Wonder of the Woods by Leontine (& Eudokimos)
On to my penultimate Senica Thing game. And this is a co-authored piece, by 7-year-old Leontine (well done! love your art!) and 48-year-old Eudokimos.
This micro game has a very stylised font design, and I’m afraid that I found the font a bit hard to read at times. But it does help conjure up a feeling of a fantastical world, which the list of characters at the start (Dramatis Personae!) then built on even more. Unicorns! I loved how I could click on each character name, and see a description and drawing.
One thing I liked a lot, and is unusual in this set of micro Twine games, is that the player can click on individual words in a larger paragraph to see more description. For example when you’re looking at River the unicorn you can tap on “mane” to see more information about their mane.
The story is nicely done, and a bit of a puzzle to solve. Which does involve understanding how the different characters - human and animal - feel about each other and interact. I particularly liked a replay option that I found (telling me to go back in time and do something differently). It was just charming, and I was very happy with the ending I got.
This feels like a well-rounded package. Nicely interactive, good visuals and differentiated characters. And a complex but involving interactive plot that builds on that foundation. This could easily have been in the Main Festival. So well done.
I did see one bug, but it didn’t stop the game playing for me.
