Ratings and Reviews by Christina Nordlander
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A flawed work of art, September 30, 2017The word "keepsake" makes me think of a small object: precious, of course, beautiful, perhaps, but above all exquisite and rare.
Keepsake is small and unique. Unfortunately, its idea is a bit too bold, and the details a bit too out of proportion, for it to form an aesthetically perfect whole.
I let that simile get away from me, didn't I? Let's rewind.
Keepsake has a very bold concept that can't be discussed without spoiler tags: (Spoiler - click to show)you are playing through a series of events in reverse, taking things from bystanders instead of carrying out fetch-quests, handing over important items, on your way away from the climactic moment. It's not a completely original concept: I haven't see Memento, but I was also reminded of Martin Amis' novel Time's Arrow, another example of a bold work of art that perhaps doesn't quite work. This conceit is wrapped up in a very simple but emotionally powerful revenge plot.
So I like the plot, slight as it is, and am impressed by the conceit. I'm in two minds about the puzzles. On the one hand, they're clever: solving them requires having figured out the conceit. On the other hand, once you have done so, the puzzles are 1) essentially the same, and 2) very simple acts of giving or using an item. The simplicity is justified: in this type of story, more complex puzzles might have been very difficult to solve, let alone implement. Still, it meant that while the first puzzle I came across (the old man's cane in the coffee shop) impressed me, the next one was just more of the same.
The writing is good, rather than great. It's not strikingly beautiful prose, and some sentences felt clichéd, but conversely, there were also times when the writing struck a psychologically accurate note, and I feel like those moments outnumbered the duds. The style is a clear window to observe the story through, rather than an artwork.
The epilogue, again, has me in two minds. On the one hand, it's well implemented and serves as a good coda to the story; on the other hand, it made me realise that unplayable epilogues might be rare in IF for a reason.
The version I played was very well implemented: the set-up by necessity causes a bunch of disambiguation issues, but the game is streamlined enough that I had very few problems getting it to understand me. As I mentioned before, the epilogue is also a good piece of implementation.
One of the more original games out there, and perhaps it implements its gimmick as well as can be realistically expected. In the end, however, between the somewhat flavourless writing and the simplicity of the puzzles, I found it not-quite-exquisite enough to live up to its name.
Slight but well-written Batman fanfiction, September 11, 2017Batman is Screaming is a short Batman fanfiction from the Joker's point of view, where (Spoiler - click to show)the Joker finally wins.
It is utterly linear and slight in size, without much of a story, but the writing and characters' voices are top notch (I'm admittedly not a huge Batman fan, but the Joker's actions and props feel true to form). Unsurprisingly for Porpentine, there is some unsettling (not graphic, but unsettling) horror content as well.
Not one of Porpentine's more memorable games, but worth a playthrough for the quality of the prose alone.
(Disclosure: I participated in EctoComp 2016.)
The Curious Incident at Blackrock Township is a short Twine story about a witch trial in colonial North America, told entirely through snippets from contemporary and later documents.
Historical fiction seems to be a comparatively rare genre in IF, which makes me all the happier when I find a game that lets me immerse myself in an alien time period. Witch trials are a concept that's hard to screw up when it comes to good drama, and I'm always a fan of the "found document" gimmick, which is used excellently here.
I'm not a historian of 17th century America, but the story feels well-researched. My only major nitpick with the storyline is that (Spoiler - click to show)I find it hard to believe that Ezola would be allowed to go free for denouncing Hopkins; to me it seems more likely that they would both have been executed. That said, again, I'm not an expert on witch trials, and perhaps that has indeed happened. (As a minor nitpick, I also find it hard to believe that a Puritan would name one of his children "Diffidence".)
The documents, both contemporary and those of later historians, are well-written and catch an authentic tone. Some of the 17th century spelling felt hokey to me, even taking into consideration the lack of standardised English spelling in that era. (I'm particularly dubious about the spelling "tortor" for "torture".) However, that seems like something that would be difficult to get right in a 3-hour time span - and, to repeat myself, perhaps some of the weirder spellings come straight out of actual documents from the time.
Ezola's character is nicely sketched in a brief space. The horrors are hinted at in a matter-of-fact way, making them stick in the mind better than any melodrama or explicit gore could have done. While many of the passages just have a single link leading to the next one, there is a reasonable amount of interactivity for such a short story.
For all that, I came away feeling vaguely unsatisfied. It felt like the game simply didn't add much to distinguish itself from other witch-hunt stories. The hints in some endings that (Spoiler - click to show)Ezola was indeed a witch is a twist that has been done before. There is some interesting potential in the concept that the player gets to influence events that are already set down by historians and should thus be immutable, but this isn't really given much emphasis in the text.
Well worth playing: for starters, it's a setting and genre that is relatively rare in IF, with a dark, interesting and well-written (my misgivings about some of the archaic spelling aside) story. At the end of the day, though, it feels like there could have been more meat on it.
Fun and original concept, but the lack of interactivity is detrimental, August 30, 2017The title of this game led me to expect something pretty dark: both "mind control" and "slaughter" are heavy, frightening terms. In fact, the game turns out to be a slapstick comedy, if one with a nightmarish, Kafkaesque side (actually, isn't that true of most slapstick?). You're an ordinary guy, out drinking with friends on your birthday, when you try a mind-control drug. Things spiral out of control quickly.
The effects of the mind-control are funny, surreal, and lead to some original havoc. I won't spoil the events that ensue, since they're the best part of the story.
Sadly, this is one of those Twine games where the lack of interactivity is a negative. Drunken Mind Control Slaughter is not completely linear, but player choice is restricted to the ending. This bothers me, because the effects of the mind-control essentially set the player up with a puzzle: perhaps a difficult one, due to the chaos and the characters' lack of control, but original. Instead, I clicked my way through a mostly static story, without a chance to affect the action. Perhaps more interactivity would just have compounded the chaos, but that would be great for the comedy, too.
The characters are cyphers: good as slapstick props, but virtually blank otherwise. The writing is hardly great literature, but it's good enough. Most importantly, it's clear: more florid writing might have made the chaotic events more difficult to follow. On the downside, there were times when it felt slapdash. Slapdash isn't necessarily a negative: Porpentine has sometimes used a more informal tone without her games suffering for it. Here, however, it made the story feel skimpy in some places (such as in some of the ending scenarios) where more involved description would have added to the drama.
Not a bad story by any means: give it a playthrough, it's short and sweet. However, I would have enjoyed a way for the player to do more. The set-up is good enough that the lack of interactivity felt like a missed opportunity.
Not much there, July 11, 2017The Morning After the Night Before is to all intents and purposes a "my crappy apartment" game in Twine. You wake up after a bender and presumably have to figure out what happened last night, though there is little actual investigation done. There is something of a puzzle (finding the key so you can go outside), which is good as far as it goes, but that is pretty much all there is to it. The rest of it is "my crappy apartment"-text. It's not noticeably badly written, just extremely bland.
The tags promise a twist, so I played to the end looking for the reveal that, for example, I was Donald Trump all along. Instead I got (Spoiler - click to show)one of the most cliché storylines of modern games, the zombie apocalypse. It's not particularly scarily written. There are prior hints that something is wrong outside the apartment, but again, they fail to build up any really ominous atmosphere. It was almost enough to make me wonder whether I'd missed something.
I don't want to be too harsh. Like I said, the writing isn't actively bad, and there are no bugs. The "my crappy apartment" genre isn't bad in itself: some excellent works have started out with a similar premise. And I always enjoy puzzles and puzzle-like elements (such as needing to find an item to proceed) in Twine games.
We all have to start somewhere, and there are much worse first games than this.
Cute, but not very memorable, July 4, 2017Saybutts is an interactive story entered in Twiny Jam about the perennial plight of a cat owner: how to stop your cat waking you up in the middle of the night. The cat in question is named Sabriel, "the Patience of God", apparently so called because that's what you need to deal with her.
The moment I played it, the lovely and character-filled photos of Sabriel won me over. If you have even the slightest fondness of cats, it's worth giving it a playthrough for the photos alone.
That aside, there's not much here, for better or for worse. The shortness is of course a component of Twiny Jam, and it does do a good job packing that small scope with a complete story (a gentle, slice-of-life story) and interactivity. However, other Twiny Jam games had far more impact on me while still adhering to the same space constraints. The prose isn't bad, but neither does it stand out. There are some cute and amusing observations, and the ending made me chuckle, but by and large, the story is pretty unmemorable.
Worth playing for some excellent photos and a sweet little story, just don't expect it to blow your mind.
For a much more in-depth game about feline cuteness and annoyance, I recommend Cat Petting Simulator 2014.
Well-written fantasy horror, but feels like it could have done more, June 28, 2017The Cursed Sword of Shagganuthor is a dark Twine short story casting you in the role of a villager participating in an uprising against an evil sorcerer-king.
The writing is extremely fine, and the central horror conceit is original and memorable. Chances are, it will stay with you for a while.
As for downsides, I will refer to Gijsbers' review: the story is so linear, it barely merits the interactive format. For much of the plot, I found it justifiable as an expression of the fatalism mentioned in the game blurb: the protagonist is swept along by events outside of his control, first in the battle, then by the effects of the curse. Even so, I found the linearity too overbearing: there are events that the protagonist should realistically be able to influence, but the story won't let you.
Also, while I've mentioned that I found the conceit original, the larger storyline of the curse is less so. Perhaps it's just that I read a lot of horror, but I still found the overall story predictable. Sometimes, predictability can add to horror: the inevitability of classical tragedy. In this case, however, I didn't experience that effect. That said, I wasn't expecting (Spoiler - click to show)the protagonist to infect his wife and father-in-law, rather than killing them.
A bit where the storytelling felt unclear: (Spoiler - click to show)when the protagonist proceeds to his father-in-law's house, I assumed that he would kill his father-in-law, and thus the man showing up alive later confused me a bit.
In short: brilliantly written, with some gruesomely original imagery, and well worth a read if you're a fan of body horror and dark fantasy. It just feels like it could have gone deeper.
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