Oh, I had big hopes and dreams for my reviews this year. I was going to do a video review with a crazy and hilarious theme. But there were some obstacles:
- There are 35 entries in the competition this year. That's a lot of games of play in a six-week period, leaving insufficient time to prepare a video.
- The competition's hot new trend is Choose Your Own Adventure-type games made with the Twine tool. This led to a lot of samey, not-very-interesting games. Trying to make a funny video review of them all would hurt.
- There are no zombie-themed games this year, and my video review idea depended on there being at least one zombie game. It was going to be the best joke in the video.
Spoiler warning: My reviews this time will have more detail about plot. So, unlike in my previous reviews, I will be fast and loose with spoilers.
Ready? No? Then here we go!
1. Saving John
Author: Josephine Tsay
Author's blurb: An interactive hypertext story made in Twine, taking the player inside the fragmented mind of John's, as he struggles to find his way through disjointed moments and multiple personalities. The story is designed to be played through multiple times.
Hip's Quips: I guess this is about a person named John who has a split personality named Sam, and he or they are involved with girl(s) named Cherie and/or Lucretia. In the end, he is either saved by Cherie or is drowned, figuratively or literally. I played it 5 times in a half-hour and still don't really get it or enjoy it.
Rating: 4/10
2. Mazredugin
Author: Jim Q. Pfygx-Vobk
Author's blurb: One world to...not quite even save.
Hip's Quips: I guess this is about a high schooler living in a world where people are expected to be able to control their dreams, but he is unable to do so and is considered a poor student because of that. Some elf happens by and puts him and his friends in an adventure, where he solves problems by trying things out and suggesting solutions to his friends. I guess this experience helps them all. The game is too vague, poorly implemented, misspelled, and scornful for me to enjoy.
Rating: 3/10
3. The Wizard's Apprentice
Author: Alex Freeman
Author's blurb: As the wizard's apprentice, can you complete the challenges set by your master, the wizard Gwydion?
Hip's Quips: An average game about an apprentice who has to get paprika and make soup for a wizard. Nouns are nicely described and I was pleasantly surprised by the responses for some of the silly things I tried. But a lot of verbs that should have worked do not.
Rating: 5/10
4. Impostor Syndrome
Author: Georgiana Bourbonnais
Author's blurb: You're giving a talk at a big important tech conference. But do you really deserve to be here, or were you selected just to fill a diversity quota?
Hip's Quips: Interesting look at a plausible scenario in the near future when Google Glasses are everywhere but the tech industry is still male-dominated and creep-infested. A few misspellings. And I don't think it was necessary to do name substitution, like "Goggle" instead of "Google."
Rating: 7/10
5. Autumn's Daughter
Author: Devolution Games
Author's blurb: The smallest choices have drastic consequences in this short story. Follow the girl as she tries to assert independence in a society that tries to cut her down.
Hip's Quips: The plight of a Pakistani girl who is forced into an arranged marriage. A little confusingly told. More of a public service announcement than a story.
Rating: 5/10
6. Who Among Us
Author: T. Orisney
Author's blurb: A noir-themed murder mystery story inspired by Agatha Christie's novel "And Then There Were None" and set in modern day Russia.
Hip's Quips: Awful walls of text. Feels like it was carelessly copied and pasted from somewhere. No character personality. Far too long.
Rating: 3/10
7. Final Girl
Author: Hanon Ondricek
Author's blurb: Everyone is dead. You are still alive. The Skull Lake Stalker might have a trick or two left up his sleeve. Will you survive the last reel of the movie? Requires a free StoryNexus account (Fallen London).
Hip's Quips: I hated this slasher tale at first for its poor writing and poor fit in the StoryNexus engine. Over time, as I played it more, I saw how much there is to it and how StoryNexus, while not a great match, was not so bad. And the story has some creative, if at times silly, ideas. But, because of StoryNexus, there is a lot of repetition. And, after making a lot of progress, I was forced to stop playing because I ran out of action points and could not replenish them since I had no "Nex" (which I presume is StoryNexus currency).
Rating: 5/10
8. Vulse
Author: Rob Parker
Author's blurb: A dead body floats down a river into the heart of an infuriating small town. As the locals grapple with the murder, they must also contend with the breakdown of cause-and-effect and the realization that the world is not for them anymore.
Hip's Quips: An existential tale about a doomed reality. That's about the most I can make out of it. I liked about the bit about the hanged man whose severed hand keeps growing back and is being used as a magic candle. After two playthroughts, I still have no idea what that means or how it fits into the story.
Rating: 4/10
9. Our Boys in Uniform
Author: Megan Stevens
Author's blurb: World War II was widely regarded as the most justified conflict in American history. Decide for yourself in one short, cynical logic game.
Hip's Quips: Dig through propaganda about WWII and click on the sole truthful statements to continue. Good idea, has some good points. But way too short. Over in 5 minutes.
Rating: 4/10
10. Dad vs. Unicorn
Author: PaperBlurt
Author's blurb: A day like many others. Dad at the BBQ - his son walking in an empty house. Remembering what's happened. Disappointment fills the void between the two. And then, a UNICORN attacks! what now..?
Hip's Quips: A story about a dissatisfied father and his troubled son at a barbecue that is invaded by a unicorn. It's neat to see the father's and son's different perspectives of the same memories, though the writing is a bit vague. The unicorn is apparently there to force each character to admit to himself his feelings for the other, but it also abruptly ends the story. The unlockable unicorn chapter is really bad and pointless.
Rating: 5/10
11. Blood on the Heather
Author: T. Orisney
Author's blurb: A trio of college students visit Scotland and get sucked into a war between vampires. An homage to the ridiculous and bloodsoaked vampire B-movies of my childhood. Black humor.
Hip's Quips: A decent CYOA. Has some creativity (the Maker in particular is cool). But it is long, ponderous, and not terribly well-written. I skimmed most of the second half of the story and don't feel I missed anything. It would have been better to have a series of 2 or 3 well-done games than one big mediocre one. It's written with that British cynicism I am so tired of. And it's not been proofread at all.
Rating: 5/10
12. 100,000 years
Author: Pierre Chevalier
Author's blurb: The longest short story ever.
Hip's Quips: The somewhat intriguing ability to go backwards or forwards in the story's chronology doesn't help that the story is extremely short, not particularly good, and unoriginal.
Rating: 2/10
13. Dream Pieces
Author: Iam Curio
Author's blurb: You are in a dream but if you stay you'll miss out on a great birthday!
Hip's Quips: This could have been a pretty fun game of breaking up nouns and forming them into the nouns you need. But it is broken in many ways, to the point of being apparently unfinishable. The rhyming is bad.
Rating: 2/10
14. Solarium
Author: Alan DeNiro
Author's blurb: The year is 1954. One year after mutually assured destruction. And I am trying to find you, through memory and alchemy. Not many people know how the nuclear devastation really happened. But we do. We were part of Solarium.
Hip's Quips: I'm not sure what this story is about, but as far as I can tell, it's about the ongoing confrontation between the devil ("the archon") and God ("The One"). The latter character has taken on many guises over time, including Jesus, but is now a scientist named Annalise. The story is told by an observer of sorts, a spiritual companion of Annalise. The archon had been defeated 2,500 years ago and sealed in an amulet which was buried, but this was dug up in the 1950s. As a result, the Cold War became very, very hot, leaving Annalise and the protagonist to face the consequences. Although I would have liked the story to be clearer, I can't fault the quality of the writing. The story is good if not altogether coherent and original. Hypertext is used to good effect here, sometimes to make choices and sometimes just to expand the text a little. The overall look and visual aids helped. This game deserves to be made into a full adventure game.
Rating: 8/10
15. Bell Park, Youth Detective
Author: Brendan Patrick Hennessy
Author's blurb: A headstrong twelve-year-old detective gets in over her head when she's hired to solve a murder mystery at an internet technology conference.
Hip's Quips: Starts out feeling like an Encyclopedia Brown story, then takes an unexpected turn. Good writing and humor, with nice and spunky dialogue, but it feels kind of wrong to tell a detective story without any real sleuthing. The story doesn't seem to have meaningful interactive choices.
Rating: 6/10
16. Their angelical understanding
Author: Porpentine
Author's blurb: I train to fight angels in a monastery by the sea. Wear headphones. TW: Suicidal ideation, ableism, abuse, possible epilepsy trigger.
Hip's Quips: I guess this story is about abuse, and how everyone except the abuse victim can see the abuser as an angel. And everyone sees the victim as a monster for trying to do anything about the abuse. The prose and flashy effects are fine, but I didn't feel drawn to the character like I should have. There should have been more work done on developing the character first, as Porpentine did last year with howling dogs.
Rating: 5/10
17. The Challenge
Author: ViRALiTY
Author's blurb: A short web-based CYOA/MCA game with 3D graphics illustrations, written and designed in less than 24 hours!
Hip's Quips: Pointless, knowingly submitted incomplete.
Rating: 1/10
18. Threediopolis
Author: By Andrew Schultz
Author's blurb: Even in the future with GPS, it's how you get there that matters!
Hip's Quips: It took a while to figure out the trick of this game. When I did, my opinion went from negative to mixed. On one hand, it was densely, unhelpfully written in the name of comedy, and its gimmick is basically word Yahtzee. On the other hand, it was clever and well-executed. I like that it had easter egg responses for most of the non-recognized words I came up with. I also liked that the game reinforced its theme by having each quest completion result in a commentary on the mysterious quest-giver, Ed Dunn. I earned 39 out of the 46 points. I then looked up the hints and think the rest of the solutions are unreasonable.
Rating: 5/10
19. Robin & Orchid
Authors: Ryan Veeder & Emily Boegheim
Authors' blurb: High school journalists spend the night in a church, investigating reports of a ghost.
Hip's Quips: Here, you're supposed to debunk a ghost story, not find evidence supporting it. This is a pretty cool premise, but it wasn't clear to me until the story ended. Unfortunately, it wasn't until after the 2-hour review period that I reached that point. By that time, I was put off by the annoying navigation and the large amount of journal reading. The few puzzles are fussy. It was, though, a neat look at the culture of youth groups, from the point of view of a quietly disdainful outsider.
Rating: 5/10
20. Machine of Death
Author: Hulk Handsome
Author's blurb: In the near future, the world will be changed by a machine that predicts how a person will die with 100% accuracy... but not clarity. Would knowing your demise change the way you lived your life? A collection of three short interactive stories.
Hip's Quips: I found the writing awkward at first, but was pulled in by the humor and many choices. I don't know whether the premise of a fate-telling machine is wholly original, but the game made good use of it. I liked all the different things I could do and had to watch out for. This is the rare example of how CYOA can be an improvement on traditional text input.
Rating: 7/10
21. Trapped in Time
Author: Simon Christiansen
Author's blurb: A Science Fiction adventure where YOU are the hero!
Hip's Quips: This one asks the reader to print it out and read it like a traditional Choose Your Own Adventure book, which I actually did. As the story is about repeating the same experiences through time travel and trying to escape the loop, you read the same sections again and again and are asked to add numbers to certain section numbers in order to get alternate results. It sucks to have to keep that in your head, and the story should have been written so that doing math would not be necessary. As it turns out, there is value in the printout format over the computer; "winning" the story gives you the ability to time-travel at will and read all the other sections, revealing a few adventures in time that are otherwise inaccessible. This is quite a clever idea and I had some fun with it, but there aren't that many of these bonus adventures. The game could have been a winner by having more bonus adventures, increasing their length beyond a section or two, and infusing them with meaningful choices and branching outcomes. There's little else to recommend the game; the writing is mediocre.
Rating: 5/10
22. A Wind Blown from Paradise
Author: N.C. Hunter Hayden
Author's blurb: If we live in the past, we aren't living in the present, and may as well be ghosts.
Hip's Quips: A tiring experience. Ride a train back and forth while either ignoring or reflecting upon ads you see, and doing so is supposed to impart some sort of insight. I think most will need the walkthrough, as I did. The story is trying to make a point, but I just didn't enjoy the game enough to appreciate it.
Rating: 3/10
23. Further
Author: Will Hines
Authors' blurb: You are a collection of energy loosely held. You are an echo of a person. Something holds you here.
Hip's Quips: A simple, dumbly sentimental game about a dying person gathering various life memories before crossing that threshold.
Rating: 3/10
24. The Paper Bag Princess
Author: Adri
Author's blurb: Princess Elizabeth is about to marry the love of her life when a dragon attacks the castle and kidnaps her betrothed.
Hip's Quips: Poorly parsed, inadequately hinted game about trying to "outwit" a dragon. Easily made unwinnable.
Rating: 2/10
25. The Cardew House
Author: Andrew Brown
Author's blurb: Thought I'd give Inform7 a try for this comp... it can be a pain in the butt though, can't it? anyhoo... here's my game... after two other abortive attempts...
Hip's Quips: A good idea--investigate a house where a famous person who had been interested in magic died under mysterious circumstances--is given sparse treatment in this underimplemented game.
Rating: 3/10
26. Mrs. Wobbles & The Tangerine House
Author: Mark Marino
Authors' blurb: Two boys arrive at a magical foster home... My kids and I wrote this as the first in a series for children 7-11. We aimed for simple choice-driven IF that emphasizes not so much the pyrotechnics but the pleasures of reading, something to snuggle up with...
Hip's Quips: I can see kids enjoying this story (especially if it's read to them) and picking up and remembering details that I wouldn't. But I just couldn't enjoy it. The writing style made me skim, and this is a story you won't understand if you skim. I didn't like the gross humor, though kids might. Lovely illustrations.
Rating: 3/10
27. Captain Verdeterre's Plunder
Author: Ryan Veeder
Author's blurb: You should carry the bag. I'm more of a delegator.
Hip's Quips: A frenetic treasure hunt in which you have to rescue as many valuables as possible from a rapidly sinking ship. Also, the captain's a mouse, but this is inconsequential. Fun enough to play several times to see how high a score you can get. (Try to beat my high of 654 Spanish dollars.)
Rating: 7/10
28. Tex Bonaventure and the Temple of the Water of Life
Author: Truthcraze
Author's blurb: Tex Bonaventure has sought many things... fame, fortune, women. Sought, yes. Found, yes. Kept? No. But now, he must find the fabled Water of Life. Before it's too late.
Hip's Quips: Spoofy Indiana Jones-type tale. A little too "witty." Some challenging puzzles, but the descriptions and parser aren't done very well, so I had to use the walkthrough most of the time.
Rating: 5/10
29. Sam and Leo Go To The Bodega
Author: Richard Goodness
Author's blurb: Sam And Leo Go To The Bodega is the second most financially-successful Twine videogame of all time. It is the story of Sam and Leo going to the bodega. Sam And Leo Go To The Bodega is a revolutionary example of powerful, personal videogame storytelling.
Hip's Quips: Two intoxicated young gents buy snacks at the local convenience store while reminiscing on past bittersweet snack memories. The story's not as funny or deep as it probably wants to be, but it is mouthwatering.
Rating: 6/10
30. Ollie Ollie Oxen Free
Author: Carolyn VanEseltine
Author's blurb: "War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other's children." - Jimmy Carter
Hip's Quips: Rescue children from a bombed school. I couldn't figure out how to rescue anyone and gave up after a half-hour. The characters are admirably diverse, but the game is too messy and finicky for me to tolerate.
Rating: 3/10
31. The House at the End of Rosewood Street
Author: Michael Thomét
Author's blurb: The manor house at the end of Rosewood Street has been vacant for as long as you remember, but a notice in the local newspaper reports that the historic house has been sold. How will this newcomer affect the peace of this quaint street you call home?
Hip's Quips: Go through the tedious process of delivering newspapers to the eccentrics in your neighborhood for 7 days, while doing odd jobs and having vague dreams, and ... it's just an endless loop? I messed up somewhere.
Rating: 4/10
32. Moquette
Author: Alex Warren
Author's blurb: Tuesday morning. London Underground. Hangover. Journey begins.
Hip's Quips: Hungover, you ride the subway around the city, observe people boarding and disembarking, and feel annoyed by them. Nothing really interesting happens for a half-hour of wandering about, and then the denouement is not really worth the trouble. I did like this tidbit, though: "Social Media job — completely worthless in the real world, but it's the kind of role they would give to someone who possessed no real skills other than being f______ lovely, just so they could get to hang around with her all the time."
Rating: 4/10
33. Reels
Author: Tyler Zahnke
Author's blurb: Find the missing reel-to-reel recordings by solving puzzles and answering questions.
Hip's Quips: Solve a series of math and trivia questions for no real reason. At least I feel a little smarter.
Rating: 2/10
34. 9Lives
Author: InformStorm
Authors' blurb: This IF was created as an assignment for ENG 437: Project Management, taught by Prof. Stuart Moulthrop at the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee.
Hip's Quips: A series of morality tests, but it's broken. You can only go in one direction.
Rating: 3/10
35. Coloratura
Author: Lynnea Glasser
Author's blurb: Stolen away by apathetic Blind Ones, your only desire is to return to your Cellarium and the Song of the Universe. They should understand. You shall make them to understand.
Hip's Quips: You're an aqueous, transcendental alien who's been kidnaped by humans and is desperate to escape. From your point of view, you are harmless and benevolent even to your captors, but from the humans' point of view, you are a horror show. Far too difficult and obscure for me to play without constant guidance from the walkthrough, but very interesting, layered, and smartly written.
Rating: 7/10
WHEW.
Thanks for reading or scrolling past my reviews!
My top five for this competition are:
1. Solarium
2. Coloratura
3. Captain Verdeterre's Plunder
4. Machine of Death
5. Impostor Syndrome
Winners will be announced tomorrow. Stay tOOned!
