While I’ve started a few game-specific threads so far, and like those for the reasons discussed here, I am going to write some full-length reviews and figured I’d collect those in their own thread—so, tada! I’ll also keep an index here of my posts in the per-game threads.
This is a sweet, fairly simple game that wasn’t quite what I expected based on the blurb. The mystery is solved via notes you happen upon throughout the castle, and is incidental to the main objective, which is collecting items of armor (and possibly a sword) in order to defeat a dragon. It took me only about a half hour to finish, and my playthrough started with this infelicitous exchange:
Castle Entrance
You see the entrance to the castle in the east, and it has been thrown open, with no one inside. The entryway is covered in soot and burn marks. Whatever caused this doesn't seem to be nearby anymore. At your feet is a small booklet with the heading "Instruction Booklet"
If you would like instructions, type "examine booklet"
>get booklet
That's hardly portable.
>x entryway
You can't see any such thing.
>x marks
You can't see any such thing.
>x soot
You can't see any such thing.
Having discovered that only important nouns are implemented, though, the rest of my play time was much smoother. It helps that the descriptions are pretty bare-bones, so there aren’t a lot of scenery items to attempt to examine. It’s a fairly minimalist game, requiring mostly simple exploration and straightforward actions. The trickiest puzzle, I think, is one I skipped on my first playthrough and only solved on a subsequent one by looking at the hints. As this implies, the game is winnable without collecting every item, which is a nice point of design. You can face the dragon at any time, but the more items you have, the better your chances. I felt the odds were good enough once I had 13 out of 18 points, and I was right!
The next thing I did after winning was restart and try facing the dragon with zero items, and I just happened to beat the 1-in-20 odds and win again. 
But even though you can theoretically do that on a first playthrough, that would mean missing out on uncovering the story, which would be a shame. It was a delightful surprise to encounter a queer storyline, and I liked the gradual revelation of the details. Also, Ralph is a sweetheart.
I do think the story could have been revealed a little more gracefully; instead of people having conveniently written down every bit of relevant information and then left those notes lying around, why not give me an ability to, say, hear magical echoes of recent conversations? That kind of thing would also deepen the worldbuilding, which was pretty minimal and a bit random. For instance, the year is 1680, and there’s a castle-dwelling king ruling the land, but there’s also a mention of the PC intending to take photographs, and a pizza (which inexplicably contains a key and a ticket) makes an appearance.
The feelies clearly had a lot of effort put into them, and are thorough and helpful as a result. I didn’t need to turn to the hints or map on my first playthrough, but I made use of them on my second to get the points I had missed. I think there’s a lot of potential here, and with some beefing up—implementing more scenery objects to add richness to the world, developing the worldbuilding a bit—this would make a very solid game!
Transcript:
A Warm Reception_script.txt (66.1 KB)
Thank you so much for your review! I’m glad you didn’t feel the need to solve every puzzle the first time around, that always frustrated me with the old Infocom games
Awakened Deeply by R.A. Cooper
This is a fairly brief and mostly straightforward sci-fi puzzler that’s a bit rough around the edges. As shown in my transcript, there were a decent number of times when the first command I tried wasn’t accepted; fortunately, that was never a problem, as it was easy to figure out the correct command (sometimes thanks to helpful customized error messages). Ideally, though, more synonyms would be implemented, and there’s also the classic “you can’t see any such thing” when examining some mentioned nouns. Interactable nouns, on the other hand, often tend to be capitalized and set off on their own line, e.g. “You see Crate here,” rather than integrated more naturally into the room descriptions. There’s also one puzzle that felt very “read the author’s mind” to me (the placard one), and I would never have solved it without the walkthrough.
My other main point of critique is that I wasn’t emotionally invested in the story. You, the ship’s captain, are coming upon the bodies of colleagues who have been wounded or killed, but there’s no emotion in the descriptions of them, and more often than not their only purpose is to provide you with an item or clue you need to progress. For example:
The dead body of, Lieutenant Yostin, lies on the floor. It looks like his left arm has been severed from his body.
>x yostin
He is wearing his dress uniform and dress coat with pockets.
>x uniform
You can’t see any such thing.
>x coat
You can’t see any such thing.
>x pockets
You check Yostin’s pockets. You find a crumpled piece of paper. It has the numbers “364” scribbled on them. You place it in your pocket. “What the hell is this for?”, you think to yourself.
Clearly the PC knows who this person is, but the presence of his dead body elicits no reaction; nothing would be different if he was, say, a desk, with a drawer you could open and get the piece of paper from.
I did enjoy exploring the ship and working my way through the puzzle chain, and the story had me intrigued. I’d just have liked to see more acknowledgement of the horror of what happened on the ship, and thus be made to feel a sense of the stakes, rather than simply being told about them.
Awakened_Deeply_script.txt (67.2 KB)
Thank you for the review. There are a few items to find that offer more backstory on pitker etc. thanks again for playing
10,000% concur and agree. As a Naval historian, I know that Sailors and Seafarers is never ever emotionally detached from their shipmates. And I think this apply more in deep Space than in High Sea.
Best regards from Italy,
dott. Piergiorgio.
String Theory by W Pzinski
This is a well-written, well-made game with some unusual aspects. While it uses the default Twine Harlowe font and color scheme, there is some customization, including the use of text effects and a dynamically-updated family tree. The latter (which is complete with little illustrations!) is a touch that’s both just nice and also proved helpful to refer to during the game (especially when things get more complicated than they first appear… Also, seeing Ben added to it at the end was really sweet). The game also employs hyperlinks well, making use of false choices, cycling links, and even the simple “click to proceed” to control the pacing, ensuring that the player never faces a wall of text.
Players will also soon discover that there are special links (usually highlighted with a text effect) sprinkled throughout that lead to NPC flashbacks. I have to admit that I didn’t initially realize these weren’t the memories of Jay, the PC; this is fully on me, as on a replay I noticed that the first one makes it clear by having the POV character addressed as “Jimmy” twice, but I somehow managed to overlook that on my first playthrough. Even putting that aside, because these sections feel set off from the main story, I think a graphical cue (change of background color and/or font?) would be nice in order to differentiate them. I also wished there was an undo/back button, because sometimes I wanted to look back at the last screen of text (whether to refer back to something or because I clicked too fast and accidentally missed a flashback link).
Now, talking about a different aspect of the flashbacks, at first I thought that they were simply giving me, the player, a look into the NPCs’ pasts, giving me knowledge about them that Jay didn’t have. I liked the way they humanized even the worst characters (looking at you, Uncle Jimmy…), adding depth to portrayals that could otherwise seem stereotypical or one-note. But where it gets weird is when it becomes clear that Jay is experiencing these flashes on some level, too. This gave what had initially felt like a very grounded and realistic game a surreal vibe, injecting some sort of magic into the world that never gets addressed or explained.
I liked the exploration of the complicated family dynamics, but I think the game packed in one or two too many sensational reveals about Jay’s family history; it got a little over-the-top, and the more extreme ones weren’t really explained, which left me more confused than anything else. As discussed here, I also wasn’t sure what the purpose of the ambulance flashback was. And one of the two possible endings felt more satisfying to me (the Venice one, due to the emotional beat of Jay meeting Ben’s grandmother and being immediately accepted, after all he went through with his family).
But while I didn’t feel like all of the elements fully cohered, I was engaged and invested in the story and enjoyed both my playthroughs, and what I saw as the central theme resonated with me: while we can’t choose our families, and we’ll always be stuck with their trauma and mess to some extent because it’s where we came from, we CAN choose the other important people in our life, and it’s possible to find love and acceptance elsewhere even if our families can’t or won’t provide it.
Bad Beer by Vivienne Dunstan
Bad Beer is an enjoyable little game! “Little” in that it’s a pretty quick experience; I reached an ending in less than 30 minutes, but did spend some time replaying. The setup is brief and lets you quickly get into your investigation, which rapidly reveals that there is something supernatural going on…
I enjoyed exploring around the pub and chatting with the several NPCs; the game uses an “ask person about subject” conversation system, which worked well here, as your explorations and conversations reveal new topics to ask about. There are two people, June and Sally, in the kitchen, and sometimes one would chime in while I was talking to the other, or I’d ask one about a subject then ask the other and get a different answer, and both of these things made the conversation feel natural and well developed—the NPCs aren’t just information-giving-machines, but have their own personalities.
Something that clashed a bit with this, though, was the ambient messages (is there an actual term for these?)—the ones that fire every one or two turns and usually repeat in a cycle or at random. They got repetitive fairly quickly, and the ones in the kitchen were sometimes at odds with the ongoing conversation:
>ask sally about pub
“Oh it’s an old pub this, with history back as long as your arm,” says Sally. “Sometimes I wonder if the place is haunted. Right enough we’ve been having cold spells lately. And odd noises.”“I hope the diners enjoy the latest food,” says Sally, hard at work.
The pacing felt a bit rushed, too, especially since the investigating was less about finding clues and more about triggering a supernatural incident that suddenly whisks you back into the past—but that was a very fun and unexpected twist, and I enjoyed seeing the same place in two vastly different time periods. Even better, you’re given the chance to change the past and thereby put to rest the ghost who’s been causing the problems in the present day.
This was a fun little puzzle that allows for experimentation, as you get several attemps before the game moves on. The reset felt a bit random, though, as there was no in-game explanation for why you were given repeat chances (but only three of them). But fortunately it’s easy to continue trying, as the sub-optimal ending conveniently gives you the option to jump back to the beginning of the puzzle.
Either way, after you fail or succeed, the story suddenly skips ahead an unspecified amount of time in the future (back in the present day), with no transition explaining what happened when you returned to the present, how your friends reacted to your story, etc. I liked the wrap-up at Will’s grave with the vicar, but I would have preferred some closure with the pub owners, too, given that they were the reason the PC got involved in all this.
Transcript!
BadBeer_script.txt (52.0 KB)
Thank you for the review and the transcript too! 