I’m really surprised this was only your second IF! Your game seemed so polished. It was well-written and I was impressed you got so much characterisation into such a big case of characters.
(For context, I am completely new here, and wrote my first IF for this competition this year.)
This is also my first year, so Graham and I may not be the best to represent the community. But for my part, I loved it, well done!
The Only Possible Prom Dress by Jim Aikin
Aaaah, TADS. Like slipping my feet into a warm bath. This is the parser-based IF experience I look for. Amazing, goofy premise and quest, large map, many puzzles from lever-and-button to locked-door to coerce-NPCs to (probably) wildly inappropriate and satisfying uses of everyday objects. The narration is capable and fun, integrating game-facilitating pointers and sly humor in equal measure. It’s not perfect: one NPC seems to attach to you without much lubricating text; a few incidents of can’t-do-that would benefit from a variable list; dense place descriptions without subsequent shorter summaries and/or bolded direction cues.
But really, those feels nit-picky. Especially in the face of a tremendous effort to flesh out nearly every noun with flavor text that makes poking around rewarding in the best traditions of early IF. Even the relatively limited NPCs which won’t make you fear the singularity, they are imbued with enough personality to remind you of NPCs of days gone by. Yes, they are code constructs, but they are amusing and welcome ones.
And that map! A gloriously dense and elaborate multi-level map to explore. Daunting even. Many locations have 4 or more cardinal exits and maybe some ups and downs too. Navigating the map was a treat - most locations have personality too, unique and idiosyncratic: weaving flavor and nav puzzles all over the place.
And here’s where my unfortunate game experience intrudes. For the first hour I wandered around mapless. I was so caught up in the delightful spell the place descriptions were putting on me I darted from one shiny exit to another without much rhyme or reason. And boy did I get lost. Over and over again. It was fun doing it! But eventually I realized I was never getting the dress this way. So I saved my game at one hour, determined to pick up next day with graph paper in hand.
Next day I went to restore my save… and couldn’t. Appears to be a bug, where the save command works just fine, but the load command (or LOAD, or Load) is unrecongnized. I corroborated that both the web and downloaded T3 behave the same way. An hour of progress flushed away, and only an hour left on my review timer. Neither path forward seemed ‘fair’ in the spirit of IF rules: do I restart the timer at 0 and pretend yesterday never happened, nevermind the accumulated good will? Or base a review on what seemed likely to be 1 hour of unique playtime in 2 hours? There was a third option. In the course of HELPing all over the problem, I noticed Jim made maps (and walkthrough which I ignored) available! For sure, I would add the maps to the game entry walkthrough/downloads box instead of burying it in a help screen. Armed with those maps and the previous day, I decided efficiency would make up the difference.
At the second one-hour mark I had fully recon’d the mall (locked doors notwithstanding) and a bit of its grounds, but only really ‘solved’ two puzzles. Plenty more were tantalyzingly layed out before me. And yeah, I was definitely Engaged. The narrative tone is friendly and fun, details plentiful and unique, and puzzles littering the joint. I found myself typing faster and faster as I noticed the clock running out, trying to eke out just one more location, conversation or search.
So now I’m left with a TADS window open on my desktop, knowing if I close it I’ll lose my SECOND hour of progress and not sure it won’t die between now and end of judging. With a game this big, save/load functionality feels less optional. Ah Mephisto, your Damoclean Swords are super specific these days.
Author: Jim Aikin
Played: 10/6
Playtime: 2hrs, incomplete
Score: 7 (Engaging but short of Mostly Seamless, primarily due to one big bug)
Would Play After Comp?: Likely, but that Load bug looms large. Who’m I kidding? Yes.
“Restore” works. Unfortunately, the help text in the game itself mistakenly mentions “load” (whereas the full “instructions” have it right).
Oh man, thanks so much. Now have a viable save! When I said I was ‘teaching myself TADS’ I definitely didn’t say ‘quickly.’ :]
Esther’s by Brad and Alleson Buchanan
Hey, there are IF works for new readers! This was an absolutely delightful interactive rendition of a children’s book. When first few clicks showed no choices, I grew uneasy. The illustrations were note perfect for the milieu, but my family situation is quite removed from kid-lit. Turning virtual pages was not significantly different than leafing through a kids book which I never do. (I mean, Seuss excepted, what am I a monster?)
That ungenerous thought couldn’t even gel before the choices started. At that point the illustrations, text and choices played off each other wonderfully. Even then, I wasn’t won over immediately because I am damaged. For whatever reason after a few choices I spontaneously conjured an imaginary child next to me… what? you don’t know my life! Reading this work, imagining a small child sounding through, making choices, then experiencing the results of that choice — that’s when it clicked into place for me. The playful problem solving, character frustration, trial and error, evocative illustrations and unexpected outcomes would play like gang busters to a new reader, and through that imaginary child’s eyes I could experience their delight.
Older IF fans take as writ that interactivity is the differentiator in this medium. The (however illusory) perception of choice, narrative influence and immediacy provides a whole new dimension of immersion to the reading experience. Esther’s uses its new reader format to remind me that even the most tired, hoary cliche’ is going to be someone’s first time and that initial exposure can be deeply revelatory. That came out wrong, I’m not suggesting Ester’s is cliche’d, just using that as a poorly chosen metaphor for IF in general. What I’m driving at is that its deliberate invocation of children’s lit tone, illustration style and whimsical content re-presents the form in a first timer perspective. How magical is that? At least that’s what I got from my imaginary co-pilot.
Scoring this feels like a no win situation. I mean would I criticize the narrative voice in “Hop on Pop?” The graphic compositions in “Hungry Caterpillar?” Like this work, they meld text and illustration into a product aimed at delighting children. That’s really the only metric worth discussing I think. Esther’s stands shoulder to shoulder with its paper inspirations, even before it ups the ante by integrating interactivity. While I wouldn’t say I found it engaging, I did get Sparks of Joy watching my imaginary companion’s delighted introduction to IF.
This review was brought to you by the word ‘delight.’
Author: Brad and Alleson Buchanan
Played: 10/6
Playtime: 10min, finished
Score: 6 (Sparks of Joy, Seamless)
Would Play After Comp?: Maybe to share with grandkids WAAAAAAAY down the road
Thank you for the review!
The new version, just now uploaded, fixes this. RESTORE works correctly, and the Help text now advises this.
You’re right about making the mention of the maps more obvious. Maybe I ought to put that bit in the opening text, but I was trying to keep the opening text as brief as possible. I don’t think the Comp is set up to offer a link in place of the downloadable walkthrough. Okay, you talked me into it. In 5, 4, 3, 2, 1…
Which game did you submit? I want to make sure I get to it!
Thanks Billy. Mine is The Thirty Nine Steps.
The Thick Table Tavern by manonamora
Ok, take two parts snarky, amusing characters, 2 parts crisp custom graphical presentation, one part grind and a dash of IF. Serve over ice with umbrella, and a sense of wanting more?
Let’s start with the most tangible detail: the graphic presentation is just winning. From the Day placards with flowing beer background, to the text scrolls, the fonts and iconography, even the adorably cartoonish bar area it all just fits together for a complete graphical experience. Like a glacier cool martini with a lemon twist suspended in the hyper-chilled surface tension, the hint of its oils eddying on the icy-taut surface.
The narrative tone and character voices are all welcoming and fun, neither over- nor under-written, and all of it moving along at a snappy, snarky pace. You speed through the text rapidly, a smile tugging at your lips due to the turn of phrase or an outlandish character moment. It pulls you through as steadily and satisfyingly as a tiki drink! (Ok, I’m going to try and resist the urge to end every paragraph with a barely-relevant cocktail metaphor. I don’t want to SOUR you on… ow ow ow ow OW OW)
Triple-T has so much going for it, so why don’t I find it more engaging? Let’s start with the opening - there are fully two different intros, and they are kind of disjoint from each other. After two hours of play, one of which isn’t really justified. Neither opening is short, and both are minimally interactive. Once the table is set (bar is stocked?), our motivations and goals established, and the basic bartending mechanisms taught, we’re finally ready to go. Time to start grinding out drinks from recipe cards. As a simulator of mixology, seems about right. An endless flow of drink orders to service in the most mechanically efficient way possible, until your shift is over. You are at least insulated from having to deal with increasingly obnoxious drunks while you work.
After a gameday of serving drinks, there is some lubricating text and interactions, then you’re back at it next day. And then again. It is unclear whether your choices, either conversationally or actions taken, have any effect on the overall narrative flow. Certainly, neither seem to derail the job you have to do. The situation varies a bit, but your tasks don’t. So far, it felt like a grindy, minimally interactive kind-of-RPG where you are earning pay towards a goal. On Day 3, I achieved enough money to satisfy my goal. However, the game did not acknowledge this, and instead repeated itself for Day 4. Literally. Day 3 was an amusing day, thanks to a character’s screwup, but I guess that screwup happened again? This time jarringly without the establishing text, but otherwise word-for-word identical. And then time ran out.
At the end of two hours, I had powered through an overlong double intro, enjoyed some peppy text and graphics, grinded a LOT, and then got Groundhog-Day’d when I met my goal. The stakes were pretty low to start with – which can be cool actually! Not everything has to be save the world. In this case though, for all the entertaining wordplay the motivations just didn’t click into place. Meaning when the timer expired, the snappy presentation and writing couldn’t overcome the mechanical central mechanism and worryingly repetitive 4th Day.
Sorry, no more for me. I’m driving. (You got 3 cocktail-free paragraphs, take the win.)
Author: manonamora
Played: 10/7
Playtime: 2hrs, finished 4 gamedays
Score: 5 (Sparks of Joy muted by grind, mostly seamless)
Would Play After Comp?: Don’t think so. Too much grind and Day 4 was a worrying portent
Nose Bleed by Stanley W Braxton
Nose Bleed was the second Texture piece of the Comp, and ever, for me. It is a very short work that attempts to use interactivity to bring immediacy to a tightly focused horror story. The impulse to treat social anxiety as a horror premise is really a great idea. Popular media is overrun with social anxiety stories that mine childhood bullying for drama. Few of those are horror stories, despite having truly horrific events depicted, and much more commonly leverage the horror for the carthartic overcoming of it.
Adult social anxiety is a significantly less-trod ground, and a horror focus is even more rarified air. I seem to have slipped into a mountain climbing metaphor, not sure why. The mechanism of a nose bleed as source for that social anxiety is also kind of a genius choice - it is something we have no control of and is plausibly not serious enough to push people past irritated inconvenience to empathy. The choice of workplace was also a crucial one, as it is one of few places adults HAVE to interact with people they don’t want to. Points for really interesting and challenging thematic concept!
The chosen implementation fell a bit short is my sense. For a few reasons. The graphical presentation didn’t really serve the narrative. Having a taste of what can be done with graphical integration in Staycation, I couldn’t help but see missed opportunities here. It is generally not my intention to contrast entries against each other, but graphical the difference stood out. That said, there were two instances, about 2/3 into the game where the graphical choices were surprising and effective. I would have liked a lot more of that throughout the playtime.
Ultimately, the graphical presentation is not a minus, more of a missed plus opportunity. Choices made to leverage interactivity for this story were harder to get past. Social anxiety works a little differently in 3rd person stories than first person IF. In the former, the trick is to get the reader on the protagonist’s side by making them some combination of relatable, sympathetic and/or rootable. This is commonly done via non-anxiety scenes where we can care about the protagonist to empathize with them when their social group turns on them. Here, the work is aiming to invoke anxiety in the player by having them ‘experience’ it directly. Which is an excellent use of horror IF if it works!
By omiting the shell of a separate protagonist though, you need to craft a narrative that the player buys into. It didn’t come together for me that way. For one, the descriptions of the injury grew increasingly horrific, in a way that made the NPCs ignoring it look decreasingly human, in turn making me less invested in their social pressure. The situation didn’t quite gel for a few other reasons. Often the choices you are given don’t fundamentally change anything except narrative texture. Adding up to a feeling of lack of agency, without clear narrative reasons for it. A lot of early game is interacting with a single other character. Social anxiety is most effective when you feel isolated from the entire community around you. When its only one person, it’s just as likely they’re just being a dick which is a whole different dynamic. Later in the game when the community expands, there isn’t a narrative reason why the PC is with them. Adults have many degrees of freedom to avoid toxic communities, like Ubering separately to work functions. I’m not saying its super easy to avoid toxic life scenarios. I’m saying the game didn’t do the legwork to convince me I was trapped.
Without that legwork, I was often thinking “well there are a lot of different ways that could be avoided” which had the effect of me decoupling from the protagonist that was supposed to be me. I started to think of them as willingly submitting… which again is definitely a real thing. The story just didn’t get me there. Instead it actively disconnected me from the protagonist. So that’s how I got to a Mechanical playthrough. Really only the short duration and the nifty graphic flourishes kept it from being Bouncy. I think this reaction is actually a testament to the author in one sense: they attempted a unique horrific experience and while not getting me there, clearly their themes elicited some response.
Author: Stanley W Braxton
Played: 10/8
Playtime: 20min
Score: 3 (Mechanical, Seamless)
Would Play After Comp?: Doubtful, experience feels complete
You May Not Escape by Charm Cochran
Well I did!
Yeah, it’s a maze (maybe procedurally generated?). A very thin dystopia skin on top of a maze. It’s a fair play maze, it graphed on graph paper exactly as you’d expect. Along the way, there is NPC interaction, (limited), items to pick up, a few unique scenery or locations and many more repeated ones, a series of heckling message scroll boards to read. Other than the clear motivation to escape the maze, there wasn’t much in the way of guidance or story. Intellectually, I think I kind of liked that about it. There was stuff, samey rooms, text to read but it was all ancillary to just getting out. If you did more with the stuff there, great. If not, just fine too.
I got the sense that maybe there were a few second level puzzles to suss out, particularly with the message boards. My end stats showed there was at least one big thing I could have accomplished before escaping but didn’t. In fact it showed a whole series of scores, some of which I achieved others I did not. Even the ones I achieved, it was fully without prompting by the game. I just did them, then turns out there was a score involved. That was kind of subversively fun, too. But all that fun was cold, meta disassociated fun. Emotionally there was nothing, presumedly deliberately so.
Without a story, humor or character hook of any kind, you’re really just wandering around, drawing on graph paper, and picking up minimally rendered items to no clear end. Yeah I played with some items just for fun, and game did enable me to do so to its credit, but it was just killing time. My perverse perseverence pushed me through to the end, but if at any time the game crashed I could have just shrugged and not restarted. Only one bug, error message “runtime error p50, empty menu list” I believe, but it didn’t stop the game. Or break any mimesis or even jar the experience. Just kept walking and mapping.
This was really a poster child for Mechanical execution. There is a place for this of course. Soduko still has its fans, picture puzzles relax millions of folks. Find-a-words, pencil mazes, all of that. A solid implementation in that category if that’s for you.
Author: Charm Cochran
Played: 10/9
Playtime: 1.25hr, finished
Score: 4 (Mechanical, mostly seamless)
Would Play After Comp?: Doubtful, maze solved
Hey, thanks for the review! Good looking out mentioning that bug—no one had found it before.
Of course, I respect the artistry and craft that goes into these labors of love, and if my feedback can help I want it to! Also, if “OverThinking” was a commentary on my review, I wholly accept it :]
Traveller’s Log by Isaac
I don’t know what to make of this entry. It presents as a super light, highly randomized FRPG kind of thing. You get an apparently randomized starting character with a name, race, some traits and background. None of those come into play again, except maybe magic use. Then you walk, trade and warp until you either win, decide you’ve had enough, or a bug ends the game. I achieved two of those in 45 minutes of pretty repetitive playtime.
You have a short list of items, effectively a status screen, that tells you what you have or don’t (helpfully pointing out you can GET them). Walking and warping lets you navigate the world, such as it is, but there is no map per se, just an endless series of terse, repeating random encounters that kill you, give you money, or neither. When I say no map, I mean your location has no discernable effect on your encounters, or even your relationship to other areas. You can still find Inns and Houses inside a Labrinth for example.
And you can die. Either because you randomly encounter foes you are not yet equipped to beat, or you just open a box. It’s not really that big a deal, as you immediately respawn with most of your stuff, but is that fun?
In practice, gameplay is just as repetitive as the encounters. You walk (dieing as often as you need to) until you have enough money to get stuff (some of which has game effect, others do not as far as I can tell). Or you warp to some area you’ve been before, but if locations don’t matter not sure why you would. Repeat many many times. I don’t think I’ve ever typed the word ‘walk’ that many times in 45 minutes before.
I did hit a small bug - I would lose money if I couldn’t afford an expensive item but already had a sword and tried to trade. I hit a big bug — an ‘out of range’ crash on something called TT. But the game asked so little of me, neither elicited a reaction. Ultimately, I stopped playing when I jerked awake to see that I had typed ‘wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww’ on the command line.
So yeah, what is this? Is it art, a wry commentary on FRPG gameplay? A zen mindfulness excercise? An impressionistic IF that you bring the story to from your head? I don’t think any of those things are for me.
Author: Isaac
Played: 10/10
Playtime: 45min, 1 crash, 1 quit, so many respawned deaths
Score: 2 (Bouncy, Notably Buggy)
Would Play After Comp?: No, not my cuppa
The Princess of Vestria by KPO
Action Princess! This was a fun story divided into 7 chapters, that played out in three phases for me.
The first phase was “the setup”, and I found it to be deftly and confidently executed. The stakes were established efficiently and effectively in very few screens. There was a lot of political, magic/religious and historical context to establish, as well as family background. There were three terrific choices right out of the gate: 1) the political/historical complexity was just right for this size game - specific and intriguing with enough breadth to feel lived in but not so much to drown in details. 2) the information was conveyed using multiple different scenes and interactions rather than a single massive textdump. 3) integrating it with player choices that also established the protagonist’s character. It doesn’t seem like the early choices have far reaching implications (maybe barring one), but they do give a chance to establish the Princess’ voice in the choices the player is making. All in all a very strong start.
The second phase was “the escape and journey”. This was a series of moral and physical peril scenarios (ie series of player choices) that would either establish character or set up potential future stakes or both. By and large I also enjoyed these. The fact that I paused to agonize over options a few times is a good indication that I’m sucked into the stakes of what’s going on. Most of them gave you a chance to flex different dimensions of the Princess’ character and skills. One of them though, involving an abusive street performer, added a new twist that I wasn’t crazy about it.
Prior to this encounter, the choices could result in death, or “luck” loss, but you had a few of those to give and if you didn’t hit a death scene, you got info or character established. With the street performer encounter, the game explicitly warns you if you want “success” you need to navigate a magic sequence of actions. On the one hand, appreciated the warning, make sure to save. On the other it changed the tenor of the game. No longer were you collaborating with the author to establish the princess character and story, or even how much backstory you were exposed to. Instead, you were guessing a puzzle sequence. Further, there were no discernable clues in the choices to inform your guesses. It devolved to trial and error where the focus was on ‘beating’ the scenario, divorced from any prior character or goal choices.
Unfortunately, the last “destination/resolution” phase was more in line with this previous encounter than the first 2/3. There are timed puzzles that lock out interesting story information. More guess-the-magic sequence encounters. But most disappointingly to me, a final boss fight that had little narrative surprise, nuance or complexity. Through the course of the game, the lore was a key underpinning of the quest, gaining more knowledge of the true vs reported history of the realm. While yes, arguably this lore informed the motivations of the final boss, that final battle didn’t build on or modify or subvert anything that came before. Given how strong the world building had been throughout the game, it felt like a let down.
Ultimately, it leaves me with Sparks of Joy where the first 2/3 of the game were that spark. Its always a shame when the ending is a let down, because that final flavor can overshadow everything that came before. In this case I want to refocus on the first 2/3 that were a true accomplishment of character and word building. Here’s the metaphor I am committing to: its like you get so much pleasure from the sound of two lego blocks clicking together, then you suddenly look up and realize you built a scale model of the Parthenon. Regardless of what you do with the Parthenon after that, that is pretty cool.
Author: KPO
Played: 10/10
Playtime: 1.75hrs, finished w/ final battle walkthrough
Score: 6(Sparks of Joy, Mostly Seamless)
Would Play After Comp?: Don’t think so, experience is complete
No One Else Is Doing This by Lauren O’Donoghue
There is no real graphical flourish to this work, little interactivity, and the few puzzles you need to solve there are no clues to decode to succeed, making it effectively random. I think I complained about all of these things in other reviews. But here, my reaction was exactly opposed – I unreservedly loved it. The intro text probably is the key to this. It sets the stage with the fruitless grind of the work, the dieing optimism, the modest yet still out of reach goals, and does so unsentimentally and resignedly. Before you know it, you are knocking on doors, really just clicking house numbers, one after another until the time runs out.
And oh my god the neighbors. Many are just not home, and sometimes the text makes it clear that’s a good thing. When they are home, each is uniquely and specifically unhappy to see you, but you still have to engage. Sometimes you inadvertantly say the right thing, sometimes you say exactly the wrong thing and they slam the door. Its not that you don’t have control (it seems), its that you have no way of knowing what motivates or sets people off so you take your best shot. And its thrilling when it works, and self-recriminations and if-onlys when it doesn’t. But, still gotta get to the next door and do it all over again.
I am kind of in awe at how finely calibrated the game is. Its individual interactions are either disappointingly abrupt, or whirwind verbal fencing matches, but every encounter is exactly the length it needs to be. Neither victory nor defeat is dwelled on, because on to the next. A quick click washes the previous encounter away and is charged with promise of the next one. A pee break if you’re lucky, then your shift ends at what feels like the narratively perfect point, leaving you with regret over the houses you didn’t get to. Text and screen organization within and between encounters pace every step of this experience just so. Until its uncermonious ending, you simultaneously feel “this shift just keeps going” and “I need more time.”
“A Community Organizing Simulator” is its subtitle. Before you start, you would probably be thinking ‘its funny because its too small a game to be a simulator.’ After you’ve played, including that chef’s kiss of a denoument, you’re definitely thinking, ‘OMG IT IS THE MOST ACCURATE SIMULATOR EVER MADE.’ I am saying that this work marries IF interactivity to its subject matter so thoroughly and precisely it is what most aspire to when they talk about form-function synergy.
Frankly, I am only resisting calling this Transcendent due to my suspicion that my recent grass-roots volunteer experiences may be coloring my reaction. Thanks Lauren?
Author: Lauren O’Donoghue
Played: 10/10
Playtime: 15min, finished
Score: 8 (Engaged, Seamless, Sad)
Would Play After Comp?: Sadly, I will be living it
The Grown Up Detective Agency by Brendan Patrick Hennessy
Everything about the pre-game hit my brain pleasure ceters and put me in this thing’s corner. Grown Up Detective Agency is just a fantastic title. Time jumps? Mystery solving? The phrase “follow the trail of a missing heterosexual”?? It’s like a pinpoint targeted glee generator.
The work itself did not disappoint. The 2-in-1 protagonist was incredibly well realized. Their dialogue crackled with wit and personality and was simultaneously recognizably same and different. The time gap shenanigans were not overplayed, just tossed in like precise seasoning. (I laughed out loud at “why are people getting more deliveries?”) I simultaneously felt bad for Kid and understood Adult perfectly. There were a few times I chafed when remembering this world-weary gumshoe was all of 21, but the text was strong enough to get me past that.
Secondary characters didn’t fare as well, but with one exception it was actually fine. Most of the non-protagonist cast was pretty one-dimensional, but in an amusing and winning way. We don’t NEED them to be fully fleshed out, they just need to be fun in their respective roles and most of them very much are. The bros, the bartender, the club owner, the furry… unique and consistent and funny. Even the client filled her role, though I suspect if I’d had more exposure to the other games in the series she would be more fleshed out. We’ll get to the love interest in a minute.
The mystery itself was extremely clever, in the sense of everyone’s motivations making perfect, hilarious sense, however surprising their reveal is. But the mystery-solving gameplay? Less clever. It relies a bit too heavily on NPCs withholding information more for plot than character reasons. It also appeared that player choice in following clues and interrogation tacks ultimately didn’t make a difference. You were always going to be able to visit every clue site, and get relevant info regardless of dialogue choices. I don’t know this is true, I could just be an Ace Detective, but it felt that way. Which led to a thought mid-game that popped in my head unbidden. “Would I be enjoying this pretty much exactly the same if it were traditional fiction? Yeah, I think I would.” As soon as that thought popped in, I realized I was not engaged because of the interactivity, it was the story and characters. My clicks were less about participating in progress and more like turning pages. Is this a problem? Didn’t feel like it, I was still Engaged in the narrative and enjoying myself immensely.
Really the only narrative shakiness for me was the love interest sub-plot. Characters made assertions about them that I didn’t see corroborated in the narration or the character’s own dialogue. If I can be forgiven the pronouns for a moment, my reaction was basically straight out of Arrested Development. “Her?” Maybe this was a ‘play the previous episodes’ thing too.
As I roll up the score, I am again confronted with the inadequacy of my judging criteria. I was Engaged, no doubt about it. But I feel like the interactivity of IF was inessential to the experience, and I think I want to count that as ‘technical intrusiveness.’
Author: Brendan Patrick Hennessy
Played: 10/11
Playtime: 1hr, finished
Score: 7 (Engaged, Seamless but Inessential Interactivity)
Would Play After Comp?: Probably Not, but the rest of the series, likely
Witchfinders by Tania Dreams
Very short work, giving you the role of witch in 1800’s Scotland trying to do good while evading close-minded witch finders.
Overall a pretty Spartan experience. The interface is functional, but not very evocative of its setting. Use of color is actually well done - different colors highlight three different game functions. The text has some offputting grammatical issues, like maybe a non-native English speaker or young author, but certainly forgivable. The text is functional enough, though contains few descriptive or character flourishes to establish the setting or players. Unfortunately, the relative sparsity of the text made the errors that much more prominent and memorable. Ultimately, without any textual immersion we are left with sequencing puzzles - how to fix certain problems without tipping off the Witchfinders that you are sus.
The NPC interactions are limited to problem identification and/or solving. Some action choices are contextual - options become available after you’ve heard of things – others appear to be available at time 0, even though you don’t know what they might be good for. People can be asked only one or two things, with only one or two actions available. It creates a claustrophobic world of limited possibilities that isn’t that compelling to explore.
Some responses and actions are obviously witchy, and these provide some tradeoff tensions, but others are ambushy - what seemed like a safe move still turned on you. Not outright unfair, just sour gameplay. There are really only 3 good deeds to do (that I found), one easy, one medium with tradeoffs, and one I didn’t solve after three tries. Was not really motivated for more attempts than that.
Definitely a Mechanical experience. The text and/or presentation could have elevated by setting a stronger sense of environment and characters. Expanded, more interesting choices and destinations would have created a more interesting playground.
Author: Tania Dreams
Played: 10/11
Playtime: 15 min, 3 playthroughs best score 60
Score: 4 (Mechanical, Notably Buggy more in language than coding)
Would Play After Comp?: Doubtful