JJMcC's IFComp22 R-O-O-T (Reviews Out of Time)

Competitions IFComp
61

The 39 Steps by Graham Walmsley

Goot eev’ning. Before I was a horror movie nerd, I was a Hitchcock nerd. I do appreciate that the game very quickly squashed any expectations on that front (39 Steps was an early Hitch film, based on the same source material). Sometimes it’s best to just pull the bandage off.

The presentation was spare, but attractive and efficient. The black/white/green palette was functional and compatible with the on-the-run thriller story. The music was really top notch. The author apparently composed it himself, and it could easily have fit in the background of any of Hitch’s black and white works. I know the disclaimer explicitly said ‘not inspired by film’ but take the win, game! Just about perfect for the story. I was vaguely disappointed it only presented during chapter breaks. A much lower volume background could have worked in a few set piece spots.

The game presents you/the protagonist with three general approaches to decision-making: Open (ie truthful), Sneaky and Bold. Characters and scenes seem to be informed by which of those you lean on in given circumstances. I like the mechanism overall. It allowed you to define the protagonist as whatever mix of the three you the player wanted to work with. I vibed with the concept of that approach and about half the time it seemed to work pretty seamlessly. The other half kind of pushed me away from Engagement, unfortunately. Some of the options seemed MUCH more appropriate to some decision points than others, watering down the open-endedness.

Not all decision points were structured around the three OPEN/SNEAKY/BOLD choices, some had more or less unaligned alternatives. Those were also hit or miss. I can remember seeing a few options laid out and thinking ‘why would that be an option?’ Eventually I tested it out by selecting what seemed an obviously bad choice, and yup, it sure was.

Another design decision that was smart for gameplay but pushed against my Engagment was the option to replay each chapter before moving on to the next. This worked in conjunction with italicized text that acted as a hint system of what should be accomplished in a given chapter. Because its a thriller, it is definitely dependent on cause and effect so I understand the impulse. I also appreciated that it wasn’t a full game reset. But I would hope that kind of thing could be implemented more organically in the text. Until the final chapter, it was a take-the bad-with-the-good thing. The balance definitely tilted when the hint up front set expectation that you’ll need to replay the final chapter multiple times to be ‘successful.’ This sapped all the immediacy out of what thrillers famously deliver.

Narratively, it was also a little uneven for me. On the one hand, the protagonist went from ‘hey a dead body’ to ‘omg I’m surrounded by enemies’ blindingly fast, in a way that didn’t ring true to me. It could be that the sequence of decisions I made didn’t quite cohere the way the author intended, but I passed through a phase where I thought he was a raving paranoid. Uh, the protagonist, not the author. There were actions taken hiding the MacGuffin from the bad guys that seemed to have obvious impact on the finale, yet went unremarked upon. On the other hand, there was real tension in some of the chase set pieces. The overall language of the piece was delightfully evocative of early Hitchcock thrillers, in that earnest and slightly stagey way. It was really consistently well done. I know what you said Game Disclaimer, you’re not the boss of me.

So many Sparks of Joy here in the setting, the language, the music(!), the decision framework. Just enough clanky narrative and gameplay choices to keep me from truly engaging. I did smile a LOT while playing.

Author: Graham Walmsley
Played: 10/21
Playtime: 30 min, replayed final chapter multiple times for 4 endings
Score: 6 (Sparks of Joy, Mostly Seamless)
Would Play After Comp?: I could see picking it up after a Hitchcock marathon. Not the boss of me, game!

3 Likes
62

Graveyard Strolls by Adina Bodkin

This one feels like an anthology of sorts. The protagonist is walking through a graveyard, interacting with unconnected stories of spectral apparitions. Initially, I didn’t approach it that way, but ultimately, that’s where I landed.

The presentation suffers some issues, one much bigger than the others. A smaller one is palette choice. The opening screen spends some time talking about the greyness of the location (incidentally in a way that could definitely use some better word choices). But the game is presented in tans and browns! That is a real missed opportunity to use the presentation to reinforce the mood of the piece. It does integrate a single picture in one thread, but because it is the only picture ever used it kind of jars. Even graphically, its blue clashes with the tan in a way that gives the page a slapdash look.

The biggest presentation issue by far however was font sizing. As you make selections throughout the game, text gets added to the screen. Distressingly often, the entire screen font size shrinks, often more than one size, to accommodate the additional words. I cannot overstate how intrusive this was to the experience. At first it wasn’t clear that you weren’t seeing an entirely new screen. Then you had to parse an entirely unfamiliar block of text to find the new stuff (which was not always at the end). Then next choice, BAM, new screen of much larger font. It was distracting and off putting all at once. I’m calling this Intrusive. Though not a bug per se, it had the effect of one.

Gameplay was also uneven. I got two end screens in maybe three clicks by choosing not-obviously-wrong paths. This is a personal points-off for me - if I can ‘die’ due to not-obvious choices within two minutes (and there doesn’t seem to be an artistic reason why), I’m already not on the game’s side. Its punishing me for something I have no way of knowing is ‘bad.’ I did dive in again, and trained to go a different way, I did. That’s where the anthology approach opened up for me, which does kind of partially mitigate the quick-death thing. There isn’t really a through line to worry about.

The engagements were uneven. Some felt arbitrary, some pulled with unearned emotion, one dark and personal. All of them peppered with the font sizing issues. But one was notable - an encounter with a spectre who had… niche beliefs… in prior life. The decisions for this encounter seemed varied and impactful, and the decision path I took through was surprisingly nuanced, generous and touching. Definitely more nuanced than the other encounters. If that font hadn’t kept jumping in my face, this could have been a Spark of Joy.

As it was, I found this entry mostly Mechanical and unpleasantly Technically Intrusive. But I will give a full bonus point for that one encounter.

Author: Adina Bodkin
Played: 10/21
Playtime: 30min, 4 different endings
Score: 4 (Mechanical, bonus point for one encounter, Intrusive presentation)
Would Play After Comp?: No, experience seems complete

3 Likes
63

Hey, really sorry to hear about the font issues. I’ve mentioned this elsewhere but the all of the Texture games were made in a workshop, including mine, and the one you’ll see with the most customization is Nose Bleed, because Stan tweaked with the engine’s HTML and CSS capabilities. We worked on a quite small time constraint in a new engine that we were learning the ins and outs of. So I was working with the engine here, and with it came many constraints (very limited customization in things like font and colour without “hacking” the engine essentially). This is all good stuff to hear and things to take into consideration, and I’m sorry that your experience was marred by the things you mentioned. I’m re-making the “spirit” of the game in a very different format (and a different engine), and am really considering what every review has had to say, particularly about narrative structure.

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No need to aplogize, hope you got something you can use from my feedback. I think its kinda cool there is a workshop out there for this kinda thing, however constrained. Look forward to seeing more from you in the future!

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Star Tripper by Sam Ursu

I’m definitely being challenged with what even is IF. There is a good half hour setup narrative here, that adheres to conversational IF conventions. I’m not exactly sure what story effect the choices have, but they do allow you to establish the protagonist’s character. After a good amount of light but amusing table setting, the main goal is revealed: make enough money to rescue your relative via space exploration, trade and hustling.

If I were being maximally uncharitable, I would call it Space Grind! That’s way too facile, and actually ends up being wrong. Here comes a digression: sit down kids and let gramps tell ya how it used to be.

Back in the 80’s there were things called Microgames - just bigger than pocket sized boardgames that mixed complicated rule sets with small maps and mini cardboard counters. There was one called Trailblazer whose very small font book was mostly tables and tables of d6 planet randomization: goods produced, goods demanded, and market sensitivity. The game itself was explore, and set up trade routes to make space money. Lord was it a chore to generate a planet on the fly (and maintain its markets!) as players explored empty space. A few years later, the personal computer was powerful enough to offload that work. 35-40 years after that, we have Star Tripper. (I understand there was a relevant Palm Pilot event in between, not in my syllabus.)

The genius of every iteration of this idea is that 1) humans love exploring and 2) humans love the smug feeling they get from buying low and selling high. Just love it! We poured hours into that tiny square of cardboard cackling over our pretend space money and trade routes, shuffling page after page of pretend planet markets looking to eke out a better buy/sell chain. Never mind that it was Grind before we had a word for it. Most especially never mind that once you seemed to establish an optimal route, notwithstanding marginal market variations, the most effective thing to do was just repeat it endlessly. Make that Space Money!

There’s a ton of game theory explanations of micro-endorphins that drive engagement, currently being used to let social media turn us into addled ad-slaves. Watching pretend money grow incrementally higher is one of those tools. Here its used for good! Or at least not evil. Which leaves this reviewer in a weird place: the central mechanism is a grind, no doubt. But while I berated myself repeatedly for submitting to the grind, I couldn’t stop milking that sweet, sweet meat->cube->truffle run I found. It is simultaneously Mechanical and Engaging! Right before the 2hr mark, the game does something ingenious. Because the profitability of some trade runs are so obvious, exploration becomes disincentivized. But what if planets revolt with new trader-unfriendly laws? Or they suspect you are scamming their poor population? Or you run afoul of new pretend licensing requirements? The game shuts down your carefully cultivated money runs. No choice but to explore again! I actually laughed out loud at the audacity of this move, and equally recognized it as crucial.

I shouldn’t close out without a word about the graphical presentation. It is attractive, slick and functional, making maximum use of icons, data organization and snarky glue dialogue. There is also generous sound effects integrated which are funny the first few times, but after an hour or so, have run their amusement course. The user interface though, there was friction there. You repeatedly have to click through select-enter sequences to do anything. Meaning it is 10+ clicks to get to a market, 6+ to make transactions, then another 10+ to get to the next when you are trying to accomplish maybe 4 things. Something as simple as single click selects would cut that in half, and often save you intrusive scrolling to boot. Ability to define trade route macros and “sell all” options would make that even smoother.

Scoring this is all kinds of baffling. Do I give the game credit for exploiting human brain vulnerabilities? Penalize it? Do I somehow tease out the narrative portion which feels like endcaps to a massive trading game? Isolate the procedural generation aspects which are kinda impressive? I guess I just have to grade it on what it is, right? Both Mechanical and Engaging; its technical presentation both intrusive and very attractive.

Author: Sam Ursu
Played: 10/23
Playtime: 2hr, 2 ship upgrades
Score: 6 (Averaging Mechanical and Engaging, UI Notably Intrusive, Graphics seamless)
Would Play After Comp?: My logic says no, but my endorphin addiction says maybe

5 Likes
66

Lost Coastlines by William Dooling

I thought two runaway brides separated by 8 reviews was close (Chase the Sun and US Route 160). Back to back procedurally generated games? I’m just a mortal man, how on earth do I not compare them??? I’ll hold out as long as I can but my eye is already twitching like a pulsar.

To extend my review Deja’ Vu, I said this about Lost at the Market:

Dreams are certainly useful settings in IF. When used effectively, it can explain and justify any of the inherent limitations of the medium or even lean into the limitations as features.

Kinda wished I’d saved that gem for this review, it’s much more relevant here. This is a procedurally generated dreamscape, and boy does it ever “lean into limitations as features.” Freed from demands of terrestrial geology, ecosystems and logic Lost Coastlines goes bananas with strange, whimsical, fantastical, nightmarish and just plain clever map nodes, butting up against each other without rhyme or reason in a deeply complicated map. Evolutionary scholars and tectonic plate experts would die of apoplexy. The scope of the different encounters in the first hour was dizzying – one minute you’re plundering ships on the high seas, the next you are desperate NOT to look under a clown’s mask, right before you collaborate on an undersea steampunk engine. The breadth and scope was giddy, you really did feel anything at all could show up next, and were kind of drawn to see what that would be. It’s realized ambitions were dramatically higher than… no no no they were just super high ok?

But I was not Engaged, and it is some combination of gameplay design and bugs that I was fighting the entire time. Let me preface by saying I have no insight into the code, I am describing in pseudo code how I modeled the game in my head. Every location you find has one or two of these states: IDLE and IN_ENCOUNTER. Most of the time you enter a location into IDLE, where you can look around, examine things, or enter one or more encounters by typing site-specific phrases helpfully capitalized for you. Or you can just exit to the next location. Some locations put you directly into IN_ENCOUNTER state. If you engage an encounter you have to see it to its conclusion before you can leave, and then cannot engage any others. This is made frustrating because verbs and nouns that work in one state are infrequently recognized in the other - same location, mind – and the text doesn’t do a great job of hinting why or what state you are in. I spent a lot of time getting “not recognized” on capitalized words the game supported but I didn’t know I was in the wrong state to exercise. It was exacerbated by a finicky parser. If met with the prompt “FRAMISTAT THE WHOSIDINGIE” sometimes the parser recognized just FRAMISTAT or WHOSIDINGIE. Sometimes you could omit the THE, and other times you needed the whole phrase, and every failure was greeted with “I don’t recognise…”. I mean, you told me to FRAMISTAT just LET ME DADGUM FRAMISTAT!!!

Ahem. This is also an RPG of sorts, with stats and equipment that need to be managed through gameplay - maximize good stuff, try not to accumulate and/or get rid of bad stuff. Because you are wandering through a randomly generated world though, there is no guarantee you can find what you need when you need it and boy do you accumulate that bad stuff. Character creation is light, dreamlike and clever. One particularly nice feature is depending on what role you choose you have a special power. However, mine did not work consistently. At first I thought it was a bug, then I theorized maybe there was an invisible state limitation I didn’t understand, then came back around to “pretty sure its a bug.” Several times my Pirate ability to bypass storms/sea monsters/pirates flat didn’t work, but I got ‘charged’ for using it every time. Either that or the action feedback didn’t educate me about its use.

For the first hour, there was an equilibrium where I fought through the parser to enjoy the majesty of that tangled, tangled map and its delightful patchwork universe. Then the randomizer caught up with me, and some of the least interesting settings started repeating. A lot. Fighting the parser became a lot less rewarding, and the unavoidable encounters I had no chance of winning became less amusing.

In the end, I found myself preoccupied with my mental model to the exclusion of the dream-logic narrative of the game. I thought of it like an ameritrash boardgame where : move pawn to adjacent space, draw 1-N encounter cards, choose one of them with limited insight into potential results, roll dice, add/subtract appropriate scores to resolve, move to next space. Rule 12.4.3.1 - you cannot return to previous spaces within X turns.

I gave up at the 1.5hr mark, still begrudgingly admiring the majesty of the randomizer and the tapestry it weaved for me. So many individual encounters were Sparks of Joy (more in their description and variety than gameplay). Notably buggy implementation for sure, but I can’t help but give it a bonus point for epic dreamscape sweep. There were some cool characteristic-tradeoff rules to work towards for the endgame, but that was down the road, way beyond my exit ramp.

Author: William Dooling
Played: 10/24
Playtime: 1.5hr; 28 pleasance, 40 knowledge, gobs and gobs of Worry and Fury, and a good amount of Madness. Like real life!
Score: 6 (Sparks of Joy, Notably Buggy, bonus point for sheer ambition)

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67

Thanks for the review of The Thirty Nine Steps, it’s great. I’m really happy you liked the music.

If you get a moment to tell me more about these things, it’d be really helpful. Do you remember where in the game this was?

And if you can tell me how to do this, that’s helpful too…

[quote]But I would hope that kind of thing could be implemented more organically in the text.
[/quote]

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@ArchivistAndRevolution

I’ve gotta get quicker on the draw on these updates. There is a lag between my rating and review posting, and I’m 2/3 the way through at this point. Occaisionally I will give ‘bonus points’ for one thing or another. I don’t pretend that it is rigorous (I mean my baseline scoring is already shaky AF), but as I look back on what I have awarded bonus points for, Archivist and Revolution world building overwhelmingly deserves one. I am changing my rating to 7 (Sparks of Joy, Mostly Seamless, bonus point for thrilling world building)

Sorry, again, for the confusion.

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69

Use Your Psychic Powers at Applebee’s by Geoffrey Golden

I haven’t been keeping track, and now I’m sorry I wasn’t, because I’m pretty sure this was the quickest entry so far. You’re selling beer WITH YOUR MIND. As one does. You can probably guess where.

…

…

I’ve stared at these 4 sentences for a while now, trying to decide on the best path forward, and I’m kind of concluding it will take me longer to type, and take you longer to read, than to go ahead and play the thing. So just hit me with your questions.

Was it parser based? No, option-selection.
Was it a game? Barely but yeah, you have sales goals to meet and powers to employ.
Were there puzzles? Only loosely.
Was it Interactive? About the same as any option-selection game.
Was it Fiction? You’re kind of phoning these questions in aren’t you? Well, psychic powers are fake, so yes its fiction. There’s a plot and a twist too I guess. It counts.
Were there NPCs? Yeah a few of them, and their inner monologues are pretty funny.
Can you lose? I mean yeah, but how much can you really lose in 5-10 minutes of IF? Assuming you’re not driving.
Were there bugs? No. Not enough moving parts to draw them.
Was it Mechanical? No, too funny for that.
Was it Engaging? No, too slight for that.
So it was Sparks of Joy? You’re catching on to how this works.

What was your favorite part? Honestly? “Adventure Snack turns your inbox into an adventure with new interactive email games twice a month. Subscribe at AdventureSnack.com.” This thing was an ADVENTURE SNACK! That is just the most perfect description possible and so succinctly captured my exact feelings about this thing that every word of this review that isn’t ‘Adventure’ or ‘Snack’ is just self-indulgent bullsh*t. You guys, a thing called Adventure Snack exists!

…

Are you just a paid shill for Big Adventure Snack? I am. WITH MY MIND.

Author: Geoffrey Golden
Played: 10/25
Playtime: 10min, 2 endings
Score: 6 (Sparks of Joy, seamless)
Would Play After Comp?: No, experience feels complete. I might could go for a snack later though…

7 Likes
70

One Final Pit Bull Song (At the End of the World) by Paige Morgan

Holy crap was this one a roller coaster ride. Let me dispense with the non-narrative parts first because this will be quick. The presentation was simple but effective. In particular, the use of background colors and to a lesser extent fonts was tightly aligned to the narrative in a satisfying and resonant way. I wish more games would take the simple steps taken here. There is sound, but I’m not sure if it was infrequent or downplayed, I only remember it registering once during gameplay.

Gameplay? I’ll need a different word. This is a super linear narrative. There are infrequent opportunities to click on internal monologues for additional insight, but otherwise you might as well be turning pages. Except for exactly one choice you get to make. Actually, over two hours I had forgotten I had made ANY choices, until reminded. Other games have had similar implementations for sure, but this one really eschewed any attempt to use other interactive tricks, like using page size and interactivity for narrative pacing, or character-defining but narratively-irrelevant decisions to align the reader more closely to the protagonist. Of all the entries so far, this was the most similar to reading a really well laid out book. I mean that’s fine, right? Half of Interactive Fiction is Fiction. I hear books can be pretty darn entertaining. Let’s talk narrative.

The plot covers a lot of ground. What starts as a hilarious multi-thousand-year sweep of history, segues to a heist and relationship melodrama, to a gritty pan-gender prison story, to a cave survival horror story, to climax in a conversation with Future Adam (but not Eve) and …a dance party. Now, you look at that list and first impression is, hell yeah, buckle me up for THAT roller coaster ride! There’s an assumption built into that reaction though, that the ride is built with tight control over your safety. In this metaphor, the plot is the kinetic design of the ride, how it connects turns, climbs, loops, and drops into a thrilling experience. The characters are the car that carries you start to end. And super importantly, the tone is the track that supports your characters. However wildly the course turns, it smoothly zips you along.

OFPBS really doesn’t do any of that. The coaster design is an early work from the architect that went on to design R’Lyeh, where they were still fleshing out their non-Euclidian geometries. I’m saying the plot twists cross dimensional barriers with their impossible turns. The car is transplanted from some 1950’s Tunnel of Love, earnestly covered stem to stern with lavishly ornate “TeeJay loves Sam” adolescent graffiti. Uniquely UNsuited to the kinetic demands of the wild ride, and while adorably sentimental at first, quickly sublimates to “shut up about Sam already, we get it, they’re dreamy. Maybe focus on this insane curve coming up instead.”

Given those two extreme and incompatible choices (plot and character), the only way to salvage the experience is with a perfect tonal track. Unfortunately, the discipline is just not there. In the first few scenes the tone swings wildly from humor, to melodrama, to violent grit, but keeps some semblence of internal in-the-moment consistency. By the time the cast is chasing through caves it does not keep a coherent tone even within a scene. It puts on the reader the entire burden of synthesizing starkly cast violent physical peril with porn ‘money shot’ parody with acres of pan-gender John Hughes romantic mooning with origin of man mythology. The text and language does no lifting to spackle the disconnects with humor or whimsy or farce, just presents it all and dares the reader to weather the discord. If the ridiculousness of the scenario WAS the farce, it was a miscalculation not to let the tone cue the reader.

And man, does that ending take a non-Euclidian turn. It is a complete betrayal of the seriously-cast character deaths, of the mortal terror they felt. Good horror movies know how to manage tone. The stakes of Devils Rejects for example are starkly different than Final Destination. The former wrings tension from raw fear of evil, the latter plays deaths as elaborate punch lines. Both work! They would decidedly not work in the same movie. Sean of the Dead shows that varying tones can coexist with the right narrative grease. That’s what’s missing here.

In the end, despite a strong opening and brief sections of notably effective chase horror, the tonal shortcomings have a predictable if cliche’ effect on our metaphorical roller coaster. That ending Bounced me clean off the rails.

Author: Paige Morgan
Played: 10/26
Playtime: 2hrs, finished one playthrough, 1/3 endings
Score: 2 (Bouncy, Notable Lack of Interactivity)
Would Play After Comp?: Would take a lot of metaphorical Dramamine

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Lol, well you have me at disadvantage, never having read House of Leaves. This is my first year rating, and I took to heart the guidance to “Use all the numbers” and “develop a rating rubric” which is documented at the top of the thread.

That said, I understand it is dispiriting to invest an insanely long time on a labor of love, only to have some clown dismiss it seemingly offhandedly. I promise you that was not me. It feels wrong to rate and not explain, especially with ratings at either end of the range. I tried to capture why it didn’t work for me in my review. I certainly didn’t mean to imply it was the fact of the relationship talk that bounced me. If I came off too glib and that’s how it read, that’s my weakness as a writer.

It’s one thing to read criticism about technical issues, or grammar, or user interface or whatever. Those feel actionable. It’s quite another hear about the impact of your deliberate narrative and style choices. Those are super personal.

Everything isn’t for everyone. At the end of the day, I am just one random dude on the internet. Your voice and message makes you happy. If I’m not helping, please forget me and continue to write your bliss.

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Pretty clear favourite for the Golden Banana of Discord! (Game with the highest standard deviation of scores.)

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74

The Tin Mug by Alice E. Wells, Sia See and Jkj Yuio

I guess it is inevitable with a field this large that human pattern-spotting is going to eventually kick into high gear. Another children’s story IF, Esther’s, is clamoring to be compared here, and as usual I’m going to try to fight it off. I am concerned that this continual battle is wearying me, and I will succumb.

Tin Mug skews slightly older with its presentation. (Did I just fail in paragraph 2???) It is far more text dense and illustration light. Less like a picture book and more like say Winnie the Pooh. There is some disconnect though, between the subject matter, text, and presentation that made it harder to conjure a consistent imaginary child-co-pilot. Winnie the Pooh, for all its young child appeal, notably invests in its characters, and is as much character as plot driven, maybe more. The characters are all quite distinct and relatable to all ages. There are a few very distinct characters in Tin Mug to be sure, but there are as many kind of interchangeable ones. This choice feels younger than the piece’s presentation.

Too, there are narrative choices that skew older. In a world of sentient dishware, the story opens with what feels like a casual murder. It is undone at the end, but since it was left to ride the entire time, it can only partially undo the lasting impression. Also the mechanism of its undoing was way younger than a lot of the narrative. I’m not here to poke at ‘plot holes’ in a children-targeted work, that’s a dick move. But I am highlighting that these presentation and plot and character choices feel like they target slightly different maturity levels in a way that keeps the work from coalescing.

Even gameplay has inconsistent notes. There are many points of exclusive choices in the game - A OR B. Choices that determine a course of action or character reaction seem perfectly fair. Choices that force you to choose to only interact with one of two characters, without narrative justification, that feels like it doesn’t reward a child’s natural curiosity. Even though I couldn’t get my child co-pilot to materialize into a specific age, nevertheless I clearly heard a whine in my head “why CAN’T I go talk to the bread basket now? I’m done with the… [other one that I can’t remember right now.]”

I can’t stress enough that these are not ‘broken’ story choices in any way. They just seem less crisply focused.

There are technical issues too, the most notable of which is screen management. Very often, a choice will produce a large block of text or oversized illustration that pushes huge chunks of text outside the window. You need to actively scroll upwards to read the text you missed. In many cases the illustration is too large to be seen in the window, and you end up panning across its height. This intrudes further into the experience in a way that would try a child’s patience, I think. It did mine.

Without a (virtual) child co-pilot, and because I am dead inside, I couldn’t wring Sparks out of this, though I could theorize multiple children could get different Sparks at different times. For this curmudgeon it was Mechanical.

Author: Alice E. Wells, Sia See and Jkj Yuio
Played: 10/27
Playtime: 10min, finished
Score: 3 (Mechanical, Intrusive presentation)
Would Play After Comp?: No, experience feels complete.

4 Likes
75

Admiration Point by Rachel Helps

So far this comp I have been a monster, a psychic salesman, a bartender, various permutations of queer/trans, a fatally wounded soldier, two different runaway brides, a chess piece, a tin mug and a Superhero horse. Now a tempted-to-stray Mormon wife. I love this Comp so much!

This is a deeply adult work, and I don’t mean in the sense of “tee hee nudity and devil worship.” I mean actual experiences and challenges relevant to actual adults. You are a digital artist working in a near-future digital art gallery. Its kind of an office drama, and it is crackerjack. The lived in setting of the office, the casual jargon-filled interactions, the constant tension between satisfying your creative urges and getting the job done, the highly specific triumphs and failures that are impenetrable to outsiders. All of this is painted so crisply, so matter-of-factly it is instantly immersive.

The characters in the workplace similarly feel organic. Over time you get enough background to establish with certainty why they are in the business they’re in, and where they are satisfied or dissatisfied with the work. It is insanely lived in. No notes! It also makes the crucial decision to effortlessly establish that it is these common intellectual and artistic passions that provide a baseline attraction, not “ooh, hotty!”

It is all so satisfyingly subtle. The piece builds attraction through dry academic texts and deeply technical dayjob project work, so that when the inevitable “wow those bike shorts” injects it feels like the involuntary chemical reaction it is - as much a result of what came before as “wait, humans can just be horny.” Now I can’t decide how much this resonated for me because I happen to ALSO be deeply interested in the digital issues the protagonist and “love” interest are. (Which by the way, loved every single detail of the future corporate/online/cultural world building. There is a special place in my heart for The Handmaid’s Tale video game being used to hawk makeup) Would someone less fascinated by these topics find this as compelling? Dunno, irrelevant to my experience!

The interactive choices on display here were similarly just perfect. You were choosing small, harmless(?) actions, so small they often didn’t register as choices in the sense of steering the game. The writing in the choices was laser precise - it was clear WHAT you were doing, but the game steered super wide of WHY. Are you flirting up to a tittilating line? Filled with shame? Actively looking for something new? Lying to yourself about your motivations? Only rarely did the game weigh in on any of that, mostly that was between you and your mouse. What a powerfully immersive choice that is, a fragile illusion you are creating that is so easily dispelled by incautious word choice. AP almost never cracked.

I’m gushing here. 3/4 the way through I was already crowning this Transcendent in my head. I was anticipating equal subtlety all the way to the end, where my mental model of the protagonist and dramatically chosen world events collided in a natural and unpredictable way. I was positively crestfallen, when amidst the super slow and organic building of tension, I was abruptly confronted with a metagame choice: do you pursue an affair, try to stay friends or cut off contact? This choice was so different than everything that came before: it was blunt and confrontive and shattering of carefully constructed character self-delusions. I could see a scenario where narratively this brutality could be justified in-story and even be rewarding, but that wasn’t the case here. I could similarly conceive the game jumping in and saying, ‘all that subtlety was self-deluding lies, because here’s the reality of all that weaseling.’ Which it kind of was? I needed more text for any of that to land, I’m afraid. Without that, all the work the game had done was discarded with inadequate compensation.

In the end, this was such an impactful design choice it eroded the Transcendental experience I was having. It redeemed somewhat when I reloaded and explored the alternatives, only to find It didn’t change the ending! I’d already baked the character and it was gonna be what it was. Adultery is a choice you make for sure, but its not a choice ONLY you make. That was kinda cool. This is a top 5, maybe top 2 game for me. Its application of interactivity and world building was qualitatively more mature and nuanced than almost everything else so far. I wish that one thing didn’t undermine it right when I was soaring but it got me so high in the air, I had room to drop.

Also quick shout out to the phrase “using steamed baby carrots to expore her facial orifices.” That is now just endlessly echoing in my head behind everything I’m doing.

Author: Rachel Helps
Played: 10/27
Playtime: 1hr, 1 ending 3 different ways
Score: 8 (Engaging, seamless) Would be 8.5 if allowed.
Would Play After Comp?: Yeah maybe, if I can get past the fear that I’ll destroy the butterfly by looking too close

7 Likes
76

The Lottery Ticket by Dorian Passer, Anton Chekhov

I love how broad the IF domain is, and in turn how foolish I was to think a two-column criteria could possibly cover that breadth. Here is the latest in my frequent review sub-series “What Do I Do With This?” I mean I am just jumping back into IF after 20+ years, cut me some slack! My parents didn’t teach ME to swim by throwing me in the deep end!

“Stateful Narration.” I, ah, ok so… hmm. Just play it then? Do I need to be checked out on the equipment first? Am I qualified to run this thing, let alone critically evaluate it? I infer this is an exercise in giving the reader ability to interject feelings and interpretations that the text will conform to naturally, but not fundamentally branch the narrative? That seemed to be my experience with it anyway. There were maybe 4 entry points in the text. One felt pretty seamless, the other two pretty I guess ineffectual? The text effectively characterized my input as “faking it for my friends” which is legit narratively but felt too easy. The last one I think confounded the parser. I wasn’t trying to do that, but I wasn’t not either. I used the word ‘giddy’ and the text said “Who am I kidding? I’m very nervous. That’s why I’m digging into my fingers…” Feels like giddy connotes some level of nervous energy that compromised the answer? I don’t know man, I get that this was a unique experimentation slash proof of concept, I hope the author is getting useful data out of this! Let me retreat to something I’m more comfortable with, how’d the narrative go?

My most memorable exposure to mixing Great Author works with contemporary augmentation was Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. My overriding impression there was that the original work was SO much better written than the new stuff. Notwithstanding the author’s bold attempt to match voice, it was nevertheless painfully obvious where the stitch lines were. LT instead takes the tack of treating the original text AS original text, then putting narrative around it that resonates with the story. It seems unfair to engage the Chekov portion of the narrative, so I’ll just focus on the contemporary wrapper.

It was good! It mirrored and contrasted Chekov’s stream of consciousness exploration in a fun way, but specific to our modern characters. The interactivity didn’t impose much on that path, and it built to a minor climax and amusing denouement. Even discounting Chekov, there were Sparks of Joy in the gentle mirroring. 3 out of 4 interactive instances were pretty ok, that’s a ‘C’ I guess? So Notably Intrusive? I’m pot committed to this criteria by now, so I guess that’s where I land, but hard to believe rating this thing is even close to the point of it.

Also, Chekov was a pretty good writer, huh?

Author: Dorian Passer, Anton Chekhov - that’s a serious collaboration there!
Played: 10/27
Playtime: 15min, twice
Score: 5 (Sparks of Joy, Notably Buggy)
Would Play After Comp?: I mean I guess I would if my data is helping.

4 Likes
77

Of all the books I ever received as a present, that one was handed in to the charity shop fastest, I think. Couldn’t get through it. (And I love Jane Austen, which might have been part of the problem.)

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78

I did get through it, though I have a famously low bar for quality when horror is involved. I totally get your reaction though.

I will say the book did open my eyes to what a terrific writer Ms Austen was - I was ill prepared to appreciate her during my school-years introduction.

2 Likes
79

Inside by Ira Vlasenko

Earlier I spoke about the power of dreams as IF setting. I should extend that to “mind palace.” As a setting, this carries a lot of the same advantages: ability to lean into IF limitations as features, ability to ignore real-world logic, full-on integration of symbology and metaphor. In a way its kind of the same thing. I mean its not like dreams occur somewhere else.

I liked the central conceit of this one: two (or is it one??) witches trapped in one of their mind palaces due to some kind of unnamed real world threat and needing to escape by passing through replayed key events of the host’s life. Escape by solving puzzles! Sure, I’m in.

In practice, I had unanswered questions about the implementation. For example, it seems like the host is at most a middle-aged adult, yet there was an encounter from old age they hadn’t lived yet. There was an encounter as a baby which doesn’t seem like it could be remembered. And in one encounter, it seemed you could effect the past in the ‘real world.’ It is possible, I suppose, that the mind palace incorporated time portals and those were not memories but ‘real.’ There was nothing in the text to imply this, and the unreal nature of the puzzle solving ( at one point a tiny hand reaches out of a cat’s ear) suggest otherwise. This game doesn’t owe me anything, it has every right to be what it is without my permission. But I felt those choices traded away some of the power of the setting without getting enough in return, dramatically speaking.

Gameplay is mostly puzzle solving, the exploring aspect is pretty limited, maybe 8 rooms. I liked that there were often multiple ways to solve puzzles, that tracked to whether you wanted to be ‘good’ or ‘evil’. The puzzles themselves were a mixed bag. Generally, the text didn’t provide a lot of nudging or feedback on your choices, so solving felt a bit arbitrary. The solutions did not come with that ‘oh, that’s why that worked!’ feeling. I got the sense that either I got lucky a lot, or the puzzles had multiple solutions. Even that is not terrible if the solutions had some kind of thematic through line to draw them together. I did not detect such.

I did like what the final escape implied about the physical fate of the witches, and really liked how understated it was. There was some nice ambiguity about the true nature of the dual protagonists, but the finale only hinted at resolving it which was maybe TOO understated. All in all I think the setting is a strong foundation that would support much tighter thematic construction and payoff. If I awarded points for ‘potential Sparks of Joy’ this would deserve it. Unfortunately, I typically do not.

Author: Ira Vlasenko
Played: 10/27
Playtime: 30min, finished
Score: 4 (Mechanical, mostly seamless)
Would Play After Comp?: No, experience seems complete

3 Likes
81

An Alien’s Mistaken Impressions of Humanity’s Pockets by Andrew Howe

This was a small game, showcasing Alien scientists excavating modern human artifacts, and being mildly bewildered by them. It felt like a working prototype in a lot of ways.

It is small, 6 rooms not counting hallways? There are NPCs with limited and unvarying interactions. There are puzzles to solve, interacting with objects the player has (mostly) no issue recognizing, but amusingly befuddle the aliens. They are pretty linear and mostly obvious. It does incorporate state awareness, opening up options naturally as you play through. It is all pretty bare bones though, narratively and graphically.

Graphically, its not very interesting - the font and color selection have no particular resonance. A lot of sentences and choices are all lower case which is a stylistic choice I assume, but serves no real purpose. Options are stacked vertically, but not ordered so that if an option is not yet available to you it looks like a stray blank line between other options. There is no consistent organization of choices screen to screen - sometimes it is a complete-or-not vertical list, sometimes it is integrated into the descriptions themselves. There are spelling errors, including in the title screen. It incorporates pictures, but incompletely. There is some light humor in the contrast between how the aliens describe the objects, and the academic photo of the actual object. This does bite the game where the object with the most obtuse description does not have a picture like the others. While I guessed at its use, I never did figure out what it was supposed to be.

The text descriptions also left money on the table, as it were. For one, the lab space, hallways and other rooms are described in suspiciously human terms. If there was an alienness to the setting, it would have much better reinforced their bafflement. As such, I kind of pictured Star Trek aliens - one prosthetic but otherwise human - when so much more was possible. There was the description issue above, and there was one puzzle where I was temporarily stuck until I realized Magenta didn’t count as Red. I think feedback text would have been useful there. There were technical glitches as well - the game did not seem to recognize when you were carrying something and let you pick it up repeatedly. Even your ultimate goal is not well signposted. While its never unclear what needs to be done next, the end screen came as mild “oh I guess that’s it then” surprise.

None of this was fatal, just unpolished. The graphical presentation was unpolished enough that it never really faded from my consciousness, and that feels intrusive to me. The text could use some rework. The framework is there for a diverting game, just needs a bit more to start Sparking. The introductory text suggests this was a class assignment of some sort. Makes sense - as a time-constrained assignment its completeness is to its credit. The polish can come later.

Author: Andrew Howe
Played: 10/27
Playtime: 20min, finished
Score: 3 (Mechanical, intrusive presentation)
Would Play After Comp?: No, experience seems complete

2 Likes
82

The Last Christmas Present by JG Heithcock

And we’re back to the “What Do I Do With This?” Sub series of JJMcC’s ROOT. Today’s conundrum: an IF implementation of a real-life Christmas scavenger hunt!

Look, I could wax academic about the quality of the map - how sometimes directions get turned around, or exits not flagged, or verbs incompletely implemented so you struggle to open a secret bookcase door. I could whine about how thrilled I was to use the nifty folding map player aid, only to realize after struggling fruitlessly for a half hour that I needed to also fold the map in the parser – that being the only way to unlock game state, so I could find what I was looking for in the places I had already tried to look. I could bemoan falling into the same trap later when I visually decoded a word puzzle, to then need to guess-the-verb to solve it again in the parser before I could advance. I could admire the chutzpah of implementing your own house in parser map, then more dramatically in a note-perfect Potter pastiche prop. There would be words about language choice, words about spare descriptions, words about lack of interact-able objects and NPCs, and words and words and words words words.

Then I’d have to score it.

I am becoming convinced that what is posing as an IF contest/celebration is actually an elaborate social psychology experiment being conducted on me, and all of you ALL OF YOU are in on it. You seem to be testing the theory that any random person of good will, when given the power to pass judgement on another’s creative work, will inevitably become a callous monster, glibly making half hour pronouncements on hours on hours of truly impressive labors of love. Cold to the people behind the stories. Well I see behind the curtain IF Comp, if that is your real name.

Today we have a work based on a real-life father MAKING MAGIC FOR HIS DAUGHTER ON CHRISTMAS! What’s next IF Comp? Huh? A toddler writing IF to earn money for life saving surgery for his out-of-work single mom? A collective work by an orphanage trying to keep an opioid manufacturer from foreclosing the only home they’ve ever known?? An overworked animal shelter volunteer desperately cranking out IF because it is the only thing that distracts the puppy ward from counting days??? YES, ADORABLE, PRECOCIOUS, DOOMED, IF-READING PUPPIES!!!

I’m not playing your little game. Y’know what happened when I made an outdoor Christmas scavenger hunt for my wife? It rained. In a state where water from the sky is the stuff of myth, it rained. Screw this, I am rating this game 10 out of 10 for Father of the Year. Did you see the photos (The Last Christmas Present - Photos) of that map he made?? Good lord who am I to shade on that?

Author: JG Heithcock
Played: 10/28
Playtime: 1.5hr, finished with hints
Score: Seriously, don’t. YOU HAD TO, DIDN’T YOU? 4 (Mechanical, notably intrusive, bonus point for that awe-inspiring map)
Would Play After Comp?: What’s happening to me???

6 Likes