Meta tags:
description=Haphazard thoughts on game design and narrative.;

Headings (most frequently used words):

if, comp, the, recent, 2021, of, semiosis, 2019, posts, comments, archives, categories, meta, these, heterogenous, tasks, 2024, birding, in, pope, lick, park, eric, lathrop, 2022, thirty, nine, steps, goat, game, last, night, alexisgrad, mermaids, ganymede, cloud, gardens, part, scents, good, people, black, sheep,

Text of the page (most frequently used words):
the (389), and (231), that (139), you (136), this (112), but (90), about (72), game (64), not (63), are (58), with (53), for (53), there (45), more (44), have (42), like (40), comp (36), they (35), which (35), really (34), one (30), what (30), than (28), has (27), very (27), october (26), your (26), kind (26), lot (26), can (25), just (25), how (25), much (25), 2015 (24), here (24), them (24), some (24), story (24), thing (23), because (23), september (22), 2021 (22), feel (22), all (21), make (21), doesn (21), posted (20), was (20), think (20), things (19), design (18), 2014 (18), 2016 (18), 2019 (18), out (18), don (18), where (17), into (17), november (16), 2017 (16), choice (16), its (16), general (16), feels (16), when (16), get (15), other (15), may (15), player (15), first (15), going (15), bit (15), space (15), little (15), isn (15), 2009 (14), july (14), august (14), protagonist (14), place (14), these (13), cyoa (13), time (13), something (13), pretty (13), most (13), any (13), also (13), way (13), choices (13), june (12), without (12), different (12), doing (12), been (12), sense (12), too (12), text (12), city (12), plants (12), then (12), character (12), interactive (11), fiction (11), games (11), part (11), piece (11), good (11), could (11), well (11), though (11), original (11), mostly (11), level (11), being (11), those (11), characters (11), work (11), april (10), sam (10), kabo (10), ashwell (10), rather (10), often (10), enough (10), would (10), point (10), comment (9), review (9), narrative (9), last (9), birding (9), plot (9), real (9), people (9), particular (9), will (9), play (9), cloud (9), gardens (9), always (9), scrap (9), december (8), march (8), 2011 (8), 2018 (8), night (8), goat (8), leave (8), reading (8), between (8), does (8), from (8), made (8), before (8), gardening (8), anything (8), want (8), world (8), great (8), around (8), over (8), had (8), who (8), know (8), dictator (8), actually (8), hero (8), endings (8), comments (7), tasks (7), 2022 (7), 2024 (7), book (7), puzzle (7), their (7), someone (7), her (7), see (7), only (7), down (7), less (7), big (7), author (7), fit (7), off (7), after (7), didn (7), next (7), even (7), likely (7), probably (7), quite (7), gets (7), makes (7), writing (7), goats (7), wordpress (6), com (6), heterogenous (6), already (6), based (6), 2008 (6), february (6), january (6), steps (6), park (6), continue (6), nice (6), making (6), take (6), fairly (6), she (6), plant (6), while (6), matter (6), small (6), action (6), love (6), actual (6), every (6), feeling (6), playing (6), end (6), elements (6), solid (6), care (6), chapter (6), problem (6), moment (6), maybe (6), major (6), information (6), were (6), ending (6), sign (5), now (5), danger (5), recent (5), mermaids (5), thirty (5), nine (5), tagged (5), mystery (5), still (5), focused (5), couple (5), together (5), mean (5), challenge (5), long (5), semiosis (5), idea (5), played (5), means (5), everything (5), need (5), fruit (5), seeds (5), bits (5), another (5), look (5), mood (5), grow (5), obviously (5), right (5), absolutely (5), sort (5), odd (5), sure (5), low (5), lots (5), focus (5), whole (5), trying (5), many (5), possible (5), advance (5), against (5), sequence (5), except (5), several (5), having (5), setting (5), issue (5), details (5), consequences (5), willing (5), choosing (5), terms (5), illustrations (5), hannay (5), thriller (5), photographs (5), log (4), feed (4), 2007 (4), 2012 (4), 2020 (4), alexisgrad (4), pope (4), lick (4), posts (4), theory (4), set (4), twine (4), horror (4), under (4), goes (4), important (4), working (4), never (4), cool (4), life (4), put (4), told (4), land (4), back (4), keep (4), ways (4), man (4), getting (4), human (4), use (4), money (4), onto (4), taken (4), deal (4), art (4), either (4), own (4), key (4), manner (4), few (4), spot (4), found (4), works (4), pick (4), each (4), affect (4), designed (4), within (4), centrally (4), nothing (4), attached (4), strongly (4), wants (4), adventure (4), second (4), culture (4), straightforward (4), read (4), sometimes (4), find (4), meant (4), fun (4), immediate (4), interested (4), players (4), deeply (4), why (4), might (4), change (4), should (4), clearly (4), images (4), page (4), birds (4), started (3), required (3), view (3), content (3), account (3), create (3), uncategorized (3), rpg (3), parser (3), standard (3), ganymede (3), eric (3), lathrop (3), limited (3), efficiently (3), despite (3), past (3), specific (3), through (3), longer (3), reflective (3), meaning (3), done (3), scents (3), initial (3), got (3), honestly (3), taking (3), order (3), entirely (3), shit (3), weird (3), heavily (3), visual (3), effect (3), hand (3), thinking (3), green (3), grind (3), music (3), options (3), yet (3), gardener (3), produce (3), day (3), result (3), start (3), fair (3), bush (3), variation (3), special (3), resources (3), easy (3), usually (3), familiar (3), placed (3), directly (3), stage (3), somewhat (3), especially (3), npc (3), three (3), central (3), interesting (3), pulp (3), come (3), happened (3), particularly (3), threat (3), exploring (3), give (3), difficult (3), situation (3), hard (3), ish (3), explored (3), unusual (3), capable (3), least (3), prose (3), two (3), playthroughs (3), tactics (3), failure (3), friend (3), face (3), fact (3), else (3), definitely (3), stakes (3), worldbuilding (3), wasn (3), keeping (3), duel (3), master (3), aware (3), blah (3), individual (3), company (3), five (3), same (3), precisely (3), boring (3), mundane (3), clever (3), bold (3), fuck (3), leash (3), woods (3), bird (3), site (2), website (2), name (2), subscribed (2), subscribe (2), blog (2), entries (2), meta (2), videogames (2), storygames (2), board (2), categories (2), 2005 (2), 2010 (2), archives (2), michael (2), house (2), patterns (2), george (2), parr (2), eastshade (2), fantasy (2), milo (2), van (2), mesdag (2), kathryn (2), search (2), older (2), advances (2), pressure (2), similar (2), act (2), black (2), sheep (2), daniel (2), ruin (2), once (2), throwing (2), others (2), mechanical (2), process (2), personal (2), creation (2), far (2), public (2), consumption (2), anybody (2), remember (2), ideas (2), early (2), exciting (2), basically (2), soil (2), similarly (2), fiddly (2), systems (2), rice (2), improving (2), wilderness (2), train (2), road (2), signs (2), cars (2), across (2), useful (2), abundance (2), animals (2), perhaps (2), light (2), concrete (2), slabs (2), rooms (2), technical (2), element (2), okay (2), awkward (2), camera (2), principle (2), building (2), bad (2), ruins (2), arrangement (2), aesthetics (2), overall (2), oddly (2), concerned (2), putting (2), genre (2), chill (2), experience (2), question (2), seems (2), activity (2), mode (2), none (2), such (2), beyond (2), decide (2), water (2), regularly (2), harvest (2), stick (2), progression (2), kinds (2), strengths (2), grows (2), open (2), cover (2), tree (2), growing (2), offers (2), aesthetic (2), highbush (2), eat (2), sharp (2), needed (2), effort (2), subtle (2), notice (2), until (2), optimisation (2), given (2), flowers (2), whatever (2), topple (2), inside (2), scenes (2), tiny (2), entire (2), radius (2), new (2), amount (2), victory (2), voice (2), jump (2), written (2), length (2), develop (2), allowed (2), sized (2), hate (2), crew (2), whose (2), mechanic (2), decent (2), chapters (2), minor (2), again (2), haven (2), harder (2), expect (2), golden (2), age (2), guess (2), yeah (2), common (2), understand (2), assumed (2), developed (2), audience (2), sequences (2), physical (2), consequential (2), notable (2), iceberg (2), screw (2), say (2), ever (2), fine (2), effects (2), opportunity (2), away (2), feelings (2), fish (2), escaping (2), filling (2), ambiguous (2), points (2), polish (2), lowkey (2), aren (2), purpose (2), takes (2), spaceship (2), disaster (2), hasn (2), established (2), mechanically (2), item (2), evil (2), tentacle (2), queen (2), abruptly (2), firmly (2), wise (2), problems (2), group (2), multiplayer (2), reads (2), suggests (2), adapted (2), format (2), perfectly (2), better (2), ask (2), decisions (2), outcome (2), deciding (2), competitive (2), tactical (2), presented (2), brutal (2), versions (2), codes (2), sharing (2), discuss (2), terrible (2), asks (2), says (2), cost (2), friends (2), contributing (2), war (2), astrid (2), europe (2), thought (2), conflict (2), inevitable (2), weighty (2), loses (2), costs (2), king (2), books (2), traverse (2), used (2), practice (2), crunchy (2), instead (2), deep (2), necessary (2), killers (2), novel (2), tightly (2), appointed (2), input (2), code (2), series (2), example (2), impossible (2), corporate (2), season (2), niece (2), suspect (2), bother (2), epilogue (2), main (2), earlier (2), assert (2), nor (2), fifteen (2), tracker (2), bottom (2), took (2), map (2), generic (2), presentation (2), scroll (2), run (2), later (2), keeps (2), option (2), shepard (2), approaches (2), vaguely (2), non (2), defined (2), high (2), goal (2), drawing (2), job (2), anxiety (2), described (2), unless (2), impact (2), shift (2), mild (2), clear (2), colour (2), respect (2), bland (2), tell (2), popular (2), impression (2), approach (2), medium (2), become (2), holmes (2), version (2), compelling (2), objective (2), lucky (2), fail (2), close (2), obvious (2), adaptation (2), since (2), skip (2), support (2), seen (2), dogs (2), literal (2), annoyed (2), eastern (2), almost (2), alt (2), haphazard (2), thoughts (2), email, write, loading, collapse, bar, manage, subscriptions, reader, report, privacy, join, 151, subscribers, free, structurally, timer, travel, areas, uncovering, clues, compromise, allowing, explore, challenging, heaven, vault, nic, barkdull, matt, borgard, cyberpunk, father, head, singularity, corporation, cult, following, died, sister, kidnapped, irene, fake, opening, obliged, pseudavid, horrific, magic, realism, alice, holiday, cultures, relationship, coming, strain, visiting, village, inhabited, ancestors, flooded, construction, reservoir, newly, revealed, global, warming, induced, drought, awoken, supernatural, perfumer, advanced, field, peripatetic, collects, perfumes, significance, associated, memories, periodically, collection, remembering, ones, assessing, fragments, methodical, biography, relaxing, strictly, perfume, memory, assigning, evaluating, symbolic, associations, wont, procgen, pieces, fully, ready, called, development, showed, generating, toy, gen, toys, wanted, passively, absorbed, completely, selecting, scent, notes, associate, rush, comes, tumble, reaching, contributors, closest, considers, elevation, rainfall, fertility, richness, productivity, farms, terroir, sakuna, tropico, untouched, neglected, clearance, irrigation, erasing, distinctive, suitable, anthropic, environments, fragment, bridge, station, converting, garbage, rubber, ducks, rusted, broken, cathode, ray, tvs, useless, stairways, blocked, pop, table, vending, machine, jam, bench, seats, tracks, boost, comprehensible, economic, harvesting, itself, crows, times, architecture, sticking, arches, pillars, stacking, boxy, towers, purely, qualities, weak, snap, rotation, cooperate, nicely, brutalist, ungainly, shapes, integrate, unearthly, floating, sea, mists, jarring, voxels, worked, pixel, reliant, atmosphere, million, miles, calm, artefact, worlds, palm, constructed, enjambed, abandoned, myst, kingdom, curation, happen, resulting, ambient, try, strange, lifeless, perpetual, click, directionless, creative, lichen, sum, parts, carving, niche, considering, sunlight, type, drainage, law, prophets, picture, opaque, spreadsheet, sim, mainly, diligence, patience, regular, maintenance, dedicate, critical, quality, fresh, mother, enjoys, chunk, tend, monitor, chore, chills, lovely, garden, fatal, flaw, aspects, rewards, paced, quickly, unlock, gradually, wisteria, kinda, hanging, flower, vines, reach, ferns, surfaces, indiscriminately, broadleaf, slow, powers, overlap, rarely, correct, lets, treat, myself, wanting, exclude, emphasize, distinct, cactus, changes, foraging, wildfoods, alaska, fruits, late, fall, cranberry, pacific, northwest, straggly, spindly, sapling, sparse, local, climate, rain, abundant, sweeter, tart, handfuls, difference, pleasantly, mouth, shriveling, drown, sugar, touching, yakutat, gather, overwhelmed, glut, heaving, plump, red, berries, seemed, plausible, minimal, joy, distant, speck, rear, mirror, rains, confined, finite, overcome, complete, notification, won, careful, scarce, solve, converts, multiply, teeming, score, bonus, prettiest, shape, efficient, mistakes, prop, car, top, crush, optimal, placement, room, future, authors, tight, objects, urban, wasteland, attach, themselves, scenery, beer, bottles, glue, gravity, collision, physics, drop, roll, stable, levels, vertical, destroy, sections, touch, planted, finish, certain, definition, thinks, describes, inherently, states, agree, conspicuous, tools, uses, stronger, woven, disparate, maintain, grazes, briefly, shorter, discursive, preferable, limits, zone, enthusiastic, cast, members, mermaid, interacting, management, absent, relevance, final, expectation, grown, happens, hadn, faceless, ageless, gender, neutral, etc, interpersonal, dynamics, diverse, deliver, rousing, speech, earned, spent, fights, shark, attacks, risk, pure, fighting, npcs, glossed, sharks, stuff, looming, background, effective, holy, annoying, wandering, alien, aimlessly, needing, figure, escape, dazzlingly, inhabitants, merfolk, crabs, palette, swapped, coral, mildly, goofy, funny, showing, mechanisms, utopia, dystopia, window, describe, reactions, came, hunh, section, captivity, block, acts, villain, proceeds, twists, build, climax, successfully, achievement, asked, struggle, answer, competence, brilliance, appropriate, inobtrusive, soundtrack, customisation, robustly, confident, bugs, implementing, lacking, divided, interaction, tone, touchstones, managing, circumstances, flirt, turn, mid, c20th, fantastical, dome, walking, town, giving, receive, babel, encountering, pulpy, suddenly, expected, strong, radical, body, modification, submersible, searching, lost, territory, maze, subnautica, reference, vonnegut, sirens, titan, form, experiment, present, challenges, testing, solution, poking, multi, mattered, becoming, mud, glad, aspel, solo, walls, frankly, obnoxious, alone, intended, partner, exhaustively, grab, both, call, deserves, fucking, randomly, afterwards, managed, scenario, rubbish, accepts, lacklustre, perspective, ass, kicked, strategic, considerations, suffering, inflict, consider, role, enacted, static, sucks, meeting, conversation, alternating, handing, silent, permission, peanut, gallery, social, gamebooks, person, rest, yell, commentary, heckle, gasp, funnier, shouldn, share, distrust, designer, vision, dev, did, hey, hidden, gameplay, adding, talking, uncertainty, moves, encourage, rely, advantages, fleshed, said, 100, grimy, post, disillusionment, disco, elysium, credited, suspicions, shared, campaign, comports, clicks, onscreen, sacrifice, wins, reward, calculation, preference, sacrifices, stave, hypothetical, offscreen, happy, handled, pay, leeway, round, scope, marginal, theoretical, felt, maps, inventories, spells, items, expended, combat, relatively, brief, partly, constraints, efficiency, worthy, adversary, legitimately, competed, satisfying, ratio, waiting, best, leader, send, surgical, infiltration, team, prisoners, burn, senate, ground, offer, captive, enemy, shot, shields, surrender, starts, wall, planned, sitting, silently, faster, ideal, wait, thick, existence, paragraphs, peroration, mindsets, soldiers, versus, attitude, hardened, veteran, fits, fuckin, bernard, cornwell, fill, plane, flight, appreciate, edited, glance, leaders, opposite, sides, roughly, resembling, 19th, century, monarchist, revanche, recently, republic, crumbling, invasion, interact, exchange, chat, inimitable, dalmady, venerable, published, 1986, sold, boxed, sets, competing, asymmetric, contexts, dangerous, dark, lord, exchanged, keys, pass, state, forth, secret, blood, valley, priorities, execution, prefer, characterized, goals, knows, respectable, hugely, unlocked, true, outcomes, exhausting, nigh, leaving, screws, gonna, confines, enjoy, exhaustive, sake, plays, satisfaction, heavy, repeat, rewarding, sixth, huh, leaves, struggling, opportunities, seat, pants, decision, exploit, disabled, marketing, purposes, unethical, forced, therefore, turning, consciously, desperate, manipulate, caring, pivot, regardless, behaved, unprecedented, nudges, dramatic, tricky, gauge, prince, hamlet, rhetorically, focuses, status, initially, appear, commitment, internal, petition, safety, explosion, caution, moot, quibbles, compactly, compactness, wiggly, river, jaggedy, mountains, capital, extent, plans, encyclopedic, creating, history, relation, cities, exclusively, interior, shots, invisible, customised, touches, intrude, progress, menu, expand, secondary, frame, animations, bring, extra, distracting, hobbyist, front, load, janky, labelled, track, ton, gone, accessible, smooth, pages, fields, friction, hold, attention, meticulously, consistently, automatically, realities, framed, frank, lie, diplomatic, evasion, truth, characterisation, signal, possibility, paragon, renegade, customise, asserts, pulled, dialogue, living, lab, days, aegis, liora, settle, novels, intro, incredibly, prolonged, emphasizing, nondescript, angsty, everyman, insert, snappier, hmm, identity, lanky, glasses, blonde, skirt, boots, woman, femme, presenting, supports, totally, avoid, recognizable, dull, emphasis, ambivalent, relentlessly, bleak, tech, junior, insecure, paths, fulfilling, personally, dealing, toxic, angst, workers, serious, ability, appears, slight, career, confide, trust, sweet, cosy, warmly, lit, grainy, soft, lines, nostalgia, vibe, ghibli, children, illustration, warmth, contrast, balance, tends, towards, tones, grey, anhedonic, modernist, alienation, subdued, desperation, descriptive, veering, stiff, impart, titled, extremely, fond, cats, egocentric, jerks, neither, god, cause, absolute, worst, trouble, indifference, concept, guilt, neat, anthropomorphic, reason, personalities, resemblance, anthro, correspondence, everyone, likes, crafted, complicity, careers, difficulty, effecting, intersects, relate, technically, proficient, conversant, falls, higher, questions, serve, preserve, convey, illuminate, wayside, capabilities, fellow, sherlock, loudly, reinforce, brilliant, understated, mechanics, unavoidably, centre, abilities, require, constantly, marked, using, skill, improves, succeed, encouraged, skills, guy, hapless, ineffable, sinister, forces, losing, help, noticing, success, undermined, service, direction, words, structure, failing, forwards, missed, broader, attempted, linear, media, easier, accept, brave, prepared, show, repeatedly, anyway, farce, unlikely, comedy, saved, deus, machina, heroism, involves, solving, solved, blundered, reminding, modern, density, cues, gives, acknowledge, breakfast, shave, fleeing, flat, letting, remembers, implication, tabs, consequence, outset, acute, mortal, pursued, conspicuously, among, titular, avert, happening, terminating, turns, resourcefulness, believe, quick, tough, die, incur, massive, suspended, disbelief, reinforcing, unambiguously, ups, core, trundling, along, basic, finale, preserves, adds, additional, material, added, certainly, incidents, credit, distinction, supplementary, snippets, limitations, audio, cut, drama, graham, walmsey, buchan, accidentally, caught, murder, espionage, cusp, position, corble, dimon, comic, vastly, hitchcock, patrick, barlow, reviews, disclosure, married, lead, organiser, competition, normally, solidly, glaring, lack, closer, incomplete, student, project, taste, implementation, tool, replicating, accomplish, improved, step, designing, needs, sidebar, dog, kept, forest, area, note, utopianism, otherwise, unglamorous, doubly, disturb, dunno, plenty, spots, ain, exactly, forests, ecuador, woodland, temperate, biome, stress, weekend, birders, convenient, access, wildest, beautiful, feature, cross, list, crossed, towhee, somehow, representing, mundanely, finding, bizarre, illustrate, indicating, practical, powerful, zoom, lens, photos, sourcing, crediting, domain, huge, faff, plain, functional, instantly, glazed, delivering, ambitions, moments, concerns

Text of the page (random words):
uses you on choice fifteen endings that status tracker at the bottom but also kind of feels designed to make your individual choices end up feeling less consequential than they initially appear most obviously there s a big commitment early on where you sign or don t sign an internal petition about a major safety issue and then the next day there s a major explosion and your caution s a bit moot i found five endings but this took quite a bit more than five playthroughs one of those endings made me a little huh there s an ending where the protagonist leaves the company and is struggling for opportunities a bit and without player input makes a seat of the pants decision to kind of exploit her disabled niece for marketing purposes i suspect some players would hate this because it s an unethical act that the player is forced into that doesn t bother me so much as the fact that it s kind of unprecedented character wise and therefore feels like it should be a character turning point rather than an epilogue the main story isn t really about the character being consciously desperate for work or being willing to manipulate people and earlier in the story their niece is one of the few things they clearly assert caring about so it just feels like an oddly weighty character pivot for an epilogue regardless of how i ve behaved earlier in the story except hm while writing this review i found a sixth ending which wasn t hugely notable except that a sequence after that suggests that there s content unlocked by getting more endings so most likely there s a true ending deal that you can only get if you find all the other endings which very vn right there so even though most of the outcomes are about how it s exhausting and well nigh impossible to change corporate culture from inside but leaving just screws you it s possible that there s an ending i m definitely not gonna find it within the confines of comp season and probably not after i don t really enjoy exhaustive play for its own sake and there s not enough variation between plays or enough satisfaction in the individual endings to make heavy repeat play rewarding while this is a really respectable piece and there s a lot to like about it i don t really love it and i think that s probably more about its priorities than its execution i d prefer a much more strongly characterized protagonist for example but i think that this would likely go against its design goals and it feels as though this is a piece that pretty firmly knows what it s going for posted in cyoa interactive fiction review tagged if comp 2021 1 comment if comp 2021 the last night of alexisgrad posted on october 3 2021 by sam kabo ashwell the last night of alexisgrad is a choice based game for two players this is an unusual but venerable format the first i m aware of is the duel master series first published 1986 which were sold as boxed sets of two books the players in duel master were competing with one another sometimes in asymmetric contexts the second in the series blood valley is about a hero being most dangerous game d by a dark lord and exchanged code keys in order to pass state information back and forth while keeping most of what they were doing secret at first glance last night works kind of like this you play leaders on opposite sides of a conflict in something roughly resembling 19th century central europe a monarchist general who s doing a revanche and the recently appointed dictator whose republic is crumbling under invasion your characters don t directly interact at first you each have your own narrative which you read without sharing information until you come to a choice point at which stage you exchange codes input the code you ve been given and continue play i played over voice chat with the inimitable astrid dalmady the first thing is that it starts out with a lot of wall of text this means that you and your friend have planned to do this thing together and now you re sitting silently and reading instead of doing something together but you re reading kind of faster than ideal because you don t want to make your friend wait around the plot does start out with you already in the thick of the action which is a solid choice but even so you get several choices deep before your characters are even aware of one another s existence and a lot of this isn t necessary the general gets several paragraphs of peroration about the mindsets of soldiers versus killers and what the attitude of a real hardened veteran is and blah blah blah and like i guess this fits in if i m reading a fuckin bernard cornwell novel or whatever but i m not trying to fill time on a long plane flight i m playing a game with someone and would appreciate something much more tightly edited the thing here is that the duel master books were kind of well crunchy they had maps you could traverse and re traverse inventories with spells and items that could be used and expended at many different points combat systems they had relatively brief text partly because of the space constraints of a physical book but also because of the need for efficiency the point of having a second player was so that you would have a worthy adversary someone who you legitimately competed against and were trying to out think this wasn t always very satisfying in practice the ratio of fiddly book keeping and waiting around to actual doing shit wasn t the best but in theory there were actual y know tactics last night is not crunchy and it isn t really a tactics game the dictator always loses and the game is mostly about the how rather than the if about what sort of leader you re willing to be do you send in a surgical infiltration team to take key prisoners or burn the whole senate building to the ground do you offer your captive enemy terms or just have her shot are you willing to use your people as human shields what terms are you willing to surrender under but the problem here is that what are you willing to sacrifice doesn t really feel like a weighty choice the general always wins so choosing to do so in a more brutal manner doesn t feel like a cost reward calculation so much as an aesthetic preference the dictator always loses so why make terrible sacrifices to stave off the inevitable and ok there are some consequences here but those costs are all very hypothetical offscreen costs especially for the general the king might be less happy about how i handled things i might have to pay someone some money yeah sure but i don t really know how much leeway i have with the king in the first place or how easy it ll be to round up that money and it s not going to matter within the scope of the game the result is that the stakes feel very marginal and theoretical and i felt pretty off hand about choosing them there are several people other than the author credited with worldbuilding for this game so i have my suspicions that this is a story set in an established shared world of some kind my immediate thought was an rpg campaign world but it could be other things that kind of comports with the sense that the outcome of the conflict is mostly inevitable this story has already been written and you re filling in the details but it really clicks with the sense that the stakes here are about the consequences of details that aren t explored onscreen there are definitely some advantages to this being a world that s already well fleshed out this does feel like a real place astrid said this author definitely played disco elysium and i m not 100 on that but it does have that sense of grimy post disillusionment europe so i ve played quite a lot of gamebooks as a group activity and in general it s great but it s mostly great because of what you re sharing one person reads and the rest yell commentary heckle discuss choices gasp in horror and the game doesn t have to be good in fact it s pretty great if it s terrible because that s funnier and you re all in it together when a narrative game asks you to play with someone else but it also says you shouldn t share information with the other players i always feel immediate distrust very often it s one of those things which was in the designer s original vision and at no point in the dev process did anybody ask them hey so is this element actually contributing anything or are you just attached to it because hidden information if the gameplay doesn t deeply rely on it can cost you a great deal without adding very much if i m playing something multiplayer i want it to encourage talking with my friends if what the other player is contributing is meant to be about the uncertainty of war well it would be pretty easy to make an ai player take their moves one of the big things that feels different between playthroughs in some versions of the story your characters end up meeting face to face and having a conversation and that s kind of weird because you re just alternating handing off codes to someone and then going silent and reading but it feels more fun because it s more immediate you have permission to peanut gallery about it it s more social i d be interested in a whole game that was about this here s the other thing about playing with a partner you re a lot less likely to play exhaustively if the game doesn t absolutely grab both of you you re probably going to call it after one or two playthroughs because look sometimes i ll stick with a game i don t love for longer than i think it deserves but no way am i going to ask a friend to put up with that in fucking around randomly on my own afterwards i managed to find a scenario where the general can make some obviously rubbish decisions and kind of get to a situation where he accepts a lacklustre victory that from the dictator s perspective is basically a good outcome but if you ve played a couple of games with one of you as general and one as dictator it s probably going to look as though the only real thing you re deciding is the details of how the dictator gets her ass kicked and that s mostly up to the general which if this is meant as a competitive tactical game isn t much fun for either player and especially not the dictator well ok so probably this isn t meant as a fun game about competitive tactics but all of the choices you re making are presented as tactical and strategic considerations so it s going to feel as though it is moment to moment the general mostly gets to decide how much brutal suffering he wants to inflict and the dictator mostly gets told about how much of a failure she is and if you consider this as a role playing game an enacted thing rather than a static text that kind of sucks actually another thing about exploring this solo those walls of text frankly are a lot less obnoxious when you re playing alone and i think it s kind of a major problem when a story reads better when not read in the intended manner that suggests pretty strongly that the writing isn t well adapted to its format this is perfectly capable as prose but it s not a good fit as game writing at least for the particular game that it s in which y know is ok this is not a new form by any means but it s not a heavily explored one and anything in this space is going to be something of an experiment i think this would be an unusual thing to design for and would in in particular present some special challenges for testing i m not sure that there s a solution to the problems it s poking up against see also aspel i think in the sense of small group multiplayer if where the multi player part mattered without just becoming a mud but it s an interesting challenge and i m glad to see it explored posted in cyoa interactive fiction review 1 comment if comp 2021 the mermaids of ganymede posted on october 2 2021 by sam kabo ashwell this game is not in any way a reference to vonnegut s the sirens of titan rather it s a straightforward space adventure story that has y know actual space mermaids in it it s divided into chapters each chapter takes place in a different part of the setting and each has a very different central interaction mechanic and honestly a somewhat different tone and set of genre touchstones the first chapter is about managing the mood of your small crew under difficult circumstances in a sf spaceship disaster situation which hasn t quite established how hard sf ish it wants to go things flirt with sf horror before taking a hard turn into mid c20th pulp adventure and the second chapter is about exploring the fantastical dome city of the space mermaids and mechanically is about getting item a walking across town and giving it to an npc to receive item b there are babel fish when you leave the city you end up encountering the evil tentacle queen which still pulpy but now we suddenly are expected to have strong feelings about radical body modification which is the evil tentacle queen s whole thing but hasn t really been at issue before and after that we re in a submersible searching an iceberg for a lost human spaceship and abruptly we re very firmly in subnautica territory mood wise but mechanically we re in a somewhat difficult maze there s a lot of polish on this an appropriate and inobtrusive soundtrack lowkey but solid feeling twine customisation this level of things feels robustly confident there aren t any bugs at the level of implementing design this is solid work what feels lacking is a sense of that design having purpose that s not entirely fair the thing that this wants to do is to fit in an entire space adventure plot of several acts into a comp sized game and it does that there are characters who want things an ambiguous villain the plot proceeds from place to place and offers a couple of twists at the points you d expect things build to a climax a story gets successfully told which is an achievement but if you asked me what s cool about this story i d struggle to come up with an answer this is a work with a lot of competence and no brilliance so here s what i mean the second chapter has you wandering around the alien city aimlessly at first but with a growing sense of needing to figure out a way to escape the city isn t a dazzlingly original creation when i say it feels like golden age pulp the general sense is that it s pretty much like a human city except some of its inhabitants are merfolk and crabs and some plants are palette swapped for coral and it s all mildly goofy without ever quite being funny and sure that s fine but if you re doing a whole sequence about exploring the city then the point of that is to give me some kind of feeling about the city you know maybe it s showing the mechanisms and effects of a utopia or dystopia maybe it s a window into a culture maybe it s an opportunity to describe the protagonist through their reactions maybe it s just about the aesthetics or the mood but i came away from this sequence without any feelings about the city except they sure are fish people hunh in theory this section s about escaping captivity but i didn t ever feel like there was muc...