Thank you for the review!
1 Like
The Dragon of Silverton Mine by Vukasin Davic
This is a Twine game with inventory and world model that has a pretty compact map set in a mine. The idea is that you are a mage who teleports into a collapsed mine with the goal of evacuating everyone inside.
It’s a classic low-level dungeon crawl, with spells, treasure, obstacles, commerce, and even the eponymous ‘dragon’. All of these ingredients are added in small amounts; most of the game only uses one spell, for instance.
The game doesn’t last too long. Much of the plot is about ‘just in time’ happenings; no matter what thing you need, you just happen to counter exactly that thing.
The game has charming and funny moments, and the text is descriptive. I think I would have liked to have an extra space between paragraphs to more easily distinguish them.
The inventory system was simple to use. I made some mistakes early on, but once I understood how it worked it was great.
It’s odd; when I started this review I had in my mind that the game was lacking in some significant way, but I can’t really point out anything. It has custom CSS, it had good pacing and interface, it had dangerous and safe moments, it has some Chekhov’s guns that go off in satisfying ways. So I’d say it’s a pretty good game!
7 Likes
The Killings in Wasacona by Steve Kollmansberger
This Twine game feels very independent from other Twine traditions, with a gameplay style, styling and structure that seems derived from TTRPGS and gamebooks more than other past IFComp twine games, for instance.
It’s a class police procedural murder mystery. Three bodies have been found, and you have to find the suspects! As an FBI agent, it is your job to investigate, interrogate, and accuse.
The game makes use of skills, which are set for you based on archetypes like ‘Negotiator’ or ‘athlete’. This skills boost d20 rolls, which determine whether yo you fail or succeed.
This gives a random element to the game, and, according to the walkthrough I read after my playthrough, there are other, hidden random elements as well. This makes the game amenable to replay, but makes it difficult to win on the first try, especially without outside knowledge about the game.
The characters were generally interesting. I liked the family members most, then the suspects. The cops seemed fairly generic. The town and college had a vibrancy to them.
Overall, the game seemed very polished. I didn’t agree with every gameplay decision, but I felt like I was playing a quality product while I was in the midst of the game.
7 Likes
I tested this, and everyone should know that when I got the beta, it didn’t have a single bug in it, which made for a very weird testing experience. I spent a lot of time picking at it because of course there’s GOT to be at least one terrible bug in a beta game, but there wasn’t and I was gobsmacked. So yeah, implementation is a major strength of Viv’s.
12 Likes
Big Fish by Binggang Zhuo
This game is a murder mystery (one of several in this comp! Which isn’t bad, there was one year where the 1st, 2nd, and 4th games were both murder mysteries) written in Twine, and fairly short to finish. It makes use of colored text, with red indicating closed off options, yellow with options to return to, and green for things found.
The idea is that some time ago, a girl disappeared, with her clothes being found in your uncle’s basement and her body found eaten by crocodiles. Your uncle is convicted of sexual assault and convicted to death by crocodiles.
The gameplay consists of you searching around various locations in town, gathering clues and talking to individuals. You soon discover that things are far different than you might have been led to believe.
This feels like it might be a first game or a game of a newish author, as it has some classic mistakes new authors make (like having links that you can click over and over that repeat events like finding a key). If it is new, it’s actually pretty good.
I didn’t like the part where we look under a 12 year old girl’s bed and find something undescribed that makes us aroused. I did like the religious background we learn more about.
6 Likes
Birding in Pope Lick Park by Eric Lathrop
This was a pleasant game. It has a goal it sets out to achieve and does it in a descriptive, polished, and entertaining way.
This game is a simulated bird-watching expedition in Pope Lick Park in Kentucky. It looks quite a bit like the parks near me in Dallas.
The highlight of the game for me is the high-quality photography of birds and other parts of nature. The framing of the photos, the resolution, and the colors were all really appealing to me. The description of the trails and woods occasionally felt a bit repetitive but had enough variety to keep my attention for a while.
Overall, a great game for encouraging people to get into birding. Makes me want to rememeber to take pictures when I see something cool in nature!
6 Likes
Campfire by loreKin
This was a pleasant accompaniment to the last game I played in IFComp, Birding in Pope Lick Park. Both games are outdoorsy, real-life games inspired by a love for nature.
This game, Campfire, is written in Ink and doesn’t use images. Instead, it describes a camping trip in words that are often vivid and descriptive, at other times enthusiastic, and at other times merely routine.
You get to buy stuff for your trip, pack, and pick different activities. I enjoyed fishing and fireworks the most.
I ran into a bug where popping popcorn made my game just hit a deadend. But I was very close to the ending and saw the endtext in the game file. Overall, a pleasant, short experience that could be spruced up a bit with more feedback from players.
6 Likes
The Garbage of the Future by AM Ruf
This game uses a choice-based format I haven’t seen before, where clicking on highlighted words opens a pop-up window with both more text (which can have its own highlighted words that open more pop-up windows) as well as action options at the bottom.
This system is genius, and could become a very popular choice if it were easy to write in and implement.
Unfortunately, I think this game was not a good choice to showcase the engine.
The game is about trying to dispose of toxic waste near a creepy forest.
You aren’t really told what to do, except to find a manual. But you can’t read it since it’s dark; there’s a flashlight, but it dies after a few turns. So I ended up with no light source before finding the manual.
I got out and explored, and couldn’t find anything but an empty forest and a truck, as well as some background things that run away if you look at them. I found a hose, but nothing to attach it to. After a while, I restarted the game and used the flashlight right away on the manual, discovering that there was a valve somewhere.
That’s when I found out, by looking around, that the truck is in multiple locations, and which location you’re in changes what you see on it. There was no hint of that given in the game, and that behavior is different than the vast majority of parser games I’ve played. Innovating isn’t bad, but I’m not sure how I was supposed to guess that examining the truck in multiple locales gives different responses.
So I eventually figured things out, and was close to doing my job, and then I died. But that’s okay, because that’s one ending and an achievement.
A lot of the game involves waiting for a long time, but there’s no way to just ‘wait’. I found out you can just talk to Bill dozens of times.
Overall, I think this system is fantastic, and the author’s writing has a lot of highlights, and there aren’t any bugs. I just got frustrated with the gameplay style. I would absolutely love to try a wider variety of games using this system and/or written by this author though.
Edit: I see on IFDB that it has some pretty high star ratings, so I think my experience is atypical, and that people in general may not be frustrated.
8 Likes
Thanks for the review, Brian!
I’ll make sure the comp organizers have a copy for the archive – thanks for the reminder!
2 Likes
This definitely seems like the kind of game that could show up in a textbook or exhibition in the future (since it looks good for screenshots, has great writing, and has an unusual mechanic), which is one reason I’m glad you’re preserving it!
2 Likes
Imprimatura by Elizabeth Ballou
This was a short, lovely game. Your deceased father was a prolific painter, and he left you a choice of 7 paintings in his will. You can sift through the paintings and choose the 7 you want the most.
Each painting has a different style and emotion. The game intuits what you’re going for in your collection, and a segment at the end is based on that, with a series of illustrations (but not of the seven paintings you choose).
This game is like an eclair to me: small, simple, but exquisite in taste. The CSS was nice, the background music pleasant, and the writing such that I enjoyed each sentence.
There’s not much to do outside of selecting the paintings, but this is the kind of game that I don’t think would be served well by expansion; it seems complete in itself. I had a good time (maybe because I chose the happier paintings and it reminded me of good times with both my father and son, and because I’ve gotten into art this year and loved getting new ideas). I do think it would be neat to have the drawings of the paintings in-game, but I understand why they’re not there (hard to make, especially since they’re described as high-quality, and our imagination can perhaps produce a stronger effect).
7 Likes
The Lost Artist: Prologue by Alejandro Ruiz del Sol
I didn’t actually understand this game, so I’ll try to summarize it. It’s a twine goal filled with surreal, non-sequitur type descriptions.
An artist named Leben is stuck in a dead end job due to losing inspiration. They hire a detective to find it, using a raven to communicate that message.
Hmm, there was also a part at the beginning about a heist. I’m going to go replay that part…
Yeah, replaying it didn’t show anything. There’s indication of meta-narrative travel, so maybe the different stories will unite at some point.
Honestly, I’ve really got no clue here. I wasn’t able to construct a mental model of the game’s structure, intent, or world. I will try to do better in the future.
6 Likes
Quest for the Teacup of Minor Sentimental Value by Damon L. Wakes
This is a game made using, I think, RPG maker, not the first IFComp game with that engine (the same author made Quest for the Sword of Justice).
The idea is that your teacup has been stolen and you want to retrieve it. You can opt not too, getting a bad ending. In fact, there are a lot of bad endings!
Most text games don’t have the features found in this game, so when I rate it in ifcomp and on ifdb I’ll focus on the features it has in common with text games, which I’ll describe next. Then I’ll describe the features not common to text games.
The writing is witty, some of the funniest to me in the whole competition. The lampshading of the silliness of the quest, the banter, is just great to me. The characters and settings constantly escalate (I like the ‘Swamp of Instant Death’ or whatever it’s name was). There are enough options to feel like I had at least some freedom, some opportunity to express my personality.
For the non-IF parts:
The ultra-HD tileset used looked weird to me. It reminded me of this meme:
Having to wait for the character to move between each interaction drove me nuts. I blanked out and five minutes later I had been scrolling through Twitter, and tried to remember what I was doing, and realized I had clicked out of this game a while ago to wait for the animation to finish, and came back to it. I steeled myself to continue, but after accidentally picking the wrong option in Satan’s house due to relentlessly hitting the ‘skip’ button (which for some reason is the same as the ‘choose option’ button), and running into two long combats in the forest in a row, I quit, since I had already seen 2 or 3 endings. I am completely uninterested in games incorporating long animations between text like this. I don’t think that would make the author feel bad, as Damon Wakes is brilliant and has done a lot of different media, often to provoke specific responses from readers or judges, so I think getting a strong reaction to the game’s techniques would be a positive thing.
Very funny text though. I would definitely read the rest of the game if I didn’t have to watch any more animations.
11 Likes
Unreal People by Viwoo
This Twine game was much more substantial than I expected and much less.
You play as a spirit summoned by a woman called Baba, a fortuneteller, as you are ripped from nonexistence into existence.
(When I think of Fortunteller Baba, I think of her:)_
You have the power to hop from vessel to vessel, both non-living and living, and it gives you the opportunity to learn gossip.
And such gossip you learn! A cold princess loves a dashing, straightforward man who may hold a dark secret. A monk does not believe all she says she believes. And so on. You gather secrets like scores in games.
Eventually, you also gain the ability to make dialogue choices, allowing you to wreak havoc in others’ lives.
In the end, before plot threads resolve, you become one with everything, and then nothing.
I would like to see the rest of the threads. I did recently teach a class on Hinduism for a few weeks as part of a World Religions course; I didn’t know too much about Hinduism before (besides reading the Bhagavad Gita), but why don’t I try to apply a superficial understanding of Hinduism to this game that may not actually be influenced by it at all?
We can see this game as a representation of the karmic cycle. Existence is suffering, and the endless cycle of new vessels and their attachments, both the good and the evil, and the happy and the bad, are not good. Only true detachment from everything allows us to exit the karmic cycle and escape the cycle of rebirth.
(My apologies for the limited understanding of Hinduism and the game).
Overall, I’m reminded of the game Riverside, which similarly starts out as a normal, promising game and then is abruptly derailed in a shocking, out of world fashion. You can peek at the walkthrough or reviews to see.
3 Likes
I also think this game is riffing off some Hindu concepts, and also didn’t know enough to do more than identify some possible themes – hopefully someone who knows what they’re talking about will eventually play this game and tell the rest of us how the pieces fit together 
(Existence is suffering and the aim being to escape the round of birth-and-death seem way more Buddhist than Hindu to me, though, FWIW – it’s been a long time since I read up on this stuff though!)
2 Likes
Yeah, I don’t know what the main schools of thought are, but the game reminded me of this part of the Bhagavad Gita we were reading in class:
“Now listen, O Parth, as I reveal Buddhi Yog, or the Yog of Intellect. When you work with such understanding, you will be freed from the bondage of karma.
[…]
The wise endowed with equanimity of intellect, abandon attachment to the fruits of actions, which bind one to the cycle of life and death. By working in such consciousness, they attain the state beyond all suffering.”
3 Likes
Welcome to the Universe by Colton Olds
This is a Twine game that alternates between academic treatises in one set of styling and a life-simulator in binary choices in another set of styling. You progress through an entire life while simultaneously reading about the (fictional) author’s thought processes and research.
I thought the life simulator part was pretty fun. It has a certain unusual perspective on the world that to me captures a lot of the weirdness one feels when transitioning from one age group to another.
The scientific part seems intentionally obfuscated. Some of it seems like a reference to way the ‘inner’ game is structured (for instance the scientific part talks a lot about duality and the importance of a fixed binary, while the game consists of yes/no choices). I think that one phrase from it describes itself well: a “verisimilar facade of truth, a frightening pastiche that serves only to bolster the supposed intelligence of the person writing it.”
The game has some meta (or is the word extra-diegetic or something fancy like that?) parts like completing a survey about the game, downloading an update, etc., a part that looks unfinished.
Overall, I liked the opportunity to think about my life, and I liked the way that the game poked fun at personality tests and the kind of vapid summaries they give.
So I think I’ll rate the game on that impression. Witty, nice-looking, poking fun at obtuse academic language, introspective.
Outside of that, someone mentioned that this is a parody of Alter Ego, a very old choice-based game. I had heard it mentioned once or twice and had looked at it in the past, but I revisited it as part of this review. I think that this game definitely suffers from the comparison. This game lambasts the over-emphasis on binaries; Alter Ego has more than just binary options and gives quite a bit of freedom in exploring the game; this game is self-conscious and tries to show the absurdity of life, but Alter Ego does so as well. I’ve heard it said that the best parodies are by those who have a deep love of the subject material, but I didn’t get that feeling here. Now, I don’t even really like Alter Ego and this whole reference idea isn’t stated by the author, so I’m not including it in my rating, but it would be like parodying a hamburger by putting roast beef in a hot dog bun: just revisiting the same basic concept, making it a little more absurd, but not essentially adding anything or doing anything significantly better. (whereas a burger-lover’s parody of a burger could make a really tall burger to make fun of how hard it is to bite into a restaurant burger, or include 20 patties and 25 slices of cheese and sparklers on the top to make fun of supersizing, etc.)
As a final side note I liked how smooth the animations were, (the two I remember are the picture of Conway’s game life and the loading bar).
9 Likes
You by Carter X Gwertzman
I was glad to see the name ‘Carter Gwertzman’ because their (one’s? zher? the pronouns do seem to matter after playing this game, but I don’t see them listed anywhere) games are generally imaginative, creative, and not too hard to complete.
This is perhaps my favorite of this author’s games so far. It uses the idea of fairies or similar creatures stealing names and identities, a very old concept that was popularized in recent years by stories like SCP-4000. I made a game about it this year called Faery: Swapped.
Carter Gwertzman’s game is a color-focused Twine game that makes clever use of CSS styling. You (and the name ‘You’ is important) are someone who has lost their identity in a strange forest. To get help, you have to explore and help others in an attempt to recover your true identity.
There are various mushrooms in the game that can affect your size and color, which directly changes the text in the game. Pronouns can be modified, too.
The game openly operates as well as a metaphor for personal change and growth, where sometimes our self-identity becomes something different than we thought it would be. It reminds me of myself, where I planned for years on becoming a professor at a specific school, and when I didn’t achieve that goal I fell into deep depression (and started reviewing IF as a coping mechanism) and spent the next few years rewriting who I wanted to be in life.
Very glad to have the experience playing this!
8 Likes
A few hours later in the day of The Egocentric by Ola Hansson
This is a neat idea I hadn’t seen before this competition: an interactive comic strip.
It’s four panels, each of which remains fixed with the same general background while a character moves between them.
The story itself is that you’re an off-duty or retired cop who’s trying to uncover a gun shipment. You need to find a way to break into a truck and uncover the truth.
The concept is pretty neat. The game is pretty hard! To fully get it right, you need to replay the same short sequence over and over, getting a little better at it each time. It’s hard to guess what effects actions will be ahead of time, so experimentation is a must.
I tried some of the other linked comics, and the idea definitely seems fun. I’d play more games like this in the future (hopefully a bit easier for my own sake!)
7 Likes
House of Wolves by Shruti Deo
This is a short, heartfelt Twine game about a remote student who feels isolation while also being forced to eat slabs of meat every day due to being a wolf.
It’s a nice blend of anxious mundanity and stressful metaphor that reminds me a lot of Early Twine.
The story itself is pretty simple, a daily routine of boredom and suffering mixed with longing and hope for something better one day.
The writing is where it shines; I loved the explanation of encapsulation and abstraction (which I constantly have to remind students about for IB exams, since they often forget what it means) and how it ties neatly into the other themes of the story. So I think that’s by far the best part of the game, how expressively and neatly it’s written.
5 Likes