Plane Walker by Jack Comfort
Spoilery Review
The opening text to this one was something to behold. I was going to copy and paste the whole thing, but it seemed too mean. Instead, I’ll describe it: a long single paragraph which meanders from belated realization to belated realization. The second sentence is, for some reason, about the PC’s entire life, even though the rest of the paragraph established me as amnesiac. Meanwhile the realization that the PC is alone on the airplane is buried after a comment on the bathroom smell. What it really needed was to be broken up into paragraphs, and focused on specific beats. As it was, the paragraph created distance from the situation rather than driving it home. It turned all these realizations, which should each have specific impact, into a mishmash of information.
It may seem harsh to spend to much time on one oversized paragraph, but it’s not crazy: an intro sets te tone for the rest of the game. And it’s not as if the rest of the game’s writing style is a model of immersion. The ending is weird (the protagonist just lets themself be unmade for no clear reason) ad a deeper sense of the PC as a character might have helped that land better.
What the game actually is is a surreal puzzler about trying to stop some sort of planar incursion. There are puzzles involving abstract mathematical concepts like imaginary numbers and 2-dimensional geometry. A lot of this is nicely implemented. However, there was a lack of clear motivation on both the general and specific level. Whether it was examining the same thing twice with no indication it might have changed, examining every single button on a keypad, entering a chalkboard, or sawing a limb off a dead tree, I often ended up doing things for no real reason. There’s also a lack of synonym support, most painfully in the lack of abilty to refer to a textbook as a ‘book’. And I really didn’t want to be doing inventory management in the middle of a plane crash.
The author clearly wants players to be able to follow the game easily, as he gives clear signposting some of the time. I don’t see any listed beta testers, and so - even though the game wasn’t very buggy - I would really recommend the author seek beta testing for games in the future, so he can find out how people will actually engage with the thing.
Rankings
The Song of the Mockingbird
Walking Into It
Sting
What Heart Heard Of, Ghost Guessed
Silicon and Cells
Wabewalker
The Spirit Within Us
Plane Walker
Second Wind
The Vaults
Unfortunate
What remains of me
Smart Theory