It seems like the early posts are split between posting reviews by game or by reviewer. I’ll post a link to these reviews in any game-specific thread as well.
4 Likes
Why Pout? by Andrew Schultz
I’ve enjoyed Andrew’s other game-as-game works over the years (chess, tic-tac-toe), but I had never played one of his wordplay offerings. I figured this Comp was the time to rectify my deficiency. So here I want focus on the experience of someone who hasn’t played one of these before and had little knowledge beyond “Oh, it’s one of those rhyme-y things, I think.”
The overarching gameplay of Why Pout? is to take a two-word phrase (such as the title!) and homophonize it into a new phrase also often of two words. The phrases that need alteration are often obvious because they tend to be odd and stick out, and they are often the names of the rooms themselves. In one early example, the room Hype Lane becomes HIGH PLAIN.
It’s a pretty clever use of the parser. Why Pout? more or less eschews traditional commands beyond X and directional commands. Instead, it’s a series of two-word commands that often have unexpected and fun results. It’s crossword puzzly in a good way, and satisfying when you figure out the next clue in front of you. As a first-time player of this genre, the game also offers several affordances which worked very well for me. If you guess at least one of the two words correctly, the parser will tell you you’re on the right track. If you guess a correct phrase but it isn’t time to use it yet (as some puzzles depend on others being previously solved), a THINK command recalls those correct-but-not-now answers for you. And there is a cleverly-named single-use item that allows you to bypass a puzzle entirely.
The puzzles can feel a little scattershot, and sometime crossword puzzly in a bad way. QUID, MENSCH, and WHEE feel a little forced, perhaps, as does the manic herb and its solution MANNA CURB. And there are a few puzzles that depend on previous puzzles’ completion that resist any logical attempts to deal with them out of turn. I’m looking at you, tree (small).
The game’s story is ostensibly about being imprisoned, recovering your identity, and then assembling a classic fantasy adventuring party to defeat your captors. The writing is fun and the dramatic changes to the world whenever you enter a new command are written well. But, while probably overused, the term ludonarrative dissonance applies here. This game is fundamentally about solving a bunch of homophonic phrases and the story seems to be written entirely around the word puzzles the author created. The fundamental throughline of assembling your companions is strong and provides some thematic unity, but individual elements—financiers and squids and mice, oh my—only exist because the puzzles say they should.
Still, I think it’s an effective twist on the medium: a chaotic fantasy story told entirely through wordplay. And, by the end, maybe you can enjoy cannon joy. I think I’m doing that right.
8 Likes
Uninteractive Fiction by Leah Thargic
“You lose” is likely prescient for this game.
11 Likes
Birding in Pope Lick Park by Eric Lathrop
This game is a bit of an odd duck. In Birding in Pope Lick Park, you go birding in Pope Lick Park, outside of Louisville, Kentucky. You drive to the park. You get out of your car. You walk around and look for birds. You get back into your car. You get a brief report on the birds you saw. And that’s it. That’s the game.
It’s entirely a cup-of-tea kind of game, simple and comforting. What I most admire about it is its earnestness. The author really loves birding and wants to share that with you. He includes various external links so you can learn more about the park, birdwatching apps, and more. Each choice is also supplemented by photos taken by the author with generous alt-text descriptions. Along the way, you’ll encounter some birds, learn a bit about them, and add them to your list of birds for the day.
The other thing I enjoy about the game is how unassuming it is. The setting is thoroughly unobtrusively suburban. We are not in some virgin wilderness somewhere, looking for birds made of rainbows and moonlight. We are at a local park, replete with soccer fields and goldendoodles and beer cans in a river. The photos don’t try to make anything look better than it is, either, and I appreciate that. Here’s a parking lot. Here’s a muddy river.
The birds, too, are largely common and some might argue bland. Typical birds from the mid-central U.S. dominate—robins and sparrows and mallards. Perhaps the most showy of them might be a bluebird or a merganser with its mohawk. There’s nary an exotic barn owl, male wood duck, or scarlet tanager to be seen. Not even a male cardinal.
And I like all of those choices. The game serves as a reminder that it’s simply a nice thing to go outside, and that birds—and not just the rare or colorful ones, but all birds—are cool animals, and that even the most pedestrian of them, like robins, are worth attending to.
The writing is solid, detailed, and observant, as befits a birder. It perhaps veers into educational mode a little bit too much at times, but the prose works well overall.
The game is presented in Twine’s seldom-seen Chapbook format, which also adds to its simple grace. It’s true that the choices don’t matter that much—you can visit any area of the park in any order and multiple times. And you can choose to return to your car at any point. The birds aren’t terribly hard to spot—you just click on a link in the middle of a passage. The ending is the same: here’s a scorecard of the birds you saw, and thanks for learning about birding.
But a story and, to some extent, agency aren’t the point here. The game seems closer to nonfiction than anything. I think of Twine’s one-sentence tagline how it’s a “tool for telling interactive, nonlinear stories.” And I think of Twine’s early (and continued) promise that anyone can make a game, anyone can tell a story. And here, our author wanted to tell a story about how awesome birding is in general and that in particular you don’t need to go any further than out your back door or to a local park. Those are good, straightforward messages, and the game imparts them generously and well.
12 Likes