"Yes, my mother is..." is a CYOA type game written by Skarn for the 2016 interactive fiction competition.
The PC is a therapist, who dispenses advice to a series of clients at her office. This near future fiction imagines a world in which the PC's mother has established an autonomous colony for some group of people who wear colorful masks and identify as "N/A". Yes, another Twine entry about identity labels.
I felt motivated to discover the hidden backstory of the N/A movement, but I think the pacing is off. There is a lot of text to wade through during therapy sessions, and only infrequent clues about what the titular "mother" is up to. The reader probably won't feel satisfied that they understand the backstory until they have played to more than one ending. During my second game I found myself skimming down the text as fast as I could, trying to find the “big reveal”. But even then, I wasn't satisfied that I really understood what was going on.
Some of the therapy options are a little non-conventional, but best of these is the opportunity to cold-cock a threatening skinhead and send him out of the therapy office in a bag.
Tuesday, October 11, 2016
Detectiveland (review)
Detectiveland is an interactive story written by Robin Johnson for the 2016 interactive fiction competition. I chose to play this next because I was drawn to the cover graphic and blurb. Also, because a quick one minute survey of the online version convinced me that this was a professional quality entry. I was not disappointed.
Detectiveland is written on a gaming platform I had not seen before. The screen is split into separate areas for the narrative stream, the exit choices, items in current use, and the full inventory list. This screen presentation allows for a point and click interface with some of the immersive world modeling features of a traditional parser game. The player can drop items in a location and expect to find them there later. Some of the games puzzles even resemble the old parser standards; using the right item in the right place at the right time.
The game is significant length, with close to fifty locations and a series of three largely unrelated cases. There is no way to die (until just before the end, so do save between each vignette).
The narrative voice is a comfortably familiar one. The hardboiled PI yarn has been a source of camp fiction for many decades. I was first introduced to it on Sesame Street. Comic noir was also one of IFs earliest tropes (Infocom's "Deadline" was a remarkable game for its time, 1982). But that familiarity doesn't diminish the fun of "Detectiveland". This is a polished, professional quality work. Definitely recommended.
Detectiveland is written on a gaming platform I had not seen before. The screen is split into separate areas for the narrative stream, the exit choices, items in current use, and the full inventory list. This screen presentation allows for a point and click interface with some of the immersive world modeling features of a traditional parser game. The player can drop items in a location and expect to find them there later. Some of the games puzzles even resemble the old parser standards; using the right item in the right place at the right time.
The game is significant length, with close to fifty locations and a series of three largely unrelated cases. There is no way to die (until just before the end, so do save between each vignette).
The narrative voice is a comfortably familiar one. The hardboiled PI yarn has been a source of camp fiction for many decades. I was first introduced to it on Sesame Street. Comic noir was also one of IFs earliest tropes (Infocom's "Deadline" was a remarkable game for its time, 1982). But that familiarity doesn't diminish the fun of "Detectiveland". This is a polished, professional quality work. Definitely recommended.
Monday, October 10, 2016
Cactus Blue Motel (a second look, review)
Cactus Blue Motel is a Twine game written by Astrid Dalmady for the 2016 interactive fiction competition. When I first reviewed it, I had gotten stuck (it turned out) only about a third of the whole game. It's kind of embarrassing getting stuck in a Twine game, but even with that limited experience, I was already duly impressed with the sense place and the onscreen text effects. Having played since to the end (twice now) there is even more depth and meaning to this game than I imagined. If you have not read my earlier review, that might be a good introduction. With respect to the author, I add these more reflective and spoilery notes.
spoilers to follow.
spoilers to follow.
Sunday, October 9, 2016
Cinnamon Tea (review)
"Cinnamon Tea" is a Twine story written by Daffs O'Dill for the 2016 interactive fiction competition. I chose this game next by closing my eyes and pointing my finger to a random entry on the screen.
As the story begins, the narrative "you" has just brewed a pot of magical tea, which might have the power to render visions of past and future lives. The player can choose from among three options concerning how the tea feels after the first small sip.
Very mild spoilers after the page break.
As the story begins, the narrative "you" has just brewed a pot of magical tea, which might have the power to render visions of past and future lives. The player can choose from among three options concerning how the tea feels after the first small sip.
Very mild spoilers after the page break.
Saturday, October 8, 2016
Moonland (review)
"Moonland" is a Twine game written by BillyJaden for the 2016 Interactive Fiction competion. The last two games I reviewed I had chosen because I already had preconceptions I would enjoy them. This I chose because I had no preconceptions. I picked it from the top of a random list.
This felt like the sort of work one might hear at a goth poetry open mike night, although it has been about a quarter century since I lived in Seattle and remember attending such a thing. The story focuses on a romantic relationship between the narrative "you" and some other person. One or both of you are emotionally disturbed, and one of you could be an android. Or maybe that android thing was just a metaphor.
Text transitions were sometimes too fast, causing me to miss bits of the story. I don't think that mattered. Mostly it is impressionistic. Text spills across the screen like a word soup of mixed metaphors,
Following are examples:
"Wasps crawl out of her mouth, exploding in your face, dripping mud, wet neon-black tears fill your stomach."
"There is an electric recoil screaming through your body. You cringe, taking deep breaths to pull yourself together."
"You vomit like a rainbow."
The story comes with an audio track, though to me the music choice was the audio equivalent of a strobe light. The music reinforced my sense of this as an open-mike night experience.
Maybe someone with different interests will get more out of this game than I did.
This felt like the sort of work one might hear at a goth poetry open mike night, although it has been about a quarter century since I lived in Seattle and remember attending such a thing. The story focuses on a romantic relationship between the narrative "you" and some other person. One or both of you are emotionally disturbed, and one of you could be an android. Or maybe that android thing was just a metaphor.
Text transitions were sometimes too fast, causing me to miss bits of the story. I don't think that mattered. Mostly it is impressionistic. Text spills across the screen like a word soup of mixed metaphors,
Following are examples:
"Wasps crawl out of her mouth, exploding in your face, dripping mud, wet neon-black tears fill your stomach."
"There is an electric recoil screaming through your body. You cringe, taking deep breaths to pull yourself together."
"You vomit like a rainbow."
The story comes with an audio track, though to me the music choice was the audio equivalent of a strobe light. The music reinforced my sense of this as an open-mike night experience.
Maybe someone with different interests will get more out of this game than I did.
Friday, October 7, 2016
Fair (review)
"Fair" is a parser game written by Hanon Ondricek for the 2016 interactive fiction competition. I loved the following prose, which I read on my first or second move of the game. This excerpt sets up the backstory and helps to characterize the PC very early.
[transcript]
This review will have a number of spoilers, so I'm jump breaking it.
[transcript]
>x posterboard
Someone took a great deal of time and craft supplies to make a sign of glittery paste-on letters. It reads Welcome to the 2016 Elementary Science Fair! Clip art of heavenly bodies festoons the borders, held in place by the sheer gravitational force of a child's adhesive glue stick.
The bottom half of the sign reads "Guest Judge: Science Author A.B. Astherton!" next to the black and white picture of you from the book jacket blown up to an uncomfortably blurry scale. You are resisting the urge to add the word fiction after the word science with your handy signature-signing sharpie.
[/transcript]
"sheer gravitational force of a child's adhesive glue stick". There is something almost comically poetic about that choice of phrase.
This review will have a number of spoilers, so I'm jump breaking it.
Wednesday, October 5, 2016
16 Ways to Kill a Vampire at McDonalds (review)
"16 Ways to Kill a Vampire at McDonalds" is a Twine game written by Abigail Corfman for the 2016 interactive fiction competition. I chose to play this next because, darn it, it always shows up first on the alphabetized list before I randomize it. Also, I'd read some buzz about this game on Sam Kabo Ashwell's site and it sounded like something I'd enjoy.
This game was probably not on anyone else's list of "first games to introduce your 2nd grade child to interactive fiction," but that is what happened to us. I mentioned this game to my daughter in the car after school, and by the time we got home she was more than eager to play. Mind you, my daughter is fan of the comic horror genre, started watching Tim Burton when she was three, collects Monster High dolls, and has binge watched more episodes of the classic sitcom "The Munsters" than anyone in the 21st century.
So after fast forwarding through some coarse language in the game's introduction, we shared the experience of interactive vampire hunting. Each of us took turns reading and picking moves. She laughed out loud and so did I. We killed the vampires with garlic, then holly, then crosses, eventually reaching four of the sixteen endings. I played a few more on my own, until the end of the two hours. But this was so much fun I expect I'll keep playing past the end of the judging period.
I tend to think of Twine as the favored platform for somber, introspective pieces about identity labels and personal demons. I know that's not entirely fair of me, or an accurate account of all Twine has been used for (and a small number of those somber pieces have been well worth reading). But I'm happy to see the platform pressed into a different service here, to produce a fun, replayable and effectively challenging comic puzzler.
This game was probably not on anyone else's list of "first games to introduce your 2nd grade child to interactive fiction," but that is what happened to us. I mentioned this game to my daughter in the car after school, and by the time we got home she was more than eager to play. Mind you, my daughter is fan of the comic horror genre, started watching Tim Burton when she was three, collects Monster High dolls, and has binge watched more episodes of the classic sitcom "The Munsters" than anyone in the 21st century.
So after fast forwarding through some coarse language in the game's introduction, we shared the experience of interactive vampire hunting. Each of us took turns reading and picking moves. She laughed out loud and so did I. We killed the vampires with garlic, then holly, then crosses, eventually reaching four of the sixteen endings. I played a few more on my own, until the end of the two hours. But this was so much fun I expect I'll keep playing past the end of the judging period.
I tend to think of Twine as the favored platform for somber, introspective pieces about identity labels and personal demons. I know that's not entirely fair of me, or an accurate account of all Twine has been used for (and a small number of those somber pieces have been well worth reading). But I'm happy to see the platform pressed into a different service here, to produce a fun, replayable and effectively challenging comic puzzler.
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