Thanks! Upheavals at work are settling down, Dwarf Fortress has loosened its claws, and the start of the semester is over… so I should be back to semi-regular posting. Now, just to sort out the new release order and get started on that.
23 Likes
Mage Elite
By Teemu Salminen
““I see. I must gather my resolve… so that I won’t be a burden to you.”
You spent some more time with Will at the casino after that. It felt like his attitude toward you had improved a lot.”
I was far too young to properly understand the themes behind Starship Troopers when I originally read and saw it. It is really strange for a piece of entertainment to stay both entertaining and to change from a popcorn flick to a slightly shocking riff on fascism, all the while never changing.
General Story:
After being accepted into an elite mage academy, you find yourself pitted against world-devouring zeno aliens and leading a small group of peers in a world-defining conflict.
In a world where mages defend the world against alien creatures, can you keep them from spreading? Contain them? Is this a losing battle?
Take a pinch of X-COM, a dash of Pacific Rim, and a dollop of Starship troopers… baby, you got a stew going. Well, sort of. This is a short title that reads like a table-top roleplaying session narrative with time management elements. Dialogue is pretty much one-liners and you are a silent protagonist for the most part. Most of your dialogue is summarized, and this all culminates in a title that felt pretty impersonal, especially in the epilogue where team statuses are copy-pasted.
Format and Typos:
The title itself is pretty typo-light. I had a hard time seeing anything that stood out. Format is in a very game-like time management set, and reads almost like an interactive fiction Persona. This means that a lot of the pages are short, and to the point. This can feel very halting, and makes the title seem fairly thin, which to be fair, it is only 40,000 words.
Game Mechanics and Stats:
Time management choices to raise relationship stats and opposed pair personalities. Choices will inform you of what stat raised and lowered, but for the most part it was somewhat difficult to understand which stat would go up or down without having the code open. There may have been too many stats to try and juggle for how small the title is. At some point you can play Blackjack, and have credits you earn… but I didn’t see any reason to do it. Maybe there was an achievement I glossed over?
Replayability:
You ‘might’ get two plays out of the title, if for no other reason than the major epilogue choice. No romances, but you can likely get two ‘loyalty’ statuses out of four during each run. It may be possible to optimize the relationships to the point of getting them all, but I couldn’t do it. Most major spells are restricted after a certain point, so you are casting what you’ve made yourself good at at the end of the title. This leads to just reading the outcomes of your early choices, for the most part.
Dislikes:
- Very impersonal. Reads like someone took a rough character backstory in a table-top RPG, and continued writing until the end of their imagined story.
- Halfway through the title, you stop making choices, and are basically restricted into choices locked by stat gains early on.
- Dialogue is pretty much non-existent.
Likes:
- Theme is well-tread, but is one I always like reading different takes on it.
- Clean and readable, definitely well organized for a management game.
- You can try it out for free.
17 Likes
The Passenger
By J. Rolón
“Jonny, you have the soul of a sixty-year-old trapped inside a scarecrow somebody brought to life through unspeakable acts,” Roach says, folding her arms.
Horror-as-a-genre has always been hard to classify for me. I’ve never found myself enjoying most forms of horror in media. I’ve been turned off on ‘torture-porn’, suffering for the sole sake of shock value. Slasher films weren’t interesting to me until a Social Theory course where we viewed them in the lens of moral panic (seriously, the Last Girl trope exists because the Last Girl abstains from everything; drugs, sex… dying).
Horror has to be unsettling to me. I’m 6’3”, 250lbs. That’s not a Tinder bio, it’s just to illustrate that I might be slightly inured against the physical danger horror trope, the idea of bodily autonomy loss. For horror to work, it has to be unsettling and connect in a way that I had never thought of before…
Another fun fact about me… I get migraines pretty regularly. Pain that can go so far as to shut down vision in one eye. Splitting headaches, nausea, and light sensitivity.
You ever wonder if migraines might not be entirely of this world? I didn’t, before this title.
General Story:
You are an eldritch being fighting an eternal war among others of your kind… and losing. In an attempt to escape your fate, you use all of your power and essence to flee the cosmos. You take safe haven in the mind of the closest pliable creature.
A human child, just before birth.
Your kind are ceaseless hunters… are you really safe?
This is a horror story version of some kind of reverse Isekai, peppered with romances, intrigues, and hijinks. And it works, on all of those levels. From the earliest portions of the story, imagining what a once all-powerful being might think stuck in a defenseless shell dependent on others… It plays on the idea of lore dumps and expositions, by explaining what you as a reader would already know about being human, through the eyes (sometimes hundreds) of an unknowable being. You follow along as they grow, guiding the choices of becoming more or less like your previous self… Until your hunter returns.
Format and Typos:
Great readability. Noticed a few typos and coding errors, and reported them. Didn’t take some paths, so you may still notice a few here and there.
Game Mechanics and Stats:
You choose one thing your eldritch self was good at in the beginning, and that informs choices throughout the rest of the title. Are you exceptionally cunning, mighty, or fast? There are opposed pairs for personality that also begin to influence pass-fail later in the title. You’ll find a few quiz style questions that test how well you were paying attention that can have a positive effect on your total power.
Replayability:
Four total romance options: one male, one female, two gender-variable and one major end choice will define your epilogue. Most players will at least get four times through the title, likely to experience all of the romances. One of the major end choices feels like it would completely change your epilogue experience, but two out of three just seem like flavors of each other.
Dislikes:
- Spoiler: The title makes it seem like choosing to consume the Hunter is what makes you able to heal your sister at the end, but I was always able to; even denying feasting.
- Some ‘false’ choices that really just influence the location your characters have the same discussion can sometimes make games feel railroaded.
- I feel like the twist could have been foreshadowed a bit better in the intro to really sell it.
Likes:
- Spoiler: I know it may not be universal in this setting, but the idea that migraines are otherworldly entities trying to take over your eyes and brains with their own body parts… That is truly unsettling.
- Characters are well-realized, and likeable… even when you think they shouldn’t be.
- The early juxtaposition of an all-powerful being learning what it means to be an infant, and have a family was exceptionally well done.
No official release thread, but discussion can be found below.
37 Likes
So glad you liked The Passenger. I did four playthroughs, loved the story. And I think I might have slightly fallen in love with Roach. Not that the others are bad but I apparently have a type and it’s them. Migraines are awful, by the way, I feel you there. I also suffer from insomnia and a splitting headache at two am with you being on the border of severe sleep deprivation is scarier than any horror film.
4 Likes
Just a suggestion, but maybe update the first post with the games you’ve reviewed and their post number? It’s over 200 comments now so getting hard to know which ones you’ve looked at 
4 Likes
All the reviewed games are already listed in the Game Rankings and Completed Reviews doc that is linked at the end of each review post. Or do you mean to point out that this information should also be available in the first post?
3 Likes
Either that or put the post number on the spreadsheet maybe? It’s starting to get hard to find what you’ve reviewed where.
3 Likes
Each document (the game rankings and the randomized list linked in the first post and each review) links directly to the posted review. In the rankings, you can click through the link in the title, and the randomized list, you can click the link where it says ‘Reviewed’.
8 Likes
Huh. Not only do we have similar backgrounds, but almost identical physical measurements. Eerie.
Will be interested to see the next couple reviews that come about. Also, sorry to hear about the migraines, that’s a rough situation with no real path to getting better.
5 Likes
Oh sorry, I assumed they were links to the games themselves.
5 Likes
No problem. I am pretty sure I only link the actual game in the title at the top of each review, and in the very first post where I announce in progress reviews.
4 Likes
By Isabel Azeredo
Well, of course you’re a guy, you’re called Arthur, for gosh’s sakes! That wouldn’t be a very good name for a girl, not to mention the implausibility of a girl serving as a squire in these prejudiced times! Sheesh, that’s some silly question, all right.
Oh, yeah, you don’t really need to tell me your stats or anything. I just needed the gender info, so there you go. Oh, unless you wanted to be called something other than Arthur from now on?
There is an art to fourth-wall breaking, and for me personally that has to be a light, subtle touch.
General Story:
You are Arthur (sort of), a servant to a noble before Merlin finds his way to you and begins helping you realize your destiny… whether you want to or not.
This is a humorous take on the Arthurian tale that leans heavily into absurdity and satire. I felt like I was reading an alternate history where Disney’s Lion King and Sword in the Stone were written as one script, but instead of Rafiki, it was Merlin.
But, this isn’t for me. I’m never really a fan of modern day dialect in earlier settings, and I guess with the exception of Spamelot and Monty Python, Arthurian tales always felt like they held too much gravitas to be this comedic.
Format and Typos:
No typos as far as I could tell. Readability was okay, but hampered by short, rapid fire sentences that were single spaced. Made it read a lot denser.
Game Mechanics and Stats:
Increasing percentages for personality stats that honestly seem to not have any real effect on the story. I didn’t notice any instance where they were checked.
Replayability:
Replayability seems pretty tied to your romance options, and you may get two plays depending on your specific romance preferences, though the romances are pretty much only really tied to the final moments.
Dislikes:
- The story is exceptionally short, and this impacts my ability to become invested in the characters due to wild pacing jumps. Feels like an aged up Cliffnotes of Disney’s Sword in the Stone.
- Modern dialogue and fourth-wall breaking feel jarring to me, but this is personal bias for the theme.
- No real branching paths, and it doesn’t feel like your stats are ever actually used to determine anything in the title.
Likes:
- You can play through the title once for free.
- Some of the absurdity works.
- Fast paced read you can finish on your lunch break.
19 Likes
Gladiator: Road to the Colosseum
By Foong Yi Zhuan
Sadly, his death comes prematurely. A pity. He had so much potential. All those hopes and dreams, dashed. Such a waste, don’t you think?
Gladiatorial fights always ending in brutal death isn’t actually historically accurate in a lot of cases. There was a difference between your average professional gladiator and those known as noxii. Noxii were the ones who were thrown into combat as entertainment, usually leading to execution. Prisoners fighting animals, or being forced to fight each other for amusement.
General Story:
You may be from wildly different backgrounds, but circumstances have brought you and your best friend under the yoke of slavery in Rome. Can you survive, and even prosper on your way to gladiatorial fame?
This reminds me heavily of the gamebook set up of a very basic story attached to stat-checks that the book wants to focus on. You spend a very short period of time in your previous life, before you end up collared and sold off to Rome. You meet other slaves who return later in your life, and you find yourself trying to sell yourself to slaveowners. Depending on where you end up, you’ll then find your way somehow into gladiatorial combat.
Issues I had involved mostly a story and theme that trended dark and historically accurate, but dialogue ripped out of a modern young adult novel. Also, I might avoid this if you generally prefer a power fantasy in your interactive fiction.
Format and Typos:
Readability suffered due to dense paragraphs, but I didn’t really notice any typos throughout.
Game Mechanics and Stats:
The focus in this title is on raising your stats to maximize your chances to make it in one piece to the end of the story. I found that unless you specifically focused on one stat, you’d fail a lot of early checks, but later checks starting combining two stats. Honestly, focusing on intelligence almost feels necessary to make it through, considering how often it was paired with other stats in the code. You get larger stat increases later in the title, so it becomes more about surviving until then… So, that’s thematic at least.
Replayability:
You’ll get a good few plays through this title. From three different origins, and three different backgrounds, you’ll start the game off in different ways. It also appears that there is a pretty large branching portion after being sold into slavery depending on your personal stats.
Dislikes:
- Dialogue is at odds with the theme.
- Some of the earliest choices are difficult unless you only focus on one stat.
- Feel like combat scenes should have been more of a focus for a title named Gladiator.
Likes:
- Combat descriptions are really exciting, and I wish there were more.
- Varied character creation and some interesting history.
- I really like how knowing different languages could make for a wildly different viewpoint.
27 Likes
Good to see you again, mate.
7 Likes
Good to see you giving reviews again. I really enjoy them! I even bought some games based on your informative reviews.
7 Likes
By Ellen Cooper
You make a pot of coffee and settle yourself into a chair next to the window, looking down on the street and trying to suppress the uneasy urge that you should be checking the polls or balancing the campaign budget. The sun is a ball of molten gold, just clearing the horizon, wreathed with a few wispy, gilded clouds. It’s going to be a beautiful day.
Reading any political topic title released in 2016 seems like a bit of a landmine waiting, especially when possibly pointing to a wolf in politician’s clothing.
General Story:
After a grisly murder and an unexpected promotion, you find yourself the campaign manager of an incumbent congressional candidate. Can you balance the stress of managing their budget and image, as well as trying to avoid the same fate as your predecessor?
The story starts strong with a murder mystery and a civil rights issue that requires nuanced thought. Many of the choices deal with the ethics of relationships between politics and media, lobbyists and funding. Alongside all of this is an underlying view of the civil rights for werewolves contrasted against a horrible death caused by a werewolf. Do you support stricter standards for those capable of more destruction? Is that too much to ask for someone who is essentially human, with a disease? Do you even view werewolves that way?
Format and Typos:
Readability was very high. Dialogue was fairly easy to follow, and I didn’t notice any typos.
Game Mechanics and Stats:
You’ll manage stats which represent both your personal skill and the overall strengths and weaknesses of your campaign. Depending on your funding, you’ll balance poll results, voter outreach and fundraising. This is all in service of maintaining approval and getting reelected.
My only real quibble is that it was sometimes difficult to understand the budget screen because of how it was worded, and that cash on hand was not immediately reduced when making funding changes.
Replayability:
You end up choosing which American political party you’ll represent, along with a candidate who determines some of your campaign’s strengths and weaknesses. Some, because your own personal skill affects it quite a bit. There are four total candidates to support (who are mechanically mostly the same, but provide different flavor to each play) and a few romance options (all of which present ethical quandaries for the player). There are also quite a few paths depending on your skills and relationships to choose from in the epilogue.
Dislikes:
- Budget screens were a little confusing at first.
- There is a ‘twist’, but the story wears it so plainly that you need to deliberately try to explain it away yourself.
- I know that politics and polling is often so much guesswork, but I would have really liked to see some more granular systems for approval. Could I improve my Republican Business-focused candidates appeal to the general public by attacking my opponents own ‘down-to-earthness’?
Likes:
- Super solid theme, pairing the supernatural civil rights issues with the more mundane political ones.
- There is so much wolf wordplay work in this title.
- I really like that the stats aren’t only representative of your own skill, but also of your candidate’s image.
21 Likes
By Jonathan Clark
“I’m sorry Jack but watching you beat that monkey senseless in the middle of the dancefloor hasn’t really put me in the mood for a dance. I guess it’s a lesson for us all really. We think we are better than the animals, but I wonder if we aren’t worse?”
The style of the Fighting Fantasy gamebooks, made popular in the 1980’s, seems to influence a lot of titles made with ChoiceScript. The idea of the one-person D&D campaign mixed with a logic puzzle, tempered with luck seems to resonate with a lot of people. As someone who grew up turning back and forth in a paperback book after being told to turn to page 34, I can understand the draw of replicating those experiences. They were just never for me.
General Story:
You race rivals in search of a fabled gem in Tanzania. You embark on the mission from London, and must use your finesse and fists to win!
Like many gamebook-alikes, this story is on rails and any time you find yourself veering off those rails, you are likely going to be treated to a ‘You Died!’ screen. There is some limited exploration at certain points, but the story is there as a serviceable sign post more than anything.
Format and Typos:
Readability was okay, but dialogue could sometimes get lost. I noticed that when including the name you chose from the beginning (either Jack or Jill), there were often missed commas or extra spaces.
Game Mechanics and Stats:
Following the gamebook style, you’ll select your stats at the beginning of the title and use those to augment your luck with dice to progress through the story. There is a preface that runs down the actual mechanics, and will explain how luck and skill checks work.
Replayability:
You’ll replay the title until you beat it, and then you won’t have much reason to continue. There is only one real correct path through the title, and most of your play will be resetting and picking a different choice or hoping for better luck next time. There is also an ‘easy’ mode that allows for automatic winning during fights, if you were supposed to be able to win (which is a different problem).
Dislikes:
- Interactivity is fairly low, and experimentation is punished with having to restart in most cases.
- A simple variable in your name (either Jack or Jill) seems to cause a lot of formatting errors which hurt readability.
- The demo has the ability to be done within just a few pages depending on your choices. You’ll have almost no idea if the game really is for you.
Likes:
- Very much a blend of Oregon Trail meets Around the World in 80 Days.
- The title gives some hints when you die, which can be helpful.
- The mechanics of rolling against luck is pretty ingenious, where the amount of luck you have is the number you want to roll under, but you reduce it each time. So, you can be super lucky for a while, but your luck will run out.
17 Likes
Paranormal Preparatory School
By David Spain
“I suppose there have to be some benefits to being related to the mad old lady who runs the monster school.” Michelle starts walking down the corridor, and you follow her. “I guess this isn’t the worst place to spend a few months. Then again, I’m saying this as someone who can’t have their blood sucked out or their flesh eaten, so I might not be the ideal reviewer.”
Why couldn’t I have a pet great dane, and his nephew along for this ride?
General Story:
After a summons from your aunt, you find yourself enrolled in an unusual school, one of the first to allow the Undead to attend! As the token human, you’ll try to keep the peace among supernatural foes, neighboring schools and you might uncover a strange mystery that might lead you past the gates of hell. Who knows? You might just save the world.
I may have only been four years old when Scooby Doo and the Ghoul School released, but I used to devour reruns, and I’m pretty sure I had a VHS tape. Just some gender variability options away from being Miss Grimwood’s campus, what with being at odds with Calloway Military Academy next door. Not to mention the team-ups and assaulting Castle Revolta!
Well, okay… it’s not one to one, but it feels like a possibly unintended homage. And a pretty good one, at that. You’ll try to manage supernatural animosity for both humans and other undead, all while trying to make sure the campus stays open and respected. Or not, that’s half the fun. Most of the humor in the story is written with a slightly PG-13 take on your usual story. Think What We Do in the Shadows, but with less witchskin hats.
Format and Typos:
High readability, and only found a couple of instances of errors that were reported.
Game Mechanics and Stats:
As above, most of the title is attempting to keep up, at minimum, a facade of respect and civility among your classmates. Do you use your nerves and fists, or your silver tongue? Your success is tracked between amiability with other institutions, and how much vampires and werewolves are willing to rip each other apart. Opposed personality pairs are often used as checks as well.
Replayability:
After playing through twice and reviewing the code, there is a large portion of this game I’ve never even seen on a standard playthrough. Quite a few branching options, five romance options, differing epilogues depending on how good or bad you do… There is a lot to see here, especially if you are willing to fail a little.
Dislikes:
- There is a lot of content behind failing, but stats seem fairly generous and obvious to follow. You might have to force yourself to fail.
- Branching paths mostly end up following one or two characters at most. You’ll end up having to ignore most others in the group to fully experience a specific person’s path. This can leave part of the ending feeling a little flat, especially if you didn’t focus on a particular romance option.
- Sometimes choices checking the ‘nerve’, ‘athleticism’, and ‘fisticuffs’ skills were pretty ambiguous and confusing.
Likes:
- Personally, this was a super nostalgic throwback to some of my favorite childhood cartoons aged up to perfection to satisfy a more adult sense of humor.
- I liked that checks varied your rewards, success or failure. Being sarcastic about something might raise your popularity with the student body, but being forthright and sincere about the same question would trend you towards being a ‘model student’. It wasn’t four different choices to see if you raise or lower the same stat successfully in most cases.
- FELLOW HUMANS! MR. SIMMONS THINKS IT IS A VERY GOOD IDEA TO READ THIS BOOK!
28 Likes
Kidnapped! A Royal Birthday
By Charles Battersby
Your mother has been overly concerned about birthday assassinations, ever since sorcerers baked a fire imp into your cake all those years ago. The poor thing suffocated long before it had the chance to attack, but still, it was quite a fright when the serving maid cut into it.
For you, the day you kidnapped the Royal Heir was the most important day of your life. But for me, it was Tuesday (and Wednesday, and Thursday…).
General Story:
In a world where there are constant machiavellian plots to kidnap or kill the Royal Heir, there have got to be some boundaries. With so many people trying to save you after the last successful kidnapping, can you find your one true love? Can you keep yourself safe? Can you avenge this slight? Most importantly, can you follow the strict liability guidelines and responsibilities that are listed on page 397 on the ‘Damsel-In-Distress’ retrieval contract?
You find yourself foiling (or being foiled) by plot after plot as the Royal Heir. This is parody, absurdism and wordplay operating on overdrive. After the major attempt is successful, you get to be on the often-unexplored side of the rescued, instead of the rescuer all the while following (or not) the rules laid out by legal oversight on how some ‘should’ be rescued.
This is another title where it was super difficult to pick a quote I wanted to showcase at the top. There are so many funny quotes and situations. Be sure to say hello to Dogeater.
Format and Typos:
No typos as far as I could see, and the title itself is super readable.
Game Mechanics and Stats:
Standard opposed pairs for personality and outfit. 5 different character skills, all of which feel like they are pretty easy to raise. Later in the title, you start managing guild demerits as you work at being rescued while following guild guidelines.
One problem I have is that there are plenty of choices where it seems like you fail no matter what, or there is no clear indication about why you failed. Code shows that this is just part of the story, and you didn’t have a choice or chance to succeed based on your skills. I understand that this can make sense in the story theme, but it is very much at odds with the mechanics side of the title. These instances should have maybe broadcasted that they were these types of situations a little bit better to combat the frustration that can come from someone who wants to succeed. This could have even been an instance where the choice is removed, but your highest stat flavors how the failure occurs.
Replayability:
Four romance options, and a couple of epilogue variations will give this title a couple of plays depending on your preferences. There is a twist towards the end that might also get you to play through one more time to see if you’ve missed any foreshadowing. One issue is that there isn’t much branching in the story, so most of the variance in future plays will be dependent on different skill choices while the track still feels the same.
Dislikes:
- I always want to know why I failed at something if it is a skill check, and if I am going to fail no matter what, maybe just don’t give me a choice.
- Story is a little on rails. This makes sense, but feels like it reduces replayability.
- One specific choice near the end of the epilogue feels so out of place tone-wise with the rest of the title.
Likes:
- Wordplay and parody at its finest.
- So many subtle instances of showing your character is aware of the plots against them, but maybe not quite connecting them as malicious.
- Character creation being flashbacks to previous unsuccessful kidnapping attempts is both hilarious, and a great way to incorporate stat-picking.
25 Likes