Anyway, it’s Spring Thing and I am excited by Spring Thing.  So what I am going to do is review some Spring Thing, and then post the “lost reviews” from last comp.  Sorry those took so long, but it’s been a rough couple of months for extra-curricular joys and hobbies.

Since I have no other rss buffer text, let’s turn to another excerpt from my unpublished novel “Deltoidclese: Laser Barbarian in Space“.  May god help us all.

-       “The Dame wears red,” grunted Deltoidclese, mentally to himself in his mind, as he fondled his laser-sword under the space-desk in his space-office. “Lots of red.  And a big pointy red hat with a white felt ball on top.  And she has a beard, although Deltoidclese has nothing but sympathy for glandular disorders.”
-       All of a sudden the self-same Dame, sitting across the space-desk from our hero, erupted: “You’ve got to help me, Deltoidclese!  Space hoodlums have stolen my sleigh!”  And then big ol’ tears began to roll down the Dame’s face and off her beard, pooling on her huge jelly-bowl-like belly.
-       “This close to the holidays?!?” Deltoidclese thundered, “By Space-Crom!  This. Will. Not!  STAND!”  And then he stood.
-       “You’ll take the case?? How can I ever thank you enough?” expulsed the Dame joyously.
-       “With your tongues,” replied the muscly brick-shit-house of a space-barbarian.  “Both of them.”

I’ve already squicked myself out and I haven’t even started the horror game!  That’s great!

Part One: The Playthrough

Please be advised that One Eye Open is a horror game. It contains mature content (including blood, gore, human injury and death, mild language, tobacco reference, violence, and violent references.)
With any luck, all of these things will happen at the same time, in the same one-turn scene.  Can you imagine how sweet that would be?  “Bartholomew Hutz wades through the ankle-deep stew of displaced human livers, slicing businessmen in half with his blood-soaked lawn edger.  His only thought: ‘Man, this Marlboro is fucking delicious.  I, Bartholomew Hutz, am in flavor country.’ Puuufffffff.”  Totally sweet, dude.

This psychic bit with the cards? Really cool gimmick.  Kudos to the author for this one.  Moving on to some kind of remote viewing/psychometry sort of thing… ah, here comes the horror train.

> x pages
Only a few pages from a diary are clutched in the student’s hand, origami viscera torn forcibly from a literary corpse that the photo no longer features.
“origami viscera”?  “literary corpse”?  You’re straining, prose.

A broad ivory spike protrudes from the floor and pierces the ceiling, transfixing the corpse of a slender, dark-haired woman on the way.
Oh, huh.  When the paper I picked up said “psychic spike”, I thought it meant something intangible, like on a graph.  Not like… an actual spike.  Piercing an asian-american 1970s nurse in whatever my room looked like back then.

This is a nicely drawn floor map.  Do I want to go check out the biohazard symbol, or the bloodstain?  Bloodstain it is!

Careful examination convinces you that the hallway has grown a mouthful of fangs.
Ah, an acute case of hallway dentata.  I’ve seen this before in an elementary school in Des Moines.  Just gotta get a 10-foot-tall dentist armed with one of those things the fire fighters use to extract people from cars, and he’ll clear it right up.  In the meantime, let’s turn around.

On the other side of the room, a bloodied corpse seems to be partially buried in the toilet, folded in half.
Tom’s attention-seeking behavior has reached an all-time and fatal low.

Seriously though, the horror-type of this game is reaching Savini levels of schlock rather rapidly.  That’s sort of cool and funny, but it’s a little over the top to the point of funny.  May just be me, though.  In the meantime, time to feed a corpse to a carnivorous laundry chute.  Another IF first this comp.

> put corpse in chute
If you put the gutted corpse in there, it’s a good bet you’ll never see it again. Are you sure you want to do this? (y/n) >
No, I’d really like to take it home and plant it and grow a corpse tree.  YES, I’d like to do this!!

> take sheets
Should you really find yourself in need of a large mass of formless textile, surely you can find some that doesn’t smell like zombie manure.
Come on, game.  I’m trying really hard to take you seriously as a work of horror, and you’re cracking jokes.

Also, shouldn’t the protag be shitting themselves about now?  They’re handling this awfully well.  I guess the author’s trying to let us (the players) be the pants shittees if we like, standard empty protag thing.. but then it goes and says shit like this:
It’s a metal box containing a pristine, solid steel fire axe. The glass on the front shows the words, “In case of emergency, break glass.”  With what, a fire axe?
And I laugh.  The occasional gallows humor wouldn’t go amiss if the horror was more subtle, or the protag was freaking out a bit.  Maybe some desperate scrambling for the fire axe would have fit better?

If everything checks out, it should be about a week before he’s introduced to the symbiont.
There we go.  Plot-meat arriving.  A little late, but not too late.

And I’ve been pushed into some kind of vision of the future, into the shoes of some poor doomed bastard.  Yup, he’s definitely doomed.  Sorry, doomed-guy.  I’d disable the fan that kills you in the future, but it hasn’t been installed yet.  Wandering around, and I’ve been pushed into another doomed future-bastard’s head:
Tobias Ensfield. I am Dr. Tobias Ensfield.
Gotcha.  Tobias Ensfield.  You’re Tobias Ensfield.

The image of Camille deVries flashes through your mind – her empty eyesocket staring blindly at you, her smashed skull half-fused with the mirror, her stricken body dangling from that point of contact.
Dr. Tobias Ensfield had never been so aroused in his life.  I’m having trouble remembering who all the future-people are.

Fuck, every time I go into a future-trance, my body falls to the floor and bangs itself up on something.  Maybe I can find one of those sumo-baby suits they use in rape prevention classes and wear it before my next future-trip. Back to the biohazard room with the keycard (did they have keycards in the 70′s?), and I come across a hazard suit full of man-slushee. That’s great.  Time to haul Poor Whatshisname here down to the laundry so the mutant washer can sluice him out of the suit (another IF first!).

Up to the fourth floor to poke around… Oop, another future scene where I can do nothing but await my grisly second-hand fate.

Dr E’s assistant. He works for Corona, so I work for Corona. Med school failure, okay chess player, okay cook, lousy son. I like plants, but I’m a bad gardener. I like music, but I don’t know how to dance. I want the world, but I’ve given up on finding it….
Oh come on, Rayjay!  Pull it together, have some confidence in yourself, and I’m sure your life will turn right aroun… out wait, yeah, you’re about to die hideously.

Okay, this is horseshit though: When I try to leave the room, I frikkin TELEPORT back into the room where I’m about to die.  The first two future scenes (willingly trapped in the boiler room, stuck in an elevator) were elegantly done, the one in the cafeteria (steam pipe bursting in front of the door) I could take, but man… the first rule of Avoiding Locational Fiat is “No invisible walls nor teleportation to keep someone in place”.  Just makes me click through this with “wait” without reading anything.

That annoyance aside, I’m getting into the backstory pretty heavily.  This game may not be scaring me, but it’s certainly working as a mystery.

Good lord, the second floor looks like the lovechild of Bosch and the villain from Anchorhead.  I’m starting to get squicked out by the accumulated mass of gross descriptions, which individually are just funny.

Each of these disgusting beasts is a special snowflake, with a unique number of human features plastered haphazardly on its body, which resembles little as much as a giant condom filled with gravy.
This may be the single most disgusting description for ANYTHING I have ever encountered.  Unique snowflake-condoms filled with gravy.  Precious.  Regretting my choice of mushroom soup as a snack right now.

Your attention strays toward the newspaper clipping, the gray filing cabinet, the tiled floor, the typewriter key, and the steel key.
Don’t forget the Wells Fargo branch location, the moose head, the unopened pilsner, and the half-eaten summer squash.  Purple monkey dishwasher.  Seriously, I have no idea what to do to trigger a vision.  Oh, touch the *floor*.  Hey, I actually get to do something in this one!  Read and send an email!

> n
You walk briskly toward the exit, only to slam painfully into an unseen obstacle. Stunned, you reach forward and touch a steel-hard, perfectly transparent barrier blocking you from the door.
Really?  I mean, REALLY?

Back out of my vision of the future to my vision of the past as… damn, this is confusing.  Still having trouble keeping all the dead people straight from the eventual dead people.  Would pay money for a “think about” command.

> x files
Which do you mean, the black filing cabinet or the gray filing cabinet?
Sigh
> look up remote viewing in files
Which do you mean, the black filing cabinet or the gray filing cabinet?
Okay, THIS message should most certainly NOT be happening.
> gray
The organization system of the gray filing cabinet is mysterious at best. You skim quickly through, but you cannot find a clipping about remote viewing.
But the damn description just gave that as an example of what to look for in the files!
> x desk
Which do you mean, the mahogany desk or the metal desk?
This room is disambiguation hell.

It is at this unhappy point, continuously disambiguating filing cabinets and desks, that I have hit the 2-hour mark accounting for time spent writing commentary.  I’m going to mark what I feel like the game’s current score is (for later judging) but keep playing, because I am curious.

Wandering around, find a lot more papers, props to the author for the Portal reference on the fourth floor… and I still can’t get anything but the crap endings, so far.  I have a glimmer of the plot, but I have no idea how to open the safe, nor what to do with the chemistry equipment in the Biohazard room.  Think we’re done for now, although I’ll probably be coming back and poking around in this some more.

Part Two: The Rundown

The playthrough probably makes it look like I really disliked the game and had an intent to savage.  Only one of those things is true; while there were definitely things I didn’t care for (most of which I pointed out above), I actually really liked the game.  Seems like (poking through a couple of other reviews) a lot of people are comparing it to or mentioning Babel for the flash-forwards, but I’m more reminded of the much-loved Slouching Towards Bedlam.

A thing that has to be said: it’s obvious that a huge amount of work went into this game.  It’s gigantic, it’s polished, there’s a lot going on behind the scenes (so much so that my interpreter slowed down a few times while processing commands)… a whole lot of work.  And it really shows.  Some people will likely kvetch about the game’s length being outside of Comp standards, but I’ll leave that to them.  To me, the Comp is about encouraging people to make games and recognizing those efforts.  If a good long game results, well, it’s better for the IF world.  And this is a good game by many standards.

The horror elements central to the premise felt over-the-top to me, but they were consistent (creeping biological ick).  It didn’t have that problem some games do where they mix Lovecraft with ghosts with demons with whatnot.  And as I said in the walkthrough, I found there was a cumulative effect (paired with the loneliness of the hospital and the realization that someone was also running around with me in there) to be creepy.

What worked much better for me was the slow revelation of backstory through the diary pages and the flashforwards, particularly to Camille’s death.  I never got a totally clear picture of what was going on (the company owner’s exact role in this recurring psychic debacle, what the deal was with the parasite/symbiotes, etc.), but I got enough to be interested in finding out more.  One thing that detracted from this somewhat were the sheer number of npcs: there were what, 12 of them or so mentioned in the diary fragments?  That’s a lot to keep track of.

The pacing of the lock and keys felt good, although tension was notably absent except for a few scenes (doomed bastard in the boiler room, that moment after you push the end-game button).  Not too many moments of desperate scrambling, which fit the mystery elements just fine.  But a few more would have been welcome.

Also, I found the flash-forwards to be a cool concept but flawed execution.  They were meant, I’m guessing, to both provide more story and also give the protag a reason to keep poking around in 1978, but they felt curiously detached.  I didn’t really end up caring about the people at all (no good reason to, although I did try to phone my daughter with this guy in the boiler room), so the whole “You can stop this!” motif carried precious little weight.  And the artificialness of RayJay and Camille’s room-boundaries really annoyed me in comparison with the first two.  Maybe if there was a bit more interactivity there, if there was something I could have done to *try* and save them (Camille excepted) I would have felt closer to them.  As it was, I felt compelled to just sit there and type “z” repeatedly, and that’s no good.

The lack of a walkthrough for better endings than the “You lose, and you don’t get any plot resolution” moments is kind of harsh.  Eventually that will doubtlessly be fixed by third parties, but at the moment it’s harsh.

Technically the game was impressive, given it’s size.  There were a handful of broken moments (filing cabinet) and the two rooms with a pair of desks each was one of those tolerable annoyances, but again, given the size of the thing… impressive.

So yeah.  Good game, overall.  Was very ambitious, and while it maybe fell short of the goal, said goal was far enough out there that it ended up being “merely” really good.  One of my favorites so far this comp.

EDIT: Wait, son of a bitch, how did the sloppy joe guy come into contact with the flesh eating symbiote stuff if he was in a biohazard suit?  Was he just an idiot?

This is scary game weather.  Let’s play some scary-looking games, starting with The Blind House by Maude Overton.

I won’t lie.  The cover art to The Blind House gives me the creeping willies.  If this game turns out to be full of flower-garlanded puppies, I will be disappointed on a primal level at the misrepresentation. Something tells me I will not be disappointed.

I’m writing this bit after playing the game: this is another one of those reviews/discussions filled with spoilers that you will probably not want in your head before playing it yourself.  So be warned, spoilers ahoy.

Part One: The Playthrough

> i
Feeling in my skirt pockets, my fingers brush against the cold, unnerving steel of a kitchen knife.
Gah.  How’d that get in there?  Do I want to know?

This text is swimming in a sea of heavy undertones and unmentioned incidents.  I think the word I’m looking for is “gravity”.  Something happened to me, I’m hiding out at Marissa’s, that may or may not make me a bad person.

There is a strange splattering noise coming from outside; it takes me a moment to register it as rain.
“Splattering”, huh? Whatever ptsd shit this character went through recently, it wasn’t happy fun time.

The slats – so sharp – are not slats: they are knives, and the knives are in my hands. Rivulets of auburn bleed into the rain, plasmatic. Red stains spreading to the rhythm of the rattling window.
Really not happy.  Man, wondering if this is another game where I turn out to be the secret murderer killing lots of people against my conscious will desperately telling myself I was handing out candy corn to people who happened to be dead already.

Oddly, there seems to be some redness under my fingernails, too. I pick out some dried flakes and wash them away.
I am now declaring an emergency state of Potentially Unreliable Narrator.

> x ornaments
I’m a little taken aback by the ornaments. They’re crude and disfigured, limbs out of proportion and faces melted into disturbing expressions – screams, sighs, grimaces. They’re certainly not what I would choose to display in my own living room.
My character’s own home decor, on the other hand, tends to chimp fetuses in formaldehyde and antique gynecological implements.  None of this half-assed Thomas Kinkade shit, no ma’am!

> x tv
The old television set is hooked up to a video recorder. A box on the floor nearby seems to be filled with several video cassettes.
I have a longstanding rule not to fuck with home-recorded media in horror games, but this seems safe enough.  Oooh, the Neverending story and some art philosophy.  Bit of interesting game-examining-it’s-own-navel, there.

> take roses
Which do I mean, the rose vine or the cluster of roses?
Pretty sure the rose vine is not in my bedroom, which is where I dropped the cluster of roses.  I could be wrong though.  I could have unconsciously hauled the whole damn bush inside while I was having a “redrum” moment.

Hmm.  Who has worse mental problems, Marissa or I?  Are we even separate people?

Dear Marissa,
In response to your recent inquiry, this email is to inform you that your search for “Helena Jevne” returned 0 results.
Thanks for using ClassmateReunion.com!
Okay, so I potentially wasn’t a classmate of Marissa’s, and she didn’t remember me to the point that she checked.  Unreliable Narrator Status has now been upgraded from Red to Plaid.

Current theory: everyone in this game is the same person.

Marissa, you take long showers, woman.  And I don’t want to read your diary.  I felt bad enough reading your emails.  But Helena wants to read your diary and your emails, so I guess we must do.

And we’re done.  Interesting.  Going to spell this out the three endings I got from the end convo (Spoiler Warning Within Spoiler Warning!) for later discussion:

Ending #1: Accuse Marissa of being dominated by Estelle, even though I’m clearly doing the scary controlling shit here, kill Marissa like I did “the last girl” (presumably who I got the defensive wounds from).

Ending#2: Admit to diary-reading, exert creepy-ass abusive control over Marissa, end up promising her safety from her own mental problems and need for security.

Ending#3: Marissa calls me on my shit, says she doesn’t think I can hurt anyone myself (giving the suggestion that arm wounds are self-inflicted?  Giving lie to ending #1 or vice versa?), I walk out noticing some things I did while unaware.

Part 2.0: The Rundown (Technical)

I’m going to talk about the technical aspects first, then thematic.

First off, standard technical critique.  The implementation was excellent as far as I could see, non-standard verbs were handled well, all quiet and well-done on that front.

I found the room images at the bottom to be immensely helpful for navigating the house (I often have trouble remembering which room is which in my own house) and giving a strong sense of place.  Likewise, the semi-hinty bits of text in the status line were also very helpful when I wasn’t sure what the heck I was doing.

There were a lot of actions (putting roses in the vase in the bathroom, washing the blanket which had the odd stains on it, etc.) that I did without being prompted by the game.  I’m not sure how many of them you needed to do to progress, and I’m not sure how they added to the ending texts (I suspect the vase did, at least), and will have to play through again to look at that.  But frankly that’s well done.  This doesn’t get talked about very often, but a lot of times authors fail to provide properly for actions taking place *before* they’re required by the narrative.  I’ve always had a problem with this (it’s a bigger issue than ever gets discussed), when said action is one that makes sense contextually.  In this example, “I am ostensibly trying to make Marissa happy and thank her for letting me stay.  Therefor, I will put flowers in that vase I saw.”  Maybe they *were* required right at that time, but it didn’t look like it.  So for that small thing, the game definitely gets a thumbs up from me, especially as (with that specific example) it added to the theme.

The technical aspects of the prose were solid and totally failed to confuse.  The feeling of trying to keep a grasp on surface reality (with some kind of madness lying under) was also clear.  Good stuff.

Part 2.5: Thematic Discussion

A big question in other reviews/discussions: what the Sam Hill is going on here, exactly?  The author definitely left large chunks of “the answer” ambiguous, which personally I like.  It’s possible that the following speculation is totally seen through a narrow lens of one playthrough, and that other actions yield different information.  I’m hoping some people will chime in.

It’s questionable, in parts of the game, whether the narrator (Helena) is even a person distinct from the other women.  Is she Estelle? Estelle’s real personality past the friendly side of things?  Marissa’s other side?  All the same?

The endings, emails, etc. seem to point to a distinction between said people.

The surface read is that the narrator is in a rather classic pattern of abuse with Marissa.  That’s fairly clear just from the freakin’ portrait at the bottom of the screen, but extends through the game from the roses (painting the roses red with hair dye) to the “big reveal” of the diary that you’ve been here for longer than you think, and you’re somewhat unwelcome (hard to say, seeing as Marissa doesn’t want to have to make her own decisions, from the looks of things).

The color thing, I need to do some more chewing over.  I feel like it’s significant that Helena/Estelle are blondes, and Marissa dyes her hair, and how that fits in with the roses.  Apparition of the older woman (self?) in the living room also needs more chewing over.  I admit not knowing what the hell was up with that.

Ambiguous or not, I think the game played around with this in an interesting way.  I mentioned earlier that I collected roses for a vase in a sort of “Hey, I’m being crazy in your house, here’s some roses” spirit.  In the end, that turns out to be a controlling maneuver due to the character’s hidden-from-herself motivation, which is a nice twist.  And the fact that I’m thinking about it means I found it well done enough to think about.

The endings bothered me a little.  They were a little too… dissimilar to be accessed from a single “undo” command, it seemed like.  Particularly when #1 and #3 don’t square with one another (well, *did* I kill someone else or didn’t I?).  Also, Ending #3 felt a bit contrived.  The fact that Helena would suddenly start to notice this stuff and have a “Oh, she’s totally right, I’m being evil!” moment is just too much of a stretch for me, sadly (having dealt with abusers).

All told, I rather liked this game.  Simple to play and interesting, although to what ultimate depth I’m not sure yet.

Promised Postscript:  Something is itching at the back of my brain about the references to escapist fantasy (in the video tapes and the bookshelf) and the Matisse documentary (i.e. an admonishment to artists to “guard the original naivete”).  I’m not sure exactly what the author was getting at with those (in regards to Marissa, Helena, etc.), but it’s been bugging me all day.  Ideas, anyone?

Up now we have The People’s Glorious  Revolutionary Text Adventure Game, a z-code game by Taylor Vaughan.  If I have to refer to the game by title again, I’m abbreviating to “TPGRTAG”, because typing it the first time gave me carpal tunnel syndrome.  Observational evidence collected in the last minute says that if you shout the abbreviation at someone you live with (i.e. “TupgerTaag, sexy lady!”), they look at you like you’re having a stroke.

You’ll also note that this is the first review without some kind of subtitle, largely for the same title-is-long-already reason.  Rest assured that it has one in my head, perhaps something like “You see no nuclear wessels here”, or “Oh, I won the people’s bodies, alright.”  Just imagine it there after the title, please.

Let’s crack TPGRTAG open and see what’s inside.

Part One: The Playthrough

Ah, excellent.  This is Communism of the Groucho Marxist school.  I like.

The red light that illuminates the room might cause eye strain and make it hard to work, but it is truly inspiring.
If someone asked me “Quick, write a humorous critique of Communism in one sentence, go!”, this would be my sentence.

> open drawer
You open the drawer, revealing some borscht.
This has to be at least the second oddest thing I’ve ever found in a desk drawer in an IF.  Hopefully it gets out of my inventory quickly, because dammit I can’t spell it to save my life.  Nor can I spell my hat’s name.  Good thing it responds to “hat”.

Oh, frikkin awesome, the game has an actual in-game to-do list.  Wandering around, gotten a comic book in trade for borscht, won the hearts of the masses…

You know, I say (a lot) that I’d like to play more games where you get to wander around trading items with NPCs in an interesting setting.  And then when I actually get to play one, my brain goes “Ahhhhh!  Who do I give this to?? Or this??  What do I do what do I dooo??”.

Oh, huh, there’s a secret basement in the Comradehole that I totally missed somehow.  Oh man, the Ventriloquator is one of the most fun doohickies I’ve ever seen in a game, even though it takes me three tries to type the damn thing’s name.

A child comes in and orders a ridiculously complicated drink. Chambers pulls out a styrofoam cup, sticks it under a nozzle, and hands the customer their drink.
Having worked at Starbucks, I can tell you that’s EXACTLY how it works in real life.  Man, I’m going to have to play through this again and try putting the borscht in the coffee vat, which also relates to my wishes at time of Starbucks employment.

The glue that binds this placard to the desk is as strong as bond between all who believe in the Revolution! It’s unbreakable! This “Ms. Daisy” is apparently expected to remain a part of this vile institution for all eternity.
And if there were an award for “Best Fixed-In-Place Message”, this would garner my vote.

Got everything on the to-do list I think.  Oh crap, counter-revolutionaries!

This is Chambers’ giant vault. In the center is a large pit filled to the brim with money. The vault extends to the north, and a massive vault door stands to the east.
A diving board is bolted over the edge of the pit.
I watched DuckTales as a kid, I know what’s up.

Okay, defeated the villain in a highly ironic fashion, I think we’re done here.  Wait, we’re not done here.

> x device
Which do you mean, the miraculous device, the Communistic Converter or the Marxist Ventriloquator Mk II?
…the one with “device” in it’s name.

Okay, now we’re done.

Part Two: The Rundown

First off, I really liked the game’s tone and humor.  This was another one of those joints like The Flight of the Hummingbird where I couldn’t make too many jokes in the playthrough, because the game already made ‘em for me.  And the tone holds up well throughout the game.

This struck me as a fairly well-done old school IF.  There was a definite Zorkian feel to the whole thing, which may be a little dated structurally but is not inherently bad at all.

Kudos also that most of the puzzles had (according to the hint-section I’m now perusing) multiple solves.  That’s always hard to wrap together, but the author managed fairly well here, and I think I’ll be going back through to see what happens with other solves (although I understand that you get in trouble for having to resort to capitalism to get the Manifesto).  Along those lines, the game also had one of the best “non-spoilery general hints” sections I’ve ever seen.  The puzzles also followed their own cartoon logic; I never really felt like any were totally unfair.

Implementation was good for the most part.  A couple of times, I ran into minor guess the verb problems (diving board, Ventriloquator when I forgot it was “point at” instead of “fire at”) that could’ve been smoothed out by a few more “understand as” phrases in the code.  Other than that the implementation seemed solid.  I wished the NPCs had more to say (they responded well to multiple subjects, but a lot of the time those multiple subjects had the same response), but it was passable.

So yeah.  Nothing “revolutionary” here, so to speak, but a fun little game I’d definitely recommend as an afternoon IF-snack.

The Disclaimer: General reviewing intention and swearing policy (i.e. “I do it a lot”)

Ninjas Fate by Hannes Schueller

Rogue of the Multiverse by C.E.J. Pacian

Gigantomania by Michelle Tirto

Pen and Paint by Owen Parish

East Grove Hills by XYZ

Heated by Timothy Peers

A Quiet Night At Home by Anonymous

Aotearoa by Matt Wigdahl

Flight of the Hummingbird by Michael Martin

The Chronicler by John Evans

Leadlight by Wade Clarke

Lost Sheep by Ben Pennington

Mite by Sara Dee

The 12:54 to Asgard by J. Robinson Wheeler

The People’s Glorious Revolutionary Text Adventure Game by Taylor Vaughan

The Blind House by Maude Overton

One Eye Open by Colin Sandel and Carolyn VanEseltine

Most recent reviews are, of course, in the posts under this one.

12:54 to Asgard is a fun title.  It conveys a definite whimsy, a potential for menace, and yet it tells you nothing. Are Norse gods involved?  An alternate universe train journey? A long Galatea-style ask/tell conversation with someone named Yorgenborg Horgenshmorger?  Only one way to find out, as always!

But first, goddamned rss buffer text.  Here’s a quick IF reenactment of practically every large-scale war fought in Europe:

>invade Russia
***You have died***

Wasn’t that fun?  Let’s get on with the game.

Love the intro text.

what’s wrong with people? What’s wrong with these specific people?
This may well be the most common thought in the world.  It sure is in my top five.

You can see the corner of the closet (in which are a mop, a roof tile and a piece of tar paper), a gardening spade, a rubber sheet, shit, some rubber bands and a broom here.
This is like one of those Sesame Street “which one of these things does not belong?” puzzles.  Also, son of a bitch I hope this game doesn’t expect me to use all that.  Oh god, I think it does.  This is going to be the most epic “take all” in history.

> eat shit
That’s plainly inedible.
Yeah, that’s right, I went there looking for a funny response.  I’m not proud.

And now we have reached the hour known as HowthefuckdoIfixthisroofo’clock.  I hate this time of night.

> tape tile
What do you want to tape the roof tile to?
The ceiling!
You’d need a roll of tape in order to do that.
take the tape, then!  It’s right the fuck there next to me!
Putting things on the up above would achieve nothing.
You can’t affix the roof tile to the up above. It just won’t work.
Gralargleargle double bullshit failure message argle

Let’s try the.. I have nails here, where the hell is the hammer?  Oh fuck it, let’s go scour for everything that can be carried in every room the game will let me into, and then come back and tackle this.

I’ve become convinced that my character here is going to die.  Mainly because the title is what it is, and I’m climbing around catwalks and rigging amongst wet electrical equipment.  I tried to speed this up by just jumping, so I wouldn’t have to figure out which odd to put on which end, but it wouldn’t let me.  Damnation!

Went into the props room.  Tried to take the jug of fertilizer, except the disambiguation assumes I’m trying to take the pile of fake shit that I’m already holding.  Something wrong with that.  Something bad wrong.  Fine, going into another room and dropping the shit.  I’m not even sure I need the fertilizer, but goddamn it if the shit ends up being more useful than the fertilizer…

You can see shit here.
You’re goddamn right, game.

> x tag
In a flat leather sleeve with a plastic window, there’s a printed card, yellowed with age. Instead of a name and address, it reads: “You can’t take it with you,” only there’s a cigarette burn in the plastic blotching out the apostrophe-T.
Okay, that’s really clever.  There’s a lot of really funny, really clever text in this game, but it’s getting lost under an increasing pile of “What would you like to you can’t see that here with?”.

I think for the sake of my sanity, I’m going to refer to the walkthrough.  …Which is also confusing.  Example:
put sponge in corner
get sponge
put sponge in corner
Was this walkthrough procedurally generated somehow?  Seriously, this is weird.  It’s like an ELIZA log.

Okay, there we go.  The message you get from examining Death is awesome, as are many descriptions in this increasingly bewildering game.

> give death coins
You place the coins in Death’s open palm.
Well dang, good thing whoever buried me is an ancient Greek.  I would’ve been shithosed otherwise!

Hmm, except walkthrough said to give him socks.  Let’s go back and try that and hope it’s not another case of the walkthrough telling you to do something that doesn’t actually do anything.  Okay, actually, that’s a really funny message.  Let’s roll with that.

A person!  Perhaps she will tell me where to go in this area.

Following a sudden impulse, she licks one of the sides of the spike. “Ew! Oh! Hm!” she says rapidly. “Taste this,” she says.
Ah.  My new friend is one of Those People.

> taste spike
One side tastes like stone, another like metal, another like – sandalwood?
I’m not even going to ask how the hell my character can recognize the specific taste of sandalwood.

Playing through a lot of the game via walkthrough, and I’m seriously unsure how I’d figure out some of this stuff.  Like, to sing in the primal chaos.  I mean, it makes very clear sense from a mythological standpoint, but not exactly from an IF-action-standpoint… maybe I missed what would have been the clue.

Mount Olympus
Red rocks ribboned with gray and orange chalamite, bands of olive trees, white temples of marble, a blue sky, a green river. Ambrosia and nectar, wine and honey. Lazing and dancing and playing in the sunshine are a curvaceous company of vixens and nymphs, shrieking with the utter gaiety of youth at play.
A wild goose is running around loose here, trying to screw everything that moves.
Well, that’s probably what I’d be doing too.  IS that what I’m supposed to be doing?

> screw nymph
Those are fixed in place.
Ah, unintentional hilarity, how I love you.

While you’re standing there looking at him, Zeus takes the opportunity to ravish a few nymphs.
Zeus: clearest priorities in all the multiverse.

And we are done, with a very confusing final message.

Part Two: The Rundown

Many of the games I’ve played this comp have been well implemented but bland in concept or writing.  Asgard is basically the exact opposite of that.

The writing’s great; *really* great in a number of places.  But it’s just a crazy mess.  It feels like an alpha or beta release of a game; stuff’s mostly there, but it’s not all fit together proper-like, a lot of “how will the player approach this?” was either undone or ignored.  And the logical leaps on some of the puzzles?  Jeez… I don’t know.  It’s an odd duck.

It also very strongly felt like two games taped together, even down to the writing style and authorial voice, between the live bit and dead bit.  “Do stuff, try to fix the obvious problem, do stuff… now…. WANDER!  Look at stuff!  Look at it!”.

First bit (live) was definitely stronger, if only due to coherency and writing voice.  Mind you, there were still the implementation problems, and I was carrying around 23 friggin’ items at one point, only a handful of which I needed while alive and a handful while dead with no idea which of those were which beforehand.

Second bit reminded me of… well, let’s just say that if I *had* ever written about or read obscure mythology textbooks while very stoned (and of course I would do nothing of the sort, ever), my mental experience would look a bit like that.  Or reading mystic textbooks and then lucid dreaming, something like that. The themes and characters were interesting, but it was all a bit smooshed together and unclear rather than coming across as dreamlike or otherworldly.  While some of my colleagues do not mind lack of narrative/wander and try things, I personally prefer at least some narrative thread.

But the thing about that is… The Zeus exchange made me wonder.  That wasn’t in the walkthrough, I got that little easter egg by trying to kiss a nymph.  How much of the game did I just not see, because I flipped to the walkthrough due to badly or uttely non-hinted puzzles?  How much of the game are most players just not going to see for the same reason of walkthrough tunnel vision?  Is there some playthrough where it either feels more coherent?

Even if it wasn’t meant to be coherent (it IS the afterlife after all), the “read the author’s mind” problem needs addressing because it just stops people from getting engaged with the work.  And the walkthrough itself was plagued by weirdness, inconsistencies, and actions that led nowhere, which just increased my feeling of “must type blindly and finish thing”.

In the end, the writing was great, the themes played with were really interesting, but it just wasn’t friendly to play at all.  I definitely hope that the author goes back in with a wrench and cleans house on the game.

EDIT: I have to admit, one thing I liked about the actual gameplay was how the suitcase pulled multiple-uses duty.  You could carry stuff in it, stand on it to reach things, stand IN it (although that last one never really helped anything)… I always like that kind of thing.

So up now we have Mite, a z-code game by Sara Dee.  Sara Dee is also responsible for Madam Spider’s Web, a game which I am currently mixing up in my head with Plotkin’s Spider and Web, which is causing some vaguely amusing visual imagery of a giant house frau spider strapped to an interrogation table.  Anyhoo.  Let’s keep the buffer text short today and play this game.

Part One: Wherein we play through this curious excitement-generation-engine and make overly pithy comments

Hmm.  That’s some long intro text.  Interesting, but long.  Apparently I am a wee person on a gemquest of some manner.  For my own amusement, I’m going to pretend I look like Vern “Mini Me” Troyer until told otherwise.

the Fairy Prince having banished most of the goblins, bogies, and other mischievous creatures to the realm beyond the hedges long ago
I’ve never heard Fox News described as “the realm beyond the hedges” before, but sure.

> ask butterfly about prince
You’ve never come upon a talking arthropod and this butterfly is no exception. Either that or it’s ignoring you.
Damn you butterfly!  I demand answers!  Vern Troyer does not take this shit from things with “butter” in their name!

At the Base of a Dandelion
I’d just like to halt right here and say how much I love this room name.  It perfectly captures the size issue.

And now I have gotten stuck at some kind of water and pipe. Although frankly at my size it could be a straw sitting in a pool of melted Slurpee and I’d never know the difference.  Time to backtrack!

> x maiden
The beautiful nymph, dressed in a simple white shift, sits sobbing on one of the lower branches of the lilac bush.
Ooo, perhaps she will go on a date with me.

“My name is Hespa,” she manages between sobs. “Today has been terrible! My beloved Bugg wandered off into the brush.”  She points at a small clearing in the the undergrowth to the northwest that had escaped your notice before.
Damn, she has a boyfriend already.

> ask nymph about bugg
“Bugg is my pet ladybug. I’ve had him since he was a larva.” Tears stream down her face.
Woot!  He’s just the token platonic male friend!  Date, you are back on!

Freed the token platonic male friend, let’s see about that reward… macrame?  You’re rewarding me with macrame??  I just killed a (relatively) giant spider for you, woman!

> ask nymph about kiss
Maybe once you get to know one another better…
Honestly, I didn’t think this would even get a response, so I am satisfied.

I’d like to take a side moment to say that one day I hope to play a game (of any type, in any genre) featuring a spider that is not, in some way, your apparent or actual foe.  A game where you befriend a spider perhaps, or where a spider is your valued boon companion who pulled you from the burning wreckage of a taco truck.  Until then I suppose I will continue to kill the things, although under protest.

In the Tulip Turret
These room names, they just keep getting better and better.

Unbelievable! And your friends back home probably really won’t believe it… they’ll think you daydreamed it or read it in a book somewhere.
Your tiny smurf-like friends who live in the hidden fairy world of a garden won’t believe you about an invisible bridge?  Are all your friends idiots?

> climb mushroom
I don’t think much is to be achieved by that.
> get on mushroom
You climb onto the squat mushroom. Its cap is springy beneath your feet.
Perhaps it is just that this game has been excellent so far at providing multiple commands for things, but I feel that these could have been folded into the same action.

Cute.  The palace is a bird feeder.  Very cute.

> ask prince about nymph
“I don’t know her personally, but nymphs are lovely creatures.
I just returned your gem, man.  Hook a brotha up with them digits.

Okay, looks like we be done.

PArt Two: Wherein we discuss the merits and/or flaws of the imaginative exercise in question

First off, the game is very well implemented.  I mean VERY well implemented.  Multiple understandings of similar logical actions, everything had a description, zero apparent bugs… it was very, very solid.  That type of care on the programming end really shows, and it’s appreciated, and I wish more authors would take the time.

The technical aspects of the writing were excellent as well, although to be honest I found the subject matter a touch bland.  A couple of places shone (the rooms I mentioned, plus places like the lawn gnome and the bird feeder palace), but the whole motivation/story was just a touch “meh”.  Very old-school in a way, but I would’ve cared for a stronger narrative hook.

The puzzles get a point for highlighting some of the second-tier verbs (jump, push, etc.), but I didn’t feel like one or two (the thorn being a notable example) were clued well enough.  I did like the wind puzzle, though.  I do wish there had been a bit more playing around with the player’s size, maybe a bit more dealing with tiny mundane items in an interesting way.  Of course, considering that the player is sized to float on a dandelion seed, those tiny mundane objects would have to be friggin’ nanomachines or something, but it’s still one of my favorite parts of “you’re small” games.

All in all very solidly done, but I wish it had gone further in the story/things you get to do.

The last time this happened, I was visiting a friend’s church nearby, and sure enough the normal guy (who was supposed to be giving a sermon on the importance of cultivating unconditional love and tolerance) was out sick.  His replacement for the day spent a solid hour giving a very heartfelt, impassioned speech that every single “negative” mental state humans have (anger, anxiety, lust, depression, what-have-you) is literally a demon trying to invade our souls*.  By the end of it, half of the congregation was face-palming, and the other half were desperately fashioning tin-foil hats.

So these days I generally just stay at home and try to be as good a person as possible to other people.

All that aside, I like bible stories.  And I’m always interested to see how people repackage and retell their favorites.   So up next we have The Lost Sheep, a z-code game by Ben Pennington, based on a very gentle parable.  Let’s take a gentle look.

Part One: The Playthrough

Involuntarily humming “where oh where has my little dog gone?”, which is one of those songs I had totally forgotten existed after the age of four or so.  If nothing else, this game reconnected me with a tiny piece of my childhood.

> search bushes
As you walk forward, the bush rustles loudly. You pull away the leaves, and there it is: your lost sheep!
Well… that was sure easy.

The sheep, shocked at its discovery, leaps high into the air and vaults the hedge to the southeast.
Oh, there we go.  Note to self: Breed sheep without legs.  Possibly wheels.  Sheep cannot jump if they have wheels.

I think I’ve played this game before, except I was an orc and the sheep was a pig, and there was a gnome trying to explain magnetism to me.  Great, now I’m wondering if the gnome in Lost Pig was some kind of complicated Christian metaphor.  Back to the game at hand, brain!

Huh, the sheep is now jumping from bush to bush.  If we consider the parable as being about guiding a lost soul back to God, then these bushes probably represent some kind of sin.  Juniper berries make gin, and soldiers during WWI used to smoke hawthorn, and rosemary… what the hell does rosemary do?  You can cook with it, I think?  So… the sheep’s jumping between the sordid vices of alcoholism, drug use, and Mediterranean cuisine.  Deep.  This episode of “totally overthinking hedgerow plants in a Bible game” has been brought to you by Skittles (taste the rainbow).

The juniper bush stops burning and returns exactly to the state it was before. You think you hear a chuckle from above, but you can’t be sure.
George Burns?  That you?

Ooo, a herd of buffalo.  This game has some amusing commands, let’s try something:

> shuffle buffalo
That’s not a verb I recognise.
Sadness.

The sheep walks purposefully into the small hut.
Ah-HA!  This sheep’s been cheating on me with another shepherd!  What a twist ending!

And I won already.  Crazy!  Gonna go back through, as is my custom, and try some of the AMUSING stuff.

> sheep, eat grass
There is no grass left. Your sheep cannot live without grass.
*** You have killed your herd. ***
ahahahaha, awesome failure message.

And I think that’s it for now.

Part Two: The Rundown

You could basically sum this up as a “cute little game”.  It reminded me of Sunday school, funny enough, when we were old enough to learn the stories, but not really what those stories *meant*.  Noah’s Ark focusing on the animal bit, etc.  Reminds me of a kinder, simpler time in my life.

I liked the amusing stuff packed into the game, too.  The gentle humor was nice and got a chuckle in a couple of places, and although the writing didn’t really stand up and dance, it mostly got the job done.

Technically the game was well-implemented; I didn’t come across any missing descriptions or weird bugs.  The puzzle quality was mixed; the central “set fire to bushes” puzzle seemed like too much of an intuitive leap for my tastes.

The game completely sidestepped the “why” of the story, which I’m not sure is a positive or negative.  The author certainly wasn’t trying to ram any theology down anyone’s throat or preach about anything (something my agnostic/athiest colleagues will likely appreciate).

Even so, I kind of find myself sad about that, despite being fairly agnostic myself.  The gist of the parable (Jesus shaming a bunch of men who were ragging on him for hanging out with sinners, and not spending more time with shit-don’t-stink gents like themselves) is interesting and raises a lot of questions worth exploring in some context or other.  I would’ve liked to have seen a little of that, even if it was just some jerk following me around occasionally yelling “That sheep ain’t worth it!” or something.  I know some people would’ve argh’d at that if it was badly done, and it wasn’t what the author was going for, but I would have enjoyed seeing some discussion-by-doing of the point.

In the meantime, cute little game.  A touch bland in my humble opinion, but cute nonetheless.

*Look, what the preacher said may actually be true, I don’t know.  All I know is, my hyper-active imagination would very quickly build an entire mythos out of this kind of thing if I let it.  You’d find me two months later, dressed in a shaman’s costume, imploring the cell phone elementals to grant me reception in that notorious dead zone between Half Moon Bay and San Mateo.

Anyway, I’ll hit one of the biblical games tomorrow and try to work on my swearing problem.  In the meantime, I’m going to kick it old-school style with one of the weirdo-interpreter games, Leadlight (a… wow, an Apple II game, by Wade Clarke).  It most definitely does NOT look like a bible game. At least not New Testament.

As most of you know already, weirdo-interpreter games can be kind of… bad… so I’m approaching this one with a bit of trepidation.  The artwork is purdy though, so I have some hope.  And I know that other people tend to skip the weirdo-interpreter games, so maybe if it is good I can get the word out or something.

Anyhoo, on with the show!

Good gravy, an Apple II emulator.  Last time I was using one of these ancient beasts, I was swearing at Zork Zero at the top of my lungs. Fuck that Towers of “Barboz” minigame in it’s ear.  I digress.

Hmm.  Trying the online version, and I come across an about page listing “Features”.  These “Features” include:

* Brings modern survival horror feel to a classic gaming form
Sweet, I like survival horror, especially when pre-rendering and bad camera angles aren’t going to get me eaten by zombies.

* Defeat enemies and uncover secrets to improve your score
Crap, I smell randomized combat.

* Experiment with weapons and clothing to improve your stats
The aforementioned smell is getting stronger…

* Avoid gruesome traps, or back up a move if you fall prey to them
With our state-of-the-art, patented UNDOES command!  There is nothing like it anywhere else!

* Horror in an Australian setting
Is this… is this good or bad?  Neutral?  I don’t know whether to be excited or not by horror in an Australian setting.  I mean, that continent IS inherently terrifying to me, what with the gazillion spiders that can kill you with a single bite.  Oh man, what if this game is totally MADE OF SPIDERS?  Like the parser and everything.  I don’t know if I want to play anymore.

This plug-in better not cause my system to be invaded by porn.

Well, the plugin crashes Firefox, but I detect no random Australian horror porn on my computer.  Good to know!  The browser works, but with no save function.  Which might be annoying in a random combat situation.

Sending you to an expensive boarding school was your mother’s way of ridding herself of you while still feeling okay about it.  Your stepfather has never been interested in you and you barely remember your real father.
Man, Belinda… you should go hang out with the kids from East Grove Hills, join that club they started.

A girl from your year, Charlotte Jeffs, sits across from you in wide-eyed repose.  She is pale and utterly still.  As minutes continue to pass, it dawns on your that she is dead.
Ehhh, Charlotte does this whole “being dead” thing all the time.  It’s a cry for help, really.

Ooo, dead girl’s ipod.  Yoink!  Rockin’ out on a pink ipod I stole from a dead girl, while her corpse sits there starin’ at me.  I am living the Gen-Y dream.

>attack debbie
Why would you attack DEBBIE?
Duh, so I don’t have to give her damn hockey stick back when she snaps out of her catatonic coma.  This thing is sweeet.  Besides, can’t rule out the possibility that there’s some kinda zombie plague going on here, and it’s best not to take chances.

It’s Belinda’s fault.
Okay, if this is actually all a dream of the main character’s, and she’s just running around killing people in a glassy-eyed fugue state… I take back my suggestion that she should go hang out with the East Grove Hills kids.

It’s really Narelle.  You really beat her to death, though you are desperate to believe anything else instead.
I’m going to pretend that I gave her candy corn.  That’s at least marginally better, right?  I’m not a bad person for giving a library monitor candy corn until she passes out in a pool of her own caved-in-head, right?

Alexis Karpa, a year nine student, is being dragged into the hedges by a rose vine.  A second vine at her mouth muffles her cries as she thrashes slowly, her eyes desperate.
That rose vine is trying to give her candy corn!  That’s MY job!

Although, to be fair… if this were an anime, that rosebush/schoolgirl moment would actually count as a heartwarming first date, probably.  Eeeurgh, need a mental shower now.

Alexis is dragged completely into the hedge.  Her cries cease.  All is still and silent.
Nooo!  Alexis, don’t take that thing’s candy corn!

Some kind of black mist killed me, used the game’s patented UNDOES function to live again, went a different way, gave the gardener some candy corn, then my art teacher tried to give ME candy corn… ugh, creepy doll.  Why must every horror game have a creepy doll?  Oh, and it turns to powder when you touch it, too.

You feel so desperately sick at having killed Miss Arden that you cannot look at her face.
Good thing I clubbed it off of her with this broken hockey stick, then!  Whew!  I mean… candy corn.

Wow… “Her social maladjustment has not improved during her time at school“?  Totally reasonable school counselor-babble to find in a student file.  “I expect that she will try to kill us all at some point“?  Not so much, and should probably have resulted in my character’s imprisonment or something before the events of this game.  Shit, this is Australia, right?  They’ve seen Heavenly Creatures, right??  Get this girl to a jail before she starts handing out candy corn, STAT!

Y’know… if I were writing this game, I would make it so the second time you go through the area, the creepy doll is unexpectedly now a creepy girl who tries to kill OH SHIT

Time to lop mystery doll girl’s head off with a pair of pinking shears give her candy corn!

And now I am killed.  So, do I continue, or… hmm.  Sure, maybe this time I can get to the shears earlier and prevent Alexis from going on a date with that rosebush.  And I do, although she thanks me by screaming and running off.  Kids these days, no gratitude.

Isabelle, if you think I’m gonna fall for that old “sit on the bench next to you and talk this out” shtick… actually, I just did fall for that.  Insta-death.  Done for now.

Part Two: The Rundown

This was actually about what I expected.  A relatively well-written horror game with a two-word parser, and random combat out the fuckin’ wazoo.  I liked it okay, in an old-school kind of way (grainy old green blinky text meshed well with the theme, and with the snazzy stained-glass background).  There were one or two genuinely creepy moments, and people with weaker horror-thresholds will probably be genuinely skeeved out in a couple of places, particularly if they turn off all the lights in the house first.

But eventually, Old Man Random Combat just got to be too much for me.  There’s the usual lack of strategic depth (ATTACK SO-AND-SO over and over), I couldn’t figure out which weapons were better or which enemies were necessarily stronger… just basically the same problems with standard random combat that’ve always been there.

The two-word parser wasn’t as restrictive as in the old-school games, which was nice.  As always when playing those, I end up missing the shortened commands (“i” for “inventory”, etc.) that we all take for granted. And a couple of times I was typing faster than the parser could keep up, even on the “high” setting, but that was okay, and might have been my connection.  The prose was passable; I didn’t see any particularly brilliant moments, but I didn’t see anything that had me gagging either.

And the presentation was definitely super-slick; kudos to the author for giving the old-school feeling while wrapping it up in a nice-looking Parchment-like app.  Sure wish I could play the old Zork games like that.  The implementation, for what it was trying to be, was also good (no missing items, nary a bug I could find in the bits I saw, both rare for a weirdo-interpreter game).  It’s obvious that a lot of love went into both the game and the extras, and regardless of who’s cup of tea the game is, that deserves a mention.

EDIT:  The hint book and Instructions pdf are also really well done.  Way better than you usually see, honestly.

Final verdict is, if you want some old school (and I mean old school) fun done well for that genre, with great overall production, and aren’t allergic to randomized combat, I’d say turn out the lights and give it a whirl for a half hour, if only to see what games were like “back then”.  Otherwise you can probably skip it.

Your mileage may vary given a save function; for all I know the game totally rocks your socks off towards the end, but I have no way of finding out without crashing my system, apparently.