After a few years of playing & reviewing IFComp games sporadically, this year I finally have some more free time. Will I get to the majority of games this year? Hopefully, but probably not.
My selection process is mostly based on interests & time, and at the end of the comp, there’s always excellent games that remain unplayed. Alas.
But, onto the games! I’m very excited for this year, as there seems to be plenty of new authors and a variety of games on creative & challenging topics, which are all human-made. Yay.
The Very Last Night I Spent at Ethelred Estate, by Kai DeJesus
While I’m not an expert in the gothic horror genre, there seems to be a tension between when to reveal the details of the horror, or when to keep it vague and enigmatic. The Very Last Night I Spent at Ethelred Estate is perhaps, a little light on concrete details, but it is dripping in vibes. The prose is actually quite restrained for the genre, and I thought the mechanics of dragging the adjective to a select noun to be inventive (I don’t believe I’ve seen a game do that before). I unfortunately did come across a bug (at a certain point, I could drag an adjective but there was no noun to apply it to), but restarting the game was hardly painful, as I was at that point, invested in the happenings of the game’s world. I’m still not entirely sure what happened and would have enjoyed more exposition, but wanting more from a short but surprisingly complex game is hardly the worst spot to be in.
Minor nitpick: The text coloring/layout didn’t entirely work for me.
First off, this is an unfinished game, and so thus, I can only review based on what is there. Even so, this is quite long, clocking in at around an hour and forty minutes to finish the first (and only) chapter. I did not play the real time version.
Technically speaking, Postgrad is very well implemented. I haven’t played a game in this particular style before, but it ran well, there were no bugs nor typos, and the drawings were a nice touch. It’s fun to play, and debating on which action to take at a particular time of day (I don’t think it matters, but it might later) is a fun bit of roleplaying.
I also find the worldbuilding compelling, taking place in a sort of alternate history/ speculative fiction with a heavy dose of grimy realism version of New Zealand. It’s mildly depressing, as being in your early twenties and being a broke grad student tends to be.
I liked what I saw of the narrative, but unfortunately, despite the colorful cast of characters, the eclectic plot(s), and the worldbuilding, I have to describe it as dry. Perhaps I didn’t entirely gel with the screenwriting/script format, and I would have loved to see more interiority from our protagonist, Bel. I also think more of a hook/urgency in the beginning would help. However, at the end of the sample, I was invested.
Looking forward to seeing what comes of this project in the future.
The one room parser in a bedroom is a both a trope and a classic, and this is a worthy addition to the bunch. I enjoyed the little details of the bedroom, from the yarn bag to the vague eeriness of the unopenable door. The main puzzle was one that required something you wouldn’t normally do, but I felt clued in by the text. I did end up using some hints (I’m not especially good at parsers), and I was a little frustrated by the eventual solution, but all in all, this was a clever little game that will keep me thinking about the ending. Somewhat reminiscent of Plotkin’s Shade.
I’m not entirely sure what the game is a metaphor for, but perhaps any sort of self-sacrificial relationship that is toxic and all-encompassing. If the character wasn’t so young, I’d say perhaps a strange parent/child relationship. Or perhaps it’s something psychological.
I had moderate hopes for this one, seeing as high school reunions tend to be a good source of both cringe and comedy. High School Reunion is certainly both, but could have used additional work to achieve what it was going for. The main character is an absolute piece of work, in a way that would have been more fun if the game was slightly more self-aware about it. I’m a little confused about why you cannot enter the reunion as yourself. It seems like a glitch, although it might just say something about the protagonist. I feel like for the game to work better, there would be more wacky endings, like a dozen-odd or so along the lines of the Vampire ending (my favorite). Or, perhaps the player could, at least, see the difference between how people treat him when he’s Edward versus being himself. Otherwise this plays as a semi-bizzare fantasy of a insecure man, where, things, for the most part, work out for him. Or he’s a vampire.
This game certainly wasn’t boring, that’s for sure.
This game could be described as Papers, Please, in a fascist fantasy realm. Fantasy prejudice against those with powers has long been a topic for speculative fiction, since it parallels but doesn’t quite map to real world prejudice. I think this is one of the more effective uses of it, since you play as one of the ‘just following orders’ bureaucrats of this system, deciding the fates of young children. There is little mercy in the system, deciding between death, military conscription, and becoming a social outcast. One of the things IF can do is allow you to occupy the thoughts of someone who is or is forced to become a terrible person (for example, Varicella) and I always find it compelling when a game asks you to step into that space. Despite trying to uphold these children as people, ultimately I made some terrible decisions, and for the very last child, I didn’t even bother interviewing them. I ended up being executed by the system for a single act of mercy I showed halfway through the game, and I thought it was a fitting end for who I had become.
The world, while disorienting at first, I felt had a lot of in-depth thought put into it. I particularly liked how you could feel the loss of traditions and culture over the course of the game. I wonder if there is any way to be rewarded by the system, or if it, Kafka-esque, will have you dragged away and killed no matter the choices you make.
I enjoyed the prose, although the past tense, and how it felt passive and perhaps overworked would have been slightly more grating if it didn’t mesh with the themes of the game.
I have been unexpectedly busy, so I likely won’t be able to play as many games as I would have liked.
See You Around by Lacey Louwagie & Zimmerman Studios
I’m not entirely sure how to write about this game, except that it is fairly competent. Playing this game reminds me of when I heard a fellow writing student recite a reading of an explicit realist story at a bookstore, and I didn’t resonate with it, but I admired their skill and willingness to push the envelope. Then we talked about IF at a pub afterwards.
Anyway, enough about me. This interactive short story is low on interactivity, using it primarily for flashbacks and elaboration on events, as well as to include song lyrics. One of the questions I had when playing this game, is whether it was best served by being an interactive narrative. I’m not sure what the player’s role in the story is, besides as a voyeur (which has its own reasoning). I think the interactivity allowed the writer to include the song lyrics, flashbacks & flashfowards, and other narrative techniques, but I also think this would have worked almost as well as a conventional short story.
The characters worked for me, I felt as though they were realistically characterized, although a little lightly drawn before the story ended. The sex scene was both well-written and felt maturely handled, if explicit. I liked the focus on each character’s music, although the lyrics themselves felt a tiny bit on the nose.
On its own, I think that this work feels as though it ends too soon, however, as part of a collection of other stories of the residents of Zimmerman Studios, this could work as a single piece. The context around this work is fascinating, and I could really tell this was set in the Minneapolis/Saint Paul area. I am interested in following more projects from Zimmerman Studios. Keep up the good work!
My fiancé, being a Catholic, a classical music and horror guy, and quite possibly the world’s biggest fan of time loops (he has lists and charts) is probably tailor made for this game. As someone who has spent many an hour breaking down the typical narrative structure of the time loop with him, I found this game intriguing.
Often, a time loop follows a certain progression: the protagonist starts off as a reasonable person who then descends into hedonism and violence before then redeeming themselves. This game skips right to the part where the protagonist is a monster (or, as this is Purgatory, perhaps he has always been that way). Which is a novel experience, and one executed in gory detail even as it left me scrambling for context.
Unfortunately, the pacing and length of the game worked against the story it was trying to tell. The bones of the story were there, many of the scenes being deeply uncomfortable and engaging to read (killing the boss, burning the uncle’s body, the scenes of suicide). Since the game is so short, I was just beginning to face the extent of the character’s actions before I was redeemed. I then replayed it, choosing a set of options that had me respond less in violence and anger, no longer killing my boss on later loops, which made the redemption feel more earned. But still, I really wanted to be fully immersed into this character, and figure out more context around his actions. While I found the second playthrough more narratively satisfying, I still think the story needed to be lengthened and developed in order for the player to go on a similar journey to the protagonist.
I am someone who spends a good deal of time in various train stations; it is my favorite method of transportation. While not as inherently stressful as the airport, there’s still a certain anxiety inherent to it, especially as there is often bad directions and unhelpful employees.
I did not remember the description when I decided to play this game, and I’m glad I didn’t. The game not only captured the anxiety of waiting in a train station while being unprepared, but I imagine how it must be like during that a state of wartime emergency. Despite the prose being pared back, the circumstances and pacing were effective at creating a highly stressful environment.
There were two moments that I think will stick with me: the moment when the player leaves those in the lower level behind, and the very end. It is a matter of stating the theme/idea out loud instead of implying it, but because the game, as a whole, is sparse, moments like that work. The last line about the bombs falling was a particular gut punch.
Thank you so much for spending time with a new IF creator’s work, and thank you also for the thoughtful review. I’ve spent a lot of time wrestling with the question of IF vs. straightforward narrative for the Zimmerman Studios work and what I keep coming back to is that, although these characters have been with me for decades, I couldn’t find an “in” for writing about them until I took a workshop on non-linear storytelling/interactive fiction and realized the non-linear/multi-perspective approach was what I needed to find my way in. I also want to incorporate multimedia and will re-release See You Around with some sound and visual assets now that the contest has closed. But I’m still very much a beginner in this space and I look forward to exploring and experimenting with the ways interactivity and multimedia can allow me to approach storytelling in a new way. I know my lens will expand as I continue to learn about, read, and play more IF.