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

Competitions IFComp
83

Approaching Horde by Craig Ruddell

Zombies have had quite the cultural arc, haven’t they? From their racist beginnings, to Romero’s definitive lo-fi masterpiece, to gorehound cutting edge horror to ubiquitous then backlash to now just a cultural staple. I mean there are zombie musicals, comedies, heist pictures(!), romances, its just a whole thing. Somewhere along the way their metaphorical power was diluted, but is still endlessly malleable (not unlike vampires).

What I’m saying is, about time I get one in IFCOMP! Surprising no one, the genre is a great fit for a a tower defense/resource allocation game. My first introduction to the game was trepidation - I’ve learned to be wary of this engine’s graphical presentation which errs just on the side of Notably Intrusive most of the time. Some early spelling and grammar errors also were a little concerning. There was some clumsy action sequence blocking where mid attack, suddenly the zombie was still approaching but almost immediately the tone not only saved it but started leading the charge. As you are being attacked by the shambling remains of your spouse, the narration observes (para) “…normally a good thing…” This really cemented the breezy tone that had been building to that point, and set the stage perfectly. After this, to the extent that spelling and grammar were an issue the tone easily sailed you past.

As you segue to the defense portion, the graphical presentation really starts to shine: the simple but effective use of screen, color, task selection dropdowns, and status bar tracking made for a seamless and pleasant cockpit to steer your crew of hardy survivors. As it is a timed game, especially appreciate that scrolling is almost never needed. The roles you need to juggle are well thought out, and crisply implemented. The tasks all make sense, in the logic of the game, and like a real apocalypse its not clear where to focus your energies at first so you wing it and fire and adjust. All in the face of a doomsday timer in the form of an incoming zombie horde.

You’re balancing survival/happiness against crucial future building tasks, on a timer. The timer started to move a touch slow (actually I was probably moving faster) as the game went on, I could see tweaking to subtly speed that up as the game progresses but definitely not at first. Even as you are in a frenzy of your survival balancing act, the wry tone periodically keeps you smiling. At one point my zombie researchers, after quite a long research effort, concluded “zombies cannot be reasoned with.” Lol, no sh*t researchers, why are we feeding you again?

And then its over! A short denouement and you get to read about your score in an amusing news story. This is a kind of slight, short game, but it is such a winning mix of tone, tension and logistical puzzle that I have to say I was Engaged. It does what it wants to really well, and knows to leave before it wears out its welcome. I would call it “Notably Intrusive” for its occasional writing clunks, slight drag before the end, and at least one “bug” where defenses were not improved after a few cycles of investment. Either I didn’t understand a prerequisite that was not communicated, or just a math bug. None of that degraded my enjoyment for sure.

Author: Craig Ruddell
Played: 10/29
Playtime: 40 min, 8 survivors, down from a peak of 21
Score: 7 (Engaging, notably intrusive)
Would Play After Comp?: Very likely. It’s somewhere between an Adventure Snack and a full meal. Second Breakfast?

4 Likes
84

If you research improved defenses, what happens is that your builders will then be able to build defenses faster. The research itself doesn’t improve the defenses. Perhaps that was a source of confusion?

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85

That almost certainly was it. At some point, these misses of mine aren’t really the games’ faults anymore…

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Ha ha, what a silly theory, what would even make you think tha – [flees]

You’ve been on a great run of reviews here but this one especially made me laugh – I definitely twisted on the horns of this same dilemma but didn’t engage with it nearly as honestly as you were able to.

Looking forward to more!

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87

To Persist/Exist/Endure, Press 1 by Anthony O

The other day, I was just kind of lounging on my couch thinking “Y’know what I could go for? An automated phone service simulator! Something that really captures the tension and mystery of navigating an audio menu!” Of course I wasn’t thinking that. No one has, ever. And yet TPEEP1 (lol, what?) comes along and says “maybe you should!”

This is a quick play, maybe quicker than… no! Stop that Id! No comparisons! It models a supernatural/emotional support line that is no better at customer service than your cable company. This thing carries off an amazing balancing act, wringing dry chuckles from a first impersonal then somehow VERY personal bureaucracy exacerbating an emotional spiral. See, you read that sentence, and you’re like “what kind of sociopath would get chuckles out of that?” This is the dark alchemy TPEEP1 pulls off.

As you navigate the menu, and there are quite a few paths through, the responses get increasingly personal, unhelpful and belligerent in a somehow hilarious way. The story is almost completely conveyed in phone menu options, both the text of the option and what is an option, which itself is fun and unexpected. My first few paths were giddy with surprise.

But as I navigated a few different paths, there was a common thread that struck me. Somehow, TPEEP1 (yeah, I’m now addicted to squeezing that abbreviation in as often as I can) pulled away from committing to its own bit. Despite presenting menus begging to build on the conceit, instead you cycle through duplicated “no, repeat” responses, and not in a compellingly, thematically resonant way. There are two possible explanations I can think of off the top of my head. Either this was an entry that was pressed on submission deadline, or the impulse was to not milk the joke. “Brevity is the soul of wit” is a bedrock pearl of wisdom, no doubt. To this I say fie! A joke should be as long as it needs to be and no longer. These could be longer! If deadline-bound, should the author decide to expand the entry, I would gladly pick it up again to see where it went.

A note on presentation, though let me say nothing here figures into the scoring as I am speculating on alternate presentations which isn’t fair to the game. I was put in the mind of a phone menu mini-game in Kentucky Route Zero a compellingly odd, uneven and fabulous commercial graphical adventure. (Stealth comparison! Take that superego!) In its implementation, you are confronted with a desktop phone, and have to mechanically navigate the audio menu. This is maybe the first Texture game (an engine I am a normally a fan of) that doesn’t really benefit from its drag and drop mechanism. An actual number pad input would have been stronger here, as would an audio ‘beep.’ End of tangential digression which, if you’re still reading my reviews, you have probably become pretty inured to by now.

So that’s where I land: TPEEP1 elicits Sparks of Joy, Seamlessly implemented, but point off for not fully embracing its strengths.

TPEEP1.

Author: Anthony O
Played: 10/29
Playtime: 15min, 6 endings
Score: 5 (Sparks of Joy, Seamless, docking a point for shallow commitment to the bit)
Would Play After Comp?: If expanded, sure! TPEEP1.

3 Likes
88

Trouble in Sector 471 by Arthur DiBianca

This is another nifty little puzzle game. You are a 'bot squashing bugs via a series of unlocking-style puzzles. Either explicitly unlocking doors, or unlocking new abilities needed to solve subsequent puzzles. The puzzle design is reasonably pleasant and seems to play pretty fair. It does require some logical leaps or guesses, even trial and error from time to time, but that is far from rare in IF, classic or modern. The text descriptions are succinct with a light, breezy feel that keeps things chugging along and doesn’t grate when you re-enter rooms multiple times.

It does a few things really well. For one, I really dug the ascii maps. They were easy to parse, eminently useful, and exuded an old-school vibe that matched the text tone nicely. The game seemed to disconcertingly read my mind at one point. I realized there were a few interesting items littered about behind me, but I really didn’t remember where and was not looking forward to exploring to find them again. No sooner did that sour thought form than BAM I unlocked “ITEM mode” on the map to helpfully point them out! Had to be a coincidence, right? The alternative is super creepy.

While the game did not really implement deep NPCs (most are one-response once their puzzle-state responses are exhausted), like the room descriptions their dialogue is short and to the point with a splash of personality. Since they are bots anyway, this doesn’t really jar - making a strength of its limitations! Same for the limited vocabulary - as a relatively simple bot, there isn’t really an expectation of full autonomy and the limited action palette feels pretty natural. Between the marriage of form and function, the enjoyable puzzles, crisp page and map layout and snappy writing there were plenty of Sparks of Joy. There was however also a friction-y design choice and one small but really annoying bug.

Bug first. It’s a parser game, and the web implementation autoscrolled on command entry for a while. Until it didn’t anymore - instead, it autoscrolled whey you typed the NEXT command. What this meant was, you would go say W(est). The descriptive text of the new room would appear below the bottom of the screen, and only after you input a character THEN it would scroll up for you to see. This had the effect of needing to type something/anything after your command, then maybe erasing that and putting the real command in. Eventually I figured out I could hit Enter-Backspace to force the scroll but man was it annoying. I don’t really have a bead on if it was the author’s bug or maybe the web implementation.

The second was in command choice. This is a parser game, but it implements very few commands. It tells you what they are, that’s fine. Most of the frequently used commands (cardinal direction, look, wait) are implemented as single letters. This has the effect of keeping things light and moving quickly. There are some mode and status commands which are full words, but as they are rarely used that’s not impactful. However, the special powers you accumulate, and use all the time (sometimes in elaborate sequences), are 3 letters. Now, you are instantly thinking less of me because I am going to complain about three letter commands instead of 1. While that is 300% more typing, I accept your scorn. But in a game this light, with a vocabulary this limited, having to repeatedly type the same 3-letter words just starts feeling unnecessary. Especially when all of the ones I unlocked could have started with unique single letters!

The cumulative weight of these frictions led me to a point where after a particularly involved surprise side mission (which I had mistaken for a ‘core’ mission) I didn’t feel compelled to finish the game. So, definite Sparks of Joy, short of Engagement. As I look at the ‘intrusive elements’ above (buggy text scroll, why can’t I type less?) while it for sure informed my experience they don’t really rate as ‘notably buggy.’ Just a spot where more lubrication could have been applied. Hey-O, that’s what sh… no. Just don’t.

Author: Arthur DiBianca
Played: 10/30
Playtime: 1.5hr, did not finish
Score: 6 (Sparks of Joy, Mostly Seamless)
Would Play After Comp?: Doubtful, got the gist

2 Likes
89

When setting up the IF Comp page for Entangled (2020), I ran into this problem. As far as I know, it has nothing to do with .zcode, or .ulx which is extended zcode. I know it has something to do with Parchment, which is kept updated. @Dannii works on it a lot. I think he might maintain it? He would know more about the problem.

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90

Campus Invaders by Marco Vallarino

Now that it’s been pointed out to me that a few works here are the product of short-burn IF workshops, the thought rises unbidden when engaging some of these pieces. It feels super patrician to assume this background for any given game and I am actively resisting it. In my defense though, CI is set AT A SCHOOL WITH AN IF WORKSHOP. C’mon, how much do you expect of me? It even implements the IF teacher as a character! If this was a workshop product and if there were grades involved, I hope the author’s naked flattery got them an A. There is something bold and admirable to pandering this overt.

As a game it was small, less than two dozen locations and filled with relatively simple puzzles, many of them signposted baldly. “X tells you to give Y to Z” Give. “Z tells you to get Q” Get. There was one puzzle with no signposting, whose solution felt pretty arbitrary, but given the relative shortness of the work was well within bounds of trial and error. There were a few paths that led nowhere. There was a mix of feature implementations which felt as much coding exercise as puzzle, but at least implemented with flair. There was a smattering of missing descriptions, and one puzzle where the game blocked you because you were missing information, but didn’t provide a narrative reason for the block. Frankly, these were the exceptions though. It was a fairly Mechanical experience, but very competently done.

And here is the part where I make an ungenerous observation that makes you think less of me. Not so fast reader! Fortunately for me, Zeno’s Dichotomy paradox famously noted that to get to a destination you must first travel halfway there. Then halfway of that smaller remaining distance. Then halfway again and again, infinitely bisecting smaller distances so you can never actually arrive at zero. The lesser known corollary to this is that to start that journey you must travel halfway. But to get halfway, you must first travel a quarter of the way, after traveling an eighth. Because this distance can also be infinitely subdivided you can’t even START your downward journey of contempt for me! I AM IMMUNE TO CRITICISM AND ACCOUNTABILITY!!!

With that armor in place, I can safely note that this appears to be the work of a non-native speaker. The setting and much of the text hint at a joyfully casual, light and snarky tone. But it rarely lands because of awkward phrasing. Early on, even descriptions took effort to parse, though I think I got synched reasonably quickly. I’m not a monster, I’m not going to penalize the work for this, but it also was just intrusive enough that it defused potential Sparks of Joy before they could land. I guess I am a monster. Fortunately, still armored! Look, if I tried to write these reviews in say Spanish, it would be hot garbage word salad. Ensalada de palabras basura caliente. More so, I mean. But I can really only report on the experience I was having, right?

This was a small, good quality exercise, not particularly complicated, with hints of Joy that couldn’t quite land. Wait. Does Zeno mean I can only give 1’s and 10’s as scores?

Author: Marco Vallarino
Played: 10/30
Playtime: 20min, finished
Score: 4 (Mechanical, Seamless)
Would Play After Comp?: No, experience feels complete

3 Likes
91

I tried playing Trouble in Sector 471 a little bit and couldn’t see any scrolling issues. No one’s reported any for Parchment recently either. So I don’t have anything to add sorry.

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92

Oh man, bad news - I kept my inventory management pretty tidy for the most part, and I’m pretty sure ITEM mode never unlocked for me. So I suspect the game does have some kind of tracking of how spread out the inventory objects are getting, and if it seems like the player’s going to get frustrated it starts giving you the map info. So yeah, kinda creepy, though I think it’s actually pretty straightforward to track and implement stuff like that in Inform.

3 Likes
93

4 Edith + 2 Niki by fishandbeer

I seem to be coming across these vanilla-themed Twine implementations more and more frequently. The White and Blue on Black background, I’m guessing it’s the default? Functional, yes, but it rarely serves the game in an interesting way and that’s certainly true here.

It proclaims itself a dating sim, but this game is not what those words suggest to me. It all feels very slapdash. You enter on the grounds of psychiatric hospital I think. This setting is almost never referenced again. I guess you work there, because you are presented with a corridor of offices to visit. The descriptive text of what is on this corridor does not match the choices on offer. This is a befuddling choice. Twine lets you embed the destinations in the description itself, it’s MORE work to provide two (incompatible) versions! You visit all 6 rooms, barely interact with their occupants, then pick one to date. One of the choices here is a date that was not referenced in ANY of your initial conversations so you kind of have to deduce who it’s referring to. Did I mention one of the interactions has a weird sexual harassment vibe?

Selecting the date presents an end screen. That’s it. No time to build Sparks of Joy let alone Engagement, though the text was really too awkward to supply either of those anyway. Besides its really rushed presentation, the thing that sticks out most is the amped up Bro tone of the thing.

Bear with me while I expand a bit on the genus and phylum of Bro-tone. All Bro-tone comes from the same extended lineage that culminated in the 80s/90s teen sex farces. Its key hallmarks were 1) faintly knuckleheaded cis dumbasses 2) carefree good humor 3) treating women as sex objects to achieve and 4) inhabiting narratives where the world happily rewarded all of those. (There was another gene, 5) Gay Panic, that is not relevant here.) And it was toxic as hell, once we looked at it close enough. Prominent in movies like Porkies, and I don’t know Joy Sticks (deep cut!), but really you couldn’t swing a dead cat in a cineplex and not hit one back then. Nowadays it is most readily identified by its excessive, prejorative use of the word ‘woke.’

There was a key mutation in the late 80’s that forked the line. I’m speaking of course of Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. This mutation dramatically diluted gene #3 above, and somehow made the species stronger. Suddenly, knuckleheaded amiability could rise unfettered by toxicity. Subsequent mutations actually flipped the gene to engage women as people, and even modified #5. At first haltingly in supporting characters in American Pie, then fully-fledged in Neighbors or its Final Boss form, Josh Segarra in his roles in She-Hulk and The Other Two. Spoiler alert, this is NOT the Bro-tone phylum 4E+2N showcases.

The Bro-tone main line had another mutation in the last 4-7 years - a new gene of mocking self-awareness. Where the joke is how awful the main line is by subtly amplifying the meanness of the worst if its excesses. A great example of this line is Michael Che’ on SNL’s Weekend Update. He deadpan advocates the most insane, exaggerated Bro-tone behaviors for laughs. Colin Jost’s role here is indispensable - his comedically beleaguered disapproval is vital to the identification of this strain. Superficially it is so similar to the main branch they can easily be mistaken for each other.

And these separate-but-similar Bro-tones are where we are in 4E+2N. My first ending I was presented with “Over the years, you realize that she’s a little hysterical, but which woman isn’t.” My impulse was to hear it in Michael Che’s voice and snorted in amusement. My second ending had a less over-the-top but clearly still Bro-tone blurb that made me question what I was looking at. As I contemplated a third run, I realized I was holding a Schroedinger’s cat box*. At this point, the game was in superposition between the two Bro-tone lines. If I opened the box with a third run, it was going to concretize into one or the other. I don’t think I want that.

*How has no one marketed a line of litter boxes under this name?? Maybe there’s poop in it… maybe not!

Author: fishandbeer
Played: 10/31
Playtime: Less than 10min, two runthroughs.
Score: 3 (Mechanical, Intrusive)
Would Play After Comp?: I dare not trifle with the quantum superposition.

2 Likes
94

Thanks for looking. It caught me by surprise maybe a third of the way in, so I didn’t identify any particular inciting sequence. Amazing how something so small ends up being so intrusive.

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Ok, now I’m past creeped out to offended. The game deemed me hopelessly disorganized! :smile:

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The Lazy Wizard’s Guide by Lenard Gunda

Old School Parser IF, like yr momma used to make! The setup is fun: a lazy wizard student trying to fake his way through finals to graduate from not-Hogwarts. Notwarts? Notwarts. He is 100% a not-Hufflepuff. (sidebar - Hufflepuff is totally the party house right? The other three houses are wrapping themselves around the axle with “evil returns” or whatever, these guys are doing keg stands and bong rips. That’s just canon.) It is super light in tone, puzzle solving and narrative. It’s components are consistently light in a satisfying way - no part seems out of place, it is a unified experience.

There are some really nice touches too. It has a spell system similar to, oh I’m not going to fight it, According to Cain. (It occurs to me this comparison is an accident of my randomizer. But for a different seed, I could as easily have said According to Cain has a system similar to Lazy Wizard. Maybe just, “they share a system.”) It shares the strengths of that system, adding spell component quests (and often creative use of spells) to the puzzle tree. In particular it does what many satisfying puzzle IFs do: require you to use an object or spell different ways for different puzzles. That is inherently more satisfying than one-and-done items that just take up pocket space after their only use. There are one-offs as well, to be clear, but I always appreciate the effort when they’re not ALL that way.

The implementation is solid - no glaring bugs, lots of scenery to examine with short, amusing blurbs. Not a huge map, but not cramped either. A character-based hint system that’s a step up from mimesis-breaking commands or menus. It makes some smart gameplay choices too, for example restocking expendables automatically rather than having you slog across the map to replenish every time. The NPC conversation menu tree is effective (and snappy!) and often context aware, adding discussion options as you learn about them. It really is a very complete experience.

So why does it peak at Sparks of Joy and not into Engaging? There are some text burrs to be sure. One spell’s description explicity notes it will only work on people of lesser intelligence then proceeds to work on a character that does not answer that description. The Hinting Jinn who is your sometime companion will randomly beam into the room to say ‘hi’. Some of his ‘arrival’ and ‘present’ text bump against each other in weird ways. Characters will still try to give you things you’ve already got, and seemingly not remember they gave them. The game sometimes thinks you have expendables you have, well, expended. These kinds of things happen often enough that it is notable without interfering in anything. Unlike other Notably Buggy entries though, these present as really minor - either because the light tone of the text lets them slip past without fanfare, or because it does SO much without these glitches that they are diluted with volume. I think I have to split the difference and round up here. Its not mostly seamless, its not, but its Notable bugs somehow intrude less.

That’s kind of dodging the question though. The above paragraph asked about Artistic Response, and answered Technical Intrusiveness. Notwarts just seemed to be missing something. There was a soucance of wit in the text but it was a light sprinkling, not a consistent feature. The setting, for all its interesting map was word-rendered kind of lacklusterly. There is nothing of those crane shots in Harry Potter that pan over the magical majesty of the dining hall, or the slippery stones of the underground rivers. Notwarts is kind of low rent that way.

Hogwarts has classrooms suffused with elaborate antique woodwork, rough hewn stone, iron candelabras and a palpable sense of ancient mystery. Notwarts has a bunch of desks in front of a chalkboard. Hogwarts has sumptuous holiday feasts, magically preparing themselves on the table in a festival atmosphere. Notwarts has an overworked gnome in a cramped kitchen making sandwiches. Now this is actually an amusing contrast, but the text does not sufficiently mine it for laughs, just lets it lay there. I don’t want to imply it was free of humourous Sparks, it definitely was not. The puzzles were fun, the tone was pleasant. But it couldn’t crest into Engaging because it didn’t draw me in. I don’t need Notwarts to be Hogwarts. I actually kind of like that it isn’t. But I would like to enjoy how MUCH it isn’t a good deal more.

This is a rock solid entry I enjoyed spending time with. That’s cool, right?

Author: Lenard Gunda
Played: 10/31
Playtime: 2hrs, almost finished, 74/93 pts, 7 achievements
Score: 6 (Sparks of Joy, just above Notably buggy rounding up to mostly seamless)
Would Play After Comp?: No, experience feels complete

2 Likes
97

Uhhh…

Rad-8 is reviewing the scan data

> com

Rad-8 says, “I see you have a grabber upgrade. Bots like you can sometimes forget where they left things! Let me help you out with this mapping enhancement.” It attaches a cable to you and transfers a small program. “There! Now your map has an item mode!”

(Type ITEM to switch your map between normal mode and item mode. Item mode shows the locations of items you can pick up.)

2 Likes
98

So you’re unorganized too! :smile:

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Who Shot Gum E Bear? by Damon L Wakes

So right out of the gate, I knew I wanted good things for this entry. After the legally mandated Noir-first-sentence-about-rain, and before anything else, it called me a “Bubble Gumshoe.” The noise I made in the privacy of my own home you have no choice but to call laughter because you didn’t hear it. This entry committed to the bit without question. If you have a low sugar or pun tolerance, this is not the game for you.

Gameplay itself is infrequently searching 6 or 7 locations for clues, but mostly interviewing 4 maybe 5 NPCs depending on how you score it. Then trying to piece together additional things to ask others based on the answers. Cycle through NPCs until ready to Accuse. The dialogue and character business is bizarre and fun, like the Toblerone who smokes candy cigarettes without arms. Because, y’know, no arm candy. (badoom-CH) It was fun for a while poking at characters to see what they could answer and how, and often rewarding to do so.

But then there was a turn. When the topic pool started to dry up, you would cycle through, hear the same things again and get nothing new. Then, the fact that all NPCs use the same, generic, “is no reply” when you ask something they don’t know starts to grate. Searching for clues in unimplemented nouns starts to grate. Asking the owner of a candy strip club about their VIP Lounge and having them say “I wouldn’t know about that” is just lolwut? I mean if not you, who WOULD know? Asking a character about the wedding they JUST TOLD YOU ABOUT and having them give no answer… you get it. I got stuck and I redirected my humiliation to anger at the NPCs.

Mystery IF has a big issue to address, what do you do with insufficiently clever players? Tonight, I will be playing the part of the Insufficiently Clever. Y’know, strictly as a public service. If the mystery hinges on the player asking one specific thing to one specific NPC, you have to at least give a thought to your humble servant who just won’t think of it. The tried and true brute force solution is a hint system, either metagame or in-story (Donut could have admirably served this purpose.) Walkthroughs are even MORE brute force, also established technologies. More elegantly, I recently read some insanely well-thought-out RPG advice that proposed always leaving three clues to every mystery story chokepoint. If you want to get super fancy, design multiple paths with intersecting information chokepoints, each with their own trio of entries! The idea being much harder to miss 3 clues than just one. It seems like there could even be some kind of ‘player not making progress’ algorithm out there, just waiting to be discovered.

This is relevant because there is no conceit so amusing, no joke so funny, that it can survive the self-hating stench of player failure. I’m going to to head off what you probably all see coming as a deep digression into “what is a game, and can there be success without failure?” Instead let me pivot to advocating for the Insufficiently Clever who are totally not me. Humans forget nothing so quickly as kind service rendered to them. For players that don’t need the hints, they never need encounter them and can enjoy your game as designed. For the IC, your timely help will quickly fade into the delusion of ‘oh yeah, I’da got that’ and they will end up appreciating it as well! Its really win-win for you, the game author.

So yeah, Sparks of Joy right from the start. And while a not a bug, spinning with no way out was an intrusive break into the experience. Speaking for a friend. Ok, review over, the rest of you can go. Author, can you hang on for a sec?

…

Hey, if you did plant 3 clues and I missed all of them, can we not tell the others? Please?

Author: Damon L. Wakes
Played: 11/1
Playtime: 1hr (yeah, like twice the recommended time), randomly accused wrong candy, failed. Allegedly.
Score: 4 (Sparks of Joy, Intrusively Unhelpful)
Would Play After Comp?: Maybe with a hint system?

4 Likes
100

So it’s not that I’m especially tidy, just that I’m unobservant? …yeah, I think that checks out, actually.

You know, I hit this same point with Gum E. Bear that you did, but instead of trying to do the hard work of actually solving the mystery, I just started spamming ACCUSE/UNDO/ACCUSE/UNDO, which sounds like it led to a more pleasant time. I dunno if you actually go to the end, but as far as I can tell, there’s no point in the game where the character can draw the necessary conclusions, so once you’ve gotten the clues you kind of need to stop playing, take a step back, and think through a theory. This is a clever take on how to do a mystery, but needed better signposting that it’s the player who needs to solve it, not the character, to my mind.

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101

The Pool by Jacob Reux

Another default(?) themed Twine entry, this one set on a research vessel out at sea with a crew of young oceanographers. The black/white/blue color scheme serves this game a little better than others given its horror theme, but barely so. During I think the 5th play through I did stumble on a nifty use of dynamic font, would have loved to see more of that but as far as I can tell that was a one-off.

The tone on this one was noteworthy. The protagonist is not dynamic, they either perfunctorily or begrudgingly follow the choices you make. They got some stuff they’re dealing with, and not particularly effectively. It’s an unusual choice which at first puts the protagonist at a remove from the player. This is reinforced if you try to goad them into action – things don’t really working out if you do. Heroic-feeling choices either outright fail or come with significant unforeseen drawbacks. Driving this PC is kind of like pushing jello - you can’t always get them to go the direction you want, and even when you can its never very responsive and requires more work. Fortunately, they are surrounded by much more dynamic NPCs which definitely give some welcome propulsion to the action. First play through I never did synch with the protagonist (and kind of admired the NPCs) and was left at a remove.

Construction-wise there are long linear sections of action, punctuated with choices you have no real way of assessing, meaning things can feel arbitrary. Some of them do allow you to build the character, or maybe shade them at least. Normally, this design choice frustrates me if there isn’t a thematic reason behind it. There’s two reasons why here, this actually kinda works? The first is that when the action gets furious in the third act (really there’s only two acts, so second act), making choices in a spur-of-the-moment panic probably isn’t going to result in deliberate, fully-informed decisions. This tracks. The second reason it works, and why the character choices can work, is only really revealed on subsequent playthroughs.

There seems to be a lot of plot divergence available here. Early choices take you down very different plot paths. It is a short game, but nevertheless it feels very broad. This is not a ‘plot will always reconverge, its the friends you make on the way that change’ design. The protagonist/player alignment benefits from these multiple play throughs. It’s not a long game, and its a race to see if you will come around on the protagonist before the end. First play through I did not, not even close. But on subsequent play throughs, because the plot varied SO much, you weren’t revisiting the past, it was like you got more time with them. I wouldn’t say you ever really like them but you at least get past “would you just step up??” to some early stage of sympathy.

But the real secret that multiple play throughs reveal is how deeply cynical and hopeless the whole thing is. First play through you might assume “well I made some bad choices, sorry dead characters.” I played to 6 endings and they’re ALL bad! The ‘best’ was physical survival but very depressing and it went down from there! That’s not necessarily pleasant or enjoyable, but it is… bold. Pet Cemetery is one of my favorite Stephen King stories because it is so unremittingly tragic. There is no ‘magic book/shaman that saves the day at the climax.’ Uh, spoiler. It is a no-compromise approach to horror that dares you to appreciate it. Which I kinda do? (Someday I’ll figure out why it works for King, and fails so spectacularly in Halloween Kills. Probably because its King, right?) I did not try to determine if there were NO optimistic endings, but I do kind of hope there aren’t.

So where does that leave me? Play through wise, between the difficult protagonist, limited and arbitrary choices, mostly vanilla presentation it was Mechanical and Seamless. But it gets a bonus point for committing to its bleakness across multiple endings.

Author: Jacob Reux
Played: 11/1
Playtime: 30min, 6 endings
Score: 5 (Mechanical, Seamless, bonus point for… extreme despair?)
Would Play After Comp?: No, experience feels complete

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102

Death by Lightning by Chase Capener

And now for my first review sub-sub-series of my review sub-series “What Do I Do With This?” This review sub-sub-series is entitled “What in the Name of a Gentle and Loving God Do I Do With This, It’s Full of Stars, the Horror, the Horror, Rosebud.”

It opens on an 80’s eight-bit graphics rendition of a snowbound station of some sort, with chunky 80’s graphics font. It’s kind of endearing, but quickly becomes surreal, depending on the branch taken.

My first playthrough, I got a quick one room drama of sex and violence over whether one character can leave another. Motivations were only loosely sketched, it was more about the physicality of the interactions. There was little investment in anything going on, Mechanical at best. But oh, that lonely, isolated building took on a Lynchian aspect as the actions described behind the closed door were fleshy and concussive. The impassive snowy facade seemed strained, somehow barely holding its bland, 8-bit face against the raw passions and furies within.

My second playthrough, boy did I step through the looking glass. Making a different choice on how to ‘restrain’ the second character, led to what was likely the protagonist slowly dying of exposure. This playthrough was so much longer. No less mechanical, mind, but infinitely weirder. There are choices to make, and lots of text to read, but to call it stream of consciousness is like calling Hurricane Ida a ‘brisk blow.’ This was a deluge of consciousness, rapid fire word play, and mental white noise. Probably all in the protagonists’ mind as their brain freezes them to death?

Y’know how most people who smoke pot are giggly and mellow, but there’s always that one person who gets super uncomfortable, a little paranoid, and loses all patience with the giggly mellow people around them? I felt like I was that poor buzzkill dude that tried to smoke in good faith and peer pressure, but just totally skunked it for everyone. NO, I CAN’T TASTE COLORS, WHY ARE YOU ALL LAUGHING SO SHRILL??

It didn’t work for me as poetry, as paradox, as surrealism, as Dada, it just didn’t work. In fact it Bounced me so hard I started having a mild panic attack mid-game trying to figure out how I was going to deal with this in a review. I’M STILL WORKING THAT OUT! And that whole time I’m flailing through that crisis of confidence? That damned 8-bit snowbound station is staring at me with its single darkened-window eye (weirdly not the door or lit window), scornfully bemused by both my and the protagonist’s shared sufferings. It just loomed there, quietly displaying its imperviousness to our pain, rather than invite us back inside.

I played it twice more, but at that point, I think I had seen the extremes and these felt … limper? There was another violent episode, and a 4th wall breaking unwinding-music-box kind of ending, but neither had the power of the first two. The station was just a picture. Yeah, this one Bounced me hard. Even after all that though, I feel like I’m going to give it a bonus point for artistic breadth. It wedded some truly bonkers narrative experiments that had no business being together into a tottering Frankenstein of mismatched parts. Most especially that 8-bit picture. The result was really singular. It certainly provoked a reaction from me.

Author: Chase Capener
Played: 11/2
Playtime: 15min, 4 endings
Score: 3 (Bouncy, Seamless, bonus point for singularity)
Would Play After Comp?: No, why would I do that to myself?

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