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Average Rating: Number of Reviews: 2 Write a review

Adapted from a SpringThing24 Review

Played: 4/1/24
Playtime: 15 min, 3 endings

This is a very short, stock-format Twine entry, with very few choices telling a mostly linear story. I exhausted the choice space in three cycles (though not the permutations of those choices, if that makes a difference). The choices provided more information, background and color and notwithstanding some different events were variations on a single theme. I feel like exhausting the space was the most satisfying way to consume this piece.

So, it was shallow and repetitive and on rails then? No, not at all. I am deliberately being vague as the few moving pieces the work offers mesh so precisely with each other that pinning any piece of it down might rob the reader of the ability to watch the gears flow together naturally. You know me though, I gotta try.

Hm, lemme try this. The work presents a dream-like and offscreen post-apocalypse setup with uncertainly reliable protagonist and antagonists. The blurriness of its details paradoxically are executed with extreme narrative precision, including ultimately-satisfying but jarring-in-the-moment descriptive choices. The reality of the situation dances in your peripheral vision but refuses attempts to focus on it. Seemingly key details are omitted entirely, only to later be resolved as maybe not so key after all. Almost by magic all these slippery and fractured story elements resolve into a complete whole by the end. It’s an admirable narrative sleight-of-hand, including its limited use of interactivity to underline key elements. It’s like if Chris Nolan adapted Little Nemo but not quite so fanciful.

It probably helps that themes of autonomy and control feel desperately vital just now, and the conceits of this particular dream logic build-a-story-by-innuendo approach enabled some legitimate insights, however oblique. Actually, the obliquity(?) helped sell things I think, in a way polemic or monologue would not.

If there is a downside, it is that between the deceptively limited individual components, and the ephemerality of the combined narrative construct I can’t talk about it without just trashing it for you all! You want me to pull apart a butterfly while assuring you it is beautiful despite its screams? Of course you don’t, and that was waaay too dark a metaphor. I would say enjoy it, submerse yourself in the dreamy vibe of it, let the connections come organically. You are in capable hands.

Not dissecting it does carry its own perils though, as even now I can feel its gossamer architecture slipping between my fingers. Down the road, will there be anything left to discuss…?

What were we talking about again?

Mystery, Inc: Daphne
Vibe: Dream Horror
Polish: Smooth
Gimme the Wheel!: I wouldn’t dare touch the thematic clockwork, but if it were my project I might spend some time reskinning the presentation. Non-stock font/color and layout choices could easily enhance the proceedings and further stitch the work together.

Polish scale: Gleaming, Smooth, Textured, Rough, Distressed
Gimme the Wheel: What I would do next, if it were my project.

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I found this game disorienting at first, to the point that I almost stopped playing. I was confused about both the situation and the location (and still am about the latter to some degree, even after re-reading---I'm not sure where the chapel, school, and volleyball courts all are in relation to each other... or why there's a stage outside?). So initially I was more frustrated than intrigued---but when I read on I discovered that there's a good reason for the disorientation, and suddenly it became quite compelling.

Unfortunately, the story didn't live up to its promise for me; I never got enough of a sense of the wider world to understand the stakes for the NPCs, and they weren't developed enough for me to be invested in their fates. I didn't understand why (Spoiler - click to show)they became fixated on the PC after discovering the journals; there was an escalation there that I couldn't see a reason for. I also never felt much for/about the PC. (Spoiler - click to show)Her circumstances reminded me of the film *Memento*, but what makes that movie so good IMO is that the protagonist has a goal that he's deeply passionate about. Here, the PC has no goal beyond maintaining her status quo---and she is able to achieve that very easily.

I also had some quibbles about the writing; the dialogue was stilted at times, and the tense randomly switched between past and present. Finally, it would be nice if there was a "restart" button at the end; as-is, in order to replay you have to close and re-open the game.

I do feel like there's something interesting to be said about gender in the game---the PC is a woman, (Spoiler - click to show)as was her former lover, and the sole female NPC in the story has a different fate than the two male ones. I'll have to stew on that aspect some more...

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