Shanidar, Safe Return by Cecilia Dougherty
[Note, it’s stated that this game is a sequel, but I haven’t played the original. This game also took me considerably less than an hour.]
TLDR: A series of brief, naturalistic sequences in the life of early hominids (neatherthals, cro-magnons, and denisovians).
Gamemechanical notes: Choice based. Choices don’t seem to direct the plot or change the ending, but do determine which scenes you view. Although the game looks at first glance to be download only, the download is actually a pdf with a link to a website, and in fact, on the website seems to be the only way to play it.
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The author seems to have done meticulous research on the time period, which enriched the game with specific details about plants and geology. This helped create a clear sense of setting. The art, also done by the author, and featuring a lot of plant illustrations, etc., was also very well done.
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Interesting speculation about possible stone age rituals and cultural practices. It definitely raised a lot of questions in my mind (“I wonder if neanderthals had the language to communicate a concept like ‘I had a vision that people 40,000 years in the future are flying.’”) and I did some googling about denisovians afterwards.
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The narration is mostly in simple, declarative sentences, which is an interesting way of putting the player in the mindset of the characters
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I lost track of the characters and think I occasionally missed important plot because I had selected to view a scene that moved too far ahead.
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I’m not sure I understand the case for presenting this as IF instead of in a different format. Other than clicking to advance, the player doesn’t have anything to do. The scenes are from different POVs so the format doesn’t seem to particularly be encouraging identification of the player with a player character. This would make, for example, a beautiful book with illustrations and different sequences on different pages.