IFComprehensive

“Ouroboros Trap” is a short choice-based game with some surreal elements.

Gameplay: In the game, the protagonist navigates a dungeon or similar environment via a choice-based system. The setup is a like that of a Choose Your Own Adventure novel; as part of the genre, bad endings are common and generally unpredictable. The game is short enough to prevent those paths from being frustrating, but there’s no strong motivation or direction for the player. 5/10.

Mechanics: The game is fundamentally one of idle exploration, and it doesn’t feature a lot of state or puzzle elements. The opening scene, for example, invokes the hoary riddle about escaping from a room with just a mirror and a wooden table. The rest of the game is similarly surreal (featuring, for example, a talking turtle), and the goal for the player is simply to explore the various branching paths. 4/10.

Presentation: There are a few sections of delayed text, which are unnecessary and out of place in a game like this one. Aside from that issue, the game is largely smooth to play, with the tone of mild surrealism consistent throughout. 4/10.

You might be interested in this game if: You want a short, choice-based game with a number of branching paths.

Score: 4

“Ocean Beach” is a parser-based game that attempts to recreate the experience of lazily wandering around a boardwalk and surrounding areas. The idea is compelling, but the glacial pace of the game and its intensely frustrating passages of delayed text make the game a chore to play.

Gameplay: The protagonist of the game wanders around the beach, taking in the scenery and having quick scenes with passers-by. As the ostensible walkthrough states, the puzzles are immaterial; the point is to enjoy the environment. Unfortunately, that environment is intensely frustrating to explore. There are long passages of delayed text in the game the player is forced to sit through, including a particularly egregious one that beginning (which even opens with “(pauses are part of the game)”). An interactive fiction game is fundamentally different from a medium such as film. Long stretches in which the player can’t do anything besides stare at text he or she has already read don’t build up any emotion or set any tone; they just waste the player’s time. I stopped playing when a cutscene involved waiting for several minutes while lines like, “I like sunset best,” or “I don’t know,” appeared after five- or ten-second delays. When I found myself pulling up another interactive fiction game in the background to kill time waiting for the scene to finish, I gave up and quit. 1/10.

Mechanics: The game discourages interacting with its setting, dismissing attempts to do so with, “You don’t want to.” There are actually things the player can do, but the implementation is sparse, and the descriptions offered are uninteresting. 3/10.

Presentation: There are numerous spacing errors in the game (e.g., “A group of people kicking a soccer ball[line break]drifts by.”). While there are embellishments to the environment (e.g., the random encounters along the boardwalk), they’re loosely sketched out. Later sections of the game may have a stronger setting, but the game was too frustrating for me to continue playing. 2/10.

You might be interested in this game if: The setting reminds you of an idle walk along a beach you’ve had in real life.

Score: 2

Although it’s a simple story about the protagonist’s coming out to his or her mother, “Out” is a smooth, polished game with an extensive environment.

Gameplay: Gameplay is straightforward, and there’s never any doubt about what to do. What’s remarkable about it is that all the details of the setting are implemented. Even minor features of the setting are recognized and can be interacted with. 6/10.

Mechanics: Despite the small scope of the game, there are numerous things to interact with. There aren’t any puzzles or any significant plot; the goal of the game is to show the feelings of its main character, and the setting is descriptive enough to do so over a short time and in a few rooms. 5/10.

Presentation: The writing is strong throughout, and it’s genuinely charming to explore successively more gigantic sections of the universe with your dog. 6/10.

You might be interested in this game if: You want an evocative game that you can finish in five minutes.

Score: 6

Like the author’s excellent entry in last year’s competition, “Poppet” is a puzzle-based parser game with a strong theme and compelling characters.

Gameplay: The game involves the protagonist’s exploring a mansion and solving puzzles to determine what exactly is going on. The puzzles are fair to the player and interesting, involving a mixture of several different mechanics. Some are a bit complicated, but there are in-game references that explain the supernatural elements of the setting (and a walkthrough if those fail). The creepy-doll theme is strong throughout the game, and it’s integral to the plot and to the puzzles. 9/10.

Mechanics: Although the first few puzzles are straightforward set-piece ones, later puzzles involve the supernatural elements of the setting. The story provides both a rationale for and instructions about handling the latter, and it works well as a mechanic. The pacing of the game is smooth throughout. Overall, it’s a well-designed game that’s fun to play. 9/10.

Presentation: The writing of the game is strong throughout, and it captures of creepiness of the setting and the character of its protagonist. There are a few minor issues with the text (e.g., a “decimated figure”), but nothing that interfered with my enjoyment of the game. There are some syntax issues (some of which are undoubtedly due to my unfamiliar with the Quest parser, as opposed to Inform’s), with phrases like UNLOCK DOOR WITH KEY not recognized (and giving the spurious response “You can’t unlock it,” possibly treating DOOR WITH KEY as a single object to be unlocked), but UNLOCK DOOR itself perfectly fine. Those are mostly cosmetic issues, but there were instances in the game where items were both my inventory and still listed in the room descriptions, and certain commands had no response whatsoever. 8/10.

You might be interested in this game if: You like the “Toy Story” series of films, but wished they were creepier.

Score: 9

Although it’s written by the same author as last year’s excellent “The master of the land,” this year’s competition’s “The good people” is a very different game. It’s a tight, linear narrative that’s driven by the raw impact of its content rather than by an underlying plot or puzzle.

Gameplay: The game consists of two distinct sections: a linear setup introducing the two main characters and the setting, followed by a more fast-paced section in which they have to face their predicament. The game is squarely in the horror genre, and its structure follows the classic presentation of a horror story. The player gets small clues about the odd setting throughout the first section, which are made explicit once the threat is apparent to the main characters. Fitting with the horror genre’s conventions, the first section has a slow pace and has an aggressive insistence that everything, or at least most things, are normal. The second past is more interactive (with most choices in the first section just revealing more scenery details), although it’s still inherently linear 8/10.

Mechanics: The game is fundamentally a well-conceived and -executed short story. There aren’t many significant choices for the player to make, although the skill of the presentation makes that less frustrating than in similar works. I was unable to complete the game, though, because of a series of (unintentional) crashes toward the end. 5/10.

Presentation: The prose and art style are done well, and their tone is a perfect match to the story’s genre. The typography of the first section in unnecessarily ornamented, both in its layout on the page and in its changes of font color and size. Some of that is attribute to (or at least helps with) the first section’s appearance as a standard slice-of-life Twine game, but it’s still difficult to play through. On the other hand, the censorship of the monster throughout the text is a nice touch. Although the text of the game was written well, there’s no reason for having it delayed. 7/10.

You might be interested in this game if: You like horror short stories and experiments in format.

Score: 7

“Rip Retold” is a simple game that gives some extra details and storylines to embellisht to Irving’s original short story.

Gameplay: The gameplay is choice-based, with most decision points separated by long stretches of narrative. There aren’t a lot of branches to it, but it describes a sidestory that fits in neatly with the original plot. 5/10.

Mechanics: There aren’t many choices to be made during the game, and the ones that are there don’t have much effect on the story. The first choice reached in the game, for example, is simply one of continuing the narrative or summarily ending it. The choices that are available do flesh out the characters a bit, though, and that’s the main appeal of a work like this based off a pre-existing story. 5/10.

Presentation: The story itself is interesting and moves at a steady pace. I didn’t find it particularly remarkable or memorable, but it’s done well. 5/10.

You might be interested in this game if: You like the original short story.

Score: 5

“The Mysterious Stories of Caroline” is a choice-based drama in which the protagonist decides what to do in response to his foster parent’s arrest.

Gameplay: It’s an unpleasant game to play, and that’s entirely intentional and appropriate; it’s a heavy game about a serious and unpleasant subject. Although the player does get to make some choices about its ending, the game is mostly about showing the mental state of the narrator. 5/10.

Mechanics: There are some choices that matter, but most of the text is simply a narrative to read through (or otherwise progress through, in the multimedia sections). The game also points out some notes about the character’s ethics or morality at its conclusion, though I found the points at which those could change to be either obvious or arbitrary. 5/10.

Presentation: The game’s dark, ponderous tone matches its content. The artwork in the game is well made and complements the text, though the soundtrack and audio effects are more distracting than evocative. The text itself is largely solid, though the narrator or author’s censoring profanity is oddly inconsistent. Unfortunately, the game has frequent sections of delayed text, which disrupts the mood it’s trying to create and frustrates the player. 4/10.

You might be interested in this game if: You want a serious, dramatic story with some multimedia elements.

Score: 5

Although they’re often considered passé, I still have a soft spot for old-school, parser-based adventure games that, like Zork I, involve exploring a dungeon-like environment by solving inventory and set-piece puzzles. “Old Jim’s Convenience Store” is a short, competent example of that genre.

Gameplay: The gameplay is straightforward: By acquiring and then using various tools, the player delves into a cavern beneath a convenience store and finds what’s hidden there. The puzzles aren’t complicated, and they involve using common tools for their intended purpose. There aren’t puzzles about, say, retrieving a key stuck in the keyhole on the opposite side of a door, nor anything as original as (for the time) the T-remover from “Leather Goddess of Phobos.” 5/10.

Mechanics: The puzzles in the game don’t require any cleverness or ingenuity from the player. If there’s any difficulty in the game, it’s finding the required tools in the first place, though they’re all fairly obvious. 5/10.

Presentation: The prose in the game is solid but unremarkable, mostly being a frame for its similar puzzles. There are some significant guess-the-verb problems, such as the problem of crossing a chasm. The expected syntax is there PUT [object] ACROSS CHASM, and variations like PUT [object] ON/IN/OVER CHASM or BRIDGE CHASM WITH [object] are unrecognized. Similarly, a puzzle about retrieving a key in a crack in the floor with a hook and a wire has an obvious solution to the player, but figuring out the precise command needed to execute it takes significant guesswork. 4/10.

You might be interested in this game if: You want a quick, bare-bones game in the old Infocom style.

Score: 5

“Arram’s Tomb” is an entertaining Dungeons and Dragons pastiche that recreates the feeling of both an old-school role-playing game and a Choose Your Own Adventure novel.

Gameplay: The game is choice-based, with the player directing a party of classic adventurers through a dungeon. The party members are archetypes, but they have their own personalities, and the game is short enough that two-dimensional characters aren’t a problem. It’s not a deep game, but it’s not trying to be one, and its ideas are executed well. 5/10.

Mechanics: The choices given to the player are meaningful, and the game has substantial state. One of the characters, for example, can cast a fireball spell but can only do so only once; using it an enemy encounter usually succeeds, but it can’t be used in future, potentially more dangerous situations. The puzzles are Choose-Your-Own-Adventure style death traps, with learning from dying being the major mechanic. Nevertheless, there is an overall idea of resource management, and some of the puzzles have multiple successful resolutions (although ostensibly correct but suboptimal ones may burn resources needed later, which would be a problem if the game were longer). 6/10.

Presentation: The game is a broad, Dungeons-and-Dragons style adventure, and the text is light and entertaining. There are multiple endings, and they arise naturally from the actions taken by the player over the course of the game. 5/10.

You might be interested in this game if: You’ve played in an old tabletop RPG campaign.

Score: 5

“Valand” is a medium-length, choice-based about a shipwrecked child who gets involved with magicians. It has promising characters and setting, but the world and narrative aren’t developed enough to sustain them.

Gameplay: Most of the game consists of the protagonist wandering around the island and meeting its inhabitants, being more of an observer than a participant. The world itself is strange and not well-explained. The presentation of the world is not cryptic or elliptical (as in, say, last year’s “+=x”); it’s just not fleshed out. The overall impression I get of the game is that it has the tone and structure of the first chapter in a novel, but its abrupt ending and lack of branching are awkward in an interactive fiction game. 5/10.

Mechanics: The game’s first half is largely linear, but later choices do substantially affect the plot. For most of the game, the player is dragged around by the plot; the few meaningful choices lead quickly to a choice of endings. 5/10.

Presentation: The narrator in the game is a child, and the prose does a good job in describing that perspective. The prose is smooth, though I did encounter a section that simply read, “Double-click this passage to edit it,” toward the end of the game. 5/10.

You might be interested in this game if: You like classic adventure novels.

Score: 5/10