Healy's Journal

What with the IF Comp being over and us moving into December pretty quickly, I figured it was time to change the theme on my blog. So say hello to the Holiday Stripes Blue theme! It's generic enough to keep through January, which is probably what I'll do with it.

Anyway, speaking of the IF Comp, they posted the results on Monday. There were quite a few surprises, and I was a little surprised that Birdland, which was my pick to win the Comp, didn't even make it into the top 3. Also, I really need to play Map. And Cape. And Sub Rosa. And Ether. And a whole bunch of other titles off that list.

Also, there's going to be a chat about the Comp (probably at this new-fangled chat-site over here) at 3 PM Eastern on Saturday or Sunday (the date hasn't been finalized yet). I hope to see at least some of you there!

Hello, all and sundry! We're in the final stretch of the IF Comp judging period, so I'll be reviewing one game a day until Saturday, November 14th. (That's an extra 4 reviews!) Up next, it's Jason Ermer's Untold Riches.

Untold Riches is a short puzzly game starring an adventuring professor's teenaged sidekick who has to find an island's ancient treasure (as well as a way off the island) after accidentally getting stranded there by the professor. It's a light, snack-break game that doesn't do much set itself out from the crowd. In fact, the author deliberately made it as simple as possible so that his middle school students could use it as an example game for learning Inform. As school games go it's very pleasurable, and I can definitely see a bunch of middle schoolers enjoying the heck out of it. (Although what they'd think of the ending, WHICH IS TOTALLY NON-CANON, I can't really say.)


There were a couple issues with the descriptions (I found the description of the water wheel and the junk surrounding it more confusing than it should be), and some of the running gags grew a little stale, but these faults don't detract from the game's charms. It's a nice game to play to wind down.

Conclusion: ( Click for verdict )

Aaaand that's a wrap! For the full length IF Comp reviews, anyway. I hope to post some capsule reviews (plus a general IF Comp 2015 summary) sometime tomorrow, but we'll see.

Hello, all and sundry! We're in the final stretch of the IF Comp judging period, so I'll be reviewing one game a day until Saturday, November 14th. (That's an extra 4 reviews!) Up next, it's Hugo Labrande's Life on Mars?

Life on Mars? (the question mark is very important) is a horror game about an astronaut, named Charlotte, who is the only survivor of a shuttle to Mars. Alone and depressed, she spends most of her days in the Martian base checking her email and listening to music. Until a new shuttle arrives in five months, she's all alone in the base... Or is she? I thought the game's portrayal of Charlotte and her depression was very well done, especially the way it gets that depression can make you think and act like, well, kind of a jerk. It also nailed the horror atmosphere and tension, especially in the creepy, surreal dream sequence near the end. (The game has some help in this respect from the optional playlist provided by the author. I would really recommend playing the game with this going on in the background.)

The bulk of the writing in Life on Mars? is taken up by the emails, and I have to say, they're really well done. They help paint a fascinating picture of the space company that sent the shuttle and Charlotte to Mars (not a very flattering one, mind), and also help bring Charlotte's co-workers and old friends to life. I also liked Charlotte's asides about the emails, displayed in the right-hand margin; I thought they were a good way to get another look inside her head.

Unfortunately, I also hit a couple snags in the game. I personally thought most of the real time effects were overdone, sometimes moving s o s l o w l y as to make me worry that the game had frozen. (I didn't mind the effects on the emails so much, but that was because you could speed the text up by holding down enter.) Also, I found the ending very puzzling. I realize that it's supposed to be ambiguous, but I still would have liked more details, even if they don't answer anything. Like, what was up with the monster? Did it get Charlotte at the end? Was the monster... DEPRESSION??? Still, even these issues can't really bring the game down.

Conclusion: ( Click for verdict )

Hello, all and sundry! We're in the final stretch of the IF Comp judging period, so I'll be reviewing one game a day until Saturday, November 14th. (That's an extra 4 reviews!) Up next, it's Steph Cherrywell's Brain Guzzlers from Beyond!

Brain Guzzlers from Beyond! (the exclamation point is very important) is a 50s sci-fi parody starring a young Bonnie Noodleman, who finds herself embroiled in a interstellar imbroglio when her boyfriend gets snatched by one of the eponymous brain guzzlers early one morning. She'll be up against deadbeat beat cops, a snobby festival queen, and mean ol' beatniks in her quest to save the town of Canyonville's brains.


Steph Cherrywell infuses Brain Guzzlers with a whip-smart sense of humor. I knew I was going to like this game when I read the town's history in the yearbook I found; it's one of the meanest, funniest bits of writing I've encountered all Comp season. The character writing is pretty great, too; by the end of the game nearly everyone you meet has shown some surprising (and funny) side to themselves. Some of the jokes about the hokey 50s small town setting didn't work for me as well, but because the other elements of the writing were so good, it didn't bother me.

Brain Guzzlers from Beyond! is a pretty classic puzzly parser IF, in the same tradition as Arrival by Stephen Granade, Earth and Sky by Paul O'Brian, or Lost Pig by Admiral Jota, although it runs a bit longer than those games. There were a few puzzles I found frustrating (like the one with the goat, or the coffee mug), and I resorted to the walthrough more than I would like to finish the game under the two hour time limit, but I otherwise found them enjoyable, and would recommend the game to anyone who has a hankering for old school/middle school parser IF.

Conclusion: ( Click for verdict )

Hello, all and sundry! We're in the final stretch of the IF Comp judging period, so I'll be reviewing one game a day until Saturday, November 14th. (That's an extra 4 reviews!) Up next, it's Michael Sterling and Tia Orisney's Kane County.

Kane County is a game of survival set in the Utah desert. The basic gameplay is kind of like a cross between Oregon Trail and a Fighting Fantasy gamebook. You have a water stat and a stamina stat, each of which can go down thanks to troubles on the road. You need to balance between scavenging for restoration and other helpful items, and moving on before you lose more water and stamina than you can handle. The game feels fairly well-balanced, and I made it to a winning ending on my first try, though not without some hardships. Writing-wise, the descriptions and such aren't so sparkling, and I spotted a couple typos, but this is more of a mechanics-focused game than a story one, and the mechanics are solid.

Conclusion: ( Click for verdict )

Hello, all and sundry! For the next couple weeks I'm going to be reviewing a game from this year's IF Comp every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Up next, it's Tom Delanoy's The Insect Massacre.

The Insect Massacre is a short, maybe 10-15 minute mystery story done in Twine. It deals with a murder on a space station, and to say anything more would be to get into some serious spoilers. The story's structured in pseuodo-script format, with the dialogue timed in short pauses; the effect when you first play through the game is quite neat, but it can be maddening on a replay. It's definitely a game you're going to want to play more than once, and luckily it lets you replay from a critical juncture near the end, which really helps with the timing issue mentioned above. The mystery is quite satisfying once solved, even though I'm sure I'm missing a few pieces. (But ain't that always the way?) The writing itself is very good, and helps build the setting in the beginning and a creeping sense of dread near the end.

Conclusion: ( Click for verdict )

Hello, all and sundry! For the next couple weeks I'm going to be reviewing a game from this year's IF Comp every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Up next, it's Megan Steven's Much Love, BJP.

Much Love, BJP is a very short story about some notable highlights from the life of a female war correspondent. It kind of functions as short lesson in recent world history, which is why I wasn't surprised to find out it began life as a school project. Truly there is a new tradition of games made for a classroom setting being submitted to the comp.

Much Love, BJP is fairly well written and engaging, but I had trouble figuring out the context of each vignette. This is probably because it was made for a class; when you go over the same material as a group, you can more easily adjust for audience expectations and knowledge. It's also a bit insubstantial as a story, given that there are only about 5 nodes in the game. Still, it could be quite useful as a teaching tool, particularly for classes about current conflict in the Middle East.

Conclusion: ( Click for verdict )

Hello, all and sundry! For the next couple weeks I'm going to be reviewing a game from this year's IF Comp every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Up next, it's Claudia Doppioslash's The Man Who Killed Time.

The Man Who Killed Time is a mostly linear story about a time-travel mystery involving a man who may have irrevocably screwed up time. Unfortunately, the game is severely held back by extremely poor writing. It's peppered with practically made out of bad, awkward phrases, some of which actively work against comprehension. (There are also a couple spelling and grammar errors, but the poor phrasing is the bigger problem.) It's kind of a shame, since the story hits a couple grace notes here and there, but the writing is too confusing for me to really enjoy any of it. I would strongly suggest that the writer get their next game checked out by a native English speaker before releasing it.

Conclusion: ( Click for verdict )

Hello, all and sundry! For the next couple weeks I'm going to be reviewing a game from this year's IF Comp every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Up next, it's Cat Manning's Crossroads.

Crossroads is a short, heavily branching urban horror story about an encounter with a menacing witch. They say it's death to meet with her, but I didn't encounter any death endings per se across the several times I've played through it. What you're looking for with her changes depending on your choices in the story, but most of them seem to deal with seeking forgiveness or catharsis or something along those lines. The writing was good at building up a menacing atmosphere, and there are a couple interesting tricks with the interface in several episodes.

Crossroads is, I think, a game that improves considerably upon replay, because a lot of the different storylines inform each other, building up a view of the protagonist that, while not necessarily narratively consistent, is... at least some other kind of consistent. I remember some guy on the internet who said that, while there is little to no narrative continuity between episodes of the old Twilight Zone series, there was a moral or emotional continuity that connected disparate episodes together. (This may be why it's so easy to parody.) I think that the same thing is going on with the branches of the story in Crossroads, as well. It's pretty interesting to think about.

Conclusion: ( Click for verdict )

Hello, all and sundry! For the next couple weeks I'm going to be reviewing a game from this year's IF Comp every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Up next, it's Phantom Williams's Summit.

Summit is an interactive travelogue through many strange and metaphorical landscapes. The obvious comparison here is to Porpentine's games (although the vignettes here are more developed and melancholic), although parts of it also reminded me of Alan DeNiro's Solarium in the 2013 Comp, and also Ghost Highland Way, the Scots ghost walking-sim from last year.

The setting is ambiguously post-apocalyptic; there are references here and there to a previous, more glorious civilization, although these are kept rather vague. The world Summit takes place on might not even be Earth (but I'm prepared to admit I might have missed a reference or two). The focus of the game is the titular summit, which is the object of the player character's desire; it's said that those who reach the top can achieve immortality. The Summit may represent heaven or enlightenment, and the protagonist's journey could be wise or folly, depending on your interpretation of events.

I don't think understood everything there was to about the game, and I might need to replay, at least to see some alternate paths. But here's my hot take on Summit: I really liked it! I found it a bit draggy near the end, but I loved all the dream/nightmare details, and the music really helped to set the mood. If you haven't already, you should take the chance to play it, as it's one of the strongest entries I've seen in the Comp so far.

Conclusion: ( Click for verdict )