I played through this game once, reaching the end after about 53 minutes.
Things I Appreciated:
What stands out significantly here are many of the meta jokes. First and foremost, when I clicked on this game, I thought it was going to be some kind of cooking simulator because of the front matter (“SimpleChef is helping parents out with a new back-to-school offer.”) I legitimately thought I was about to play some game where I have to put together meals using one of those mail-order services along with some Ikea-core instructions. I kept thinking about this while I was playing, only to finally realize (I think) that it’s making fun of YouTube/podcast etc ad sponsorships. There are many examples of this kind of meta-humor: “unfinished” content, an extended survey about the game and the survey itself, and a fake download screen that gave me an opportunity to pretend I cared about checking my e-mail for a few minutes. These moments create an interesting effect because of how meta the game is. It’s almost as though the in-universe professor/creator of the game is self-conscious about how the thing they are writing is going, and is trying to distract the reader and themselves from these uncomfortable emotions with this meta-humor.
There was a unique phenomenon I experienced while playing this that I will now attempt to explain. Wish me luck! I think in games that are About Life™, there is a natural player urge to hold a mirror up to their own experiences and current state. Indeed, this is heavily encouraged by the game in this case. But! From the first moments of narration, I kept being distracted by the voice of the narrator. What is happening exactly, I wondered, that these kinds of philosophical thoughts are being imposed upon a baby/child? And as the game goes, the narrator becomes more and more intrusive. I realized, eventually, that the narrator is using the game as a mirror to hold up to themselves, instead. And this led to a kind of authorship-readership-narratorship power struggle: who gets to hold the mirror? I wanted to snatch back the ability to be introspective because of the subject matter of the game, yet, the narrator snatches the mirror back to view themselves instead. It kind of has me thinking of the responses that I’ve written for IF Comp so far. Like, I guess they’re about the fiction/games, but don’t they also kind of feel like weird personal essays at times? Like right now, for instance? Have I, as a responder to IF Comp, snatched the mirror to look at myself more than the work these responses are ostensibly about? Is that an inevitable feature of subjective review/analysis/criticism such as this thread? Let me know in the comments, and don’t forget to c̸̙͠lic̴̭͌k̶̩̅ ̵̱̕th̷̟̃at̶͚͑ ̴̧͂b̸̡̅ë̷͇́l̷̺̐l̴͜͝!
Feedback/Recommendations/Questions:
I ran this game online through Chrome and I found that this game really chugs/lags, which is strange to me. I’ve ran many more resource- and media-intensive games than this so far without a similar issue. So what is happening with this text-based game? Any time I wanted to copy-paste a quote, it took some time for the cursor to catch up to make that possible. (I even went through and closed a bunch of other things running on my computer/other tabs to see if that helped. It didn’t.) Maybe this is an intentional feature (the game is meta and intentionally “wastes” your time as part of the experience), otherwise my guess is that it must be running some inordinate amount of code/variable checks per page. I don’t know enough about coding to offer a specific recommendation, except that I would like it to not lag.
I had a weird emotional experience of this game. At times, the questions this game asks me or prompts me to think about are very difficult. (Based on what I’ve experienced IRL over the last few years especially, certain elements really made me feel uncomfortable. Not in a bad way because the game has done anything wrong, it’s just the nature of games that are trying to be about you.) Yet the game is also going out of its way to be very funny with the meta jokes, etc. It leads to a kind of mercurial tone where I’m not sure if I should be clinging to a core of meaning here, or if I’m being trolled, essentially. My question is, is the meta humor a necessary relief from the darker elements of the game? Is it necessary because the game is simulating the inescapable tension one feels balancing on the razor’s edge of acknowledging/distracting from death, and humor is an essential part of that? I think maybe the answer is yes, but I’m not fully convinced.
What I learned about IF writing/game design:
Something this game posits (as I read it) is a kind of triad of methods to better understand life: (1) analyzing it in an academic/philosophical way; (2) actually just doing/living life; (3) doing/living life as mediated through a guided fictional experience like this game. In terms of the first one, there’s a presentational element I’m flagging here: the use of a white background and plain text along with academic writing dense with quotes, citations, etc., which seems to point to the insufficiency of that type of approach as these fragments of a paper interleave with the rest of the game. Similar to film editing techniques of the association between sequential images, the different backgrounds push the player to make an implicit comparison between the methods. The message I got from it is: isn’t the game approach, the IF approach, more inviting? (Wait, I just kind of realized that what I “learned” here was… use different backgrounds for different sections? Don’t I already know that? Well here is another example of a context to do that in.)
This game plays with expectations as to whether or not your choices are being recorded/mattered. Throughout the game I wondered if I would see some kind of summation of the simulated life I lived based on those choices, and I did! But in a twisted way. You are shown a “letter to yourself” based on your choices, and the letter is structured to reveal inconsistencies in your choices based on what it groups together. (At least… mine did. Maybe my choices were particularly disjointed, but I kind of doubt that.) This was an interesting meta twist as it provides the player with what they are expecting (a summation of their choices) but shows them why that is a questionable thing to want (the summation is definitionally inadequate to tell you much more about yourself than a horoscope might). So my lesson here is: you can weaponize your reader’s familiarity with the genre (an IF game about life that shows some kind of culmination of your choices) to give them an interesting experience when it doesn’t turn out quite like they expect.
Quote:
“Clowns represent full depravity and unchecked hubris. We are to speak in truth, not deceit and lies. The stories are wrong. Canio is not a tragic puppet of circumstance or dramatic irony, but a fool undeserving of compassion and love.” (This is an absurdly exaggerated response to me saying that I’d prefer a good joke to a bad joke. Also: what’s up with all the clown games lately?)
Lasting Memorable Moment:
When in the middle of a survey about a game I hadn’t finished yet, I was asked whether I thought the length of that very survey that I hadn’t finished yet was appropriate. I guess it’s connected to this idea that these games about life are asking you to reflect on a life that by definition hasn’t finished yet. Or it’s just a cute meta-joke. Pick whichever you like.
Content Warning: This game discusses an investigation of child sexual abuse in a way that is (imo) not thoroughly conveyed by its existing content warning, so I am adding that here up front. As such, this response also discusses that (in the section Feedback/Recommendations/Questions)
28 | BIG FISH
28 | BIG FISH by: Binggang Zhuo
Progress:
I completed this game, reaching the “true ending” in around 25 minutes.
Things I Appreciated:
The element I thought was most engaging about this piece was the surprise Lovecraftian/supernatural twist which builds over the course of the piece as you visit the various locations. The setting of a strange town was a good choice for this kind of story. I liked the gradual intensification of this aspect of the piece.
While there wasn’t that much choice ultimately in the path you take, I liked some of the interactive elements where you return to a location that you’ve been before with a new item or new information, and there is colored text that indicates what has changed. This directs the player’s attention appropriately, making it relatively seamless to travel through the different locations.
Feedback/Recommendations/Questions:
Re: the content warnings, I can empathize with the challenge of writing thorough/accurate content warnings because I find it hard to sum up what in my own work might be warn-worthy content, how specific to be, etc. It’s like having to write an abstract of a paper, only it’s an abstract of the potentially disturbing things in a fictional world that you are immersed in writing, a task I find it hard to wrap my head around at times. However, in this case, I think the topics discussed could’ve been listed out in more detail. I think it’s good to be more specific if you can, so that players that want/need content warnings aren’t surprised in a bad way by what’s in there even after reading those warnings. Speaking from my perspective alone, I was surprised by what was in this piece based on the content warnings that I read.
There are some ominous references throughout the piece about the protagonist, e.g., “The repetitive in-and-out motions [of using a toothbrush] bring some lewd thoughts to your mind.”; “You found a few things that shouldn’t be here under the [victim’s] bed. This led you to some despicable thoughts.”; and the protagonist’s impulse to confess to the crime at the end as one of the options (which turns out to be a joke ending). At the true end of the game, the protagonist invites the victim’s sister Sarah to live with him. Because of the comments I quoted leading up to this ending, it certainly gives the impression that Sarah is in significant danger from the protagonist, but the narrative presents the ending in a neutral/positive light that seems to be unconscious of that. So it makes me really wonder about the reasons for the toothbrushing/look under the bed lines? Am I missing some important context here, I wonder, and misreading this character?
This piece could use some light edits for formatting. For instance, a link says “Enter Chapter 3” when other links refer to a specific geographic location. I think this could be changed to “West Bank” to be more in line with the styling of the other links. Similarly, I believe the character “Fleur” is sometimes called “Fuller,” (I’m pretty sure these are the same person), so I’d recommend picking one of those names to use consistently.
I would like to see a unique aspect of this piece developed more. The sheriff accompanies you (the reporter) to many locations throughout the game, which I think is uncommon for these types of games—to have two characters traveling together through the majority of the scenes. You could really take advantage of this feature of the game by including more dialogue commentary between the two characters in each area to enrich the atmosphere of the piece. Especially given that the reporter is an outsider, and the sheriff is more familiar with the area, I feel like this is a ripe opportunity to develop their characterization much more than currently exists in the piece.
What I learned about IF writing/game design:
I think this is a good example of how a mystery that doesn’t give a lot of choice can still be developed in an interesting way. I thought that even though your character kind of auto-solves the mystery, there still was enough creativity/intrigue in the plot to sustain interest. So what I take away from that is: sometimes just allowing the player to read the clues in a somewhat nonlinear way rather than actively solving the mystery can work as an approach, if the mystery is inherently interesting enough.
This was a good case study of an escalation from the very grounded and ordinary (you are just at home starting off on this journey) to something much more supernatural and odd. I thought that was built up well with worldbuilding details that start off a little strange, but get progressively harder to ignore as you start to understand how central they are to the plot. I think these details stand out because the start of the story is so grounded by comparison—a good note on how to set up for a shift like this.
Quote:
“The middle-aged man in a suit begins to explain the origin of humans to you. The gist is that in ancient times, alien spaceships crashed in Antarctica, they modified Earth’s organisms to ensure food supply, and humans were born in this process. [Look at the table] You see a copy of ‘The H. P. Lovecraft Collection’ next to the man.” (I thought this was a funny buildup to looking at the table and seeing the explanation for his comments.)
OK, given my experience with the game (where I inadvertently gave myself the same name as my partner) I find the fact that you did this with the girlfriend’s name hilarious! Maybe everybody’s a figment of everyone else’s imagination
I just read your review on Imprimatura. Very interesting and well-written. It’s great to see your thoughts and associations with the game, the obvious involvement with the work, both mechanically and thematically.
After just over an hour, the game returned me to the title screen, which I interpret as the end of the game.
Things I Appreciated:
This game features poetry heavily, but is also written in a poetic manner. Many individual lines and turns of phrase invite pause as you might consider how they challenge you to think. I’ll give you one morsel of an example: clicking through to “cell like-clouds.” You expect it to be “cell-like clouds,” which draws to mind a thunderstorm cell, a metaphor whose familiarity has perhaps dulled it: you are not often invited to think in a visceral way about why a storm might be compared to cells, in particular. But the unexpected displacement of the hyphen creates a new image from that. What is a “cell like-cloud”? It makes the cell the forefront of the image, as though something alive is posing as a storm, as opposed to a storm posing as something alive. And is a storm un-alive? It’s certainly dynamic, and often storms are described using a kind of stages-of-development-life-cycle. I go into this detail to illustrate the poetics of this IF piece: you might be drawn to engage with many lines in such a way.
Related to the point about poetics: as a non-poet (or rather, someone who does not seek out the challenges of poetry in particular), advice I’ve received and found helpful at times is to listen to challenging poems read aloud. Throughout the piece, I would sometimes pause to read sentences out loud to myself to see what hearing them did for me. So I thought it was an interesting aspect of the piece that I was drawn to interact with it by speaking, something I haven’t done before in this response process (except perhaps to sigh or moan or curse during a parser puzzle or what have you).
The interactive element I found most interesting was the gamification of the labor of translation. Unless one works as a translator, (or do that kind of academic reading practice where you hyperfixate on the thing you are doing until it feels in some way alien—like I’m sure there are reams of academic literature about how all acts of communication are in some sense translation), you most often interface with the already-translated poem, story, or what have you. This allows you to focus on “higher order” units of meaning, rather than at this subgrammatical level. Yet, this piece forces you to become more conscious of the labor of translation. You click the words, noting how they reform, rearrange, and recontextualize as the translation occurs. You’re left at the end with a “static” translated work that feels like it could have morphed, or could still morph, into something else, yet this is what Eca saw. So what I’m saying is: the gamification of translation here undercuts the finality of the text. What is the “canon” of a translation? What even is the canon of a “non-translated” text? It’s amorphous and unsettled.
There are a few engaging, pervasive themes in this text. The first is that of food/eating/consumption, to make both alien and inviting the act of eating. Consider this description of a biscuit: “After a tentative bite, you eagerly demolish the rest of the biscuit. It’s unlike anything you’ve ever eaten: dense and satisfying, but bright, with the funk of fermentation.” What an odd way to describe a biscuit, yet, accurate. It reminds me of the first time I did an at-home fermentation project to make some mead (I really wanted to know what it tastes like since it is in so many fantasy novels). When I tasted it, I came to a startling realization that should’ve been obvious in hindsight: wine doesn’t taste like grapes, wine tastes like yeast. How interesting, here, to actually credit the flavor of the biscuit to the microbiome whose collective lives and deaths produced it. That brings me to the second pervasive theme: this work is preoccupied with social scale, by which I mean, what is the relationship between an individual “cell” in a collective and the whole that it unknowingly or semi-knowingly produces? This plays out in all kinds of ways: Eca doing analysis without the context that would give the results of that analysis meaning; motes of dust making visible a beam of light; the moisture of a cloud being reconstituted from the skulls of the dead; atoms of various elements structuring a sample; individual word within a line within a whole of a poem within an anthology. There are many such images. And running alongside that, the threat of a cell that corrupts the whole: imagery of teratomas, growing tissue where it shouldn’t, the apostate resisting the call to analyze. I am left feeling conscious of a whole body or person as a permeable collective, not only in a physical sense (millions of cells, microbiome, etc) but in a social sense (influenced and influencing social forces beyond an ability to fully comprehend them). I am not able to condense what I have seen into something easily digestible. I’m sure when I re-read this paragraph looking for and failing to find all the typos, I’ll still be disappointed with how it fails to really express what is happening here, but I’ll leave that to the experts.
Feedback/Recommendations/Questions:
I know this is a matter of personal preference, but I loathe light mode, and in particular, this light mode. Let me make my case for why: the white background completely washes out the text. In the dark mode sections, the clickable word links really popped out in color. But in the light mode, I thought it completely washed out the distinctions between the brown/maroon and dark blue text. I spent much of the first few minutes of the game adjusting the browser window, zoom, computer brightness, etc., trying to settle into reading it, and as a result not focusing on the text itself as much. Given the themes of this work, this may be intentional. But given that there are plenty of people who feel as annoyed about dark mode as I do about the light mode experiences, I wonder if it would be worth making the light mode text colors more distinct from one another if this element of the user experience was unintended.
I experienced a significant issue in Analysis #2. When I got to that screen, clicking on the four links didn’t do anything, so I thought I had glitched or softlocked the game somehow and backtracked for a bit to see if I could get around that screen. Eventually, my solution was just to spam-click on the links because they would occasionally let me through. Having glanced at a few other reviews searching for technical help, my conclusion is that this is another Chrome error and perhaps the text was meant to display as flickering. However, I’m describing the issue here in case a technical fix is possible, in the event that this wasn’t the intended interface.
This is probably the most inconclusive critique that I have, as it’s so personal, but while I found the piece stimulating to analyze, I did not often find it emotionally engaging. I find I have a hard time connecting emotionally with text that is so self-dissociative. And it makes me a bit resentful in a way: if text seems not to want to be known, should I really open myself up to it? Why? I won’t be able to know if I’ve reached it; and I’m not always… I guess, mature enough to accept the notknowingness as itself the experience. It was hard to find footing in the story or the characters because of how abstract and amorphous they are, despite the vivid imagery in many of the sentences. I’m not sure what to make of that. It was still an engaging and interesting experience to read this, but I’m left with a sense that I’ve missed more than I’ve felt.
What I learned about IF writing/game design:
Simply put, the effect of writing interactive fiction with a deeply engaged sense of poetics. The poetics of the piece’s interactivity are something unique to this particular medium, enhancing and exceeding how this might have come across in a more static presentation.
A note about agency: as the game went, I chose to eat two biscuits (it appeared that I had the option to eat or not eat them, but I didn’t try to not eat them). At a later point, the apostate says, “What have I done? I have not collated the memories she brought to me. I have not kept eating and eating and eating what she has given me. I have not been her dutiful oblate.” Taking note of this, I thought, oh, maybe I shouldn’t just be eating all these damn biscuits. The next biscuit was eaten by default without offering a choice. I thought this was a great example of anticipating reader behavior to make a point. It’s more likely than not that players will eat the first biscuits, making the revocation of choice later more impactful.
Quote:
“And the sun came down to sterilize with fire the words we’d left rotting on the pavement. The sun mistaking the words for us while we mistook the word for its meaning.”
Lasting Memorable Moment:
When the protagonist loses their eye, raising the stakes of analysis considerably.
I reached the end of the game in about 40 minutes.
Things I Appreciated:
Weirdly (perhaps), my favorite part of the game was the salad dressing simulator. I thought it was the most actively engaging task that I was asked to do, and as a result I felt actively invested in reading the taste cues to figure out how to balance the flavor of the dressing. There’s something kind of interesting about the fact that you have the most engaging experiences at the compound that the protagonist has determined to leave forever.
I thought this was an interesting case where there is a notable gap between the player and the protagonist. As the player in this game, I felt a sense that I was lagging behind the protagonist’s knowledge and motives. You can guess what those motives are based on which tabs they left open on the console, or by interpreting their dreams, but you are not truly privy to their sense of purpose. That was a unique dynamic of this piece. I did not understand why we had flown all this way until the very final scene of the piece, yet, given that purpose at long last, the preceding clues make sense in hindsight.
I liked the sci-fi worldbuilding here. The snippets from the console tabs were interesting and felt internally consistent, as well as hinting toward the overall goals of the protagonist. An example of a cool worldbuilding detail would be the maintenance crabs that helped with the harvesting, that was a creative/imaginative touch.
Feedback/Recommendations/Questions:
Another entry with forced light mode in a row, oh no! The randomizer really hates my eyes today. The first time the switch happened I was caught off guard and really did not like it, but since it follows a pattern I learned to look away from the screen right before the bright flash was about to happen. I wonder if there’s a way to make the shift between dark/light mode a little less visually disruptive?
Something I noticed about my experience playing this game is how it reminded me of times in my life when I was most battling depression. The fact that your character wakes up, seems to only do the bare minimum in what seems like it would only take a few minutes/an hour of real time to complete before becoming so exhausted that they needed to sleep again felt very familiar to that. But I’m not sure to what extent that matches the tone of the game? I mean, in some ways, the kinds of tasks your character focuses on are peaceful in their simplicity (such as planting and growing herbs in the hydroponics station) with the exception of clearing the tabs from the console. But the game brought me more into that depressive mindset than a relaxed or calm/focused mindset.
I thought it could’ve been interesting to have more opportunities to engage with the “esoteric” objects (e.g., the tarot deck and orrery) and potentially have randomized results given to you? I just quickly replayed to check and still got the same cards. I think from a player perspective it would be interesting to be tempted by the opportunity to read into the random card that you get and interpret its significance to the plot, only to realize later that it was actually random and you essentially fabricated a connection with your pattern-seeking mind as can happen with real world tarot/horoscope readings.
In terms of the dream sequences, I thought some of them could’ve been written in a more intensely weird or disorienting way. I think I would’ve liked for them to stand apart from the “awake” writing style a bit more. However, that being said, the parts of the dreams that were happening inside the ship were realistic in a way (it reminded me of times when I had dreams about reading emails, like seriously, why does my subconscious need to waste my time while I’m asleep with that?) . But I don’t know, I just wish there was more intensity and variety to these sequences since they encompass a lot of the game’s runtime.
What I learned about IF writing/game design:
I thought this was a great example of balancing the desire to give the player insight into the character/world without overly explaining it. By the end, the things that I had seen made sense, but I didn’t necessarily feel that it was telegraphed to the point of undermining the story, either. Overall, I thought this is a good example of giving the player an opportunity to pay attention to learn more about the character and world, or not, and still have a fairly neatly tied conclusion to the narrative.
I really loved the way that the hyperlinks in the cult compound were formatted into a minimap of the area. This was a clever bit of UI that I thought helped provide a contrast between the compound and the ship, and made intuitive sense to navigate as a player.
Quote:
“The planetary dials continue to rotate, various dates appear and you notice how few of them hold any particular significance to you.”
Lasting Memorable Moment:
When the protagonist declares to the Hierophant that they want to leave, and ultimately hands in the jade figurine they’ve brought all this way.
31 | BREAKFAST IN THE DOLOMITES by: Roberto Ceccarelli
Progress:
I was able to finish this game in around 40 minutes. I did look at the walkthrough for a small bit of assistance (I needed to do the command “turn paper” to proceed), but otherwise, despite some parser command struggles I was able to sort things out. I apologize for forgetting to start a transcript until the buffet scene, but I’ve attached that partial transcript here in case it’s still useful.
Things I Appreciated:
I think what this game does that is interesting is that it realizes that struggles with parser gameplay can be inherently comedic, and takes advantage of that. Because the game’s front matter explicitly frames it as a comedy, I went in searching for the comedy, and realized that I was actually producing comedic moments by struggling to maintain my manners/decorum while doing tasks that would be automatic in real life. Take, for instance, this exchange between myself and the game, where I struggled to accept a drink from the waiter:
“May I serve you a hot beverage?” — the waiter asks, then explains: — “I can offer you a coffee, a cappuccino, a hot chocolate or a tea.”
> order cappuccino
“Don’t change the topic.” — Monica says you.
> ask for cappuccino
“Don’t change the topic.” — Monica says you.
> talk to waiter
You are already talking to the waiter.
> tell waiter that i would appreciate if they gave me a cappuccino at this time
“The only hot drinks that are available are a coffee, a cappuccino, a hot chocolate or a tea.” — the waiter states.
Reading this, it’s hard not to feel like I was co-writing a comedy sketch with the game. This made my experience more fun, rather than frustrating. Instead of getting annoyed at my aeons-long struggle to spread apricot jam on a slice of bread, I thought how funny that I go through all this and then accept my fate to just eat a completely unadorned piece of bread:
Monica spreads the portion of apricot jam over the buttered slice of white bread.
> spread portion of apricot jam on slice of white bread
Which do you mean, the buttered slice of white bread dressed with a portion of apricot jam or the slice of white bread?
> slice of white bread
Which do you mean, the buttered slice of white bread dressed with a portion of apricot jam or the slice of white bread?
> the slice of white bread
Which do you mean, the buttered slice of white bread dressed with a portion of apricot jam or the slice of white bread?
> spread portion of apricot jam on slice of white bread on plate that i just set down
You typed a rather long command and I didn’t understand it. It’s better to stick to simpler things like TAKE CRISP LINEN.
> spread portion of apricot jam on slice of white bread
Which do you mean, the buttered slice of white bread dressed with a portion of apricot jam or the slice of white bread?
I chose to find the fun in these situations and let myself become the source of the humor in the game, and that made it more enjoyable.
My favorite moment in the game was probably when Monica asks me to get a glass of juice for her, because there was something that felt very wholesome about focusing on the simple labor of going over, learning to use the machine and chop the carrots properly, etc. It assuaged some of the anxiety I felt at the beginning of the game as I am in real life, a gay guy who has never dated a woman, I started to get nervous about what exactly Monica expected from me. So I appreciated here that she voiced what she wanted and it felt like a very caring gesture to go through all the steps to make the juice for her.
I enjoyed a really small moment of linguistic discovery. I hadn’t encountered the idiom for a “bull’s eye” as a description of a fried egg before, but I instantly knew what it meant as my mind called up this image. I think it’s fun to encounter details like this that I wouldn’t otherwise come across in my day-to-day life.
Feedback/Recommendations/Questions:
In my transcripts, you can see how I struggled with the parser commands, but I don’t necessarily think that is such a bad thing—the struggle seems to be kind of the point of these games. I will say that in one case, an unexpected response “spoiled” the puzzle for me. When trying to find a glass for the first time, I tried “x containers,” which gave me the response, “Which do you mean, an apricot jam portion jar, the left drawer, the right drawer, the juicer bowl, the juicer recess, the white bowl, the white basket, the brown basket, a blueberry jam portion jar, an orange marmalade portion jar or the wallet?” This alerted me to the existence of several “containers” that I had not discovered yet.
Overall, I appreciated elements that added to the atmosphere of the game, and just wanted more of that. More description, and so on. The longest description in the game was the description of the hike, which I thought was written in a somewhat mechanical way that was overly focused on the distances (e.g., 2405 m) that distracted me from the narrative of what the hike might be like. Another detail I think would be to have the hotel feel a bit more lively—there are a lot of mentions of the staff working, but not much of a sense that there are other people also here enjoying the hotel. That might help contribute to the romantic atmosphere, to see that other people are also enjoying the Dolomites.
In terms of structuring the narrative, I guess I find the ending a bit unsatisfying—the final scene is you using the bathroom (thankfully not in too much detail), and then the entire cast breaking the fourth wall to applaud you for doing so. While that is funny in its own right, I suppose, I think having a few more turns after that of at least starting toward the hike with Monica and ending on more of the scenery description or what this time spent together means to you both, would be appropriate.
What I learned about IF writing/game design:
I haven’t had enough opportunities to play Dungeons & Dragons to properly test this theory, but I have a theory that D&D doesn’t have to try to be funny, because the friction in its game mechanics inevitably causes funny things to happen. I think I would apply that theory to parser gameplay as well: it can be inherently funny to struggle with the grammar of a parser, and that’s an excellent tool that the writer can use (as happened here) to create humor out of moments of player vs. parser conflict.
There was a small moment where I felt like there was a continuity error. When I opened the left drawer, it starts with 10 glasses. I take one, and Monica takes one, so there should be 8 left. But when I check back later, there are still ten glasses. One can infer in-universe that the waiter has restocked the glasses, so I don’t think this is a true “error”. Instead, the point I want to make with this is: why tell the player exactly how many glasses are here? If it had just said “several glasses” I never would’ve questioned it. So I take this for myself as a reminder that sometimes a numerical detail like this can cause friction with immersion and would be better off withheld; I think that’s especially true in a game like this where so much of the focus is on small-scale tasks.
Quote:
“A sweet nectar with the delicate flavour of freshly picked pears.” (The relief of finally getting to drink this!)
Lasting Memorable Moment:
Being invited to use the juicer and do something nice for Monica.
This had me stumped for a bit too—I hadn’t processed that “workstation” and “deck” were distinct things, and also typically if something is just sitting there in plain sight, I’d expect it to be mentioned in the room description, instead of me having to examine the surface it’s on in order to be told about it.
I am so bad at parser games that I somehow bricked the entire playthrough with my incompetence.
This made me laugh. And listen, sounds like it was ultimately useful in helping identify a bug!
Having tried Focal Shift last night, I’ll third the key fob and synonym observations here.
I did manage to work out the word-hack puzzle mechanic on the first go (with only one guess left, which was pretty exciting), but then I got stuck looking for the key fob. In desperation I rehacked the deck, and, when faced with the word-hack puzzle again, suddenly lost my mojo at the prospect of doing it just for the purposes of doublechecking I hadn’t missed anything, as opposed to knowing I was advancing. I may return to the game but +1 votes for that room being reimplemented a bit.
Nice review – I had a very similar “camping” experience with Garbage of the Future, though I think I wound up more impatient than analyzing how it was impacting my engagement with the game. Although one bit of speculation in what you wrote makes me wonder about a way to get the best ending, which I likewise never achieved:
Maybe you can use the duct tape from the abandoned truck to tape down the pump? I thought it could be used to make the hose less leaky but not sure that’s all that helpful.
32 | RETURN TO CLAYMORGUE’S CASTLE by: Claudio Daffra
Progress:
I managed to reach the end of this game in about 1h20m, using the walkthrough significantly. I was able to solve some of the puzzles without it, but needed it at several points to advance. Perhaps I could (or should) have spent more time guessing at solutions since I had 40 minutes left to go, so that’s on me. That being said, I do not think I would’ve finished this game within 2 hours without the walkthrough being available.
Things I Appreciated:
Something unique to the game that I thought was engaging was that instead of a singular player character who is a jack-of-all-trades solving everything, you are explicitly managing a group of people that each have their own specializations. While there is some clunkiness to managing this in practice, I liked the realism that my character would not just, for instance, be a master hacker and also proficient in reading ancient manuscripts, and needed to recognize that those tasks are best assigned to others.
Some of my favorite aesthetic moments were moments where the castle lives up to the promise that is anachronistic, most notably, finding a computer with a USB cable in a sorcerer’s tower laboratory. I would have loved even more of those jarring moments, and for the potential horror/intrigue to be intensified further.
Another feature I really liked was the castle map, and how it filled in as I explored the rooms. While many of these games do allow a player to develop a mental map, I found that I had some trouble making sense of the locations until the first time I actually used the map, at which point the geography made a lot more sense. I like how assigning the locations to a specific point on the map made the locations feels more concrete to me.
Feedback/Recommendations/Questions:
I had significant issues reading white text on the high-contrast backgrounds. While I like the idea of having these backgrounds for different locations, I found that I had to use my cursor to highlight the text to make it more readable. Since there was often many paragraphs of text per location to read, I found myself straining at points. The specific recommendations I would make in terms of formatting are as follows: (1) add a dark tint to the panels with text on them, so it mutes some of the contrast of the castle backdrops, allowing the white text to pop more visually; (2) for readability, I would recommend adding spaces between paragraphs more consistently as this visually breaks up the text and helps direct the reader’s attention, uncluttering the page; (3) set apart character dialogue with a different formatting (for instance, a specific color) so that it stands out more as something distinct from the room descriptions. (I realize all this is a ton of work, but I think time spent making the interface more inviting for players is well worth it in terms of directing their attention away from the interface itself and toward the narrative, characters, and puzzles.)
I appreciated having a walkthrough here because some of the puzzle solutions were not the most intuitive. The best example of this is the first time I got stuck, which is where you are required to “Me examine weeds” for a second time. The first time, I had received a message that had become standard to me as an error message that the action I had attempted failed. Since there are so many possible actions to try, and a significant mechanical commitment to making a command (clicking at least four times to assign the actor, verb, object, and enter command), having a “false” error message like this is a bit frustrating as it’s not likely that I would intuit checking a second time. Had there not been a walkthrough, I am sure that I would have eventually gone through to examine the weeds a second time (as it’s a standard strategy in puzzle games if you’re stuck to re-check everything that you’ve already checked). But I question whether that would’ve been a judicious use of my time. I think a potential option here that I would recommend is, if you still want to give an error message at first, have at least some hint that there could be more to do here. Perhaps when you visit the scene a second time, your character makes a new comment or observation about the weeds, prompting the player to check them again.
In many games I’ve played so far, my advice has been that I want more detail, but in this case, I think I would’ve appreciated the room descriptions to be a little more condensed/specific/focused. Something I noticed throughout the game is that I was often told that rooms blended old and new, rather than being shown how they did that. I think having less description, but description that is more specific and focused, will make the unique features of this game’s setting stick out more. In particular, I would love to see more “anachronistic” elements that emphasize the temporal eeriness of the location. Because that is so distinctive to this particular project, I think it could lean more into that strength.
I liked moments when the characters were in the same rooms together and interacted with each other. I’d love to see more moments like this, that help tease out their personalities and show the chemistry of how they work together as a group.
What I learned about IF writing/game design:
Mainly, the power of efficient and specific writing. The moments that were the most captivating were when there was a focused, specific image for me to latch onto as a reader, whereas other times there were paragraphs that I found it difficult to find that heart in. I know as a writer it can be tempting to say too much (I mean look at the length of some of these responses, wtf was I thinking??), so I think it’s often worth the reminder to do a little more (punch, impact) with a little less in terms of word count. Advice I’d do well to apply in my own writing. (As if I’d ever follow my own advice consistently. Ha!)
As I discussed above, I really liked the idea of having a player team of different specialists. While I do think the implementation would have ideally been less laborious for the player to manage, I think there’s a lot of value in this approach. It has me thinking about how these games are often so focused on an individual as the key agent in the plot, and how questioning the assumption that a game should be structured with that in mind can allow for interesting approaches like I saw here.
Quote:
“Then, the chandelier begins its fall. As it descends, the chandelier spins, creating a whirl of lights and shadows. The impact is inevitable. The chandelier crashes to the ground, shattering its crystals into a thousand pieces and extinguishing its candles. The once majestic chandelier now lies in fragments on the floor.” (I like the sense of motion and energy here.)
Lasting Memorable Moment:
A moment when I felt a thrill of wonder was when I read the sorcerer’s diary and learned about the meteorite that struck near the castle moat. I found that really exciting and instantly wanted to go find that.
Thank you so much for your extensive review. It has really helped me focus on many aspects of the adventure to improve it, such as the graphic interface, character styles, and dialogues between them, and more. This kind of feedback is invaluable to me.
You’ve taken the time to do this, and I’m glad you enjoyed some of my ideas. The specific dialogues, like the ones between the narrator and Lisa, were written with my partner, and we had a lot of fun poking fun at each other! I didn’t include everything in the walkthrough, just what was needed to finish the adventure within the set time, but from what I’ve read, you got very close to the castle’s enigma. Thanks again for everything!
Thank you very much for playing my game and leaving the review.
Don’t worry about the transcript: after playing online, the platform automatically saves the transcript of the entire session (I also saw the command to start the transcript).
The remark about the number of glasses is interesting: in fact, when the waiter clears the dirty crockery then puts it back in its place, and this also happens with other things.I would have liked to have included an indefinite number in the descriptions, but that is still beyond my abilities.
Editor’s note: I think that, more than normal, pretty much everything in this game is a walking spoiler, so I advise caution when perusing this review if you have not yet played this one. I’ve still made an attempt to mark the bigger spoilers, though.
33 | 198BREW
33 | 198BREW by: DWaM
Progress:
I played this game for just over an hour, reaching one bad ending and what I presume to be a “good” ending. I did make light use of the walkthrough. The main things I messed up were never examining the plastic sheet, and I never saw the prompt to go into the park (the other locations you can go to are set apart into a separate paragraph), so I just never knew about that location until reading the walkthrough.
Things I Appreciated:
Having finished the game and completed the main story puzzles (but without discovering any secrets, as far as I could tell), I feel like I have only scratched the surface of trying to understand it. This game has very unique, unsettling worldbuilding that gives the impression that its mysteries are solvable (and not just weird for the sake of being weird) but that you will need to work very hard to make that happen for yourself. I think if I wasn’t playing this in the context of a competition, I would want to spend more time absorbing the game and piecing together its mysteries.
Weirdly, this is another game that has cannibalism as a central theme. Add that to the “Similarities and coincidences” thread, I guess. I wonder what the significance of this theme is here? I might be way off base here, but it has me thinking first on a basic level of how all survival/life involves some form of cannibalism/consumption: one could imagine how a growing baby is in some way “eating” the blood/cells/flesh of their parents in order to be born; or how the consumption of something like coffee is a consumption of the labor and material resources to produce it. But I think the game is not so literal as that? There’s a lot of focus on relationships of love and the idea of consuming one’s partner in a more emotional/conceptual way, and how that consumption changes the consumer. Or perhaps, given the painting, how consumed/absorbed/digest art affects the reader/viewer/critic? (I suspect given the church mentioned in the game that there’s a lot of religious imagery that’s going over my head as well.) I don’t think I figured out much here, and as tempting as it is to delete this entire comment and never speak of it again, I figure it’s better to leave it than not in case it helps someone else develop a more convincing reading of this text. At any rate, I found the themes engaging.
I liked the strange and very off-putting way that characters communicate with you, owing to their time loop experiences. Like as a player: you start out, things are pretty weird, but you see that there’s a café and it’s like, alright, I have a chance to get coffee. And the barista launches into the most unexpected diatribe. It really adds a lot to the tone/atmosphere of the game to have such strange NPC encounters.
Feedback/Recommendations/Questions:
I think it would be most helpful if I, instead of casting a particular judgment as to whether or not the game should be this way, describe elements of the game that I had friction interacting with, and why I felt that way.
(1) Clothes. When you go around, the characters constantly comment about the fact that you are almost naked. Yet, when I tried returning to the bedroom to put on some of Fiona’s clothes (with the goal of getting to have different conversations with people) I was not allowed to do so in a way that I could figure out how to phrase. Is it important to constantly tell the player that they are underdressed and then not allow them to dress? Is this thematically important in some way?
(2) Toothbrushes. The main thing I found to interact with in the bathroom are red and purple toothbrushes, which are given narrative importance, but I wasn’t allowed to take them. I came back here after discovering that red and purple were key elements of the painting, but still couldn’t figure out what to do with them.
(3) Telling Jacob to eat the crows. Having just received some change, I remembered that the train station phone booth needed money. So I went to use the phone, and was surprised when the protagonist automatically enacted a plan to tell Jacob to eat the crows. There are other moments where the protagonist has a different agenda than the player (for instance: refusing to examine the sketchbook), so I’m not fully against this, but it feels like a major puzzle element to have auto-solve for the player (I hadn’t made the connection yet that Jacob was the one who needed to eat the crows, but the game seemed to think I had figured that out.)
(4) Hair color. The painting instructs you to find the living version of her, and the main feature of the painting is the vibrant red hair. So I was very determined to figure out who in the game had red hair, but found that when I tried to examine people, I would often not be told about their hair color (such as: trying to examine myself in the mirror). The uncanny aspect of this is that a feature like that would be clearly visible, so it felt like the game was withholding information, which made me paranoid as I wondered whether I needed to stab various different people or myself in case they were red haired. But also, I was afraid of resetting the time loop by stabbing random people (and as the game says, “You probably shouldn’t go around stabbing things for no reason.” As if “a painting told me so” is a good reason!) It would’ve been helpful to be able to rule out potential stabbing victims () by just being told whether they had red hair, since the red hair was made to seem important. Weirdly enough, the living Madeline doesn’t even have red hair—her hair is golden—so maybe I still did ultimately stab the wrong person. So much for my reckless campaign of anti-redhead violence.
(Having concluded this list of random complaints, I’m adding here a reminder that I did find this game super interesting and engaging; this friction was born of my struggle to better know the game and its slippery themes.)
What I learned about IF writing/game design:
Personally, I love narratives that involve time loops, and I thought this was a unique example of one: the loop doesn’t reset. As far as I encountered while playing, over the course of the game, it’s not possible for you to time out of the loop “early” and restart the day. So (apparently) the loop only loops if you reach an ending but choose to play the whole game again, rather than looping multiple times in a single play session. I found that to be a distinctive and interesting feature of the piece. It’s an encouragement for writers engaging with time loops as a device to think of clever ways to implement them.
The horror of matter-of-fact descriptions of gore. Something this game does really well is place disturbing elements in otherwise “normal” environments, that the protagonist still mostly regards as normal, but has a big impact on the player. For instance, the protagonist matter-of-factly wonders if they can get the remainder of their discarded flesh together to feed to animal. Or the fact that they just have random bits of their own flesh and blood hanging out in the refrigerator. Oh no! As a horror technique, this was well executed here.
Quote:
“The poison of eternity coveted by many.”
Lasting Memorable Moment:
When I randomly decided to “talk to crows” and not only did they respond, they had quite a lot to say. It gets worse the more you think about it!
34 | THE KILLINGS IN WASACONA by: Steve Kollmansberger
Progress:
I completed this game, receiving a pretty good ending (4 out of 4 correct, the suspect arrested and charged), in around 36 minutes without the use of a walkthrough. I played as the “Negotiator” class.
Things I Appreciated:
Something I really liked off the bat was the opportunity to select a class. I liked the implementation of d20 rolls/checks where I could plainly see what the consequences of my specialization were. While it is frustrating to fail many rolls in a row, it makes succeeding checks on a bad skill feel like more of a breakthrough, and I think it helps add texture to a choice-based narrative where otherwise, you’d just get way too much information for free. Using semi-influenceable randomness is, to me, a reasonable way to do that and I had a good experience with it.
I thought the social world was well-constructed and appropriate in size for the scale of the mystery. I liked that when I went to locations and talked to people, I would see connections that directed me to other locations. There was not really a time where I clicked on a location just for the sake of clicking on it; I was making a choice to follow a lead I had picked up from a conversation or scene. So this is a case where I felt like I was actively solving the game, instead of the game solving itself while I made naïve clicks.
The in-game clock felt consequential. There are locations that are logically unavailable if it’s too late at night. Moreover, at one point I made a decision to tell the college to shut down. And moments later, I had plans to continue searching at the college, but couldn’t, because I had it closed. I did this to myself! This was a great moment because it made me feel consequences for a choice that I made, but didn’t ultimately stop me from arriving at solutions. I like the feeling that I can and might botch this game with poorly thought out choices, and as a result, I felt like I was rewarded for strategic thinking later when I did successfully solve the game. Whether or not the game is actually that hard, it at least successfully creates the illusion that you could easily fail it, and that is powerful in shaping player experiences.
Feedback/Recommendations/Questions:
One of the fascinating elements of the game is the gap that is created between what the player knows (by analyzing the text, thinking in a critical/meta way about the narrative, or by reading the prologue) and what the protagonist knows (the result of dice rolls based on stats) and how the game is hard-coded to remember the results of those rolls when it comes time to accuse. For context, I played as the “Negotiator” class. The downside of this class is that your “academics checks” have a massive -6 penalty. And there were a lot of these. The thing is, while I failed every academics check except one or two with lucky rolls, but failed checks still gave me (as the player) a lot of information. An example: I failed to identify the footsteps at two locations, but out-of-universe as a player, I had a meta awareness that those footsteps would more likely match than not even though the protagonist character did not have that same awareness. By the end of the game, even though I had failed so many checks, I felt like I was too sure that I was correct about my suspect, given the information it seemed like the protagonist actually knew. There was really no other person that I considered accusing, though it felt weird to just accuse the same person of all the crimes. So the question I have is: does the prologue (invisible to the protagonist but known and remembered by the player) simply reveal too much? It does happen in mystery novels (that I have read to give critiques to writing partners, I don’t normally read them) that there are killer POV chapters like this, but I think it hits differently in a gamified/IF version of that genre where you are meant to immerse yourself more into the character. Is there another way that this game could have opened to set the scene without revealing so much critical information?
There’s a stylistic choice here that makes sense for the genre but I still think is worth discussing. The writing is very crisp, focused, factual. The people you meet are mainly described in terms of basic demographic characteristic (age, ethnicity, gender) rather than a more florid or evocative way of describing the presence of a person in a room. I understand that makes sense for the genre perspective and the idea that you are playing as someone whose job it is to do detective work and piece it together. But I found that it made me dissociate from the potential emotional impact from what is happening. (This isn’t a criticism of the game, really: I think it accomplishes the writing style it sets out to accomplish. I just wanted to describe what my experience was. To be fair, I don’t normally engage with procedurals as a genre, unless it’s in like a fantasy setting or something, and would not be surprised to learn that it’s very much expected for this type of work to be presented in a professional style.)
The user interface of this game is beautiful. It is crisp, clean, polished, the colors are just right and never distracting. It looks like an interface that is crafted with a ton of care. So I feel like a game with this much labor to produce a balanced visual aesthetic deserves better than what is (in my opinion) tacky and distorted-looking AI art. I understand that there are plenty of people who aren’t bothered by AI art, (and ultimately, it’s not going to factor into my score as I have other priorities than moving scores by full points based on just cover art), but because cover art is so important as a first impression for a game, I hope it isn’t terribly condescending for me to say that I feel like this game should have cover art that more positively and accurately represents the quality of its contents.
What I learned about IF writing/game design:
As discussed above, I absolutely loved the crispness of the visual presentation of the UI. If I were to develop another IF game, I would want to study the spacing, layout, and color scheme of this game to get a sense of why it came across so cleanly to me.
I thought a truly unique feature of this game is the stats summary page, where you are presented with your playthrough and how it compares to other people who have played this game. Since you don’t have an opportunity to play the game unspoiled a second time (as you’ll already know too much), I thought it was a really engaging element to contextualized your own bespoke personalized experience. Did you have an average experience, or is there something that stood out? For instance, there is apparently a possibility that Melody’s parents will lead a protest against the sheriff’s office?? That didn’t happen for me, but imagine how exciting it would feel for the 8% of players to learn that they had such an aberrant experience of the game. (Maybe less fun to learn that you were one of the 3% of players to receive a grade of “All Talk, No Results” or “Abysmal,” which is yet to be “achieved” at the time I played.) While this wouldn’t make sense for other genres/types of IF games, I thought it was an inspired choice here.
Quote:
“A quiet starlit evening covers the small town in an illusion of peace and security.”
Lasting Memorable Moment:
When the RNG allowed me to overcome a -3 penalty on a physical check to chase a car down to learn critical information. This made up for what felt like a dozen disastrous academics checks. Earlier I had scored a -5 out of 20 on one of the academics checks because I rolled a natural 1 with a -6 penalty. (Stay in school, kids… etc.)
I was able to complete the game with a score of 18 in about 28 minutes without the use of a walkthrough (though the game did kindly give me a hint when I was wandering around in a maze for many turns). I decided to replay to check to see if there was any special text for beating the game with a score of 0 by just happening to roll a 20 (there wasn’t).
Things I Appreciated:
Up to this point, this response thread documents a lot of struggle with challenging or unintuitive puzzles. I think because of the nature of the community (or at least, what I’ve seen of it in these few weeks of playing this game), there’s sort of an assumption being made about the skill level of players and that puzzles should be challenging, and that the target audience for games should be at an intermediate-to-expert level. So what I appreciate is that this game is designed to be so approachable for a beginner at parser games. I haven’t played a ton of parser games (well until very recently ) and the game made me feel like I am getting better at them because of how quickly I breezed through it. While I wasn’t challenged much, I do feel that there is a place for a well-designed easier game like this one.
I thought the plot was cute, and if you explore everything, you shouldn’t be too surprised by what you find on the other side of the warm door. There’s enough thought put into the social worldbuilding to make it feel worth uncovering.
I enjoyed the bits of humor peppered into the text, which contribute to the generally very light-hearted tone of the piece. It delivers on what it promised in the front matter, for sure.
Feedback/Recommendations/Questions:
I may be a demon apologist (though honestly, IF Comp 2024 so far could be giving me a lot more opportunities to engage in demon apologist propaganda—do better, everyone), but I am setting that agenda aside temporarily to take up the role of “dragon apologist.” The most surprising thing about the game to me was that it didn’t in some way subvert the “slay a dragon” ending that it sets up. The game-ending screen had so little description of the dragon or what happened, other than I either killed or was killed. I was looking forward to the moment when I entered this room fully overdressed for the occasion in ridiculous armor, only to ultimately calm the dragon down or let it escape or something. Because it is framed as a beast that has been corralled into the situation by Ralph, rather than having maliciously chosen to invade the castle, I was actually surprised the ending was just that straightforward. Perhaps there is another solution, and this is on me for choosing violence. It’s not like I combed through the game looking for an alternate approach, but I would’ve tried one if I found it. From the dragon’s perspective, this is a pretty downer ending!
I think this game has too many object types that are repeated: namely, the notes. Many, if not most rooms have a note conveniently written out with key information. While I understand for suspension of disbelief that puzzle games are going to have “unrealistic” stuff like this, at some point I was like, really? Another note? The push I would give is to think about other ways to provide plot details without always spelling it out on a note. Perhaps you could take advantage of the setting to introduce a magic element (you, as a gossipy journalist, have an amulet or something that allows you to hear whispers from the past). (Editor’s note: it looks like Tabitha had this thought already in eir review here—I could probably do a better job to avoid repeating things people have already said now that so many reviews are out of various games, but I also don’t want to be overly influenced by them either ) Or, do more environmental storytelling (like the warm door, scorched hallway, etc.) that shows what happened so the player/protagonist can infer some of the details.
While I understand that this game is meant to be approachable and not too difficult, there were many times where I felt like the game didn’t give me an opportunity to solve a puzzle. Often in room descriptions, you will see a phrase like, “The only thing of interest seems to be [thing].” This doesn’t give me an opportunity to read through the description of the room and decide for myself which of the items is worth looking into, because the game has decided that for me. This has pre-solved that aspect of exploration, where just by entering the room, I have had the progression item handed to me.
What I learned about IF writing/game design:
I think there’s an elegance to a game like this, whose purpose (besides being a game in its own right) is to teach the player how to play games like this. It has me thinking a lot about difficulty curves in games, and how games train you to play them and develop a kind of gameplay/exploration toolset to approach more challenging puzzles. Were I ever to try designing a parser game, this is one I’d look to get started, especially thinking about the elegant way that items and item descriptions gently direct the player to solutions (for instance: the cage of moths description gives you the information you need so that when the moment arises, you will know what to do with it).
I take this game as a challenge to someday write something more lighthearted and humorous. I think I take fiction writing too deathly seriously sometimes, and while I don’t want to devalue what I have done and still want to do, sometimes what players/readers need is something breezy and fun. Isn’t there a value in that kind of experience, too?
Quote:
“A small, gold ring that was used by the royal family to cheat in many contests of strength.” (I appreciate the gentle skewering of royalty here and there throughout the text. Feudalism Monthly indeed.)
Lasting Memorable Moment:
I think my favorite moment was using a cage of moths to eat the princess’s entire wardrobe. It was a creative and fun use of an item that is still intuitive. Hopefully I’m not held liable for the replacement costs…
With that, this response thread has reached a milestone—I have now responded to 34 games, bringing me over the 50% mark of the 67. I never promised to respond to every game (and I still am not promising that. 67 is a lot…), but it feels cool (and a little weird) to have gotten this far.
Some of you must be thinking: this person has a terrible sense of priorities to have spent all of their free time and energy in this way. And by “some of you,”I mean that I kind of think this about myself and feel a little embarrassed. I guess the rationalization I’d offer is: I would be doing something less worthwhile with my time otherwise, so this is arguably a net positive and a fantastic distraction from other things that are stressful!
Anyway, here we are, so maybe it’s time to check in. How am I doing? Am I getting any better at these responses? Hopefully not worse, at least? (Is it gauche to ask for feedback about feedback? It must be.) I feel like I’m still learning a lot and am getting something out of this. So, I hope people have found it, on the whole, better that this thread exists than not.
And listen, sounds like it was ultimately useful in helping identify a bug!
) by just being told whether they had red hair, since the red hair was made to seem important. Weirdly enough, the living Madeline doesn’t even have red hair—her hair is golden—so maybe I still did ultimately stab the wrong person. So much for my reckless campaign of anti-redhead violence.