Victor's IFComp 2023 Reviews

[VictorGijsbers]

The Gift of What You Notice More by Xavid and Zan

This puzzly Twine piece is based on the song The Blessings by Dar Williams. The name of this artist does not ring a bell for me, but I looked at the lyrics of the song, and the inspiration is indeed major and direct:

And the blessings were like poets that we never find time to know,
But when time stopped I found the place where the poets go.
And they said, "Here have some coffee, it’s straight, black and very old, "
And they gave me sticks and rocks and stars and all that I could hold,

There is a sense in which the game makes quite a bit more sense if you know the song, which could perhaps be seen as a weakness, but in practice didn’t bother me that much.

The story of The Gift of What You Notice More centres on our protagonist, who is moving out of their house after breaking up a relationship. (The game isn’t fully clear about this, but the song is.) Gameplay then consists of delving into a series of surreal (I’m sorry Carl) memories through which we get to ask three questions: When did things go wrong? What should we have done differently? What do we need now?

The structure of the game is smart and indeed impeccable. The three memories are each visited three times, with a different item unlocking a different part of the solution space. Rabbit gives us a perfect story about how the puzzles progress, noticing patterns that I had not:

Although the puzzles in each set of three take place in different locations, they each share a common theme: the first set has you improvising temporary fixes to problems, the second set has you tending to other living things, and the third is about revealing hidden things in the world. This, I think, mirrors a growing maturity on the player character’s part to examining their relationship: from papering over the cracks and pretending that the problems aren’t there, to nurturing themselves and paying closer attention, and then finally removing the paper over the cracks and revealing something deeper. It’s fantastic narrative design.

The puzzles themselves work okay, I think, but I quickly got into the habit of clicking every single inventory item at each node, which was optimal as a puzzle solution strategy, but suboptimal as an enjoyment strategy. A game where these two kinds of optimality diverge always has a bit of a problem, though I do not think it was particularly egregious in this case.

My main complain about The Gift of What You Notice More is that it deals way too much in abstractions. After playing the game, I have no idea what the protagonist is like; I have no idea what their ex-partner is like; and I have no idea what went wrong in their relationship. “We didn’t talk enough. We weren’t vulnerable.” Yes, okay, but that is always true. Now tell me what was going on in this particular case. But the truth is, there is no particular case. We are dealing only with the abstractions of love and relationships. Which… is not the level at which love or relationships function.

Great structure. Lack of meaningful content. I’d love to see these authors come down to earth a little and apply their talents to real, detailed characters.