Fragrant blooms and flowers to sniff. Fresh green leaves to nibble. An abundance of IF to lick!
Most of Spring Thing will have to wait until next week, we’re going to France for Easter vacation.
But I couldn’t resist this one succulent little sprout:
A Quiet Scurry (Moss & Quill Studios)
An ittybitty mouse goes about its nightly routine. There are tasks to do and dangers to avoid, a belly to fill and sweet rest to seek.
A delightful little slice-of-life, if you keep in mind that each thin slice of this mouse’s life could be its last. I’m impressed at how well this game succeeded in communicating the immediacy of the mouse protagonist’s needs and impulses. Thirst is. Fleeing must. For a short while, I very much enjoyed inhabiting the fluffy fur of this cute and brave mouse.
The Universal Robot (Assembled by Hex) (Agnieszka Trzaska @agat)
The first few exploratory clicks in the starting room of this game already had me filled with a mixture of emotions. There’s a burning satire of capitalist hyperefficiency, resource-draining profit-hungry shortsightedness, and subsidy-guzzling greenwashing scams which made me angry. All this was presented in a matter-of-factly deadpan tone which I found hilarious.
The satirical tone subsides somewhat once the door opens and the rest of the map becomes available, but it reverberates in the mind of the player, colouring the examination of many objects and events throughout the game.
The writing is sharp and witty, without becoming a barrage of puns and jokes which brings down many satirical/comedic games. Several times, a clever turn of phrase or an unexpected event had me giggling, but the game never took its focus off the puzzles and end-goal to indulge in mere silliness. (Which is not to say that there is no silliness…)
The world-model with its movement around the station, interaction with machines, and handling of portable objects worked consistently, with all changes refelcted in the text on repeated examination. My one point of friction was in the handling of the inventory. The game generally works with USE [item]. This gave no problems at all with objects in the room descriptions (there are nifty cogwheel icons!), but I was a bit confused at first at how to use one inventory item on another item also in my inventory. This didn’t feel so intuitive, but maybe that’s just me.
A very enjoyable puzzle-clicker in Agnieszka’s recognisable and appreciated style. I had a lot of fun going back and finding some alternative endings. There are twelve of them for the most completionist among us. I settled for four, of which two had me grinning ear-to-ear: training the robot on my own drunk brain, and putting the training helmet on the secretary bird…
Fun! (Be sure to check out the Gizmo-ring around the resource planet!)
This started off great, but it soon sank into a bog. Although the game has the word “plot” in its title, there was none whatsoever I could discern.
What was there was a repetitive series of locations thrown together in a wholly inconsistent world, with the same few tactical choices that I never figured out. There is probably a strategy for when to use which option, but I wasn’t engaged enough to bite down.
At first, I was excited at the pleasantly gloomy descriptions and the dark atmosphere. After about ten turns however, I felt as if I was being pummeled with globs of a Lovecrovianese thesaurus which had been thoroughly blendered into a porridge of monotonous randomness.
So, good attempt at atmosphere, but not enjoyable as a game to me.
Sorry for the long silence. I caught some COVID variant and I can’t even focus on a TV-show, let alone interactive reading. I’ll get back on track as soon as the fog lifts.
(Mostly healthy now. Still a bit foggy in the head and raspy in the throat, but at least I can read again.)
The Coffee Cake Caper (dariusf)
"They don’t care about how patient the fermentation was, and how complex the flavour is as a result, just whether there are chocolate truffles in it or not. Gosh, I hate the truffles so much.”
This line made me laugh while at the same time nodding my head in agreement. It’s a sign of the times, too much attention going to the superficial bells and whistles, and not enough feeling for the deeper heart of things.
Not that The Coffee Cake Caper means to be a thorough cultural critique, it’s a rather whimsical detective story about a mishap at a baking festival. But underneath its low-stakes investigation in what appears to be no more than a bit of mischief, it does touch upon some important themes. Superficiality vs authenticity, the driving force of popular applause, lingering love and simmering frustration,…
I had some trouble with the interface at times, finding it interrupted the flow and pace of the story. On the other hand, it did force me to take a step back and consider my hunches each time I was accusing someone of lying, which is what a good detective is expected to do, right?
The characters were a bit one-sided, but they were convincingly so. The part of their personality that was presented was the only bit relevant for the short story.
I had fun, and I’m going to buy some fresh sour-dough bread from ourt local bakery tomorrow morning for breakfast!
This one jumped at me! The compact introduction immediately sets the tone: Mission: Urgent, PC: Cocksure.
The setting is Bondesque, saving the world with your superior secret agent spy skills is just what you do.
The writing keeps up the tempo, short, pointy sentences like stingers. It’s a short piece, but I found the few choices it provided offered me real options in how I wanted to direct my PC.
“They were very scared and they ran for their lives. James found a way to the city, but Emma didn’t make it. Nobody knows what happened to her.”
The matter-of-factness of that statement made me laugh. Actually, this entire game had me smiling throughout. It reminded me of a storytelling game we would play around the campfire when I was little: one person starts with a short story, the next person continues, and so on… (Cadavre Exquis I think?)
It always lead to the most insane situations and absurd endings, and so does this game. The credits say that it was written by “T.H.K./3x13 years”. I’m assuming that means that three thirteen year-olds were laughing their asses off while trying to top one another with ever zanier continuations.
Good to hear you’re feeling better! I was just thinking how, with so many review threads wrapping up, it was going to get pretty quiet during this last stretch of the Festival. (Though no pressure, of course; I was really tired for weeks after my last bout of Covid even after other symptoms had gone away. That recovery period can take a while.)
“The maid enters the room. The king bites her, but she doesn’t find it weird since the king throws a lot of tantrums.”
I was still giggling after playing the previous Senica game, and then The Underground Dungeon hits me with a line like that. I’ll be under the table for a while.
It started a few choices earlier actually, when faced with the standard adventure-obstacle of a missing key, one of the options is to poison the king! I played through a bunch of storylines, and they’re very, ehm…, imaginative. And mostly funny.
Here, the game is credited to “A.S.M/3x14 years”, so I suspect a similar dynamic was at work as with WHAT A MESS.
Great fun to witness these authors minds rumbling and rolling all over the playground of their imaginations.
An eerie, moody piece. Self-investigation, acceptance, struggle. Too short to really delve into its main theme, a bit simplistic but effective and thoughtful.
Similar to the previous one, but here the struggle is more externalised. Temptation of one-ness. Freedom from individual concerns, or freedom with (because of) personal thoughts, fears, hopes…
Thank you, Rovarsson, for once again reviewing so kindly on our young authors’ entries. I will pass them on to the team. It is the most rewarding feeling in this comp to read and share your comments.
