Manon tries to finish the Comp (49/75)

Competitions IFComp
8

New day, new reviews. Still sick.
Yesterday, I finished the games without any indicated length. Today, I’ll get into the 2+h entries (maybe doing a long, then a small one).

First one is another parser ;-;

Milliways: the Restaurant at the End of the Universe

Entry
Forenote: I have not played HHGG, but have read all the books.

M:REU is a very large parser game, reminiscent of the old Infocom era, and very much a love letter to the original HHGG game. The story follows the event of the second book of the HHGG series, in which the protagonist makes their way towards Milliway, the restaurant at the end of the universe. It combines puzzles and exploration, and includes hints and a walkthrough. It can’t be completed in 2h (afaik).

When starting the game, I knew I would not be able to finish it within the 2h mark (the beta call, mentioned a 8h-long playthrough…), nor would I have been able to go through the different parts without losing (its difficulty being cruel, one wrong move and you die). But I did not expect the quality of the game to be this impressive, considering this is the first game of this author and the fact that the game had been re-coded a few months prior to the comp.

Through my limited playthrough (I managed to get to the 4th location?), it is clear this was a labour of love for the old Infocom games, and the HHGG universe. The game manages to encapsulate the wittiness of the books so well, from the description of your actions, to the error messages, or the in-game hints. I gladly tried to die, just to see the funny messages, and the game calling me a noob for being a bad player.

Some of the puzzles seem a bit obtuse, and require either knowledge of the story or some trial an error (thank you, walkthrough for the help). They are definitely not meant for first-time parser players. Even trying to understand the hints, or follow the walkthrough, it is pretty easy to make an error and see your progress blocked completely.

Close to the 2h-mark, I stumbled into the Milliway kitchen, tried (and failed) to wrangle with the cupboard and my inventory. At some point, the cupboard just refused to open, and the timer rang. I still tried to play a tiny bit more, undoing previous actions and redo the puzzle, but alas, I could not get it past (is it maybe a bug? or did I miss something obvious?).

Honestly, from the little I played, it is really impressive, and could pass for an official game.

Maybe I’ll restart it later and try to play it fully.

This time, I made sure to log a transcript at the start… but I played online, so it wouldn’t let me download it or save it in the tempfiles? From what I saw on the IFComp website, it should be available to the author on their side. So Max, if you see a transcript spamming Z in the Milliway kitchen section, that’s probably me…

11 Likes
9

The Library of Knowledge by Elle Sillitoe

Entry

The Library of Knowledge is an interactive piece, where you get to browser three sizeable and intertwined stories, in a turn-the-page/click-to-continue style. The setting is heavily influenced by Chinese mythology, mixing historial realism with fantastical aspects.

In its gameplay, save for an early-end at the start and a potential choice at the end, the entry feels more like a kinetic piece than anything. The interactivity focuses mainly on “reading” through the books, with limited conversations with the library inhabitants afterwards.
While there is nothing wrong with a more linear/interactive-less type of game, the turn-the-page mechanic felt a bit… tedious, making me wishing I was physically turning the page myself. Especially considering the quite substantial word count in game.

As for the stories within the story, one book explored your past, while the others focused on the world around you. The latter read like some sort of codexes, while the first felt more like a novella. While there were some interesting bits, I have to admit I ended up skimming through the books by the end. The forced and lengthy exposition felt like a drag, and didn’t quite manage to make the ending satisfying for me.

By the end, I wasn’t quite sure whether this format fitted the story best, especially with the mechanical gameplay (you have to read every page of each books). I wondered if the entry might have worked better if the player could “play” the PC’s story with maybe “fake” choices, rather than reading about it in the book.

kinda felt more like an exercise in worldbuilding in a way?

8 Likes
10

I’m going to play a few short ones…
The next one is a Texture one. I learned from my mistake of last year, and playing it on mobile instead :stuck_out_tongue:
curse you, click and drag…

We All Fall Together by Camron Gonzalez

Entry

We All Fall Together is a short surrealist game about “taking the plunge” and facing things head on. Made in Texture, you click-n-drag actions towards specific block of words to affect the displayed text or move the story along. There is only one ending.

With its fantastical setting (you falling towards the eye of a storm, falling with others), WAFT proposes a very simple and silly game. Yet, intertwined the silliness, the game discusses a very human trait: the fear of just… doing things. Of diving head forwards into things. Of avoiding situations for fear it will end badly…

It was a fine small entry.

6 Likes
11

20 Exchange Place by Sol FC

Entry

20 Exchange Place is hostage-situation high-stake game where you play a Sergeant trying to solve a sticky situation. The game offers multiple consequential choices, with many leading to a bad ending. I would rate this game Cruel on Zarf’s difficulty’s scale. I know it is possible to reach a “good” ending, but didn’t manage even with my multiple attempts.

This game was… frustrating, especially as someone who wants to do good when playing game, and strive to reach at a minimum the least harmful ending as possible. I usually don’t mind replaying, until I find a (somewhat) satisfying result. But here, I gave up after a good half-dozen try. And savescuming is difficult with Ink (only one slot).

20 Exchange Place is very much a “golden”/“only-one-true” path type of game, and if you stray from it, you will face the consequences. And while each failed state will get its own extensive variation, having to restart the whole thing every time (especially when you are pretty far along) is tedious at best.

The difficulty of the game is that you are pretty blind when choosing what to do next, as there are little to no indications in the text to help, which is frustrating when the PC is supposed to be a veteran on the job (or are you just that stupid). Even choices characterised as “safe” can lead you down a bad path.
This is kinda the type of game where you need some sort of walkthrough… Someone should add one to the IFDB page at one point… if they find the correct path!

While the prose does a good job at setting the scene, and pushing the high-stake envelope about the situation, I also found it awkward at times. This was made even more obvious with the missing punctuation in the dialogues, or the censoring of “bad” and “swear” words, which, considering the indicated genre and content warning, feels out of place.
Is hell a bad word? I think it was most in the context of swearing…

Is it supposed to be like… a critique of the police force? that they are bad at their job?
or that there are always too many variables to take into account in difficult situation, leaving the end state muddled at best? (but then, why a good path?)

6 Likes
12

Thanks for the review! I am very glad someone liked it.

2 Likes
13

Last one for today, also the 10th one!
I should be working a bit on my EctoComp entry… which won’t be today again apparently.

GameCeption by Ruo

Entry

GameCeption is “a game within a game” action thriller, where the goal is for you and your friend to win the gaming competition, and win the much needed prize (money!). The game you must play, however, is really not what it seems…

I’ll say it out of the gate: I liked this game. It was nicely paced*, with engaging gameplay and choice, and a pretty stylised UI (I’m a sucker for a sci-fi-esc interface). Even if I saw the twist coming from a mile away, I was still pretty entertained, and felt vindicated when proven right! I thought the game knocked it out of the park.
*timed text on replay was a taaaaad annoying, esp when trying to speed run the last part

I liked the differences between the two parts of the competition, both in terms of styling of the page and the text itself. As both parts sort of mirror each other, especially in terms of action, there is just enough distinctiveness between both parts to make it feel fresh. The “parser”-like actions with the links added to the game competition aspect.

While characterised as an action thriller, I think Survival, à-la Battle Royale, might fit the game even better, especially considering the gameplay when the competition starts. Though the interface of the game and the cover art would maybe give the expectation of a more sci-fi like entry.

For a game with multiple “losing” state, I appreciated “respawning” at the last major point, avoiding replaying the whole game to get back to the action.

Maybe a less positive point, it would be in the characterisation of the protagonists’ relationship. It was maybe left a bit too vague for the question at the ‘interview’ to hit harder.

I was also curious how whether there were other endings, so I popped the downloaded file into Twine, and there was like a whole other game inside! (I don’t know if this was intentional, haven’t tried it, didn’t seem like it was related.)

7 Likes
14

Continuing on the +2h entries…
Good thing there are blurbs, because you could expect something completely different with that title (puns!).

One Knight Stand by A. Hazard

Entry

Sitting at over 400k total words, One Knight Stand is quite a sizeable game, with extensive branching. It also is a demo (prologue + 1st chapter), meant to be part of a longer series. Characterised as a mashup between Among Us and Arthurian lore, the story will twist and turn at every corner. I found one Dead End.

The game is very much anchored in the ChoiceofGame style of interactive fiction, with its extensive, almost overwhelming, character creation, lengthy playthroughs, and variation galore. Replay value seems to be an important part of this entry, due to the many many choices available (some are even locked depending on previous choices).

While the amount of available content is impressive (400k for a single chapter is massive), the pace of the story is at times painfully slow. In part due to the extensive nature of the character creation. From requiring you to confirm every single character-building choice, to going into details about some trivial options (like the shade of your favourite colour has a dozen of option per hue), it often felt unnecessary and tiresome (be prepared for choice-fatigue here…).

The entry starts pretty intriguing, with a spooky nightmare set in an Arthurian setting, with a bone-chilling feeling that continues to follow you throughout the rest of the chapter (with creepy voices and creepy feelings)*. To balance it out, the prose strive to add humour when it can, from mentions of or punny winks about mainstream media (Knights of Our Lives, lol), to taking an almost sarcastic or parody approach to some situations**. The balance was not quite there, however, making me question whether the story was supposed to be primarily comedy or horror.
I had a bit checked-out by the time the horror started to pick up.
* It’s kinda funny a fast-food server can be part of a Polo club…

While I was not particularly fan of the pronoun switch between the main text (you) and the choice list (I), as it sometimes broke the flow of reading, the formatting of the more horror-y beats (especially the ones with creepy sounds or anxious feelings) helped keeping things fresh.
Another thing I hope will be used further into the game was the phone element, specifically the texting side-“game”. The options of sending back messages were pretty funny (yay for creepypasta).

For a ChoiceofGame style game, it has a pretty solid base and I suspect it could become quite popular with CoG fans. But I don’t think it’s my kind of game.
(I was almost relieved when I reached the end, even if it wasn’t a “good” one).

I’m calling it now: you are the long lost child of the Phone Company CEO.

7 Likes
15

The Witch by Charles Moore

Entry

The Witch is a fairly difficult parser where you must save the snatched villagers, though how to do so or solve the puzzles along the way is not quite clear. There are limits in both the inventory and turn count. The entry does not include an in-game help or hint system, but an external transcript walkthrough is included. I reached a total of 60 points before stopping playing (using the walkthrough for help).

Knowing my (in)aptitude in playing parsers, I wasn’t expecting to sweep through the puzzles and reach the end easy-peasy. I just hoped to be able to solve at least one puzzle all by myself. It became quickly apparent I wouldn’t be able to do much by myself without the walkthrough either.

Aside from the blurb, the game gives you little indication of what you are supposed to do. You are essentially dropped in this world, left to your own devices. You can explore the world, pick some stuff up, interact with elements around you… and hope for the best. I found myself running around the world, and ended up stuck in some sort of tree that wouldn’t let me leave*.
*was there a hint somewhere about the order of actions you should input?

Going through the rooms, I kept wondering if I missed some clue or if there was some context about the game or story I should have known about or found before getting to certain locations. It kind of felt you had to do quite a bit of guesswork… and that was a bit frustrating.

The game was not meant with beginners in mind. I hope more experienced parser players have an easier time than I did…

Is this a cruel-level game? It felt like one. ;-;

4 Likes
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Since it’s not my game, I can feel free to point out that this is 100% a “Choice of Games” style thing rather than author choice (I mean, technically it’s author choice but regular ChoiceScript readers would find it extremely jarring if they DIDN’T do that).

2 Likes
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Oh, I see… I think it shocked me most when the final sentence of the main text would break, only to finish in the choice list. Going from one PoV type halfway through was peculiar :sweat_smile: . Maybe the use of the imperative form instead would work better? :woman_shrugging:

But also, if A. Hazard is reading this, it’s clear I’m not the target audience of the game. If this is part of some CoG styling guidelines to publish with CoG at a later point, please disregard this bit of the review :slight_smile:

2 Likes
18

Lonehouse by Ayu Sekarlangit Mokoginta

Entry

Lonehouse is an emotionally charged piece about facings reality, processing one’s grief, and finding ways to remember passed loved ones. The entry feels very personal albeit short. Following the passing of your estranged sister, you find yourself sorting through her belonging, reminiscing about the past, and learning new things about the time spent apart.

The entry takes you through different rooms of your sister’s place, each giving the player the same actions (inspect, move, thing). It feels methodical, as if you had to force yourself going through the things your sister left behind. But, in each room, you discover a special item, triggering a memory or thought - each showing a different facet of the person you (thought you) once knew.

Grief can be a heart breaking and complex feeling, rendered even more complicated when the situation is itself a complicated thing (there’s a lot of unsaid things in the entry about how it got to this point). I felt like this entry showed maybe a more detached look to that feeling.

For future players, in screens with the hums or the text bubbles, go from top to bottom in revealing the next text. Otherwise you’ll miss important pieces of information.

5 Likes
19

The Enigma of Solaris by jkj yuio

Entry - Note: it’s listed as Engima and not Enigma on the ballot.

The Enigma of Solaris is a short interactive game set on the Solaris station, where you must find the reason for the power loss threatening the lives of its inhabitant, fighting any hurdles along the way. It can be played as a choice-based or (limited) parser (only used the choice list). There seemed to only be one ending.

The story was reminiscent of those old pulp sci-fi stories, with the strive for advancement at the cost of human life, and the hubris of it all. The game is not afraid to go at full speed into those tropes, which makes it a bit comical (in a good way). The visual characterisation of the NPC add a bit of creepyness to the situation, with it’s uncanny valley-esque vibe.
Those NPC images freaked me out, I kinda wished there was a toggle to wide them.

Though I quite enjoy bite-sized games, this one felt somewhat incomplete - as if a whole part of the story or a different angle to it was missing. Starting strong with multiple options to explore the station, interact with different elements, and diagnosing the issue, the player sees its agency disappear by the second half of the game - railroaded towards the ending, with not even the illusion of being able to make a choice.

I think it could have made the ending a bit more satisfying if you had a final choice between fulfilling the mission to save lives or being persuaded to take a path of higher purpose just before the end. Maybe even a bit more choice in conversation with the second NPC.

There was also a bit of friction with the engine used, with the image messing a bit with the placement of the text (if they were more to the side, it would be nicer), or the longer portions of the text forcing you to scroll up and down to read the new bits.

Stopping here for today…

6 Likes
20

Probably my only one today, cause i’m trying to make progress on my ectocomp entry.
Everyone have been talking about that one, so here I go:

DICK MCBUTTS GETS KICKED IN THE NUTS by Hubert Janus

Entry

DICK MCBUTTS GETS KICKED IN THE NUTS is what you could consider a joke entry. It is a nonsensical and completely unserious game, where the point is to make you chuckle, one way or another. The game is not just dipped but fully immersed in absurdism… if you got the correct start when opening the game. I reached multiple Dead Ends, and one True Ending out of Three.

I was pretty lucky, getting the good path from the moment I clicked Play, avoiding the flashing image and on-purpose terrible spelling*. I got to enjoy the adventure of Dick, our protagonist, trying his darn best to protect his family jewels from getting the kick. If this sounds juvenile, it is on purpose. The game is meant to be a joke through out (if that was not yet obvious from the title and the author’s name), and can be enjoyed by playing along with the joke (making the situations even more absurd than they are), or making fun of the game for how stupid the sequence of events is going (how unlucky Dick is to have to choose to flee towards two different shoe factories…).
*Whether the author did it on purpose or not, just for having that path, it will be a Banana of Discord contender for sure.

While it is very humorous, it is also a very specific kind of humour, which will not be of everyone’s taste. It is a one-type-of-joke kind of game, which can become tiring pretty quickly, if you are not in the right mindset. It’s crude, it’s rude, it’s balls-y*.
*yes, not very smart

Though, the author should be commended for how long they managed to keep that joke going, never once faltering, always doubling down. It is pretty impressive how creative the game stays even with just one scenario, and the sheer amount of branching available in the game (every passage or two, you have a choice). It is a commitment to the bit I’ve only really seen with major shitposting and memes*. Just for that, kuddos Hubert!
*hrem…Goncharov

This was a riot of a game!

Last note, importing the game on Twine give the dumbest but most topical overview of the passage placements. Extra points for effort.

Last commit to the bit

SPOILER_image
10 Likes
21

I took a break yesterday (progress on the Ectocomp is going, and so is nursing that darn flu). I don’t know how many entries I can manage to do today, so I’ll finish the 15min or less if I can at least.

The Sculptor by Yakoub Mousli

Entry

The Sculptor is a pretty short interactive story about the artistic dilemma of creating for the sake of creating and essentially selling out, through the lens of an older man yearning to create his Magnum Opus before it is too late. Through a fairly poetic prose, the man reflect on his gifts, the process to get to the finished state, and that dilemma.

With a focus on touch-related imagery, the entry does a fairly good job at describing the tedious, and often painful, but fulfilling process of creating art. Its poetic prose engages to see creative endeavour as more than the final product, but all the acts, the efforts, the sweat, the tears that made it happen. I was particularly touched by the yearning of the old man to accomplish one last piece, fulfilling his dream, before meeting the inevitable.

Though it is a major point of the story, I did not find the dilemma quite satisfying. The question itself of creating for the sake of creating or to be able to survive has been debated almost ad nauseam, without much of a new or fresh angle to it. It also felt like the Sculptor’s position was clear: not preserving the art from being sullied through transaction would tear his soul.

Another thing that felt strange was placing the time period of the piece. The cover art and starting prose suggest a Baroque or maybe Romantic period, while the dialogue from other characters would place it in a more modern time. It would not be too surprising to learn that the sculptor’s sensibilities were tuned to older periods, being maybe even detached from reality due to his age or current state. An angle like this could have helped bridge the gap, I think.

6 Likes
22

Escape your psychosis by Georg Buchrucker

Entry

Escape your Psychosis is an illustrated CYOA booklet about escaping the cycle of psychosis by recognising and avoiding the unhealthy choices. The format allows you to click on the option to process through the story. The text is accompanied by whimsical illustrations, relevant to the state of the story. The entry is meant to be educational.

This very short entry is the product of the author’s experience with psychosis in their surroundings, wanting to spread awareness and demystify what it means to fall into a psychosis. Through short snippets of situations, the entry takes a light-hearted, often humourous, approach to the theme. Still, it recognises that this is not a situation-fits-all type of content.

For what it tries to do, I think the game manages to do quite well. It provides enough variety and choices to make it feel believable, but brushes over the more darker elements of going through a psychosis to not make it a bummer (the illustrations* are a big help in this way). However, this can also be seen as what doesn’t work about the entry, with how over-simplistic the game tackles the subject matter, or how it overlooks completely the darker realities, or how too cheerful the entry looks for what it tries to portray. It can feel a bit superficial.
*they reminded me a bit of the Little Inferno game style…

I’d love to see more CYOA entries in a similar format in future comps!

And that’s it for the under 15min!
I’m probably going back to writing for now…

6 Likes
23

New day, new reviews! Def one, maybe more :woman_shrugging:
I wrote quite a bit yesterday, so I can enjoy some more games…

Trail Stash by Andrew Schultz

Entry

Trail Stash is a short-ish puzzle, where you must go through trash to find treasures. Along the way, you pick up items you can use to unlock new locations. As the story is rather not deep and quite nonsensical, the focus of the entry is meant to be on the gameplay. I could not solve the puzzle without the external map.

Trail Stash is the latest entry of Andrew’s experiments in SugarCube, which I got into with his Neo Twiny entries last June, where the focus is less on the story itself but what the code can do or what gameplay could be added to a Twine game. In this entry, it is all about a puzzle map, where you can pick up items, use those items, unlock rooms, and collect all map pieces to get to the ending.

Though it is humorous and you should take the story at the first degree, the puzzle itself is a struggle. There is no indication on what you are supposed to do, or even hints. When you finally manage to understand what’s going on after clicking on everything, solving the puzzle itself comes down to a trial and error, and error, and maybe a win, but mostly error, and an error again. If there was a certain logic in where to use which item, I did not find it…
Even while using the map, I’ve made many errors because I could not differentiate the colours.

Honestly, this felt a bit like one of those old school parser puzzle transplanted into a choice-based engine. Which is neat in and of itself, but didn’t really work… I found quite a bit of friction, with how the pages were formatted: with the locations being in a line, whole pages refreshing instead of a single line, or the inventory hidden*. That made, to me, the entry feel more like a proptotype.
*I think it could have worked better tagged at the end of the passage, with a popup on whether the combo worked or not…

Still, I’ve always found something interesting with these experiments, as it’s made me think of new ways to approach SugarCube or gameplay in general. There’s always something intriguing, making me wonder how things work under the hood. And this one is no different.

Andrew, a new interface when? :stuck_out_tongue:

5 Likes
24

The Whisperers by Milo van Mesdag

Entry

The Whisperers is an interactive game set in the late 30s Soviet block, where you are an audience member of an interactive “propagandist” play, of three “families” living inside a paper-thin-walled apartment. Throughout the story, you are asked for your opinion on how the play should continue. There are essentially 3-ish possible endings.

I personally hate plays where the audience needs to take an active part of the story, where immersion is broken because the audience must have a say. But as an interactive game, I’ve quite enjoyed it! The active participating is not only welcomed, but adds another layer of intrigue into the story (at least in this case). The awkwardness of waiting for the play to start again is not there, as the passage loads right after your choice is made.

As for the story, a morality take in two acts, it made me think of those typical contemporary French plays happening within an apartment, where miscommunication and personal drama becomes the crux of the issue. While it is not as vaudevillian, with the play set in Soviet Russia during Stalin’s regime, it is nonetheless cynical in its treatment of its characters. No one is good, no one is bad, everyone is stuck in their own situation (and some are maybe a bit stupid*).
*the characters felt at times a bit flat, or a bit preachy in how they discuss some topics.

If you take it at face value, it’s a pretty neat experience; and if you look deeper into it, it shows off the extensive research on the setting and the length taken to portray its intricacies, the horrors, and the hopes. It felt a bit like a commentary of the period. The play is fairly fast paced, and doesn’t overstay its welcome, ending just at the climax. The interactiveness of it is fun, with your choice mattering or being disregarded (depending on the mode played) – it could have been fun to learn whether these choices affected your position.
I found the hidden ending to be the most fun one.

But, I did have some issue with the formatting of the text itself. While I appreciated the inclusion of formatting options, with palette themes and text font/size*, it made it obvious when an aspect was not customised (link colour not contrasted enough, popup). But that’s a detail compared to…
*it might have fitted more inside a Setting popup, the buttons’ colours were too eye-catching.

… the passages not looking like an actual script. From the blurb to the game itself, it was clear we were meant to look forward to a play on our screen. But the text is vaguely formatted like one: the Act is centred on the page, but not the scenes or the character’s names; the actions or voice level* are made obvious in brackets, but end up feeling lost inside dialogue (especially in the Guide’s and Sergei’s monologues)… It might seem like a detail, but the essence of playwriting felt a bit lost because of it?
*the whispering aspect kinda felt like an afterthought after the first scene? The voice level of the characters didn’t seem to matter much in further conversations…

Visual friction aside, this was neat.

A game I played recently that took advantage of the Script/Play format was Goncharov: Coda. It made the difference between play and reality more obvious than this entry, though.

EDIT: Turns out, there’s no one way to format a script. The formatting in this entry can be found in published play. It just depends what you’re used to/what printing you’ve read before.
Still would make some tweaks to make blocks of text more digestible or differentiate names/actions/spoken words better.

5 Likes
25

20th review…

The Ship by Sotiris Niarchos

Entry
Forenote: I stopped playing during Chapter 4, without reaching the 2h mark.

The Ship is a hypertext puzzle game, following two interconnected stories of captains, each looking for a specific location. The game includes different kinds of puzzles, from visual ones to more fetch-quest like, and achievements. I completed 3 chapters out of 7.

I don’t know why I had a hard time getting into the game, it has all the stuff I like: pirates, some sci-fi elements, some puzzles, some fun characters with interesting or funny backstories… Mixing genres is usually so much fun, and drawing parallels between storylines is usually intriguing and has me on the edge of my seat. But something just didn’t click with this game.

I don’t think there was one reason for why it didn’t work (for me), but more of a combination of frictions with the story or the gameplay that resulted in not enjoying as much as I thought I would have. I could see where it was going with the tropes of the characters and the similar elements between the captains, so it felt a bit frustrating.
I ended up relating quite a bit with the first captain from the start of the game.

Though there were bits of humour, I found most of the prose a bit dull and dry (more so in the sci-fi section). The dialogues were more palatable, especially with the more cookie crew members (they had some funny bits, playing the tropes and such). The pace was a bit slow, and in conversations lore-dumpy with the long paragraphs.

Still, I pushed onward, discussed with the different fun characters on board, ran around the ship to get things rolling, tried to solve the puzzles and put stuff back into order… I followed what the game wanted from me, but it still didn’t grab me. After reaching the navigation puzzle*, I stopped.
*a neat puzzle, but too many to solve at once to continue the story.

Maybe the game needs like a specific mindset/humeur to be in before starting the game? I might come back to it later on… Because there were still some good bits in there…

4 Likes
26

Please Sign Here by Road

Entry

Please Sign Here is a fairly linear visual novel mystery. As a coffee barista, you have been brought in for interrogation after being involved in an accident that took the life of your friend and the police finding your signature linked to other incidents. The game goes through the events of the past week, ending with you potentially naming who you think did it. There are about a dozen endings.

Out of all the things I would expect to see in Twine, a visual novel wasn’t really one of them. Usually made in RenP’y or Godot, this one was made in Harlowe, a Twine format. Even if the scaling doesn’t always work, or the positioning is not always quite right, or the music bar being distracting, just for trying to do that, kuddos to you!
Just a little note on contrast, the text sometimes blended with the background, which was a bit hard to read. A darker text background or different positioning of the image would help a ton!

The story itself might be a bit generic (oh, no! you were accused wrongly!), and the prose awkward at times, but throughout, the game managed to keep up with the suspense. When it starts to mellow out a bit, here’s a creepy sprite, or the background changes with darker tones to reflect the state. It is also made clearer with the main character slowly losing her sanity, which is already exasperated by working too much.

Though most of the story is pretty linear, you have a few choice on how you interact with your surrounding and the people entering the coffee shop. Still, your agency stays fairly limited, as the majority of the game happens in a flashback. The main choice happens at the end of the game, with most endings being fairly similar to each other (not one felt quite satisfying).

A big big plus for this entry was the illustrations for the game, especially the backgrounds. Really added to the vibe of the game. I think I liked the car scene the most.

Also found a bug on the option page (also appears in the ending)

Screenshot

image

5 Likes
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Thanks so much for the review!

I think I know what you mean by it not looking like a script? Like were you expecting something where the character name would be central and the line would be beneath, left aligned? That’s certainly something I’ve seen, but it’s something I’d definitely associate with screenplays, not scripts for use in theatre (although you had me so unsure I had to google image search to sanity check :stuck_out_tongue:) As for centring the scene and act name, that’s really a coin toss from script to script, from what I know.

But I’ll definitely look at changing my code for the accessibility options later! I’m really terrible at that visual design stuff…

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