Good luck! I have about a dozen in a queue 
5 Likes
Just a normal Human, by glucosify
Ah, fitting in. All sorts of works can be written on it. How to do so. How fitting in may actually be bad. How it was nice, but you need time to yourself.
This is a brief humorous explanation of humanoids trying to fit in to human culture. But there are so many ways they fail, despite having done extensive research. The names don’t sound right. And … well, no matter how much research they do on blinking, it fails.
Blinking is so natural to us, yet we can’t explain it. We don’t even know we do it, and it’s painful to keep our eyes open.
There’s a neat trick where you click on an eye and it opens up more text. It provided some much-needed color, though having a whole box of eyes blinking seemed like overkill. (Don’t click the big eye at the bottom.)
However, everything else was pretty effective. It’s easy for me to say “yeah yeah another game about fitting in,” but this offered genuine humor. There’s a chance to fail as well.
One thing about writing about fitting in, though, is if it fits in too much with the existing literature, it doesn’t help. And if it tries too hard to be its own thing, that doesn’t work. This covers out ground to show its individuality, and this it fits well in the jam without surrendering what makes it itself.
Ideally, the same can be applied to people and fitting in.
A side thought on playing through: some groups I felt obliged to fit in, not because I wanted to, I never realized that some people were, in fact, acting at “being themselves” but imitating their favorite comedians or celebrities or actors from a movie or even book characters. They seemed natural at the time. But they had done a research of sorts, too, like the aliens in this story, and of course they couldn’t tell me how to fit in, because it would blow their cover and show them as not original!
4 Likes
Oops! I meant, meeting in terms of, I start at one end, you start at the other.
I’m assuming you’re pacing the reviews so they flow regularly so we can keep seeing reviews on here–which makes a ton of sense!
This one here is where we cross paths. We’ve both reviewed other games, but this is the first since I focused on going from most to least recent.
And we wind up crashing together at, appropriately, …
This is a short tale of, well, someone who has crash-landed. There’s a surprising amount of humor, and there’s very little hope of survival. Of course, given the serious situation, the humor is not actual knee-slappers but more frustration and misunderstanding. Reading this just after Just a Normal Human is interesting. The droid is pretty sure it is making good jokes, and the weird thing is, the meta-joke of “this isn’t funny” doesn’t work, as does the alien in JNH.
Thinking as literally as the droid DeDro, I peeked in the source to see if the % chance was, in fact, a random thing, or it was just dialogue. I wouldn’t have minded reading a few more jokes. As-is, there’s a bit of regret packed into this. A whole lot happens with just 500 words, and it’s worth a look, with the different paths through.
4 Likes
(almost eleven), by spacedfoxes
Works that mention certain things almost always invoke certain reactions in me. In this case, it’s a relationship that went on too long, maybe for 11 years. I was wondering briefly if it was someone who turned 11 and felt they were too big for certain things, or even friends who found each other when they were almost 11 and broke up in adulthood, but – well, it’s 11 years of sort-of stability. And of being in and out. As happens with friends, because life happens.
I’ve been sucker punched by people who told me I was lucky to have them in my life, not I, like the narrator, was being used for someone to lean on and then run away. There were people I was just glad they didn’t point out how unexciting I was. Or if they did, they provided ways to become more exciting!
But they never really asked me what I cared about–they just assumed their needs and wants were more important than mine. But they did come with a few superlatives, which it felt rude to turn down–before the next long rut. I felt I was ripping them off, since I could not offer superlatives back.
I took a while realized these quasi-friends were in the way of what I wanted, which was different from what they were pretty sure I wanted or should want, because friends help friends find what we really want, right?
Some people I wanted to be better friends with, but suggesting I’d be interested seemed an implication they were not that exciting. There are also some people whose lives I went in and out of because I figured they had enough friends, and it never struck me until recently that they may’ve thought I thought I could do better than them.
It’s tough to remember these things, but not so tough as it used to be. I have my own examples that parallel this work, and I wrote down a few more after. The lack of melodrama was nice.
I’m worried this review may be way more melodramatic than its topic. But I hope it will be somewhere around as illuminating as almost eleven was to me.
5 Likes
Scale, by lavieenmeow
I thought I recognized the author’s legal name from other places. I forgot Dawn Sueoka wrote Phenomena, which was in the back garden of 2022 Spring Thing, and it was an entertaining madlib-ish poem.
So here we have a fish tank which isn’t very big. Not much happens, allegedly. But it’s surprisingly absorbing. There are the typical things you find in a tank, like a rock, or bubbles, and you get fed every night, with seasons turning at an alarming rate. There’s also a chest you may be lucky enough to see open. It took me a while, and I’m not sure if it was out of skill or luck or just persistence.
There’s some nice humor in here. It’s slightly surreal and yet feels like you expect a goldfish-pet’s life would feel.
7 Likes
Listen to the Phone Ring, by Rylie Eric
This was a bit short in terms of choices – you have two friends to contact, and one is amenable, and one isn’t, and you react accordingly. Which was acceptable, given what you told your friends about, but it wasn’t until I played Literally Watching Paint Dry, which showed a neat side of the author actually using a Cookie Clicker game to have a sort of plot.
Cross-promotion of old games seems fair game for the Jam if those games themselves aren’t too long, and in this case it added a lot to LttPR. Although I admit I used a keystroke-sender to plow through the clicker game. (Note: you don’t seem to get any reward above 43.2k seconds watching paint dry, which is half of a day or, perhaps, 3/4 of a waking day.)
4 Likes
The Truth of the Nightmare and Why Am I Exist?, by TrexandDrago Development
These had some of my favorite cover images of the whole competition. A Calvin and Hobbes feel, but a bit dark, and it shows imagination across what I assume are language barriers. Why Am I Exist is interesting to me because although it’s a grammatical error, it brought up more than the pedestrian “Why do I exist?” … there’s more a “why me” feel, or why am I only existing, or still existing.
Each of these promises a bigger sequel, but I think they open too many possibilities too quickly and leave us hanging. The text could be broken up, and especially in TotN, we could maybe have another choice or two. I preferred WAIE, which felt like the beginning of a journey, while TotN just sort of presented a conflict.
The illustrations show a strong imagination, and it looks like there were some translation errors. Hopefully the author(s) will be able to find a translator to help ensure their larger works and images and ideas come to life. This isn’t meant as a backhand compliment. Translation is tricky, and they deserve it, and I’d definitely be interested in reading a full illustrated story.
4 Likes
This is a really neat puzzle to work through. It’s got nothing abstract, and it needs no knowledge of Venice, but it has misdirection which adds to the atmosphere without being unfair, and everything you need to know is pretty much contained in the description. It has the feel of a parser game where you need to examine everything. And I mean everything!
There’s also a way to sort-of fail that I found amusing. I didn’t try it at first, because I was trying to get through.
Of all the potential previews for a full-length work, this is the most concretely interesting, because the author knows what they’re doing, and they used the word count very well to create atmosphere and a feeling of character–what you are looking to steal is not just mere riches.
7 Likes
Collision, by manonamora
I noticed the author didn’t want spoilers in the discussion thread, so I won’t describe my initial strategy to try to get through or details on the hints I noted. You’re stuck in a collision with what seems to be no way out, as you may guess from the title and blurb. There are things you should be able to do, but you learn some aren’t viable. If you fail, you get to do it all over again. Maybe you can do better.
The descriptions are purposefully odd and suggest something’s up. There are sound effects. And … rather neatly, there are options, for French or English text, and to turn down the sound if you want.
The two-word sentence descriptions work well for who you are and for the limitations of the jam. They make sure the descriptions of your actions aren’t too skimpy. Helplessness abounds.
5 Likes
thank you for this generous and thoughtful review of a fun little experiment 
I’ve been working on a larger game in the same vein, and I thought it would be fun to create a little excerpt.
6 Likes
There’s still 12 days!
This is always a tough one – wanting to be in the spirit of the jam, yet still expressing yourself, maybe even using the rules (written or unwritten) to gain focus. It’s weird, our first day of school has long since come and gone, but we still have these “will I fit in” worries a lot of places. But to oversimplify & probably preach to the choir, diversity should be welcomed, even if the person bringing diversity hasn’t been discriminated against or hurt in the past.
And I’d say given how many serious works there are in the jam, comic relief is a good thing, especially when it goes beyond simple “listen to my joke here.” Emotional issues are important to write about, and people should feel free to share them. But as a reader, I have a right to say, I want to pass on the heavy stuff right now. And intelligent comedy helps recharge.
And I think another way it fits in is that there is anxiety about being accepted. I know from watching Shark Tank I’d be scared as heck giving a sales pitch & I’ve seen youtube videos that break down why/how certain people who give pitches make themselves more or less likable than others.
5 Likes
A word on the (unplanned) delays between reviews – my 3rd entry for Twiny Jam took a lot out of me (in a good way! It was something I had wanted to do for a long time, just in terms of technical stuff) and I am still pushing to get a ParserComp entry ready. So I may be slow reviewing things. I intend to do so past the deadline. I hope to cover over half of the entries that aren’t mine before the jam deadline ends. (Pedantic point: that’d mean 37 of 73 right now. Or 38 of 74, later.)
Buck Rockford Heads West, by J. J. Guest
If you worry Buck Rockford is too on-the-nose as a Western character name, fear not. This work is not fully in earnest. And Buck’s name works doubly for me. Why? Well, having lived in Chicago for a while, I know of a good-sized town about 90 miles west called … Rockford! It is not a terribly romantic place to live, alas.
In this brief Ink work, you are Buck Rockford, and, well, you keep heading west through various misadventures. If you read lazily it seems like just another plain western, but it vigorously smacks the old Western cliches around. Also there is a 14-letter word in there I really like, and I don’t want to spoil it, and it shouldn’t take too long to find it. But it’s sort of sad, too. Buck has four different professions to try. There is no roaringly successful ending.
There are a few branches that lead to different adventures for Buck. He certainly has an interesting, surreal life. The writing never feels like it’s looking up at you expecting to laugh, but there is definitely humor.IKnowing the author’s works, I sort of knew what to expect, and I was glad some of the twists caught me out and made me think “did I just read that? Yes, I did.” But, of course, in a good way.
7 Likes
Thank you for your lovely review! It was an interesting exercise, writing something with a tight word limit. For a while now I’ve been wanting to do shorter, choice-based pieces and this jam gave me the impetus I needed. If I have time, I’ll enter another, but even if I don’t I’ll try to do more short pieces in Ink. As for the sadness, well, a lot of my recent writing seems to have a note of sadness in it, whether I intended it or not. I guess my outlook has changed these past few years. But funny and sad can be a good combination.
6 Likes
Infinite Space Battle Simulator, by Autumn Chen
I poked around with this when it first came out. It’s a Dendry entry (I originally assumed ChoiceScript–the basic feel is the same) where you control a ship in a simulation. You have a health bar, and with each bit of health won, you collect scrap, which can add to your health, range, accuracy, damage or drones. Drones do a bit of damage and make it so enemies can’t hit you. In combat you can go backwards and forwards.
The author mentioned they were still balancing their effort, which I can relate to–my own basketball tournament simulator (Now We’re Clickin’ Team) didn’t really balance stuff. But I enjoyed maximizing what I could. I got to about 7 wins with save-scumming but it got too hard to even hit the enemy without being hit in return.
But here’s the thing–there are 4 types of enemy crafts. At least at first. I can assume that, as you build up your ship, it eventually reaches a point where you can wipe enemies out with hesitation. Or you never get there, because even with top-notch equipment, you can only hope to battle the final enemy to a dead draw (or you even are expected to lose HP long-term even with the best strategy!) There’s a stasis point, so to speak.
So while trying consciously to rig the game and save and re-start, I wound up with a weird fear of the infinite. What if I did manage to hit that critical point? Would the simulation end?
Maybe this wasn’t precisely the thing the author wanted us to feel, but it was a well-constructed effort, the sort that lets your mind go off on tangents as you plan strategy.
The author has apparently tweaked the entry since I last played. It may allow for strategy to affect more. But given the title, I suspect there’s something the author wants us to feel beyond “maximize strategy yay go boom win.” Perhaps the infinity is reserved for cheaters like me who keep trying to save and reload, and that’s on purpose, to a certain extent.
I was really surprised to see a ChoiceScript-ish entry could make it into the jam, much less a well-produced one. So well done to the author.
6 Likes
It’s made with Dendry, which has ChoiceScript-like visuals (but you can do more customisation).
4 Likes
So Neo Twiny Jam is over, but I may still be dropping reviews in here. Games I found particularly thoughtful may go to IFDB as well.
the ride home, by cassian
This one, I thought I’d written a review for during the jam! It was one I connected with, but it felt almost silly to write, or to remember fears from high school. And it suggests some fears are still very real, if not especially crippling. I knew what I wanted to say. But I did not. At least, for a while. I wasn’t sure how much to share. But on replay, I had even more. So here goes.
You see, I went to a horrible four(?)-week driver’s ed school the summer before my senior year. For many kids, learning to drive was exciting. But I had quite a lot of my mother saying how expensive insurance was, and how teen drivers had better shape up because they are careless, and so forth. It was a bit of a shock to me that some people enjoyed taking Drivers’ Ed. That includes kids who would lower their grade-point, even with the easy A, because of the boost from honors and advanced placement classes! One other thing about Drivers’ Ed: it was at the fourth floor in my high school. I never went up there as a student. So it held some mystery when I finally went back on an open house night, after having sold my own car because public transport was good enough. It wasn’t that exciting when I got there, of course. But it was a reminder of other things I’d built up and not looked into.
My first instructor apparently spent a lot of time in nightclubs, and he’d yack on endlessly about it, so as not to put people on edge, apparently. The (very faulty) reasoning being that if we were being deluged by the subject of how interesting and outgoing he was, we couldn’t feel fear!
This confused me, since drinking occurred a lot at nightclubs. And drinking and driving was bad. Suffice it to say that I did not need the negative reinforcements from certain driver’s ed movies, the newspaper clippings on the wall of very sweet and lovable kids who screwed up, assuring me that I had better not drink and drive. All blissfully unaware I’d never even been to a party with alcohol at that point!
How does it relate to the work? Well, TRH’s background music–well, it reminded me of those horrible driver’s ed movies that tell you not to screw up or you’ll endanger your lives and others. It establishes fear, but a totally different one than perhaps the drivers’ ed movies want you to feel. It’s a fear of understanding too well how you might screw up and not having the confidence to avoid that. It’s a fear based in how you maybe aren’t acclimated to how cars have safety feature, and the rules of the road–well, how to be a safe driver has a lot of precautions, and if you’re paying enough attention, you’ll catch things. Or you’ll wind up getting close to a mistake, but not really, and if you’re conscientious, you’ll realize why people do certain things.
At some point, though, being over-cautious is too much. And I never had anyone address that until my nightclub-visiting instructor said “YOU ARE OBVIOUSLY TOO SCARED TO GO ANYWHERE WITH A HIGHER SPEED LIMIT.” Between them and my parents–ouch.
And the parents in this reminded me of, well, my own. They know how to nitpick. They never suggest the simple truth, which is that you learn things fairly quickly if thrown into the melting pot. And … well, having a kid drive at night for their second lesson is a really, really bad choice. There’s more to remember, with turning on lights. It’s harder to look for a stop sign, or for people not wearing reflective clothing or whatever. There is so much to process, but the parents failed to keep it simple.
So I see, intended by the author or not, two parents that threw the kid in the deep end and, conscious or not, had something prepared for the kid’s inevitable failure, or almost-failure. And the kid certainly beats themselves up. There is more fear than there needs to be and a shocking lack of empathy from the parents, who don’t outright tell the kid they’re a flake but jump on small mistakes.
Oh, that combined with the kid realizing they could have hit two pedestrians not paying attention. I empathize with the narrator, for being pushed into fear that drains them, trusting adults to plan and do things correctly, but the adults did not.
This is all very negative. My story had a happy ending–I had a second driving instructor later who said “just go ahead. I trust you.” And it worked. The second instructor actually smoked in the car, and it did not bother me. I reacted favorably to his lack of “exciting” nightclub stories tinged with belief he should be an even bigger man when out on the town than he was. (Note: the first instructor did shut up, but I felt guilty that I was so distractable, he couldn’t share the stories he wanted. Also, he is on Twitter now, and one of his most recent pictures features an odometer going up to 100 MPH, which is well over all speed limits.) I don’t drive much now, but I feel confident I recall the basics quickly. It’s the opposite of fear–competence without excitement.
This is a bit long-winded, but it’s my own driver’s ed story, so different from the average “I AM GETTING MY CAR!” But I hope it shows more growth and overcoming fear and how TRH brought that home but also reminded me I had progressed past certain fears. In a nutshell, what is a joyful rite of passage for most teens is extremely stressful, for the narrator. And they, unlike most “normal” kids, are unable to put small mistakes behind them, likely due to adults who needed to flex how with-it they were and others weren’t. That’s sad and terrible, even before the story’s climax.
7 Likes
One-Word Warlock, by Damon L. Wakes
So I’m the sort of person predisposed to like this author’s sense of humor, kicking well-worn tropes when they’re down in a sophisticated playing-dumb sort of way, but I think this will have mass appeal. It has pretty much everything needed to make you happy you (sort of) wasted time. Each passage and choice is, you see, one letter long. The actual quest (as I see it) mirrors a well-known fantasy book, but you get there your own way. There are lots of ways to fail. Of course, there is the “sleep in bed and do nothing” possibility. One of them has you marrying a dragon and having a kid. This might not work with long drawn-out passages, but it does here.
There are also audio clues of the “best” choice. Sometimes it’s pretty obvious. The right choice is contained in what the voice (the author’s, which is a nice touch) says. Other times you have to remember some tropes. But it’s non-intrusive, and I very much enjoyed the reactions, especially to one that promoted inclusivity nicely without being preachy.
I’m one of those people who always felt bad that I didn’t enjoy 500-page fantasy novels as much s I should have, what with everything to track and the descriptions of scenery which quite frankly got repetitive and tedious after a bit. That’s not a problem here, with just 500 words. On the one hand, it’s an exercise in efficiency, but on the other hand, it was oh so wonderful for the author to have packed in as many jokes as they did. I was just happy I got things under 500 words, and I was relieved to get rid of some of the more flabby sentences. The author did me one better.
I’ll likely enjoy said novels even less now, maybe because OWW (which may be an inappropriate acronym, as it is one word the author did not use!) puts things to a much higher standard. I hope more people see and enjoy this. The author’s work is always good and funny and enjoyable to me but this, to me, is a spike up from his usual high standards.
4 Likes
Curse of the Bat’s Tomb, by fsi
Neo Twiny Jam had a surprisingly large (to me) ratio of fantasy-quest games by authors, all of whom really seemed to know what they were doing. There’ve been a lot of works with emotional impact, too.
But this one combines both, while sneaking in under the maximum word count. I wasn’t expecting what the curse was, and you probably won’t, either.
Of course, given that it has some narrative, the tomb is not VERY big, or the quest VERY long. There’s really only one puzzle and a few things to observe. It’s a puzzle you can maybe guess, but said puzzle also has under a hundred states, so figuring an efficient brute-force method is a neat puzzle on its own.
It’s a very clean effort, without extra fanfare, and I’m left with a clear feeling the author could (and should!) create something much bigger if they wanted. I’d also like to praise the cover art, which drew me in without grabbing me.
Finally, thanks to the author for including the source, and for telling us to experience their game before looking at it. It’s in chapbook, and I used sugarcube in the jam, but several things still made immediate sense to me.
5 Likes
Dreamscape CYOA, by KADW
Hmm! Looking at the relative popularity of items in the jam, this one slid way behind the other’s work, Eviscerate This Girl. DCYOA seems a lot more my speed, and I’d like to encourage others to give it some love or thought, too, if you haven’t. You could simplify it down to just choosing 3 tarot cards from a pack. Instead of double-edged stuff like Death or The Wheel, though, it’s odd gifts like a Celestial Pillow, which helps with Lucid Dreaming. Or you can visit a paradise resort, but you have to pay for a room. You choose three, then at the bottom, you click at the end, and said three cards are together.
It’s interesting to re-read through and see which is the best fit, but I was amused by how I quickly said some at the top were the best, or if I was offered them take-it-or-leave-it, I wouldn’t wait for the next ones. They were too good.
But at the bottom is a choice that might expose my reflexive gratitude as selfish. It’s a choice that allows gifts for others. You are less powerful. It’s double the height and width of the other cards–whether the author just wanted to leave relatively little white (well, dark here) space or kind of unsubtly point out what they feel the best gift here, I certainly had a moment of reflection. I’d been slightly enchanted by the possibilities and then felt like a bit of a bum, nothing to ruin my day, but I realized that even with gifts that seemed benign (as opposed to the ones from a Djinni that cause bad things to happen elsewhere) I hadn’t thought much of ramifications, or What Was Really Important, or I assumed my gifts could cover WWRI later.
So whether or not it was intended to be a psychological experiment, I found it to be an effective one.
6 Likes