All Hands (Natasha Ramoutar)
This was a nice little haunting game. I loved the world building a lot; I thought the character development was pretty strong; and as I was assembling my inventory, I smiled, because the main thing you collect (songs) was evocative and charming. It also had an underlying theme of loss and acceptance that I found touching.
Despite this being written in Texture (aka ‘the system where you drag verbs around the screen for no reason’), it was still enjoyable, so bonus points right out of the gate for that. And to be fair, this game is the first I’ve played in that system to make some use of the system to have a slightly positive effect on the gameplay: after you select a verb, only then do the nouns it can connect to end up bolded. This added a bit of an exploratory feel to the interface, which connected to the exploratory feel of the game itself. However, using Texture also gave the game its biggest flaw, namely the lack of undo or save. It’s another one of those games where everything comes down to a final choice, and what I would have loved to do would have been to see all the endings. However, without a way to checkpoint your progress, you have to re-play the entire game just to make a single different choice at the end. I went ahead and did that to get one new ending (taking as many shortcuts as I thought I could get away with), but ended up stopping there. It doesn’t really help that it is utterly impossible to predict what might happen if you choose one thing over another: you can guess what it’ll be themed around, but nothing more.
Did the author have something to say? Yes! Not only did it have a sumptuous world and sharply-defined characters, it was also a little reflection on grief, loss, and acceptance.
Did I have something to do? Yup! I was engaged in exploration throughout.