I wrote about Repeat the Ending and how we try to justify personal and vulnerable games as legitimate pieces of art to the detriment of the works:
It was fun to figure out how I should write this, and it made me reflect on how I should write criticism moving forward.
I understand the ideas during your article but I confess I donāt follow them to its conclusions regarding Repeat The Ending. To my eyes, Repeat The Ending is doing great. As you say, itās 49th on the 2023 Top 50 Interactive Fiction of All Time list, already. When you say, āthis article will be the first write-up it has received,ā I understand you mean the first that isnāt explicitly a review, but it already has many reviews across venues which are so articulate, I think they amount to write-ups. I attribute the no comments on its itch page to it being a substantial parser game. Non-short parser games generally donāt get comments there. Itch isnāt the home of that culture, nor where it has gone (except in a practical sense - we put games there because it has good tools for comps and jams). I donāt think the game lacks a home any more than the majority of parser games. I donāt think itās filed as a curiosity, nor will it be; itās already been well received in its still-pretty-recent phase.
-Wade
Hi Kastel. Thanks for this write-up! I donāt usually comment on discussion of my work, but you brought up some subjects that are important to me, so I thought Iād say something just this once.
There are two main characters in Repeat the Ending. One is D, of course, and the other is āDrew Cook.ā With Drew Cook, I had a lot of ideas bouncing around in my head about writing disability (Iāve joked that RTE is a āmental illness simā), but I was also interested in the ways audiences respond to difference.
This all being said, I was very happy to see this write-up focus on these issues, since they are so important to me.
I hope I havenāt said too much! Thanks again for your essay, and for playing my games in the first place.
I am (unreasonably) bothered by the statement that this is āthe first write-upā Repeat the Ending has received. So many people have written about it. Iāve written about it in an academic context. It was released just over two years ago, and has received probably more attention than any other parser game released within that period. I think whatās bothering me is not that the statement is incorrect, itās that it denies a whole relevant dynamic of engagement and analysis that has emerged from this personal, experimental game.
This seems a good time to say how grateful I am to everyone who has paid attention to my work. Here at home, we always talk about responses we see to the games (and to Callieās illustrations). We donāt take any of it for granted; itās a gift that has affected our lives for the better.
Is your work publicly available anywhere? Iād love to read it if so!
Technically yes, but itās a 200-page dissertation in Portuguese 
Iāll be ecstatic to send you a link if youāre at all interested, though
Iāve asked the editors to revise this problematic section and I sincerely apologize for this grave error.
As I was trying to write for a general audience, I wanted to say something like that even with the fanfare the IF community has shown, itās unknown in the general public. Of course, IF games in general do not compare to the likes of GTA. But I think thereās a lapse in the games media writing space since they donāt talk about IF.
In revising this piece for word count, Iāve omitted several contexts that would make it clearer what Iām trying to say. I deserve criticism for indeed omitting experiences and engagements since what the piece needs is just a few more words to contextualize my angle.
For transparency, this is what Iāve changed it to:
Despite its small but ardent following in the interactive fiction community , Repeat the Ending doesnāt have a home in the general space. Although it ranks 49th on the 2023 Top 50 Interactive Fiction of All Time list, this article will be the first write-up it has received in the games media writing space. The world is indifferent, if not hostile, to works like it.
I donāt believe this is the best fix I can offer right now, but it is the one I can do right now without bothering the editors too much. Again, I apologize to the IF community.
Sadly I cannot read Portuguese, but I appreciate the offer!