Tabitha's ECTOCOMP 2024 reviews

Hoping to write at least one more full review, but for now, a compilation of brief thoughts on various games! Will likely do another post or two in this format in the next few days/weeks.

Roar
The UI is cool, but I accidentally skipped several choices because I scrolled a little too far too soon. Having a button you have to click to lock in the choice before the next text will show up would be nice. Plotwise, I don’t think I’m the target audience for this, but I had fun with the obstacle course scene!

The Column
Intriguing circumstances and dilemma; I love “who can you trust?” as a plot/tension driver. I wasn’t sure what I was meant to be basing my decision on, though. I had thought that doing the ritual with either of the surviving people who went into the cave would get me killed, so I tried to guess who that would have been and avoid them. On my first playthrough, I picked the botanist for the first ritual and the archeologist for the second, which got me killed. I then went through all the other possible combos, dying every time. Finally the only thing left to try was picking the archeologist first and then the botanist, and that indeed was the answer. But I’m not sure why this worked and the reverse order didn’t?

your life, and nothing else
I enjoyed playing through this, and did so multiple times. I’m sold on the interpretation that the setting is an afterlife, but feel like some things are still eluding me—in an intriguing way, though, not a bad way. I collected these quotes about discrete entities vs. things as one:

Quotes

“You wonder what he sees. The hearts? The swords? The wolf?”
“Too much in the posters all worlds at once like mirrors”
“They are an an they are a one a whole”
“You’d always know that all three are one and –”
“You know without knowing: the wolf.”

Last-Minute Magic
I spent a lot of time with this game and had a ton of fun, both evidenced by my detailed notes and map here. Even being the completionist that I am, though, I felt satisfied without discovering the last two items; I didn’t want to have to go through the whole map yet again. But I quite enjoyed the several hours I spent with it!

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