JJMcC's SpringThing23 A-S-T-O-O-T

Competitions Spring Thing
,
21

Lady Thalia and the Masterpiece of Moldavia by E. Joyce & N. Cormier
Played: 4/8/23
Playtime: Distracted timekeeping, maybe 2.5-3hrs

IF feels like a nice match for heist/crime caper stories. Between the logic problem of defeating security, the think-on-your-feet crisis management during the inevitable reversals and complications, and even the manipulative work to defeat physical barriers it all just synchs nicely with IF strengths. Unlike, say, punch punch kick punch I win fighting. Throw in some quirky character work, and maybe a relationship or two and you’ve got a great stew boiling.

Here, you are renowned GentleLady Thief Thalia. (I know Lady is the proper feminine to Gentleman, but by aliasing it to woman so often, it kind of sheds that essential ‘Upper Crust’ connotation.) I understand this to be part of a series, but this was my intro, and the game eased me into the setup smoothly and seamlessly. In no time I was hosting a social event, crossing mental swords with intellectual inferiors and plotting an intro heist. While this worked well to set the table for the main event, I found myself at a remove, and it took me a bit to understand why.

Either through the staging of the introductory sequence, or due to the choices I made, LadyT was consistently the smartest, bestest, most capable person in the room. And knew it. Boy did I find her tiresome. She was surrounded by amusing bumbling wannabes, socially awkward gadgeteers and conflicted adversaries. In particular, I enjoyed the Q character Gwen, who only near the end of a conversation did I realize was actually a Scoreboard telling me my score from the previous scenario! It was a delightfully subtle bit of writing. Every one of the supporting cast was fun to read and engaging to interact with. If only the protag half of the interactions wasn’t such a chore.

Now fiction is full of these kinds of characters. Characters like Doc Savage work because you spend more time with his colorful, flawed assistants and he acts more like a walking Deus Ex. Superman has endearing humility. Classic Bond works thanks to his sociopathic sense of humor. The immediacy of IF puts us IN the protag, where remove is not possible and an absence of mitigating personality is pronounced.

As the game shifted to the main heist planning, I was further thrown off by narration telling me I had a map. This led me to believe I didn’t need to do paper mapping, as the protag/game would take care of me. Boy was that not true! I was a few rooms in before realizing, wait a minute, I’m lost and shoulda been mapping all along. It’s not that the museum is geographically difficult, it was just a bad expectation.

So I’m in a hole, enjoyment wise, and then the game does the most perfect thing. It introduces an adversary character who is EVEN SMARTER than LadyT! Mechanically, this character is basically a reversal generator to keep the plot fun. But CHARACTER wise she has the crucial function of putting our protag off her game, getting her worried and frustrated and second guessing herself. She is so much more interesting this way. It was compounded by me the player totally bollixing an interview. LadyT’s frazzled self recriminations (due to my ineptitude) were perversely amusing. The protag was much more fun when I was doing badly!

This turnaround came at a crucial time. From here, we are off to the races in the Big Heist. A quick word about the setup here. This game made some really smart game play choices, specifically in the preparation (recon! interviews! staging! NPC coordination!), giving real perceived agency in getting things set, and how easy or hard the endgame would be. While I suspect failure would be really hard (if not impossible) to achieve here, the illusion of creating success was strong. Not to mention the detailed work of engineering a heist was just plain fun. Ditto managing the inevitable escalating reversals, culminating in a nice bit of character work (if you’d done your homework earlier!) to secure your escape.

Overall, I spent about half the play time at a remove, a quarter of time “ooh wait, I like where this is going,” and the final stretch fully engaged. This game dug a hole for me, then through a few tightly choreographed twists, propelled me to a very satisfying end. Seems about right for the genre!

Spice Girl: Ginger Spice
Vibe: Crime Caper
Polish: Gleaming
Is this TADS? No.
Gimme the Wheel! If it were mine, I think my next step might be to create an in-game map. Either as a pdf-eelie, or better yet use that Twine dead space left window to implement a dynamic map that grows as you explore. You might need to rotate the museum 90 degrees (the map is wider than tall, but turning on its side could take advantage of that narrow window). In addition to realizing the promise of the text, it would add a nice graphical flair to a bare bones presentation.

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Thanks so much for the review! I take it that you haven’t played the previous games, which means we did better than I thought at making it accessible to people new to the series. That task gets harder with every entry so we’re going to take detailed notes about your early game experience and use that feedback in the future.

Also super happy to hear your opinions on the map puzzles–this is the first time we’ve done something like this, plus the scale per-puzzle is bigger as well. Glad you enjoyed it in the end!

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Yeah, it’s tricky, because we’re well aware that Thalia is kind of insufferable and the only thing that keeps her tolerable is that we periodically make her step on rakes (as a friend of mine likes to say). But at the same time, we do want the player to have a sense of agency and feel satisfaction when they do well, and going too heavy on the scripted failures would undermine that. I actually was a bit worried that the back half of the game was straying into that territory, so I’m glad to hear that the balance there worked for you. Which is to say, I guess, that even three games in, we’re still trying to find the line between too much enforced rake-stepping and not enough, and we’ll keep trying.

I am honestly not sure our technical skills are up to creating a graphical automap feature, but a PDF would certainly be doable—we could probably do that before the comp is over, even.

Thanks for the review!

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The Withering Gaze of the Earth by Emily worm
Played: 4/8/23
Playtime: 30min

Depending on how you approach it, this one either packs a lot into its short runtime, or not enough. It’s a Monster of the Week kind of setup, an in media res supernatural investigation with personal stakes. It’s also very linear, very few choices to make and most of those adding details without changing anything. For sure, the narrative is the star here, not the game play.

To the narrative’s benefit, the writing style is smooth and confident, and plays with itself in fun ways. At various times it subverts itself with humor, and elsewhere falls victim to the powers of the monsters it is documenting. The latter in particular is a really fun tweaking of form that works better in IF than it might on the page. All in all, the writing style is a solid foundation to support the story.

But the writing’s biggest strength I think also ends up ham stringing it. The narrative leans a lot on implied back story, loric details tossed out without much explication, leaving the reader to speculate/fill in the gaps. It is a powerful technique, and the details dispensed are singular, odd, evocative and intriguing. Rainwater Death filters, reality bending creatures, god shards, there is a lot to tantalize, but because it’s new to you but not the characters you only get oblique hints. It really engages the reader’s imagination.

Unfortunately, the same remove that makes the backstory so tantalizing is also applied to the main character and their relationships. This works less effectively, and makes the protagonist a bit of a blank. Interesting things are happening to and around them, but they remain enigmatic at the center of it. There are relationships presented as fact, but without details that showcase the emotional underpinnings that have to be there. While the reader’s imagination is fully engaged in theorizing the setting’s details, it’s quite a different thing to ask us to ALSO plumb the main character’s personality and emotional history. Most especially because of the personal stakes in the plot.

As the story drew to an end, the most overpowering impression I had was that I had just read an outline, rather than a fully fleshed out story. A really intriguing outline, with details I’d love to hear more about, but needing a lot more meat on its bones.

Spice Girl: Scary/Ginger Spice
Vibe: Horror Outline
Polish: Smooth
Is this TADS? No.
Gimme the Wheel! If it were mine, I would focus on fleshing out the protagonist’s character. Let the reader see more of their inner life, either through dialogue, actions or direct access to thoughts (a bit easier to do in IF). Most especially the two relationships that are at the heart of the story. The plot and background can get away with leveraging the reader’s imagination. The protagonist and their emotional life is going to be more powerful delivered on the page.

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Galaxy Jones by Phil Riley
Played: 4/9/23
Playtime: 2 hrs, finished. FOR NOW.

Like <REDACTED> years ago I went through a phase where I was fascinated by the pulp magazines of the 30’s and 40’s. High Adventure, against a backdrop of first draft wild ideas and third-hand science knowledge, delivered on an insane monthly deadline. These ingredients created some propulsive, wonderfully goofy, imminently readable stories. Not for nothing, the source of the word ‘pulpy’ as a narrative type. (Also yes, so much racism and sexism.)

Galaxy Jones is a wonderful echo of those tales - Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon without the White Man’s Burden. Phil makes the crucial choice to cut away all the problematic baggage without comment or fanfare, and give us the straight uncut adrenaline. It would have to REAAALLY drop the ball to lose me, and it didn’t.

As a parser game, there were rough spots. Quite a few unimplemented nouns:

[...] the dock features several dozen speeder bays. Only a few are
      filled right now. [...]
>x speeders
There's nothing like that nearby.

Or worse, then:

>x speeder
(the speeder)
Galaxy One [...]

This kind of thing happened often enough that it left an impression, but the piece is so tightly paced it doesn’t let you dwell on it in the moment. Most commands give a concise and often amusing 1-2 lines max in response. The thing is sprinkled but not drowned with dry humor and pulpy spice, letting your internal Buck Rogers fan fill in what’s necessary behind the nicely thematic cues. This gives the whole narrative an internal momentum, like ‘no time for details, here’s what’s important, quick, what’s next?’ It is such a successful marriage of form and function. The pace is further reinforced with relatively spartan locations, again discouraging extended loitering. When you do get more than 4 lines of response, it immediately conveys, ‘wait, this is big!’

The puzzles are, for the most part, also pretty streamlined. It is uncommon that things you need are not a room or two away. Like another reviewer (@AmandaB ), I struggled with one ledge-related puzzle but was otherwise fine. (I particularly like the task boards, though I was crestfallen that adding ‘solve my puzzle’ to the board didn’t actually get it done. :] ) I go back and forth on whether the relative simplicity is a drawback or a feature - it certainly supports the dynamic momentum of the story to not spin excessively on locked doors. Given all that, the presence of inventory items (some of which were tricky to collect) that were ultimately unused was confusing, unless some puzzles had multiple solutions?

The game further endeared itself to me by implementing in-game hints in the form of your ‘gal behind the keyboard’ over comm link. For sure the positive outweighed the friction by a good margin, and that’s even before the part that had me giggling and clapping like a toddler getting a new woobie. Which I will spoiler because the surprise is part of the delight.

The piece opens with an ascii-banner, the logo of our heroine. Itself, just a perfect mood setter for the vibe of the piece. Then, after the first significant victory, the logo flashes beneath your success text, “GALAXY JONES!” It is the most perfectly surprising, evocative, and delightful touch, and you get it with every subsequent major success. After that, its dog could poop on my lawn all week and I would be incapable of being mad at it. You got me, game, you got me.

After a whirlwind of action/adventure, it ends on a cliffhanger, promising another episode! A really well executed homage, crisply translating classic pulp fiction’s narrative momentum into the IF medium. Also translating retro-pulp into the new millennium, come to that.

Spice Girl: Ginger Spice
Vibe: Sci-Fi Pulpy
Polish: Textured
Is this TADS? No.
Gimme the Wheel! I would take time to scrub the noun universe, and to a lesser extent verb responses. There were enough glitches for me to notice them, even at the speed I was moving. The skeleton and muscles of the game are there. At this point, it’s all polish.

jjmcc_gj23.txt (127.6 KB)

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The Sacred Shovel of Athena by AndyG
Played: 4/10/23
Playtime: 1hr, with hints and MRusso transcript

This is an established fact about humanity: that there are dog people and there are cat people. It is further an established fact that cat people deserve empathy for life events that led them to welcome into their hearts a being that at best greets their suffering with complete disinterest, and at worst passes the days mentally creating Final Destination fan films where their owner is every victim.

// What is this feeling suddenly possessing me, of being alone in a vast minefield surrounded by shadow-born trebuchet? Probably just the wind. //

Sacred Shovel of Athena is a notionally fantasy IF about befriending a cat, then fighting. Boy does it whitewash the first half of that.

Stepping away from the premise a bit, this was mechanically a rough ride for me. There was a lot of guess the noun/verb. There were some positional dependencies not well flagged, where the right action in the wrong location failed without explanation. There were descriptions that didn’t quite convey the mechanics of what was happening, and inconsistent levels of detail. There were successes without clear explanation what I did to make them succeed. All of this led to an overwhelming feeling of constantly fighting the game to make progress.

Other games have these challenges for sure. The tone, stakes and narrative act as motivation in those instances to push through. Here though? The narrative is really thin, it’s intended as a puzzle fest. The tone is occasionally wry, but not overly humorous. The stakes are low, which by itself can be admirable. Low stakes can still be compelling stakes, and even when they’re not, if the game play is short and light you may not notice. But an hour, mostly fighting this thing, is not the right balance for these stakes. Not when the stakes are befriending a creature that would kill me in my sleep if that would grant him my opposable thumbs.

// Eyes fierce with determination, I gaze upward at the distant lip of the pit. Ignoring the old man’s counsel, I redouble my efforts to dig free. //

The bug that ultimately crashed my experience was the Hint system. When I tried to use it in Gargoyle, I got 18 lines of help topics, notably short of what I needed. I got the same when I played the downloaded HTML, or the online link. It was only when I cribbed @DeusIrae 's transcript that I even realized more were available (not sure what interpreter he was using). This left me in the unenviable position of trying to solve some obtuse guess-the-sequence puzzles via someone else’s similarly struggling transcript.

For me, this was way too much work for too little reward. I fully acknowledge that Cat People may find a better experience here. But don’t they already have ENOUGH cross to bear?

// And lo, a chill wind surges and the clouds darken. Too late, the peril is revealed. I dared trifle with Pet Forces Beyond My Ken, and my reckoning will be swift and violent. //

Spice Girl: Baby Spice
Vibe: Fantasy-Lite
Polish: Rough
Is this TADS? No.
Gimme the Wheel! Ok, if this were mine, the Hint bug clearly needs addressing one way or another. But my first stop I think would be to internalize as many transcripts as possible to a) add noun and verb synonyms that make sense and b) add cluing prompts and feedback in areas where complicated sequences are required. “The cat curls up snugly in the bed. You can’t imagine that angelic face being anything but pleased once it wakes up.”

“AND MURDERS YOU.”

jjmcc_ssoa23.txt (173.5 KB)

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Thanks for the review JJ McC! I do seem to have difficulty tracking down all the implementation problems, though. Sigh.

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Thanks for your review @jjmcc - Firstly

I’ll take that :slight_smile: Always my favourite.

I take it from the review you are not a ‘cat lover’ - I must admit that before we got a cat (my Wife’s idea not mine) : I didn’t much care for them either, their aloofness slightly worried me. I love the quote :-

However, having ‘lived’ with one for a few years now - I have come to enjoy their idiosyncrasies, and although it is difficult to believe, their shows of affection (although that mostly relates to whether there is any food involved).

From the ‘game’ point - I agree that it is a little ‘rough’ (as I only had a few play testers and, as already pointed out, it shows) -

I did try to ‘guess’ the verbs that people would use within the game but, perhaps because the lack of play test, it is difficult to cover all bases here.

The thing that worried me the most regarding your review (or enjoyment of the game) was that you had trouble with the ‘hint’ system?

I used the inform menu system by Emily Short, which is similar to the hints used in Infocom ‘Invisiclues’ - Where you select a ‘question’ which gives a series of hints. Those hints can then be scrolled through (using the ‘H’ key) or you can return to the game by pressing Space to return to the question list and then ‘Q’ to quit the hint system. None of this was ‘original code’ and has been uses in other games before - hence my confusion. I went back and had a look at the HTML ‘play online’ version and that seemed to work on in my ‘chrome’ browser. So, I tried windows GluIxe and that worked okay too : I then tried I loading gargoyle (as I don’t normally use that) and (apart from the fact that the ‘menu’ list was at the bottom not the top) that worked okay too. Can you explain your experience to see if it can be improved? I am in the process of working through the ‘code’ again to try to improve some of the issues noted in reviews and have already released a ‘new’ version to the comp to fix some of the problems. I hope that by doing this, further ‘players’ will get a better ‘experience’ and enjoyment from the game (cat lovers or not) - maybe I should do a dog one next :slight_smile: (or perhaps a pig one, I have always liked pigs) - Once again, I appreciate the time you took to review this game - AndyG

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I’m not the original reviewer, but I’ll jump in here to say that I must have had the same problem with the hint system without knowing it at the time. After getting the items from the shop and letting the cat sleep, I didn’t know what to do with the mouse, so I checked the hints, but there were no further hints for the mouse or anything else as far as I could tell. The last hint question available (I just checked the online version again) is “How do I get the coin from the well?” But with no question mark, so the list seems to be cut off.

And I didn’t know what to do with the mouse because it seemed to be very random whether the cat would actually play with it in the way that got you the affection point. I did the same thing as the OP and checked someone else’s transcript to see what I had missed, and near as I could tell, you just had to give the mouse to the cat multiple times and eventually it would trigger. But in my playthrough I think it took a couple dozen times, which is far too long for an unclued random outcome. Was there another factor we all missed?

I liked the premise of befriending the cat (I am more a cat person than a dog person, fortunately), so I do hope you make another game. I’d be happy to help test it next time if I’m available. Having good testers and implementing their suggestions and issues is a big part of finishing a game.

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Lol, you have found the tiniest hairline crack in my journalistic impartiality! :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

I only recently submitted my first game to other eyes and boy are you right here. To the point I am actively questioning whether I am being too ungenerous to the games I find this in. It seems to be one of the fundamental challenges of parser IF authorship, with only beta testing providing any amount of relief.

Reiko has me at time zone disadvantage :slight_smile: but this was exactly my experience, down to the truncated coin clue. The only thing I can add is that I am on a linux machine/Firefox and the attendant Linux version Gargoyle, if that makes a difference.

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Structural Integrity by Tabitha O’Connell
Played: 4/10/23
Playtime: 10min, happy ending, save theatre

Well, this work was a nice change of pace from the pretty narrow “Pulp or Funny Only” algorithm that seems to have inhabited my randomizer up to now. This is a relationship drama piece and stands out in direct contrast to everything else so far. It is specifically a tale of two lovers working through some doldrums and tensions in their relationship. It travels a clear path to success, by committing to the details of the characters in question and selling us on the reality of those.

Early on I was worried. A conversational path had a bug that delivered non sequitor text that both jarred and cast a pall worrying whether more glitches were to come. I happily report they did not. Details below.

A smart choice the game makes is to alternately put you in one, then the other’s head, back and forth as the drama progresses. It takes the additional step of providing a unique graphical cue for each protagonist which was a nice touch. The author uses this conceit to nice effect - contrasting their respective concerns and highlighting their dissimilar emotional priorities. This contrast (and neither character’s acknowledgement of the difference!) was a very mature, very interesting, and very well observed artifact of relationships. If I had a quibble here, it is that I found Yaan (the older, more powerful member of the pair) much better rendered than his young lover Kel.

As we are introduced, Yaan seems congnizant of the power imbalance between the two but not OWNING it, if that makes sense. He is further struggling with work anxieties and pressures. Between the background descriptions and the potential actions he might take, I felt he was really effectively painted with few strokes. Now that picture is a little skeevy, but it rings complex and true and interesting.

Kel on the other hand, despite having lots of concerns, felt less clearly drawn to me. He wants to befriend cats. (A clear cry for hel… no, this is not the place.) He’s aware of the power imbalance. He wants closer relations with his family. He likes an old theatre. In particular, the options provided for him felt less nuanced and more melodramatic, most especially around the theatre topic. Which honestly, is really not their relationship problem, yeah? That comment was too flippant. The text is clearly using the theatre as a catalyst to air their deeper grievances in an indirect way. But it didn’t always come off that way for Kel’s options.

The game allows multiple gameplay styles. You can try to “two hand solitaire” it, and role play both characters, or you can “I’m the director” it and orchestrate the drama. For me, the latter made more sense because 1) I didn’t want to be skeevy and 2) Kel was harder to get a bead on. So in gameplay, I tried to work against 1) and find ways to add complexity to 2). And I got a satisfying drama and a good ending doing it! Well done, author!

Now the Achievements page told my there were 4 more endings, and two more achievements I might find. I don’t think I want to go for those though. I really enjoyed the character study I went with, and don’t think alternate ones will satisfy my sensibilities insomuch as it requires choices that were not as compelling to me. I’m happy enough with the story I got that I don’t need to poke the sleeping bull.

Spice Girl: Ginger Spice
Vibe: Relationship Drama
Polish: Smooth, bar one.
Is this TADS? No.
Gimme the Wheel! If it were mine, I’d fix that dialog bug next. That sounds easier than the jeweler’s tool precision of character refinement. Here it is.

Kel shuts the balcony door before turning to you. "I've been calling her Agate,
I'm not sure why, well maybe it was because..." As Kel continues, you...

Get yourself a drink.
Sit down on the couch and take off your shoes. (->select this one)
Just listen.

Followed by:

"I hope so." Kel follows you to stand beside the couch. "Anyway, do you want a
drink before bed?"
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Thanks @ReikoYukawa for your comments too - all these comments are really useful. I did re-look at the cat/mouse ‘puzzle’ (to gain the affection point) after comments from @DeusIrae in his review. Although it is not ‘random’ the ‘logic’ was that for the cat to ‘play’ the mouse had to be in the same location and a ‘look’ performed. This did not seem to sit well in the mechanics (I had actually noticed this just before the ‘deadline’ of the comp, but didn’t get time to revisit before the release). Since then I have reworked this slightly and re-released a version to the comp which hopefully addresses this.

Thanks also for the offer of ‘testing’ any subsequent games - Although I am probably going to do some ZIL stuff next - I am currently finishing off the ‘Lurking Horror’ transcript game in ZIL for the ‘hell of it’ :slight_smile:

Unfortunately, I don’t have a ‘linux’ distro to test this on : All my PI’s have either ‘given up the ghost’ (probably due to my bad soldering) or being used in other projects. If anyone could help here - it would be good to understand if other people have had similar issues here and what ‘platform’ they were using - to see if this could be tidier? - Again, thanks for all the comments. AG

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I confirm that the hints are cut off both on desktop (Windows 10 64bit) Firefox version 112.0 and on mobile Chrome version 112.0.5615.48. I also downloaded the story file and it’s the same in Glulxe version 0.4.6.140. Hope that helps with bugfixing.

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Protocol by 30x30
Played: 4/10/23
Playtime: 1.5hr, 3 endings

Is it me, or did it get heavy in here?

My hands are kind of frozen immobile above my keyboard as I figure out what I just read, and what on earth I have to say about it. Ok, they WERE frozen immobile, but I coaxed them into action to type that they were immobile, and now momentum is just chasing the ouroboros down this typing about typing path. I’m struggling to get my brain out of the hypnotic tarpit of Protocol and my go@!$#^mn fingers are going on about what good typists they are. Yeah, that’s the kind of work this is.

It’s fiction, not a game. Not really. There’s only a handful of choices and a limited plot. The story is set in space, aboard a damaged space station. With a large swath of the crew gone, the protagonist is wakened, injured and amnesiac, to repair the damage. Now in standard IF, this is a framework on which to hang lots of clever find the gimcrack and weird use of item puzzles. Here, the narration takes care of all that for you. And it does it under a deluge of language. It’s like there is so much impressionistic description, you are watching the plot unfold tens of feet below you, under water. Or maybe even you are tens of feet under water looking up to the plot above the surface. It is distorted and wavering and sometimes easier to just focus on the water itself, with its hypnotic rhythm and surging beauty of its own.

I can be a bit fussy about language. I balk at long compound sentences, packed with an overrun of syllables and clauses, and metaphors on metaphors. (Lord knows I don’t do any of that.) If you’re going to throw barrage after barrage of syllables at me, you better know what you’re doing. Poetry is the wobbly apex between histrionic and pretentious and if you falter even a moment you’re going to tumble down one side or the other.

I think maybe Protocol defies the odds to proudly plant its flag at the summit.

There is a tension between poetry and science, and slamming the two together is inherently fascinating. (Yes, to me. I’m writing this, everything here is according to me!) The opening prologue are science lessons, or reminders of them. They are rendered in cold, scientific language. But SO coldly and SO scientific it takes on a patios of its own. Before you even get to the story, it has started enmeshing you in its rhythms. Then the first page talks about stars, and hoo boy are you through the rabbit hole. I was seduced by the confident complexity of the metaphors, tying scientific phenomenon to human biology. And the language consumed me. Even as the plot wound through injuries, dopplegangers, cramped then expansive physical passages, you were never far from the soaring descriptions and contemplations of the void. And most of it worked. Really, really, really well.

Its not 100% perfect, according to my sensibilities. I feel like it went once or twice too often to the ‘overwrought emotional reaction to pretty specific physical activity’ well. Also, while it struck me as very competent in underpinning its poetry with realistic mechanics of space work, there were a few glitches that stood out: tethering and hand trucks were both sacrificed to drama. Looking at my notes, I captured a few passages that lost me, and a few that grabbed me, but to repeat them here does the work a disservice. It is really the cumulative use of language whose effect was so impactful. Miraculously, after every stumble, the work managed to time and again claw its way back to the summit.

To proudly stand there when the tale ends. The endings (and I looked at 3 readily available to me) were fine I guess. I chafed a bit at what felt an artificially limiting triad of choices - three variations of one idea really. But this is definitely a work where the journey is more important than the destination. And man, did that thing take me on a trippy, mesmerizing journey.

Spice Girl: Posh Spice
Vibe: Surreal Sci-fi
Polish: Gleaming
Is this TADS? No.
Gimme the Wheel! What would I do next, if I wrote it? Publish it, then engage whatever the literary equivalent of a decompression chamber is, to twist my brain back to mundane conversational English.

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Thank you so much for the review!! I’m just absolutely blown away, I’m glad you enjoyed it!

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I so appreciate this thorough review; glad you enjoyed!!

This made me laugh out loud :laughing:

Will fix this post-haste–I was catching and fixing a bunch of these at the end, but not surprised I missed (at least) one!

Thank you so much :face_holding_back_tears:

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May I also add, regarding cats… I grew up with a bunch of them, several of whom were every bit as affectionate and loving and non-aloof as the stereotypical dog. So maybe you just haven’t met the right ones yet :smile:

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Likewise!

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I think our cat count maxed around 25 at one point… (we lived on a farm) I think there are still 8 or 9 running around the house I grew up in…

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// They cluster ever closer, the pitiable wretches, souls consumed by They Who Scheme. One sad creature spinning the most horrific tale of a homestead inundated, overrun in whiskers. A spike of abject horror punches through their ensorcelling murmurings – the horror that these poor unfortunates welcome their masters’ cold embrace. //

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