I got lost in the rooms a few times and couldn’t get back to the blue door or the elevator. And there’s no way to restart that I could see without closing out the browser window and restarting the game. And doing a TON of backtracking in the maps trying to find my way back to an important place got frustrating, so a BACK TO ELEVATOR or BACK TO RED DOOR button would have been wonderful. Second, I found the 3 voices to be fairly similar, without enough to differentiate them from each other.

I’m not sure if there’s an “end” to any of those sections. I spent the better part of an hour with the game (and this is a Petite Mort, y’all, which should give you an idea of its scale) and I didn’t find anything like an end.

The last section, the manager’s section, was structured more as a traditional choice-based narrative, and the writing there was particularly good, I thought, and well-differentiated from the other 3. It did end in an error screen, unfortunately.

I’ve written a lot here for me (my PM reviews tend to be short), which should demonstrate my engagement with the game, which was high. A very interesting work, and some of the writing will stick in my mind.

11.) Yarry by Zachary Dillon (no obvious handle)

I absolutely ADORED this game. Just loved it. I don’t really want to say anything about the story as you should come to it with no preconceptions at all. But it was my favorite kind of horror-- the kind that actually happens on a fairly regular basis, is mostly psychological, and that is so scarily, nightmarishly possible/probable that it actually makes my heart beat faster. Just a bruising little game, extremely well written and with a very effective status bar that chilled me. Excellent and highly recommended.

12.) At the Strike of Twelve by One Boat Crew (no obvious handle).

I couldn’t figure out how to play it. The game window won’t scroll or enlarge, and downloading it just yielded the cover art. Anybody have any suggestions?

Edit: This game is now playable in-browser!

13.) Ghost Hunt by @dee_cooke

As is usual with Dee, this is a charming Adventuron game about, well, ghost hunting. Very easy and quick, with cute writing. I’d recommend playing this with a small child as a fast, easy introduction to parser games.

Is it just me, or is the crop of Petite Morts exceptionally good this year?

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Hi AmandaB, since I’ve played it (had to download it) they’ve enabled browser play, but must not have enabled scrollbars. I’ll see if I can message them. I’m thinking this might be their first time hosting on itch.

I agree I’ve played some really good ones this year!

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I just this second got a PM from them telling me to try it again for exactly that reason-- that they’re unfamiliar with itch. I’ll edit my post to reflect that!

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Is it any better now?

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Yes! All good. I’ll play it first thing tomorrow and write about it.

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14.) Second try: At the Strike of Twelve by One Boat Crew (@Eudokimos )

A creepy little tale of torture and murder and ghosts and scary monsters. Establishes a good sense of confusion and dread and has at least 2 endings. I got the “good” ending (which is still pretty terrible) and the “bad” ending, which is bad indeed. Story-heavy and interaction-light, but the choices you do have lead to very different paths, so the author(s) used their 4 hours wisely here. Nice little game.

15.) Your Little Haunting by @Christina_Nordlander

It’s always exciting to see parser games in the petite mort category, because I am here to tell you that it is really freaking hard to write a parser game in 4 hours. Traditionally, you need to tell a story, code tasks/puzzles, implement every object you mention along with every reasonable synonym, have custom responses for all the baked-in parser error responses (nobody wants to know that you are as good-looking as ever), and try to get some semblance of freedom of movement for the player. It’s nigh on impossible to do all that in 4 hours, especially if you have multiple rooms. So kudos to another of my tribe who attempts it.

And this is a solid effort that is more complete than many parser PMs. It’s a house that isn’t haunted at the beginning of the game, but that changes. I enjoyed the story and finished the game, meaning that there weren’t any game-breaking bugs in it (great for an Inform PM) and it actually had a narrative arc. Good little game.

Transcript:
YLH-AW.txt (14.1 KB)

16.) As the Eye Can See by SkyShard (no obvious handle)

This is a short story with no choices or interactivity besides clicking through. It goes back in time through some years until you are a child, always the day before Halloween. There’s some evocative writing here, and bad things are hinted at. Did something bad happen to your mother? Were you bullied at school? But nothing is ever said outright about much of anything. I’m torn about it, because on one hand, this gave it an air of mystery and pathos. On the other hand, I was never sure what the real story actually was-- it was just snapshots in time, going backward, only loosely connected. Definitely worth the few minutes it will take you to read through it.

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If it makes you feel any better, this one was horrendous to test - even knowing exactly what was coming.

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17.) Die Another Day by @EJoyce

This was great! The setup is fantastic: you keep dying and coming back to life. Every day. Living through a few days of this in the game is just awful. The writing is really vivid and just disgusting. It gleefully gives detailed descriptions of how jiggly or chunky your death-vomit is, which is just fantastic. And the sheer grind of it all, written with messy, gross, crushing, horrific detail, made me squirm. This was a smart structure for a 4-hour time limit. Loved this one!

18.) Rustjaw by @mathbrush

Fun monsters, fun artwork, fun story! Brian is really coming along with his drawings. There’s a group of really nasty scary monsters, and you get to choose which ones to engage with most (I avoided the icicle-eyed woman like the plague). There’s a lot of replay value here, and the game keeps track of your “connection” (shudder) with the monsters you choose. I played through a few times and never got away, although I got some amusing and satisfying endings. It’s got a LOT going on for a Petite Mort and yet it all appears to work smoothly. Quite an achievement.

19.) Contaminated Space by @Cerfeuil

This is a wonderfully grim sci-fi/horror story in which you enter space you’re not supposed to and… oops. That was a bad idea. I went down 2 different paths, both of which had satisfyingly awful conclusions. Very gross, and the use of different fonts for different voices was effective. A horribly enjoyable story with a lot of writing for the time limit. Everyone gets more done than I do. That sounds like whining because it IS whining.

And that’s all the English language Petite Morts! What a great year for them. My top 2 this year were Roar and Yarry, but I had a great time with all of them and was jealously impressed with how well everybody managed their time.

Maybe I’ll play a few of the GGs and write some reviews for those, seeing as how this year there are such high-quality games.

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Thanks a lot, Amanda, for your favourable review. The game was designed by Raiden, a solo author, and I will pass your review to her.

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