Category: Reviews

Mini-Ludum Dare 27

Last weekend there was a mini Ludum Dare — an online game jam — focusing on conversational games and encouraging people to try Inform, Undum, Ren’Py, and other text-heavy engines. There were thirty entries and I haven’t tried all of them, but some thoughts on the ones I sampled:

Leaks is an Undum piece that presents the backstory to a poem. Technically it’s doing something rather cool: new stanzas of the poem appear in the sidebar as the reader makes progress through the story. The story itself could use quite a bit of polish, as there are a bunch of non-native English errors, and it is initially somewhat confusing what is going on and how the different passages of text relate to one another. It’s also extremely linear. All the same, it’s an interesting example of what Undum can do with juxtaposing and reordering text. (See also The Matter of the Monster.)

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Romance, Hold the Choices

Here’s a Homer in Silicon on Don’t Take It Personally, Babe, It Just Ain’t Your Story — Christine Love’s follow-on (of sorts) to Digital: A Love Story. I had various issues with it, which I discuss in the article, but overall I did like it, especially for the vivid characterization of the anime-obsessed teens. (Also, Love manages to do things with Ren’Py that I wouldn’t have guessed possible and that make it feel much less static than the average visual novel.)

Added bonus: Dirolab has some thoughts on the piece also.

Choice of Romance

Choice of Romance is a piece from the Choice of… series: not exactly new, but I’ve been too busy to look at it until recently.

I wonder a bit about the marketing strategy of calling the stories “Choice of [blank].” It makes the stories sound more generic than they actually are, especially when the thing that goes in the blank is as sweeping as “Romance.”

In this case, the title is deceptive. “Choice of Romance” isn’t a generic romance story. On the contrary, it (like Choice of Broadsides) is set in a slightly alternate version of a historical setting, designed to allow the player to play as either gender, seeking a partner of either gender, and to give players with female characters the opportunity to exercise more agency than would otherwise have been available.

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Alan Wake: Enh

Ordinarily, a critique of storytelling in a mainstream game would end up as a Homer in Silicon column. But I don’t quite like to do that with a game that I couldn’t finish, despite multiple bouts of play.

Alan Wake was widely hailed as “story-driven,” a “psychological thriller,” and “movie-like.” Its wikipedia article says it is “often revered for its narrative, pacing, and atmosphere” (though that looks like it’s just begging for a “[citation needed]” tag to me). The premise could be interesting: the eponymous hero, a horror writer, comes to the Pacific northwest for a bit of R&R but rapidly finds himself plunged into a nightmare based on his own work, in which creatures attack him every time he strays into the darkness, and his light source becomes as important as his weapons.

So I wanted to play it and wanted to like it. Neither of those really worked out.

Some mild spoilers, but as I haven’t seen the ending, I don’t spoil that.

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SPAG 60, with Demo Fair Goodness

SPAG #60 is now available, and it brings with it the promised write-up of the IF Demo Fair from PAX East: entry names and descriptions, links to the entries and/or the authors’ websites where appropriate, and commentary from people who were there. Many thanks to the Demo Fair audience members who helped me assemble comments on all of the pieces: Sam Ashwell, Jacqueline A. Lott, Sarah Morayati, Johnny Rivera, and Rob Wheeler.