Next played “Anne of Green Cables” by Brett Witty. I had been looking forward to this title with some trepidation. I enjoyed the original children’s story upon which this is based, and I am a fan of Canadian Maritime culture more generally; the music, the history, the landscape, etc, etc. I once considered buying a vacation property in Nova Scotia, but then Covid changed our financial situations and that did not work out. On the other hand, I’m lukewarm about cyberpunk, or steampunk, or whatever this particular adaptation should be called.
“Anne of Green Cables” follows the original story somewhat faithfully for at least the first three chapters, which is about as much as I remember from as long ago as I read the book. But the cyber-punk conventions and setting almost completely displace the pastoral maritime setting which attracted me so much to the original.
This re-telling is text dense, with few branch points. I read as carefully as I was able for a few chapters, then found myself skimming, stopping at the branch points. The “undo” button is enabled, so I could toggle back and forth to see how much difference the choices really made. Sometimes they did (in the short term, at least). In one scene (which I think was adapted from the original) Mrs Rachel insults Anne by calling her ugly. Anne has a choice between calming down, or blowing up, but this is a false choice. If the player directs her to “calm down” we are reminded this is not in her nature, and the scene plays out exactly the same. Afterwards, however, given a choice between apologizing to Mrs Rachel or not apologizing, the scenes play out quite differently through to the end of the chapter.
The CSS styling is attractive throughout. There is a cool visual puzzle near the end, which determines the ultimate conclusion. The default ending (if the visual puzzle is not manipulated) includes a number of Twine Syntax warnings. The more desirable endings work fine.