JJMcC's 2025 R-A-T-A-T-O-O-T-Y

[jjmcc]

What would the dog days of summer be without this community’s foremost canine partisan? (As measured by anti-feline posts). No seriously what was it like? Serene? Cozy? Absent serious foot-in-mouth incidents? Like walking with blissfully pebble-free footwear? Sounds about right.

Well, the honeymoon is over, your favorite shoe-pebble is back! Or, if not favorite, perhaps most persistent? Fresh off some feverish per-Alpha work on the WIP (thanks to some gradeA playtesters) I am charged to get my head out of my hind quarters and reconnect with the larger artistic community. Y’know, by reviewing their works.

With motivating intro like that, you know it is time for

JJMcC’s 2025 R-A-T-A-T-O-O-T-Y*

* review-a-thon assessments, thoughts and out of time yammerings

As last year I am well and truly flying without a net - no rubrics, scores or math of any kind. Just those signature stream of consciousness shotgun blatherings that may or may not trip over something meaningful by sheer probability alone! Let’s see!

[jjmcc]

The Moon’s Knight by 30x30
Style: Choice-Select
Played : 7/14/25
Playtime: 5m, two playthroughs, all 497 words

I see what I am in for here. Microgame jams are a practically review-proof endeavor. If we take the reviewer’s task to its most transactional core, the question at play is ‘Is it worth a player’s time?’ Of course this question is nuanced. A simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ is so heavily steeped in the reviewer’s biases and fascinations that without context it is practically useless.

So we try to build context, frame our reactions. Readers can ideally extrapolate their own response based on this, either in sympathy or opposition. Y’know what that takes though? Words, man, lots of words. So.. at what point does the review become out of scale to its subject?

In service of a sub-500 word game? I’m not sure I can decide on a MOVIE to watch in fewer than 500 words, let alone capture complicated feelings from art! And for these short works, length matters. Investing in gameplay for multiple hours, to be underwhelmed is opportunity cost frittered away on other things you COULD be enjoying more. Investing in review reading is time you could instead be playing the game in question! I mean, I’m pushing half this game’s word budget, and haven’t said a damn thing about it yet!

Let’s just posit that 5 minute art IS worth your time. You will waste far more than that on far less rewarding elements of your day. Like reading these reviews.

Of, say, Moon’s Knight! Art thrives under constraint, and MK is no exception. Every word is crucially important, and must cover multiple bases: mood, character, plot, scene. This is actually true of all writing, but the clarity of hard limits drives it home. I am an unabashed fan of this author’s prose. Their longer works cast a spell on me through the power of carefully crafted, moody sentences. It is a fair question, if I pretend I don’t know the answer, whether shorter works would clip these wings too short to fly. Well, no, not at all. MK makes the perfect decision to tightly constrain narrative focus - a study of a mythic, doomed romance set against a backdrop of brutal warfare.

Ok, writing it out like that doesn’t sound clipped, nor does it feel so in the moment. We are treated to visceral yet lyric passages that feel exactly as elaborate as needed to weave this particular tale’s spell. There is no sense of pushing against an arbitrary boundary, only the incredible sharpness of it. The discipline comes in what to leave out: backstory that is more powerfully inferred anyway; rounded character traits that are immaterial to the central conflict; world building that is so much chrome. Jettisoned or gestured at without belabored fanfare. This is a focused work that lets its prose breathe where it needs to, and does not waste time where it does not.

Do yourself a favor. Spend the 5 minutes. (497!)

[jjmcc]

Method In My Madness by Max Fog
Style: Choice-Select
Played : 7/14/25
Playtime: 10m, two playthroughs

Graphical playfulness seems to be the least-utilized tool in the IF author’s toolbox. I don’t mean to imply it is unique, certainly examples WELL predate the internet and IF, going all the way back to illuminated bibles. I am tempted to say it engages a different artistic muscle than the more writerly “words’ meaning are the canvas” approach. Maybe I’m just defining IF too narrowly? Or perhaps focusing too narrowly? What are words but graphical representations of ideas, intended to evoke an intellectual and/or emotional response? Different than paintings only in the steps necessary to create and consume them? Against this definition, IF (and all computer art. except AI “art”. f*@$ that s#!@) is just another medium, this one using its inherent tools of time and dynamism to enhance that same impulse. I mean, Super Mario conjures very specific human engagement, nevermind The Last Of Us.

This specific approach though, of using words both for their meaning and as graphical elements, this feels under-exploited. MIMM is a poster child for the potential of this approach. It uses dynamic graphical layout of conflicting snippets of internal monologue to drive home how messy, fragile and conflicted we can be behind the face we present to the world. Words tumble over each other, entwine in the full breadth of two dimensions, flicker, cloud and clarify all at once. I found this to be insanely well executed. A marriage of form and function that perfectly sing off each other to unify into an artistic statement more effective than its disconnected parts.

Two things ensure that this central conceit neither overruns the narrative premise, nor becomes a distracting flourish undermining the experience. The first is the work’s brevity. It neither overstays its welcome, nor dilutes its own impact. The choice to slowly but noticeably ramp the visual chaos in synch with the narrative is exactly the right one to maximize its punch. The second is the high melodrama/low detail plot. It is a heightened emotional story, almost Twilight Zony in its distilled dramatic shorthand. This resonates with the high artificiality of its construction. A choice this visually dramatic married to an appropriately dire melodrama allows both to flourish, rather than one or the other taking all the oxygen. It is less like form in service of function and more a collaboration of equals. Either in isolation could easily slip into schmaltz or histrionics, off-putting in their exaggeration. Together they resonate in a way that reinforces both.

I really liked this small dose of artistic playfulness. It felt novel, well realized, well tuned, and perfectly sized.

[jjmcc]

Heaven Alive by Grim Baccaris
Style: Choice-Select
Played : 7/15/25
Playtime: 5m, three playthroughs

Another sub-500 jam game! As established, these are WORTH YOUR TIME. What’re you the CEO of a struggling company? You got time for this. What else you gonna do? Foment social media conspiracies?

This is a two-hander, a dialogue based lightly sci-fi game of living with mismatched power. It is a relatively short game of trying to influence a mercurial lord to engage a rescue mission, when said lord is more preoccupied with their own inter-personal potence. It doesn’t take many viewings of Game of Thrones to understand the dread of this scenario, of LIVING it. Ultimately, you choose between self-respect and physical abuse.

I think this dynamic is pretty well understood (if quite timely), and deeply unpleasant. This familiarity could undermine impact pretty quickly. So much so that having it be the entirety of the work’s artistic aims presents a challenge to the author. The solution? Make the game short. A distilled, heightened representation, that has its say and lets you stew in the aftermath before you fully realize it is done. This is the perfect way to realize this message.

If I had a quibble with the game, it was in its multimedia choices. Not all of them. For example, the “Approval” score being the only game stat was a kind of genius way of underlining how primarily important this lord’s opinion was in the scheme of things. There is no “happiness” score, no other score AT ALL. Similarly, the sound choice was nicely evocative of the mood of the piece - omnipresent dread, even behind seemingly transactional conversations. Highlighting that the content of the words is only half the story.

Its visual presentation is what I find less focused. To my eyes, there is just a bit too much going on, in a way that doesn’t coalesce together. The background conveys “generic sci fi background” where its sci-fi-ness is the least necessary thing about the work. The bar coding is a very powerful choice, emphasizing the property aspect of the characters… except the lord ALSO has a barcode? That feels like a mixed message for this particular work. The title screen also feels unfocused: its logo and title fonts feel like too many disparate graphical elements that don’t resonate with each other. “Heaven” is one sci-fi font, “Alive” a more organic one, and the barcoding a third, only the latter resonating with the background in any meaningful way. Graphical dissonance is not a BAD impulse, but to my eye, this feels like one too many. I might suggest recasting “Heaven” to more align with the barcoding, to maximize the visceral punch of the “Alive” choice.

Don’t let these quibbles get you down though. As we have established, brevity and focus, even imperfectly realized, are overriding virtues. Don’t make me COMMAND you to play it… that might undermine your APPROVAL stat… and nobody wants that…

Feeling word-parity smug. Exactly 498!

[jjmcc]

A House of Endless Windows by SkyShard (productions?)
Style: Visual Novel
Played : 7/15/25
Playtime: 30m

This is a visual novel that headfakes a supernatural premise as a tool to cast fraught family dynamics (and possible mental health issues?) as horror. It occupies a similar space as Turn of the Screw, playing with audience expectations of supernatural stories to cast its protagonist (and family) in high relief. I found it pretty effective at this. That frisson of ‘is what’s going on what they SAY is going on?’ is a constant engagement to the reader, keeping the mind open and probing so that adjacent emotionality can get past any disbelief or detachment and get purchase. It is a very effective narrative tool, well employed here.

Over its runtime, it also does something interesting with its characters. The same suspicious dissonance that keeps us engaged, allows (most of) its characters to grow from initially painted one-dimensional extremes to more fully realized characters. Most especially the mother and sister. This is accomplished tangentially, as we internalize seemingly conflictory story beats that are well crafted to paint a picture in our heads without outright explaining things. The father character never really rises to that level, though this is not necessarily fatal, he is somewhat orthogonal to the story’s aims. The protagonist is slightly different, no less powerfully painted. Here the fact of interactivity is used to flesh out the character via the reader’s engagement rather than any imposed plot beats.

The multi-media presentation is very winning - abstract, pastel fog spaces over a moody soundtrack are excellent choices to reinforce the slippery, out of focus nature of the narrative. The text itself is attractively wrapped in a cool graphical box. It is timed text, but crucially plays out faster than we (ok, I) could read, meaning we get the “realtime conversation” vibe without slowing things down. The only off note I felt here was an early screen that seemed to be out of synch - a second, visually incompatible screen crowding up from the bottom. Later, such a graphical dividing line is used to good effect but early on it felt more like a bug than an artistic choice. The fact that this “bug” was not repeated suggests it might be deliberate, even if it didn’t read so.

There are a few further dissonances. Most notably, the narrative plays with POV. The protagonist, the character we are nominally aligned with as reader, is rendered in first person. We have full access to their inner life and to the extent we feel proactive, it is with this POV character. It is somewhat jarring then when a later character is referred to in second person, explicitly casting them as the reader! The first effect of this is to nicely reframe some prior text that felt applied to one character as another’s. The price we pay for that neat twist though is a weird space where we understand/empathize/and align with the “ME” of the narrative, not the “YOU.” In fact, notwithstanding that we are consistently called “you” by the narrative, it does not produce a dramatic tension within us or the story, it just kind of jars things. I have no doubt there was a purpose to this explicit choice, but whatever that might be was lost in the confusion.

My other main quibble is that the ending felt… arbitrary. It just kind of ended, resolving little of the tension of the work. To be fair, there is real resolution for one character as well as the ‘what really happened’ plot. Between the reader alignment confusion, and the fact that the narrative continued to power on for a bit after those climaxes, I was left feeling like the story outran its own aims. Instead of crescendoing with resolution of plot closure, it lingered on. The message here is unmistakable - there is no CONCLUSION, life continues past things like plot climaxes. True, but… isn’t the power of stories heavily tied to closure and climax? Even “nothing ever ends” is a meaningful ending, but it should be underlined in the reader’s head to land as actual ending. For me, my mindset was just a bit too muddled to get there.

All that said, I would still recommend this work - it does many things right, creates a wonderfully enigmatic vibe for much of its runtime, portrays some interestingly fraught family dynamics and has impactful revelations to dispense.

Some typos for the author:

“I know not waste time..”
“..just how young were now…”

[jjmcc]

The Butterfly Dreams by Ave Q Productions
Style: Visual Novel
Played : 7/15/25
Playtime: 15m demo

There were enough caveats and warnings to this work, relative its Linux readiness, that after some mental tussling I decided to start with the demo. I needn’t have worried, it seems. The engine ran just fine for me. This is a well put together visual novel that carries some super strong Wonka vibes. We are introduced to a collection of characters, most to one degree or another characterized as flawed if not selfish. They are invited by a wealthy innovator to experience the wonder and magic of his latest creation. While the demo ended before further generalizations could crystallize, early on it feels like it is leaning into “and get some comeuppance for their narrative-imposed shortcomings.”

It has a lot to recommend it. The production value is quite high, showcasing photographic backgrounds to static cartoony character portraits animated in clever and amusing ways. The graphical interface is pleasant and engaging, and the peppy background music sets the stage quite well. The butterfly motif and animations in particular are really wonderful. It feels ungenerous to focus on how those elements failed to land for me, the more so given I only really experienced the preamble. It is true that that experience convinced me this was not going to be for me, which, ungenerous or not, is the headline for my engagement with this work.

In general, the graphical choice of cartoon-characters-on-photographic-backgrounds has an uphill climb with me. I get the cartoon character thing, those kinds of portrayals facilitate player engagement better than photographs through iconic aliasing. Contrasted to photo realism though, the effect is mildly jarring, positing a world space that requires some mental dissonance to resolve. Where used in service of making a statement about the artificiality of the characters, that works for me. As a default palette choice, I find its artificiality to carry perhaps-unwanted subtext. It also feels like a missed opportunity. You already have some dissonant graphical choices. In a story about VR worlds, the opportunity to contrast to the ‘real world’ via background graphics seems a potentially subtle and powerful possibility. Here though, at least through the demo, no such differentiation exists. Granted, maybe the point of the fictional tech is how “indistinguishable it is from everyday,” I’m just not sure how the graphical choices make a great case for that.

It isn’t helped, I think, that the very first character we meet is described as having white hair, yet whose illustration portrays a darker coloring. Again, it is a jarring dissonance that serves to push the reader a bit. If we can’t trust the words to report the evidence of our eyes, how can we trust their later assertions? Which, boy does it make. We are then introduced to a collection of characters that will be experiencing this uber-VR world on behalf of its creator.

As a crew they are clearly delineated but all kind of one dimensional? A nervous but well-meaning banker, elderly children’s author, skeptical scientist, passionate chef (whom the narrator, apropo of no dialogue or business we have seen, characterizes as ‘gluttonous’), a tech focused prodigy and a gamer/skate boi. And the PC of course, tentatively the Charlie in this Chocolate Factory. The NPCs feel as one dimensional as their Roald Dahl counterparts, which is not NECESSARILY a bad thing. If their story function is to avatar their shortcomings for poetic comeuppance, sure. Why not? The dynamic is just a little off though, since WE are a faceless vanilla Charlie, we don’t actually have a sympathetic guide to the proceedings here. Some of the caricatured characters do generate more sympathy, but that is its own pitfall. When we understand single-note characters as unappealling, their one-dimensionality gives us permission to dismiss them. Purportedly sympathetic one-note characters on the other hand… feel kind of uncanny valley? Undeserving of our sympathy because of their one-dimensionality? And also at odds with any emerging comeuppance narrative (raising the prospect that it is a misread of the tale). Too, some of them are kind of clumsily portrayed. The narrator’s drive-by comment on the chef stands out, as does some pretty dated slang used by the gamer.

Before getting to the central conceit of the piece, there is one technical choice that further pushes at player engagement. I speak of timed text. I assert that I have a greater patience for this than many in this community, but this was too much even for me. I dialed text speed to its fastest setting, and STILL endured dramatic pauses and other artifacts that slowed the reading experience in a counter-productive way. Like the graphical choices, it never settled into a background atmospheric artifact, it continually jarred and frustrated my progress.

The plot does move pretty briskly to our first encounter with the magical VR, where the cast gets to inhabit each others’ full-sensory dreams. Once again, there is clear narrative shorthand on display. Our first dream is hosted by the elderly children’s author. Unsurprisingly, it is a whimsical tea party hosted by cartoon rabbits. It feels weirdly infantilizing. Here we have a woman whose decades of life do not give her a full inner life of which her art is only a part. No, her dreams are fully and completely summarized by her craft, by wanting to INHABIT that craft. Again, in service of a Wonka-like plot, fine. Except also, underwhelming? I mean, this amazing tech that breaths realistic life into our mind’s eye, and we get a tea party? Is that a compelling use of time and resources? How much data center water and power was consumed to deliver THAT? Fittingly, the characters focus more on the wonder of the technical achievement than the dream itself, but it can’t help but underline this as a novelty, and not the transformative innovation promised by its creator.

And there the demo ended. I reluctantly conclude this is not for me. Too many creative choices are pushing at me in too many ways. I outline them all above both as an honest reflection of my engagement (hey! It can’t be cruel if it’s honest, right?? RIGHT???), and to highlight that these choices are quite legitimate, artistically, and folks with different hot buttons than me may have a much more positive reaction. Certainly the Wonka template is a tried and true one, the setting and premise a promising spin on it. I wish the authors success in finding their audience.

(I should parenthetically note that my consistent ‘Wonka’ characterization is informed by the first 15m of the work. There is every possibility its narrative aims are different in the context of the larger piece. Please don’t take the word of a dude that bailed so early as in any way definitive of the full work.)

[jjmcc]

Lazarrien: A Love Story by DemonApologist
Style: (single) Choice-select
Played : 7/15/25
Playtime: 20m, one playthrough

Fantasy hero awakens with patchy memory and vaguely defined quest - a well-trodden premise, no? This is a one-choice game that does a lot to make you forget you’ve seen this before. For one, it operates in a dreamy unreality where the challenges and tasks feel simultaneously metaphoric, mythic and immediate. It accomplishes this with its prose that I ultimately found to be successful, but not unambiguously so. Moment by moment there were phrases and passages that felt more showy than impactful. Reaching just far enough that the strain was felt. But. Those passages also accumulated over time to create a specific vibe to the thing, one that sang cleanly off its ending in a really cool way. Whether this crests from “on balance good” to “completely justifies its excesses” is a nuanced line I’m just going to leave as an exercise to the player. I found it to be AT MINIMUM the former. Which, if you are familiar with my biases on this score, is no mean feat.

A less ambiguously successful element is the NPC population and our protagonist’s journey with them. A flighty but insightful “bard,” a priestess being reclaimed by the forest, a horrific wax king (a true highlight to the work), and a pursuing demon. I found all of these NPCs to be compellingly imagined, hinting to metaphor and meaning beyond their physical presence but also oh so physically PRESENT. They showcased the fantastical creativity alive in our most beloved fantasy properties and are the overriding strength of the work.

The other major strength of the work was its plot conceits and turns. Which I’m going to endeavor not to spoil. As our amnesiac protagonist progresses, more of their situation is revealed (as is de rigueur for these kinds of things), which ends up being truly surprising. Perhaps more of it is dispensed in a final info dump than I might prefer, but honestly the twist itself is interesting enough (and resonant enough with the work’s not-quite-overwrought vibe) that that is easily forgiven. What felt metaphoric, mythic is both acknowledged and justified in a very satisfying way. The portentous room of swords is an amazing image that totally sells the final twist. It is the kind of work whose immediate details sometimes ring hollow or unconvincing (not enough time to remember? emotionality asserted but not felt?) but whose final twist contextualizes those disconnects into a specific kind of mythology.

Notwithstanding all the moaning I’ve stitched into the above paragraphs, by the work’s end all those quibbles were kind of moot and immaterial. Its overriding plot engine, and the wonderful characters that populate it to that point compensate and justify all of it in a very satisfying way.

There is one quibble I have that was not so easily dismissed. The interactivity. It was billed as a one-choice work, in service of a Jam of that theme. One choice works have a unique challenge. As a percentage of the choices available to the player, a HUGE amount of weight is placed on that choice. Here, that one choice is kind of… immaterial? The narrative makes quite clear what the impact of the untaken choice is, to the point there is no real need to revisit it. It is effectively a no-choice narrative masquerading as something else. This is perfectly aligned with the narrative theme of the game, by the way. This artifact reinforces the tragedy of the piece. I am at a loss to envision a better one-choice this particular work might proffer. What I question is, does the one choice ADD to the narrative in a meaningful way? I’m not so sure. In compliance with the Jam’s rules, the player has no agency up to that point, so it is not really a question of playing with player initiative. It is a choice that reinforces the theme of the piece, but whose ACT OF CHOOSING doesn’t really register as meaningful, either in the moment or certainly in retrospect.

Look, Jam games have their specific rules. Sometimes these rules breed unexpected creativity and resonance. Other times, you get a really cool story, well rendered, that is not necessarily showcasing its constraints. Does that make the work lesser? Not even a little bit.

[DemonApologist]

Thank you so much for taking the time and care to review Lazarrien: A Love Story!

I agree that the single choice as presented is not very balanced. At the very least, I overestimated what percentage of readers would find it worthwhile to watch Lazarrien stab his hot demon boyfriend to death in service of such a nebulous quest, especially if they already knew this was a terrible idea from having spared him the first time. Still, I thought at the time that some proportion of people might try the sacrifice first. (To me it feels like the obvious correct choice to spare him, but as a moderately self-aware purveyor of gay demon propaganda, I don’t necessarily assume that others will feel similarly aligned with my nonsense.)

At any rate, I probably banked too much on reader completionism to instigate re-reads (allowing readers a chance to witness the in-universe randomization taking place). And I haven’t learned from this. I had a similar issue with Radiance Inviolate in SpringThing where the text did not inspire many reviewers to re-read and go ending-hunting, to my not-insignificant disappointment.

I am, however, very glad you encountered the king in the wax fields during your playthrough. That’s one of my favorite character-area combinations!

Take care,
DemonApologist

[jjmcc]

Habeas Corpus by GC Baccaris
Style: Choice-select
Played : 7/15/25
Playtime: 7m both endings

(Lost Internet service last 3 days! What a wild way to live.)

Another constrained implementation Jam game! This one doubles the word count to a full 1k. Thankfully the author declines to provide their actual word count, freeing me from the conceit of matching it in review length. That particular fancy was FAR funnier in my head than in practice, and was running real danger of taking over this review season.

HC presents as an older school - pixel font/square nav button/90’s browser kind of feel game. As a newly awakened denizen of some unknown space (the blurb claims it to be a wandering fortress, though the text of the game does not establish that with any certainty), you explore and decide to escape or not. The exploration space was uneven, I found. One location was imminently interesting and engaging, while the others were far more functional. I get it, word constraints were a real pressure. Even so, the work would be much better served, I think, by putting all locations on equal footing, especially in a map this tight. To the point, one fewer location could free up word count for the ones that remain without really losing anything.

The central question is foregrounded pretty effectively by player exploration, camouflaging what is essentially a one-choice work behind a veneer of agency. That sounds negative, but I don’t mean it that way. By giving the player exploration agency, the choice feels organic and seamless rather than an atypical agency in an otherwise linear narrative. That said, the choice does not feel particularly HARD. The nature of the choice is presented pretty dispassionately in both cases. Thing is, absent contextual text of some sort trying to SELL the inferior option, it seems pretty clearly a resignation rather than a legitimately attractive choice. Meaning, I am at a loss to figure out who would choose it over the other.

So I didn’t, and got an ending that was reasonably satisfying for its modest investment. Then I went back and chose the other and got another ending. In a longer work, I don’t think these would have satisfied much. Which I don’t think is a useful observation, as a longer work would have had more word count to explore, paint the environment and engage the player. As a short work, we have established that artist voice is a wonderful thing to experience, warts and all. I definitely left with that here. HC’s idiosyncrasies were modest but nevertheless engaging in this short dose.

[jjmcc]

Quotient, the Game by Gregory R Simpson
Style: Parser
Played : 7/16/25
Playtime: 2.25hrs, hit a trigger wall I could not cross

I am unsteadily balancing on a tightrope with my experience of this game. Not because I am unsure of my response to it. I am SO SO sure of that. Because I am quite sure that in communicating that response, here, in public and documented for posterity, will be so alienating to you my dear, indulgent reader, that I have no hope of getting safely to the other side. I see no future where I do not plummet from this height, mirroring my exact experience with this game. Maybe if I retell it, how I got this far from safety, so wildly unbalanced, you can at least understand my dilemma. Before you watch me plunge to my reputational death, right along with whatever regard you had for me and my words.

This is a parser game, a light spy romp apparently based on properties I have no prior exposure to. How much of the game is reflective of those sources I cannot say, and will have to factor no further in my review. I found this to be a reasonably competent parser. It makes an early design choice that does a lot to smooth its inevitable burrs. Interesting nouns are italicized in text, calling attention to their relative importance and by extension deprioritizing other nouns in surrounding text. This turns out to be a potent design choice. A common problem with parsers are unimplemented nouns.

"..you see a bookshelf here..."
>EXAMINE BOOKSHELF
You see no bookshelf here.

This is a pretty common parser artifact to this day. “Implement all nouns you type” is easy advice to give and nearly impossible advice to follow 100%. As writers, you are conveying a mood, and you often need nouns to do so. You KNOW it’s not important, merely scene setting, so it is easy to forget potential players will NOT know this. QtG suffers this unimplemented noun problem in spades, pervasively so, but via the simple italicized emphasis it at least conveys to the player where the boundaries are and hopefully minimizes wasted time. It is an effective choice to mitigate this common shortcoming.

There are other implementation frictions as well, less effectively mitigated. Most notably limited synonym space. In several spots it was clear what the game wanted to happen, but required synonym-spamming to get the command accepted. This was also pervasive but not a show stopper.

The story/gameplay was a clear winner early on. Exploring the headquarters of your new spy job, familiarizing yourself with the tools at your disposal and the characters you need interact with, all this was done competently, clearly, and with enough search areas/find keys/interact with people chrome to keep the challenge tractable and rewarding.

The vibe of the piece is quite interesting, as established in the first 2 hrs. First in the mix are artificial parser conventions like minimally reactive conversations with NPCs; several massive loredump objects that teeter towards intrusive, but manage to stay on the entertaining side; pervasive compass directioning; collect-everything movable ethos. These feel squarely in the middle of the road of expected gameplay and are enhanced by imaginative mcGuffins and interactivity. Bolted onto this gameplay is a spy-movie world of shadowy global organizations, Uber-competent bureaucrats and elected officials with king fu sidekicks, weird science, and super criminals. It is a very specific, light vibe that couples to globe trotting gameplay once the narrative kicks into high gear. FURTHER bolted to this stylized, pulpy world is a very real-world travelogue. As you travel through Ethiopia, Oxford, Washington DC, you are treated to simplified but deep implementations of actual locations. Sometimes complete with (jarring in their inconsistency) photos of the architecture and locales in question. It presents kind of a narrative dissonance actually, bounding from outlandish pulp conventions to real-world grounding and back again. This is a world where one puzzle, super well-clued, demands you put a succulent plant on the hood of your plane. And also lovingly details Oxford’s campus and history. I wouldn’t say the combination is unworkable, just not well integrated, forever keeping the player in tension between pulpy excess and real world grounding.

Here is the point where you say, “Ok, I see how the work is maybe a little unsteady in its aims and implementation. You seem on solid ground though, reviewer.” Hold onto that thought, dear reader. This is the point in the narrative where I attempted to go to space for plot reasons. To reiterate, at this stage we have established a silly cast of exaggerated characters (including a wildly popular female President), and dissonantly detailed real world locales.

To get to space we encounter a narrative development that provoked a mental reaction analogous to the gag reflex. To get to space, we must visit Starbase City, Texas, home of SpaceX and Elon Musk. Yes. In addition to fun, exaggerated spy movie tropes, and hyper-real factual locations we now add unabashedly fawning oligarch propaganda. In some ways this setting synthesizes the dissonance already present in the narrative. According to text, Starbase City is an ecological showpiece of Clean City (b*%*^ please, do your homework), and is mankind’s glorious gateway to the stars. All thanks to the selfless genius of Elon Musk.

Where the hell does this plot development live? In the pulpy spy-movie side of the house? Where real-world Musk is recast as just another exaggerated, heroic figure in our spyworld pantheon? Or on the travelogue side of the house, where its uncritical endorsement lives alongside straight-faced factual reporting? Either way, WHYYYY? And also

HELL NO.

Aren’t we past uncritical lionization of a man who unapologetically Nazi saluted the world? Who decided the best way to battle woke propoganda (whatever the hell that strawman is) was to create MECHA HITLER?? For sure, I am. If cast as a Bond character, there is for sure only one role Musk would fit and it’s NOT THIS. I checked the date. Developed in 2024. This choice gets no “of its time” forgiveness. I took barely a moment to reclaim my equilibrium and NOPE’d out of there so fast I didn’t even log my score.

That’s right, former dear readers. I refused to patronize SpaceX even in fiction, thanks to a visceral reaction to an unforgivably misguided creative choice. I stand by that decision. I stand by it in the full knowledge that subsequent gameplay could easily reveal Musk to be the true villain, or perhaps some other equally mitigating development. I stand by it on the strength of the visceral reaction its uncritical text provoked in me.

While your regard for me and my now-clearly-illusory impartiality lie bleeding out on the floor, know that I understand this is an EXTREMELY unhelpful, prejudicial and biased personal response. Perhaps based on values you might, despite the wealth of reported evidence, personally disagree with. I recognize this to the extent that I am unlikely to burden IFDB with hosting this review-cum-screed. While I recognize the aggressive specificity of my response, I apologize for none of it. Sometimes the hill you die on is actually a very high wire.

Also, I can now conceive of a 5 minute game that would NOT be worth my time. That was a real paucity of imagination on my part.

[Apologies, thought I had captured a transcript, as far as it went. Perhaps my ragequit compromised it.]

[jjmcc]

Atraxia by Lauren O’Donoghue
Style: RPG/Choice-select
Played : 7/17/25
Playtime: 2.5hrs, Day 55, plateau’d

This is a work that inflicted a very specific, very powerful Deja Vu on me. So much so, every review approach I have tried to frame has devolved to ‘Compare to Other Work.’ Which I very much did and do not want to do. Until I want back and looked at it. It’s by the SAME AUTHOR!!! Why must you TEST MY OBJECTIVE RESOLVE SO?!?!?!

This is a, for want of better term and hopefully not coming across as too dismissive, cottage-core story. As an island’s new resident, you will spend your days eking out a living (kind of as a scavenger! at some point, all the silver chains you yeet might qualify as a crime wave), integrating into island life, exploring its mysteries and making friends. You have a daily routine of tend your garden/make a living/ and interact with four main environments/NPCs while other events continually crop up to get your attention and interest. You get so many actions a day before you must sleep and repeat. It is a very familiar, very grindy and not unpleasant gamplay style. It helps that as choice-select, it incorporates some simple but effective optimizations to minimize repetitive click friction.

The biggest strength of the work is its devotion to very specific, varied and interesting local lore. You will run the gamut from monster stalking, to treasure hunts, to naturalism, to cold case investigation, while encountering multiple local culture events of varying oddness. It all blends to a very rich picture of an island’s life, dispensed naturally enough through the act of living there. Like its spiritual doppleganger (a phrase I am DESPERATELY trying not to overuse), the depth of implementation is amazing. I went 38 game days before I started seeing intrusively repeated text (outside of dreams, which, recurring dreams are among the most easily forgiven). That’s pretty deep!

There is also an interesting twist on the ‘choose your love interest’ trope. Of the major suitor NPCs, all of them are longer in the tooth than typically showcased in these kinds of things. They all have interesting, full prior lives and are portrayed as middle aged or later. Late in life romance is an uncommon, and welcome choice to focus on, trading youthful infatuation and passion for a softer, warmer, informed-by-life sweetness. A welcome new flavor here.

There are so many nice touches and flourishes - a four-humours based “RPG Stat” model of the world. An event timetable that conveys life beyond the player and their choices. Wonderful prose throughout that sells its cottage-core setting and is fun in its own right. I can’t tell you the joy phrases like this elicit in me: “There are fish with the hearts of hanged men.” The ability to own a dog! Heck the ability TO NOT HAVE TO ENGAGE WITH A CAT! All of these made for a pleasant, immersive time. For a while.

The game is advertised as supporting 2-8 hours of gameplay! Nice swing for the bleachers here, game! Perhaps through my own choice architecture I did not get that. In fact, I seemed to have somehow steered myself into a box. Around day 38, the island’s space collapsed around me. I started getting repetitive responses to interactions. (For a moment, sit with the idea that this DIDN’T happen until gameday 38!) The missions, quests and stories kind of petered out leaving only the grind.. to no obvious purpose. In particular, my romantic interest crescendo’d to a sweet early scene of mutual interest and then… nothing? Textually, it felt like maybe I had gotten too ‘friendly’ with another NPC and the game interpreted that as disqualifying? In the moment, that was not my intention or impression. After that initial romantically charged interaction, my chosen paramour’s repeated (and ONLY repeated) text acknowledged nothing of what had passed between us. Too, I think I somehow boxed myself out narratively where one quest required depositing 4 historical artifacts, of which I had secured 3. There seemed to be no other loose threads to pursue to get the last one, even after another 17 game days. It just felt like the game petered out around me, caging off that fourth quest?

If I resign to inevitability and compare it to its successor, there was one crucial difference. Eikas had goal focus: a specific event/climax you were building towards and able to focus on both with game play and as a narrative. Here, the much more wide open, seemingly climax-free architecture seems to encourage a wider playstyle that ultimately it does not fully service? For example, one NPC, the woodsman had a humorously awkward meeting. Unlike other NPCs, who you could engage with in a variety of social situations, this NPC was a textually tougher nut to crack. Who I quickly assessed as ‘more work than worth.’ I cannot help but suspect my lack of engagement with them is what plateau’d my experience at the 2.5hr mark. (Though belated attempts to shower in gifts did not show promising daylight.)

I hope my online play produced a log of some kind for the author, I am intellectually curious how this gamestate developed. Whether it was a choice architecture artifact or truly a narrative one. Despite the winding-down-calliope I experienced, I do recommend it. It was a very engaging two hours that only deflated and stalled in the subsequent half hour. Per my experience, though, I very much missed the climactic focus of its successor. Feels like the right lessons were learned.

[DeusIrae (Mike Russo)]

There is a climax that weaves all the threads together, and I do think you need to progress with all the characters, as well as finish all the “quests”, to get there - and you shouldn’t be able to accidentally lock yourself out of a romance, the choices are all very direct and clearly-described. Is there anything in your to-do list still? I’m guessing the issue is that you need to wander around in the woods a couple times to trigger the quest related to the monk since that’s the only progression check that isn’t out in the open.

(My review was also all about Eikas, it is very hard to treat them in separation after having played the latter!)

[laurenodonoghue]

Thank you for the lovely review! As Mike said, if you went down the museum route, you should have one other quest to complete; based on other reviews I expect you need to take a few more walks in the woods. I made the wording of that quest objective sort of oblique to make it seem more mYsTeRiOuS but am now realising it was probably vague to the point of frustration, lol. I’m glad the rest of the game landed well though, particularly the prose! I personally love that fish line and I’m glad you did too.

[laurenodonoghue]

Also, vis a vis romances, I unfortunately don’t get a log so can’t tell you what happened there - how it should progress is: once you reach a certain level of closeness with any NPC you should get a letter prompting you to buy a brooch from the market that you can give to your chosen suitor to lock in the romance; after that there are 5 additional romance storylets, and the option to invite them over to the cottage. It may be possible that you missed the letter? Could be worth checking at the market to see if the jewelry seller is there.

[jjmcc]

Blood and Sunlight by alyshkalia
Style: Choice-select
Played : 7/18/25
Playtime: 10m, 3 endings

Elsewhere, I have asserted that ‘good vampire’ stories can become prisoners of their own subtext. While I initially felt that knee-jerk here, BnS manages to dodge that trap pretty nimbly. It presents a sympathetic mortal-vampire love affair drama that through small touches defuses most of its potential gotchas. Let me call out three of them. 1. The mortal half of the relationship is aware of and consenting to the relationship. Consent is among the thornier of the subtexts to “good vampire” stories. 2. Vampire lore is offhandedly tweaked, implying these are not vampires as we might understand them, giving us permission to shrug off more confrontive subtext. 3. Bloodlust/feeding is ignored, like completely. It is unclear these vampires feed at all, let alone on people. A lot of this begging the question “why vampires at all?” beyond the most obvious “in service of the Jam theme.”

We are presented with a drama of college-set drunken New Years, cresting to an overnight decision. It is an interesting dynamic. Young adult romantic selfishness, magnified by alcohol, is a super relatable human situation. “I know daylight will agonize you but… HOLD ME!!!” It is a pretty deep cut of human experience and gets hella novelty points. Other than the observation of it though, it felt kind of … slight? I played through three endings, and they all showcased clearer Day After eyes in realistic ways. Meaning the tension in the choice itself was not undercut by unconvincing melodrama, but nor were its stakes meaningful. In daylight, the selfishness of the ask is acknowledged, its outcomes concrete enough, and neither particularly impactful to the overall arc of the relationship.

Brevity is a strong asset here. Yes, you are not getting deep, impactful pathos. You are getting a contained slice of life, showcasing an underserved young relationship dynamic in a precisely realized setting. The three endings I got were all clear, justified, but pretty uniform in long term emotional impact. In, out, novelty on the way, what more you can ask of a short work?

I can’t help but suspect and wonder how much previous work knowledge might enhance this (of which I have none). This is part of an ongoing series with these characters, and my suspicion is that the vampire lore, and the particulars of the relationship, are rounder across them all than on display in this standalone work.

I do humbly suggest that should this “Blood and…” series continue, you will for sure want to include “Blood and Sand.” Blood and Sand: equal parts scotch, cherry liqueur, sweet vermouth and orange juice. Shake with ice, strain, garnish with orange peel. More than the sum of its parts, hopefully a meta-statement on the series!

[simpsong00 (Gregory)]

Thanks for the review. The book it is based on was written in 2022… I’ll remove the name in that one location description for the next release. I’d encourage others to give it a try and not let this one location/name mention keep you from giving it a look!

[jjmcc]

Return to Home by dott. Piergiorgio
Style: parser
Played : 7/18/25
Playtime: score 13/14; locs 13/14 10m 3 playthroughs

I am fascinated at the mental space this particular work settled into for me. It is a parser implementation, using the MOST niche GAGS platform. As an aspiring IF author I fully understand and endorse the active pleasure of engaging an uncommon platform and producing something functional with it. It the impulse that drives the Engineer subclass of our population, and for those so smitten a source of great personal satisfaction. It is true, though, that as a CONSUMER, a parser game’s implementation language is almost never interesting. If anything, all parsers look the same from the outside and are often burdened with common expectations. On some level players have no reason to CARE what happened before the > prompt.

As a training vehicle toy, what does this work offer the player? A pretty solid, spare parser experience of navigation, pick stuff up, find goal. It certainly has the unimplemented noun/synonym problem of many parser games, but not defeatingly so. Its very small size puts it in the category of “no wasted time,” even in the face of its unambitious narrative and puzzle construction.

More, as a parser fan, I really appreciated its palate cleansing properties! My randomizer slyly slotted this in the middle of the 'Thon for me, which ended up being about perfect. I have no beef with choice-select/Twine, it’s a perfectly serviceable interface. But I do have a soft spot for parser play, and this tiny little shot of gameplay was just the perfect amuse bouche in the run of this 'Thon. A little treat to spice up this endeavor.

I do wonder, outside the context of the 'Thon, is there an audience for this? Where a cascade of fully realized parsers are just a click away, will this plucky little trifle register? Seems like no? That’s certainly ok. Not all art must be timeless, how much pressure would THAT be? For me, in this moment of 'Thon 25, it served a very specific, very welcome function and I’m glad it’s here. Feels like more than enough to justify itself.

rh_jjmcc.txt (18.8 KB)

[jjmcc]

The Deluge by Lionstooth
Style: choice-select
Played : 7/18/25
Playtime: 10m 2 playthroughs

It occurs to me I have gone quite deep in the 'Thon before referencing “Twinesformer: Parsers in Disguise” - my shorthand for choice-select works that lean on parser-style explore/collect/unlock gameplay. This is a very capably implemented iteration, portraying a PC trying to escape a flood-ravaged town. By exploring, collecting and unlocking! The timing of this hitting my brain, with the flooding in Texas so recent, probably adds some context to the work that ramps up the impact and mood of its setting. It’s not like this is leaning on the Texas tragedy in any way, or even particularly referencing it. It is one of those art-life resonances that often happen independent of any artistic aims.

I found Deluge to be very well conceived and implemented, its locations and challenges very organic to the setup, including its trickling revelations about the protagonist’s life. This is both harder and more exceptional than it sounds. Some Twinesformer puzzle solving tropes (and the parser source on which they are based) have evolved into accepted practices by the form. Intellectual puzzles are overlaid onto narratives in sometimes staggeringly artificial ways. But as players, we just accept and hand wave that artificiality as inherent in the form. We do not trade in real-life realism, there is a Twinesformer/Parser realism we accept as adjacent to that. When we encounter works whose puzzle integration is this organic, it is notable and highlights that tradeoff we have agreed to over the years. This is a true strength.

Its setting is doing a lot of work here. Exploring a nearly post-apocalyptic setting, a pocket of chaos in an otherwise normal world, has a particular flavor of desperation and hope that the work produces quite effectively. It also presents a situation where the tropes of parser puzzles ARE the most effective (if not only) path forward. The types of things the protagonist is asked to secure are aligned with the scenario, and progress naturally through the game. The protagonist’s background and aims are similarly conveyed and shaped effectively through the course of the work. The player’s focus is cleanly aligned with the discovered lore, both that lore and the immediate tasks evolving with increased understanding.

Where the work glitched for me, and really, given the tightness of the story was only a small part of the experience, was its inclusion of less welcome old-school parser tropes like uncued instant death, and occasional choice narrowing. What I mean by the latter is, in some locations, there is no ability to back out or disengage from a developing situation. It is an infrequent, and notable for its infrequency, gameplay railing. Again, in a work this short, not a disqualifier by any means, just a slight sour note, where the work seems to temporarily suspend agency without serving a narrative purpose.

Of a piece with this is the uncertainty of navigation. One parser convention this Twinesformer implementation rejects is compass point navigation. This is both thematic and narratively justified here - the protagonist knows the town and NOBODY I MEAN NOBODY IN THE REAL WORLD USES COMPASS NAVIGATION IN DAILY LIFE. This is an unrealistic parser artifact we have all just accepted because the service it provides is crucial spatial organization that makes mapping and mental conception possible. Absent that, we are trailing a protagonist that knows their town supremely well, where we can’t assemble a coherent mental map. Locations become networks of connectivity, not a lived-in topography. To my way of thinking, compass points need not be integrated into navigation, but maybe some subtle text could align us on the relative locations as we navigate to get us on the same footing as the protag. I never REALLY felt at home there (which, post-flood, fair enough), and that gap led to maybe some ill-advised choices I imposed on a protag that probably knew better.

I characterized those two artifacts as ‘glitches’ and that feels right to me. The work does so much good work, developing a melancholy back story with streaks of hope that mirror the town’s current misfortune in interesting and affecting ways. Its puzzle play is about as well integrated as these things can be. In a work this short, that is what you will take away, not the compromises that I whined about.

[jjmcc]

take me to the lakes where all the poets went to die by Naarel
Style: choice-select/Visual Novel
Played : 7/18/25
Playtime: 10m

What a cool, unique combination of story and presentation. Its presentation is very dawn-of-pixel-graphics, with pixel fonts and art that are evocative of 80s monochrome computers. Its story does not particularly NEED this conceit, nor does it seem to resonate with that choice in a meaningful way. Rather, it plays as a time capsule, a squarely narrative work from a time where that was a rarity, exploring the graphical capabilities of a medium not yet mature enough to enable that organically. It is actually very successful at that, pushing against its out-of-time constraints to build a specific mood in support of the story. In particular, the ‘blurring effect’ used in profile and reflections are stunningly well realized both thematically and in the context of its technically-limiting conceit. It was less an ‘overcoming of its arbitrary technical limitations’ as ‘this is what drama could FEEL like under those limitations.’ It felt like finding an overlooked, ahead-of-its-time work from a time gone by.

The story is tight and effective, and positively sings off its implementation choices. I feel like a work this short, any words I give to the story will spoil it a little bit, and it is worth experiencing unspoiled. The story’s command over its progress feels super controlled and precise, augmented by inventive uses of its technical presentation. The story generates genuine pathos and surprise in its short runtime. I go back and forth on what is MORE memorable, its narrative or its presentation. That more than anything tells me the balance between the two is just about perfect.

So this is weird. This may be my favorite work this 'Thon (so far), yet I find myself unable to bleed words about it without getting into unwanted spoiler territory. I know, who even am I right now? I hope the brevity of this review doesn’t induce unwanted ‘not worth discussing’ inferences in the reader. Regardless of how deft I am in discussing the work, for sure I highly recommend EXPERIENCING it. It was pretty singular.

[jjmcc]

The Sword of Voldiir by Bottlecap Rabbit Games
Style: RPG/choice-select
Played : 7/20/25
Playtime: 30m

I have previously asserted that High Fantasy is not my chosen fabulist genre. Nor, to the extent that I have engaged TTRPG, is DnD my chosen system. To the extent I have engaged these things before… which, I live in this world in this time, don’t I? To the extent I have engaged these things it has been predominantly as a Rogue. Make of that what you will. Collectively, these dynamics suggest that High Fantasy DnD where I cannot play a Rogue is going to face an uphill climb with me.

Which was my experience here. Interestingly, if I squint a bit, I can see an experience just adjacent to SOV that would engage me. SOV sets the table with some interesting dynamics: possibility to romance other characters, including full gender selection; a plot that subverts dungeon crawl into a more dynamic scenario TAILOR MADE FOR ROGUING; legitimately interesting and diverse characterizations of two of your three companions. These bright spots highlighted something I kind of knew: when I TTRPG, I am much more enamored of the RP than the G. DnD’s mechanical systems (predominantly combat) I find pretty fiddly and uninteresting in their own right. They are a randomizer delivery system, whose main benefit is to unpredictably alter the story’s progression and provide RNG optimization puzzles to solve/survive.

Here, the implementation consistently (though not uniformly!) steered into those aspects that hold the least fascination to me. Let’s start with its exploration mechanism. At various points you are presented with multiple choices, directions to explore. Pretty consistently, there is no context to those choices, no knowledge that informs the possibilities. Meaning, you are going to need to try them all until you find the one that works. This is not inherently a bad mechanism, it emphasizes the ‘exploration’ nature of the setup. It is, however, not so rewarding when the construction is ‘dead end,’ ‘dead end,’ ‘objective.’ Would be nice to have incidental encounters, sidequesty wonders to experience, or even clues, anything to justify the diversions. Otherwise, what is the point of the choice? Instead, it becomes a fairly mechanical ‘try until success’ exercise.

Similarly, combat was rendered not as an open-ended, interactive challenge. Instead, it was a series of die rolls (without opportunity to change approaches mid-combat!) that just played out. That parenthetical part is crucial to what I perceive as the appeal of of TTRPG combat. The ability to try wild things, to adjust based on how things develop, heck to run away before grinding to death on bad rolls. Here, you get one choice at the start, then die roll your way to a finish. Happily, my playthrough I survived all encounters, however if truly left in the hands of cold Dame Fortune, it seems unsatisfying death, as a result of no choices on my part, was a real possibility. Randomization is not the compelling part of these mechanisms, its the agency to mitigate and optimize the random effects that are. That feels missing here.

Where the work is most alive, is when interacting with NPCs. Lorelei and Aenwyn are both rendered as pretty specific personalities, whose agency and drives are nicely varied. In this short demo, Cassian suffered a bit, feeling more like Lorelei-minus than a unique thing of his own. It feels like the romance is teased in this early going, but not really fruit-bearing yet. This is fine, enough of the romance mechanics are introduced that the flavor is there, and while not cutting new ground (yet) is certainly serviceable enough. Non-romantic character interactions are pleasant enough too, in particular when the opportunity reveals more NPC character. Other, non-mechanic-tied choices feel a bit better too. Things like player-driven investigative approach, whether to lean into DnDs brand of casual murder or not, these spice up the proceedings in a welcome way.

So yeah, a mixed implementation bag for me, but none of that is my overriding impression of the work. Hovering over it all is what I can only describe as a “first draft feel.” The work is rife with typos, awkward grammer and coding bugs. I captured examples of these as I went, and will hide them under a dropdown for the author. Beyond a wealth of spelling, verb tense and clumsy wordings, there were some specific technical issues: a gender variable appearing untranslated in text, even an alarming warning about unclosed markup. It all added up to an unpolished vibe, that could’ve benefited from playtesting and more editing.

Note that these are not exhaustive, merely examples of pervasive artifacts that dragged on my experience.

Issue Examples:

Phrasing: “The others follow suit, also tying their horses off to trees nearby to the mouth of the cave”
"There is three major options on where to go, and if you explore them all, you will go down the more narrow paths; for now, however, you save the narrow paths for Lorelei for now. "
“Are you look for four rooms…”
“..are hold up in ..” (should be holed)

Bad Math?: "You raise your morningstar and deal 6 bludgeoning damage to the Chimera, leaving its health at 18.
“Aenwyn follows up with an attack with a Fire Bolt, dealing 6 magical damage to the Chimera, leaving its health at 18.”

Coding: “clutching her robes away from $ahimself due to the heat.”
“as she turns $his attention to her book”

“Great to hear right now, Aenwyn.” You stare at her with distaste.
“Sorry!”
Error: cannot find a closing tag for HTML Chimera Battle!

So, where do we land here? For all prospective audiences, I would recommend another round of polish, bugfix and editing. For a DnD-philic audience, this seems to reasonably hit expected beats, and augment it with character and plot development in a nice way. For me, those augmentations are more interesting than the game’s bones, which just tells me there is a more squarely targeted audience out there.