Maasdreniev, taudis de l’Est is a short hyperlink story created in Decker, in which you follow a hungry and cold man in an unnamed dilapidated neighbourhood (though the vibes are evocative of Eastern Europe, just after the Iron Wall is constructed). Lost and left behind, these beings do what they can to survive, even if it means turning on each other and losing more of their little humanity. It is very bleak and as immersive (especially with the uneasy tune of the background music).
dénanti is a CYOA booklet, in which you switch bodies with billionaire Arnaud Bernard (and definitely not the French businessman, wink wink). Armed with this incredible fortune, you get to choose how to spend it… except, it’s really hard to spend a lot of money like this. If your actions are not stopped because it looks fraudulent, you actually end up richer by fixing the (speculative) economy or through tax-loophole! In both the setting and gameplay, this entry reminded me of You are Jeff Bezos. It was a pretty funny 5min going through all the options!
Famille P. LOISEL is a short cinematic Moiki story in which you spy on a family, whose business meant the death of your brother. While learning that your target is actually not here, which means you can’t yet follow through with your plan, you also hear tit bits which makes you reexamine (a bit) what you thought about the family.
The game ends with a little chase (defining your ending), and left me hungry for more! Granted the word limitation could only give us this short scene, I would play a larger version of this game in a heartbeat (maybe confronting your target? or some sort of break-in to figure out what’s the deal with the daughter refusing to eat).
Paye tes impôts Isabelle ! is a short Moiki game, where you play as actress Isabelle (Nanty, if the end is to be believed), trying to do her taxes last minute. It doesn’t help that she doesn’t remember where she put all her documents (or that you’ll find them in improbable spots)! It is a pretty light-hearted setting with a comical tone, with multiple different endings. It’s silly… and remind us that lying on our taxes doesn’t always pay
Maasdreniev, district d’Azotja is a short hyperlink piece made in Twine, where you read about the history of the Kostin’s family moving to “7 rue des Ramendeurs” a few generations prior, and how they fair now. The narration, with its repetitions and unsaid, paints a very dark atmosphere where hopes and misery cohabit.
Play the game - Custom - French
The text adaptation of Tax Mage, a platformer from the same author.
Taxathoustra is a short humorous and surreal adventure, in which you play as the titular mage, whose best trick: tax evasion. Waking up from a nightmare where he’d lost it all, he leaves his house hoping to win big! Twists and turns occur along the way, pulling you along with some Dr. Seuss-y vibes. It’s a pretty fun short time.
Le Père Potlatch is a a mocking Christmas-Day story, where you incarnate the titular Père Potlatch, who unlike our known Santa, tasks himself with burning received gifts. On his list this year: some rich billionaires and their new toys. It’s as funny as its premise is silly, and definitely satisfying (unless you choose to leave them alone). Happy belated dream Christmas!
Sparing a few words for my own entry, Dénantir, which I started at the last minute, and probably didn’t spend more than 4?h on it, and was the only parser entry of the bunch (it’s not easy to make a parser under 500 words ). It was my first time trying out Donjon.FI, which had been on my bucket list for a while now, which was fun!. Anywho, you’re going grave digging(-ish) in this one!
Some final notes:
Like the Nouvim3000, the Partim500 is always a blast, even if the timing of the jam can make creating a bit difficult (essentially the Christmas break). I kinda found the theme (dénanti) a bit difficult to use this year, mainly because I’d never seen that word before.
The most fun from this jam, imo, is seeing how everyone interpret the theme (there was a bit of a dark atmosphere vs light-heartedness/silly divide between them, not really a middle ground) and the connections/similarities between the entries (set in the same town, the tax/money angle, the revenge/destruction of others angle…).
Another really fun edition this year! It was a pre-New-Year treat!
Play the game - Ink - English (also available in Spanish)
Le Grand Guignol
how to fly a kite is a short interactive piece made in Ink, based on poem by Refaat Alareer. In it, you play as a spirit in a war-torn setting, crossing path with a young child. Being able to inhabit and move objects around you, you help the child to build a kite. While it is mechanically pretty repetitive, the poetic prose shines here. The way it contrasts the bleak environment, revealed bit by bit, with the child’s joy in gathering the materials and building the kite is both haunting and touching.
39 Trillion and 1 is a body horror game made in Twine, in which you embody a virus that infected a woman, with the means to spread further (but at what cost…). There are 6 endings to find (a couple are v similar), depending on your choices.
This was an overwhelming piece to go through, not just because of the lengthy passages filled with gruesomely detailed description of body horror (as the virus take over the body, expanding its reach, and how the body reacts to this) - not really letting you catch a breath - but also in the way it chooses to interact with the environment (the unconscious victim having little to no say in the matter). Those in contact with the virus/infection are subject to pretty graphic internal violence, depicted in a pretty disturbing way (the ghoul-like section, where the infected woman is turned into an infectious puppet is particularly chilling), as the hosts become completely hopeless in the face of the illness (whether they becomes food being toyed with or tool for its infectious goal).
In the excess found in the genre, I felt 39 Trillion and 1 crossing the line into the too much territory, to the point of cheapening the whole, making it look more edgy for the sake of edgy. I don’t think it helped with how the illness being referred to with interchanging pronouns (It/He) or how confusing it changed who was controlling the body (the infected woman, the virus, or the voice (was that the hive mind of illness? something different/godlike? I’m still not sure).
This was particularly most obvious in the section where the woman is not just a body fighting a losing battle against the virus, but having stronger thoughts and voiced opinions, and being able to interact “like a regular person”. Up until that point (and through the other paths), humans were just there, ripe for the taking/infecting, just existing. Almost unreal. But now, two women have names, and background and layers, and the POV switches away from the virus. The switch is pretty jarring and feels out of place.
Play the game - Inform 7
Le Grand Guignol (also part of the Gothic Horror Jam) - Also, I beta-tested this game
No More is a short horror one-room parser made in Inform, in which you, a young woman, are given an opportunity to escape your abusive preaching father before reaching the nunnery meant to imprison you. It uses a simple and limited command list, there is no losing state (merciful) and it includes a StoryMode for non-parser players (or see what you missed).
Stuck in a carriage with the patriarch, which you were forcefully thrown into, you wait for the right moment (and having enough courage) to strike back and set yourself free. On a bright full moonlit night, only a little push is needed to transform yourself. Examining your environment drives most of the story at first, until you get to that culminating point, where it hits that sweet sweet spot of cathartic.
It is most obvious (and pretty neat) in the shift in perceptions of the characters - how the description of the father and yourself change as the story progresses, when the newfound confidence and self-assuredness grows within you. The obvious shift in power marked in the mirroring descriptions of those two characters: your body shivering, which you try your best to stop, leading you to be scolded by the mighty patriarch VS the old powerless man shivering in fear as you tower over him. And that mirror is also seen between you and the objects in the carriage (with the lantern being another cage, the closed curtains as a wall between you and freedom).
It is also interesting how the story uses the werewolf to convey this story of breaking chains: the woman turning to an actual monster to regain agency and power in the unbalanced dynamics, because who else but herself can save her (probably not the nuns). Rather than monster to be feared, a way to freedom.
Roar is a comedic action-focused game in which the animal kingdom has had enough of men and decided to wage war against them. You play a lowly soldier trying to survive to the increasing animalistic mayhem. Because of the focus on the action, it’s pretty fast-paced (expected), which is accentuated by the reading mechanic (scroll to display the next section/paragraph).
On this point, there was a bit of friction when I played, as I often ended up scrolling too far, which would show the next paragraph before I clicked on the cycling choice or display the chapter header (which covered the whole page) before I was done reading. This meant the game either made the choice for me, or forced me to scroll back to read the last missed sentences. But, considering this was completely custom, and made in 4h, it’s still pretty impressive.
Overall, it’s a zany game that doesn’t take itself too seriously, playfully overdramatic, with a fun twist at the end.
Like a Sky Full of Locusts is a western/monster-y parser game in which you play as an Army man in the Far West, whose tale is derived from the titular epic presented by Rattlesnake Yates at the Castle Balderstone Horror Convention in 1969. Returning to the Fort after some unexplained adventure, you find it in disarray, and crawling with monsters. Simple man of arms that you are, you shoot them until they perish/disappear. There’s one major puzzle to unlock the final scene, but as the hint command indicates: just explore and shoot.
The most trouble I had, while playing, was finding the glyphs. While most where in plain sight, a couple were hidden behind descriptions (so I went around the map maybe 4-5 times before finding them all. But that’s essentially my fault for not drawing a map from the start. I was a bit anxious looking at the bullets in my inventory (knowing shooters, it’s always an issue), but was pleasantly surprised that you don’t ever run out (I don’t think I even used any of the other guns available, and still got to the end unscathed) because the game provides and doesn’t let you waste the bullets anyway.
There’s another layer, wrapped around the game, in which we are only privy to by being a guest to the convention, listening to Yates’s epic poems (of which we get snippets through the game, the amount of rhyming is pretty impressive), or the other participants’ criticism of the poetic tale. This entry being essentially my introduction to the Castle Balderstone anthology, that whole section after the first end kinda went over my head.
However, if I were able to add to the other authors’ criticism, I wouldn’t have minded having the choice to decide the face of the Colonel, as the whole mess is essentially his fault, and honestly, considering the damage he’d done in the Fort, doesn’t really deserve being saved just before the end.
Overall, a pretty engaging parser, even with the limited agency you can have, with an intriguing framing (story within a story).
No transcript because the game closed by itself before I remembered to open the transcript on Glulxe…
Die Another Day is a short resource management game made in Twine, where you play as a person who gruesomely dies at the end of every day, only to wake up the morning after as if (almost) nothing happened. And you can’t stop this groundhog-like cycle either - you will die no matter what - only exacerbate it. There are 3 endings, with different outlook on your future, dependent on your choices.
Aside from the obvious but effective metaphor for living with disability/illnesses, it makes an interesting point on the triviality of death. Forced to die again and again, each day, death just becomes an inconvenience: you don’t know when your body will stop working. What if you pass out in the middle of the street or in front of friends? What about the mess you need to clean the day after (bodily fluids/broken belongings)? What if you hurt yourself even more?
And so you must work around it - do you prioritise potential discomfort for an easier tomorrow? or convenience for (financial/social) struggles down the line? While you can prep some stuff, it’s not like you can really plan your day/life when you don’t know your state days/hours ahead - compromises can only take you so far. Your body essentially forces isolation from the world (how can you go out when your body might give out?) and yourself (can you spare the energy to do something for yourself?).
And so you die, every day.
The whole chronic illness metaphor + choices to spend energy/health/money on action reminded me a bit of The Archivist and the Revolution (when you decide what to do with your day/money).
A Puzzled Soul is a short timed parser made in Inform, in which you are trying to escape a creature hunting you, by solving some questionable puzzles to get to the next section. If you take too long solving them, you’re sent back to the start to try again. There are two endings, dependent on your choice at the very end of the game.
Each section has multiple puzzles you can solve (though only one is necessary to get to the next section, and you won’t have time to do them all in one playthrough anyway), with seemingly different difficulty (really puzzled to how to solve some of them, I gave up pretty quickly). It was interesting to get branching in a parser, and giving the player agency in how to get to the next section… which is ironic because you are essentially forced to do awful things to progress and escape the creature (like stealing from a confession box, poisoning a well, or desecrating a grave). Coupled with the sense urgency from the timer, it creates a pretty fun environment.
On the other side, I did struggle quite a bit with the implementation of the puzzles with regards to the timer. Because we have a limited amount of commands before the creature catches you, there’s only so much you can do/test before you’re sent to the start. And when it’s not always clear what you need to do to solve a puzzle (or what command to use to do something, because some are custom, like crossing wall instead of going west, where we’re told we can go). It became pretty frustrating at times, but with a bit of persistence (and Saving at every new room), it is possible to get to the end.
No transcript again, because I forgot to turn it on at the start …
thank you for your review! for what concerns struggling with parser and commands, we are currently working on a new release, which we hope to publish soon
Your Little Haunting is short horror parser, where you get to explore an abandoned house and interact with the limited elements within. In this dark night, your goal is to find a light source. Except it doesn’t go the way you hope it will.
Though under-implemented (the bedroom is essentially empty, some elements not interactible/reachable like the lamp you see through the window), which is understandable considering the Speed-IF time limit, it’s pretty chilling: the empty neglected house come to (un-)life as you interact in specific way, a sort of ghostly mirror to what you did.
But even as ghosts might appear, your presence in this house feels ghostly too. You haunt these halls, turning on/off appliances, moving objects just because. The ghosts themselves don’t seem to care about or acknowledge you… until the very end, when the veil is removed from your eyes.
I would have loved being able to explore/interact more with this dreamy, liminal space, but my stay in this abandoned house was just right.
Fireboad is an action parser, in which you incarnate Captain Kent Decker, a senior fireboat captain of the NY fire department, on the Hudson river, when the ghost of your grandmother appears before you, with dire news: a terrorist is planning to blow up the Big Apple! You ready yourself to thwart its plan, going up/down the Hudson river with your trusty boat.
There are two endings, incl. one bad which is obvious enough (and clearly hinted that you shouldn’t touch the trailer) and one where you save the day. A walkthrough is also provided on the game page, though if you follow the explicit “crumbs”, getting to the end is just a matter of remembering where to go.
Because you are eagerly told what to do, head on, the game feels pretty railroady: the game presses you to do the things it tells you to do, rushing you almost before you can take a breath. It’s a somewhat understandable, seeing as you have an exploding plot in your hands, and you’re a seasoned captain that knows what do to. But it felt a bit like exploring/examining objects around you to be… futile/pointless. At times, I wondered if some of these hints/pressure points would have been better behind the HINT command, for those needing that extra help (especially since notes left around by the ghosts tells you exactly what to do.).
I liked that inclusion of the spectral presence leading you along the way, and how it only appears when you “need” it, or the ghostly objects disappearing when you completed their task. It made keeping track with your task’s progress much easier. Though, the whole Liberty Statue section felt a bit out of place, and stilted a bit the pace of the story, especially considering the urgency of the issue.
Yet, it was genuinely fun to play and I really enjoyed being able to move the boat around the river (that’s such a fun movement function!). And kuddos to the Chief Mate for being so good at his job!
Transcript: fireboat.txt (22.8 KB) (I did use David Welbourne’s map for the locations of each bit, because nautical compass makes me even more confused than a regular NSWE one
You promise is a short Faustian horror game made in Twine, in which you make a deal with a mystical being (devil? or maybe fae with the insistence of giving your name?) to solve your money problems. Like any magical deals, it’s a lot about give and take… and how you take. I found 7 different endings, with only one “good” one.
This was a fun take on the deal-with-the-devil trope, giving you different options to deal with your Honoured Guest, each branch as entertaining as the next. Trying to trick HG into giving you what you want without, essentially, paying the price, was trickier than I thought. Getting away with it is the challenge, and HG will take you up on your words - the exact words you utter. After all, you promise It your words are true.
And the consequences are… varied - your literal words thrown back at you (heart, soul, and all) - and fitting to each path taken (in a sort of monkey-paw kind-of-way sometimes). The styling of that final passage is particularly on point, as tension builds and the danger is imminent. Like a creepy Cheschire Cat about to devour you whole because you slighted it.
Though after the second or third ending found, the timer on the animation drags on a little too long. Great the first time around tho!
One final point on the “good” ending, because while there is a way to best HG and get the money, it doesn’t feel good, or like you actually won. You don’t even touch it when you see it in your account, you wait weeks and months, and still you wait. As if, the second you spend the money, HG will appear still and give you your comeuppance. The tension is still there, lingering. Finding this one last really felt like a full circle moment.
Play the game - Inform 7
Le Grand Guignol - part of The Little Match Girl series
Essentially went into this series blind (first actual game!), so I think some stuff went over my head wrt the series’ lore. So imagine my surprise when LGM tells us in the intro she has A GUN?!?!!?.
Also used David Welbourn’s maps and some of his walkthrough to get through (mainly the end).
The Little Match Girl in the Court of Maal Dweb is a fairly long parser game in Inform 7, where you play as Ebenezabeth Scrooge, the Little Match Girl who can travel through time and space by looking at fire. In this episode of the LMG series, you are tasked to take down a big bad werewolf, called Imrath, who has been terrorising people through time and space. The game includes hints, and as far as I could tell, does not have a failure state.
This was also my entry into the series.
Though you are supposed to be teaming-up with three other characters, you end up doing not only most of the search and prep for the werewolf, but also take it down. The game itself is relatively simple: explore the Woods and the different worlds (through the flames/torches), try to find information about the werewolf and how to take it down, and help the people in those worlds along the way (some back-and-forth between world is necessary).
While I managed to get through most of the game without needing hints (I think I was lucky in the order I ended up visiting the different realms, it made sense which things I had to get to next), it was the final showdown that gave me the most troubles/confusion. Before you can complete your preparations, you come face to face with Imrath and are forced into some sort of mental battle. It really made no sense as to why the violin was there or why I had to play it (my guess is that LGM’s violin play is central/greatly mentioned in another game. Still, it somehow??? takes Imrath down? While the other puzzles made some sense (though I did wish there would have been more use in the kit we get at the start), this one really broke my brain.
I did enjoy the post-game content, going back to the different worlds and heal everyone again with the violin. After taking Imrath down, I figured why not, and just rolled with it. But was a bit bummed to not find the missing element required by Maal (did it ever exist?), or what’s on the pole, or that Mattin didn’t want to read my fortune.
I was a bit apprehensive of the long playtime, especially compared to other Ectocomp entries, but it was pretty fun nonetheless. The different worlds are rich in details and implementation, and super varied. Seeing your companions fall one by one to the cursed state, like some weird slasher movie where the ingenue(-ish) to save the day, made me snort. They must not have forgotten their plot armour
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