Moody, very envious of the design. I enjoyed the parallel reading required of the first (or was it second) parts, the text and the subtext presented simultaneously, it felt novel to me. The text hidden until rolled over could be used for a lot of things, and is used nicely here, but maybe could have been used a bit more before outstaying its welcome. I got ending C, but I’m not really sure how many choices I made to lead me here, they all seemed pretty minor. I suppose most choices do.
One Step Ahead
Quick, at times almost a draft. The central concept is spelled out a little aggressively, but I’m always a sucker for a glitchy, unsettling level of agency from something that should lack it.
Dead Sea
Some simple puzzles, heavily signposted. A funny setting and scenario, I thought of Dark Souls more than once whilst I played it. Some strange ideas here, an unexpected fishing game, an also more of a plot than you might imagine from the early orange fanta quest, but it feels like a bit of a sketch for a larger treatment and at times thematically inconsistent.
I’m not the guy to review this. I like vibes and I don’t like puzzles. This game is light on vibes and heavy on puzzles. The puzzles in this are sokoban themed, and pretty varied. But I reached a point where I needed to “Make a map on paper’ which I know and respect is extremely satisfying to some people, just not me.
Puzzles man…puzzles. I finished this one but I did resort to the hints (very nicely packaged) a couple of times. How do you rate puzzles? I think the various puzzles with the stone statues were good, it was like I was given three tools and told how to use them. I like puzzles like that. The puzzle with the vines and the barrels…I felt really stupid because I could not really visualise what was meant to be happening with the vine and the hook and etc. I just didn’t get it, the behaviour of the vine particularly baffled me. The other puzzles were get item/use item on X type puzzles which I think are really hard to make sensible, but these were actually pretty rational, except for the glasses one. Why would the monkey have the some prescription as me.
I played this one with my niece on my knee and I liked that it had a family friendly concept that I could share with her. Generally I love depraved things, but the geoblock is making me reappraise some more chill stuff like this.
I often feel quite an outsider in the IF community. Not because of any animosity or outsiderism from the community itself, people are extremely welcoming and kind to newcomers. It’s just that there’s a lot of old games to play. People frequently reference beloved plot beats, tropes and mechanics that I have no idea about.
This is all well and good, but maybe I’m getting somewhere
Summary
because this game played into IF tropes to wrong foot the player, and I was wrong footed! I had preconceptions! And furthermore! They were undermined! The cover art, the cozy slice of life premise, even the title, all led me to think this was going to be a certain kind of game, and it made the subversions that it played quite effective. I had no idea this game was going to propose gang murder, the rapture or the collapse of civilisation. At worst I thought it would hint at some kind of domestic falling out. Good work game. You got me. I would have loved the plot reveal to play out a little slower maybe, but hey, it’s a short game, and I think having everything sledgehammer into you at once is a valid artistic choice.