Sub Rosa: The Seven Deceits of Confessor Destine (a review)

"Sub Rosa (The Seven Deceits of Confessor Destine)" is a parser-style interactive fiction written by Joey Jones and Melvin Rangasamy for the 2015 interactive fiction competition.

"Sub Rosa" is part mystery, part spy intrigue set in an alternate meta-verse.  The writing is remarkable for the detail and uniqueness of the alien culture it describes.  From the moment I checked my inventory, I was sucked into this game.

[transcript]
>x llama suit
From feet to appendages to head, your form is completely covered by a thin-weave suit made wholly from the wool of the pellucid llama. It renders you undetectable to all the senses that matter, including your own.

You wove it yourself under the tutelage of the master weaver, White Widow. For her knowledge and silence she only asked for the whereabouts of her seven wayward sons. As you wove the invisible thread, she slowly and solemnly sapped each one, all the while instructing you on how to avoid dropping unseeable lines.

Your lower legs are splattered with mud from the trek through the Mambling Plains.

>remove suit
Merely wearing the suit would be pointless, anyone would see straight through to the person beneath. No, in order to make use of it, you had to weave it into your own skin. In time, the suit will peel off as your skin is shed, but not today.

[/transcript]

As the blurb suggests, the goal of this game is to infiltrate the compound of a corrupt theocrat and uncover evidence of his deceitfulness.  The puzzles are clever and approach a level of difficulty I have not seen in modern IF, perhaps not since "Spellbreaker".  There are only seven points (seven deceits to discover) but each one requires pulling together information or using tools gathered from multiple different source locations.  But the game is so solidly coded that I felt the puzzles were fair, and I did not turn to the walkthrough until halfway through the game, well after the two hour judging period had ended.

In a game this large there are, of course, a few minor bugs in the implementation, but overall I was impressed by the professional quality of the writing, programming and game design.  The Confessor's compound includes a library with over a hundred books.  And unlike so many of the libraries I've run across in past works of IF (where reading the tomes individually returns a default message 95% of the time) the Confessor's books have been individually implemented, each one with a brief, interesting and often useful piece of information.  I will say, however, that I wish the library had not been at the center of quite so many of the puzzles.  Reading through every one of those books, some of them more than once, became a little tedious and non-interactive after a while.

Really a great game.  One of the top in this year's competition.

Switcheroo (review)

"Switcheroo" is a web based story by the Marino family, entered in the 2015 interactive fiction competition.

Switcheroo is a story about a boy's magical transformation. This can be read and enjoyed at two different levels.  If you're a shallow thinking sod like me, you can read it as a goof-ball children's story, and enjoy it quite a lot.  But at another level, it gives the adult reader or older child some deeper symbolism to consider and discuss.

As a goofball children's story, this was a lot of fun.  There are funny bits, an embedded card game, a silly (mostly irrelevant) scoring system and references to other children's stories.  I loved the simulated card game, which parodies both "American Girl Dolls" and collectible card games like "Magic".

At another level, this game is about identity and the difficulty that all children (but especially foster children) have understanding and asserting their own identity.  I say this even though I had initial concerns that this would be JAHPAGI (just another hypertext parable about gender identity).  After playing the game to the end, I concluded that it went much deeper than that.  Sure, it is consistent with the modernist view that gender is a social construct:  one can wear girls clothing or not, play with the other boys or not, act aggressively or not, and none of those choices has any dependency on the others.  But this isn't JUST about gender identity.  Identity is complex, and the story recognizes that complexity.

Lucian Smith has reviewed this game and analyzes its meaning as it relates to foster children in greater depth than I feel qualified to do.  I recommend reading his review, but not until after you've played the game.

IF comp (almost) 50% done

I just finished writing my 25th review for the 2015 interactive fiction competition, which is more reviews than I've written any other year (almost double what I've written any other year.)  Yet I'm still not even quite half through with this year's competition entries!!!

This really has been a great competition year, both for the number of entries and the quality.

My favorites so far have been
Brain Guzzlers from Beyond
11th Sandman
Life on Mars?

Some others that have improved their standing, upon reflection, because they stuck in my mind are
Baker of Shireton
Forever Meow
Spy Intrigue

I know I won't be able to play all of the games before the end of the competition season.  Indeed, I need to take a break from this, as I have some other obligations piling up.

I have been been inspired this year to start learning Twine and Java script.  I have in mind a slice-of-life story that focuses on character development.  Characters are boys in their late teens, closing shop in the last week of their summer job.

Some of my other goals include:

Realistic modelling of both PC and NPC changes over time.
Realistic modelling of the passage of time in location descriptions.
Use of integrated puzzles to control pacing. (by integrated puzzles, I mean not arbitrary puzzles, but obstacles that contribute to the story arc)
Point and click map navigation

Contact me if you are interested in beta testing later on, though it will be at least six months before I have a testable game.  Contact me if you already write Twine and javascript and are looking for a beta tester yourself.

In the Friend Zone (review)

"in the friend zone" (lower case) is a Twine game by Brendan Vance entered in the 2015 Interactive Fiction competition.

The writing, dream sequences and game design all have a strikingly surreal quality to them.  For me, this worked reasonably well as a surreal horror story.  I was less satisfied, however, by the depth of insights this tried to provide regarding obsessive love and failed relationships.

More after the spoiler.

Crossroads (review)

"Crossroads" is a multiply branching story by Cat Manning, written in Twine for the 2015 interactive fiction competition.

In the past two days I have set about learning Twine and javascript for myself.  This new knowledge changes rather fundamentally the way I look at Twine games, sometimes becoming more distracted away from the story, while I imagine the structure of the code.

The story is about a planned encounter with a witch at the edge of the woods.  The text suggests that this witch may not be entirely good-natured.  The writing here starts out strong, which is good, because the beginning is the only part of the story that every player will necessarily see.  The narrative then branches off rather quickly, depending on what reason the player has chosen for seeing the witch, and what herbs they've brought along to help her with her spells.  I played several times, to check that the alternate story pathways lead to fundamentally different conclusions.  They do,.but with this many different endings, I didn't think the ones I played were written to the same high quality as the opening passages.

In past IFcomp years, against weaker competition, this story might have been in the top third.  But this year will be especially challenging, and this story (thematically) didn't light my fire.  I would recommend this game to players who like this particular game design. (hypertext interface, multiply branching CYOA).  I would not expect it to finish in the top thirtieth percentile.

A Figure Met in a Shaded Wood (review)

"A Figure Met in a Shaded Wood" is a web based interactive fiction by Michael Thomet entered in the 2015 Interactive Fiction Competition.

The PC is a vagabond, asked to make a series of choices during his journey through the woods, prior to an encounter with the figure described in the title and blurb.  I played three times, and then began to develop some new understanding of the meaning of the blurb.

The writing was good enough to hold my interest through what was only about a fifteen minute game (depending on how many times you replay, your times may differ).  The vagabond character is described in what I thought were self-consciously gender neutral pronouns.  I guess that's the trend in writing now, but I thought the prose would have read more smoothly with "he" or "she" rather than repeatedly "they".  There appeared to be some minor bugs in tracking the players choices.  But the players choices are tracked, which makes this a more sophisticated programming effort than many of the Twine games I've played.

Major Spoilers after the break.

Grandma Bethlinda's Variety Box (a review)

"Grandma Bethlinda's Variety Box" is an interactive fiction by Arthur DiBianca, entered in the 2015 Interactive Fiction competition.  Weirdly enjoyable, in the way that listening to any well-told shaggy dog story can be.  Demonstrates how many clever puzzles can be introduced with only a limited selection of verbs.

The King and the Crown (a review)

"The King and the Crown" is an interactive fiction written in z-code by Wes Lesley for the 2015 interactive fiction competition.  In a lot of ways this felt like a programming exercise: short, simple and under-developed.  It felt like the author put more effort into customizing standard error messages, than building a world model which is robust enough prevent the player from experiencing parser errors.

I reached two quite different endings before turning to the external hints file.  Turns out there are lots of hidden Easter eggs, but many of them so obscure that nobody is ever likely to find them without the walk through.  Better game design requires that an author focuses their energy on writing responses to likely actions (examining details on the stained glass, for example) not on commands the player would never think to type without the walk through.

Forever Meow (a review)

"Forever Meow" is a short web-based interactive fiction by Moe Zilla entered in the 2015 interactive fiction competition.  The PC is a cat. The story is very linear, but there are some choice points that allow you to delay the story advancement while role-playing other cat-like behaviors. I don't want to say too much, because the best parts of this game are the unexpected twists that happen along the way.  There is going to be zero Venn overlap between players who connect with the PC in this story, and players who connected with the PC in Chandler Groover's competition entry "Taghairm".

Duel (a review

"Duel" is a web based interactive fiction by Piato, entered in the 2015 interactive fiction competition.

The PC is a wizard, in a duel against another wizard.  You have a short list of spells to choose from, though you can use each one only once.  Through a series of failures and restarts I was able to figure out which spells were more or less effective.  I managed to make it to the third test before consulting the walk through for a complete solution.

Spells and their effects are described in verbose prose, some nicely written, some almost incomprehensible.  In all, I think this is too densely written to convey a sense of danger or urgency which I would think should be the desired mood in this type of story.

Taghairm (a review)

"Taghairm" is an interactive fiction by Chandler Groover, entered in the 2015 Interactive Fiction competition.

The violence warnings on the blurb are not without purpose.  Not a story for cat lovers. If you don't know the meaning of "Taghairm" you might want to look that up before playing.  This is a simulation of a Taghairm ceremony.  I am not a cat lover, but it was not for me either.

Well simulated though.  And has something to say about human cruelty, if you can bear to play it long enough. A likely intentional bid for Golden Banana of Discord.

Life on Mars? (a review)

"Life on Mars?" is an interactive fiction written with Inform by Hugo Labrande for the 2015 Interactive Fiction competition.

This game won a French IF comp previously.  I haven't played the original, but the translation seemed very well executed.  I experienced no grammatical errors, and only one minor typo.

More after the break.

Cape (a review)

"Cape" is a superhero origins story, written by Bruno Dias with the Undum Engine for the 2015 interactive fiction competition.

I am not normally a big fan of the superhero genre, but this is really well written prose and dialogue, at an appropriate length for the competition.  This dystopic urban setting shares more in common with "The Dark Knight" than camp-1960's "Batman", although nothing I read would lower it below a PG13 rating.

More after the page break (not too spoilery this time...mostly my reflections on the various purposes of "choice-points" in a hypertext game)

Baker of Shireton, revisited (a second review)

"The Baker of Shireton" is a parser type game writen by Hannon Ondricek for the 2015 annual interactive fiction competition.  After posting my initial review of this game, another judge advised me to check the walk through for content I may have missed.  I'm glad I did, although some of my impressions haven't changed.  This revised review is going to be very spoilery, so don't jump after the break unless you want key game points revealed.

The Problems Compound (a review)

"The Problems Compound" is a parser-style interactive fiction written by Andrew Schultz for the 2015 Interactive Fiction Competition.

The "credits" in this game lists as one inspiration "In a Manor of Speaking" (Hulk Handsome, 2012 IF comp 10th place).  That game, in turn, has been compared with "Nord and Bert Couldn't Make Head or Tail of It" (Jeff O'Neill, 1987). "The Problems Compound" also makes reference to a classic children's book "The Phantom Tollbooth" (Norton Juster, 1961).

What all of these games (and book) have in common is a passion for word-play...puns, homonyms, spoonerisms and figures of speech.  The principle mechanism in "The Problems Compound" is compound word reversal.  You'll meet lots of strange people in this strange world with names like "Uncle Dutch", "Turk Young" and "Buddy Best". (Now reread the title "Compound Problems").  The game shoehorns in a lot of different types of puzzles in a way that made me think of the 1999 competition winner "The Winter Wonderland" (Laura Knauth).

More after the spoiler break.

Kane County (a review)

"Kane County" is a choice-based text game for the web, written by Michael Sterling and Tia Orisney for the 2015 interactive fiction competition.  I chose to play this next because I was drawn in by the blurb, which suggests I'm in for a nail-biting survivalist adventure yarn.

The blurb provides all the backstory there is.  You've crashed your jeep in the desert during a rainstorm.  Now you'll need to use all your wits and strength to escape.  The first choice you're given allows you to decide whether you are the type of person who will rely primarily on your "wits" or on your "strength".  I played both ways, and saw some of the differences this made on the outcome of my later choices... whether or not I could successfully build a fire without matches, whether or not I could safely scale down a sheer rock face.

The game design felt like a cross between one of those old RA Montgomery CYOA paperbacks, and a role playing game featuring "saving throws" and such.  The game has a high degree of genuine interactivity.  Each choice you make has a consequence:  moving you closer to the goal of civilization or slowing you down.  Discovering new material resources, or using them as tools. Increasing or decreasing your stamina and hydration level.  Sometimes the results of a particular choice were predictable, such as expecting that I would not be able to successfully scale a cliff without a rope.  In other cases, the results of my choice seemed somewhat random: whether to go left or right along a path.  As a player and reader, I preferred making choices which seemed less random.

The game is effective at creating a nail biting adventure in which the player has some genuine agency over their own survival.  However I would have liked more back-story.  Why was I driving across the desert in the first place?  What was I running away from?  Who (or what) do I miss the most back home?  In other words, what is my motivation for survival, and what are the inner demons which might be holding me back?

Brain Guzzlers from Beyond (review)

"Brain Guzzlers from Beyond" is a parser style interactive fiction written by Steph Cherrywell for the 2015 interactive fiction competition.  I chose to play this game because I so thoroughly enjoyed Cherrywell's 2014 entry "Jacqueline, Jungle Queen".  I was naturally eager to see what she had written this year.

In my formative years of playing the IF comp, roughly a decade ago, I had an elaborate algorithm for judging entries.  This required ranking games on multiple scales before calculating a rounded average.  I scored games on writing quality, story telling, novel programming tricks, simulation depth.... half a dozen scales in all.  But in the end, if I wasn't happy with a game's calculated score, I would throw away all those other numbers and assign whatever value I'd already decided in the category of "overall enjoyment".  That experience describes how I feel about "Brain Guzzlers from Beyond."  This game misses the "exceptional" mark on several of my fussy little metrics, but I had more FUN with this entry than anything else I've played this season.

More after the page break.

"Arcane Intern (Unpaid)" (review)

 "Arcane Intern (Unpaid)" is Twine game by Astrid Dalmady, entered in the 2015 Interactive Fiction competition.  This was the next game served to me from a randomized list.

Most of us who are now in professional positions remember at one time working in a low-pay or no-pay internship.  This game, though set in a fantasy world, effectively evokes the spirit and tribulations of that first starter job.  I remember bosses (it seemed like everybody was my boss back then) who nurtured me and I remember others who cut me down.  I remember feeling sometimes rewarded and sometimes misused.  The most important knowledge I gained from my internships was the wisdom I came by unexpectedly... but perhaps never so much as the character in this story manages to gain knowledge which her employers did not intend for her to acquire.  (At least that was how it worked out the first time I played).

More after the spoiler break

IF comp 20% done.

Ten days into the 2015 IF comp, and I've finished reviewing my 11th game.  Holy Cow, I never imagined I'd get through this many games in the entire competition season, let alone the first week.  With 44 games remaining to review, I doubt I'll get through all of them by the end of the judging period.  But maybe it will be a worthy goal to review all 55 games (54, with one removed) by the end of the year?  I'll try.  Let me know if you are reading this.

Capsule II - The 11th Sandman (review)

"Capsule II - The 11th Sandman" is a web-based interactive fiction by PaperBlurt, entered in the 2015 Interactive fiction competition. This game had all the cards stacked against it, but my initial impression was wrong.  You must play this.

It had all the cards stacked against it.  I had played PaperBlurt's "Dad vs. Unicorn" game in 2013 and didn't like it.  I thought the title and blurb of "Capsule II" were kind of lame.  I had read a review of "Capsule II" by Juhana Leinonen, which was largely unfavorable.  Worse, in the opening pages of "Capsule II" I agreed with the main points of Leinonen's review.  The alternate universe imagined here is unbelievable and internally inconsistent.

But after playing this story long enough you will suspend disbelief.  The writing quality is compelling.  The graphics and text animations are carefully designed.  The imagined universe might be fake, but the human behavior described here is real. I won't say any more.  You must play this without any spoilers.