Bellamy's SeedComp Reviews 2023

As I work on my Spring Thing entry, I think it would be nice to review a few SeedComp games in my spare time. It looks like there are some good entries this year so I’ll throw in my two cents on some of them.

I hope to join next time SeedComp comes around. Great work, everyone.

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SPOILERS AHEAD

Spoiler tags only hide things I would like others to experience themselves, not every secret that the games offer. Proceed with caution. :^)

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Current Reviews
In a dream I told my mother
Cozy Simulation 2999
Hidden Gems, Hidden Secrets

10 Likes

Number one, In a dream I told my mother - ~~~

Positives

This game took the genre of surrealness and expanded on it in such a captivating way that I had to write this review immediately. First off, the music is wonderfully chosen. The anxiety-inducing sounds that appear during the more creepy moments in the narrative add to the player’s immersion and on the other side of the scale we have the emotionally-charged melodies that play periodically and always successfully drew the most sentiment out of me (especially when climbing the final ladder). The protagonist you play as is a blank slate that you can insert yourself into although it’s still very clear that they have a backstory attached to them. There were so many metaphors and detailed passages to wade through that I spent the better part of an hour, reading, going back and rereading, trying to get every single detail and after that venture, I found myself very surprised and impressed.

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(Attempted) Plot Deconstruction

From what I got of the story, our protagonist is a nondescript oil platform worker that has been sent off on a water expedition by some researchers to explore the bottom of the ocean. Since our protagonist has nothing to their name and nothing to go back to, they agree to be the diving man for the expedition. Taking the rig down, they immediately are surrounded by the overwhelming darkness of the ocean and we begin to see flashes of their memories once they reach the bottom of the sea. A nightclub filled with spirits of people that once were, one perpetually burning house filled with memorabilia of their life and childhood, a factory where drained workers seemingly work in loops creating nothing… forever stuck in their cycle, a classroom which makes you feel that if you work hard and put in the effort someone or something should come to reward you or at least congratulate you, but it never comes, sitting in your mother’s chair and reminiscing, discarding all of your possessions and ascending, finally climbing the final ladder. Will you ever truly leave this place or are you just returning to the darkness where the sights and thoughts of your past will forever follow you? It was a beautiful and truly a 10/10 experience for me.

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My Questions/Notes

Here are some random thoughts that arose during my playthrough

  • He screams until he sleeps, it seems.
  • Were their mother and father drug addicts?
  • Why does the diver feel his father’s embrace after the man in the Slurry Stream climbs over him? Is the man his father?
  • His father lies in the collapsed church… what could this mean !!!
  • My first ending was waiting in the classroom for something to happen and finally getting credits.
  • Where is the diver going now? Was the expedition, in the beginning, real or did they die when they went under and was this a sort of pre/post-death hallucination?
  • Questions, questions, questions…

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Criticisms

None; I honestly and unequivocally loved playing this game. Discarding everything I picked up was the most cathartic moment for me.

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Overall Impression

Loved.

9 Likes

Oh wow, thank you so much!

4 Likes

You’re welcome. It was a great game!

3 Likes

Number two, Cozy Simulation 2999 - ~~~

Positives

First off, I want to talk about the game’s design.

The music was beautiful and the intentional cuts where it disappeared added to the tense atmosphere the author was attempting to build; it all seemed masterfully chosen. The sudden shift to the creepy red text on the black background after previously being in a warm, cozy, cabin made me feel as if I was suddenly forced into a cold shower and that nervous feeling it brought was very appreciated. As a fan of horror-everything, playing this game effectively captured the perfect three protagonist feelings of “Where am I? How do I get out? (and) Should I get out?” And this is something where choice games always have the upper hand compared to other forms of media.

The game itself is based on a straightforward idea of virtual abduction, but it’s executed in a way that is so wonderfully unique.

The writing is truly the crown jewel of it all. The prose carries the entire idea the author had envisioned and executes it beautifully. Drinking hot chocolate on the rug and watching the fireplace feels warmer and lovelier compared to real life because of how it’s described adding to the feeling of living in a perfect world; the first scene goes like this,

  • “Somewhere a fireplace is crackling. You are wrapped in an old quilt. Soft downy fuzz. You remember a patch of sunlight on the carpet. Your head feels languid with dreams.”

I honestly felt as if I was transported into a warm log cabin and I had a little narrator friend nudging me along to do pleasant activities. Then, of course, we had the… new place which I encountered after sleeping once again,

  • “I need to run. Can hear them outside, crawling through the abandoned complex. Buzzing. The broken window casts a jagged square of light barely visible on the floor. Floor slick with mold and blood. Need to run. Can’t muster the strength. Hear machinery buzzing beyond the broken window. Can’t muster the strength. Huddled in a dark room with peeling walls. Can’t—”

Those few lines drag me out of the feeling of safety the cabin once provided and force me to open my eyes and finally try to figure out where I am.

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Plot Deconstruction

So, the protagonist awakens to find themselves in a warm log cabin during the middle of winter.

A disembodied narrator speaks softly to them to enjoy the warmth and feeling for as long as they want to. Almost like a getaway from home, we don’t have to worry about the problems of everyday life. We can read a book, sit by the fire, and truly do whatever we feel as time passes on and on. But as you sleep, flashes of memories start to break down the utopia you’ve seemingly found yourself in. Disturbing memories. So now critical thinking finally starts to seep in and the player begins to wonder, “Why am I here… and how did I get here?”

The “glitches” in this cozy cabin seem to get stronger and stronger as time goes on where books detailing you to look under rugs start to appear and stories of mental rewiring start to pop up on your holo screen.

The white world of snow you get to explore seems too good to be true, and lo and behold, it is. As expected in twisted simulation horror games we find out that a little Lovecraftian friend on our head is trapping us in a human factory farm chopping off parts of living humans and using those parts to create mindless new ones. One hidden message in the game described it as a “mental rewiring manufactory that has reached a new level of efficiency.”

Surprisingly, the creature is more benevolent than I had thought it would be, but not benevolent enough to let you escape. From what I can glean from the other flashes of memories we see, our protagonist was one of the last humans hiding from these creatures that were taking over their area, but they were found and taken to this place. I’m not sure why they want to create new human beings, but the lack of knowledge about their end goal works better in my opinion. Instead, the player has to accept that this is just reality now.

Ending Spoiler → You either stay in the dream-world or you experience two types of ethereal type of death in the real-world

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My Questions/Notes

Here are some random thoughts that arose during my playthrough:

  • I love the narrator slowly getting disconcerted with our “art.”
  • Man, they got me. Should’ve crushed it ← (my thoughts before I realized both endings lead to death)
  • Who set this up… and why do humans need to be mentally rewired? Is the head of this operation a creature? or a human being?

  • I am not sure how to feel about my shelled friend, this relationship seems very toxic.

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Criticisms

While I enjoyed playing, I can admit that the game is not completely polished with there being some bugs here and there. However, it’s forgivable when compared to the overarching great storyline.

I’m also questioning the creatures being called “angels.” it might be a manufacturing name that was assigned to them, but since the protagonist seems scorned and disgusted with them I doubt they’d call them anything with a positive connotation.

And this is just a personal thought, but I would’ve enjoyed seeing the creature not be able to speak with the protagonist after being taken off since they severed that neural link. I think that having a screechy indiscernible alien language once they’re disconnected from the player would have been an even cooler contrast between dream-world and real-world.

Also, my first ending ended up being my player getting taken over by hive after not crushing my little friend. After going through it all again to get the rest of the endings, I found that the “normal” ending where you go through the game and notice little things going awry was one of my favorites. I wish the trapdoor link didn’t come so early so that the player could notice a few more things going wrong before opting to wake up; I believe it would add more to the atmosphere.

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Overall Impression

This was a great game and I enjoyed myself very much!

I would recommend this to anyone in a more polished form.

5 Likes

Thank you for your review! Really helpful thoughts. If you’ve read the long author’s note in the About section, it says I made a few last-minute changes, including the angel bit, that might’ve been misguided. The original concept was a little different. I’m still not sure if I made the right choice changing things.

It’s odd seeing other people react to your game and try to guess at the larger setting when you have the specifics in your head, but seeing how it got translated through the events of the story is really interesting. I will probably release a post-comp version that elaborates on/changes things, time depending.

The bug reports are real helpful, too. mutters in corner cursed bugs… can’t squash them fast enough…

2 Likes

I see. If you do end up releasing a post-comp version, I will happily play it all again. And either way, I love the final version of the game the way it is right now. I’m definitely looking forward to your future successes.

2 Likes

Number three, Hidden Gems, Hidden Secrets - ~~~

Positives

To begin, the design of this game is very unique and I enjoyed that original feel to it.

The chat function is something that I haven’t seen used very often in games and so I liked extracting the story from that type of format. And on that topic, the creators did a wonderful job at making it feel like a real discord chat. Characters responded at normal times or took longer to write if they wanted to send a bigger paragraph.

I’m a slow-ish reader meaning that I purposely read games aloud in order to get exactly what the author wants to portray. So, for me, it was kind of the perfect pace. But for those that read mentally and quickly, the pacing was probably a tad too slow.

The writing was great, the message was clear, and the people felt real, making each character show an effective, unique spin on what happened to them even though it was a joint experience.

Corn is that perfect strike between a genuinely nice person and a “too nice” person. This makes it more likely that younger characters would continue to put up with him even after he eventually delves into harassing them. In the real world, sudden changes like these sometimes make victims wonder if they were overreacting or possibly said something to elicit a sexual response from a person they once considered to be a close friend. This is especially true if the predator was “nice in the beginning” instead of a creep from the start. That was tactful and I enjoyed that.

The switch between perspectives was also very cool and you can see the rabbit hole get deeper and deeper as it’s finally revealed that Corn has made passes at nearly all of the biological women in the group and that gnawing feeling of disgust and surprise continues to grow.

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Plot Deconstruction

There are about seven people in a Discord Chat for a club called “The Hidden Treasures Of Poetry.” They have all moved from an old forum which was previously a mailing list in order to grow the amount of members in their group. The notes they share amongst themselves seem innocent and playful, each of the characters clearly having a close and strong relationship with one another. However, when Erica goes to the general chat to discuss something that has been weighing on her mind, news strikes that Cornelius (Corn), who was the original creator of the group, has been involved in a car crash and was now in urgent care. The group is noticeably surprised and caught off guard, but as Erica still insists to share her message, it seems that there is more to Corn than they had originally thought. Going through the game, it seems that Cornelius was a serial predator sending unsolicited pictures to women and minors in an attempt to groom them. More and more people come forward and by the end, everyone is left wondering whether they should dissolve the group. They decide to leave and from there the story ends.

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My Questions/Notes

Here are some random thoughts that arose during my playthrough

  • I like the format, and the characters right now are very engaging.

  • Corn was in a car crash??

  • I can relate to having a small group of friends come together to participate in fun, intellectual, discussions.

  • So Corn is the power abuser…

  • Did something happen to August in the past?

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Criticisms

In the beginning, the background music was a little bit too discomforting for me so I turned it off. Plus, the ending was a little too abrupt. When Corn mentions in his email that he did things to August that he regrets, possibly alluding to SA, we don’t see that explored much when we switch to August’s perspective, instead leaving the player to guess what happened. A vague approach is a valid way to end a game, but for such a clear-cut story, I think that a determined answer would have worked well. I also would have liked to see a return of Corn coming back to an empty channel (from most of the characters leaving the group) Maybe even a fade-to-black as Corn is typing would have made the ending more satisfying to me.

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Overall Impression

Pretty Good! The themes were cool and it was a very engaging story.

4 Likes