This one made me squirm. It is short and economical, but still descriptive enough to tap into a fear that nightmares are made of. It uses some clever effects to enhance the repulsion, but the writing is what makes this entry so transporting. Except–who can I recommend it to? Considering that most of us who enjoy text adventures are able to place ourself in the game so effectively, what would motivate someone to want to go through this???
As someone who gets stains on their clothes at work on a regular basis, I connected very closely with the anxiety of a highly noticeable mess turning everyone’s attention towards you. I also relate to the feeling that everything you try to do to cover it up and move on just makes it worse.
The Thirty Nine Steps is deliberately designed so that you always overcome the obstacles and get a “good” ending. You’ve got a lot of choices about how to do that: be sneaky, be fighty, find a disguise. Your choice affects the way the story is told, but not whether or not you’re successful.
Whether or not that’s a good design choice is a fair question! But it was deliberate.
In this game, you play as a witch inside the mind of another witch, and many of your choices consist of things to say to your host. It was interesting playing as the main character but existing within the NPC at the same time.
Over the course of the story, you are trying to escape from some unknown place you have found yourselves in. There are some light puzzles, but I would expect every player will navigate them easily.
What I liked: Written in Ink, the game makes it easy to progress, make decisions, and eventually replay it. I feel like the majority of the games I’ve tried for this year’s comp so far have been in a click-the-link style, which I am really preferring. It’s great for when you don’t feel like spending a long time on one passage.
What I wish were different: I always enjoy it when I can experience different content by playing the game differently. On a second playthrough, I made a different choice at nearly every opportunity, but almost everything unfolded the same way. Also, I would have liked to have more characterization. However, for readers who just want to get to the action, this story moves along at a brisk pace.
I think this might have been the most entertaining entry from the 2022 comp I’ve played up to this point. The premise is pure Tito Valenz catnip: you play as an entrant on a reality dating show–set on an island, yabish–with a selection of hot singles being stalked by a killer with a cake knife (not a spoiler–the cake knife appears very, very early). The scenes flowed into each other effortlessly with no wasted moments. I was completely engaged, start to finish. When I was done, I immediately played through two more times to look for different results. I do wish there was more variety as far as what you can make happen–especially since there is HEAVY emphasis that EVERY choice matters (not all do). This is also another choice-based story, and you know how I much I enjoy that convenience. It’s a longer game, but the mechanics help it breeze right along. I also appreciated that the author is clearly a student of the producer manipulation these shows are known for: when you take another character on a date, there is a seafood lunch set out, but of course, the couple is NEVER allowed to actually eat the food. That’s for display only! So I will be rating this one highly and I give it my recommendation. Unless you don’t care for dating sims. Or horror trope deconstruction. Or slasher films. Or really, just talking about horror movies in general.
This game is so short, that I feel like describing any part of it will spoil half the experience. It’s one that goes so quick that players should just take the time to try it for themselves. I will say that it is emotional; the author is effective at describing multiple sentiments. I would trust this author enough after reading this to try other pieces they release.
For a while, this game appears to be a very straightforward quest to gather ingredients for baking. I got pretty far just using common sense, and since I hadn’t read the description, I didn’t know what genre it actually was. When I discovered another layer to the proceedings, it came hard out of left field. I didn’t make it to the end, so on my second playthrough, I was more conservative–which means that I didn’t make any choices to intentionally upset the other characters. That worked. Then came the climactic finale. It was pretty satisfying–I would like to keep replaying just to see all the different possibilities in this scene alone. Also, I enjoyed going back to make bad choices, because even though it can cause the game to end early, some of the best moments came on these paths. And a third reason to keep replaying is that you can unlock “bonus endings.” There is a sentence that appears when this happens saying, “Seems like there’s more of these [bonus endings] than actual endings, doesn’t it.” I would recommend Let Them Eat Cake. My only wishes are that you could 1) save/load a game, and 2) have the game keep track of the endings you’ve found (the website will keep a count, but resets if when you leave the page).
The Tin Mug by Alice E. Wells, Sia See and Jkj Yuio
Here is a short children’s story where you make choices to guide a sentient mug over one afternoon. I immediately responded to this work, because even though I grew up in the U.S., I had one book that was a collection of short British stories. They had a style different to the other fairy tales and picture books I owned. Reading The Tin Mug was like finding one of those stories I hadn’t read yet. It recreates the experience perfectly.
This is one of the games that require you to drag a choice over some text to proceed. I can see why this format might be preferrable for an author, as it allows a little more opportunity to add to the story without additional lines of text visible until you line up your choice. For now, I still prefer clicking links, but either choice-based format is still great when you’re not up for a parser game.
In this story, your character literally heads to the graveyard, and if you use common sense, you’ll meet up with several unhappy haunts. It’s clear that you’re meant to help the ghosts. However, as a series of encounters, they get repetitive. Also, the scenes get less substantial as the game goes on, creating an anti-climactic feel. My impression of Graveyard Strolls is that it would be more effective if the story focused on helping one ghost–possibly assigned by one of your choices–and put everything it has into that one vignette. It might help if each situation had a different goal, but even then, I think it would be hard to add a follow-up that flows naturally after the success of helping the first ghost. Another option might be to start with a brief encounter, and have them become increasingly demanding, to build toward the final high-stakes scenario.
This was harsh. I’m very glad I don’t have this kind of drama going on in my life (for the moment…). Kind of like another entry from this year, Nose Bleed, this story is just too effective. I actually started to feel uneasy and a little sick. The writing skillfully puts you in a tempest of toxic finger-pointing. But who’s responsible? Suffice to say that this one stressed me out. Kudos fo Ms. Abarca for structuring the story so that the exchange goes just long enough to let you fully sink into stomach-burning misery, but then wrapping it up before it splinters your spirit completely. After all, you can’t play through more IF Comp entries once you’ve lost the will to sit upright.
My last review was of a pretty bleak story, i wish you were dead. INK is not the game you want to follow that one with.
You make some choices by dragging a text box over top of a line of text, but the experience isn’t really about exploring where the story can take you. There’s only one way this can go and you know it. It actually reads more like a poem, and incorporates a surrealism that does nothing to soften the torment of losing the one you love. If anything, it ramps up the anxiety of not knowing what to believe. Did I enjoy it? It was not designed to be enjoyed. It was written to grind your will into the scorched, rocky terrain under its boot heel. At the point when I saw a choice to “give in,” I wanted nothing more. Did that bring relief? To quote another harsh piece of writing, if you think this has a happy ending, you haven’t been paying attention.
Two genres that I’ve never really been drawn to are historical fiction and war stories. HOURS involves both. I gave it a try without reading the description, largely because it was listed as “15 minutes or less.” For me, the initial playthrough felt like it was probably upwards of half an hour. There is some interesting world-building going on, but being a shorter game, there isn’t time to do much more than provide a few examples of what makes this setting unique. I was invested in seeing where the story went, but wasn’t able to find a favorable ending. Now, this is probably not a helpful detail to bring up, but I could have sworn that one of the last choices I made had two options. Playing it back, I wanted to try the other route, but now I only see one link available. Is that a real thing that can happen? I would usually assume my cognitive decline is the cause for such an unlikely scenario, but I’m not so sure because without that second branch, you basically seal your fate a long way back in the story. I also think I might have experienced some bugs because several times I found paragraphs which were clearly not endings, but contained no further links. The story really calls out for a lengthy expansion; it didn’t feel like it accomplished what it wanted to in the brief playtime currently available. It feels like there is a lot more to see and do, so let’s hope for a post-comp announcement on the future of the game.
Normally, I would reach out to the author to check on some of these questions, but no contact information is provided.
Here is a very short choice-based entry that has your character finding their way through a forest to a safe haven. There is some world building going on, but one can only fit so much in a 10-15 minute read. There is a stats tracker monitoring your health, but it seems like an odd inclusion, being that your playthrough probably won’t last long enough for the numbers to fluctuate. Also, you can make some extremely poor choices, but even if your life bar gets low, you’ll probably come across some magical healing item of one kind or another. There were some sequences that began to draw me in, but ended without developing the interest further. After going through it several times, I was wishing the game had some sort of hook–some unique element that would help it stand apart from the other entries.
You are read a phone menu and must choose which number to press. Spoiler: it was not written with a hopeful outlook. Rather than seeing a choice that you are eager to explore, you will more likely feel forced to select an option you don’t really want and end up on a dead-end path that quickly terminates without bringing any satisfaction. Could that be a metaphor?
Here is another very short choice-based game that is also a children’s story. It would be a nice introduction to IF for younger players. It feels like you’ll never be able to accomplish the goal of the game, but it turns out to not be so tricky after all. I think I’d like it if we continue to get more entries in this vein for future comps.
I really enjoyed this story. Entries like this are what the IF Comp is all about. As the name implies, there is a mystery to solve, but the real reason to play is for the characters. I enjoyed the world-view of the protagonist(s), and the humor was very much in my vein. My impression is that this could be one of the higher placing games of the comp. Nice work.
A short, fun, choice-based game with replay value. Enjoyable humor and wacky characters. My takeaway: A late night in a chain restaurant makes for a good IF setting.
