FYI Mike, the dirs are r,f,iw,ow! I never mastered them either 
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That’s entirely fair – I think in the Galaxy Jones thread we realized there were two adjacent puzzles, one of which we found obvious and intuitive, the other very counterintuitive, except we had different opinions on which was which! And I do think your caution on reading carefully and taking things slow is right; for whatever reason I had a harder time doing that with NCBFFTT than I sometimes do, and that definitely led to me missing some solid clues in the sometimes-wordy but well-written prose. On the flip side, the puzzle or two right after the one you’re on were the ones that I most thought were only plausibly solvable with hints, so perhaps your opinion might soften after finishing 
Yeah, definitely – it scratched a unique itch, and it is rewarding to push through the challenges.
This is definitely a challenge (and for that matter, one I’ve run into while failing to fully resolve myself when wearing my author’s hat). Since these are text games, it’s natural to want to have lots of text, especially when it’s fun, well-written text, but it can lead to player fatigue, especially when they think they’ve seen it before. Actually, now that I think a bit more on that example I mentioned:
I think a major reason I missed the clue is that the second part of the passage is identical to the death sequence when going into the hole in the depot; my eye naturally jumped to the bottom since I saw the death message, and then my brain assumed the early part must be basically the same, too, given that in both cases I was entering a tunnel to the cult’s base and getting caught. So while it makes sense that the cultists’ response would be the same in both situations, the puzzle might work better if the death sequence was a brand new one, so that lazy players like me might pay closer attention? I dunno, just a thought!
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II assume you’re talking about the Toenail clippers of Death in the jar and the Wrath of God Mirror of Doom mounted on the statuette
I spent half a playsession treating these as one single puzzle. I tried throwing the jar at the crowd from afar, putting it down in different places as a boobytrap, timing it so the Clippers would burst out just as the crowd stormed in after I activated the EF-burst.
All this because I had this idée-fixe that I had to eliminate the crowd before using the Death Ray on the Ward of State.
When nothing worked, I let the game simmer in the back of my head for hours. And it clicked!
I had been treating the Clippers as a solution to a puzzle. I flipped this and regarded them as an obstacle in its own right. After all, I already had a perfectly good weapon of mass destruction on the Plaza, the Mirror of Doom.
Separating the two made the whole thing fall into place. Get rid of the metal Clippers with the Transmutor → acid resistant glass jar → dissolve safe (I already had the “dissolving”-concept firmly in my head from when I tried to get some of the corrosive disinfectant from the showers).
I did need a nudge from @keturion to remind me that I had an accomplice on the Plaza who could help with adjusting the Mirror of Doom’s aim. I had previously been looking to aim it at the crowd with the wrench, but there were no bolts to loosen or tighten on the statuette. When the author mentioned an accomplice, it didn’t take long to see the solution. It did take a lot of experimenting before I found the correct command to get Tony to aim the Mirror for me.
btw: Wrath of God → Deus Irae. Funny!
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This CONTROL interview is killing me!
I’ve had a good share of varied Death scenes. I can’t find a satisfactory answer.
I’ve tried accusing just about every character I can remember. Ati, Nur Dular, Tony, Silia, the bomb delivery guy, myself, (even CONTROL itself; unfortunately the game doesn’t allow that…). They all get me killed. I’ve tried being truthful, deceitful, doubtful, and a random mix of those options. How did you manage to survive this interrogation?
tagging @keturion too. (Not that it’ll do much good with the notifications down…)
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Yeah, it was this one and the mirror, not the jar puzzle, that I was thinking of (though I loved seeing your thought process on the mirror!)
Hmm, let’s see…
I mostly just trial-and-errored my way through this; it was usually pretty clear if I’d botched things. The general structure was to just use YES/NO/MAYBE/SORRY to get me through each individual question, then there was a final question where I needed to ACCUSE someone. Does that help? If not try the next paragraph.
You need to ACCUSE NUR as the final move (maybe using the full name is throwing things off, or you’re doing it too early?
If none of that helps, ping me again and I’ll reconstruct the exact sequence from my transcript.
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Protocol, by 30x30
As I write this, there’s a forum thread bandying about the question of what counts as “literature”. There are a lot of answers to that question – with the only correct one being the unsatisfying Potter Stewart “I know it when I see it” line – but wherever you choose to draw your boundary around capital-L literature, Protocol sits comfortably inside its confines. Sure, the scenario is a pulp sci-fi standby: you wake up, with a shaky memory, on a space station on the verge of disaster, and need to push yourself to the utmost to fix things and (hopefully) survive. But the method of the telling, not to mention the issues the game’s actually concerned about, are more Stanislaw Lem than Prey.
First style, then substance. Protocol is far afield from the default Twine visuals, with a dark, cybernetic style that oozes cool without being overdone. This is of a piece with the prose, which is dense, inward-tangled, chilly:
Observatory Station Calypso-54414d, an orbital stellar observatory under the command of the UIPSC, housing an astronomical infrared survey telescope pointed at some distant patch of stars. It measured distortions in light and heat, peering back along the curve of time to the very start, when the universe was confused and aflame. It was looking for
No. That’s not right.
You were looking for
You were looking down at your hands. You were looking down at the lines in your palms and the gently swaying shadows from the gently swaying lightbar that hangs half-detached from the ceiling.
You were looking for the words.
When I read this, I cooed in delight; this is how I like my sci-fi, closely-observed and scientifically grounded with literary verve making the hard technical detail going down smooth. Protocol is generally written to this high standard, getting even more pleasantly rich and heady when it delves into the protagonist’s subjectivity, with disoriented perceptions of the catastrophic present juxtaposed with clear but low-context memories of their life before. With that said, there are some moments of overreach, like this one:
It looks the part, cramped ceilings and a narrow catwalk suspended above the most fundamental construction of the station, metal and carbon composite, arterial pipes and venous branches of sheathed wires, a pseudo-neural pneumatic network, a beating heart whose cancerous ambition has escaped the confines of the slatted floors.
There are some good images here, but it’s too busy – all of these organic metaphors point in a
consistent direction, sure, but the various tube-systems surrounding the heart, the lungs, and the brain are reasonably different, with quite different associations, so throwing them all in muddies what could have been a more striking metaphor.
There’s a little too much repetition, too. There are whole paragraphs that are repeated verbatim, which is clearly an intentional choice to convey the cyclical nature of the protagonist’s experience (more on that later), but I found sometimes broke the game’s spell as it led me to skim forward to look for next new piece of writing. There are also a few stylistic tics that Protocol employs a few too many times, like the trick above of longer, denser paragraphs alternating with paragraphs consisting of a single short sentence fragment; the first few times, it’s very effective, but after that the law of diminishing returns kicks in. It also sometimes gets a little too flowery for its own good (I couldn’t figure out how the New Game+ mode was supposed to work, because when I clicked it I was given the option to either start anew or return, either of which seem like they could apply to starting a NG+ playthrough; I suspect I clicked the wrong one, but I’m not fully sure!) Let me emphasize, this is the kind of writing that I like, and it’s executed quite well – but some tightening could make it really great.
As for what the game’s about and how it plays, I similarly have praise for what Protocol accomplishes leavened by some execution criticisms that made it land a little less strongly than I wanted to. The basic structure is well-defined, with the protagonist’s desperate attempts to save the space station by attempting increasingly-heroic repairs juxtaposed with her scattered memories of her life before the crisis, and her stream-of-consciousness doubts and reflections about who she is and what she’s trying to do. While the opening segments of the game are perhaps a bit too straightforward, with barely any choices and rather quotidian tasks, it quickly hits its stride, and does a good job creating exciting sci-fi challenges with cool visuals, plausible danger, and significant choices, while the more psychological segments are sufficiently pacy and high-stakes that they don’t bleed off too much narrative momentum. This is an impressive balancing act, unifying the literary and genre aspects of the piece in a clear, satisfying way.
Here’s the but, though: for all that, my experience of Protocol was much more intellectual than emotional, admiring the craft with which it was put together while not finding the questions it posed emotionally engaging. This is mostly, I think, down to a series of authorial decisions that are reasonable on their own terms but combine to reduce the impact of the game. Chief among these are the related decisions to start in medias res and make the flashbacks pointing to the protagonist’s backstory fragmented and opaque. This approach makes for an exciting opening and ongoing puzzle-box engagement through the middle, but for me it weakened my investment in the protagonist. There were occasional bits of flashback that I found quite compelling, but it was often hard to connect them to each other, or to the present-day action of the game. In particular, the flashbacks posit the protagonist as someone who’s sacrificed personal relationships for their scientific ambitions, but with those relationships only receiving fleeting, vague gestures – and the scientific ambitions not even getting that, for the most part – the dilemma felt rather inert to me.
Again, I can see the reasons for doing things this way (and beyond what I’ve mentioned above, the questions around the protagonist’s identity given what appears to be repeated cloning might feel less compelling if we were given a more complete look at the arc of their experiences). But as a result, when I got to the ending, while I recognized it as a satisfying way to resolve the issues the game had put into play, with some real moments of beauty, I felt like I was held at something of a distance; tellingly, while you are offered a significant final choice that should imply radically different things about the protagonist’s journey, I didn’t find any of the three options worked any better or worse for me than the others. This bespeaks a pleasant openness of interpretation, but it also feels like a slight hollowness at the core of an otherwise satisfying, intelligently put-together game. I think the author deliberately chose to prioritize thematic and structural considerations over character and narrative ones, which, while risky, is a gamble many literary authors make; I admire the risk and think a lot about Protocol works very well, but here I’m not sure the gamble fully paid off.
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Thank you for the review!! Everything you’ve pointed out is something I was conflicted on during the writing process, so it’s definitely going to be a part of the learning process too. A lot of the issues surrounding identity/the protagonist that have been mentioned to me are part of something I should have made a lot more clear - the player character is not the person who the memories belong to, the station is responsible for both the memories and amnesia. I also get where you’re coming from with the ending choices - they’re intended to be very open and also provide a way of “looping” the game for NG+ purposes, same as the verbatim repetition of paragraphs, though most of those have subtle differences to their predecessors, the structure is meant to be very strongly similar. The endings are also meant to feel hollow, a kind of Pyrrhic victory, but again, could have been conveyed better. All in all - I’m still learning - this is just my third year writing as a hobby, and my first completed project, and I really do appreciate this feedback and all the other feedback I’ve gotten.
As for the NG+ mode:
[quote=“Mike Russo, post:47, topic:61553, username:DeusIrae”]
I couldn’t figure out how the New Game+ mode was supposed to work, because when I clicked it I was given the option to either start anew or return, either of which seem like they could apply to starting a NG+ playthrough; I suspect I clicked the wrong one, but I’m not fully sure.[/quote]
“Start Anew” resets the game state (fresh playthrough), and “Return” keeps the game state. Admittedly, the text in that menu was a last-minute decision, the options could be explained far better.
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fwiw, for me at least I thought the text led me naturally to this conclusion. I just didn’t want to spoil it. MIKE. :]
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Ah, I’d actually wondered whether that was the case; there were definitely indications that that’s what was going on, but between not being sure my interpretation was right, and not being sure how to discuss the protagonist in a spoiler-free way if that were the case, I left that interpretation out of my review. So I agree that you could have hit that note a bit harder – certainly, I think there was room to explore what that situation means for the protagonist – but wanted to reassure you that that plot point did come through at least a reasonable amount!
Yeah, I think this all came through; the emotional affect around this I thought was a bit muted, but the structure and themes felt well considered to me.
Wow, this does not read like a debut effort; it’s very controlled and sophisticated. Congrats!
Oops, yeah, I picked the wrong one! I flipped interpretations a couple times, and almost convinced myself that Return was the right option, except I think it’s listed second? So I second-guessed myself and figured the first option would be to confirm the selection, and the second would be to cancel out, so that’s how I got myself into trouble
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The Withering Gaze of the Earth, by Emily worm
This is the second choice-based horror game set on an island of the Festival – we’re not quite at clawfoot bathtub territory, I suppose, but it feels like a surprisingly specific coincidence. Where Etiolated Light is thinky and gothic, though, Withering Gaze of the Earth is shorter and punchier, leaning on grand guignol spectacle and emotions. Per the about text, it was written under unexpectedly-constrained circumstances – the author came down with COVID close to the deadline – and these process challenges do show up in some occasionally typos and infelicities in the text, as well as a climax that could use some sharpening. I still liked it very much, though – it’s punk-rock horror with a sympathetic protagonist and minimalist but engaging gameplay.
The setup here is that the protagonist, who’s a sort of vampire who was brought back from the dead via demonic possession, has tracked their mother to this isolated island, intent on a final confrontation – said mother subjected the protagonist to isolation and abuse based on their new condition, as well as plotting to destroy the world through eldritch means, plus also she’s currently dead but planning to come back and apotheosize as a god. Oh and you’ve got a handler who keeps you on track via an intermittently-cutting-out radio, and the handler is also your wife. This is a lot, none of which is presented with any especial subtlety (the premise seems pretty clearly meant to resonate with a certain kind of trans experience, for example). But that’s OK, because it is presented with energy and commitment.
While, as mentioned above, the prose is a bit rough – largely issues involving sentences with too many clauses or commas – it’s still pretty fun, and evocative to boot. Here’s the protagonist’s melodramatic reflection on their genesis as a monster, which only came after they technically biologically died:
“It didn’t last. Death calls to death, and I was only dead for a few days before a fragment of a dead god lodged itself in my heart, and I awoke screaming, with a maelstrom of blood as the fire of my rebirth.”
I’m pretty sure “With a Maelstrom of Blood as the Fire of my Rebirth” was a Queensrÿche b-side from 1987. I also really enjoyed this bit of dialogue from your wife/handler explaining a magical doohickey you come across:
"It’s probably an ontological engine, then. They use them on the island to like, purify the water. Make it not saturated with the essence of death, or whatever. You know.”
The magus as Valley Girl is an underdeveloped archetype; I unironically love this. But the high points aren’t all silly; the flashbacks relating the protagonist’s persecution by their family were effective, I thought, and some of the imagery-focused section titles attained moments of poetry.
In terms of the gameplay, it’s mostly linear and exploration-focused until the final confrontation with your mother, where significantly different outcomes are possible based on your choices. While the game requires both parts to work, I found the former notably more engaging than the latter, though. Partially this is just because poking around on a haunted island is fun, and the protagonist’s wife is also fun, so when these elements dropped out, I missed them. But it’s also the case that I found the mother character a bit of a let-down. When she’s discussed in the earlier sections of the game, the harm she’s done to the protagonist makes it seem like she should be an expert manipulator and gaslighter. In practice, though, I’d have to agree with the protagonist’s accusation that she’s (just) a dick, happy to sling insults at her daughter but not especially emotionally sophisticated and more focused on monologuing than actually carrying out her plan. Thus, while the basic concept of the confrontation makes sense, requiring the protagonist to directly confront and reject their past bullying in order to move forward, the conclusion of the arc maybe felt too schematic for my tastes.
The fact that I found the ending to be a bit of a damp squib isn’t an unmitigated con, though. For one thing, it helped motivate me to replay and see if I could get a different result, and for another, the comparatively-lackluster baddy allowed the protagonist and their wife to occupy more of the stage. This is an easy game to recommend to anyone who finds the concept engaging, especially if there’s a post-Comp update to smooth out some of the remaining rough edges.
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I enjoyed the work as well, and am not intending to ‘pile on’ or somehow mock it.
But I nearly lost a mouthful of coffee reading this line.
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Effectively starting the circle anew in the next incarnation of you, with the experiences (and memories? and gauntlet?) of previous you preserved??
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Exactly that, yes. No gauntlet though, you have to earn that back again.
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Wow! I just finished 10 minutes ago and I’m still recovering from the experience.
I will have to return and go through the New Game+ feature. It seems it should add to the cyclic tailbiting-snake nature of the narrative a lot.
My brain needs to rest first though. Maybe a more lighthearted game in between.
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That’s the intention, yes. Also, if you refuse to answer some questions in the New Game+ Prerequisite section, you’ll get a new ending that lies outside the narrative…
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Well, this hasn’t been my favorite last couple weeks. What started as a short reviewing hiatus to accommodate a busy work-week (overnight business trip followed by a few all-day trainings) extended somewhat when my son got an ear infection and decided he was only going to be sleeping on daddy, not in his crib – somewhat putting a crimp in things since most of my IF time is post-bedtime.
And then it turned out the ear infection was the least of our worries, since the three simultaneous viruses Henry’d picked up from day care were starting to put him in respiratory distress. Thankfully, he’s well on the mend now, but we’ve spent the better part of the last ten days in and out of various hospitals – turns out the only thing worse than having to rush to the hospital is having to rush to the hospital again because they discharged you too early the first time.
Anyway, I’m very grateful because it could have been a lot worse – we were mostly just in for monitoring and a little bit of an oxygen boost when he needed it, and the only medium-term effects are that his sleep schedule is garbage and he’s still a bit hyped up from watching way too much TV since there wasn’t much else to do in that hospital room. And we’re fortunate enough to have lots of support at home and at work, so there’s not really anything on fire on either front.
There is rather a lot to catch up on, though, so while I will complete this run of reviews, it might not be for a little bit – apologies to the authors I left somewhat in the lurch. I’m very much looking forward to getting to these last games, all the more so after these last couple weeks.!
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Very glad (and a bit relieved) to hear from you!
Ah… The hospital rush. Now there’s an example of the adrenalin&panic-boosted thrill ride that parenting can be. Good to hear your son made it through ok.
Have fun with the rest of Spring Thing. It’ll probably be neat for the authors to have the review-season prolonged into post-Thing time.
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Take care, Mike, you and your family.
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Stay safe, Mike and take care of your family.
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I too found your sudden absence conspicuous… so glad everyone’s okay!
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