wolfbiter reviews IFComp 2025 - latest: Operative Nine

wolfbiter · September 8, 2025, 6:56am

Whew, I’ve been having a real one over here, but excited to play some games! As a flag, due to limited institutional capacity (it’s me, I’m the institution), I’m not going to have time to play very many this year.

A big thanks to all the authors—I’m wildly appreciative of the time and creativity authors share freely in this event!

Introductory notes:

I love it when people interact with my posts, so if something I say sparks a thought please do not hesitate to come in here and post. More opinions! I live for them!
I blur egregious and specific spoilers, but generalized spoilers are unmarked. The assumed audience for these reviews is people who have already played the game.
(With the slight exception that, I will occasionally give spoilered hints under “gameplay tips” for games with no built-in hints/walkthrough if I think it might be helpful)
To avoid redundancy I try not to say “this is just one person’s opinion! this is just one person’s opinion!” in every post, but, you know, this is just one person’s opinion. I strive for accuracy and transparency in my subjectivity, but I hope no one takes my lonely opinions too hard.

And look, I take it the organizers are in a tight spot, and I don’t know enough about the details to second-guess, so I’ll just say that it strikes me as deeply sad that this IFComp has been censored at the behest of the UK.

This is a gripping, very smoothly implemented game. I had to pause my session at one point and it was difficult to tear myself away. It was always well signposted what puzzle I should be working on, and I had no issues getting things to work the way I wanted. (I particularly thought the system of dragging the corpses around was easy to execute, without giving away too much if the player didn’t have a concept in mind). The recycling / fabricating was also really well executed, and expanded the range of items for puzzles, while also making the game more forgiving if someone were, hypothetically, to just be going around recycling everything that’s not nailed down.

The game delivered everything I wanted based on the front matter, including plenty of sci-fi elements and puzzling. The puzzles were not too hard but satisfying (I did enjoy the “look at the functional engine and figure it out). The ending is also a nicely done twist, it really tied together breadcrumbs from the whole game [I had in my play notes, “interesting point of commonality that the PC and GAIL both say they don’t feel like themselves"]. I also found the sequence where the PC recycles themself into a new body felt surprising and impactful.

If I was going to try to think of ideas for improvement, this is minor, but (1) I never really felt much of a sense of PERIL, which I think could fit in this type of game, (2) the resource-management layer felt tuned perhaps slightly easy?

Selected quote:

Overall: a creative, well-honed puzzler raising some classic sci-fi issues

If you like this, you may like [other media]: hmmm, the premise is definitely in the vein of say, Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir and others, but actually I was most reminded of (warning: major spoiler for the end) Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan, for playing around with what kind of bleed through you’d get if trying to run the “software” of a person on a different person’s “hardware”).

radiosity · September 8, 2025, 9:29am

Hey, thanks for playing and for the review! Really glad to hear you enjoyed it.

Just re. your resources/peril comment – those two are definitely linked, and yeah, they were both originally tuned to be a lot tougher, but during playtesting, it turned out people don’t like dying (who knew!?). I’m toying with the idea of adding a ‘hard’ difficulty level for a post-comp release, and taking that back to how it was originally planned – so resources are scarcer and survival elements are tougher.

wolfbiter · September 9, 2025, 2:01am

Escape the Pale by Novy Pnin
Flavor: by wordcount, 90% barebones trading simulator, 10% persecution
Playtime: 40 minutes

This game was pretty successful in what I take to be its goal of setting up a contrast between the two main elements. On the one hand, a dry, pared-down interface for a buying and selling layer. On the other hand, the immediate and unpredictable terribleness of injustice experienced by the PC. (The structure of the latter reminded me of RPG-style “encounters” during travel.) I found this structure was effective in emphasizing the lack of logic attached to the persecution, and the lack of control experienced be people who were subject to that persecution. It definitely had the feeling of a unpleasant gut punch when my first travel “encounter” was trusty cousin Ephraim getting killed by a corrupt border guard.

The trading interface was fairly clunky (perhaps intentionally?). I can see the case for wanting the player to discover through exploration (1) whether the reported prices are accurate (ish), (2) where to buy long-distance tickets and how much, and (3) which areas are most perilous. I’m not sure I see a gameplay case for (1) not showing the rail destinations in advance or (2) not stating the actual sale price when you sell goods. I was mildly interested to note that, not only do the prices seem to be randomly determined in each game, but they change throughout play (possibly in accordance with the laws of supply and demand? i.e., it seemed that if you ran a loop between two cities, you would flood the market and the sale price would fall).

FYI, particularly for those who might be better at this game than me, the end-of-game text seems to vary based on the ending, and I only saw the longest / most interesting author’s note on the “die in prison” ending.

Selected quote:

Gameplay tips / typos

A partial list of the rail connections available from each city:

from Chelm, options of Bialystok, Lublin, or Kiev
from Kiev, options of Minsk, Lublin, Chelm, or Odessa
from Lublin, options of Kiev, Chelm, Kielce, or Warsaw
from Minsk, options of Grodno, Kiev, Pinsk, Vilno, or Smolensk
from Grodno, options of Minsk, Bialystok, or Vilno
from Vilno, options of Grodno, Minsk, Pinsk, or Smolensk
from Smolensk, options of Minsk or Vilno
from Odessa, options of Kiev or Bucharest
from Warsaw, options of Bialystok, Lublin, or Kielce,
from Bialystok, options of Grodno, Warsaw, or Chelm
from Kielce, options of Warsaw or Lublin

wolfbiter · September 10, 2025, 1:44am

Just Two Wishes by Kozelek

Flavor: explore connections between three vignettes, the first of which is set in Tel Aviv
Playtime: 31 minutes

Probably the most memorable part of the game was that the opening of the second vignette absolutely bodied me with surprise. But it did also make sense with the rest of the game and did not feel arbitrary. I respect that.

The first vignette in particular did a good job establishing a sense of place and expansiveness, while still constraining the player enough that things felt manageable. I liked the custom refusal responses on navigation, e.g., “That’s the way to the Ayalon river. You don’t think there’s anything interesting there.” The second and third vignettes I thought would have benefited from being built out a bit more and allowing / rewarding a bit more exploration. That said, I finished the game with about half the available points, so there must be content I missed. (Which, I’m already firmly on team “really, your puzzle-y stuff needs a walkthrough,” but I’ll say it again! This would have been better with a walkthrough! To me, a walkthrough shows that the author wants people to experience their work.)

I found the first vignette evocative and interesting, and I was curious to see where it went. I’m not sure the rest lived up to that initial spark. The second and third vignettes did feel more cramped/rushed. Also, to the extent that I understood the overall themes, it was fairly nihilistic, which is not my jam. [major spoilers] I understood the logical connection between the vignettes to be that the events of the first two are the results of “just two wishes” from the little girl in the third one. The implied theme then is something sad about retribution, tinged with slight absurdity from the supernatural elements.

Selected quote:

If you like this, you may like [other media]: beautiful wish-centric graphic novel Shubeik Lubeik by Deena Mohamed

alyshkalia · September 11, 2025, 12:25am

I’ve been trying to decide what the game is saying here. The first vignette shows the directly responsible party facing the worst consequences, but plenty of uninvolved people getting swept up too. In the second, the only harm that’s done is to the responsible party; everyone else around is very happy with the turn of events. I haven’t really figured out what to do with that juxtaposition…

wolfbiter · September 11, 2025, 12:50am

Right, I wasn’t quite sure what to make of that juxtaposition either. I guess I took it a bit as, the person doing the wishing is past the point of caring about precisely who is “involved” or “uninvolved,” which is certainly realistic in terms of, it’s a way that some people feel, but also made it feel sadder to me

wolfbiter · September 11, 2025, 1:00am

Warrior Poet of Mourdrascus: Part 1: The City of Dol Bannath by Charles M Ball

~~Flavor:~~ [in this case the title gives sufficient flavor]
Playtime: 42 minutes

I have a soft spot for a game that—like this one—unapologetically drops you into the premise without any attempt to justify it. Warrior poet is, I take it, a mildly un-trendy course of study at university, and yet after dealing with that the whole time, on the eve of graduation we have been further stymied by Professor Zylock’s abscondment with the Mantablasphere. Rude. Anyhow, we’re off to try to find them.

This game features reasonable puzzles and exploration of a colorful world. I was generally engaged and I enjoyed flouncing around with the PC’s inflated ego, fighting people and looking at the setting. I was also glad to see there was a walkthrough!

The game did a good job setting up rails to direct player exploration. I could wander around enough, but I also general knew where I was supposed to focusing. There was some nice not-to-glaring closing off of options—only making one inn available, showing NPCs but clearly cueing that the prerequisites had not been completed by having them be stated to be unavailable. I also liked a lot of the game’s auto-complete logic, e.g., just telling me directly that I was not going to turn myself in to the guard rather than have me wonder if I was going to accidentally do so through conversation, or I suppose, try futilely to turn myself in. It also looked like there was perhaps a pacifist route provided if you talked to the guard more? (I did not try that.)

The two things that come to mind which would have made me even more pleased would be (1) more combat and harder combat—particularly for a game that gives me this many chances to think about my loadout. I fought 3 people and took a grand total of 1 hp of damage from them, the same amount that I took from a bush. And, (2) although I take it this was an intentional choice aimed at creating anticlimactic humor, I wanted the poetry to be more badass. Our species has been writing poetry for 5 millennia–there are bangers! We can do better than 5 words of Mary Had A Little Lamb! Or to put it another way, when your title starts with “Warrior Poet,” expect that some of your audience will be there for the poetry.

Selected quote:

ETA: transcript
wolfbiter - Warrior Poet transcript - Copy.txt (182.2 KB)

wolfbiter · September 12, 2025, 7:40pm

The Wise-Woman’s Dog: A Bronze Age Adventure by Daniel M. Stelzer

Flavor: the PC has magic, but lacks thumbs, and must solve puzzles in a richly detailed Bronze Age setting
Playtime: 2 hours (did not finish, felt I was pretty close to finishing)

In the Miss Gosling’s Last Case, the 2024 IFComp outing by Daniel Stelzer, we played as the ghost of a human woman, whose main way of interacting with the world was via instructions to her faithful canine companion. In The Wise-Woman’s Dog, we play directly as an unusually intelligent doggo. (2026 prediction: we play as . . . the ghost of a dog?)

The interface is a bit unique and has features of both a parser and choice-based game. It looked very similar to me to the interface from Miss Gosling’s Last Case, although I didn’t check exhaustively for tweaks. Generally you have a choice of typing your instructions, parser style, or clicking from context dependent links (i.e., an object will suggest contextually-appropriate actions to take with it, like taking it, pushing it, jumping on it). This lets you type if you think it will be faster, but also avoids any getting stuck because you don’t realize you can “turn the knob” or what have you. I found that I mostly clicked, although for navigation-heavy segments typing is faster. I quite enjoyed the interface before and am still a big fan.

I also really liked the minimap at the top of the screen, which lets you travel automatically to previously-visited locations by clicking (except for a few places that are trickier to get to, where the game will make you walk). It also displays context-dependent icons (i.e., “!” seems to indicate you left an item there, “?” seems to indicate there’s a person who you can currently interact with there).

Overall I applaud the care taken in the UI and to try to make it a frictionless playing experience. (Other notable quality-of-life features—as a dog, you can only carry one thing at a time, but there’s a “stash” option which will leave any item where you are, and give you a menu option to return directly later. You can also only have one spell at a time, and similar fetching mechanic is provided).

The main struggle for me, and this may be idiosyncratic, but there was a good portion in the middle-ish of the game where I was exploring the city, and doing things, but I didn’t really know *what* I was trying to accomplish, so I lacked motivation. At some point after that it occurred me (and I kept this impression throughout, but I haven’t finished the game, so hey, caveat lector) that it’s basically a heist game where you play as a dog, in that you’re just supposed to steal everything that’s not nailed down, sell it for money, and the money will allow you to solve the plot). That did give me a lot more direction and I started feeling more motivated, but it took me a while to have that realization.

A few loose ends that I will have to suppress my curiosity about until I finish: (1) I wonder if we’re ever going to be able to do anything with the captivity “blessing”? (2) When I read the description of my collar, I started wondering if the plot was going to involve me getting Flowers For Algernon -ed, although that might be too dark for the tone. (3) if I am indeed going to suffer some kind of cosmic consequence for selling temple goods. I mean it seemed in-character for the dog to take the risk either way, but I’m curious!

And some things I was really vibing with:

loved the puppy-finding mini-game. Although that somewhat inflated my expectations of how much smelling there would be in the game?
One of the “but you have heard of me” guys of all time, pretty sure that’s an Ea-Nasir cameo‽ (3,775-year-old spoiler alert).
the thorough, graduated hints
the historical facts. I love it when fiction has footnotes, and not just snarky, “another character annotated the text” footnotes (I mean, that’s fine), but like INFORMATIONAL footnotes! I am 100% here for this

Selected quote:

(Also, let’s bring pithoi back! Please, get me a jar so good it’s also a storage bin so good it’s also my coffin.)

Draconis · September 12, 2025, 7:54pm

Thank you so much for the review!

wolfbiter · September 14, 2025, 2:05am

Moon Logic by Lancelot

Flavor: A humorous riff on Zork, with metacommentary
Playtime: 48 minutes

As a person who has never played Zork, I’m probably not the ideal audience to say, understand the references in this game. I did not let that stop me.

I got a huge kick out of the format. There’s sort of a parser game being played in the left pane, and Roger and Wilco are providing commentary in the right pane. They make jokes and dispense occasional hints. It’s the first time I recall seeing this in a way that’s purely lighthearted (i.e., I recall similar commentary in LAKE Adventure, but sadder and more wistful). I like to imagine that Roger and Wilco have / will play many other games together before and after my time with them.

The right pane isn’t exactly a parser, either. It’s a choice-based interface simulating a parser, where there’s a maximum of four buttons available at a time, each corresponding to a different parser comment (e.g., TAKE, DROP, GO . . .). The game will decided for itself the object of each action–i.e., will decide what you drop (it seems like the options are usually cycled through in a preset loop). In some ways this makes the game easier, because the game must always offer you the correct option, but I did enjoy the sort of “action management” layer, where if you want to say, DROP something, but DROP is not a listed option, you need to exhaust other commands so that they go away, without messing up your game state, until DROP is available.

A highlight was the writing, which I found quite funny.

I also appreciated that the game shipped with a pretty detailed invisiclues style hints document (although the author seemed to have some disdain for walkthroughs, which I don’t share). And I could tell there had been quite a bit of thought to make sure the game was winnable (and I appreciated that the axe was not added to my struggles with dropping things)

All that said, I had a kind of unusual arc to my experience, where at first I was really vibing, but at a certain point I got tired of trying to read through the increasing visual clutter and fairly quickly transitioned into hmm, perhaps my experience with this game will be ending soon. (A few minutes later, I looked for and found the option to turn off the visual effects, which got me through the game. I’d be curious if anyone completed the game without turning them off—they were really intrusive.) I think this game slightly overstayed its welcome with me, based on the difficulty of reading the text, plus the high level of friction from the “need to loop back through everything” aspect to the gameplay, but ymmv.

Selected quote:

Lancelot · September 14, 2025, 10:00am

Thank you very much for your review of Moon Logic!

My disdain for walkthroughs stems from the fact that, whenever I truly got stuck in games in the past, the walkthroughs available at the time were not very helpful. They only worked if you started using them from the beginning of the game, not when you were stuck somewhere in the middle. I much preferred the invisiclues-style hints, which at least put you on the right track.

That said, I do like walkthroughs if they work no matter where you are in the game. I implemented this approach in my previous IFComp game One King to Loot them All (the “story mode”), and I’ve done the same for this game as well, in case players feel stuck.

I will probably turn off the visual effects by default after the competition, as I get the strong impression that they hurt more than they add to the player experience. It’s a case of “show, don’t tell” gone awry. Simply describing what happens is probably enough, especially since Roger and Wilco are already commenting on this “feature.”

wolfbiter · September 16, 2025, 1:25am

I do also like invisiclues-style hints, for just this reason!

My love of walkthroughs probably stems from a few too many times getting stuck somwhere (usually failing to guess the right command), and then realizing that the author had not even conceived that someone might get stuck there, and thus that spot is not covered by the hint topics. But to go truly maximalist I am certainly happy for there to be hints and a walkthrough!

wolfbiter · September 16, 2025, 1:29am

Murderworld by Austin Auclair

Flavor: solve puzzles while playing as one of several X-Men characters
Playtime: 2 hours (did not finish, felt there must be at least several more hours)

I’m not hugely knowledgeable about Marvel or the X-Men. Consistent with that, I learned only after the game that Arcade is a canonical Marvel villain known for kidnapping superheroes and putting them in elaborate deathtraps called “murderworlds”! If you knew this already then you could have deduced more than me about the plot of this game. (If the game is canon-accurate, then the deathtraps tend more toward “elaborate and mildly whimsical” and less Saw.)

I found the high point of the game to be the ability to play as multiple characters, and explore how their unique power set would help solve puzzles. For example, I really enjoyed the Nightcrawler puzzle in murderworld, which made good use of his teleportation ability.

This game is also well polished, a lot of tires have been kicked, even in sections with a lot of pathing / patrolling / dependencies, I didn’t notice any behavior that seemed buggy. The game is also pretty big feeling, with a lot of locations and puzzles (for example, the first segment has the option to play as any of 6 heroes, and there presumably are 6 different paths to accommodate this).

I felt the game withheld the goods a bit too much, although ymmv. It took me 58 minutes to get to the actual murderworld section, and I didn’t find the intro area particularly engaging (not enough chances to use cool powers, characters acting so illogically it was difficult to suspend disbelief—really, I can’t even clear rubble until I literally find someone’s foot sticking out of a rubble pile? What kind of disaster response playbook is this?)

There was also number of places where a few more synonyms would have helped, because I tried something hitting on the intended solution, but got no encouragement from the game because I was using the wrong command (e.g., no useful response on “show [broken] golem to Nuwa,” when the correct command is “give [broken] golem to Nuwa”, my many many failed attempts to guess the verb that turned out to be “open floor tile”). I think a lot of these had even been flagged already as potential friction points because I noticed a lot of spots where the character’s internal thoughts would steer me toward the right action, but what I really needed was just a slightly larger vocabulary.

And, let’s check in on the classic comics question—what onomatopoeia to use for various actions:

A+ on that front

Selected quote:

Overall: for me at least, would really have benefited from focusing on delivering the meat of the concept and implementing a few more synonyms.

wolfbiter - Murderworld transcript - Copy.txt (259.3 KB)

wolfbiter · September 17, 2025, 4:38am

Imperial Throne by Alex Crossley

Flavor: opaquely implemented secondary-world grand strategy game
Playtime: 1 hour, 11 minutes

Hurm. Hurm. Perhaps the game that has most wracked me with confusion with a mixture of interesting parts and parts that weren’t working for me (thus far!).

The start of this game was rough. You’re dead in the water, no momentum. Besides the general sense from the summary that it’s an empire-management game, there are few immediate “hooks” of what to do next. (In a video game, presumably there would be a nifty UI with a map and a bunch of options, which, by the way, would be fantastic here although presumably difficult to implement.) Some of this information is available in the game if you ask, but the process gets a bit tedious, and not all of it seems to be available. (As far as I can tell, for example, there’s no way to get a list of other neighboring countries other than waiting until they get namedropped in random events, which, diegetically, I find hard to swallow.)

And I think my skids may already have been greased in comparison to others—I saw earlier reviews mentioning that there was no list of commands, but the updated version I played did list some commands under “verbs” and “help,” and fairly clearly spelled out that you could “ask Kurash about deployments” to learn where your troops and generals currently were.

Another thing that would have smoothed the game was some indication of how long it was going to be—is there a victory condition? Are we on a timer?

My initial information gathering went OK, although to set up the C plot for this review, I encountered a bug where my advisor wouldn’t respond to any questions about the province Luracan.

Once you have a basic understanding, it’s off to the “guess the command” races. (Official game position: “Try to do anything that a ruler might do and some of those things should work.”). I actually went and skimmed a few other reviews early on because I felt a bit at sea, and thanks to their oblique spoilers (thanks, others!) I decided to try every possible idea that I thought of. I encountered success, I don’t know, maybe 10% of the time? (Example: verbs / help tells you there is a “build” command. The only things I found it possible to build all game were a temple and a bridge [the latter of which I declined to do—what if my enemy captures the bridge? What then? I’m too risk averse for this.)

As @alyshkalia mentioned in eir review, the game is certainly not criticizing or complicating the timeworn “let’s go conquer an empire” narrative. I could probably live with that—although it would be great to see at least the scope of actions expanded a bit. I read this post which touches, around the middle, on what kingship historically looked like. The basic breakdown is (1) chief general, (2) chief judge, and (3) chief priest, but with a focus on performing these functions publicly and with appropriate grandiosity. Like many of these games, Imperial Throne definitely covers chief general, but I would have loved more spice from the others. (Religion comes up frequently in the events, but I didn’t feel much power to shape things, and my attempts to sacrifice various things to the gods were rejected. Sorry, gods, I tried to propitiate you.)

And yet . . . reader, I was very engaged by this game. Perhaps, like a gacha game, the withholding of satisfaction most of the time actually made it more engaging. But there were definite dopamine hits when I finally convinced the game to execute one of my ~~enemies~~ plans (“marry princess,” “promote this guy to general”), even though every success had probably ten utter failures (as far as I know, one cannot commission propaganda, ban scurrilous plays [ETA that apparently with better commands, one can ban scurrilous plays! aim for the stars, friends], assassinate foreign leaders, hire spies, sell religious indulgences, replace priests with more loyal prients, etc.). And by the time General Callius betrayed me, leading an army of rebels to the capital, it felt like a real knife to the back. How dare he!! And when my loyal troops valiantly pushed back the rebels, it felt good! Well, until I encountered some kind of Luracan bug at the end that seemed to thwart my powerful counteroffensive . . . Luracan, graveyard of empires. Although I did at least “revitalize” the empire, if not deal with the traitors as thoroughly as they deserved.)

Anyhow, if I were speaking to the author, I would love 10,000 more synonyms and 10,000 more acceptable actions. To the players . . . know thyself, but if you like this type of game and you kind of like being tormented, then this one’s for you.

I’m going to go ahead and provide a list here of some basic nouns so that, if others, want, they can at least ask the game about them.

Several useful noun lists

starting provinces	starting generals (not necessarily matched to starting provinces)	other political entities that exist in the game (in no particular order)

Kohlus	Maretus	Namaran
Kalyra	Fedwyn	Plutari
Hayala	Zaren	Majeen
Coletta	Rilayn	Samira
Ravera	Callius	Aberion
Thurvira		Coriman
Luracan		Amaratus
		Orphiel
		Sontalin
		Uthanus

Raising revenue was a odd minigame, where, if you name something the game accepts to tax, it seems to give you money and have no bad repercussions, but the game will not recognize most things. While attempting to be somewhat progressive, I found 7 things I was allowed to tax, and tried 50 other things, so it very much felt I was earning money by typing.

Selected quote:

wolfbiter - Imperial Throne transcript - Copy.txt (64.9 KB)

DeusIrae · September 17, 2025, 5:41am

I enjoyed your review – and the ACOUP link, that informed some of my thinking about how the game presents information too! – but:

Actually you can! I did it with BAN TRAVIUS.

wolfbiter · September 17, 2025, 5:45am

And yet the humble “>ban travius and carissa” was rejected? We live in a cruel world

DeusIrae · September 17, 2025, 5:47am

Oh, weird! I wonder if it was the AND that did it, by making the parser think you were trying the BAN TRAVIUS and then separately CARISSA?

wolfbiter · September 18, 2025, 4:13am

A murder of Crows by Design Youkai

Flavor: a lightly offkilter vision of a day in the life of a crow, conveyed through anecdote and peculiar language
Playtime: 12 minutes

The game has simple, approachable gameplay. You have only a few choices at a time, and your actions often loop back on themselves. You see just a few vignettes before the day is over.

The game depicts crows as having a relatively advanced (for a crow) mental state, but a lot of the poignancy comes from the gap between the crow’s understanding and the player’s understanding. (I wouldn’t say I attained a full understanding of events, but the crows find a dog that’s being mistreated by its owners; a human friend, who might be a child or a bird rescuer or something? There was something going on there; and a crow who thinks she was harassed by some humans although it seems implied there’s more to that story. The crows often use simplified diction, grammar, etc., and a sort of sing-songy diction.

I thought it was pretty effective at simulating different-than-my mental processes, and I enjoyed the looping gameplay—something felt very crow-like to me in the idea of having the same idea several times in a row (and occasionally you get different results). The game had a more grounded / bittersweet vibe than you might expected, and I enjoyed that the endings I saw were open, which felt right. Crow life goes on, you know?

Short, made a point, didn’t overstay its welcome.

Indicative quote:

wolfbiter · September 21, 2025, 10:55pm

you are an ancient chinese poet at the neo-orchid pavilion by KA Tan

Flavor: satirical social commentary + court politics, and yeah, they’re all poets
Playtime: 27 minutes

I was excited to play this game based on the title. Yes, let’s write some poetry and discover some intrigue! Intriguing! At the open, we learn we are down-on-our-luck (I mean, not so down-on-our-luck that we don’t have servants, we occupy a particular class), and get a bit of an infodump about our backstory and the state of the world, but are off to the palace for the intrigue quickly enough.

The main elements of this game could be separated into two groups, and I think one of the puzzlements for me was that I couldn’t ever figure out how the two groups were thematically connected. In the first group I would put the standard “court politics” parts—rival factions! I’m an outsider asked to take a side! The emperor says “enough” because he’s tired of all this infighting! In the second group I would put all of the poets we meet wandering around the party. They all hang out in cliques, and display exaggerated behaviors that I took to be satirizing contemporary concerns (e.g., a group dedicated to protecting fruit that is flagellating themselves and holding self-criticism circles in the forest).

Plot-wise, yes, both of these parts of the game were involved in the plot, but it felt a bit to me like two different games pasted together (i.e., in contrast to all of the poets, the main rival figures in the “court politics” part were not sketched as exaggerated parodies of a modern “type”). This could definitely be a flaw in my reading/playing but I just kept expecting there to be some payoff or resolution of this juxtaposition and didn’t find one.

I enjoyed the chance to be involved in some poetry writing, and it certainly seemed to have a lot of endings.

Selected quote:

If you like this, you may like [other media]: in the spirit of the game, let’s go with a Tang dynasty banger by a guy who did not seem particularly interested in being subtle.

wolfbiter reviews IFComp 2025 - latest: Operative Nine

TOC