JJMcC's ST25 A-S-T-O-O-T

[jjmcc]

Cut the Sky by SV Linwood
Played: 4/8/25
Playtime: 1.75hr

Notwithstanding Clint Eastwood’s descent into deplora…bility? Yeah, deplorability. (Proving yet again, as if needing further corroboration at this point, that we will all “die a hero or live long enough to become the villain.”) Notwithstanding that, there is a slice of his filmography that I find compellingly mythic. His western Man With No Name character was featured in only a very few of his movies, but I find them the least poisoned by time. Dirty Harry reads as a parody, but at some point both the actor and the culture decided, no, that was GOOD, ACTUALLY. Bleah. MWNN rather embraced an existential unknowability of mythic forces apart from human concerns, but nevertheless imposing on them a code of justice that is as compelling as it is terrifying. A pressure-relief valve for the universe that makes us question ‘justice at what cost?’ and ‘is Justice actually about us at all?’

Cut the Sky evokes that archtype. Better, it evokes it by letting us inhabit him (just gonna go with ‘him’ here, in deference to the iconography, sorry) but never really UNDERSTAND him. What a fine tightrope to walk! We are the motive force for the character, but the guardrails are firmly universe-driven to keep our human concerns and responses at bay. This is driven home both in the text, which resolutely refuses to expose any inner life, and in the interactivity, which limits our possible actions to less than two hands-worth of options. There is no nuance to the MWNN, everything is one of 9 actions, of which only 4-5 are actually ACTIVE. This artificiality of constraint, more than anything, engages us with the mythic protagonist, reinforcing his unknowability to humanity. It is a use of interactivity I hadn’t seen before.

There follows a series of puzzly interactions, steps on the protagonist’s journey, where we are encouraged to creatively use these 5-9 actions to resolve a series of conflicts. The fact that, ultimately, every problem IS resolvable with those actions underscores the mythic nature of the role. MWNN doesn’t NEED more actions. Armed with those 5, he is immune to nuance and human complication. He CUTS through it if you will. (What, did you forget who was writing this review?)

Even the journey he is on, through a far-future, post-apocaplyptic landscape, we only vaguely understand as weighpoints. Both the motivation and consequences are revealed to us so casually, so off-handedly, it is clear our understanding is tangential to the protagonist’s work. Yes, we direct him, but we don’t DRIVE him. It’s all we can do to keep up.

All in all, I found this a dynamite evocation of this compelling mythic archetype. The ability to put us IN this character but not diminish the mystery of him is a really cool approach, very successfully realized. If I have one quibble – and petty as I am, it looms large – it is that, despite one of 5 active verbs being KISS, infuriatingly, one cannot KISS THE SKY.

In. Ex. Scusable.

Horror Icon: Pinhead
Vibe: Man With No Name
Polish: Smooth,
Gimme the Wheel! : If this were my project I would ABSOLUTELY enable that final action. I don’t care how damaging it might be to the artistic whole, don’t you see??? IT IS JUST SITTING THERE, RIGHT THERE!!! HOW DO YOU NOT PRESS THE BIG RED BUTTON???

cts_jjmcc.txt (124.3 KB)

[svlin]

You are absolutely correct. This is a grave omission on my part. I shall amend this post-haste. Hopefully you can forgive me.

[CTOMahony]

Thanks so much for the review!

Ok, yes, you and I would drop everything to labor on our civic-mural-scaled STACKS OF CASH TRYPTYCH. This protag doesn’t. Just roll with it.

Genuinely didn’t occur to me

What? You want me to say it? In print, attached to my name in perpetuity? Fine. Yes, the cat companion was quite fun. Happy?

Very happy haha Glad you liked the demon, too. That one seems to be the most popular, interestingly.

The nature of IF is such that players usually do not begrudge inhabiting a complete character who is NOT them.

This is great feedback and gives me a lot to think about for my next project, thank you!

[jjmcc]

Stowaway by Nicholas Covington
Played: 4/8/25
Playtime: 15m, 5 endings

What is the line between dream logic and Dada? The obvious answer is, that depends on the dreamer. Dream logic is pretty famously associated with a deeper, sub-logical collection of images and scenes that feel and flow naturally in the moment, but become bafflingly disconnected when considered in retrospect. Dada, by contrast, intends to shock in the moment with dissonance. That is arguably its entire point. These are not opposing states of a dichotomy though, these are points on a continuum.

Ok, I am obviously ignoring the most important thing about Dada, its political motivations in its historical context. Maybe I’m just talking about Surrealism. Dada is just a much more fun word to say though, so I’m sticking with it.

Stowaway opens with the titular protagoinst, but quickly spirals from a Treasure Island vibe into something fractured and weird. And honestly, kind of fun. As you navigate the ship, to initially uncertain purpose, maybe to steal some food, it quickly becomes apparent via navigation links that the setting is mutable and uncertain. It spins into wildly different spaces and settings in the dreamiest of dreamlogic connectivity. You encounter a wild variety of fantasy, sci-fi and otherwise unexpected NPCs, in service of loose fetch/use IF puzzle play, before cresting to an abrupt ending. Series of endings really, depending on your path.

Ah ha! I see you now, game! You kept me off balance for a bit, but you are really one of those “collect-all-the-endings” games! So let’s do that! Here’s the thing. For a work this short, this bonkers and varied, it has a remarkably narrow and similar suite of end states, different in detail but pretty samey in effect. This work was not going to have a ‘plot’ or ‘character’ based arc of setup and resolution. It could have an artistic arc, though. Treat its belligerent reality-defiance AS the character, develop this dynamic from its early discovery, through its escalation and expansion into a crescendo of weird dissonance.

Instead, it was kind of like we found a Golden Ticket, experienced the wonder of the Wonka factory, but then decided to just sell it to Nestle’s. For me, these kinds of works hit much better when the ending-collection is as or MORE disparate, bonkers and unpredictable than the midgame. Like, instead of a corporate buyout we get on a glass space elevator and fight cosmic turds or something.

I appreciate what the work was doing, and doing so economically, but I wish it commit to its Dada all the way to the end. Ings.

Horror Icon: Freddie
Vibe: Surrealist
Polish: Textured
Gimme the Wheel! : If this were my project, I would really explode the ending space, both in number and variety. Make them every bit as surprising and disconnected as the steps that got us there.

[jjmcc]

The Goldilocks Principle by iris
Played: 4/9/25
Playtime: 10m, 5 (of course) playthroughs

Here is the order you should play this game: 1-5-2-4-3. You’re welcome.

That’s a jarring approach for me to take, right? This is an autobiographical-feeling work of art, detailing a dire, debilitating emotional and physical disorder. Yet here I am, superimposing myself between you and the work, telling you how it should be experienced. I’m probably going to go on and tell you how you should feel about it. Then maybe how successful or unsuccessful it is. I kinda have a history of this. Honestly, who the f*#$ am I to weigh in on any of this?

On some level, this is how I feel with ALL deeply personal works I presume to review. Where is the line between dissecting a piece with the same toolkit I use on, I dunno, Cyber-Swordsman Detective, and dismissing actual experiences by actual people, striving to communicate their anguish? I’d LOVE for that line to be “intent,” whooo boy, I’d wear that like armor. But you don’t really get to say “Sorry my Coat of Sharp Knives sliced you up so badly, I was really just trying to find some space in this subway car. Oh, this old thing? Just something I threw on this morning.”

This is a work about eating disorder. It plays with the concept of “trigger warnings,” presenting various levels of trigger to select among. I appreciated this conceit, overlaying narrative on those selections while challenging the player with explicit charges of misery-voyeurism. I found the graphical presentation minimalist, but effective in its aims. The choices of what each level communicated were wry and effective, escalating as you expect but also embedding commentary with WHAT each trigger level could actually express (and the inherent artificiality of it), relative the underlying reality. How close are we willing to get to someone else’s pain, how much of it can we ultimately experience? And what are our motivations in doing so?

I think that is about as much as I am willing say here. Why do I even own that coat?

Horror Icon: Leatherface
Vibe: Confessional
Polish: Smooth
Gimme the Wheel! : Pass.

[svlin]

I am happy to report that Cut the Sky has been updated and you may now kiss the sky to your heart’s content*.

*Offer only available in select locations.

[jjmcc]

Spring Gothic by Prof. Lily
Played: 4/9/25
Playtime: 1.5hr

Woof, this randomizer really served up a 1-2 punch didn’t it? On the heels of an emotionally challenging exploration of eating disorder, I get an explicitly fictionalized-but-biographically-based relationship drama. Are we trying to see how MUCH damage my oblivious intentions can do in the minimal amount of time? Do I have a shot at the record??

No one wants to see me grapple with self-doubt and aspirational angst for ANOTHER review, so I am going to lean hard into the ‘fictionalized’ claims of the this visual novel and strive to inflict as little collateral damage as possible. This is a work that grapples with the emotional unreality of interpersonal relations, ESPECIALLY in an age where physical presence (and attendant physical cues) can be bypassed completely.

A pre-narrative extended online flirtation leads to a 3-day meatspace meet up where two characters try to plot a path forward. Even if this were not explicitly acknowledged as biographically rooted, it is so stuffed with specificity and detail I would have accused it of being such. The details are constant, offhand, and build a crisp and complete picture of the narrator(s) in our heads. There is no question of the ‘reality’ of these two, they are established fully in every moment of narration. This is like the holy grail of character work.

And we get two of them! The narrative gives us a god-view of BOTH characters’ inner lives, expectations and disappointments throughout the quick visit. The nature of the work is that it is unclear where the narrative might end. Unlike books, where we feel the heft of unread pages, there is no signpost here how much more narrative remains. We start with a full arc with one character… hey this COULD be a single character study! Then we get the OPPOSING character’s journey through the same events. Ok, it COULD be a contrasting narrative of two character studies! Those were effective, but to my eye slightly unsatisfying. Unsatisfying in the sense that both characters were a bit oooh, I almost typed ‘selfish’ there. Substitute another, less charged word please. Inward focused? One was reflecting their own expectations and disconnects on the events, the other treating it like a dating sim where the optimal choice of date events will lead to… SMOOCHY CUTSCENE!!! Neither were truly engaging the other outside online paradigms.

This seems a deliberate narrative choice, possibly at the heart of the work’s artistic aims. Their relationship blossomed online, initiated through avatars. Of COURSE it was more internal than external. Absent physical cues they were simultaneously able to bypass inhibition to expose their intimate inner lives quasi-anonymously while also free to project their own wants and desires on an unresisting avatar. It was both MORE and LESS intimate at once. That dynamic encourages the most idealized, optimistic and distorted view of relationships that can’t HELP but buckle a bit in real life. Sidebar - I found the graphical presentation to reinforce this in a stunningly effective way. The graphics are actual photos of London and environs - as real as it gets - superimposed with cartoony anime-styled characters. Further, those characters are EXPLICITLY from the POV of the opposite partner! Is there a clearer way to emphasize the artificiality, the superficiality of how each sees the other?

So at this point we are left with a mirrored mini emotional tragedy. The work then does something I think elevates it but maybe also falls short? Hoo boy, please don’t think I’m saying ‘The real lives behind this didn’t work for me.’ I am REALLY leaning into the fictionality here, like HAAARD.

Crucially, once we have a ‘filtered’ view of events from each of the two characters, where their motivations and stresses have so thoroughly colored those events, each unreliable to at least a little degree… the narrative goes to third person omniscient. We no longer have access to either’s inner life, but get a script-format instead, practically a court transcript of dialogue. It is up to us to infer the inner lives based on what we have seen so far. The vivid detail we have digested makes this super effective. We kind of shed distortions each character works from to see it more dispassionately. Honestly, prior to this I respected the writing and scene-setting but was still a bit removed. This section really hit a new gear for me.

I really, really hope though, that WHAT I responded to was consistent with the authors’ aims. See, unfiltered by inner lives, that dialogue is kind of… bad? I don’t mean badly written, not at all. Drawing together the previous scenes into a coherent whole, with surprising emotional beats is REALLY cool. I mean the dialogue reflects badly on the two having the conversation. On the one hand, they FINALLY breach their anxiety barriers to have something approaching real communication. On the other, Nica’s response is self-serving outrage without an ounce of empathy for Chun. And only a hand-wavy acknowledgement of their own culpability. This is totally believable, we are watching artificial expectations crumble in real time, of course it can result in lashing out. It’s not exactly admirable, though. We, the readers, understand both Nica’s frustrations and Chun’s motivations, and how devastating these attacks will be. Nica is both oblivious and uncaring. (I do feel there was a disconnect between the heat of Nica’s attacks and Chun’s even, almost accepting responses. Given the emotional brittleness we had seen before, I half expected a concurrent dissembling on Chun’s side.) It had the effect of magnifying and exposing their self-preoccupations, their mutual unreadiness for something less idealized and more real.

At this point I should highlight I barely have a toe in modern online culture. While I understand the concept of parasocial relationships (hell, I’m having one with all of you right now!), it is really a vanishingly small element of my life. That said, Nica’s accusation of stalking was completely unconvincing to me, in terms of these characters and this setup. It read like hurt passion overtaking reality in an disheartening way. This was not some rando in the comments getting weirdly familiar. This was a person YOU ENCOURAGED A RELATIONSHIP WITH, desperately trying to UNDERSTAND YOU MORE FULLY THAN THE ARTIFICIALITY OF THE MEDIUM ALLOWED. Were they supposed to NOT Google you? What kind of expectations did you think sexting would build? TO NICA, WAS THIS FUNDAMENTALLY DIFFERENT THAN JUST WATCHING PORN???

The effect of that scene was to strip away the sentimentality we developed by living in each of their heads, and expose the flawed, flawed characters with fresh, less sympathetic eyes. Dramatically, this really worked. I am deeply afraid this is NOT the intent of the piece.

But wait, it’s not over yet! There is a final scene, of Nica returning home, digesting the entire visit, and plotting a path forward. As conflicted as I was about that previous scene, I am not conflicted at all here. I found this to be a really strong, delightfully ambiguous ending. We see Nica doubling down on the online relationship, somehow unpurturbed by the previous scene, given the heat of it. This is either a breakthrough, getting past the hurt and betrayal into something approaching a fuller relationship, or regressing to the idealized comfort of the icon-distorted parasocial status quo. I have a pretty strong feeling which.

I will just close with my favorite line from the work: “melodrama is only melodrama to those that don’t share the same concerns and stakes of the characters.” Man do I hope my effort to engage those stakes and concerns doesn’t land horribly wide. Again.

Horror Icon: Babadook
Vibe: She said/she said
Polish: Gleaming
Gimme the Wheel! : Nope nope nope

[jjmcc]

For Lila by MUSE
Played: 4/10/25
Playtime: 5m, 2 endings

Oh thank God. A non-biographical vampire story.

This is a tight little work about strangers on a train, cresting into family dramas with a hint of the supernatural. It knows exactly what it is about, sets up a really nice early twist, and builds confidently to its emotional climax. It is SO short, if I give you anything more concrete than that it will end up spoiling a mathematically significant chunk of it.

Pacing wise it is pretty breathless, which is about right for a work like this. It dispenses background lore quickly, economically and clearly, building to a climax of some emotional complexity, though what is left UNsaid still looms large over it all. It also makes a nice decision to background the mechanics of its conceit in favor of the emotional tale. On the one hand, this leaves the player a little asea as to what appropriate responses might be, but that seems like a fair trade when the story’s aims are so wide of “Who can beat up who?” Its brevity makes restarting with new knowledge not really a hurdle at all.

It purports to be a first effort, which, I admire the discipline of it. Especially early in an endeavor it can be irresistible to bite off more than we can chew. Here things are focused tightly, to the story’s credit. There are some typos that creep into the work, some dissonances (like a teddy bear charm that is described more as an actual full-sized teddy bear) that could use a bit of polish. There are also some nice lines. I particularly liked

“offer what little empathy your undead heart can squeeze out.”

All in all a very worthy first effort. Look forward to seeing where this author goes next!

Horror Icon: Leatherface
Vibe: Spiraling Violence
Polish: Textured
Gimme the Wheel! : If this were my project, I would do a pass on those typos and tighten down dissonant descriptions. With a work this focused, it could be polished to a SHINE!

[jjmcc]

Little Match Girl 4 by Ryan Veeder
Played: 4/10/25
Playtime: 1hr 10m, finished

If there is a word for this series, it is ‘inventive.’ Hey, there all millions of words! We could ALL get one! I think I want to dibs ‘maladroit.’ Match Girl gets ‘inventive.’ Here in episode 4, it doesn’t seem like there should be a strong need for summary, but keeping to review discipline: Hans Christian Anderson’s nameless Little Match Girl gets Daddy Warbucks’d by Ebeneezer Scrooge (and gets a name) while having cross-time adventures because fire is a time portal for her. And gradually assembles an entire portfolio of wildly disparate weapons, skills and allies while doing so.

There is a bit of a Dr. Who vibe to things, with most every stop in time being either an idiosyncratic historical pull (death of Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens!), a completely fanciful distant period of time, or a quick revisit of characters past. As often as not, the puzzle solving involves a clockwork of cross-time dependencies including how to find the flames needed for continued travel.

This episode does not disappoint in any of those dimensions, most especially the far future techno-religion that is this work’s main antogonist. This iteration compounds its formula with two specific new elements that work (and work together) like gangbusters: real-time dialogue and a countdown timer.

The real-time dialogue is essentially snooping on the antagonist radio frequency, getting to hear their (often amusing) back and forth as the plot progresses. I heeded the work’s guidance to play in an interpreter with html-like formatting support and was glad I did. This choice gave me font and color cues to help differentiate the different timelines, but also was used to great effect in incidental dialogue. The illusion of realtime responses by active NPCs was very strong, not the least of which because the conversations were so DEEP we never got into ‘mimesis death via robotic repetition.’

That last was itself partially due to the realtime countdown timer addition. Yup, from the jump, an uncomfortably tight and graphically centered countdown timer hangs over you like a Damoclean Sword. How relevant is a realtime timer to a time-hopper? How relevant is: shut up? What a great dramatic device this was. Timers have a focusing effect on the player. This will be no leisurely saunter through the author’s implementation space, casually and belligerently poking into every crack until you find the implementation threshold then harumphing superciliously. We all do that, right?

No, the timer focuses you relentlessly on the immediate task at hand. In tension with and reinforcing the realtime dialogue, it represents a disincentive to test the author’s limits. You want to listen in more but HAVE NO TIME. It really is a wonderful mechanical synergy that sells the conflict and setting.

The timer ALSO really focuses the parser gameplay. A lot of parser games are characterized by experimentally fiddling with bizarre artifacts to find the complete left field way it needs to be manipulated to make progress. No time for that here! Every unsuccessful puzzle attempt drains away your remaining time making things sweeter when solved and tenser when not. It almost goes unnoticed that the DIFFICULTY of those puzzles is finely tuned here too, giving the player a fair chance at success and letting the timer inflict the tension, not the puzzle itself.

The prose is similarly tuned to the pressures of the game. No extended descriptions, elaborate joke setups and payoffs. No, everything is streamlined to the accelerated playstyle. Most especially the wry humor of the piece.

All in all, I found this a hugely successful iteration and tweaking of the franchise, even if it might hide a TERRIBLE SECRET, spoil-blurred: I don’t think the timer is real! Not as real as it presents. There are enough relief valves to provide moments of build and release around accomplishment, themselves very well distributed into dramatic mini-crescendos. These releases felt both earned but also subverting of the conceit. Now, I did not test this, even though it would be trivial to do so. This is also due to the effectiveness of the conceit - even with my suspicions I completely embraced the work on its own terms because that delivered the best experience.

I know I dibbed ‘maladroit’ but is ‘satiated’ taken yet?

Horror Icon: Jigsaw /Freddie
Vibe: Bonkers Adventure
Polish: Smooth
Gimme the Wheel! : Honestly, I’m kind of at a loss here. I think if it were my project I would be satisfied with the precisely engineered experience on display. Perhaps smugly so.

[Kastel]

Thanks for playing the game!

The game being compared to the Babadook feels surprisingly apt. It’s nice to hear so much praise for the “reality” of the game to the point you thought it might not be fictionalized (it is, we assure you!).

@jjmcc

I am deeply afraid this is NOT the intent of the piece.

Author’s Thoughts: While I don’t want to intervene too much in how someone reads my scenario, I was definitely feeling Brechtian writing that part of the game on that day. What you’ve described of your reactions is what I wanted. Thank you for writing this.

[rovarsson]

Right on! Rain down your fury, JJMcC! It’s absolutely justified.

For every random male stranger that comes upon your path, you can kiss the guy, but somehow you can’t kiss the sky?!

I’m calling Jimi. He’s up there somewhere.

[jjmcc]

Terra Nova - The Mystery of Zephyr’s Landing by P.Rail
Played: 4/11/25
Playtime: 1.5hr, 4 endings

There are some tropes in IF that are pretty well established. Expectations that are common enough that they exert a pull on gameplay and frame expectations while simultaneously represent a subversion opportunity to the author. Things like ‘explore everywhere,’ ‘collect all the things,’ ‘lying will be punished,’ ‘lore will become personal,’ all these represent opportunity to streamline gameplay with unspoken guidance and/or to create dramatic moments when subverted. There is one expectation I didn’t list due to its spoilery nature, one so ingrained a player may not even notice its presence. It’s going to be a challenge to dance around though, because its subversion is among the most noteworthy accomplishments of the piece.

This is a work unabashedly occupying the well-trodden ground of ‘lost sci-fi setting of historical secrets needing explored by faceless PC.’ It wears this tropey setup on its sleeve, leveraging its familiarity to smooth player expectations and gameplay. This turns out to be necessary, because it implements a timer of sorts, a looming danger that every move brings you one step closer to. The second in a row this Thing! Like the other work, it knows what it’s doing balancing tension and fair play into a very engaging scenario. If I had a quibble, it is that because I wanted to provide a transcript, I did not use the author’s interpreter of choice. This choice made guidance like ‘the timer is visible in the right corner’ an outright lie. If there was a way to access it, I never found it. Not a deal breaker by any means, but feels like a missing element of the author’s intent.

You poke around 3 small to modest sized areas, conducting your collect-use-ungate parser gameplay, all the while finding artifacts and documents that fill in historical gaps. As these things can be, the revelations are staged into a nice series of context shifts: "Yes, And.."ing itself as the lore builds and twists what it already told you. While the plot beats are not necessarily revelatory in and of themselves, you’ve probably seen most of these elements before, they do capably build on each other in satisfying ways. All the way up to the final closure.

Aaand here is where I dive into that final expectation in the most spoilery way possible. If you have not played it yet here is the takeaway: Go ahead and play it. It’s fun. Read no further.

If you HAVE played it, you full well know the expectation I am alluding to. That successful parser play means ‘player lives and/or triumphant when game beaten because finish = success.’ SubVERTED!!! The ending was the most noteworthy thing about the work, evoking (indirectly) two different pop culture properties for me: Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series and The Twilight Zone. I’ve been blurring, but that’s about to stop so if you still haven’t played, GET THE HELL OUT OF THESE PARAGRAPHS.

That second of those two resonances is the one that worked the best for me. The work is very peppily paced: between the ever present timer, the tight location space, the crisp descriptions cuing areas of interest naturally, the thing zips along with little drag. This as much as anything matches the tempo and discipline of the best of that second IP. It sells its twists through momentum, each subsequent twist just that much more impactful, culminating in a monster subversion that I really liked. I am prepared to hear that others might find that subversion a step too far, and somehow deflating, but that was not my experience of it. To the contrary, I admired it all the more for the bold Serling of it.

The resonances of that FIRST property though, really the engine behind the plot twists, those I found less compelling. I find critiques of that first IP (which I will shorthand to F for the remainder of the review) more compelling than F’s canonical text. F is an interesting intellectual experiment, well suited to storytelling, but posits a technological determinism that undersells both random happenstance and human perversity. Do I need to explain the thesis of F? I’m going to assume I don’t. I find F great as a conversation starter, unconvincing as a conversation closer. So basing the twists so heavily on that premise kind of undermined it a bit for me.

Only a bit though. Because the resonances to that SECOND PROPERTY do a lot to redeem it. The pacing and sometimes shorthand allusions play directly to that tradition of ‘this is a clockwork of plot manipulation. The CLOCKWORK is the fun part, we can handwave the individual gears.’ Agreed! Especially as it built to a rare, fun subversion of form.

Horror Icon: Jigsaw
Vibe: Just As Planned
Polish: Smooth
Gimme the Wheel! : The easiest little tweak I would make, were it my project to tweak, would be to add a timecheck in text mode. Either in the banner, or as a standalone command. Just something to focus up the ticking clock a bit.

tn_jjmcc.txt (81.5 KB)

[jjmcc]

As the Fire Dies by Alex Carey and Deborah Chantson
Played: 4/11/25
Playtime: 30m, 2 fire dies, finished

This was a tight, light puzzle fest, exploring the interactions of waking and dream realities. As a relatively compact link-select work, it enabled ‘lawn mowering’ through its variations as a near default gameplay style. This is not necessarily a negative thing, especially if the aim was not ‘punishing logical challenges.’ Which it is not. Rather, the centerpiece of the work is its really wild dream scenarios, so ushering us through them all is the goal. Lawn mowering is a legitimate way to accomplish that.

This is a work that glories in the randomness of dream logic. Embracing that is to embrace a very specific challenge. True randomness is both hard and unsatisfying. A True random generator in your music player would occasionally deliver the same song, back to back, perhaps more than once. Despite it being ABSOLUTELY random, it FEELS less random to us because… pattern! No, the trick to satisfying-feeling randomness is to absolutely inform subsequent selections with prior ones, if only to DISTANCE from them.

This is also hard! It is not enough that you come up with an amusing random scenario, it must also explicitly NOT resonate with any prior scenarios. The more you create, the harder that gets. Here is where, I thought, ATFD succeeded most unambiguously. The scenarios were delightfully whimsical, hilariously specific, and admirably broad both in setup and solution. They didn’t quite flow together in a dreamy stream of subconscious, but were successfully random FEELING.

Stitching through this dream journey was a ‘real world’ need to keep a fire burning so you don’t freeze to death. This part was.. less compelling? The campfire setup was kind of light in tone, noting you want to keep warm but refraining from any dire admonitions. When the worst does happen, it is reported pretty impersonally as well, not really providing tension, uniting the work, or providing any thematic utility. It’s fine, try again! I don’t think I would be looking for ‘super realistic, tragic death’ in this work, that would feel just as out of place. Just some stronger linkage between the two gamestates.

That said, there is one sequence of dream scenarios that ABSOLUTELY play off the waking state in a neat twist on the formula. Definitely needed, as otherwise the waking state quickly becomes drudgery that must be endured, away from the dreamstate showpieces, to keep the game going.

Overall, I found this to be a light, pleasant affair, not too challenging, delivering an amusingly large array of nifty mini-scenes. Geez tho, I wish I could fall back asleep as readily as this protagonist does. I get up to pee, I struggle, nevermind playing with fire!

Horror Icon: Pinhead
Vibe: Slumberland
Polish: Smooth
Gimme the Wheel! : This dreamy, multi-scenario conceit is crying for graphical playfulness. If this were my work, I would spend some time pulling the work away from Twine Sugarcube (I think?) default esthetic. It kind of flattens the technicolor dream worlds being presented, and even simple changes in font and color would emphasize the waking/sleeping differences much more impactfully.

[jjmcc]

Espresso Moka by Roberto Ceccarelli
Played: 4/11/25
Playtime: 20m, two playthroughs, Marco stepped in both times

This is a work in direct, confrontive conversation with its predecessor, with community response to its predecessor. I was one of those respondents, having a truly whiny litany of complaints with the former work. “I don’t like AI art.” “Why is it so hard to do simple things?” “Why is the game haranguing me for not knowing things it hasn’t told me yet?” I believe I called it an “All Thumbs Simulator.”

EM is a sequel to that work, using its familiar characters with full memory of both the previous work AND ITS RESPONSES to usher through another low stakes morning ritual as gameplay. Buy and make some coffee. Buuut is that really the work’s aim? Or is it to taunt and double down, not trolling exactly, more like playfully tweaking self-important blowhards like me? Yeah, it’s definitely the latter.

Here’s one of innumerable examples:

1. In the first game I complained about having to search pockets for something the protagonist knew, player did not, and game refused to acknowledge.
2. Remembering that experience, the FIRST thing I did this time was a painstakingly thorough search of my pockets.
3. To be followed by this:

"Hey look!" Monica claims your attention "There are the shorts
you love, the ones that drove so many people crazy with their
pockets in your last game." 

"It's better not to mention it," you suggest "I don't want players
to run away thinking they have to search all the pockets for the
wallet."

I honestly laughed out loud at that. I mean that’s pretty unambiguous, yeah? Game’s having a go at us. This meta-teasing is the overriding vibe of the piece, from photos of the previous game’s aftermath that critics (just assume I mean ‘me’ when I try these lame misdirections) bemoaned weren’t part of the game, to some in-your-face fourth wall breaking. Even to interrogating the word ‘shrew’ which drew comment in the last game.

All of it coming to a head with the game’s dramatic climax of… pouring coffee. At that point, the setting becomes explicitly fourth-wall compromised with characters and narrator coming onstage to address the player directly. The impetus for that… it’s got to be deliberate. The game’s NPCs berate you for not reading instructions, where earlier gameplay provided

>get sheet
You take the written paper sheet.

>read sheet
A folded sheet of paper with the words "READ ME FIRST!"
clearly visible.

That response alone is kind of hilarious, I mean I was TRYING to read it and reading just told me to read it! The trick I did not tumble to, which I expect the game EXPECTED me not to tumble to, was to first UNFOLD IT. Because in this world of micro-detail, implicit actions are for losers! All the better to later berate me for not accomplishing.

I did find there to be an excess of bugs and implementation issues which clouded the water a bit. Manipulating my credit card eventually just led to me unable to pick it up off the counter where I could see it. Many physical rituals had exactly one bespoke way to accomplish it, rather than any number of reasonable synonyms. Just try running water in the sink, or doing any damn thing with the moka. Even buying strong coffee seemed bizarrely out of reach. These implementation gaps made it as much a chore as its predecessor, and cast uncertainty on the ‘bug or creative choice?’ boundary.

But by directly engaging these artifacts in the text of EM, basically carrying the throughline from last game forward, it kind of takes on a hilariously confrontive tone. “Yo dawg, I heard you didn’t like some stuff so I TRIPLED DOWN ON IT FOR YOU.”

There is no better sum of this than the extensive, almost pathological use of AI art in its instruction and quick start manuals. I am in the camp of rejecting this ‘art’ as uncanny valley plundering of real, human accomplishment. “I hear you,” says EM, “how 'bout you drown in it?” I mean look at these dead eyes and faces. THEY KNOW WHAT THEY ARE DOING TO ME, AND ARE DEFYING ME TO DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT. They are absolutely SMUG about this!!

That is absolutely hilarious. I can’t help but wonder how something like this can possibly play outside its critical context. Without the first game and some critics (my) reservations as part of the text, how does this land for new players? Does it matter? It is so clearly FOR US, why not enjoy it that way?

If you can under the relentless gaze of that shark-eyed couple.

Horror Icon: Freddie
Vibe: Trolling
Polish: Rough
Gimme the Wheel! : If this were my project, I would need to seek professional therapy, as clearly development would have devolved into an extended, schizophrenic shouting match with myself.

em_jjmcc..txt (41.4 KB)

[strawberryfield (Roberto)]

Thank you for playing my game and leaving your review.
I enjoy creating a world for the player to explore, so if I find a folded piece of paper, the first thing that comes to mind is to unfold it…

[jjmcc]

Test Subject: Synaptix by mkellygames
Played: 4/11/25
Playtime: 20m 3 playthroughs

Synaptix is a work that posits a present/future where economic opportunity is so limited, human workforce so underserved by machines-are-cheaper capitalism, that the protagonist seeks out medical experimentation as a viable way forward. Ridiculous, right?

The scenario is painted clearly enough, with some endearingly detailed specifics on the protagonist’s living situation. Any reservations we have are repeatedly buried under a ‘guess there’s no choice’ shrug of compliance. There follows a series of dosages where the drug’s effects ramp up, modestly impact our protagonist’s daily life, give him some hallucinogenic visions, then just settle into the background of ‘something I guess I did.’

It seems to present a dispiriting tale of no real choices. Even when presented with choices, they were quickly revealed as dead ends of wasted time. The real impactful choice seems to be your initial motivation for seeking the money in the first place. The side effect hallucinations cluster around that motivation, though seeing things through doesn’t really resolve uniquely.

There is one additional impactful choice: do you violate your non-disclosure to score some side money above and beyond your initial contract? It is an interesting problem to posit. While the terms of the experiment you sign on to and people conducting it are relatively benign, there is always the chance the side effects could be really bad. And the corp doesn’t care, not really, about that outcome, just needs the data. Arguably, the whole scenario is part of the system that led to rolling dice with your health to get money. Yet, pushing back against that system is not better. You get rich but make the world demonstrably worse. Underlining that ‘success’ in this social system is still optimized and incentivized to personal gain over public good. By trying to break with a single available path, you are shown to be doubling down on that path after all.

All this is interesting to reflect on, but very light and underplayed in the work itself. The work is no-frills, ‘here’s what you want to do, you do it, temporary win.’ That underplayed narrative tone does as much as anything to sell the impotence of choice when following the script of this post-capitalist dystopia. I appreciate the soft-sell approach to its dark premise, but the selling is SO soft it also kind of shrugs your engagement away. I see what happened to the protag. What choice did he have? What impact did he expect? Fiction doesn’t HAVE to inspire or terrify, but it could do… more than this?

Horror Icon: Carrie
Vibe: Big Pharma
Polish: Smooth
Gimme the Wheel!: If this were my work, I would feel compelled to use the purported function of the drug to enhance the themes of the piece directly, stitch another linkage into the story’s fabric. As it stands, while the drug in question is intended to confer useful abilities, it rarely seems to do more than generate some scenario-specific hallucinations. You could squint and see how the drug maybe enabled THOSE hallucinations, but I would take the squint out of it in my project.

[SomeOne2 (Max Fog)]

@jjmcc

Horror Icon: Carrie

… what is carrie meant to signify? It’s not one of your definitions in the original post!

[jjmcc]

Lol, I had to add one during my review of Hound of Ricsige. I have no discipline. None, whatsoever.

@jjmcc

Theme aside, how do I map this experience to my horror icons? Three games in, and I’m already adding one! So much for discipline. Please welcome Carrie to our pantheon, who will represent games focusing on emotional drama and melodrama. Yeah, its in all our interests that you be nice to her.

[jjmcc]

Radiance Inviolate by DemonApologist
Played: 4/11/25
Playtime: 30m, two endings

There is a fundamental problem with “good vampire” narratives. It is all that gosh-darn subtext. In some ways that subtext is helpful - the exotic ‘other’ both feared and desired, a tailor-made receptacle for bigotry and bias. The problem is, in the text of vampire lore, that bigotry and bias turn out to be COMPLETELY CORRECT. They SHOULD be feared. They WILL steal your women and daughters. They ARE a menace to the living. They DO operate in a consent-free zone.

“Some good, some bad” have it worse. If we posit an “all good” vampire tale, we might at least subvert cultural expectations with story-specific lore refuting the mythic presuppositions, expose them as true prejudices. With the “some” narrative we are into much greyer, much more human space. Yes, some illegal immigrants commit crimes. Does this give us permission to villify them all, as a monolith? Does that fact cancel all imperatives for empathy? That’s rich soil to work. I don’t feel that was really RI’s aim, however, to its tonal detriment.

The antagonists of this story, a religious order of vampire hunters, are positioned as cruel and implacable. But, they are not obviously WRONG to be so. Yes, we want our hero to live, but we come from a starting position closer to the bad guys than good. Worse, by our glimpse into the protagonist, we have seen that he is (and presumably all of his kind are) prey to dark vectors pushing them in murderous directions. Resisting, so far, but forever? All of this dilutes the inciting conflict, I think, muddies it in ways that detract from the drama. Immigrants deserve empathy because they are just as human as we are. Vampires are, textually, ACTUALLY BIOLOGICALLY PREDISPOSED TO MURDER.

Fortunately, this is NOT a good vamp v bad religion story. Well, it is, but it’s not PRIMARILY that. This is a character study of a vampire coming to grips with his undead afterlife, the sacrifices it demands, and the pressures it presents. Ultimately asking questions about the value of free will when a decision’s stakes are not and cannot be really understood. This tension I found much better realized than world lore. The details of his turn were nicely grounded, the tactile struggle to escape his trap visceral, and oh that encounter with the transition Demon(?). This last was the showpiece scene of the work. Kembrael (said demon) was delightfully witty, wry and charismatic. That scene alone is worth the price of admission. All these pieces fed a much more personal story of change (only vaguely understood at first) and ongoing struggle.

Before I could embrace the character study though, there was another aspect of the work that pushed at me. The language is formal and flowery, hearkening to a Victorian or Gothic setting in its sentence construction. Any work that uses this much ‘twixt’ and ‘yet’ instead of ‘between’ and ‘still’ is trying my patience, making me think of the dreaded ‘P’ word. And it did for sure, but it also had some real bangers in there:

“Paladins and fiend-flayers and their growing hordes of frothing zealots punished ever more obscure sins.”
“enough of his blood still lingered brainward”
“To consign that much silver to a vampire death trap required hatred with extravagant funding.”

In the end, these were the phrases I grabbed to remember, not that other stuff, so bullet dodged!

I played through twice. There was a weird artifact where one playthrough skipped part 6? Jumped straight from 5 to 7? I think? That was weird, but undamaging to the narrative. The varied endings did have something to say about the value of trust in a climate that discourages it which, while heartening, didn’t really coalesce with other elements in any kind of thematic unity.

And maybe that is the biggest danger vampires pose to a narrative. Their archetypal status, encapsulating so many themes and subtexts, immediately cue certain readers to madly scramble for messages and metaphor. Certain maybe-trying-too-hard readers like me. Maybe I should just settle down, stop trying so hard, and enjoy a more personal, character-based story?

Horror Icon: Babadook
Vibe: Vampires But Good
Polish: Gleaming
Gimme the Wheel!: If it were my project, I would be unable to resist taking an editing knife the more flowery passages. Sharpen those up just a little to really let the strong lines shine.

[jjmcc]

Chronicles of the Moorwakker by Jupp
Played: 4/11/25
Playtime: 1.5hr dying all the time, even in Easy mode?

Is there less envigorating an experience than to dive deep into the rules and setting of a game, tentatively conclude it is probably not going to be for you, then see that borne out exactly as you foresaw? Oh, I know! It would definitely be less envigorating to read a ‘review’ that only had that to say!

Chronicles codifies a very maximalist TTRPG-kind of experience. Deep world lore, informed by a bespoke magic system that translate to specific game mechanics. Evolving powers, abilities and capabilities that unfold as you progress. Learning the strengths and weaknesses of all those abilities as a kind of problem-solving toolkit to apply to continually varying challenges. An ethos of progression through conflict, where most interactions are framed as mortal combat-focused encounters. Young me would have fallen head over heels for this kind of thing.

And one presented so slickly: its uniform artistic esthetic (described a AI assisted? pushing my boundaries here!) and card-reminiscent stat-catalog graphical design underscore its RPG bones. It is also boldly attractive in its own right.

Older me is not so easily won over. Or, probably closer to the truth, less open to it. I struggled mightily with the magic/combat system. I never really tumbled onto an HP-recovery mechanic, meaning I would go from encounter to encounter being worn down by enemy steel AND MY OWN SPELLS, until numbers went to 0. Some encounters did provide a healing goose, but in a way that seemed to underscore its exceptional and scarce nature. I just did not have it in me to explore the interplay of spell/weapon values and combat sequence to discover optimal, effective strategies.

The NPCs I encountered, even the central mystery were all quite interesting and engaging. For me, it just continually ran aground on seemingly unavoidable combat that I never mastered the subtleties of, gatekeeping all that stuff I really wanted. I died and restarted (on ‘middle’ setting) so many times I finally just capitulated to Easy/Story mode.. and still died in combat? I did not detect the promised ‘encounter bypass’ mechanism, so much so I question whether I was actually in easy mode at all? Is there a bug there? Or just a player missing an obvious out?

I guess my conclusion is I liked everything about it EXCEPT the combat, but found the combat inescapable, and ultimately pushed me away, unfinished. So in an effort to provide any value at all to this abortive review, let me say: if you like dense lore translating to complex, subtle fighting mechanics, this will likely thrill you. The supporting story and graphical elements are dynamite draws to that central suite of mechanics you could just d20 with all day. Certainly I could see younger me doing that!

Horror Icon: Jigsaw
Vibe: Lore Heavy RPG
Polish: Gleaming
Gimme the Wheel! : If it were my project, I would repair the Easy mode. Who’m I kidding, what I’d really do is ignore the other two modes! This is why so many projects are NOT mine to fiddle with.

EDIT: sloppy, sloppy, sloppy cut’n’paste fixed