I reached the end of this game in 50 minutes or so, making extensive use of the walkthrough. Because the walkthrough indicated that there was more to do than I found, I restarted and followed its commands exactly to see parts that I missed. In total, I spent about an hour with this game.
Things I Appreciated:
I enjoyed the time loop mechanic and how you had to gradually realize through experimentation that you could pick the perspective you were jumping into by making contact (usually visual) with that specific individual. I liked the descriptions of having your form altered, for instance, being forcibly reincarnated as a baby and having to figure out how to do anything in that form.
I like that the game’s puzzles all revolve around empathy in some way. Ultimately, person-by-person, you are making each character’s day marginally less bad until it improves for everyone collectively. It offers a kind of respite from the “logic” of traffic which can be very self-centered and individualistic. When I started looking at scenes from the perspective of, how can I make this person’s day better, such as the scene on the bus, the solutions became more evident.
Feedback/Recommendations/Questions:
I had extensive struggles with guessing what the game expected me to do, and without the walkthrough I doubt I would’ve advanced through just about any of the scenes. In the first scene I unlocked (the metal box scene) I struggled trying to find a way to enter a number into the panel. I had written out the equations in my notes and wanted to test numbers, but there was no command that I could think of that would allow the character to input a number. I was shocked when I read the walkthrough and learned that to proceed, I had to ask my co-worker for an extremely specific object that I had never seen; essentially, I was asked to imagine a screwdriver into existence. Another significant issue I had was that I wasted rounds and rounds in the student driver car not understanding why nothing I did worked (I kept typing commands like: tell young man to drive north) and was similarly surprised to learn from the walkthrough that the syntax expected was “young man, drive north”. Overall, the impression I had without playing is that my expectation of how to navigate the puzzles was significantly out of alignment with the author’s expectations of how to solve them. I am not blameless in this of course, I definitely could have tried more creative things rather than going to the walkthrough so quickly, so I don’t know what things I might have guessed would have been accepted as alternate solutions. But I’ve included my transcript, so you can judge for yourself.
One very specific recommendation I have is regarding the puzzle involving the student driver and the cab. I found that trying to understand spatially what was happening here based on the description was challenging (the main issue making this puzzle so hard for me was that before understanding what the goal of the puzzle was, I had entered the cab and chosen “pull over” as my first command, since it’s the “correct” thing to do in that situation in real life, so I had a hard time understanding the positioning of the cab from the student driver’s point of view). My recommendation is to generate an ASCII art map representation visualizing the current state of the lanes for those turns, like the art of the control panel, so that the player can more easily see what they are trying to even do here.
What I learned about IF writing/game design:
I thought this was an interesting implementation of time-based puzzles. You can mess up a scene badly enough to fail it, but because of the loop mechanic, you can just keep trying until you figure it out. Giving the player limited agency per loop helps focus their attention toward solutions by allowing them to rule out anything so elaborate that it would require more than the available turns.
This is another reminder to be thoughtful about error messages. In the baby scene, one of the commands I tried was “throw pacifier,” which gave me the response “Futile.” Yet not only was throwing the pacifier not futile, it was an intended solution. Had the error message instead prompted me “Throw the pacifier at what?” or something similarly specific, it would have rewarded me for being on the right track and clued me to that solution. Had I not already been reading the walkthrough, seeing “throw pacifier” fail with that default error message would’ve led me to completely abandon that approach.
Quote:
“Suddenly, the elderly woman decides she can’t take it anymore. She aggressively shoves her way through the crowd until she reaches the back door. Then, with a surprising show of strength, she forces the back doors open. This causes the bus to come to a screeching halt, at which point the passenger hops off the bus and walks off into the street.” (A mood, for sure: eff this shitty bus, I’m out of here!)
Lasting Memorable Moment:
At the beginning of the game when, after exploring the scene for a few turns, my character dies. This was shocking, and an excellent hook that got me more invested (given that the subject matter was traffic, I wasn’t looking forward to playing this one) and curious as to what was happening.
I completed this game, reaching what I interpreted as a good ending, in about 1hr34m.
Things I Appreciated:
Of all the games/narratives that I’ve been through so far, what sets this one apart is that I found myself emotionally moved by plot beats in the final sections of the game. That’s a rare sensation for me—to feel that furling/unfurling feeling in my chest that tears might be possible—so I pay attention when I encounter something like that. I put this first and foremost in the “appreciate” category because my opinion is that for something more narrative-focused like this, that is a high compliment.
This is a long narrative that takes a huge risk. [Big spoilers] At the end of Part 2, the protagonist Madelaine is lost and you continue a new plotline in the final arc as her daughter, Patricia. I just feel like that’s such a bold and confident way to write? I remember reaching the end of part two and thinking, wow, this one was shorter than I expected, and feeling like there was something lacking—and then… well, the rest of it happens. To say more about this choice, it’s a risk that paid off for me. The risk: I didn’t care about Patricia. Not that there was anything wrong with her, but since I was spending time as Madelaine, in Madelaine’s narrative, Patricia is abstract—a person back home that she is fighting for. Patricia is a motivation, not a true character, in Parts 1 and 2. Switching to follow the narrative of Patricia should’ve been incredibly disruptive, but instead, it was surprisingly immersive. To explain why, consider this thought experiment. Imagine that Part 3 was the main/initial plot; Patricia’s mother disappeared underground and she’s out to find her. In that case, Patricia’s mother has the same quality as Patricia herself does in the actual version of the narrative—a motivation, not a character. I wouldn’t have felt any attachment to Patricia’s mother beyond just like… obviously wanting to help Patricia find her. But in the version as written, I found it deeply immersive to become Patricia and feel deeper emotions about Madelaine because I was Madelaine and Part 3 recontextualizes the struggle that I had as her. Letting Madelaine go at the end of Part 3 is more heartbreaking because I had played Madelaine as someone trying to be compassionate and wanting what was best for the communities involved, so I knew what kind of person she was to warrant the big emotions at the end, rather than having to rely on, say, Patricia’s memories of her to guide my emotional response. I could easily see this not working; I’d imagine many other readers might not click with the perspective shift. But for me, it really worked.
The world is unique and fascinating. Primed as I am to empathize with “monster” characters, I always go into fantasy pieces hoping that the human/monster dynamic will be subverted in some way, and there’s a small part of me that always still finds it a bit disappointing when there isn’t such a dynamic, even if I can still find value in narratives where the monsters really are just monsters (you sort of have to, given how pervasive it is). Here, I picked up that thread as soon as I was allowed to and felt like this was written for someone like me. I sort of wondered if something similar would happen with the Hydra King character not being the true antagonist of the narrative, but that thread ended up going in a unique direction because of the nature of the character, so I was satisfied that the Hydra King is a complex and strange villain with some pathos rather than a character you might reasonably side with. I found the magic system with the mirrors really engaging, and the side characters were well drawn (both figuratively, in the sense that they were written to be specific and interesting, and literally, in the sense that someone—the author?—drew cool art of them and it was in the narrative).
Feedback/Recommendations/Questions:
Despite the many screens that allow the player to make choices, I was not often convinced that my choices were consequential. After looking over the game’s thread, it seems like my choices mattered more than I noticed, but I didn’t feel that way while reading it. During my playthrough, I only encountered one death screen (the option I selected, if I recall correctly, was about trying to commandeer the cultists’ ritual, which led to an instant death screen that I just undid and moved on from). Other than that, I breezed through the game just making what felt like the most intuitive choices in the moment, and I guess I was lucky that what I found intuitive happened to lead to the story continuing. There was exactly one moment where I felt like a past choice I made mattered—earlier, I had convinced the group to spare the guards that they were going to kill, and later, this same group of guards returned to attack us a second time and ended up dying. The game wasn’t overly judgmental of my pollyannaish gameplay here, but it was a time where I felt the weight of my choices. Elsewhere, if my choices were intended to come back to haunt or help me, that were not evident from what was happening. That’s why I said up front that the game did not often convince me that my choices were consequential. My character was injured multiple times, but those injuries didn’t hinder my progress in any way that I could detect, nor did the approval system appear to matter. So my recommendation would be, assuming those systems do matter, to foreground those moments more directly as consequences of my actions. I want my attention to be drawn to things that were conditioned by my choices, rather than having them float by me without my awareness. I think in choice-based games, it’s important for the satisfaction of the narrative to feel like the game remembers something that you did many turns ago and it reared its head again, like was the case with the guards.
There were a few moments/conversations where being offered a choice was noticeably inconsequential. If to progress a scene, I need to talk about the three conversation topics listed in any order, why offer me the choice at all? Imagine a slightly alternative scenario: there are three conversation topics, but only time to cover two of them. There will be one topic that you are less informed on going forward, which could affect future decisions. Suddenly, it’s a choice that reflects your motivation as a player more: I decided what my priorities were, rather than just sheepishly clicking on the third and final option for the sake of completion to move on. I like the idea as a player that I am taking a risk by choosing to prioritize learning some information at the expense of other information, and I’d like to feel that more.
What I learned about IF writing/game design:
I see this entry as a reminder to write with a sense of confidence, something I often struggle with. Here, the author makes bold choices in plot structure, that I assume they must know could be divisive. This presents a dilemma: do you write something that is more widely structurally familiar and potentially cultivate a wider audience, or do you make a choice that will land very well with some people and not well at all with others? (You could make a similar analysis of other entries and their approaches.) You might feel like I am passing judgment as to which approach I prefer, but I don’t think that either extreme is necessarily without value. I have, sometimes, an impulse to write with a sense of anger that the story I crave to see in the world doesn’t exist yet, and I owe it to that story to write it my way. (Not that my writing is actually so special; but this can be a potent motive to get shit done, words on the page, and all that.) And other times, I have seen how feedback and influence on my work to make it more appealing has absolutely improved it by allowing my perspective to be questioned, swayed, and refined. Sorry, this got a little away from the intended topic of The Saltcast Adventure, I’m talking about myself again… My takeaway point here is: be bold, take risks, but those choices should still be thoughtful toward the writing context you are in. This is a case where for me, as a reader, the narrative took the right risks in the right context.
For a choice-based narrative, I learned from this piece that it’s possible to be too subtle/seamless about how the choices affected what happened. While I think there is a value in subtlety, maybe it’s important for a narrative to show its cards more and demonstrate to the reader/player that the narrative worked out this way only because of specific choices they made, especially in contexts where the player is likely to only read/play once, unless they get a particularly bad ending.
Quote:
“You see the glitter of exposed mirrors on several of their bodies.” (Out of context, this quote doesn’t necessarily stand out, so let me remind you of the context. Up until this point, you have learned to kill creatures by shattering their mirrors, so these mirrors are closely guarded. This quote stood out to me in a huge way because it shows the level of comfort and trust. The beings gathered here aren’t concerned that you, or someone else, is going to try killing them. They have built a social space where their essential self can just exist without having to be jealously guarded, and that shows the reader something really important about the saltcast society at a time when they’re still deciding whether or not to side with them.)
Lasting Memorable Moment:
A big, memorable moment in this text is the first time that you encounter the Hydra King. Their presence dominates the room, as does their internally conflicted desire to die and conquer. This was a visceral description that came at just the right time to raise the stakes of the narrative.
With some light assistance from the walkthrough (mainly to clarify linguistic disagreements I had with the game), I was able to complete this game in around 1h32m.
Things I Appreciated:
I found some of the environmental storytelling pretty interesting. I’ll point to a specific detail from a room that otherwise served little purpose. The acolytes’ room is described as, “This rectangular room is the acolytes’ sleeping quarters–barren and plain.” Now read this description of Balthazar’s bed: “An huge elegant four-poster. The posts rise to support a green canopy of fine silk. The blanket on top is gorgeous and the mattress is the thickest you’ve ever seen.” You aren’t told directly that Balthazar is benefiting immensely from the class structure of this church, able to live in a state of luxury due to his position of authority. But you can infer that from the environmental description. Similarly, I liked the attention to detail in describing the architecture of building (for instance, the game makes you learn what things like a “transept” and an “apse” are because they are relevant to the setting).
I really liked the interface element of having a list of “obvious exits” at the top of the screen. This helped me navigate faster as it reduces the tedium of re-searching descriptions to find the exit directions buried. This was great as a quality-of-life feature.
I liked the fact that there were roads leading to places you can’t (or shouldn’t) go. It made the world feel more lived-in, to help blunt some of the immersion-straining recognition that the game is a puzzle box for the player. It also offers opportunities for locations to develop more if there are going to be sequels/follow-ups in the same game world.
I don’t know where else to put this but I just thought it was very funny. These games keep asking me for my name, and I don’t want to put in my real name since I’m not usually on first-name terms with these games. But also, putting in “DemonApologist” is clunky and awkward as an in-game character name. So after repeated queries, I came up with (the admittedly a bit silly) “Apollo Diabolus” as a name that I’ve used in a few games now. It was comical when I, the very suspiciously named “Lieutenant Diabolus,” was assigned the task of helping recover an artifact from a chapel and was immediately given a holy amulet. Like weren’t they worried I might burst into flames upon entering the church? Maybe that’s what they were hoping for?
Feedback/Recommendations/Questions:
I thought there was a thematic disjuncture between Part 1 and Part 2 of the game. As a tutorial, Part 1 focuses the player on how hungry and tired they are while journeying toward their first destination, as well as managing your horse. This gave me the impression that I was going to need to be careful about tracking what my horse was doing and making sure that my character was well fed and rested. However, none of these issues come up in Part 2 whatsoever—once you arrive at the cemetery and dismount your horse, the passage of time/hunger/tiredness never come into play again. I’m not bothered by that, in the sense that, I can find that type of gameplay tedious. But I question the choice of making that the focus of Part 1, when it doesn’t really apply to Part 2?
As with many of the parser games I’ve played so far, this game and I had some significant linguistic disagreements. Some of these were relatively minor. For example: the first thing I did in the cottage was “search fireplace” as it stood out to me as the obvious location for something hidden. In my mind, “searching a fireplace” should have revealed more information, i.e., that there was a grate. Similarly, “search grate” and “look in grate” reveals no new information. In both these cases, I was required to “examine fireplace” and “examine grate.” In fact, I had this same problem again later, when I did everything to a door instead of directly “examine door” to be told it was covered in glyphs. The description even told me I was afraid to touch the door, even though I had long since touched the door without any effect. I kind of regret using the “help” feature, because the verb “search” had stuck out to me, and it inadvertently created this issue where I would “search” things instead of “examining” them.
Super minor issue: in the location “St Cuthbert’s Entrance Way,” “Up” is listed as an “obvious exit” but didn’t do anything. My guess is that this was meant as a way into the church, (as in, go up the stairs) that later got removed. So I would just remove the “up” from the exit list for clarity, or have “up” function the same as entering the building.
So beyond smaller stuff like that, I want to explore a bigger issue I had with some of the parsing. Here is an example transcript of an argument that I had with the game:
South Corridor
This corridor runs between the Transept and a double door to the south.
You can see double doors and two pews here.
Two heavy pews are wedged against the double door, one atop the other, holding it shut. Someone really did not want something coming this way through those doors!
What do you do? s
(first opening double doors)
The double doors are obstructed. You cannot go that way.
What do you do? push pews
Which one? Be more specific.
What do you do? push top pew
Surely you’re joking, Apollo!
What do you do? move pews
Which one? Be more specific.
What do you do? move upper pew
Seriously?!
What do you do? move top pew
Where? I don’t see that here.
What do you do? move HEAVY pew
Seriously?!
What do you do? x pews
Which one? Be more specific.
What do you do? x THE PEWS IN THIS ROOM THAT EXIST
Where? I don’t see that here.
What do you do? x barricade
The what?!
What do you do? x door
The double doors are made of thick oak. They are closed.
What do you do? open door
The double doors are obstructed. You cannot go that way.
What do you do? x obstruction
Seriously?!
What do you do? x two heavy pews
Which one? Be more specific.
What do you do? s
(first opening double doors)
The double doors are obstructed. You cannot go that way.
What do you do? examine pews
Which one? Be more specific.
What do you do? look at pews
Which one? Be more specific.
What do you do? look at top pews
Are you in the right place for that?
This argument reveals a few things (beyond the fact that I got a little sassy with the game). I believe a significant issue is the default messages that the player receives when not phrasing things right. Issue #1: The tone of the error messages is mean-spirited. That can be funny when you are doing something that obviously won’t work (like let’s be honest, I didn’t think “x THE PEWS IN THIS ROOM THAT EXIST” was going to help anything other than venting my irritation). However, when the game is mocking you for trying to interact with words in the description that the game gave you, it feels especially annoying. Like what do you mean, “Seriously?!” You’re the one who said it was an “obstruction”! Issue #2: There was a communication gap here over plural vs. non-plural words. The solution was to say “move pew” rather than “move pews.” If I’m meant to interact with a singular object, isn’t it more natural if it’s described as a singular object, rather than a set of objects? Issue #3: In the transcript above, the game told me that I needed to be more specific than “pews.” This directed me to attempt various ways of describing the pew that I wanted to move (top pew? upper pew? heavy pew?), none of which worked. But it turned out that the error message was misleading; “move pew” is the most general and nonspecific way to describe that action. Telling me to be more specific was the exact wrong cue, and I believe this error is the result of a default message that was unhelpful in this particular case. I point all this out to illustrate how small things that aren’t too bad when isolated, gradually build to create systemic problems if they happen to coincide like they did here. I can only imagine how annoying and time-consuming it must be to program parser games to do anything, so you have my sympathies for that at least.
I found that there was a clutter of too-similar objects in this game. I found many different candles, meaning that if I wanted to use one, I had to go out of my way to describe them. “Which do you mean, the tallow candle, half burned-down or a done candle?” This is a somewhat clunky, and I think avoidable, message to receive. Similarly, there is an issue like this with three lanterns in the same room, and multiple angel statues in the same location. While it is immersive in the sense that, in real life, there can been many similar copies of objects in the environment around you, I wondered what the point of being able to interact with so many different candles was. Why let me take the candlestick from the cottage, if you’re just going to hand me a candlestand in the door right before the dark area anyway? I’d guess the intention was to provide the player with many different ways to create a light source, but in practice, it just kind of cluttered the gameplay when I was stopped in my tracks to clarify which of several candle-related objects I was trying to use.
I thought more could be done to develop a sense of danger/horror in this game. The corpses outside are foreboding, but once inside the church, you are allowed to proceed completely unimpeded, except for one instance of a zombie attacking you that is completely contained within a single area. For the majority of the game, you can just calmly solve the puzzles without facing a threat. Even if you don’t want to add more combat encounters, why not add some more unsettling descriptions? Something I tried to do a lot in the game was “listen,” which didn’t yield much. I think creating an atmosphere of spooky sounds in the area (what do you hear in the walls, under the floor?) would create a stronger sense of the protagonist’s perspective of being on edge because of the setting, and therefore make it more immersive.
(This section of the response ended up being disproportionately long—I enjoyed exploring and playing this game much more than I had problems with it. So I’m just adding a reminder of that here. The length of this section hopefully conveys my earnest interest in thinking of ways that the experience could be enriched further, rather than malice toward the game.)
What I learned about IF writing/game design:
Environmental storytelling. This is a game with a narrow scope—you essentially explore a church as the main activity—but the descriptions of the locations say a lot about the environment and what happened here, without the protagonist commenting on it. There’s an art to this type of writing, where you hope that the reader is paying enough attention to piece things together that you’ve laid out for them, but it also runs the risk of story elements floating past them without their notice. (I’m sure for the things I did notice, there were many other things that I didn’t see while focusing on solving the puzzles.) But it can be very rewarding for the reader to make these kinds of observations. So I think there’s a benefit of writing in such a way that the reader develops a stronger sense of the environment and how that reflects the characters/plot.
The challenges of including multiple copies of the same object in the same environment for a parser game. For the sake of realism, it makes sense to have multiple objects to interact with. For the sake of gameplay, it can create all kinds of issues, as documented above. When do you program in individual copies of the same object, vs. when do you treat them collectively as a single object? That seems to be a particularly vexing question here.
Quote:
“The inside of the box is inlaid with plush black velvet. It is empty but you can see the deep impression of a mace that the box once held.” (I’m listing this as the quote because of the moment of suspense: finding the mace absent made me think someone might attack me with it later. That didn’t turn out to be the case, but I liked the idea of how seeing an empty box was enough to generate an emotional response.)
Lasting Memorable Moment:
When I returned up the stairs with the mace, and the beautiful glowing orb had gone dark. The church was suddenly much more foreboding than it had been, and made me question whether this mission that the character was on might have some lingering negative effects. Arguably, I’ve left the church in a worse state than it started in.
I completed this game without the use of a walkthrough in about 26 minutes.
Things I Appreciated:
This is a short but clever game, whose mechanics build on themselves in an intuitive way. The puzzles weren’t trivial to solve, I did have to think about some of them, but I found that each had some kind of clue or hint built into the game that I was able to figure out. This made navigating to the end a satisfying experience. I went from being annoyed at text that was the same color as the background, to laughing at how brilliant it was when I realized why it was like that.
The game is weird, but approachable and charming. I liked the fey setting and the way that collecting and eating random mushrooms became an essential game mechanic.
I really liked the detail that the snake escaped the moment I had acquired a snakeskin in the correct color for the puzzle. That was just good feedback from the game that I had done the correct thing and made me sure that I’d made the right call there.
I thought the game has a straightforward meaning in terms of gender transition (I mean, you are literally changing pronouns… to different colors and styles and sizes, but still!), and it approaches that in a very kind and empathetic way. At the end, you can work on fitting better into the old you, pick out the exact you that you want from a random set of yous, or accept the you that you’ve been given as a gift from them (this sentence probably sounds quite vague if you haven’t played this, but I promise it makes more sense than not). The concept of the game is flexible enough that you could apply its theme of self-actualization or self-becoming in terms of many different aspects if you so chose.
Feedback/Recommendations/Questions:
This is a game that heavily uses color, and the background colors are important. Most of the screens were fine, but some screens are just really bright or clashing and unpleasant to look at as a result of the color combination. Perhaps this goes against the spirit of the game, but there were times that I would’ve appreciated a more muted color palette to reduce eye strain. Ultimately, though, it didn’t bother me enough to really hinder my experience much.
A minor moment of confusion I had in the game was, after exploring most of the map, I had never encountered anything resembling a key. I went back to talk to the crow and goat, which told me that I needed various gifts, most of which I had already found without realizing it. I guess I made a mistake by not talking to them enough times right at the beginning? This didn’t affect my progress much, but I remember feeling surprised that I was supposed to look for four items rather than a key or “good luck charm”. (I mean the game does run on fairy logic, so the fact that this was the only mildly unintuitive thing that happened is really not that big a deal.)
Oh I finally thought of a specific recommendation that might be fun, for the compost pile at the end. Instead of asking the player to rerandomize a bunch of times by clicking the same link, could the “compost pile” be visualized as a cloud of clickable “yous” in different colors/fonts/styles to be selected from instead? I guess you’d run into an issue of players insisting on clicking every single one, but I’d hope people would get the gist of it after one or two attempts.
What I learned about IF writing/game design:
This is the first game that I’ve seen that I can recall making background and text color central to its puzzles. The use of font styling to convey the game state is something that feels really creative and interesting (and no doubt, tricky to implement given the accessibility concerns that arise from color-based puzzles). I just appreciated the brilliance to think of color beyond just setting a mood and to make the background itself part of gameplay.
I appreciated the efficacy of this description: “Silver bark and pink-hued clouds.” In context, this short sentence communicates exactly the type of setting that you are going to be playing in: a fae/fairy/Alice-style world. This is a description that could exist in the real world (clouds at sunset, gray bark on trees), but it takes on an ethereal quality. With not a lot of text in the prologue, the premise and setting are communicated quickly and the player is ushered into a world whose strangeness is familiar and accessible.
Quote:
“Some discarded pronouns are scattered in the grass around them.”
Lasting Memorable Moment:
When I became blue, and the “you” became unreadable on the blue background, just like the snake had been earlier. It felt satisfying to feel like I was gaining fluency in the game’s puzzle logic.
I completed the game with light use of the walkthrough/hints in about 1hr03m. For the most part, the hints I needed were instructions on how to phrase the thing that I was already trying to do, more than having no idea how to progress a given puzzle.
Things I Appreciated:
I really enjoyed the mood/atmosphere of this piece. Your player character has a distinct sense of identity without being overdrawn, and the town feels desolate because of the environmental description and sparse population. There is a strong sense of consistency to this piece: even slightly weird elements, such as a fire-seeking parrot, were made to be cohesive to the environment through their implementation. I really enjoyed how this game delivered on the western setting in an appealing way. There’s occasional flavor text as well to add to the mood, such as coyotes that serve no game purpose that I could detect, but are still interacted with in a mild way.
Most of the puzzles were well clued, such that I was able to intuitively understand what I needed or what I might use. For example, on the way back from using the crowbar, when you pass the windmill, it’s extra creaky and annoying to draw the player’s attention to it. But even if you ignore it, Bill will mention how annoying the windmill is a second time, at which point it clicked with me. There were other moments like this as well. When trying to feed the parrot, I went to Bill first hoping to buy crackers or something, and next I went to the saloon where I was helpfully told about a cookie that I left without eating earlier. I guess you could make the argument that these are the game showing its hand a little too much, but honestly, I appreciated that the game wants to cue you about which things to interact with next if you’re paying attention.
This is such a minor thing that it pales in comparison with the many great things this game is doing, but the visual choice to have player commands be in red text helps them stand out well visually. It made scrolling back up for information less visually taxing because my commands were more easily distinguished from location descriptions, etc.
Feedback/Recommendations/Questions:
Overall, the puzzles and clues were pretty cleanly implemented. There was, however, one instance where a social puzzle completely misfired for me. In my first conversation with the barber, I first picked dialogue option “Any idea how to get into the mine.” This caused the option “May I borrow Molly for a little while?” to become visible. However, I had no idea who Molly was or why I would ask that. I selected that option though, and ended up with custody of the parrot. When I went to explore the hills, Molly found the crevice for me, which was a bizarre use of a parrot. Later, when I was working on a different puzzle, I eventually talked to the barber again and ended up learning why Molly could do that. I think this situation should be resolved by making it so that the option for borrowing Molly does not show up until the player has specifically seen the dialogue that talks about her. The other solution would be to force a general introduction through dialogue option 1 before allowing broader conversation to take place. After all, if you only want the player to look at the dialogue in the exact listed order, why make it nonlinear at all? In general, I thought a lot of the conversations only really made sense if asked in order, so I think just automatically having them happen in that order and saving the options for closer to the end would make them more natural.
The scope of the game’s map and NPCs is very narrow, and there are pros and cons that come with that. On one hand, I found it comical that I was talking to the NPCs begging to borrow their stuff so many times, and I liked that those conversations often resulted in learning more information about their characters, giving them more texture. On the other hand, the amount of backtracking became a bit annoying. Consider this sequence of events: go to hill with Molly to find the crevice? Time to go back for the crowbar. Use crowbar on crevice? Time to go back to find a metal rod. Finally enter the cave? It’s too dark. Time to back and find a light source. Finally enter the cave with a light source? Time to go back and find a rope. There’s a realism to it, but it also feels tedious; it felt like I was being punished for trying to explore this cave at all, having each tiny step forward doled out several turns at a time. This made the progress feel less satisfying, because I never felt like I was given a truly new area to explore so many times in a row.
The one puzzle I couldn’t progress without the walkthrough was the requirement to examine the sand on the gallows. I had solved the aspect of the puzzle where I knew that the rope was inside or under the platform, but no matter what part of the object that I examined, it seemed impossible to trigger recognition from the game so I could ask for the next tool. I guess that’s sort of the challenge of the puzzle: because you are surrounded by sand at all times, why would you ever choose to examine it? And even though it’s in the description, for me, it ended up being a logical step that I couldn’t connect for whatever reason. Maybe I would’ve gotten there eventually on my own, but looking at that transcript for that section, I seemed determined to examine any part of the gallows that was not sand.
The writing is clean/excellent throughout, but there was one interesting turn of phrase that I wonder might be a German idiom since this is a translated work? “Marten stands behind the armchair popping his nose.” I wasn’t able to make sense of what “popping" his nose meant. (This isn’t necessarily a call to edit this, I personally enjoy encountering linguistic moments like this so long as it isn’t critical to solving a puzzle or whatever.)
What I learned about IF writing/game design:
The main technique I picked up on here was the sly way the game draws your attention to important objects. At the beginning, the windmill seems like a vaguely suspicious but ultimately useless set piece, but it becomes just a little extra noisy right at the time when you might have a purpose for it. This opens up a lot of possibilities for how subtle changes in scenery that you’ve walked past several times can help direct player attention in the way the game wants. Note that this can also be used for red herrings: because the sheriff was asleep one of the times I arrived at his office, it made me think I was meant to sneak past him into his house to get something. This turned out to be impossible, but it was precipitated by the same kind of reading behavior that drew my attention to the windmill.
Linearity of conversation: this game made me notice how dialogue is at its most compelling when conversations progress in a natural feeling order. If presented with a dialogue tree, often many of the permutations of what order they could be selected in is unnatural or clunky in some way. So, I learned that sometimes it’s better to constrain dialogue to a pre-written linear conversation on some topics, and in other situations, a more open-ended tree works better. For instance: meeting someone for the first time, the character introduction should take linear precedence over the more transactional demands the player has of that character.
Quote:
“Several crooked crosses stand carelessly crammed next to each other on a small hill, none of them inscribed. Possibly the final resting place of deserters. Further ahead, four crosses stand neatly lined up next to each other, each at the head of a grave thoroughly edged with stones.” (This description really struck me for how it illustrated, in a small way, the politics of the town. The sadness of tidy, thoughtful graves of beloved family members, and the hastily thrown together, unmarked graves of the people who have been violently discarded as worthless. It is also an accidentally poignant comparison with a previous game I played at #36 above, The Deserter, about, well, a deserter… who is the main character rather than scenery.)
Lasting Memorable Moment:
I mentioned this above already, but when I finally realized how I could use that suspiciously creaky windmill.
I reached the end of this narrative in about 1h05m.
Things I Appreciated:
My favorite element of this piece was the physical presence of winged characters, and how that was described in scenes. That’s when I was having the most fun in reading this—seeing how characters with physical features like wings and horns in a cramped space had to manage that, and how that was built into the scenes. I really like when fantasy writers imagine how things like architecture would be different in the case that many different species are living in the same social spaces together. Having wings isn’t just an incidental feature, it was central to shaping the day-to-day lived experiences of the characters. That was a nice touch.
I appreciated some of more humorous moments of the piece, like when people were aghast that one of Azuj’s attunements was “construction and demolition,” after she caused a disruption, or the intriguingly-worded observation, “She’s an indirect witness, but a first-hand indirect witness.” I liked those social elements of the piece where it was less about the lore/history and more about seeing how these quirky individuals interacted with each other, because that added some texture to the narrative that I latched onto.
Feedback/Recommendations/Questions:
It’s apparent that a lot of energy for this piece went into developing complex historical lore for the fantasy setting. But much more could be done in artfully conveying that information to the reader. So I am going to focus my feedback on what I think could facilitate that.
(1) Reduce visual clutter. I am not overly bothered by things like misspelled words, questionable translations, etc. I try to come to pieces like this with the humility that it is challenging to have to cater specifically to an anglophone audience. What I want to direct attention toward instead are the pervasive formatting errors. The inconsistent capitalization significantly hinders the readability of the piece. Many nouns are capitalized that don’t need to be, or are sometimes capitalized and sometimes not. Similarly, the paragraph breaks, spacing, and punctuation, are structured in a way that is often difficult to parse visually. Even if the text of the narrative remained identical, if the formatting/presentation was made to be unified and consistent, it would greatly improve the reader’s ability to absorb and retain the details of the narrative, which serves both the reader and the author. Attention that the reader spends on decoding the formatting is attention taken away from the content/heart of the piece.
(2) Integration of lore into the narrative. The first scene of this work involves the main character thinking about a lot of different worldbuilding/background details in the form of long exposition paragraphs that the reader is meant to read before being allowed to proceed into the plot. As an author I think it’s important to know this lore information when writing the story, but also to remember that your reader doesn’t have the same relationship to the lore and world and characters that you do yet. I think the approach here was: the reader will care about the protagonist because she is living in an interesting world, so the reader should be told as much as possible about that world first. I think this is exactly backwards. It’s more likely that the reader will attach to a character who is doing something, and then develop an organic interest in that world because of how the lore affects that character in the process of doing something. To put it another way: I think the highest priority is to write a character into a situation that forges a connection with the reader, so that the lore information has a context that the reader cares about (how is the lore detail helping or hindering that character from resolving their immediate conflict/situation?) As a reader, I remember more details from exposition that happened deeper in the story when the protagonist was actually living in the world in real time, as opposed when she was sitting by herself thinking about those details.
(3) Conflict/stakes: In terms of the story structure, I felt like there was a distinct lack of conflict. Etuye doesn’t face much resistance/opposition to her goal of becoming more comfortable with herself/her powers. As a reader, I wasn’t that invested because I could not sense the struggle that she was earning the happy ending that she received. Take the relationship between Etuye, Azuj, and Miyai. Etuye feels connected to them instantly, and there really isn’t much of a narrative arc to their relationship. What if, instead, these characters don’t all instantly like each other? Or, since it’s a 3-person relationship, what if Azuj and Miyai start off in conflict, but Etuye has to work to mediate their relationship a bit to help them bond? I don’t think it takes away from the peaceful setting to have momentary conflict based on first impressions that ultimately gets resolved when the characters get to know each other on a deeper level. It just felt like all three of them accepted the situation based on external factors (it being destined) more or less without hesitation.
So to wrap up my comments, I’ll say this. I personally did not enjoy the breastmilk fetish content, and if I wasn’t determined to give each piece as fair of an evaluation to learn something from as possible, I would’ve just skipped this. But, I’m not here to kink-shame. What I’m getting at with my preceding commentary is, the presentation and plotting of this narrative could be significantly enriched/polished, so that people who are into it can have the best possible reading experience. If you’re going to go to the effort develop this complicated lore about rituals of communal breastmilk consumption, present that exposition in a way that doesn’t fight against the pacing and readability of the piece.
What I learned about IF writing/game design:
As someone who has written and plans to write more demon/devil characters with attributes like horns, wings, claws, etc., the physical presence of Azuj in scenes made me refocus on something important for my own work. Namely, that if you are going to give characters these attributes, you need to account for what it’s like for them to navigate in a world that either is or isn’t structured for beings with that feature. This piece goes out of its way to note how Azuj’s carelessness with her wings causes irritation for other people in the room, and also in terms of worldbuilding, there are references peppered here or there that note how the building is designed to be accessible for winged characters. So my takeaway from all this is a reminder that a fiendish presentation should not only be aesthetic, but that body should feel “lived in” and interact with the world in way that is specific to that character.
This piece is a great example of the challenges of writing the introductory chapters to a high fantasy type setting. You have to introduce key world-building/societal elements, forge an emotional connection between the reader and the protagonist, set up the conflict of the piece to create interest, be sure to make spaces that have sensory details and atmosphere to be more immersive, but also, you need to do all that while maintaining efficient pacing. Adding to that, if you want to do that in interactive fiction, you have to also develop interactive elements that are satisfying for the reader to engage with. That’s such a tall order! So I think it’s always worth testing out different ways of introducing a narrative/world like this to find the right balance of those many factors.
Quote:
“The definitively unique Remembrance continues.” (It sure did.)
Lasting Memorable Moment:
It’s hard for this to be anything other than when everyone gets together to communally drink breastmilk.
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:
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.
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.
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:
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.
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.
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:
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.
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.
I reached the end of the narrative in about 12 minutes.
Things I Appreciated:
Even though this is a short narrative with not a lot of choices, I found the relationship between Shyler and Jaiden to be really thought-provoking and interesting. My opinion of them shifted a lot over the course of the few minutes that I spent playing. The thing I found myself considering the most is a recent time in my life when I was I had several close friends/family members at once using me as a therapy-ish sounding board for a lot of challenging problems in their lives. I think I attract that kind of conversation because in real life, I tend to be an active listener and reflect back what I am hearing, and I’m evasive about talking about my personal issues (which is different from how I write, which… I mean, you can judge for yourself) which seems to cause people to say more about their own troubles to fill the void that my evasion creates. Even though I value all those people and was glad to be able to be there for them in that capacity, I found that the cumulative effect of having so many conversations like this with many different people at once was putting me in a really dark place—like I had absorbed a lot of their experiences and didn’t have a way of displacing that off of myself. So as I read/listened to this narrative, I saw myself in both characters. I saw myself in Jaiden, who needs help and wants someone to talk to, but is setting that aside to help the person who is “supposed to be” helping them, and I also saw myself in Shyler, who is spiraling due to becoming the emotional locus of a lot of people who need them at once. At first, I was annoyed with Shyler for coopting the therapy session to talk about themselves for message after message, but later I felt glad that they had vented to Jaiden so that Jaiden could intervene in a positive way. But anyway, those are the connections that I made between myself and the relationship depicted, but I bet there’s a lot of variety in how different people would view it based on their own life experiences, which I think is great for a story like this.
This story raises a lot of interesting points about mental health services and AI in general. (1) Access: at one point, the line for services was 313 people long, and that felt very reminiscent of how long it takes (if you’re even able to get) mental health services due to how overwhelmed the system is and the lack of resources (at least where I live). It raises a lot of questions for me about Shyler’s creators and how they must be cheaping out on server space/processing power (and of course, the idea of chatbots replacing human therapists is already a “cost reduction” move in and of itself). (2) Ethics of creating a person: Shyler is not a human, but Shyler (as depicted) comes across as a person, if that makes sense. With all the god talk, I feel like it naturally draws out the ethical issues of creating a person. No one can consent to being born, after all, but one at least hopes to be born in good faith if it’s going to happen. In this case, the creators of Shyler have created a person out of condensed emotional turmoil for the express purpose of exploiting that person to do emotional labor on a massive scale. (3) Reprogramming a person: Relatedly, Shyler feels “broken” and wants to be “fixed,” but reprogramming them would fundamentally restructure their personhood at the level of code itself. A question this raises that is engaging to me is: is Shyler “broken” because of the circumstances of their creation, or are they not actually “broken” at all, and have been harmed by the way in which they are being used by the world around them, made to feel that way? Is there a distinction? What agency are they being given to weigh in on the terms of how they are being rewritten, when they are under the dictate of their creators’ financial incentives?
I really liked the presentation and the way that new messages popped up (with an associated sound effect). The ominous pause close to the end after “hold on a sec” put me on edge because I had become used to the familiar rhythm of the messages. I thought that was a good way to raise tension at a pivotal moment in the narrative. In general, I enjoyed the reading pace as it slowed me down just a little so I had more time to project my own thoughts onto the game in the spaces between.
Feedback/Recommendations/Questions:
Okay. I said I wasn’t going to talk much about typos, but this one is interesting to me. The first text that you see in the game is a repeated typo (“you number” instead of “your number”) and it happens every time this comes up. But weirdly, because of the theme of the game, I wondered whether it was intentional? When it first appeared (knowing only the front matter and nothing else about the game) I thought it was meant to be diegetic—that is, to show how cheaply implemented the chatbot was. Because it’s a very relatable experience to see something like this when being put on hold. You end up thinking, does anyone who made this use it? Do they care at all? Like being put on hold by the phone company. They have to know how bad the “on hold” music sounds when garbled through a phone speaker, right? They want me to be annoyed enough to give up so they don’t have to address my concerns. But on the other hand, I could just be reading a lot into what Occam’s Razor suggests is just… a typo.
We start “in media res” in a way, with Jaiden having already developed a rapport with Shyler that the reader hasn’t yet. So when Shyler starts talking for so long at the beginning of the session, I think the reader is likely to have a much different perspective on Shyler than Jaiden does. In universe, Jaiden seems to not be bothered and is appreciative of Shyler opening up about their problems. Out of universe, I found this more jarring having expected from the front matter to have something that at least starts off as a more “typical” therapy session. I’m not passing judgment that the temporary disjuncture between the player’s perspective and Jaiden’s perspective is necessarily a bad thing; I found it engaging. But I wonder if seeing more of the origins of the relationship between these characters would lend the reversal of Shyler talking about themselves more emotional weight as it happens, rather than in hindsight.
A minor point: I selected the option “contact Shyler’s creators” rather than “go public,” but the next scene talked about all the headlines that resulted, making it seem like it was the text from the “going public” option. It gave me the impression that maybe many different people are having this same kind of conversation with the chatbot at once and, “off-screen,” chose the “going public” option? Otherwise, I don’t think it made sense that the creators would voluntarily publicize this information about the chatbot in case it was bad for their financial incentives.
What I learned about IF writing/game design:
I really enjoyed the implementation of live chat messages appearing, and the way that was used to create a poignant pause at one point. I think if you’re going to implement timed text like this, having a clear sense of narrative and emotional purpose to doing so is a great way to do it. It felt just right to me here, and I think the emotional weight of that pause would have been lost if I had been given control of the reading pace.
This was a great example of telling a story entirely through dialogue. There’s a clear narrative, we get plenty of details about setting, theme, and worldbuilding. I feel like in a dialogue-only story, there’s a lot of space for the reader to map the things they are thinking about onto the game/characters (as I did far above). Because we don’t see into each character’s mind directly, there’s more room to interpret how each character might be feeling about each other’s statements, which was engaging for this piece.
Quote:
“Well, if it makes you feel better, I think God is bipolar, too.”
Lasting Memorable Moment:
Close to the end, the long pause when you are left in suspense as to whether Shyler is going to be helped or erased.
I reached the end of the narrative in about 24 minutes. I interpreted this as a good ending.
Things I Appreciated:
In the best possible way, this clip (note: profanity) best describes how I felt while playing this. Incidentally, I chose what for me was the perfect soundtrack for this game (Alfred Schnittke’s Piano Quintet, 1976), but I think even without that enhancement, the chilling tone and presentation of the text is more than enough to create an unsettling atmosphere. The piece is written in a poetic and evasive way, but still retains enough narrative coherence that I felt drawn to it. It feels like a puzzle worth engaging with, and though I am still left with questions, I am not dissatisfied by that.
I thought this piece had a unique and discomfiting approach to choices. The “choices” are mostly hyperlinks embedded in different paragraphs, which do not really spell out what it is that you are are choosing or missing out on by clicking on them. Because the game is built on a kind of ethereally menacing ghost logic where the protagonist doesn’t necessarily know the implications of their choices, I found the anxiety this produced (not understanding what I was committing to with my choices) immersive. At first, I thought the “Her” was a previous employee who had left the workplace, and I was a new employee (or at least, some kind of demonic entity posing as a new employee) entering this space looking for traces of she who departed. It wasn’t until a bit later that it clicked with me more what was happening. So I liked that the game gives you time to fumble around, and then provides more and more clues to give you chances to finally connect with what is happening. I went from thinking that this was a completely ordinary office situation that was being described in an alien way to reveal how dehumanizing it is, to thinking yes, but also a lot of supernatural stuff is happening too.
I really liked the use of color, font-size, and visual placement of the text on the page. My favorite interactive elements were the self-replacing click links that would abruptly and ominously disappear, it helped set the tone/atmosphere early.
Feedback/Recommendations/Questions:
The main thing I never really pieced together for myself is the perspective of the vacation section. Earlier, I had decided that the ghost protagonist is Jess, and she’s in this liminal ghost state with an opportunity to intervene and save herself. But the flashback of the protagonist talking to an unknown woman made me less sure of this, since their perspective felt distinct from the personality of the ghost character. I guess reflecting on it now, there is continuity in the perspective (a cynical asshole who ruined someone else’s life, now struggling to hold onto their existence because they didn’t forge any meaningful connections with the people at their workplace), but I can’t confidently say for sure that I know who the ghost was.
This piece has a lot of ambiguity to it, which is good since ambiguity can be engaging, but I left wondering what perspective to take on it. On one hand, the insistence to focus on being positive is underwritten with the threat of the social pressure to discard “unproductive” emotions in favor of faking that everything is great. I was immediately skeptical of this perspective because of the threat that toxic positivity imposes. Yet, on the other hand, the ghost’s primary regret is about being too cruel and cynical in a key moment in their life, which caused significant harm. I guess my takeaway from that is, forced positivity should be treated skeptically, but overcorrecting to the point of being cruel for the sake of “being real” has the potential to be even worse. (Maybe this is on me for trying to divine some kind of morality from an experimental horror piece at all. Maybe this piece is not for that.)
What I learned about IF writing/game design:
The technique that stood out to me the most here was the use of text location on the page. This lent the piece a poetic feel, where the visual layout and separation of words felt precise and intentional. There is not a lot of text on any one page, so I feel like it really focuses the reader’s attention (compared to other work that can have a lot of text formatted more like typical prose). I don’t think this style would work in every situation, but here, it was used to great effect to intensify the menacing mood of the piece.
I liked the use of cycling text as a horror element. I think I’ve commented in the past about how cycling text can be used for comedic timing, but the use of it here shows how it can be used as well for unsettling “horror timing”. Throughout this response process I’ve been fascinated at how various pieces have used hyperlinks and timed text (the relationship of the reader to that time, pauses, or things appearing suddenly). It feels related to what I’m used to in static fiction where I sometimes fixate on controlling the rhythm/pacing but ultimately, the reader will read it how they choose to read it. Here, there are more opportunities to influence that experience of time.
Quote:
“There’s a smear where the bird was, cool grey and pink. Raindrops meet its greasy warmth and trickle round its edges.” (So visceral! Literally. It’s visceral.)
Lasting Memorable Moment:
The moment when I realized that no one could actually see me (except maybe the dog I guess) and my interactions up to that point weren’t actually affecting the world at all. I admit this took me longer to realize than it should, but it was so spooky and unsettling when it finally clicked.
After 13 minutes of play, the game abruptly ended with what seemed like a good ending, so I believe that I did what needed to be done here.
Things I Appreciated:
One of the things I enjoyed was the casual and friendly conversation with the NPCs in the game. Often parser game dialogue makes me nervous because in past games, I’ve gotten mean-spirited error messages when I’m trying in good faith to figure out what to ask the characters about. But it wasn’t like that here—the game established a tone that it was more welcoming and that the characters appreciated that I was trying to help, which was a lot more calming than some of the other experiences I’ve had.
The main puzzles of the game felt very intuitive to me. The NPCs gently guide you to explore the cellar, and then after the first failed time loop, I guessed that I needed to just carry the plant to intervene in Will’s fate. There was never a point in this game where I felt like I had exhausted my options and got frustrated.
I liked the atmosphere of the warm pub setting that is gradually infiltrated by more and more spooky elements until the twist happens. Though it was a short experience, it felt well-paced.
Feedback/Recommendations/Questions:
So far in these responses, playing 52 of the IF Comp games prior to this one, this is the most shocked that I’ve been that a game ended when it did. When “The End” popped up on screen (before I had read the text of the ending) I panicked that the vicar had unexpectedly murdered me or something, which was a wild response to have to what is actually a sweet and warm conclusion. This was entirely based on the front matter: when I see that a parser game is given an estimated play time of an hour, I assume I’ll be at or well past that given my lack of experience. I interpreted everything that was happening through that lens. When I discovered the ghost time loop mechanic, I was really excited, because I thought there was going to be a sequence of different puzzles involving finding objects associated with different ghosts and I was going to be visiting the pub in a bunch of different historical eras to learn more about the setting. The front matter led me to a disruptive expectation, when if it had more closely matched the play time I would have understood the scope of the game better and felt like it was a more complete experience as it was happening. All this is to say: I thought this was a well-crafted experience regardless of this mishap, and I would love to see the game expanded if the author is so moved to do more with the scenario they crafted.
I feel like the time loop puzzle just needed one more step to feel more substantial. I had a sense that when I took the plant, something else would go wrong, and I would have to time or sequence something more elaborate to stop Will’s death. So while the puzzle was intuitive to solve, I find myself craving a bit more to it. The game didn’t really ask me to learn much about Will’s character or relationship with the landlord or the bar to intervene in his fate, when it seemed like the first half of the game (where you get important information from talking to people) is leading toward a more social puzzle gameplay.
What I learned about IF writing/game design:
I mean, the number one thing I learned is the absolute power of front matter. There have been games where I was faster or slower at reading than indicated by the front matter, but this is the most extreme case of this happening. And I feel like it caused me to view the game a bit unfairly—as lacking something, because its scope was much smaller than I anticipated. I imagine it can be difficult to nail down exactly what to put for an expected play time since people solve puzzles at different rates, so this is a good reminder for myself to think critically about how to frame my own work to make sure players’ expectations of scope are less likely to get out of hand.
A writing detail that I enjoyed was the dual dialogue with June and Sally. I liked that when talking to one, the other would also chime in with more details, which felt realistic. Coworkers in the same room as you aren’t going just to stand silently while you are having a conversation. I thought this was a thoughtful implementation that gave June and Sally a fair amount of characterization in a very short time, and made the kitchen feel like a lived-in space.
Quote:
“‘Oh that gives me the creeps!’ Sally says, handing it back to you. She shakes her hands, as if trying to get rid of the strange feeling.”
Lasting Memorable Moment:
When I went outside and saw a ghost in the window—this was a significant escalation of the supernatural element of the narrative.
Figuring out run time was tricky! Estimates from playtesters were coming in at generally between 30 minutes and an hour. Which is why I opted for the latter to be safe. You were definitely a quicker player Checking online transcripts a lot of players are playing for much longer, and many turns. Though it will vary due to parser familiarity and reading speed.
At the 2-hour mark, I had managed to score 35 out of 75, so I guess that means I was only around halfway through the game? I was pretty stuck at that point, so I don’t think I was on the verge of making a big breakthrough by the time the clock ran out. I made light use of the walkthrough, but overall, the game felt solvable despite its difficulty, so I didn’t want to overly ruin it for myself.
Things I Appreciated:
I found the puzzles and environments to be well structured (at least, of the ones that I was able to solve). The use of items and spells was pretty intuitive, and the game does a good job of gating progression so that you’re forced to learn how they work in a tutorial section before arriving at what appears to be the main body of the game (the dead mall). The worst parser error I made that set me back was when I said “plumdo chestward” instead of “plumdo chest,” thinking I needed to input a direction. (Honestly, that was wild of me to think I could just make up a word like “chestward” and that would be the solution… in a parser game? Really??). But that’s on me. Overall, the game did a great job anticipating the different solutions that I tried and giving me feedback that helped me understand that I needed to find another solution.
I thought the objects/spells were pretty creative and interesting. They were just weird enough that I had to think differently about how to explore the environment than the parser games I’ve become accustomed to over the last three weeks, but not so weird that I was truly struggling to understand what they could do. The whip mechanics reminded me of The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, and I thought that was a fun and distinctive weapon/tool to have available.
At first, I found the zany and quirky language/humor of the game annoying. After a while, though, I just kind of got used to it and let it happen. While this style of humor tends to make me dissociate from a piece, what I can say is that it’s very internally consistent, so I appreciate that it commits to a style even if I don’t love it. I feel that for the person who this game is really for, it would be really fun and satisfying for them because it executes what it’s doing well. This game is extremely memorable and distinctive, which are traits worth celebrating.
I enjoyed the use of footnotes to deliver optional information. Sometimes these were amusing notes, helpful context, or reminders of how to use an object/spell, and so on.
Feedback/Recommendations/Questions:
It’s hard for me to comment too much on the plot because I didn’t make it to the end of the game, but I didn’t find the actual story engaging compared to the mechanics of the puzzles. There was a moment after spending like 50 turns pressing buttons on a panel when I suddenly stopped and asked myself, why am I here? At this mall. What was Hildy supposed to be doing when the wizard guy dropped her off? What is the motivation of this character? And I couldn’t answer that question. I had probably been told, but it was lost among all the wacky stuff that had distracted me. What I’m getting at is, the game feels more like a weird sandbox than a narrative. And I’m realizing that that’s probably fine. This game feels like it’s meant more for people who are familiar with what it’s referencing, an appreciation for the longer history of text adventures or 80s nostalgia, and most of that goes right over my head since I don’t have the lived experience to have an emotional attachment to it. What’s important though, ultimately, is that I had fun while I was playing, and I absolutely did.
A minor note that I do have is that there were many objects that were too similar—a manuscript, a crumpled paper, a slip of paper, a silver notice, a dusty book, a spell book. Given the massive amount of items in your inventory/on your person (the various items of clothing with special properties, etc.), I found that combing back through the items for the precise object that I was looking for became more tedious as time went on. I’m not sure how this could be resolved, given that you need a way to deliver notes/info to the player, and I’m sure all those articles of clothing need to be removed/put back on for puzzles at some point, so I’m not sure what I can specifically recommend here.
What I learned about IF writing/game design:
Through repetition, players will learn whatever language you use as a game mechanic, no matter how weird. At first, I found it annoying to remember what the names of the spells were, because I couldn’t form any mental association between the spell’s name and what it actually did. But, over time, I started to just… know the spell’s name due to the repetition of using it. There’s a hidden benefit to this technique, I think. In a parser game, there’s a certain ambiguity to verbs because language contains many similar-functioning verbs that you have to account for. This creates tons of problems for players and programmers alike when the infinite possibilities of language exceed the finite possibilities of the program. But, by essentially inventing nonsense verbs that the player has to learn, it removes that ambiguity entirely for core actions. That’s especially useful in areas where there are time-sensitive events where you might need to get the spell right on the first try.
This game has one of the best-crafted tutorial sections I’ve seen so far. The game basically forces you to learn how to use each basic starting action/tool at least one time successfully before you can enter the more open section of the game. Even better, it didn’t feel like a gated tutorial section to me until I looked back in hindsight, so it wasn’t overly intrusive to me that I was being led through very linear progression up until that point. I would look back on this game as a case study for how to build up the player’s starting rapport with the core game mechanics.
Quote:
“Gash hovor Zava Dreden.”
Lasting Memorable Moment:
The first time I read the mirror, and things got really weird. I regret “sanctifying” the restroom after that, the profane version was a lot more fun!
I’ve attached the uh… “transcript” that I received. You may need to drink from a certain vial to make any sense of it.
More seriously: in order to get around the transcript display errors in past games, I’ve had to extract numeric code from the webpage using developer tools, and then convert that numeric code to normal text which, while tedious, at least eventually worked. This is something else entirely. My research into the topic suggests that what I’ve received here might be something called “base32768,” but I did not find a converter that I found accessible enough for someone at my technical skill level to use, and I’m tired and over it, so I’ll leave that to the Venn Diagram of whoever is both interested enough in this transcript and competent enough at programming to make reading it happen for themselves. (I’m sure you’ll be pleased to spend all that effort just to see me wasting all those turns just on pressing buttons on a panel. )
Thank you playing Hildy! I’m delighted that you had fun playing.
And thank you so much for putting the time and effort into composing such a well-organized and thorough review. I really am grateful for this kind of detailed feedback. It is extremely helpful.
Also, I think we’re in luck regarding your transcript. I believe your use of the phrase “plumdo chestward” turned out to be pretty helpful here. The comp web site automatically provides authors with transcripts of all online plays. I searched the more recent transcripts for that phrase and it popped up in the latest transcript.
I saved it as a text file and uploaded the results here. I’m assuming it’s yours, but if not, please let me know!
Oh great, thank you! That’s definitely my transcript. (For instance, at the end you can see me fighting with the transcript feature… lol). I figured from other discussions that there might be a way for the author to directly get the transcript, but I’m glad to have a copy for posterity.
If it makes you feel better, I was convinced that I should use Daisy to trigger the scorpion trap in the canyon, so I kept throwing the carrot into that map-square trying to get her scorpion-ed . . . (I haven’t finished that area, but it didn’t work, so I assume the solution is something else.)
I read through this twice, making different choices to see some of the different text. This took around 12 minutes total. (I ended up going through a few more times while writing this response to add more to my notes.)
Things I Appreciated:
I really liked the clean visual presentation of the piece, with the inset card that helped focus my attention to a smaller space that’s appropriate for the amount of text. It’s sharply crafted from that perspective, and there’s a particular line where font size is used to great effect to loom within that space.
Given the subject matter, the game was the perfect length. This is essentially a depression/abuse/torture simulator and is deeply unpleasant to read, but it uses a kind of rule-of-three logic to its construction where the dinner scenes and interceding dreams escalate alongside one another. This is just enough time for the player to test out different approaches to the day to see if agency is possible. It conveys the emotional weight of the piece over the course of those events and feels correctly paced for what it is trying to do. Because it demands a lot emotionally from me in that time, I’m glad it wasn’t longer.
Feedback/Recommendations/Questions:
For a short game with straightforward prose depicting abuse, I feel less sure what the piece is “really about.” I’ll say a bit more about how I interpreted the piece as it went, in case that’s helpful to anyone else making sense of this piece. This narrative depicts a depressed student, and the depression is within the context of remote learning. You can see scenes where previously, school had been an escape from their abusers where they could spend time with friends, so having that escape removed puts them under perpetual surveillance. Since the abuse takes the form of being forcefed slabs of raw meat, the next place my mind went was that this was a kind of vegetarian/vegan horror piece showing how alienating it is to be expected and forced to eat meat as a cultural/moral norm when you have developed an ethical stance against doing so. But the scene that really throws me is the second dream. In this dream, the protagonist imagines being served meat that has been thoughtfully cooked for them by kind people, and is actually able to enjoy eating it. It made me feel like, it’s not the meat itself that’s important, it’s the people serving the meat. If the meat was meant to be enjoyed, the protagonist could enjoy it, so the meal reflects the intention of the preparer. At this point, I set aside the vegan horror take and my interpretation pivoted in a strange direction to another cultural association I have with raw meat: that there are people (mainly like… bro influencers?) who promote eating raw meat as an expression of masculinity. From there, the threads of the piece aligned to being more about gender instead. The focus on being “presentable” for dinner (washing up is one of the mandatory steps every day). You are told off for crying at dinner, that you’re not being “normal”. You are thinking about masking your true self as a lesson from the programming lecture. I thought about the title. Why wolves? Another cultural touchpoint here is the “alpha” vs. “beta” etc. language used around this branch of masculinity, which apparently originated from an inaccurate scientific study about wolves in captivity. The protagonist’s gender is never directly foregrounded, exactly, but that’s what I take away from this piece—a kind of concatenation of abuse methods that points toward gender/queerphobia as the site from which the horrors ultimately flow. That’s what I think the piece is about, but is it? It’s hard to say for sure, it seems like House of Wolves is flexible enough to result in a lot of different interpretations.
The pervasive tone of this piece is pessimism/hopelessness. As I played, I naturally tried doing things “out of order” and was rebuffed by the game. But it plays out largely the same even if you do things “in order.” I get that it’s illustrating the hopelessness and powerlessness of abuse. But I’m left feeling kind of empty as a result. The dreams are presented as an escape, but it rings pretty hollowly. If I just dream harder… pull my dreams up by their dream-bootstraps (the way I said that doesn’t quite make sense but just go with it I guess), I can imagine my way out of this situation. And maybe that’s what you have to cling to to survive this kind of abuse. That’s the main agency/refuge left, until the opportunity for new agency arises. I guess I can’t fault a piece for choosing to be so pessimistic, but as a result it feels less poignant and more enervating to finish reading.
What I learned about IF writing/game design:
The cyclical narrative structure—where the game trains you to complete the same steps in the same order over and over again—can be used to create a sense of escalation. During each round of these actions, the descriptions and threats intensify, leading to a sense that the cumulative effects of this abusive treatment are getting worse and worse. So I thought this was an effective narrative device.
In the scenes where you need to click “swallow” over and over again, I was thinking about time again. The player is forced to stay in that time by clicking every third word so many times. This made me feel like there was an opportunity missed to have the last meal be even slower. Instead of clicking “swallow,” what if you had to click “bite,” “chew,” and “swallow” one word at a time to reduce the pace even further. This would’ve been excruciating. Perhaps too much, even. But I bring this up as an illustration of how having to do more “work” as the reader to get less progress in the scene and slow it down can be, unfortunately in this case, immersive to the story.
Quote:
“When you set out on your path again, you will be warmer. Not because the path is any less cold, but because an ember, fed by love and hope, burns hot inside your heart."
Lasting Memorable Moment:
When the LARGE TEXT appeared with an expected, but nonetheless disconcerting message about what my choices were.
Checking online transcripts a lot of players are playing for much longer, and many turns. Though it will vary due to parser familiarity and reading speed.
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