Right, thanks mods for approving the post! First review:
Rent-a-Vice
By Natalia Theodoridou
☆☆ (8/10)
I see the reviews are mixed, and I totally understand why. It’s dark. You play as a semi-defined protagonist. The endings range from bitter to bittersweet. It’s short. But that’s why I like Rent-a-Vice so much—well, everything except the last part. Even with its pacing flaws, I found myself thinking about this little IF long after I closed the window.
For those not super familiar with interactive fiction, most protagonists are “blank slate characters,” i.e. you can easily self insert. They don’t have strong opinions, backstories, or personalities, so you can mold them how you see fit. In Rent-a-Vice, you play as the complete opposite: you are a grizzled detective with an ex-partner, young child, and a crippling amount of debt. When you’re approached by an attractive, mysterious individual who offers you a huge payout to solve a case, you already know this isn’t a simple cheating-spouse stakeout. Of course not. Why would anything be easy in this world? No, you are going down the deep, dark underbelly of “virtual experiences”—a technology that makes VR look like a baby’s first headset.
Warning: I’ll be discussing mild story spoilers, along with some potentially triggering mentions of self-harm, drug usage, alcohol usage, and depression. And a HUGE thank you to IndieGems and CoG for giving me a free copy 
Pros:
The premise/worldbuilding. The old adage for writing—all writing—is that you need a hook to grasp your reader’s attention. Well, Rent-a-Vice has that in spades. Even in the store description, my attention was grasped. “Virtual experiences” are the name of the game (literally), and it’s like virtual reality on steroids. (Or crack cocaine, whichever’s worse.) VR allows you to experience anything you want in the safety of your own home. VE, on the other hand, allows you to experience anything you want—with all the strings attached. VE actually happens to the person called a “feeder.” For example, there’s a scene where a feeder slowly works through buckets of fried chicken. Listen, I love me some KFC, but not when my eyes are dull, I’m chewing slowly, and I’m forced to finish the damn thing. There’s a scene where you get to choose a VE. I chose being trapped in a coffin underneath the ground, with the soil slowly weighing on me as I tried to scratch my way out. Not fun.
Writing. A good idea crumbles without solid writing to support it. I found Natalia Theodoridou’s prose effective, even though it’s not my preferred style. I would describe Theodoridou’s prose as clipped (?). Not simple, per se, but grim and restrained. Descriptions of feelings or observations are usually a one-liner that hits hard. She lets the unspoken linger in between the lines. I usually prefer the opposite; I like long, flowery language, à la George R.R. Martin or Dostoevsky. Gimmie the pages about characters just yapping, or what food is served. But Theodoridou’s style contributes to the dark atmosphere/tone of the work. For example, when trying to convince someone not to self-harm, you can be angry: “That seems to cut him deeper than any razor. You can see it in his face. ‘You have a right to be,’ he says. ‘But I still have to do this. I’m sorry.’ He looks at you a moment longer. ‘If only we’d met elsewhere, some other time.’ ‘Some other life,’ you say. ‘Yeah.’” OUCH.
Tone/atmosphere. All of the above contributes to a beautiful grim, dark world. In Vice, you can be as fucked-up as you want. You can choose to be a drug addict or abuse drinking or even self-harm. You can even choose to not even get better. And as strange as it sounds—I’m glad to have this choice. It’s different; it’s refreshingly real. If the world is so unjust, why wouldn’t it be reflected in your psyche? All of this folds together into a tone that feels grimy in a way most IF tiptoes around—where every protagonist is secretly two therapy sessions away from being okay, and every world politely avoids the kind of ugliness real people wrestle with. But Vice doesn’t do that. There’s this thick, oppressive atmosphere: neon lights flickering over alleyways that smell like smoke, people running from their own ghosts, and a city that feels like it’s chewing you up. I usually bounce off bleak stories because they can feel edgy for edginess’ sake. But here, the bleakness isn’t misery-porn; it’s a mirror held up to a world where the cracks show, no matter how much you try to paint over them. It’s refreshing to see a story acknowledge that sometimes the world is unfair, and sometimes your internal landscape reflects that unfairness. Let people be unhappy, damn it!
Semi-defined protagonist. For me, I loved having an ex-spouse and a child. Again—it’s different. Having a pre-established family made my character more real to me.
Ethical dilemmas. You get to choose if you support VE or not. Usually, most IFs have one side that’s clearly better than the other. Not to mention the arguments rarely changed my mind. But in Vice, I was staunchly anti-VE—until the narrative shocked me so much I switched allegiance to pro-VE. That has never happened to me. I’m impressed!
Bittersweet endings. Again, I usually don’t like bittersweet endings, but I do love the trope of “I got everything I wanted. But at what cost?” There’s something haunting about it. You can claw your way toward your goals, rebuild yourself, or cling to whatever scraps of happiness you can find, but the story always asks you to acknowledge the shadow trailing behind those victories. Did you trade your health? Your relationships? Your sense of self?
Cons:
Short length. This is the biggest problem. Vice is only 150,000 words, and while I love what we have, there’s some rushed scenes. Vice tries to fit a whole psychological spiral, a mystery, a family drama, a cyberpunk noir plot, and an existential meltdown into that space … and the seams definitely show. The third act, in particular, has a lot of mega bombs dropped on you, but you can’t really relax and think about what happened. I kept wanting to pause the game like, “Wait, no, go back. We need to actually process the life-altering revelation that just got dropped on my head.” The story has weight, but it doesn’t get the quiet moments it needs to sink in.
Characters are flat. Because of the short length, you don’t get to interact with the characters. Even with your family, you only get a couple bonding scenes, not to mention with the other side characters. You’re told these relationships matter, but you don’t feel them because the story never gives you time to actually be with them. There should’ve been smaller domestic moments, messy conversations, shared history—anything to make the eventual emotional stakes hit harder. The side characters were very much plot devices too; I can’t remember any.
Not stat-based. I didn’t mind this personally, but your stats rarely come into play. They reflect who you are, mostly, and your stats mattered only a couple of times.
Not for everyone. IF is already a niche of the “choices matter” category. But to have such a dark tone, as well as a protagonist with a lot of baggage? It’s no surprise a lot of readers won’t even pick this one up.
So for years, I’ve been a fan of Choice of Games, Hosted Games, and Heart’s Choice. But in the past two years, I’ve made it a mission to review EVERY game I have on Steam—which was a resounding success. Of course, I rediscovered some CoG/HG games I loved when I was a teenager. And reading them since has been quite a wonderful experience, so yep, I’m back in the community.
I read loads before I started doing that and really dove deep into why I really loved these things and what I liked about them, which honestly surprised myself 