Wolfbiter encounters Review-a-thon - latest: A Mouse Speaks to Death

[wolfbiter]

Inquiring readers,

Here you will find my take on review-a-thon! For full explanation of these antic revels, see @alyshkalia ’s intro post. (In defense of my topic title, @zed already took “___ reviews-a-thon,” which I think is a great bit.)

I’m still in the preparatory phases but aim to start posting this weekend. My intention is to complete the bingo card, if I can (use of ominous voice deliberate), and then see how I’m feeling. For reference:

FYI, while I don’t always post reviews to IFDB, for the special occasion of this special event, I will write reviews and ratings for IFDB as well. An incredible value for your money, really.

Looking forward to joining the conversation!

[mathbrush (Brian Rushton)]

Looking forward to your reviews!

[wolfbiter]

He Knows That You Know and Now There’s No Stopping Him by Charm Cochran
Playtime: 4 minutes

This is a dialogue-heavy, very short take on Bluebeard. The game is consistently high-stakes and emotionally intense (more focused on the climactic payoff than a slow build of suspicion).

There were a few points where I felt the game was fighting with me (i.e., having the player-character do something that was not what I was trying to accomplish by selecting a certain dialogue option)–for example, taking the “acquiesce and bow your head to be killed option” triggers the “sassiest” one-liner-stabbing ending. I think I would have enjoyed that ending more if I had been trying to be sassy. But, overall the dialogue generally worked for me, and was suitably witty. I particularly liked the closing set of actions.

I did feel like the game needed a bit more words / playtime to do justice to the concept. On my first playthrough this was subtle, but I noticed it more on replay. On some of the paths, the characters seemed to be acting artificially or out-of-step with their characterization in order to rejoin the main path as quickly as possible. More words / play length would have let those paths flow more naturally and be more differentiated. I understand it was written for an event with constraints, but it didn’t feel like those constraints left quite enough space for what the author wanted to cover.

One thing I particularly enjoy about historical fiction is being reminded that people in the past probably saw the world a lot differenthly than I do. That comes up in this game in the “let me pray first” sequence—I suspect that pitch would be a lot harder to make to one’s would-be-murderer in 2024. That sequence also reminded me of this comic dramatizing the bit in Act 3 Scene 3 of Hamlet where Hamlet decides to wait to kill Claudius because Claudius is praying (also Hamlet is a paladin in an RPG that Horatio is GM-ing).

Overall, a fun game that was gripping. So it begins!

[wolfbiter]

Dark Communion by alyshkalia
Playtime: 19 minutes total (3 minutes to first ending)

This is a fun, short horror game set in an abandoned church. (well, not abandoned ENOUGH dun dun dun)

There’s not that much text / branches but it holds up well on replaying. The church descriptions, for example, are only getting spookier.

Your flashlight caught graffiti on the wall: “WHAT MUST I DO TO BE SAVED?”

The atmospheric descriptions were generally a highlight:

It’s dimmer here, the ceiling dropping low to form a sort of hallway. Small chapels are set off on the other side, their saints gone but racks of half-melted candles remaining. It would be nice, you think, to see them lit again—a small spark of life returned to this place. But it’s not like you carry a lighter.

One thing I would have loved would have been to lean maybe slightly more into the religious horror elements? In some ways the game play was straightforwardly based in the physical world, I would have loved to get a bit more tangled up in guilt or culpability with religious themes.

Re: the endings, I liked that different strategies were required to save Laina depending on whether she was your crush or your sister. That was a fun realization! I did really want a way to save her with the acquaintance backstory, which I think from the structure of the achievements list just does not exist. Obviously that would be the authorial intent, but it just made me a bit sad I couldn’t help her (perhaps colored by the fact that I’m the kind of person who picks acquaintance the first time, thinking “gee I hope this NPC lowkey can’t stand me [in an entertaining way]”).

gameplay tips / typos:

One minor bug (I think?): several of the room descriptions have a long version you get the first time you visit, and a shorter version you get on return visits during the same game. For example, at the pulpit, on the first visit you can specifically click in to read the Bible, but on return visits it just quotes you a bit of the text upfront. Most of these descriptions reset to the long version if you restart the game, except that the description of the “aisles” seems to keep showing you the shorter version even after you restart. The only way I could get the initial, longer description (which I quite liked! it’s quoted above) back was to close the entire browser window.

[alyshkalia (Tabitha (ey/em or they/them))]

Thanks for the review, and for catching that bug! I just took a look and figured out the issue, so I’ll be uploading a fixed version momentarily!

[wolfbiter]

Museum Heist by Kenneth Pederson
Playtime: 59 minutes total (I forgot to record splits, alas. I would estimate how long it took me the first time, but, err, not trusting myself to estimate is exactly why I use a timer in the first place)

This was very close to completing my “game over 1 hour” bingo square, but no cigar. (“wolfbiter, couldn’t you just re-read the ending screen for 75 seconds–” it’s like you don’t understand how I operate at all, interlocutor I just made up! Onward!)

The overall frame is an optimization puzzle. There are also a few (pretty straightforward) constituent puzzles. Puzzle games without hints or a walkthrough scare me, but in this case I did fine.

The prose is workmanlike, which is not a complaint. I appreciated that the game was very clear and direct in laying out my goals and what I needed to do.

Although the author mentioned it was coded on a short timeframe, I thought the game had a lot of nice quality-of-life features, and it just worked well. I was never prevented from doing something I wanted to do, the error messages were helpful, it’s nice that your character performs the first robbery and exits when time is up on their own if necessary. Major kudos for crafting a frictionless user experience! (And I had no issues with the online runner, the map looked and worked fine. Although it was stranegly difficult to copy text out.)

One minor thing that did grind my gears—it’s my firm belief that if I call for inventory I should be told everything I have ready access to on my person. I think treating, say, the the pockets of the charactr’s clothing as a separate space that needs to be specifically explored is more common in “old school” parsers, but I dislike it! It’s fiddly during play, and it also throws me out of immersion that the player-character is apparently in suspense about the contents of their own pockets. Me every time:

Ok, and what was all that larceny FOR?

final surplus, € 696 million

Mild spoiler about that: I played until I extracted all of the art I found. I am aware from the IFDB page that it’s possible to get more money, which definitely makes me infer a few things . . . but my experience felt complete.

A fun, tightly constructed game. It provided one VERY strong moment of simultaneous eureka / head-in-hands emotional reaction. I had a very good time–get robbing!

[Denk (Kenneth Pedersen)]

Thanks for the nice review! Your feedback on the inventory command is definitely valid. I might update the game someday to fix that, if I ever find the time

Let me know if you want me to add your score to the highscore list - your score gives you a 3rd place so far - well done!

[wolfbiter]

@Denk

Let me know if you want me to add your score to the highscore list

Definitely!

[wolfbiter]

DOL-OS by manonamora
Playtime: 59 minutes total (53 minutes to first ending)

Another near miss on “game over 1 hour” . . . this bingo card thing is going to be more challenging than expected. (As mentioned below, I am worried I may have missed some content in this game? So it may take someone else longer.)

This game invites you to explore the documents, programs, and accounts on a semi-derelict computer desktop. The GUI for the game is really well done, with a fake battery indicator, fake browser history in the fake web browser, etc. In general the polish was really good. I really enjoyed a lot of the little flourishes, like the playable hangman game (BLOOD), or the shifting corrupted greentext.

The game opens with an atmospheric almost cut-scene while you access the computer for the first time. (OK, I’ll say it. Cut scenes in IF? I’m ready. Maybe just because it takes me way back to yelling for my brother so we’d have emotional support, but they’re a good time!)

The premise is obviously chock-full of environmental storytelling, which was very effective, and the game has a lot of the same voyeuristic / investigative thrills of like, the parts of a single-player video game set in a destroyed science facility, where, in between fighting horrifying monsters you find a computer password on a post-it note and read like, one recovered document that suggests some concerning things about the horrifynig monsters (e.g.: “day 200 – management assures us that the escaped specimen will never survive in our oxygen-rich atmosphere”).

The game does a good job building up cast of characters. I particularly like the way the characters are all given backstories, and the backstories tend to have a lot of conflict / flaws, which makes them feel more realistic (i.e., the people who end up working for years in an isolated facility maybe had some preexisting issues with their family relationships!). If I had quibbles about the writing, they would be:

1. the purported corporate documents never quite authentically hit that register of corporate-speak to me

2. some of the characterization was heavy handed (i.e., the HR file on one character said he has a tendency to make his teammates into alcoholics, another character journaling about that character thinks “we will all become drunkards”) and

3. very close to the end, the player character is given some automatic dialogue that makes a strong character choice, but not necessarily the choice that matched the mental image I had spent the game developing (I’m thinking specifically that it takes a particular kind of person to say “So, a lot then,” and “come on” while having a high stakes confrontation with a rogue AI)

There are puzzles, which were fun and well-designed. (For example, perhaps the hardest one was logging into a locked account, which will perma-lock you out if you exceed the permitted number of attempts, but that’s also so early in the game it’s not really too much of a pain to restart if necessary. And the jigsaw puzzle I actually found quite difficult, but it is very well “hinted” in the game.)

The sound design also actually added a lot and increased the sense of immersion without ever annoying me. In particular, at the ending, I realized for the first time that a computer-fan noise had been playing the whole time as part of the soundtrack but I only noticed when it suddenly turned off . . . which was a very effective way of emphasizing that plot beat.

Overall, one thing I would really have liked was delving a bit more into themes. The premise is that the group was designing an AI to work as a judge in the criminal justice system, but it went rogue and deviated from human norms in judging (e.g., finding the overwhelming number of defendants guilty, sentencing people to death for petty crimes) and also refused to be patched. But if you don’t come into the game with an opinion about why having an AI work as a judge is a bad idea, the game won’t really give you any new thoughts on that topic. There was one reference to maybe the AI sentencing people harshly because it was considering that they would commit future crimes and trying to sentence them for those too, a la Minority Report, but you can’t explore those topics in conversation and they’re not really followed up on.

Overall a fun, atmospheric piece with excellent production values.

gameplay tips / typos:

So I got to the end and felt I had had a complete experience, but reading the in-game list of easter eggs after, I think I may have missed some areas of the game. For example, I never managed to read my email. It might have been useful, particularly in a game without a walkthrough, to signpost a bit more if people are missing things since it felt pretty complete without that.

[wolfbiter]

Codex Crusade by leechykeen
Playtime: 25 minutes

Fantasy academia meets office satire in this quick puzzler.

The writing was a strength, it is clever and delivers on the premise of mocking university life.

Oh! It’s an AI. An AI with a cat GUI for accessibility and broad market appeal. Okay. I got it.

The puzzles and plot were perfectly fine, and there’s a pleasing absurdity to the proceedings. There was also some nice uses of “make the player click the same link again and again.” My biggest issue is that it didn’t feel like a complete game. While I understand the author plans to write more in the series, each entry should still feel internally complete. It felt like the game just stopped in the middle rather than providing any resolution.

gameplay tips / typos:

• re: making pottage, you may think you are stuck based on what snack you picked up, because it appears to be impossible to ditch a snack onec you’ve picked it up (at least I couldn’t find one). BUT this actually doesn’t matter at all because when making the pottage, adding the snack is a free response text field, and you can just type whatever in there whether or not it’s what you are currently holding

• direct spoilers on the pottage: the kitchen lady accepts a pottage made with (1) the coffee, (2) the Pabst blue ribbon, (3) the granola bar. Just type “granola bar” in the free response field whether or not you possess it

• ok, I am a typography pedant, so this bothered me throughout:
  

The circled piece of punctuation is called a curly quote or smart quote. It comes in two different shapes “ ” and you use one to open the quotation and the other one to close it. Using the same one everywhere is giving me a palpable sense of unease!

[wolfbiter]

The Labyrinthine Library of Xleksixnrewix by Daniel Stelzer, Ada Stelzer, and Sarah Stelzer
Playtime: 54 minutes

Yet! another! game! barely! under! 60! minutes! Truly this bingo card is subjecting me to great adversity, &c, &c

There is a LOT to love about this game:

• creative and fresh concept
• cute cover art!
• robust hint file → me feeling safe and secure
• entertaining flavor text—the descriptions of the various rooms do a good job channeling dark academia + twisted bureaucracy (from the Employee Manual: “Librarians should trap, banish, murder, or annihilate them by any means necessary before they can harm our precious books.” On it, chef)
• the puzzle mechanic itself is engaging and unique feeling, as is designing the physical layout, then running around avoiding adventurers
• everything just works. Never did I have a failed command or a bug, I didn’t spot even a typo

Less positively, in addition to the many high points, I also hit a lot of friction points. I think the game was created as part of an event with time restrictions, so I totally get it, but my default state is still comparing each game to (what I conceive as) its platonic ideal. For the record though, absolutely INSANE that this was made in four hours. The custom GUI! Custom descriptions of 30 rooms! Truly incredible

Most of the frustration came from feeling out of step with what the game wanted me to do, or realizing that I had spent a lot of time doing something pointless / counterproductive. I think the biggest improvement on this score would come from adjusting how the player is introduced to the core game mechanic.

Consider the following basic facts required to effectively design a maze (mild spoilers about gameplay, not a solution)

• the adventuring party enters the maze near you (2 rooms behind, I think) and is capable of moving at the same speech the PC moves (one room per “turn”)
• when the adventurers face a branching path, they choose randomly
• the adventuring party is one coherent group that will stay together
• you will have perfect information on the current location of the adventuring party
• line of sight is important: if the adventurers get line of sight to your location they can insta-kill you from any distance (given that I thought I was appx mouse-sized and was imagining skittering over shelves this particularly surprised me)
• what each of the available traps does

I don’t think any of these are really meant to be “spoilers.” (For example, the traps are very clearly explained in their description text, accessible as soon as you open the chest) But all of these facts are impossible to learn before setting up an entire maze and letting in the adventurers. That wouldn’t be problematic at all if the first run was low-investment–it’s just a throw-away! But here, setting up a maze is actually quite cumbersome (you can only make changes in rooms adjacent to your actual location [insert the map is the territory joke], so making a maze requires at a minimum visiting every square on the path to lay out the maze, then visiting each of thoes squares again to get back to the gong at the entrance, and potentially a lot more than that if you have opened rooms already to explore).

So it was quite frustrating that that game seemed to require a lengthy set-up period for the first run, yet the player is probably going to want to throw that all away literally seconds after they open the library. I particularly don’t understand why the player can’t even learn what the traps do until the library is open.

To segue slightly, in addition to feeling like the learning curve on the main puzzle was too steep, there were two other main sources of frustration

1. perhaps I’m the only person this happened to, but I had the strong impression from the room descriptions and Employee Manual that it might be important to stop the party from entering certain rooms (other than ES). This is not actually the case. But, in my defense, consider the following room description:

This room is dedicated to the application of sociology for personal profit and gain, as promoted by demons. If one truly understands the underpinnings of society, they could use that knowledge to manipulate the world in their favor. Most demons don’t have the patience for sociological research, and so they pay others handsomely to do the boring work for them. Your master has worked tirelessly to collect all the volumes on the subject so that no evildoer will have a shortcut on their research by learning what others have already found. Unfortunately this means if any of the aforementioned evildoers found this room, they would have their entire lit review conveniently completed for them.

So I was mis-directing a lot of effort to avoid certain areas of the map, which made it harder to put in a maze that would work. (Also, I had explored the whole map before starting to try to identify such hazards, which was very time consuming . . . so it felt bad to realize later that the room descriptions are pure flavor text and exploration is actually unnecessary)

2. once I did finish, I was a little disappointed that it seemed like there was one basic solution? I suspect the “successful” runs will all have a pretty similar physical layout, and have played out pretty similarly. After having climbed that steep learning curve I wanted to flex more, be asked to do more with it, apply it in different scenarios, etc. The payoff for learning how to use the tools seemed low.

I loved the core game mechanic here, and I’m imagining it really shining with, say, a video-game inflected approach:

1. Start with a very basic tutorial level, where the player can’t change the physical layout (you’re visiting your friend’s section of the library and don’t have librarian powers or something). It’s a handful of rooms already connected in a few unchangeable ways. You still have the gong and the chest of traps, and you can experience opening the library, going to the chest, learning how the traps work, and deploying them (and probably this is way easy somehow, maybe you have a much longer lead-time on the adventurers or a very powerful trap), and the player learns the basic mechanics for the adverturers, and starts climbing the learning curve more quickly since they don’t have to (and also can’t) make a maze.

2. A level that is basically the extant game, except now the player will start with a pretty good grasp on how to design the maze.

3. Some even-more-difficult third level that stretches the player’s skills. Weird obstacles that can’t be traversed in the map. New and different traps provided. Two adventuring parties enter from different sides, &c &c

Anyhow, this is definitely not a demand that the authors return to this project, since I’m sure they’re working on other things, but just my explanation of what worked well and less well for me.

I did have a lot of fun, and clearly I was very engaged in thinking about the game!

gameplay tips / typos:

Yes, it IS possible to open rooms on diagonal pathways and then travel or throw things in those directions (e.g., “open southwest”). This is mentioned in the Employee Manual, yet I somehow totally missed it until I was reading the hints later. Also you don’t need to use intercardinal directions to finish the game, but the more you know.

[Draconis (Daniel Stelzer)]

Thank you so much for the review! Indeed, this was made under a tight time limit, so we unfortunately didn’t have time to expand on the concept very much. But a structure like that definitely would have let the central mechanic shine more!

[wolfbiter]

Your World According to a Single Word by Kastel
Playtime: 14 minutes, 43 seconds

Heads-up, the game features (consensual) possession and references sex by someone using a body they are possessing.

This game has a really delightful and creative concept, that concept alone is probably worth the price of admission, as it were.

I really enjoyed the whole reading experience, the word has a charmingly naive yet enthusiastic voice:

I guess what I’m saying is that words like implicative and the color gray could be cousins.

[about clothes hangers] I’m awed by how solid lines like this could hold so much content.

[on drinking water] It was worth the hype.

The game also raises a bunch of fascinating questions without answering them. For some the lack of answer seems intentional, for others, less so.

• the word really figures out how to process visual input and taste etc so quickly?
• the PC’s close friends and mom don’t notice they were possessed for a month?
• the word reads books, how does the experience of reading a book differ or recreate the experience of being in the “text stream”?
• how did the PC fare on their own adventure?
• is it meant to be a reveal that the word in question is “hypertext”? It could be a nod because hypertext is a significant concept in twine games, or is there something more going on?

Loved the thought-provoking concept. The implementation was generally top-tier and I liked a lot of the little somewhat unexpected choices that were made (for example, the word’s obsession with the supremacy of images). The ending was a bit of a downer.

[wolfbiter]

Cubes and Ladders by P.Rail
Playtime: 48 minutes (first ending 9 minutes)
Note: The author mentioned that this game was recently updated, but I haven’t played the updated version.

This is a fun office-themed puzzler, elevated by clever writing and atmospheric art. The absurdities of office work are well skewered, for example, your boss’s feedback on your report: “take this year-end report to the next level and make it a paradigm shift to a win-win!” and “you confused our mission statement with our vision statement.”

I agreed with @jjmcc that some of the puzzles could have used alternative solutions or more clueing, but the game has comprehensive hints, so on the occasions where I got stuck it was straightforward to unstick. It would have been a nice quality of life feature if the game flagged which directions had exits (and while I think “walk to ____” was implemented, which I approve of, I didn’t realize that until I was checking the hints).

One of my favorite elements was the accompanying illustrations, which were well-curated to create the appropriate mood (I particularly liked the boss sitting in your office and the various different shots in the cube farm).

The other thing that perplexed me a bit was the tone of the ending–the player character saves the company and is promoted to C-suite executive. I didn’t detect any cynicism in the enthusiastic description of this outcome,which surprised me a bit given the other game elements (the company’s key invention was basically a generative copy machine that produced bullshit, your boss’s nonsense feedback, the general ineptitute of the employees) which portray the office in an absurdist / ridiculous light.

---

And with that, when I next return to this space it will be with ONE EMPTY SPOT on my bingo square . . . which has been, errr, somewhat difficult for me, so let’s see how that goes!

[prail]

Hey WB,
Thanks for your thoughtful review and feedback on Cubes & Ladders! I’m really pleased the puzzles were engaging and that you enjoyed the humor and illustrations.

You made a good point about the tone of the final resolution text, so I fixed it up to match the cynical feeling of the game as follows:

Well, well, well, look who’s mastered the corporate jungle. Congratulations, future office overlord!

You showed a remarkable talent for navigating a maze of pointless tasks, and this has somehow convinced management you’re fit to lead. Your ingenuity and resourcefulness saved Minimax Inc. from the brink of bankruptcy.

You have ascended to the illustrious Mahogany Row, where the air is thick with the scent of self-importance, stale coffee, and overpriced cologne mixed with boozy lunches. Yes, you, the person who once struggled to run a copy machine, are now the shining beacon of innovation at Minimax.

Gone are the days of languishing in the soul-sucking void of a dull gray cubicle. Now, you command your team from a luxurious corner office, complete with a somewhat overrated view of a nearby greenscape.

To make this surreal victory even sweeter, your former boss, now your groveling assistant, serves you artisanal gourmet coffee every morning in a mug that proudly proclaims “Innovator of the Year.”

Enjoy the scenic view, your humbled lackey coffee-fetcher, and your regal, expansive, gold-inlaid walnut desk. But remember: At Minimax, even the top floor is an endless hamster wheel.

Congratulations once again on your wholly unexpected triumph!

Thanks again for improving the game for others.

[wolfbiter]

I like it! cynicism detected

[wolfbiter]

THE RUIN OF 0CEANUS PR1ME by Marco Innocenti
Playtime: (for reasons of dramatic tension, playtime at the bottom of this review)
Note: This game is a sequel to A1RLOCK, and playing A1RLOCK first is recommended. I, err, didn’t do that. But in a gesture toward preparing, I did read some spoilery reviews for A1RLOCK, so there’s that. And actually with one exception I thought it played great as a stand-alone.

An important preliminary–if I’m going to play a game set in some kind of deep sea environment (my hazy understanding is that we are ON ANOTHER PLANET, but it’s a very deep sea kind of planet), I want to know: will I encounter one or more underwater apex predators with an unsettling number of teeth? I am pleased to report that YES, multi-dentate deep sea denizens do appear in this game! (A less important question, albeit one that went unanswered: why is the title of the game styled with numerals but the characters spell it “Oceanus Prime” in-game ?)

OK, to business. This is a delightfully adrenaline filled, pacey, chock-full-of-action ride, probably the closest I’ve come to feeling like I was the protagonist in a Michael Crichton book.

The prose is well-written and very effective in clearly conveying action and tension. The PC has suitable action chops, but also gets a lot of good backstory and characterization, and has a gallows-humor sensibility it’s fun to spend time with:

It’s easy to be a dentist with other people’s mouths, you think.

The game is very good at creating a pressure cooker atmosphere, while also being relatively forgiving and playable. There’s some reference to oxygen levels as an in-game timer, but they seem to only decrease as you pass plot-points, so it’s not painful to need a lot of exploration. And a lot of conversations occur on their own between the PC and people on the radio (in general the game isn’t timed, so you can just ‘z’ through to read the converation. You can also keep taking actions on your “turn” although then the conversation gets interwoven with the action responses in a way that can be mildly confusing.)

The puzzles were quite good. I did resort to the walkthrough at one point (not un-typically for me I had, errr, missed a room), and I’m always glad to see when there is a walkthrough.

The game is also pretty friendly in prompting saves at key points. If I had one accessibility note it would be that some of the directional relationships between rooms are not symmetric (i.e., you go “NE” to go from room A into room B, but then you go “S” to return to room A from room B) which threw me off at a few points.

I’ve been emphasizing the action and thriller aspects, but that’s not at all to suggest that the plot is unsophisticated or underdeveloped. There’s a really delicious unspooling of important facts about the player, the backstory, and the scenario you find yourself in. (For example, early on I developed the mild belief that my coworker on the radio was kind of an asshole, and boy was that developed more and paid off later.) There’s also a great reveal at the three-quarters point or so that the PC has been on a cocktail of mind-altering drugs the whole time that puts a lot of things in a different light.

I had a great time. It’s a fantastically well put together game and I hope people check it out. Really my only quibble, which isn’t that big, is with the ending. (spoilers for the entire ending) The ending felt like it left some thematic payoffs on the table. The game has gone to all of this effort to develop the PC’s family life, child-related trauma, and history with his employers. I felt like this was setting up a climactic decision—am I going to get the job done because Carliss and the kids need the money, or does my child-related trauma make me sympathetic to the experiments? Am I going to be loyal to my buddies and coworkers, who have apparently had my back through some pretty rough circumstances, even if it requires me to grit my teeth and avert my eyes, morally? Or am I going to throw in with the psychic inhuman (?) experiments and thwart the retrieval mission?

But the player actually isn’t called upon to make any of those choices, because it turns out the psychic inhuman (?) experiments are Unambiguously Evil (I was a bit surprised at how evil they were, once I met them—prior to that I think telling someone to get off your creepy station and leave you alone is pretty understandable) and the station is a deathtrap, so the choice is just between surviving and dying in diverse ways. For most people, choosing “survive” is overdetermined.

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OK, zooming back up to the bingo-card level and that pesky "game over 1 hour” square.

.

.

.

Playtime: 1 hour 28 minutes

This was probably my fourth contender, but I got there in the end. Which is lucky for everyone else, because y’all are NOT prepared for the “sad tuna” graphic I prepared in case I couldn’t complete it. But instead we have:

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I may have a few more reviews that didn’t fit anywhere after a break, but it probably won’t be very many. This was a lot of fun, though, and thanks again to the organizers!

[Jamespking (Marco Innocenti)]

@wolfbiter

(A less important question, albeit one that went unanswered: why is the title of the game styled with numerals but the characters spell it “Oceanus Prime” in-game ?)

The answer is in A1RL0CK. This is EXTREMELY spoilery, so DM me if you really wanna know before playing the game.

For the review: wow.
What to say. Thanks.
In another thread we were inquiring about success. Well, being compared to Crichton is the sort of thing that, in a certain way, and if not as a global value, does make one feel successful.

[alyshkalia (Tabitha (ey/em or they/them))]

Congrats on the bingo!!

[wolfbiter]

A Mouse Speaks to Death by solipsistgames
Playtime: 36 minutes (14 minutes to first ending)

This is a vignette-based game taking a retrospective look at the life of a sentient mouse. Given the conceit, the mood is contemplative, not suspenseful—everything has already happened.

The vignettes were well written and interesting. The worldbuilding was a highlight—I enjoyed learning about the mouse culture (they use electricity!), and the mice have a pleasingly alien outlook on humans. The world feels very built out. We learn that mouse society has differentiated roles, there’s some fun custom terminology (and an accompanying glossary), mice apparently go wander around as youths, etc etc.

Although I liked the overall structure of picking stories to tell about your life, I would have liked it even more if was a bit game-ier. Choices didn’t seem to change the future gameplay much, if at all (i.e., for later events did not connect to earlier events, earlier choices did not allow or disallow later choices). If you wanted to follow up on a certain thread or learn more about a certain aspect of mouse life, there didn’t seem to be much to do except keep replaying until the rng gods favored you.

There were also a few aspects that were under used. Death is present but doesn’t say anything of interest. And the number of available vignettes was a bit small. I would frequently keep seeing the same cards I was trying to avoid again and again, which detracts from the feeling of having a choice in characterizing the PC. (I also am not sure why the plot cards were gated out of the first playthrough. I mean, yes, at one level I understand that it was to encourage people to play the game more than once but I’m not sure how that structure made it a better experience than just putting them in the mix from the start.)

But overall, a fun glimpse into a different world (even if I did never find out all of the plot secrets).

gameplay tips / typos:

• during “The Wind” event I kept getting an error (Error: <>: bad conditional expression in <> clause: unexpected token: ‘)’

• although the PC’s sex wasn’t mentioned a lot, it seemed to change within the same playthrough? Like the “abandoned” background stated I was a girl, but when I had pups I was told that as a guy I couldn’t nurse them.

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This is probably it for me for the event. I’ve got some other commitments and also must rest up my puzzling brain and typing wrists for IFComp! But will see y’all there.