All you’re forgetting is your beanie, flannel, and vinyl 
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AS someone who regularly wears flannels and have a favorite black beanie I wear on the regular but isnt a hipster. I feel attacked rn.
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… Are you sure you’re not a hipster? Are you REALLY sure? 
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Positive. Flannels are just comfy and the beanie contrasts my white hair nicely. 
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My writer friend had ideas that also involved fixed-gear bikes, obscure 7-inch vinyl, microbrews, and a bunch of other 2013-vintage stuff that I’m forgetting. Less hippie than Boulder; more of the midwestern big city vibe.
And don’t worry, he never ended up pitching to CoG that I know of. He does small-press stuff in Minnesota, listens to a lot of great music, and hosts Guthrie Theater cast parties in his garage-turned-home-bar (which holds the literal bar from now-defunct dive Grumpy’s). He’s living his best life. I’ll be joining him there in a few weeks when I’m home for the holidays. We’ll both be in beanies.
And even if I were friends with the Love at Elevation author: sincerely felt dis reviews come with the writerly territory, and I wouldn’t get mad on his behalf. 
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This is absolutely incredible! In a million years I would never have thought of this. Kind of genius, in some ways. Maybe there could be a vending machine where you can exchange your romance points for sex points and vice versa.
Really appreciate the negative reviews. Good calibration. It makes the good reviews matter more!
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@Cataphrak @Kate27 Oh you! Thank you so much 
I do really enjoy writing those friendship and romance interactions. I don’t know what I was thinking having so many of them in Creme de la Creme - looking back I think I didn’t really recognise how ambitious I was being! - but it was really fun and didn’t feel like a chore at the time. (Actually that’s not entirely true, the Bird Festival dates in Chapter 6 were a lot. I remember coding them all, and then going from the bottom to the top of the document to fool myself into making it feel shorter.)
(And Paul’s chapter artwork is gorgeous, I always enjoy it!)
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It’s called Love at Elevation. You’re gonna get high.
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I was so surprised to this one get reviewed! But my thoughts are pretty much the same as yours. I bought/read it a few years back, and I cant remember a single ROs name.
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I’m really enjoying these deep reviews. It’s not easy to put into precise words what you liked or disliked about a project.
I’m gonna re-read the infinity series because of your glowing recommendations.
keep em coming 
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It was cool to see! You could make, like, a friendship bar or a romance bar. Or if you have a high sexual percentage, you could … Idk. I’m bad at ideas. I just know what I like! But it was interesting in theory.
I’m used to like. 4 or 5 ROs. Any more and writers get overwhelmed or have favorites, I fear. So when I saw our large cast, I was … do you know that Bugs Bunny cartoon when he sees a woman rabbit or whatever? That was me! I was very pleasantly surprised by how the branching and romance
I hate when people are funnier than me!
I love being right 
Thank you for your kind words! It’s a bit tough; I noticed I struggle with explaining why a writer’s style works for me besides just “vibes.”
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An Odyssey: Echoes of War
By Natalia Theodoridou
☆ (9/10)
Whelp. An Odyssey: Echoes of War actually made me so depressed I need to take a couple days away from anything dark or serious. I lowkey let out a little tear at the ending I got. Just a little one, mind you. Written by Natalia Theodoridou, you play as gasp long suffering Odysseus, that kingly man, as he attempts to sail home. However, this Odysseus is not the one by Homer; nope, you can play as Odyssesa or use another name entirely. Just know you’ll be reliving his experiences in The Odyssey but with a light modern polish. I was curious how Theodoridou would handle a linear story in a format known for its emphasis on player choice, but somehow they meld the two perfectly. In this short game, I’ve encountered the most beautiful, melancholy reflections on war, loss, love, glory—passages that seem plucked from Homer’s Odyssey itself. I’ve always loved The Odyssey when I was studying it back in college. Yes, the battles were bloodthirsty and brilliant, but Homer’s epic, I once argued, could be read as anti-war in its vivid, unflinching descriptions of death and destruction, or even the sympathy extended toward enemy soldiers who. were once are sons, husbands, and fathers. Theodoridou focuses more on the echoes of war, indeed. They aren’t interested in the clamor of battle; they’re interested in what war leaves behind, what it steals, what it warps inside you long after the battlefield is gone. The branching and choices are impressive for a smaller work, but I’ll be thinking of the writing for a while. (And thank you to the staff for giving me a free copy! Or not, because I felt physically ill when I finished reading.)
Pros:
The writing as a whole is stunning. Can a work be a Greek retelling without Homeric epithets? Of course not, which is why Theodoridou leans fully into Homeric texture—rosy-fingered dawn, the wine-dark sea, the old rules of hospital and supplication, invocations to the Muse—yet never feels like they’re merely copying. The prose is weathered and aching, almost tired in the way a war veteran is tired. As your battered little ship floats merrily along, you’ll have deep conversations with your crewmates on what you’ve left behind or what you’re looking forward. There’s a strange tenderness, almost, in the writing. A sadness, a melancholy, for something you lost, or for something you never had.
Some long monologues I love:
- “But I will never forgive myself for risking it in the first place. Your mercy is for other people. Not for you.”
- “Don’t you ever wish you could be someone else?”
“What use is wishing?" he replies. He shows you his calloused palm. “We are born onto this earth unasked, made to bear our names and our weapons and our shields unasked, our lives hanging by a thread spun by the Fates. Wishing will change none of that.”
- “And yet I’ve known you to value actions, not words,” I say.
“And what are actions,” she says, “without an account of them?” She motions with her head towards Demodocus. “What is your story without someone to narrate it? You can only remember with words. You can only feel with words. And my memory and my feeling is broken.” She unfastens the knife from her waistband. “Because if you were to cut me with this blade, you would see blood, but I would bleed eshar.” She points up. “I look at this and I see ‘sky’ but I remember intephes. You say Priam was my father, and I remember my tati.” She smiles sadly. “My story will never be whole,” she says. “No bridge will ever bridge who I am now with who I was before.”
- “People say we make pleasure out of sorrows,” Parthenope says, stretching her very human legs. “Isn’t this the lot of many women? Somebody else’s pleasure, our sorrows.”
- “How can love be a defeat?” I ask.
“A nymph knows not what love is,” Circe replies, her voice harsh and cutting like a blade. “I speak from experience. Mortals fall for our charms like pigs walking into a pit.”
“Does it matter, if the pig walks happy to its death?” I ask.
“Spoken like a human,” Circe scoffs. “Like a priest spraying water into the eyes of a sacrificial ox and pretending the animal has agreed to its own death when it jerks its head. A comedy of innocence.” She turns to face you and grasps your shoulders. “You’re better than this. Do not fool yourself. Don’t walk freely into the gods’ nets.”
- “What are we, if not our memories, and the memory of us?”
“I don’t know,” Calypso replies. “I think perhaps some deeds carry their own weight. Some kindnesses have value, whether they are remembered or not.”
- “History will be repeated anyway,” Calypso replies. “History is but the expression of human nature. People will make the same mistakes again and again, whether they remember what came before or not. Mortals are bound by their nature.”
- “Alas, the fruit has no effect on immortal beings like myself,” she replies. “Death is the plague of mortals. Ours is memory.”
- “Is happiness a fruit that heroes can ever enjoy? If one is prideful and a hero, perhaps they will taste a happy moment in their prime–but then the inevitable fall will come, and they will cry bitterly at the foot of the hill that was their life. If they are humble, they will be prone to put the needs of others before their own, and thus they’ll push the fruit away.” She looks at you, then back at Polyxena. "I have yet to find a hero who is happy, or a happy person who can rightfully be called a hero. But then, perhaps happiness is not the lot of mortals. Perhaps what one can hope for is a life rich in moments of joy, of companionship and the pleasures that buoy the human heart, and in all these things.”
FUCK. ME. UPPPPPPP.
Mechanically, it’s linear but allows freedom. The stats—Born Leader, Silver Tongued, Fast as a Torrent, Strong as a Storm, plus your inventory, plus your chosen weapon, PLUS your divine parent—create a strong backbone, and your choices come up again and again in the narrative. Yes, you get to talk to your divine parent (Zeus, in my case). YES, they will help you on your quest. I also loved how Theodoridou keeps the main plot points of the original—Polyphemus the Cyclops, Scylla and Charybdis, the Sirens, the Land of the Lotus-Eaters—but allows you to choose how you react and act. You can talk to the Sirens. You don’t have to kill Polyphemus. You can even abandon Ithaca all together.
Choices matter in a distinctly ancient-Greek way. You choose how your hero relates to the gods and to fate, and that choice shadows everything: your guilt, your victories, your longing for home. Sometimes, small decisions beget enormous accidents. Sometimes, the world goes awry for seemingly no reason. Sometimes all the pretty things are broken. Ah, I almost forgot how petty the Greek gods can be. I will never talk shit about Greek tragic heros again. There is a character the gods expect you to play, and fighting this usually ends badly. Sometimes you do everything right and still lose. I wanted to be a hero. I wanted to be good, and brave, and just, and loyal. I tried to do no harm, yet I ended up hurting people anyway. How many people have died by my hands alone? How could I hurt Calypso and Polyxena so deeply, whose only crime was loving me more than I could spare? (I’m in my feels, leave me alone, dawg.)
It’s deeply, exuberantly LGBT in a way that feels mythic rather than modern: you can play as Odysseus himself or rebuild the legend as a woman, a nonbinary hero, or something in between, and the game lets you tailor how you present. You can choose your genitalia, no matter your gender, and how you can present. Husbands having husbands are casually referenced. Penelope can be a woman, a man, or nonbinary. You can be monogamous, polyamorous (!), or wandering in heart as much as in body. It’s strange at first—gender flipped Homeric epics aren’t exactly in the standard curriculum I read—but the strangeness fits. The ancient world was always weirder than we pretend. (I also loved how Telemachus still exists as your “real” son even if you played as a lesbian. The gods literally delivered him straight to your doorstep. Real tbh.)
The endings. They will ask some hard questions. MAJOR STORY SPOILERS but: Who do you love more: your son or your wife? If you could bring back one from the dead, who would you choose? Is it worth it, when they come back as a shadow of themselves, if they mutter at night and dream of an underworld of no laughter or life?. I got everything I wanted. I ended up a god. My wife and son are safe, sheltered by my sacrifice; my son is a wise king. My loyal dog still breathed at my feet. The people adored me. But why do I feel so lonely? I thought divinity would be a blessing. Instead it felt like exile. Immortality stretched out before me like the endless sea, and I realized too late that I had traded my humanity for the illusion of protection. They would wither away in the end. I would remain. It was one of those endings that hits so hard you want to start over immediately—not because the game failed, but because it succeeded too well. I found myself wishing I could sail home as a mortal, lie on Ithaca’s shores as a man, and die as a man. The game nails that ancient truth: immortality is a curse disguised as a gift.
Cons:
Polyamorous romance (!) is gorgeous but slightly underdeveloped. The relationship between Calypso and Polyxena is heartfelt and compelling, but Calypso arrives a little too late in the narrative for me to connect with her.
Ending felt a bit rushed. While the journey itself is rich and immersive, the final chapters wrap up quickly relative to the depth of earlier choices. I wished I could have a moment more with Penelope and Telemachus. Like, dude, I turned into a fuckin’ god for you. Can’t you say “I love you?”
Not beginner-friendly. The game assumes some familiarity with classical Greek literature and can be challenging if you haven’t studied the myths or Homer’s style. Still, I’m bummed by the fact that An Odyssey: Echoes of War only has 13 reviews—and a Mixed review!
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My god, these reviews are getting longer. I just keep yapping and yapping!
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Oh you sold me so hard on this one that wasn’t even on my radar! Looks like I’ve got my holiday reading cut out for me. Maybe I will even delve into the Infinity universe despite my deep annoyance with stat management games…
You write really good reviews by the way!
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I’ve already curated a numbered list of my holiday reading. I’m actually addicted; I have plans with family and then reading. All by myself! So I highly encourage you to do the same lolol.
Thank you! It’s much easier when I read a fantastic or not so great work, like I’ve had recently. I’ve been on a roll. It’s harder when there’s not much to say.
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I loved An Odyssey: Echoes of War! It’s underrated, but I can never get enough of Natalia Theodoridou’s melancholy writing style.
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@Havenstone Love at elevation actually was supposedly a COG that seemed to get moved to HG for publishing…probably for the reasons Kate covered.
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Just popping in here to say that I’m really enjoying reading your reviews. Hopefully they stay fun to write, cause I can’t seem to get enough of them 
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Tally Ho
By Kreg Segall
☆☆ (8/10)
Ya know, I’ve never read anything strictly comedic in my life, and I didn’t intend to. I don’t even like comedy shows or specials because comedy is hard. Even harder than romance or action or poetry, honestly. At least with every other genre, you have your usual tropes: the hero’s journey or enemies-to-lovers or the sexy, mysterious stranger and what not. But with comedy? I’m scratching my head thinking about any tropes or storylines to support a comedic work. Slapstick, maybe? Anyway, a CoG text lives and dies by its writer, and though I was politely flummoxed by Tally Ho’s plot, Kreg Segall’s (intentional) loquaciousness and wit carries the game hard. I’ve already picked up the sequel (review to come!). In Tally Ho, however, you play as the perfect gentleman’s gentleman or lady’s lady in 1920s England, who gets into quite a lot of hijinks. You show up expecting to polish silver and politely remind your employer about their aunt’s visit, and instead you find yourself embroiled in motorcycle chases, jewel-thieving escapades, a boat race, high-society conspiracies, and perhaps the most polite espionage ring in literature. The premise should not work. It’s weird, quick in pace, and wacky. Yet Tally Ho leans fully into the foppery and the absurdity, and the result is a delightfully silly romp that had me genuinely laughing out loud multiple times. And, of course, a warm thank you to the staff for giving me a free copy 
Pros:
The writing. I cannot say enough good things about Segall’s writing. Quick, think of all the stereotypes about British people in the 1900s as fast as you can! Did you think of prissy, pretentious, uptight old people? A British soldier drinking Earl Grey with his pinky out? Their emphasis on keeping a stiff, upper lip? Yep, it’s all in here! The writing walks this tightrope between clever satire and full-body slapstick, and the wild part is how effortless it reads. It’s light on its feet, quick with a quip, and always ready to escalate the situation by precisely one absurd degree. The prose is modern enough that you never feel like you’re drowning in ye olde diction, but it’ll suddenly treat you to a perfectly purple, perfectly ridiculous sentence that sounds like it was ghostwritten by an over caffeinated Victorian novelist who just discovered adjectives. Like, of course you’re perfectly making tea on a motorcycle while in a fierce gunfight. What else would happen?
The game jabs at the classism of the era without becoming preachy or awkward. Aristocrats behave with a level of detached idiocy that would get a normal person killed twice over, and the narration treats these blunders as completely mundane inconveniences. Nearly getting arrested over some peacocks? Unfortunate, but hardly unexpected. A head servant wishes to recruit you to an underground cabal of hyper-trained household staff? Well, that’s just the industry. By having everyone act like these events are normal, the story highlights how utterly nonsensical the old social order was. Rich characters are charming disasters who survive only because an overworked servant (you) keeps patching the world together behind them. It’s almost as if such hierarchies are fragile and absurd . . .
Structure. Unlike a lot of CoG titles that funnel toward a single path regardless of early decisions, Tally Ho branches like a particularly chaotic family tree. Entire acts can shift based on your choices. Even little decisions, like where you sit on a train, grants you a new scene. Your relationships, your employer’s fate, your standing in the shadowy Committee of Superservants—everything changes depending on how you navigate this fine mess. The replayability is genuinely impressive.
The humor is a massive highlight. This is one of the rare games where failing a stat check leads to the funniest scene you’ll get all playthrough. The low-stakes tone helps: you’re not saving the world, you’re just saving your employer from themselves, which is infinitely more fun.
The cast. The cast, respectfully, is a bunch of strange, odd weirdos. I could not love them any more.
Cons:
There is a certain painter subplot that is notoriously mandatory for a good chunk of the story. For me, I quite liked this plotline, but I grew weary of it after the constant back-and-forth. I sort of wish there was a way to say “figure it out amongst yourself!”
The second or third act leans hard into detective/caper territory. This was well-written—credit to Segall—but the natural pacing of the game is fast. Tossing in events such as investigating a suspicious party or a jewel theft struck me as abrupt. I personally came for a more grounded(-ish) “behind-the-scenes” servant drama. So I had no idea what was going on at that rate (or why I was boat racing).
Time-based. So, let me use a scene in one of the early chapters as an example. You and about six or so characters go on a hunt. Fun! However, you cannot talk to everyone. Each conversation takes up an amount of time. Additionally, you are also asked to help out a fellow servant and investigate back at the manor. Again, each task carries a time limit, so you are forced to juggle your priorities. This design choice, in itself, is not a bad thing. It leads to great replayability and allows the player quite a bit of agency. However, I am the type of reader who only wants to do one, “perfect” playthrough. This time mechanic comes up quite a bit, so it was a bit of a bummer to me, personally. As a result of me not being able to do everything I wanted to do, I did not get enough—or any!—time with the supporting cast. So characters like Haze or the Inspector remained mysterious, as I only allowed myself to focus on my job and romance.
Poly romance option could use a bit more fluff. I’m quite pleased with the (potential) love triangle aspect. You can choose to be in love with your employer, your employer’s betrothed, none, or both! I, of course, in an effort to raise society’s brows as high as possible, romanced both. I got a good ending! They both confessed their love for me, and we all lived together (very scandalous, I know). However, the poly romance felt like I was romancing them individually. I could spend time with one but not both at the same time. I couldn’t hint about all three of the characters together. The narrative sort of ignored the fact that I had feelings for both, and you do sorta have to go behind each ROs’ back to flirt with the other. I wish there was a bit more openness, though I understand these things are simply not done in polite society.
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Cool review I’ve never played Tally Ho but after reading this, I’m definitely considering picking it up.
Also, do you think we’ll see a review for the newest COG at any point?
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