Brett Witty's IFComp 2024 Reviews

Last year I had a great time reading reviews and getting some for my own work. I didn’t have anything in the comp this year, so I felt like I should contribute as many reviews as I can manage.

As a disclaimer, I beta-tested two of the games this year, and helped out a little in the comp organizing. I’ll attempt to keep those from being a factor in any review.

My Reviewing Approach

I want to highlight games with good ideas, good writing and good implementation. I want to improve games and writers if I can. Being nasty is not useful (however fun), but being constructive is (however hard). I don’t automatically ding games for any particular technology. I want to see good stories or games, regardless.

I’ll review games and put the review up when I can, first on this forum and then later on my website. I’ll cross-post to the particular game threads.

I’m happy to have a friendly discussion with the authors via direct message.

Good luck everyone!

Reviews posted (13)

13 Likes

Final Call by Emily Stewart and Zoe Danieli

In Final Call, you play a down-on-your-luck con man. But unsympathetically so: you’ve seemingly ditched your partner Mike at a previous job, and your long-suffering girlfriend Roxy - aren’t they all called Roxy? - is dragged through yet another mud puddle of your failure and she’s had enough. I imagined a slimy but somehow likeable jerk like Worm from Rounders. Out of guilt or a chance at redemption, you’ve taken on one last job with Mike: a simple little trick to flog money from a casino. No problems.

Of course it’s a trap and Mike has gotten his revenge. You wake up and your casino job has become something like a Saw movie. Abandoned buildings, cracked mirrors, mysterious corpses and a feeling that you’re being watched.

I have to admit the setup was pretty obvious, which is A-okay for horror movies. It’s a warmup for anticipating worse things. But the setup was drawn out. Several paragraphs said pretty much the same thing and there was quite a lot of tell, and not a lot of show, in the old writing parlance. Each character was sketched very loosely and you are given a chance to name yourself, but it doesn’t pay off in any way that I could see.

The main horror gameplay involves exploring a thoroughly unsettling building to find some clues to type on a typewriter. Why? Not sure. Why is Mike and the casino dropping you in a place like this? Not sure. What do they get out of it? Not sure. If you were to be carved up by Jigsaw, they gave you a hell of a lot of latitude to just walk about. There were hand-waves towards a chilling message by the organizers, but it never really pays off.

Some of the bite-sized set pieces are dripping with atmosphere. The secret found on the body is properly chilling, for example. But others are just sorta creepy rooms with nothing more going on. You are encouraged to return to rooms, but this does something meaningful once, maybe once-and-a-half times.

There are a few instances where you can choose to do something different and get different information, but none of it is exceptionally enlightening. I managed to smash through the story in maybe 15 minutes and got to a “nice ending”. But it was an ending like a dead end - it just kinda stopped. I played through again, doing things slightly differently and seeing different details, but nothing radical. I chose a completely different ending which attempted to explain the backstory for the creepy building, but didn’t really.

In horror you want to dunk your audience into a deep vat of questions. Unsettling questions that they might not want answers to, but are driven towards. Final Call had all the aesthetics trappings of horror, but didn’t quite fulfill it in gameplay or writing. With the same attention to atmosphere and perhaps a longer polish on the writing, future games from Emily and Zoe could do well at Ectocomp.

14 Likes

Imprimatura by Elizabeth Ballou et al

I’m still blessed to have both of my parents still around. I do not look forward to that day when they pass away and in untangling their final mortal affairs and effects, I find the little notes on who they really were, beyond just “Mum” and “Dad” distorted through my own little prism of perspective and memory. Imprimatura is exactly this struggle, intertwined with the challenge of art.

The gameplay loop is simple: browse a wide array of paintings of your father, and choose seven of them to keep. (Actually the main character can be a mother or grandparent as well - you can choose their relationship to you, the protagonist. I’m sticking with my choice - their father.) Every time you keep an artwork, a memory shakes free and (eventually, literally) builds a picture of your father.

Immediately I was reminded of the Nebula Award finalist Scents and Semiosis where you have a similar gameplay loop. However in S&S, each item is unique and procedurally-generated. After a few rounds, I noticed exact repetition in the paintings, so I think this is a more curated experience in some direction. The associated memory appears to be chosen appropriate to the painting and sketches out your father and your relationship to him. This procedural concoction of experience, as well as some beautiful writing, definitely earns its similarity to Scents and Semiosis.

I played through a few times, and as I dug deeper I was intimately aware of similarities to my own game from last year’s IF Comp, Hand Me Down, where a dying father tries to share his art with his daughter. I’m glad Imprimatura came out this year, because it hits the notes so much better and the whole experience - the visual design, the subtle sound effects, the beautiful music, the writing - ties together so well. It is frankly beautiful.

Imprimatura is, however, ostensibly about that uneasy balance in art of what is invented and what is discovered. In choosing pieces to take with you, you are inventing the image of your father whilst telling yourself it’s curation. Replays are encouraged and so you realise that there is actually no objective portrait of your father to preserve. Just a lot of brush strokes, and you make of it what you will. This is a wonderful way to tie the art to the gameplay. It does, however, seem to err towards an unflattering portrait of him, but not egregiously so.

So while I have small reservations regarding the palette, the layering and composition feel beautiful and complete.

15 Likes

You Can’t Save Her by Sarah Mak

The blurb for You Can’t Save Her describes it as “a 12-minute interactive story”. The title screens offers the chance to start or go through individual chapters. There are five of them.

“Five chapters?! In a 12 minute game?!” I would have exclaimed this loudly, but I had just put the kids to sleep.

Nevertheless I plowed on. The game begins with “It will always end the same way.” As I took a breath and prepared to dive into the narrative… It gave me an interactive content warning. A content warning that is both neat in that it lets you click on a term and let it expand, but also clumsy in that the first click doesn’t tell you anything except “clicking this will tell you more”. This awkward stumble of IF literacy felt like the first jolt of a roller coaster leaving the station.

Next, it said, “Headphones recommended.” I was torn. The kids remained asleep and no author will get on my good side if they recommend sound and I come to regret it. Final Call had a decent audioscape, but the random casino sounds almost had me undone. Imprimatura had some beautiful music floating under the game. I had to give You Can’t Save Her a chance as well. I took another deep breath and turned the volume up a little.

And look, I’m not going to walk you through my every moment with You Can’t Save Her, but my growing sense of wariness ended up being unwarranted. This is a narrative game of two friends who find themselves either side of a religious divide, how they got there and their attempts to resolve it. It was reminiscent of an anime or manga, with quiet, emotionally-laden moments that explode into superheroic clashes of swords.

Once the story gets going, the chapters makes sense. The two characters are pink and blue, as seen in the cover art, and cleverly laced into the hyperlinks for each section. From the perspective of blue, all links are blue, and pink for pink. The narrative bounces between the two characters, as well as two times, before and after. Without the visual cues, this could be extremely confusing, especially with the sparse text. But it works well here. As chapters ticked by, I had a sense of a mutual gravity between the two characters, spinning around each other like two lost moons, each one threatening to spin off into oblivion at any moment.

You Can’t Save Her employs a number of hyperlink tricks. Despite timed text and overloading what it means to click a link - sometimes it cycles through choices, other times it cycles through a few before resolving into plain text, and others it advances the scene - these all work reasonably well without too much confusion or clunkiness with how Twine works. The transitions between scenes effectively use colour to convey information.

The times they don’t work well is when they take an effective use, and repeat it too soon after and too similarly (the “I’m sorry” section). Sometimes the timing is a little off and you wonder if the game is broken and forgot to advance. Another has a scene where the antagonist dodges out of the way of a bullet and disappears into the darkness. You are asked to chase her:

She could be to the north, north by east, north-northeast, northeast by north, northeast, northeast by east, east-northeast, east by north, east, east by south, east-southeast, southeast by east, southeast, southeast by south, south-southeast, south by east, south, south by west, south-southwest, southwest by south, southwest, southwest by west, west-southwest, west by south, west, west by north, west-northwest, northwest by west, northwest, northwest by north, north-northwest, or north by west.

Each of these directions is an option. To which I thought, “FORGET THIS”. But it’s a false choice and one that risks overloading the player and jolting them out of the story.

The music is by Falling Islands and works effectively. Occasionally the timing of scene changes or when the song loops was accidentally awkward but these are hard problems to deal with, especially in Twine.

Although the story didn’t quite deliver the emotional or philosophical punch I was hoping for, it was nevertheless a deftly crafted piece with considerable care and polish.

14 Likes

Hi Brett! It’s good to see you still reviewing games in the comp. I still remember your review of my game Bi Lines; it was a very thoughtful writeup that really uplifted me.

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Thanks! I’m glad to hear that. I hope to get to your entry this year!

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Awesome! I’m looking forward to your thoughts!

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House of Wolves by Shruti Deo

This short, bleak piece takes its place on stage honestly. The red-black-and-white colour scheme is harsh. Ornamentation, minimal. The content warning does not euphemise. In fact, I was expecting the warning to have been an abstraction for something much darker or more sinister, but it was thankfully not.

From the beginning, the game establishes a tone of grinding inevitability, of obedience, of repetition. Depression. Given no obvious target to fight against this ennui, I took the role of obedient student. I did the right things: washing up, studying, going to dinner. The latter is the pinch point of the day - where the presumably vegan protagonist is forced to eat meat. It’s a dramatic, visceral struggle, but I guess understandable.

As the day starts over, the same choices reappear with the same wording, reinforcing the sense of a life stuck on repeat. In some ways the constrained interactivity fits the story well. The more you stay obedient and go on autopilot, the more you disconnect from the torture of dinner. The cycle continues a few times, making short explorations into even more issues the protagonist is facing.

And then it kinda resolves.

I didn’t do anything special. It hits a crescendo but I nor the protagonist seemed to learn anything to earn this ending. It was an unearned dream of hope, getting me through an unending cycle of bleakness.

So I started the game again as a rebel. I was going to break this cycle with my bare hands. Except you can’t. Each time you are driven back to the obedient path. Given the same revolting meals, disconnecting from the same group of friends.

As an interactive piece, you cede most of your agency. As fiction, usually the writer presents a problem and through the story, provides a response. House of Wolves is just the question. All setup and no punchline. An audit of abuse, but not really an investigation.

If this story is from the author’s own experience, I hope for them not just an ember of warmth, but a glow to move towards, a resolution to a dark chapter. House of Wolves offers a raw portrayal of abuse, but its lack of resolution leaves both the protagonist and the player adrift in a sea of unrelenting bleakness.

8 Likes

An Account of Your Visit to the Enchanted House & What You Found There by Mandy Benanav

After a short string of bleak games, I was delighted to get The Enchanted House. It was a creamy lemon-mint sorbet - just a hint of sour at the start, but then once I got into it, the game was endlessly refreshing and sweet.

You are invited to a spooky house by an unknown individual for unknown purposes. Classic. But this is Addams Family spooky, not Texas Chainsaw Massacre. You soon find an entertaining ensemble of characters contained in a tight set of well-used locations. Initially I was skeptical - it had all the trappings of a parser puzzle romp, but it’s in Twine. The lighter puzzles fit the mood excellently, and abstracted away all the fumbling with items or conversations.

While only a little of this game I found outright funny — the writing desk joke tickled me immensely — it was thoroughly charming. All the writing was crisp and inventive. The characters were drawn well. Although… my eyebrows rose steadily higher when I explored the mansion and found both a cat and an octopus NPC… But I’ve already used my “mention my own work” token for this IF Comp. The rest of the house’s inhabitants were varied and colourful, and the coincidence was one instance too short to be a conspiracy.

But yes, the puzzles are light but unfold nicely. Every character introduction is unique and interesting. And the writing is just damn charming. I didn’t know what it had in store for the ending, but it had a sweet and poignant callback to the start of the story and a satisfying conclusion.

All in all, I was charmed by this game. Utterly charmed. Enchanted even.

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Uninteractive Fiction by Leah Thargic

With all the rest of the care and attention they put into this, they missed an opportunity to write a walkthrough.

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I am informed that a note-perfect walkthrough is available for Uninteractive Fiction.

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Doctor Who and the Dalek Super-Brain by jkj yuio

I’ve only tangentially intersected with Doctor Who throughout my life. My Dad liked it, it was always on Australian ABC TV after school, and I think I even read a Tom Baker-themed Cybermen novelization once as a teenager. I even remember seeing the very first episode in black-and-white replayed as a special feature on our national broadcaster. I never gelled with it, especially the modern reincarnations (ha! I made a Doctor Who joke). I appreciate sci-fi which doesn’t take itself too seriously, but Doctor Who always seemed a step too far.

In reviewing this game I was already a little reluctant. I knew I wouldn’t get any deep references, but I’m across the basics enough to get into it. So I did.

Doctor Who and the Dalek Super-Brain is a bit of fan fiction using what I believe is a custom visual novel engine. It has a commercialisation vibe to it - the very first thing you see is a synopsis that reads like ad copy - but it’s definitely a labour of fandom. There’s an introduction to IF for newbies who might happen to stumble across the IF Comp, and there’s a lot of customization options. Every scene is accompanied with a 3D render and maybe an assortment of static renders of NPCs. The game opens with the thumping classic Doctor Who theme. This is all to say, they’ve put a bunch of work in.

As a bit of Doctor Who fun, that’s fine. As a piece of interactive fiction amongst nearly seventy others, it falls short.

The plot is something I might expect from a Doctor Who TV episode. You, the Doctor, are randomly dumped into a problem with your assistant, something bad happens to them, you hit your Act 2 low point, solve a small puzzle, then jostle on through to a climax where the Doctor defeats the villain with a bit of tricksy logic. In the game, these all happen in quick succession, without much in the way of character development, deep exploration of the environment or any particular idea. It has all the story beats a fan would recognize, but not much more.

Interaction is primarily through selecting options from a list, or occasionally getting extra info via hyperlinks. Unfortunately for a few scenes you need to lawn-mower your way through options to progress. In parts they are at least kind and tell you you’re cruising towards a deadly end if you don’t change course. Nevertheless, the successful path through the game felt a little too much like mind-reading the author. I certainly did not appreciate being scolded by the game in the wrap-up for choosing the wrong sonic screwdriver attachments, even though they all seemed ostensibly the same. And dire consequences that my assistant endured seemed to be forgotten by the next scene.

All the assets assembled for the game appear to be from elsewhere. They fit together, which is no mean feat. The main NPCs are from Daz 3D, which has a particular uncanny-valley look and - it has to be said - have a horniness to them. The assistant has an audaciously plunging neckline. I know Doctor Who has found some sexuality over the decades, but I suspect this might be a step beyond that. To the author’s defence, the characters are not used sexily, so stays on brand as far as I know. You can zoom-scroll into cleavage though. I think it’s all okay, but just a little odd.

Scene composition was a little weird. With a big focus on visuals, the creator needed to nail this. On my machine (and I believe others), characters are positioned far too high and have their heads truncated. Or their boobs focussed on, depending on how you feel. Occasionally they go in for a close-up of an NPC’s face with a detailed render, but which feels like I’ve got a dermatoscope out, examining their pores. From this startling closeness you can even zoom in, although the picture resolution does not support it.

NPCs tend to hover in their environment, which might be okay if they are in space, or at least to give the scene some dynamic appeal. But they can hover behind text and when you want to zoom, you just scroll. So while there appears to be a lot of care as evidenced by the settings panel that allow you to customize how text appears, there are a bunch of simple mistakes that probably should have been caught.

Lately I’ve been making my own 3D art and I can appreciate the tonne of work they must have put in to make this game. But as a whole piece of work, it fell a little flat for me. The presentation initially felt fresh, but revealed a plain core. It’s focussed on fun, but a little more time working on their craft could have paid off immensely. It’ll be interesting to see what they do next.

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Hi Brett. Thanks a lot for your really interesting review. I’ve discovered from feedback that people like playing in widescreen, for example 16/9 laptops. I’ve definitely got a problem with this form factor. The text and picture fight for vertical space and, as you noticed, the character close-ups tend to loom in rather too much.

Thanks again.

2 Likes

Re: You Can’t Save Her

^ exactly this

Yeah, it’s a tricky design problem. One thing I forgot to add to my review is the intended design gave me a modern sense of the 90s adventure games like Return to Zork. Which is a good thing! Keep at it!

1 Like

Under the Cognomen of Edgar Allan Poe by Jim Nelson

Full disclosure: I was a beta-tester for this game. I got Jim’s okay to write my review.

In idle moments I’ve wondered what you’d need to write if your goal was to win IF Comp. Do you go high-brow and write that one great piece of interactive fiction, emotionally resonant and philosophically poignant enough to bring your standard forum reviewer to rapturous tears? Or do you go the so-called low-road of the entertainer and the comic, making something light but universally enjoyable?

The protagonist of Under the Cognomen of Edgar Allan Poe is challenged with much the same question, and takes both roads. The devil, bastard that he is, has given you a diabolical offer of giving you either Fame or Respect. While you take one road, your doppleganger takes the other. This very same deal was rumoured to be behind Edgar Allan Poe’s success, and he perhaps was not the first.

Three different twinned fates intertwine in this game. From its description the game seems incredibly complicated, but it is actually fairly light throughout. There’s a good balance of conversations, explorations and puzzles, light and dark. It’s a TADS 3 game (yay!) but not your traditional kind - there’s a lot of menus to cut down some of the busy work, and you’re never trying to open a door with everything in your inventory. The hint system was well-done and the map felt expansive yet not too laborious to move around in.

I was really impressed with a game interested in exploring the dichotomy of popularity versus depth, that somehow manages to find the middle way itself. And, in the midst of this balancing act, pays a layered homage to Edgar Allan Poe’s works! My favourite bit is the clever trick that allows one twin to escape its Faustian deal, pivotting on a peculiar historical quirk.

So Jim has cut the Gordian Knot. How do you do well in IF Comp? Write something meditative or for the masses? Well, you be a thoroughly, solidly skilled writer and just do both! Easy!

I have to admit I’m a little jealous at how easy he’s made it look. I must invite him around to discuss his technique over a bottle of amontillado.

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Where Nothing Is Ever Named by Viktor Sobol

I’m definitely bang up for a high-concept game. Where Nothing Is Ever Named ironically names the premise and delivers precisely that. It’s a minimal escape room where the trick is that nothing has names, like being noun-blind in a parser game. Luckily you can distinguish objects from one another, so there’s a little bit of detective work. Verbs and adjectives sure work.

I was super keen on the idea of this game but only so-so on the execution. I was hoping for a little more exploration to show how much of a game you can have without nouns. The game is quite short, but even then I floundered. With such a limited premise, a bunch of things were aggressively not implemented. I was hoping to feel, smell, and taste my way to victory, but much of it was denied.

What little details remained were quite evocative, and I liked the merger of some untethered fantasy genre and perhaps an SCP-like region.

So it was neat but I was hoping for more. What exactly? Well, it’s hard to name…

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Thanks for the kind review, Brett! And thanks for playtesting.

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I’m going to sneak in some last reviews while I can. I must warn you I am ill, so the reviews will consume what minimal brain power I have left, in between sleeps.

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Quest for the Teacup of Minor Sentimental Value by Damon L. Wakes

This is a charming JRPG in a slightly modern style - high-res tiles, lots of beautiful colour and every villager lives in a room the size of a football field. While there are certain JRPG trappings like getting into a battle, it’s all in service of the story and comedy, rather than stretching out the adventure to 100 hours plus.

Of course your quest is minor, but it’s meaningful. The NPCs you meet either throw up small obstacles (“You’re looking… for a teacup?!”) or huge ones (you can be utterly annihilated by a jerk genie or a road sign your disregarded).

I enjoy Wakes’ style of humorous writing. It’s anachronistic here but always lands for me.

The graphics, special effects and sound were all great.

I managed to win by out-annoying Actual, Literal Satan and that felt perfect. Small stakes against gigantic opponents defeated by stubbornness.

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