Tabitha's IFComp 2025

Competitions IFComp
1

I don’t have the energy to do lots of full reviews right now (although I have done one, posted directly to IFDB), but I figured I can at least write some short reactions! Here’s the first batch, in no particular order…

Fable by Sophia Zhao

I love a low-stakes, character-focused fantasy story, especially when it’s queer. This one is a story of queer longing, and what the PC is willing to do to see (some form of) that longing fulfilled. There are layers to it, and it and takes some surprising turns. After finishing I backed up a bit to see some of the other possible endings (I’ve found three so far, but there may be more).

Clickbait by Reilly Olson

I had a really fun time with this one. There were some parser struggles, but I always figured out the right command in the end (I suggest reading the “help” text upfront, as it has a list of verbs and command phrasing), and I quite enjoyed the strong narrative voice. The camera was a fun device with both a narrative and a puzzle-solving purpose, and there are fun extra touches, like that you can wear some of the trash you find and take goofy selfies with it. And catering specifically to me, there’s even a character who’s obsessed with rats!

Fantasy Opera: Mischief at the Masquerade by Lamp Post Projects

This was fun as both a mystery game and as a historically-inspired opera-focused work! The author has clearly done their research, and I loved being immersed in the details of instruments, musical keys, and opera politics; there’s enough to provide good flavor, but not so much as to be overwhelming. I was able to figure out most of the mystery, and the in-game hint system pointed me toward the piece I was missing. There are also bonus achievements, and I enjoyed replaying to earn some more of them and explore different options.

Slated for Demolition by Meri Something

This one gave me a lot of feelings, and whenever that’s the case with a work I always have trouble putting said feelings into words. I’ll just have to settle for, it’s a really strong work about trauma and how it ripples out and affects your whole life.

HEN AP PRAT GETS SMACKED IN THE TWAT by Larissa Janus

Confession: I haven’t really played the Dick McButts or Rod McSchlong games; I tried both out but lost interest pretty quickly. :sweat_smile: But this entry promised something different, and it certainly delivered! (I got the game-y version with the cards.) It’s both funny and full of biting commentary on the UK government and being trans in 2025.

The Witch Girls by Amy Stevens

This one uses genre horror to capture some of the real-life horror of being a teenage girl. Social pressures, identity struggles, friendship with people who are actually shitty friends, desire mixed with fear and uncertainty—it’s all explored through some attempted witchcraft and the variety of results those attempts can get you.

20 Likes
2

High on Grief by Bez

This one resonated a lot with me. I was glad to get to follow all the threads of Yancy’s thoughts/feelings/reactions about/to their mother’s death; there are a lot, and some of them are contradictory, because this is a situation where of course their feelings are complex and messy, and the game did a great job exploring that. While initially I thought some of the convos with the friends felt too neat, too pat, the game itself called this out, with Yancy’s sort-of diary entries reflecting that while they may have told their friends they agreed with their advice/found it helpful, really they just said what their friends wanted to hear while knowing things aren’t actually that simple or easy.

There’s also a meta element where Yancy talks to us, the players, about the fact that they are the main character in a game. They wonder whether they’re really a person, and essentially ask us to treat them like one, because there is a real person behind their existence, who created them and has given them some of their (the creator’s) own trauma and complex emotions. This made me think about the vulnerability of sharing a work like this, and how it’s reviewers’ responsibility to take care with how we approach writing about it, because when we judge the characters or emotions on display, we could very well be judging a real person.

4 Likes
3

Imperial Throne by Alex Crossley

Unmarked spoilers ahead

Expanding on some of what I said in this thread, I had fun playing this one, but ultimately, looking at the walkthrough (after playing through several times without it) kind of ruined it for me. Initially, I really enjoyed exploring the possibility space, both as far as testing out commands and, on replaying, being more strategic and seeing if any of my strategizing would pay off. After five playthroughs (some of which, admittedly, were not actual attempts to do well), I thought I had a pretty good handle on what was and wasn’t possible. But when I cracked open the walkthrough out of curiosity, I saw multiple possible actions that I’d never thought of.

The walkthrough starts out with a list of useful commands, which I think should have been included in the game itself; players could have a choice of whether to view them or not, but I think the player should definitely be made aware of their existence. Especially because I learned from the walkthrough that some of my attempted actions that had been rejected by the game were actually possible, I just hadn’t been using the right phrasing. Implementing more synonyms and/or including helpful failure messages that point the player toward the correct wording would help with that issue, too.

But what’s a bigger deal to me is that, pre-walkthrough, I’d concluded that ending the game with some level of failure was inevitable—whether the empire being completely overtaken, or its borders shrinking. And I liked that; the game seemed to be saying “No matter what you do, empires are doomed to fall.” But the walkthrough presents a series of commands that leads to an ending where you’ve not only held onto your current territory, you’ve expanded and conquered others’.

Given that this is the only path presented in the walkthrough, clearly the author considers it the ideal ending. With Drew Cook’s essay on “The Game Formerly Known as Hidden Nazi Mode” fresh in my mind, I couldn’t help feeling that my whole experience of the game had been deflated by this authorial intervention. My own interpretation went out the window, replaced by “Oh, it’s just a game where you win by growing your empire.” The game’s fantasy world is very generic/traditional, with barbaric tribes harassing your borders and women appearing only as courtesans or brides. Before, when left to interpret the game myself, I could see these as purposeful choices; now, though, they just seem lazy.

6 Likes
4

The Tempest of Baraqiel by Nathan Leigh

I really liked this one… up until the ending. I enjoyed inhabiting the main character and exploring the unique situation they (she?)[1] found themself in, pulled from academia into the military to work on a top-secret translation assignment, with the shadow of their deceased war-hero mother constantly looming over them, influencing everyone’s perceptions and expectations. But ultimately, the payoff was disappointing. In my first playthrough, after making basically zero translation progress, the outcome of the climactic moment came down to a random guess—which I got wrong, to disastrous consequences.

Fortunately I had enabled the “back” button and could easily try different choices until I got a “good” ending, but even this one felt very abrupt and perfunctory and was unsatisfying. Both endings referenced a character who I hadn’t heard of before, leaving me feeling like I had missed something important. But with the “save” function broken, replaying over and over until I discovered the key path(s) felt like more trouble than it was worth (until today, when I opened the JS file and poked around a bit to get some guidance. But obviously, having to resort to that is not ideal!). This feels like a game where you need to see multiple paths to get the full picture, but it fights against itself by not making it easy to do so.

  1. Initially I assumed the MC was a man because I’ve used the name “Kel” for a male character in my work, but then I realized I never saw a gender specified during any of my playthroughs, but then on replaying more today I saw a scene where I think someone starts to call them “ma’am”. But I’ll stick with “they” since it isn’t clearly specified. ↩︎

8 Likes
5

Oh, wow, I got the same ending as you in ‘Baraqiel’ and also felt like it was a ‘multiple paths are necessary to understand stuff’ game. It’s really interesting to me that we both got that same impression. Thanks for the review!

3 Likes
6

A few more mini reviews!

The Little Four by Captain Arthur Hastings, O.B.E.

A confession: I’ve only ever read one Agatha Christie novel, and it’s the Poirot-less And Then There Were None, so I went into this game with absolutely zero knowledge of the characters or their circumstances. But fortunately, that didn’t matter. There was enough context provided that I could easily pick up the backstory, and I was charmed right away by both the writing and the setup—a bachelor and a widower sharing a flat and co-raising the latter’s children together. The homoerotic potential of this arrangement is high, and the game doesn’t disappoint there; I loved the results of repeatedly examining Poirot and the response to telling the PC to kiss him.

As other reviewers have mentioned, the biggest hiccup I encountered was the mystery bit; I spent a fair bit of time re-examining everything I’d already looked at, which was kind of tedious, and when it came time to make an accusation, the game’s multiple layers of “Are you sure?” made me chicken out the first time—but at that point the game wouldn’t let me reload a save, so I had to quit and restart. Hence two separate transcript files! But overall, this was a very enjoyable experience.

Transcripts (I played the version updated on September 10):
transcript1.txt (162.2 KB)
transcript2.txt (21.3 KB)

Saltwrack by Antemaion (spoilers!)

One of my favorites of the comp this year. The atmosphere of threat, of something not quite right, escalating into something very much not right, but also bringing with it new possibilities… The danger but also beauty of the frozen landscape, the mysterious companions who you can decide to trust or not. Excellent, moody writing. Very Southern Reach trilogy-esque without feeling derivative. I absolutely adored the first ending I got—settling in to live in an underground garden with the second oracle, embracing my new connection with the not-so-hostile-after-all land. I played again to see how things went with a different set of companions, and enjoyed my second time through almost as much; will very likely be returning again to see more of the variations. And definitely going to check out the author’s other work!

Will end with one of my favorite quotes:

It’s just you and the land. The land, you know now, is so terribly alive. It recognizes you, seeks you. It wants to touch you in any way it can. Some think that the salt wrack is uncaring, indifferent. You know better. It would change you; it would incorporate you into itself. If you let it.

4 Likes
7

Thank you for taking the time to review The Little Four!

I want to sincerely apologize for the confusion and tedium—I had a difficult time fine-tuning everything in the rush to meet the competition deadline, and the Inform extension I used for the final question gave me a lot of trouble. But I’m relieved to hear that your time with the game was still pleasant overall! I hope to deliver a smoother and more satisfying experience in the expanded post-comp release.

Your transcripts were very helpful (and fun) to read through, and are greatly appreciated. I have a new update in the works for all the recently-reported issues that can be fixed mid-comp; for everything else, I’m aiming to at least keep the help guide updated so that players have somewhere to turn to.

Thanks again and have a lovely autumn!

P.S.:

I’ve taken the liberty of sending you a private message with a couple of comments and questions about your playthrough, in case that’s something you would be open to.

1 Like
8

Thank you for this wonderfully kind review, Tabitha! (And for the link!)

2 Likes