51 | WHEN THE MILLENNIUM MADE MARVELOUS MOVES
51 | WHEN THE MILLENNIUM MADE MARVELOUS MOVES
by: Michael Baltes
Progress:
- I reached an end of this game in around 45 minutes, with light use of the walkthrough. I suspect a better ending is possible given that I had an unused firecracker that must be able to disrupt the robbers or perhaps the political rally in some way, but I didn’t want to unwind that much of my progress to keep tinkering with it.
Things I Appreciated:
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I really liked the mechanically unique feature of having a time loop where object locations persist at a reset. In a typical time loop story, the protagonist always resets to the same place/time without evidence of the time loop happening other than their memories. Yet here, you will wake up where you died in the previous loop, and similarly, you will retain all the objects that you were holding at the time. I thought this was a distinctive feature of this game and would love to see it mechanically developed even further.
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I really liked the descriptions of the flat environment that showed the characters’ financial state. The environment felt very specific and familiar because of this, as opposed to just being a generic setting. I felt like I was rewarded for exploring these rooms with some interesting details.
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I thought the central game mechanic of figuring out how to wake up earlier and earlier in the day was intriguing. While it’s not logical in any way really (wouldn’t you just set the alarm clock differently?) I liked the idea that I had to almost trick the protagonist into not sleeping as much as they needed to so that more locations/events would be accessible. Once I understood that that was what was happening, it helped me focus my attention to finding things I could do to affect my sleep schedule.
Feedback/Recommendations/Questions:
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Given the narrow scope of the game, I found it strange that a plot beat was repeated. At 9:45 PM, you get automatically struck by a car if you try crossing the street, causing the day to reset. But I found it strange later when you can have the same type of event (getting hit by a car) happen at a different time of day to progress the game. I thought the second event was more specific (you are hit by a car and wake up in the hospital in order to get an important item), so I’d recommend changing the first one to a different type of event for variety.
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The bigger issue I have is how the protagonist doesn’t acknowledge the time loop in any way. I feel like I was missing a lot of emotional development from the protagonist since they don’t make any effort to speculate why the time loop is happening, or have an impulse to tell Jo to leave work earlier, or anything else that might alter the sequence of events. This made me wonder, does the character not know that the loop is happening? But since your inventory persists, they should at least be confused why they have a random firecracker that wasn’t there moments ago. Despite seeing Jo die multiple times, I felt like it lacked an emotional weight because of how uninvolved the protagonist seemed in what was happening.
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In a similar way, I would’ve liked if after making certain progress as a player, the descriptions of locations updated to reflect a raised sense of stakes/purpose or to show how the protagonist’s state of mind is evolving. I want to see more desperation and determination on the page, rather than the neutral distance the protagonist seems to view these events from.
What I learned about IF writing/game design:
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What I thought was notable here was how I found myself craving a stronger sense of escalation to the story, and that there are many ways that could be done. You could give the reader more access to inner thoughts; have dynamic location descriptions that update after key events; show a change in the character’s moods through external actions or dialogue. It makes me realize that through examining all these narratives/games to get to this one, there really is a lot in the author’s toolkit to escalate narrative tension and that if one style seems inappropriate (for instance, here, maybe you wouldn’t want to have inner monologue at all), there will always be another option/approach.
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One of the design details I really loved here was the mini-map of the street at the top of the screen. It did take me a bit to understand what it was, but once I figured out what it was, I found that it was very helpful as a technique to visualize the locations. It also emphasizes the importance of knowing which side of the street to be on at what time, because of events that require crossing the street (or not crossing the street) to activate. This was a good implementation of an in-game map that was helpful without being obtrusive.
Quote:
- “I saw no Johanna there.” (I think this might have been an error message, but in context it was extremely chilling. She had just died in front of me, so I interpreted as a shocked/dissociative response to what happened.)
Lasting Memorable Moment:
- The sinking feeling that I had when I saw that there was a dark van outside the supermarket (having earlier heard on the news about the robbers). I knew what was about to happen, and worse, I knew that I was so early in the game that I wouldn’t be able to stop it this time.
DemonApologist_WhenTheMillennium.txt (81.7 KB)