valley of glass
a reimagined moment alone from the folktale Black Bull of Norroway
Devan Wardrop-Saxton
Erm.
Back in the day, we had something called the ‘IF Art Show’ in which people entered works (not ‘games’, necessarily) that just focused on one single thing, like scenery or an item or a single conversation. This game would not have been out of place in that milieu… but it also wouldn’t have scored very well, at least if I found everything in it. If your goal is to just capture a moment, I would want that moment to be extremely rich and packed with interactions within that limited scope. Everything should evoke a memory or a thought or a description. Instead, we got, I dunno, sort of a ‘normal game’ level of description, which you could probably get away with in a larger work with more things to do, but here you get the five minute introduction to a game that doesn’t exist, instead of a robust work of art that could be enjoyed on its own.
This is not to say that there was absolutely nothing here: I loved that fact that you could use your cloth, and I was intrigued by the idea of going >E to a room, but that room is only a memory. That’s a cool idea! I’ve never seen it before! I wanted more.
Did the author have anything to say? A bit! Not much, but something!
Did I have anything to do? Nope; just found a couple things to experience.