Category Archives: Game Review

Game Review: What the Bus (2020, E. Joyce)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

This game is an entrant in the 2020 Interactive Fiction competition.  All of the entrants can be played here.

This game starts off with a premise that anyone has ever had to rely on mass transit can relate to.  You’re waiting for the #44 Bus so that you can ride it to the station where you have to catch your train.  However, while you’re waiting, you get a notification telling you that your bus is running 40 minutes behind schedule!

Do you try to catch another bus?  Do you try to catch a different train?  Or do you just suck it up and wait for your bus to arrive?  Choose carefully because the world is strange and who knows where all of these buses and trains could be going.  I consistently failed to pick wisely and I ended up more lost than I was before.

There are 10 different endings that you can get at the end of this game, depending on which bus or train you decide to take.  Among the endings I’ve gotten, I’ve found myself trapped in a train station and I’ve also entered into a strange parallel dimension.  I have yet to actually get to where I needed to go.  Anyone who has ever had to deal with MTA Maryland or tried to navigate the subways in New York or the Underground in London will be able to relate.  It’s a universal game, one to which we can all relate and which everyone should be able to enjoy.  We’ve all been there.

You can play it here.  Good luck!

 

Game Review: Minor Arcana (2020, Jack Sanderson Thwaite)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

This game is an entrant in 2020 Interactive Fiction Competition.  All of the entries can be found here.

Minor Arcana is probably not the first game to center around Tarot cards but it is probably the first one to actually be written from the point of view of the cards themselves.  You are the cards and, as you wait to reveal your next fortune, you think about your past and maybe your future.  Who created you?  Who gave you power and why?  Are you going to help the people who seek your insight or are you going to destroy them?  Are you a force of chaos or a force of peace?  These are the decisions that you, as the player, can make as you point and click your way through the story.

Like a lot of works done with Twine, Minor Arcana is more of a short story than a game.  While it’s true that you control several elements of the story and that your decisions will determine the type of story that’s told, it would be a mistake for anyone to play Minor Arcana thinking that it’s going to be a traditional IF game where you solve puzzles and examine rooms and decide whether to move north, west, or, if you’re really lucky, northeast.  Instead, Modern Arcana is more of a well-written mood piece, designed to make the player meditate on issues of fate, fortune, and the future.

Minor Arcana can be played here.

Game Review: Tavern Crawler (2020, Josh LaBelle)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Tavern Crawler is an entrant in the 2020 Interactive Fiction Competition.  All of the entries can be played here.

Tavern Crawler is an incredibly addictive Twine Game.  It starts out with a typical Dungeons and Dragons style set-up.  You and your two companions meet a wealthy man in a tavern.  The wealthy man is named Walter Barnes (not much of a fantasy name but that’s the point) and he offers you a fortune in gold.  All you have to do is find a dragon’s lair, kill the dragon, and then return with its head.

Sounds simple right?  The problem is that you were quite drunk when Walter approached you so, even though you heard about the dragon, you didn’t really hear the name of the tavern where you were supposed to meet him afterwards.  Though finding and dealing with the dragon is a part of the game, Tavern Crawler is more concerned with what happens after the quest.  Will you be able to find Walter or will just get spend all of your time wandering from tavern to tavern, getting progressively more sloshed as you search?

Tavern Crawler is unique just for the amount of options that you’re given.  Every decision you make has a consequence and effects how the game will end.  There’s not single throw away decision to be found and, as a result, you can play Tavern Crawler over and over again without once playing the same game twice.  Will you remain relatively sober and not only find Walter but also discover the secret of the dragon?  Or will you get so drunk and obnoxious that you’ll end up penniless, bloody, and abandoned by your companions?  The choice is yours!

I liked everything about Tavern Crawler.  There’s several side quests that you can chose to get involved with and the town, its residents, and its taverns are all described so precisely that you feel like you’re right there, drinking ale and wondering whether or not to get involved in the knife game that’s taking place in the back of bar.  Tavern Crawler creates a world that you’ll want to explore and the game rewards experimentation.  As soon as I finish writing this, I’m going to replay it just to see how many bad decisions I can make before dying.

Tavern Crawler can be played here.

 

Game Review: Desolation (2020, Earth Traveler)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Desolation is an entrant in the 2020 Interactive Fiction Competition.  All of the entries can be played here.

In this piece of horror-themed Interactive Fiction, you have just escaped from a mansion and a blood-thirsty cult and now, suddenly, you’re in the desert.  You have no food.  You have no water.  Your phone isn’t going to save you and the sun isn’t going to stop beating down on you.  You’ve got a flashlight but that won’t help if you die of thirst and there’s a good chance of that happening since you’re stranded in the desert.

Or are you?

Desolation does a good job of keeping you guessing as to what’s really going on.  After a few turns of wandering around in the desert, the game took an unexpected turn and then, a few turns later, it took another unexpected turn.  I can’t go into the details without spoiling the game but I will say the Desolation kept me on my toes.  I’m terrible at IF games that require you to figure out how to survive in a desolate location.  I always go the wrong direction or pick up the wrong object.  That happened to me a few times while playing Desolation but I still enjoyed the game.  It’s a real challenge and requires more than a little thought.  If you’ve never played an IF game before, this is probably not the one to start with.  But people who know the format should enjoy the challenge of Desolation.

One final note: Desolation is actually a sequel to an earlier game, Two Braids Girl.  I haven’t play the earlier game but that didn’t stop me from enjoying Desolation.

Desolation can be played here!

Game Review: Ascension of Limbs (2020, AKheon)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Ascension of Limbs is an entrant in the 2020 Interactive Fiction competition.  You can browse and play all the entries here.

In Ascension of Limbs, you play the owner of a mysterious antique store.  You may have bought the store.  You may have inherited from a relative.  You may have gotten it in some other mysterious way.  There’s a lot of randomization involved in Ascension of Limbs, which means that you can play the game several times and have a totally different experience each time.

Your goal in Ascension of Limbs is to not go broke, to not go insane, and to not end up poor and destitute.  That’s not as easy as it sounds.  There are some dangerous things in that antique shop and, if you’re not careful, they can sap away your sanity and lead you to do some terrible things.  (Losing a point of sanity limits what you can do in the store, sometimes at the worst possible moment.)  If you can’t find anything to sell, you’ll lose money.  Lose all your money and the game is over.  It’s not easy to make money when you’re also losing your mind.  Lose your mind and the game is also over.  Balancing both money and sanity will be challenge but the game offers a lot of ways to do it.

Make your choices.  Do you promote your store or do you hope the customers will just find you?  Do you call the police about criminals or do you use them to commit insurance fraud?  Do you build up a strong base of loyal customers or do you murder them, for either their money or as an exchange for forbidden knowledge?  The choice is yours!

Ascension of Limbs is a challenging game but I can’t recommend it enough.  For those with patience and a tolerance for the occasionally macabre, Ascension of Limbs is a game to play again and again.

Play it here.

Game Review: Last House On The Block (2020, Jason Olson)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Last House On The Block is an entrant in the 2020 Interactive Fiction Competition.  All of this year’s entries can be played here.

Mr. Harrison, who has lived in your neighborhood longer than anyone who can remember, has died.  Mr. Harrison was the neighborhood hermit, a quiet elderly man who lived in a big house and who rarely talked to anyone.  Everyone assumed that he had to be rich.  Because Mr. Harrison had no family, the city is going to come to his house and take everything.  That leaves you with only one chance to explore his house on your own and find the money that you’re sure Mr. Harrison had secreted away.

Just from the set-up, Last House On The Block sounds like it’s going to be horror game but actually, it’s a slice-of-life.  You explore Mr. Harrison’s house and see how the old man lived.  In order to discover where Mr. Harrison hid his secrets, you’ll have to pay attention to ever detail and start solving puzzles early.  From the very start of the game, you’re presented with a puzzle that will either lead to you having a friend to help with your search or leave you with the next-to-impossible task of doing it all by yourself.  Some of the puzzles are more difficult than others.  Luckily, the game does have a walk-through.  I had to refer to it several times but there’s not a single puzzle in the game that can’t be solved on your own.  You just have to pay attention.

Last House On The Block is a good example of a search-and-explore type game.  I appreciated and enjoyed the care that went into describing each room in the house.  By the end of the game, I could visualize every aspect of Last House On The Block.  It can be played here.  The walk-through is here.

Game Review: Trusting My Mortal Enemy?! What a Disaster! (2020, Storysinger Presents)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

This TWINE game is an entrant in the 2020 Interactive Fiction Competition.  Because it’s October, I’m currently concentrating on only playing the horror and fantasy-based entries but I hope to have played and reviewed all of the entries by November 29th.

In this game, you are Lightbearer, Garden City’s greatest hero.  And you are also Promethium, Garden City’s most nefarious villain.  You play both roles in this unusual text adventure.  When Lightbearer finally defeats Promethium, it might mean that she’ll have to leave Garden City and, for a lot of reasons, she’s not ready to uproot her family and make that move.  So, Lightbearer and Promethium make a deal.  Lightbearer will let Promethium go free on the condition that they continue to have regular “staged” battles.  Lightbearer and Promethium meet regularly at a coffeeshop to choreograph their fights ahead of time.  Depending on the choices that the player makes, the hero and the villain can bond over their unexpected similarities or, as the title suggests, trying to trust your enemy can be a complete disaster.

I enjoyed this game.  It took me by surprise and both Lightbearer and Promethium were interesting and well-written characters.  This game explored why a hero needs a villain and vice versa and the story led to some very unexpected places.  It’s not a short game but it is a rewarding one.  It’s well worth the time required to play it.

It can be played here.

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.