Category Archives: Game Review

Game Review: Electric word, “life” (2020, Lance Nathan)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Electric word, “life” is an entrant in this year’s Interactive Fiction Competition.  Right now, because it’s October, I’m just playing the horror and Halloween-themed entries but all sorts of different games have been entered in this year’s competition and I look forward to playing all of them in November.

Electric word, “life” takes place at a Halloween party in 1999 but it’s not really a horror game.  There are elements of the supernatural in the game but the game is more about memories and grieving than it is about the paranormal.  Your roommate is throwing a Halloween party and, realizing that your flat is full of strangers, you’re looking for a way to either escape or at least find some peace and quiet.  Then, suddenly, your friend Andy shows up but there’s something different about him.

Like most games designed with Twine, Electric word, “life” is more a short story than a traditional game.  You point and click to move the story along and to get extra details.  There are a few choices you can make but they all appear to eventually lead to the same conclusion.  Luckily, it’s a very well-written and emotionally-effective story.  I especially liked the amount of detail that Lance Nathan went into when it came to recreating Halloween, 1999.  Everything from the Matrix costumes to the music playing at the party felt spot-on.  Playing the game, you feel like you really are at that party, listening to strangers chat each other up and wondering how you’re going to clean up the mess afterwards.  When Andy arrives, you’re as relieved as the narrator to see a friend and when Andy reveals his secret, it’s an emotional moment for both the player and the narrator.

Electric word, “life” is a simple but rewarding work of Interactive Fiction.  It can be played by clicking here.

Game Review: The Pinecone (2020, Joseph Pentangelo)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

The Pinecone is one of the entrants in this year’s Interactive Fiction Competition.  In this work of flash fiction, you’re waiting for the school bus to arrive.  It’s another cold and boring morning.  You’re running late but so is the bus.  It’s while you’re waiting for the bus that the goats arrive.  How you react to the goats will determine whether or not you make it to school.  That my sound simple but there’s more to it than just standing to the side while they walk by.  You never now where a goat might show up.

This is a brief but well-written and frequently funny game.  Because of movies like The Witch, I was expecting the goats to act in a certain and more sinister way.  While they didn’t (and this is not a horror game, despite the presence of goats), the game still did a good job of showing why you wouldn’t necessarily want to mess around with a goat.  Towards the end of the game, there is a literal laugh out loud moment involving a goat and a school bus.  The game’s worth playing just for that.

The Pinecone is simple but it’s also a game that rewards being replayed.  Unlike a lot of Twine works, your decisions really do affect the outcome of the game.  Making the correct choice early on in the game will give you more options later on.  Making the wrong choice will lead to your options being limited and you missing school.

It’s not a difficult game but it probably does help to know something about goats before playing The Pinecone.  After you’ve done research, The Pinecone can be played here.

Game Review: Baby Face (2020, Mark Samples)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

In this work of Interactive Fiction, the recent death of your mother forces you and your father to come to terms with Babyface, a semi-legendary bogeyman who haunted you in the past and who may still be living in his old house, watching as people walk by.

Babyface is more of a short story than an actual game.  There are things for you to click in order to move the story forward but there really aren’t any decisions for you to make.  If you’re looking for a traditional IF experience, with you explore locations on your own and it’s up to you to figure out what the clues mean and how to solve all the puzzles, Babyface is not it.

Instead, it’s a story that puts you right in the head of the main character.  Even though you don’t really control her actions, you still see the story through her eyes.  It’s both well-written and well-designed (using Twine) and it uses both audio and photographs to create and maintain a spooky atmosphere.  Inspired by a nightmare, this story does a good job of capturing dream logic and keeping the player off-balance.  It may not be a traditional game but it is a good read for fans of horror.

Babyface has been entered into the 2020 Interactive Fiction competition.  It can be experienced here.

Game Review: Vampire Ltd (2020, Alex Harby)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

One of the best Interactive Fiction games that I’ve played recently, Vampire Ltd. is described as being “a corporate espionage adventure (with vampires in it).”

Taking place in a world where vampires are not only known to exist but where they often become rich and powerful businessman, Vampire Ltd. has the player take on the role of Nero Brashov.  Nero is a former aristocrat, a current vampire, and a failed businessman.  But the failure is not your fault.  You were cheated by your business partner, Hadrian.  Now, Hadrian is on the verge of unveiling something that he calls the Moonlite and you’re determined to get revenge by sneaking your way into his corporate office and destroying the machine.

The only problem is that you’re a vampire and you can’t enter unless someone invites you in.  Can you convince someone to do that?

A clever and very detailed mix of horror and corporate espionage, Vampire Ltd. is a frequently hilarious text adventure in which you alternate between dealing with the realities of corporate life and your desire for revenge.  While the puzzles are not excessively difficult, they do require a little work to figure out but the game comes with a walk-through for those who might get lost.

Vampire Ltd. is a game that benefits from being played more than once.  There’s a lot that your vampire can do.  It’s not necessary to do all of it to win the game but it’s still rewarding to replay and discover all of the different things that can happen.  Fortunately, the game ends with a series of suggestions of things that you might want to try when you play a second or third time.

Vampire Ltd. is an entry in this year’s Interactive Fiction Competition.  It can be played here.

Game Review: The Brutal Murder of Jenny Lee (2020, Daniel Gao)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Jenny Lee was only seventeen years old when she was brutally murdered, beaten to death with her own saxophone.  Now, seventeen years later, you have been sent into the past to investigate her murder.  A disembodied voice follows you everywhere you go, sometimes offering up hints but sometimes reprimanding you if you find clues to a solution that the voice doesn’t want to hear.  The voice makes it clear that you have a limited amount of time to solve the murder and when that time expires, so will you.  When you’re not investigating, you’re in limbo, where you can move in every direction but you can never escape.  Or can you?

This work of Interactive Fiction is actually two mysteries in one.  The first is the mystery of who murdered Jenny Lee.  The other is the mystery of who you are and why you’ve been sent to the past.  Neither is an easy mystery to solve and, fortunately, the game does have a walk-through for those who just want to find out what’s going on in the most straight-forward way possible.  However, it’s best to play this game without using the walk-through so that you can fully immerse yourself in the world that it creates.  Not everything you see in the game is going to be relevant to solving the mystery.  Like all good detective stories, there are red herrings.

The best advice I can give you for what to do while playing The Brutal Murder of Jenny Lee is to write things down.  A lot of the game’s clues involve remembering either directions or passcodes.  Making the right or wrong decision when going either north, south, east, or west be can be the difference between a good ending and a bad ending.

The Brutal Murder of Jenny Lee is an entry in this year’s Interactive Fiction Competition.  It, and all of the other entries, can be played here.

Game Review: Alone (2020, Paul Michael Winters)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

You’re alone.

You want to be alone.

Surviving what has happened to the world requires you to be alone.

But if you want to keep driving down the hallway, you’re going to have to find the closest garage and get some gas.  And when the gas pumps turn out to be locked, you’re going to have to figure out how to get them unlocked and you might not be able to do it alone.

Alone is a post-apocalyptic Interactive Fiction game.  While you try to solve the puzzle of how to unlock the gas pumps, you also find journals and other notes that reveal what has happened to the world and why it’s so important to stay isolated from other people.  It’s not a bad text game.  The descriptions are sparse but effective and the puzzles are not that difficult to solve as long as you pay attention.  As befits its story, it’s a straight forward game without any unnecessary padding.  In the game, you don’t have any time to waste and neither does Alone.

Not surprisingly, Alone is one of many IF games that I’ve played this year that deals with people having to isolate themselves because of an apocalyptic events.  This is the year of the quarantine so, of course, it’s going to be reflected in our games, books, and movies.  I think that’s one reason why Alone sticks with you.  Right now, a lot of people are feeling alone.  Depending on the choices you make and how you play the game, Alone can end on a note of either hope or uncertainty.  It’s up to you.

Alone is one of the entrants in the 26th annual Interactive Fiction Competition, which is currently ongoing and accepting entries until November 29th.  You can play it (and all the other entries) by visiting the Interactive Fiction Comp’s home page.

Game Review: Six Gray Rats Crawl Up The Pillow (2015, Caleb Wilson as “Boswell Crain”)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

You are Rinaldo di Gorgonzola, a spoiled fop living in Renaissance-era Italy.  With the plague shutting down most of the country and with you needing money to pay your rent, you accept a bet.  All you have to do to win is spend the night in the deserted castle of a recently deceased nobleman.

The main challenge of this Interactive Fiction game is to figure out how to get to sleep.  Getting in the caste is easy.  Since there’s only three rooms in the castle, finding the bedroom is easy.  Once you figure out that the command is “enter bed” and not “lie on bed,” getting on the bed is easy.  It’s getting to sleep that’s the hard part.  Not only are there things you have to do — like get undressed, eat, and read — before you can go to sleep but you also have to deal with a series of memories.  This game is unique in that your inventory includes memories that have to be examined before you can go to sleep.  Each memory leads to another memory until you finally reach one memory that will not go away.  The solution for getting rid of that memory is so simple that I’m worried that it took me so long to solve the puzzle.  I might not be as good at these games as I think I am.

The game doesn’t end once you fall asleep.  There’s some other things that you have to deal with.  You didn’t think that spending the night in a dead nobleman’s castle would be easy, did you?  But those puzzles are considerably easier to solve than the puzzle of how to get to sleep in the first place.

Six Gray Rats Crawl Up The Pillow is a well-written and atmospheric game.  There’s a lot of unexpected wit to be found in the game.  At one point, I grew so frustrated with trying to figure out how to go to sleep that I commanded the game “shoot shelf,” just to be reprimanded for always thinking about myself.  Another entertaining thing to do is to try to pick up the corpse of the nobleman.  (Yes, it does seem that the body was just left in the bedroom.)  I liked the way the game incorporated memories into the inventory, though I think some of the memories could have been combined to help the game flow better.  It took me about 40 minutes to play the entire game.  Someone who is actually good at this will probably be able to do it in 10.  It can be downloaded from here.

Game Review: Ghosts Are Good Hosts (2015, Leonard Pilchin)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Waiting for an invitation to arrive
Goin’ to a party where no one’s still alive
Waiting for an invitation to arrive
Goin’ to a party where no one’s still alive

— Dead Man’s Party by Oingo Boingo, lyrics by Danny Elfman

Last night, you dreamed about going to a party that was being thrown by ghosts.  The next morning, you receive an invitation to just such a party.  Of course, you go.  When you arrive, you meet Annabel, who is not a ghost.  However, the ghosts soon arrive and, once gathered around the table, they look at you with hungry eyes.

As the title of this game states, ghosts are good hosts.  However, they also want to eat you and Annabel for dinner!  Since there’s no way for you to leave the dining room without the permission of your hosts, you’re going to have to talk to the ghosts and somehow win them over.  Not even a ghost would be willing to eat its own friend.

Talk to Corsair, Halle, Kal, and Soul.  It’s not hard.  (All you have to do is point and click and then select what questions you want to ask them.)  Get to know them.  Ask them about each other.  Learn about their stories and compliment them at the right time.  Once you think that you’ve won each ghost over, ask them if they want to be “ghost friends.”  Ask too soon and you’ll get rejected and you might even get eaten.  Ask at the right time and you’ll have a pleasant ghost party and you might even make a living friend out of Annabel.

Ghosts Are Good Hosts is a surprisingly challenging but good-natured TWINE game.  The challenge isn’t finding the right questions to ask as much as it’s asking them in the right order and to the right ghost at the right time.  It’s not easy but it is fun, mostly because each ghost has their own unique story and personality.  Along with the wonderful graphics, the game has a retro feel which will appeal to the nostalgia of every 90s kid who used to play games on a big, bulky personal computer.

Ghost Are Good Hosts can be played here.  If you’re struggling to not get eaten, a walk-through is available here.

Game Review: The Sock Puppet Killer (2019, Jason Cantalini)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

In this diabolically clever work of interactive fiction, the narrator needs you to track down the Sock Puppet Killer!

Who is the Sock Puppet Killer?  A killer who kills sock puppets, of course!  And why are you the only one who can stop him?  Because that narrator says that you’re former Chief Inspector Caine Slade, the brilliant detective who has been a pathetic drunk ever since the tragic death of your family!

You can tell the narrator that you’re not interested in catching the Sock Puppet Killer.  You can say that you won’t even “do it for the children!”  (Yes, that is an option.)  You can say that you have no memory of ever being Caine Slade.  You can tell the narrator, in detail, why his story doesn’t make any sense.  But eventually, you’re going to end up in a bar, approaching a beautiful woman who you’ve been told is the Sock Puppet Killer.

This is one weird game and winning it going to require more than one try.  Fully understanding everything that is happening is going to take probably a dozen tries.  There are a variety of different decisions to be made throughout the game.  Make the wrong decision and you’ll end up dead.  Make the right decision and you very well could still end up dead.  The best piece of advice that I can give you (without spoiling the game, of course) is to avoid pissing off the narrator.  At one point, I very adamantly told him that I wasn’t going to approach the Sock Puppet Killer and I suddenly found myself drowning in the ocean.  It’s accepted in almost all Interactive Fiction games that the narrator is basically God but The Sock Puppet Killer is remarkable for featuring an easily angered and very vengeful God.

The Sock Puppet Killer is well-written and often loud out loud hilarious.  It’s not an easy game but that just makes it all the more rewarding if you manage to get through the entire thing without dying.

The game can be played by clicking here.

Game Review: Bogeyman (2018, Elizabeth Smyth)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

In this interactive fiction game, you are put in the role of a child who, after having what you believe to be a nightmare about being abducted, wakes up to discover that you actually have been abducted.  You are now one of several children, living in an isolated mountain cabin and subject to the unpredictable and often cruel whims of your abductor.  Escape seems impossible and survival is going to mean making some truly grim choices.

Bogeyman starts out with a dark premise and then it just gets progressively more dark from there.  Whenever you think that the story can’t get any more unsettling, it does.  It’s not a game where you always get as many choices as you would like.  Often, you have to decide between doing a bad thing or doing an even worse thing.  It’s also not a short game but it grabs your interest from the very first line and I played all the way to the end because, after spending just a few minutes experiencing life in that cabin, I had to know how it would all end.

Bogeyman is a Twine game and it actually makes good use of the format.  White text slowly appears against a black background while subtle but spooky music plays in the background.  Your choices are in all caps, highlighting the desperation of your situation.  There are a few graphics but most of the game takes place in your head.  The game does such a good job of describing the cabin and the situation that you feel like you’re there.

Well-written and carefully put together, Bogeyman is an IF game that sticks with you.  You can experience it here.