kjorteo: Photo of a computer screen with countless nested error prompts (Error!)
More IFComp 2021 extra credit games. The judging deadline is in a few days, so this may be the last one, actually.

You Are SpamZapper 3.1 by Leon Arnott takes a look inside the world of computers, as many of the games we played this year did. You, as you might have guessed, are SpamZapper 3.1, an email plugin tasked with screening all of your human's incoming emails and approving or zapping them.

The player character begins this tale incredibly jaded; ages of having to read brain-dead "who could possibly fall for this crap?" spam letters all day every day has brought them to the point where they hate their job and they hate people in general. This creates a bit of dissonance which is one of the things for which we have to ding this game: we ended up liking the early portion of the game a lot more than our POV character did. The "approve or deny incoming letters" mechanic is done very well. It feels interesting and is a clever and creative way to present the world of this setting. Even the obvious pointless filler spam letters are written to be amusing to read, and the way the game furthers its plot with the letters from the human's friends in between all the spam is an inventive way to handle the pacing and the drip-feeding of the game's story. It even makes what is actually a somewhat railroaded plot progression feel interactive, with all the letters to approve or deny. All in all, we were really liking this! Unfortunately, SpamZapper wasn't, and having our POV character constantly raining on our parade did feel a bit unfortunate.

Said plot is very intriguing when it picks up, as it explores the question of living and self-aware computer programs and the rules by which they must play, even as they find themselves in the role of unlikely heroes tasked with saving one of the human's closest friends from her overly controlling religious conservative father. It had quite a few moments that the other woodlings, particularly Sara, related to. The plot is gripping, intense, and... unfortunately something like three or four hours long. IFComp has a very strict rule about spending more than two hours on a game. Games longer than two hours are permissible, but only the first two hours can be reviewed. Prospective judges just stop at the two hour mark, write a review, and stick to it without changing it based on any later information. Alas, we were so engrossed with the plot that we lost track of time, missed that cutoff point, and therefore are unable to adhere to those rules without cheating. Therefore, this is another game that we are unable to score and submit.

Still, unofficially? This was outstanding. We love the story and we love the creative gameplay mechanics through which the story was told. It's a strong recommendation overall.
kjorteo: Sprite of a Skarmory posed and looking majestic, complete with lens flare. (Skarmory: BEHOLD)
Wrapping up the last few extra credit entries from IFComp 2021, after already having hit the "anyone can be a judge but play and score at least five of them" threshold. Which is fortunate, because I actually don't think we're going to score this one. I mean, we played it, and we're writing this review right now, but I just don't think there's enough here to qualify as an IntFic game.

My Gender Is a Fish by Carter Gwertzman is a short Twine narrative. You ventured into some kind of fey forest and the magpies stole your gender identity. Now you must construct a new one. As you walk through the woods, you go through a few rounds of seeing one of two sights to choose between, both of which invite some gender-related musings. (Is your gender an eagle, flashy and majestic but performative, or a fish, quiet and plain but practical?) After a few rounds of such choices, the story concludes.

It's a neat narrative. It has some intriguing and well-written thoughts. It's worth experiencing. I like it and I'm glad we played it. Alas, it's short, not really interactive, and we just don't consider it enough of a game to qualify for IFComp. Rather than bringing out the dreaded 1 rating for something we actually liked, I think we're just going to pretend we officially never played this and just not submit a score.

Unofficially, though? It's good. It took me longer to write this than it will take you to play it, and the writing is pretty, so like... why not, right? It's a little after-dinner mint of a "game" but it's nice. It's neat.
kjorteo: Glitched screenshot from Pokémon Yellow, of Pikachu's portrait with scrambled graphics. (Pikachu: Glitch)
IFComp 2021 continues. We're officially doing extra credit games now, as this is our sixth completion out of the five minimum IFComp requires of its judges.

And Then You Come to a House Not Unlike the Previous One by B.J. Best is... actually, okay, let's back up a bit.

Infinite Adventure by A. Scotts is an authentically old-timey text parser adventure. So authentically old-timey, in fact, that there's no online version and this link takes you directly to the download, which contains a file that needs to be fed into DOSBox (or whatever DOS emulator you prefer) to work. This is an actual DOS game. It's what appears to be a procedurally generated parser adventure. The player starts in a random-looking map, every room has a one or two sentence description, some also have "There is a (collectible item) on the floor" at the end, one room in particular has a gatekeeper that very blatantly and directly requests a certain item (an NPC who's hungry for food item or greedy for a treasure item, an idol that wants some kind of offering, etc.) Feed them the correct item and *** YOU WIN! *** "And then you come to a house not unlike the previous one," at which point it repeats with a newly generated level.

It's... pretty bad, actually. The rooms aren't interactive in any way except for the ones that happen to have items in them. The item collector at the end of each level blatantly tells you what it's looking for before you even have a chance to guess. Every level is a simple matter of walking around until you find the correct item and the thing that's asking for it, and it takes about two iterations of this to become mindless and repetitive.

Infinite Adventure is actually a defictionalized companion game, it turns out, and all of this is by design.

The best way to describe And Then You Come to a House Not Unlike the Previous One by B.J. Best is "What if The Neverending Story were Infinite Adventure instead of some book?" You are a kid, you are visiting your friend's house, and you are playing Infinite Adventure (along with several other games she owns) on her computer. You and your friend get bored with Infinite Adventure in universe about as quickly as we did playing the standalone file, but then things get... meta. Game characters start to show glimpses of intelligence behind the basic roles they were written. The inventory carries over between all the different games and even real life, and items from one game may be just what you need to get past a puzzle in another. Everyone seems to know more about you and your friend than random characters in computer games should.

While Infinite Adventure is intentionally bland, And Then You Come... is incredibly clever. Any story about "and then things in the computer got weird" instantly has my interest. Learning more about the relationship between you and your friend is somehow as captivating as the transdimensional weirdness, and the pacing as far as how both threads unfold while going back and forth between her game library is perfect. The challenge level was nice, as well; I briefly became stuck at one or two points, but never severely enough to need the walkthrough. (If you do need the walkthrough, though, there is one.)

Excellently presented and executed, all around. Fun to play with brilliant and intriguing framework, this (with apologies to the other parser game we reviewed this year) is how one takes the standard "go back and forth between locations, using/giving inventory items to trade for other inventory items" IF game formula and presents it as and makes it feel like something fresh and creative.
kjorteo: Sad Bulbasaur portrait from Pokémon Mystery Dungeon. (Bulbasaur: Sad)
IFComp 2021 continues.

Weird Grief by Bez is a side story, a companion piece meant to be played alongside The Dead Account (which we covered previously.) Rather than playing from the perspective of a Hivekind messenger employee investigating the case of Mike Stanvinci through flagged messages and profiles and group chatroom interfaces, Weird Grief assumes the role of one of Mike's partners and is a presented as a much more standard narrative that doesn't try to dress itself up as anything fancy.

We are... conflicted. On one hand, there are enough "choose what you say in response to this conversation" choices that it technically qualifies for the competition, I guess, but never before have I looked at an IFComp game and even considered bringing out the dreaded 1 score. (We take their guidelines very seriously and try to follow them, and per those guidelines, 1s are for entries that shouldn't even be in this competition because they're not IF.) I don't think we're going to do it, though; there are enough "choices" here to get in on a technicality. Still, we cannot in good conscience call this a "game" so much as a long textual story with a couple variations of certain scenes.

On the other hand, I have played IFComp games I absolutely hated and the lowest score we've given a game to date--the score we gave what we currently consider the worst IFComp game we have ever played--was a 3. And--and this is the important thing--we actually like Weird Grief. A lot. It's barely interactive as a story, but it's a good story. It touches on some deep themes. It has a sense of authenticity to it that makes it a refreshing departure from your typical "Hollywood Heartbreak" narratives.

It is incredibly pornographic. (We're used to adult content warnings in IF games because people swear a lot and maybe mention sex or imply it in a sort of fade-to-black way, but this has multiple sex scenes with the kind of intense focus one normally only sees in actual smut fics.) The pornography itself is used in a refreshingly honest way, as a seldom talked about part of the grieving process. This is an important lesson that not nearly enough people realize: brains are weird, and grief and shock take people to completely unpredictable places. Some people have breakdowns and sobbing fits, others go numb. Some feel angry or relieved or annoyed or heartbroken or all of the above, all at once. Some feel horny. There's a lot of awkward self-consciousness about this--"should I really be feeling this so soon after...? Does this make me a bad person?"--and I wish there wasn't, because that happens sometimes, not always but definitely sometimes (grief is an unpredictable beast.) It happened to me after my last breakup. Therefore, I know that this is an authentic reaction, the confusion over it is also an authentic reaction, and I wish we had more stories like this so that people experiencing feelings like this had more representation and more examples that could help them feel less alone, less like there's something wrong with them because this is where the complete chaotic RNG that is your brain in this whole process happened to land that day. I love that this story went there. I love that this story exists.

But is it an IFComp game?

I...

Look. The Dead Account is fantastic, probably our favorite one we've played so far this year as of this writing. Weird Grief is also fantastic, and it deserves to be here so that people can experience more of this story. Where one game goes, the other should follow. They're a matched set. One of them does a lot better job with the actual rules of IFComp submissions than the other, though. And so we may have to find ourselves downvoting a story we loved on sheer principle.

But I'm not going below a 3, because I refuse to let the current "lowest scored IFComp games we've ever played" entries off the hook, especially for something like this.
kjorteo: Teary Bulbasaur portrait from Pokémon Mystery Dungeon. (Bulbasaur: Teary)
IFComp 2021 continues.

So hey, did you know that Telegram messenger has a non-removable dead man's switch that auto-deletes your account if you haven't logged on in X time, presumably to free up space on their servers? You can push back the length of time before it activates in your account settings (I believe the longest you can give it is one year) but you can't disable it entirely.

The Dead Account by Bez is a multiple choice Twine game set up to look like the interface of "Hivekind," a fictitious chat app. Plot beats are played out by reading user bios, reading and reviewing previous flagged messages, and confirming details with users in a group chat. You are a Hivekind employee and moderator, and they just put out a policy update that states deceased users are to have their accounts closed. Unlike Telegram, Hivekind believes in that human touch, so your job is to review messages flagged by the system indicating this user might be deceased, confirm this information with their contacts if so, and then pull the plug on the account yourself. Or you can try to resist with as much wiggle room as you're allowed (but no promises.)

Also, this game was written by a furry, and furries are heavily referenced within (account profile pictures, messages about suiting and attending cons, etc.) so the Telegram connection becomes that much stronger.

So this game hits like an absolute train. Granted, the subject matter is very close and personal to us, to the point that the Hivekind account pages and chatrooms feel authentic and incredibly well put together (the author uses Twine to absolute perfection and the framing greatly enhances the story) so maybe this wouldn't be as heavy if we weren't a part of the scene. Or maybe it would? Death and grief are universal feelings, I suppose, even if the details with which the game paints a picture of these people, not as names on a screen or characters in a story but as people, draw largely from our subculture. I guess that the question of how much this game affects non-furries will be up to the non-furry reviewers to decide; all we can say on our end is oof.

This game does such a good job humanizing (or badgerizing as the case may be) its deceased account that we're mourning him now. On one hand, that's a sign of a well-written story, and is to be commended. On the other, I'm sad now and I need to go sit in a corner and be sad for a while.

... Give your Telegram (or Discord or whatever) friends a hug and tell them you love them. And maybe download local copies of your chat history from time to time.
kjorteo: Portrait of Marcus Noble, a wolf character from my novel, looking equal parts exhausted and nervous. (Afflicted: Marcus)
IFComp 2021 continues.

This Won't Make You Happy by Mike Gillis is a short Twine CYOA, representing IFComp's coveted "15 minutes or less" category that makes it so much easier for us to pad out our completion counter and get enough games down in time. You are sad, and on a quest to venture into the Caves of Despair to find the legendary Jewel of Happiness, in hopes that it will make you happy.

This game is heavily railroaded and its initial adventure through the caves is poorly written and handled, but both of those are. It gets meta after the relationship between the narrator and player breaks down, and credit where it's due; I so dearly wish I could have had "SHOUT: "WHAT? You made me kill him! That was the only option! This game is so annoying."" as a selectable option a couple years ago when we were playing The Milgram Parable.

All we can think of, though, is a screenshot from Jazztronauts that [personal profile] swordianmaster likes to use as a Telegram sticker, with one of its characters (The Pianist) angrily shouting, "MAKING JOKES ABOUT BEING THE PROBLEM DOESN'T MAKE YOU NOT THE PROBLEM." Furthermore, even giving us the option to choose the exact grievance over which to call out the narrator is only so satisfying when it's part of three "yell at the narrator about something" choices that all get railroaded into the next plot beat.

There is a tender moment near the end that encourages ways to find one's own happiness outside the game (breathe, call a friend...) before going back to the actual ending, which is... unsatisfying, but again, perhaps deliberately so. This game will not make you happy. Any happiness you get from it is fleeting like a Skinner box-like dopamine hit from the sound effect of a coin being collected before you finish playing, close the window, and go right back to where you were. The moment you have just before the ending does exactly what it promised it would do is nice, though, and is one of the more clever and positive-feeling ways a game can make us feel things in a meta way that lasts beyond its playtime; that maybe the thoughts we're thinking right now as we write this are still somehow part of the game experience. Look, after The Milgram Parable and Abandon Them in 2019, the bar for "kind of makes you think, doesn't it?" IntFic on our plate at this point is fairly low. This at least wasn't those. I don't regret playing this. We'll all just have to be happy with that, I suppose.
kjorteo: Confused Bulbasaur portrait from Pokémon Mystery Dungeon. (Bulbasaur: Confused)
OH HECK IT'S OCTOBER, and you know what that means: spooky season IFComp is once again upon us. I always somehow forget until it's here and then respond with a last minute scramble, but hey! At least we're doing them this year.

So, it's been a while because we skipped 2020 because 2020 was a little too... 2020. If you forgot (or are new to our Dreamwidth since 2019), IFComp is an annual interactive fiction contest (you know--Infocom-like text parser adventures, multiple choice Twine games, etc.) where all of this year's entries are made available to the general public around October and early November, and anyone who's interested is invited to play them and submit scores on a 1-10 scale based on their scoring guidelines. The general rule is that if one is playing and judging games then they should do at least five, though it can be any number one wishes so long as it's at least five or above. Again, we didn't participate in 2020 because mluh, but you can see our 2018 scores here and our 2019 scores here.

All that said, we begin 2021's IFComp reviews with Finding Light by Abigail Jazwiec.

You are a human's assigned guardian familiar, but you and your human have been separated after some evil raiders attacked the two of you and made off with your human. It is now up to you to find and rescue him. This is a fairly standard text parser text adventure game, structurally. You look at your surroundings, take everything the game allows you to, use items to solve puzzles, etc. It is possible to die, but not possible to softlock the game (to our knowledge.) With the medieval fantasy setting, this feels something like "what if one of the earlier and shorter King's Quest games were IntFic (but without the Sierra-ing.)"

The gimmick this game has that makes it clever is that you can shift at will between human and fox forms, each of whom have certain things they can and cannot do. You'll need to be a fox to spot scent trails, but you'll need to be a human to open anything that requires opposable thumbs, and so on. The puzzles are mostly fine. The way certain characters express their problems in the form of "Oh, if only I had SPECIFIC ITEM, then I surely would be able to part with my OTHER ITEM YOU PROBABLY NEED LATER" can be somewhat blatant and gratuitous, but... let's face it; this is IntFic. If that were a problem, then we would be in the wrong genre, given how universal that approach is.

Still, I guess that leads us to our main thesis, here, which is that this game doesn't do much to stand out. It's good. It's very good, in fact! If you're here to romp around a text parser adventure for a while, this is capable, well-made, well-written, well-designed, and absolutely will scratch that itch. It just... you know. The IFComp guidelines reserve the higher scores (especially 10) for games that are groundbreaking, which this absolutely is not. In fact, I would even go as far as to call this game standard in its execution; the closest thing it has to a unique stand-out gimmick is the human/fox shapeshifting, and even that feels in execution like the equivalent of a "wear the spare uniform to be able to talk to the guards" puzzle with some extra flavor text. (Oh, there's a "wear the spare uniform to be able to talk to the guards" puzzle, too, by the way.)

Which, again, none of this is a knock! It knows exactly the kind of game it is and it delivers a satisfactory IF experience. It's. You know. It's fine. It's an IF game. It's a good IF game.
kjorteo: A screenshot of Magicant, from the SNES game EarthBound. (Magicant)
After, what, a three year wait? Toby Fox just dropped chapter 2 of Deltarune out of nowhere. We have other games we're playing at the moment, but of course when it's a Toby Fox project, you just know the entire Internet is going to be all over this including us so this one just couldn't wait. I'm delighted to have torn through it, because aaaaa once again this series continues to be amazing.

I swear that it's actually getting better now that Toby's been reaching out to form a game development team rather than doing almost everything by himself. For example, Undertale was incredible, from the writing to the music to the gameplay even to the detailed battle sprites and portraits, but if I had to find even the smallest fault anywhere in the experience, I think the overworld field sprites were... not quite up to the visual standards one sees in battles and portraits. By Deltarune chapter 2, I look at scenes like this and I swear that the field sprites are somehow the best part of the new visuals. Even within the smaller space constraint of the field sprite, Susie's facial expression is incredible and completely sells the mood of the scene.

The writing is top-notch as usual, brilliantly switching between hilarity and sincere pathos. If you enjoyed shipping any of the characters from Deltarune chapter 1, HAVE WE GOT A FOLLOWUP FOR YOU, since there are moments for almost everyone. The music... I mean, it's a Toby Fox game, of course the music is phenomenal.

This may in fact be our favorite offering in this series so far, which is nothing at all against Undertale or Deltarune Chapter 1 (there's a reason we were so quick to tear into this one when it dropped!) If anything, it speaks to just how well they've been able to raise the bar over the course of the series... which means the subsequent chapters are going to be beyond belief.
kjorteo: Portrait of Marcus Noble, a wolf character from my novel, looking equal parts exhausted and nervous. (Afflicted: Marcus)
Once upon a time, there was a mantis who wanted to repair a bridge....

Full disclosure: We received an advance copy of this game from the developers in exchange for this review. At no point was the content of said review discussed (presumably we could have trashed this game if we'd wanted to) but we absolutely were given a free copy of this game in hopes that we'd say something about it, and now here we are.

The Repairing Mantis is a... I hesitate to say "horror" game because that usually implies the existence of danger, perhaps something with enemies or the ability to lose. This is an exploration-based walking sim, if anything, but it's so aesthetically and tonally unsettling that I suppose it earns that horror tag regardless.

You are a mantis. You want to repair a bridge. You befriend(?) an absolutely adorable squirrel who dreams of building a flying machine. The squirrel would rather you not use the nearby branches and driftwood and such to repair the bridge--they need those for their machine. However, you can slice off a chunk of their wing and use that, if you'd like. What are friends for, right? :) After a few iterations of using fresh squirrel parts for the meat bridge, it is repaired. This is the prologue and I'd rather not spoil what happens after that, but suffice it to say that you will end up crossing back and forth over the bridge several times to help (or betray) several other squirrels inspired by the dream of the first, resolve a series of fetch quests, and reach one of two endings depending on choices made.

Visually, this game has something of an early 90s multimedia CD-ROM adventure game feel to it, with a first-person 3D exploration of a low-res environment blown up with a pixel filter. We actually adore this style, and the appealing graphics were definitely a high point for us.

Tonally, this game is heavy. The violence and gore are one thing, but it's not just blood and guts for the sheer sake of blood and guts. The story is rich in English class litcrit-friendly symbolism, and the violence takes on an even more psychologically horrifying aspect when contemplating what it means, what the game is trying to say with all this. It's one thing to have a scene where a squirrel accomplishes their fetch quest, then immediately gets besieged by a hostile swarm of moths that rip their entire skin off and toss it aside like a discarded squirrel pelt. It's quite another when the squirrel refers to the stolen skin as "my dream" and this all becomes a message about losing one's dreams when chasing them.

(Never accomplish anything in life, kids. If you achieve your dreams, then you won't have them anymore, and if you don't have them anymore then there's no reason left to live. Apparently.)

This game has depression, is what I'm trying to say here, but I'm also trying to say that it's a very effective art piece. Please heed every content warning it lists and then some, but if you can handle its tonal bleakness, then what's left is an incredibly poignant and thought-provoking game that has stuck with all of us far longer than its couple-hour playtime would suggest. I've thought for a long time about the central thesis I would have with this game (the advance copy we were given was very advance) which speaks to how much we all needed to just... digest this. In the end, I think what we are left with is this: To say this game is great is like saying Supertramp's "The Logical Song" is great. Both statements are 100% true (they are great) and we greatly enjoyed them. However, in both cases there's a heavy sense of spiritual loss, a feeling of wide-eyed young idealism turning into dull and soulless jadedness. We are profoundly sadder for having experienced each of them. That's ultimately why each of them is such great art, though, and why they each carry our highest recommendation. I may have had to lie down for a bit after hearing what this game had to say (and I still get a sense of whoof reflecting back on it even now,) but I have nothing but respect and admiration for the fact that this game had something to say, and that it said it so well.
kjorteo: Glitched screenshot from Pokémon Yellow, of Pikachu's portrait with scrambled graphics. (Pikachu: Glitch)
This one came because Nakana.io was having an "If you own any one of our games then all the rest are like 90% off" sale, and we did, so we added this one to the collection because it looked really weird and intriguing. And it was fantastic, which only solidifies Nakana as a good publisher in my eyes. This means that Nakana is now responsible for three of what I consider to be among our top games this year so far (after Journey of the Broken Circle--the one that qualified us for that sale--and Mythic Ocean.) They're very much threatening to overtake Mojiken Studio as my favorite "Oh, they published this one? Say no more, instantly wishlisted" publisher.

Infini is a puzzle game. It is also incredibly visually and musically weird in what we consider to be a very positive way. It's striking. I can't think of another game on the market that looks or sounds anything like this one. As far as the puzzle elements, though, everything essentially boils down to the following core elements:

  • The goal of each level is to reach the exit (that silver ring, which is a portal.)
  • Touching the shiny cubes = death.
  • The screen always wraps around in all directions. Falling off the bottom will make you fall back in from the same position on the top. Moving off the right side of the screen will make you appear in the same spot on the left.
  • What is currently visible on the screen is treated as the only elements that actually exist.


Exploiting the latter two mechanics to the hilt is the key to traversing most puzzles. For example: If the level exit is contained inside a solid square prison of cube walls with no actual way in, you can move to the right of that square and get the camera to follow you, then zoom way in, such that the right wall of the square is in the middle of the screen and is the only wall visible (the upper, lower, and left walls are out of frame.) Then you can go off the right side of the screen and reappear on the left, which, oh, hey, now you're inside the square where the exit is. Upper/lower/left walls? What upper/lower/left walls?

Honestly, the trailer is so incredibly demonstrative and well put together that just watching it tells you everything you need to know about how the gameplay works and about the visual and musical aesthetic presentation.

There are also twenty-six collectible Strange Symbols (each corresponding to a single letter of the alphabet) scattered throughout the levels and even in a lot of the chapter-opening and closing narrative walk-around bits. They're either a hidden secret or they're in plain sight but in a position where "how in the world do I get that and survive?" is an extra challenge, and so they serve as the majority of your completionism challenge. The Strange Symbol language is used exclusively both in a sort of secret side lore museum and by a major late-game character, but every individual letter you've collected is translated, kind of like FFX's Al Bhed Primer. Thus, building your collection turns the plot from "eldritch unknowable Cthulhu speak but I can vaguely infer that this is threatening somehow" to "oh now I know exactly what they're saying and that provides so much context."

There are also a few bonus levels here and there that are unlocked both with Strange Symbol collection and with having completed other levels. The bonus levels were hard enough that I almost needed a walkthrough, and I might well have caved but for the fact that this is a niche indie game and there are no bonus level walkthroughs. I eventually got them, and I felt like an absolute genius when I did. I give them a solid 8 the One to Qrostar scale of puzzle difficulty. (We can provide this one valuable piece of advice: If there's an asterisk under the individual level number when you're going back and looking at it in the level selection, that means there's still at least one more Strange Symbol to be found in that level somewhere.)

Narratively, the plot is... somewhat obtuse and allegorical at first, being presented largely out of order and starring a cast of concepts as characters like Time, Memory, Infinity, War, and so on. Things come a little into focus as the story progresses. The ending is... heavy, such that the first time we completed the game, I just assumed that that was the Bad Ending and that there would be a better one once we'd hundred-percented the Strange Symbols and bonus stages. There wasn't; there is but one ending, and the story really is just kind of like that. However, remember when I said that a major late-game character speaks in Strange Symbol language, and that there's an entire side lore museum thing that provides backstory explanations and such except that those are also in Strange Symbol language? Mechanically, nothing new happens when you go back and revisit all of those scenes again once you actually are able to understand them; the plot does not branch or change, everything still leads to the same single ending. Narratively, though, the knowledge gained from understanding both the backstory and the character monologues puts entire new English class-level layers of meaning into what's happening, and that ultimately made us a lot more satisfied with the ending.

So, yeah, this is a weird game in the best possible way. A+, do recommend if you like puzzles, artsiness, and/or litcrit allusions.
kjorteo: Portrait of Celine exercising, with a workout headband. (Celine: Exercise)
So, Google hid an entire multi-hour game in one of their doodle logo things.

You are Lucky, the Chosen One who has come to Doodle Champion Island, a place where the greatest athletes in the world converge and compete once every four years, which totally isn't a stand-in for anything you guys. There are seven minigames with three difficulty levels apiece (the first one gets you one of the seven scrolls you need to collect; the other two are optional for-fun extra challenges,) plus 22 sidequests one can pick up and solve by talking to all the various NPCs along the way.

There isn't a credit sequence that I could see anywhere, so the game is over essentially when you say it is, depending on what you consider good enough. Do you just want to get the scrolls and get out? Do you want to go for 100% completion? Personally, we called it good when we had collected the scrolls and finished and collected the trophy for every sidequest. All that remained was levels 2 and 3 of each minigame but Climbing++ is some horseshit so those can get stuffed, I think.

There are also four factions one can join and global leaderboards with the combined total score everyone has earned for each faction. Much like that one racing nitro Steam sale thing, the entire Internet has coalesced around their decision so at this point you can either join Team Red or join a team that sucks and will never win. (We joined Team Green because the recruiter was adorable and we don't care about online leaderboards.)

Anyway, lots of cute characters, some fun minigames, some neat moments from wandering around and Talking To Everyone. Some of the sidequests were... not very well clued? You may need a walkthrough. But it was neat overall.

There's an air of "ehhhhnnhhh" about this whole project because 1) Google is a straight up Shadowrun-style Evil Megacorp at this point, and 2) this was all made to hype Coronalympics 2021 and a lot of people have... mixed feelings about that. But... you know... whatever random workers made this game weren't really the problem in either of those cases. They just wanted to make something cute and fun, and I really think they succeeded.
kjorteo: A 16-bit pixel-style icon of (clockwise from the bottom/6:00 position) Celine, Fang, Sara, Ardei, and Kurt.  The assets are from their Twitch show, Warm Fuzzy Game Room. (Warm Fuzzy Game Room)
This is technically "complete" in that we have been through one cycle and seen an ending and credits. We are absolutely not done with this, though.

Mythic Ocean was one of the many entries on this year's Wholesome Direct, and was one of the major standouts for us. As the game begins, the world ends. You awake in an ocean with no memories, and your guide/mentor figure explains what's going on: A new world must be created, and one of the gods in this ocean must be the one to do it.

What unfolds from there can best be described as a mixture between a visual novel and an oceanic first-person exploration game like Endless Ocean or ABZU: you travel around each area talking to NPCs and looking for secret hidden collectibles, and when you find one of the actual gods, you converse, befriend, and influence them through your choices and actions. At the end of the game, one of the gods ascends and remakes the world in their image, and the player is treated to an epilogue based on both who the new creator is and what sort of lessons they learned from you during their time in the ocean. This makes every choice meaningful not just in the sense of befriending and smoothing things over with everyone, but also in their cosmic implications.

For example, the Twins are lonely and looking for someone to play with. Amar is a joyous and friendly and playful sort (almost to a fault for irresponsibility and Hakuna Matata reasons, which is another thing to consider and perhaps influence if you can) and would love to play with them, but there's a problem. Amar is... creative in his play, doing things like challenging the Twins to a race and then taking a secret shortcut to win, or controlling the direction of the game through Calvinball-esque recreating the rules on a whim. In the Twins' eyes, Amar is a dirty cheater and an all-around jerk. In Amar's eyes, the Twins are way too stuck up on the rules presented to them and need to think outside the box. Talking to the Twins, you can advise them either to tell Amar how they feel and ask him to please cut it out and play fair, or to get creative and beat Amar at his own game by cheating right back. How things unfold from here is a twofold question: One, how will this decision affect how each of them feel about you and about each other, and things like friendship levels that will ultimately effect who the new creator will be? Can you get them to improve their relations with each other and with you? And two, if either Amar or the Twins happen to be the ones to make the new world, what sort of lessons will they take from this when it comes time for them to shape and control their new society?

The characterization is outstanding, and each of the gods is incredibly endearing in their own ways. The way things unfold can get deeply emotional at parts. This is the second game we've ever played in which we had to do the "Star Billions Walk"--a term [personal profile] xyzzysqrl coined (after the first one to do it) for a game with a dilemma of a choice that makes you just... put the controller down and walk around the room and think about it for a while, because fuck. That's a testament to how strong a sense of connection this game can build between you and everyone in it, and how deeply it can make you care and worry about whether solving a crisis in this way might hurt that god or so forth.

In the end, we followed our heart and it... was a disaster, I'm not going to lie. I tried to influence things toward one particular god getting chosen but it ended up being another despite my efforts, and said other... really, really had not learned the right lessons to be in control of something like a new world, so the epilogue was generally full of horror and devastation. However, rather than being discouraged, this just makes me want to go back and try again. New Game Plus mode is essentially a baked-in part of the plot: It's directly stated that this cycle of destruction and recreation and memory wipes has been happening for ages and will continue to keep happening. The world that ended in the prologue of the second cycle is the world that was created in the epilogue of the first (and honestly, good riddance to that one; it... really did not turn out as planned.) Now we shall teach and interact with the gods all over again, and I will try to learn from my mistakes, to do better this time, both for their personal relationships and for the world one of them will create.

This game is beautiful, both in the sense of emotional meaning and heartfelt impact and in the sense of its lovely oceanic visuals and absolutely incredible soundtrack. It uses its presentation (you start out not knowing or remembering anything, only to be told not to worry about it because this "happens every time" and is "part of the arrangement") to create a sense of wonder and apprehension, a feeling of wanting to know what's behind the curtain but being afraid to ask about things you won't be able to un-see, things that might change your perception of everything. I can tell this is going to be one of those games that will invoke that "I wish we could play it again for the first time" feeling (you know the one,) to the point that I actually held back on learning more about the main character's past even when presented with the option because I want to preserve the mystery, at least for a little while longer. Maybe next cycle, or the one after. We'll see.

It also has a decently-sized free demo, so not only can I not say enough positive things about this game, but I can also push it on everyone we know. Seriously. This was and still is incredible. We will very happily continue the cycle, and you can more than likely look forward to seeing this one pop up a lot in our year-end awards.
kjorteo: Sprite of the dead "boss" and "Sorry, I'm Dead" speech balloon from Monster Party. (Sorry - I'm dead.)
I was looking for that Sonic the Hedgehog "I want shorter games with worse graphics etc." image to show to someone in a conversation, and an errant internet search pulled up a "Shorter games with worse graphics"-themed bundle on itch.io because one should never doubt the itch.io community's ability to reclaim anything in the form of naming a bundle/jam after it. I did eventually find that image, but the bundle led us to this little detour in the meantime, and I'm glad it did.

Remember Mary is a short artsy thing (this is itch.io, after all) about a girl named Mary interacting with her friends and going about her day. There are three sets of fetch quest type problems, and in each you possess the ability to solve the problem the helpful way or the fucking horrible way. For example: One of your friends lost their purse and another one of your friends has it, but won't give it back unless you find another suitable item to trade. Finding a suitable trade is definitely one way to solve the problem, which leaves both friends happy with the outcome and with you. Or, you can also get the purse back by stabbing that friend who has it to death.

Doing things the nice way always involves going a little more out of your way, and is slightly longer and more difficult. Not enough that an all-kindness run is any sort of challenge, but just enough to be very slightly obnoxious, which helps sell the feeling that you're going out of your way for these people. Gameplay to establish a mood! Very well handled and designed. The reward for doing things the long way, of course, is people thanking you for being a good and helpful friend rather than reacting with the kind of shock, disbelief, horror, and betrayal one could only feel when their dear and presumed longstanding (lifelong?) friend who has no prior history of this kind of behavior just straight up left them to die out of nowhere.

After resolving all three situations, you get one of three endings depending on whether you did the right thing in all of them, the horrible thing in all of them, or a mixture. There's a sort of... home life situation with Mary and her family that's vaguely hinted at in the kindest ending, and the curtain of what actually is going on here gets peeled back more and more in the medium and especially the pure evil paths. This is one of those five-minute-long art games, so replaying it for each ending isn't exactly a huge endeavor. In fact, there's a lot of replay value here, assuming you can stomach the lamentations of your friends if you explore the non-kind options.

Picture if Undertale were a free five minute indie walking sim instead of a full-fledged however-many hour RPG, I guess.

I did particularly like the sensation of doing one more pure-kindness run after seeing everything else, because 1) I really wanted to wash the guilty conscience down and make everyone happy again, and 2) the otherwise-vague and kind of weird kindness ending makes a lot more sense after the knowledge one gains from the other routes.

And even then, even replaying each route, we haven't seen everything. Mary starts out chipper and full of life and everyone else starts out loving and overjoyed to see their absolute favorite best friend in the world, but Mary's mood and the mood of the rest of the game darken considerably every time an evil deed is committed. Thus, the order in which you tackle every situation--whether you're still feeling fine when you encounter that purse situation or you're reeling from already having two atrocities under your belt by that point--leads to unique dialogue and conversations. (The order is far less important on an all-kindness run, as everyone's mood starts out at the same maximum brightness and just stays there throughout.) There's a part of me that really wants to go back and see the other combinations, to see what the dialogue sounds like if I ruin everything with the purse friends first or last. The dialogue is very well-written and evocative, you see, and it's very much worth seeing it all. On the other hand, because the dialogue is so well-written and evocative, I'm not sure I have the heart to explore the evil options any further than we already have.

We're fast approaching the point where it takes you longer to read this entry than it would take to play the game, being a quick little itch.io freebie and all. I guess I just had a lot to think about and a lot to say.

One last thought: I find the darker routes of this game to be an unnervingly perfect depiction of an Intrusive Thought Simulator. You know, that sensation of just hanging out with your group of dear and beloved friends and warmly enjoying each other's company, while a small part of the back of your mind is like, "Hey, I'll bet if I stabbed one of them to death right now, the other would be mortified and grief-stricken and probably hate me for what I did and the entire group dynamic we've been enjoying for decades now would just all be over all at once, just like that. Wouldn't that be fucked up?" You hate that option and you never want to take it, but it's there. As much as you want to enjoy a quick romp through a peaceful afternoon where everyone is happy to see you as you help them with a smile, that selection in the choice prompt is always there. It feels weird, almost fake or dissociative somehow, to have them praise you for your helpfulness and call you a hero and such when you know that it's there.

This game is very thought provoking. It gives me some feelings I'm not quite sure what to do with. Still, I'm glad I had the experience of chewing on them. This is itch.io at its... itchiest? itchioiest? and we are 100% here for this kind of stuff.
kjorteo: Screenshot from Heiankyo Alien, of an alien engulfing the player character's head in his mouth. (Tasty humans)
This came from the Double Dragon and Kunio-Kun Retro Brawler Bundle, an absolutely massive Legacy Collection-like Switch title that includes, from what I can tell, literally every Double Dragon and Kunio-Kun franchise game made for the NES and Famicom (and the previously unreleased-in-North America Famicom games even have translations!) It's a fantastic collection, all told, but of course the first thing I had to do when we bought it was see if I could get through River City Ransom, a game with which younger me often struggled.

This is one of those games that I probably shouldn't have to explain because everyone knows it already, but just in case: You are Kunio and Riki Alex and Ryan, and the local high school students led by the evil Slick have kidnapped Riki/Ryan's girlfriend, formed the most colorful themed gangs since The Warriors, and are now out to take over all of River City. You beat up gangs, take the money they drop, use it to buy things that raise your stats, and follow the chain of "beating this boss sets the event flag that makes that boss spawn over there, and beating him unlocks this other boss" all the way until you're allowed into River City High School, at which point you beat up a few more bosses as you climb up its floors, and then beat up Slick in a final battle on the roof.

River City Ransom sure is a gang-fighting brawler, and despite the more chibi Kunio-kun style graphics, it fits right in alongside the Double Dragon games in the collection. However, RCR has more RPG elements to it (money, shops, stats that can be raised) and a more open map complete with backtracking rather than individual stages or levels. I adored this game as a child, but found it brutally hard. Young me remembers completely skipping the fight against the Dragon Twins in RC High 4th floor because I just could never beat them, even though that appears not to be possible given that even current world-record TAS speedrunners still have to stop and fight them. Tex, the boss of RC High 2nd floor, is optional, but the Dragon Twins aren't. I swear I remember beating the game but never being able to beat the Dragon Twins, though, somehow. Memories are weird, fallible things. The memory of calling the Nintendo Power hotline to get help on how to beat Turk is probably true, though. (They recommended spamming Acro Circus, which is... not... uh... see below.)

As an adult who has a better understanding of how stat grinding works and (thanks to several walkthroughs) what the stats actually do, I found the game's difficulty... unbalanced? Though it has RPG elements, at no point does RCR follow the mechanics of "becoming stronger turns once-overpowered enemies into a balanced and fair fight." Instead, high-level encounters appear to be contests of whether you or your opponent gets the "cheap you to death" strategy off first. There is no stat that does anything about how every enemy in the game, all the way down to the lowly minions in the Generic Dudes gang, hits like a truck and can combo you for half your health or more. (You'd think that'd be what Defense does, but that just increases your percent chance odds of blocking an opponent's attack when you hit the attack button at the same time.) At any point, in any room, this can happen. But so long as it doesn't happen, you are a death-dealing machine, completely ruthless and unstoppable (and cheap as hell) until someone hits you once. Every boss (including the Dragon Twins!) is all about spamming the attack that knocks them down, and hitting them with it again when they get back up to knock them down again, and just repeating and stun-locking them until they die.

In other words, this is one of those games where beating the game the actual normal legitimate developer-intended way feels like cheating, because there's just no balance whatsoever. The balance is that random gangs can do the same to you, I guess. I used to think that the Dragon Twins were the hardest fight in the game (even more so than Slick,) but I now understand the true challenge is any time you have to clear an entire room of gang members (either for grinding purposes or to make a boss appear after defeating all the minions.) Even the Generic Dudes. The bosses, though? They're are all laughable once you knock them down once. The Dragon Twins can be a little tricky since there are two of them and theoretically one can attack you while you're engaging the other, but by then you have the Grand Slam technique and a weapon, they spawn standing next to each other, and you can generally keep them together and keep them too stun-locked to split up.

Anyway, that's a childhood game played with adult eyes, I guess. A lot of it hasn't aged well, though it's still charming despite its (apparently more than I remembered) flaws. I'm glad I got to experience it again. I may even go through the translated Famicom version also included in the bundle just to see the differences. On the other hand, I'm also very much intrigued by the "Downtown Special Kunio-kun's Historical Period Drama!" game that's also included. It's basically River City Ransom 2, complete with a lot of quality of life adjustments that would eventually find their way into the River City Ransom EX Game Boy Advance remake (displaying the numerical amounts of damage you do, AI partners, a Defense stat that actually affects incoming damage, etc.) only set in ancient feudal Japan. If I want more River City Ransom without the rough edges, that could be a promising lead.
kjorteo: Screenshot from Daedalian Opus, of a solved puzzle with the text "GOOD" displayed on underneath it. (GOOD)
This was in itch.io's Racial Justice Bundle (AKA The Bundle,) which we're still slowly working on sorting through (even though The Bundle 2 for Palestinian relief efforts is now a thing, aaaa.) On the other hand, it's a short little free browser thing you can play just by going to the product page anyway, so being in The Bundle doesn't really do anything except remind you that it exists as you're sorting through Bundle pages. On the other other hand, that is an important perk, since I'd completely forgotten about it and then I saw it again and was like "oh yeah" and went and played it and actually beat it this time. So the ploy worked, I guess?

Anyway.

A Kishoutenketsu in the countryside is a short and sweet little walkaround puzzle game. There are four keys hidden in the various directions you can go from the starting point. Most of them are hidden behind some manner of block puzzle. Once you have all four, you can enter the final area, which has a nice callback mixture puzzle of all the different types of puzzles you've encountered in the four key puzzles, and then you make it to your house and have some hot chocolate and enjoy the rest of the day, the end.

Not much to say about this one, I guess. The puzzles were neat. One of the keys was really hard to find and took a hint or two from the comments before I finally got it. The end part is very satisfying. I really enjoyed this overall, and since it's like right there, there's no reason why you shouldn't too.
kjorteo: A 16-bit pixel-style icon of (clockwise from the bottom/6:00 position) Celine, Fang, Sara, Ardei, and Kurt.  The assets are from their Twitch show, Warm Fuzzy Game Room. (Default)
This one was an unexpected delight that kind of fell into our laps because it was on some absurdly big sale on the Switch eshop and like, why not I guess? And somehow grew from that to being one of our favorites this year.

Journey of the Broken Circle is a cute little indie game about a circle with a wedge-shaped piece missing (thus giving them a sort of Pac-Man-looking appearance) who feels a sense of longing due to their incompleteness. They want to find that missing piece, that thing that can make them whole, and so they set off on a journey. Lonely and depressing at first, Circle meets a cast of characters and things go from there.

This game is a very heavy-handed story about relationships. Circle is alone and lonely until they meet someone who fits in that wedge, and the two of them proceed onward together. You even gain various extra powers and abilities based on whatever your partner can do, the two of you together being maneuverable in ways that neither of you could have achieved alone. However, the funny thing about relationships is that they can be hard. Sometimes each partner has different goals--one wants to keep exploring and moving forward in life while the other wants to settle down and put down roots, for example. Sometimes these differences are irreconcilable. And sometimes Circle finds themselves alone again, hurt by the grief of having loved and lost.

Gameplay-wise, this is a platformer where your goal is to reach the end of the level. It sounds basic enough and it kind of is, but the level design does a very good job of emphasizing the narrative point of what Circle can and can't do with their partner (or lack thereof.) Each level has a few collectible mushrooms if you explore a little and go for completion, and gathering enough mushrooms unlocks a couple optional non-canon just-for-fun bonus levels. Narrative and dialogue snippets come and go as one progresses (think Thomas Was Alone) and the text is well handled as well, really selling the mood of each stage.

I'll be honest with you; I almost bounced off of this game at first. During the first one or two levels wherein Circle is alone and angsting, the narrative felt a bit too heavy-handed, and gameplay felt so basic and non-challenging that it almost seemed more like a walking sim than a platformer. There's a certain... there can be games to which we in Clan give the dreaded Indie Game About Death title in spirit even though they're not literally about death, just because they have that general aura about them (you know the one.) This is definitely one of those games, and it was a bit too much at first. But I stuck with it and... by about the second or third level, things just suddenly clicked? The platforming got a lot better--not sadistic to the point of frustration (except for the first bonus level, which fortunately is completely optional,) but there was enough there to wake me up and to sell the narrative difference between being single and in a relationship. The story and characterization got good and grabbed me, and... just... from that point on, suddenly I loved this, and that feeling only grew stronger the more we progressed.

This game is poignant, moving, and very relatable. As someone who's been there a few times, I could relate not just to the overall message but even to each specific case. From the relationship that had so much bickering toward the end that the final breakup felt inevitable and maybe even a bit of a "whew, finally" relief, to the one that seemed like it was going fine until your partner pulls the rug out from under you and leaves you feeling blindsided and betrayed, to the relationship you're wary to start at all because you've been hurt before and maybe you just need to stop trying for a while, it's all there, and it all spoke to us.

If a relationship ends badly, are all the "at least we were happy for a time, while it lasted" experiences still valid, or are the once-happy memories tainted now? This journey is just as much about learning, growing, and maturing as it is about finding that missing piece.

For a semi-basic platformer with heavy Indie Game About Relationships energy, I cannot say enough good things about this game. It snuck up on us both by being something we randomly picked up in a sale and by not really clicking until a couple stages in, but once that taste had been acquired, it was just... so good. So, so good. Please consider letting it sneak up on you, too.

(Some miscellaneous caveats:

* Content warning for suicidal ideation in some of the emotional low points.

* The second bonus stage, "The Good Trip," unlocks way, way, way too early. It features non-canonical cameos from your various companions throughout the main story, and if you're collecting every mushroom in every stage as you go, you'll have enough to unlock it before you even meet a couple of them. Playing The Good Trip as soon as you're able to is both a narrative spoiler and a gameplay pitfall as some jumps rely on your later partners' mechanics which the game hasn't even told you about yet since that's all in the main story. Consider saving The Good Trip for last. By contrast, the first bonus stage, "The Bad Trip," is fine to do at any point as soon as you unlock it, but it's also the most openly sadistic level in the game.)
kjorteo: Sprite of a Skarmory posed and looking majestic, complete with lens flare. (Skarmory: BEHOLD)
Golf Story is a Switch-exclusive indie game about Golf and... uh... Story.

You are a nameless protagonist who wakes up from his going-nowhere life one morning and decides he's going to make something of himself and become a pro golfer. He has no training, his form and stance are awful, but for some reason he has the magic intangible "it" factor where whatever he's doing somehow works for him, allowing him to go toe to toe with the very best.

Golf Story has the 20-hour world-map-traveling storyline, sidequests, and XP/level-up systems of a JRPG, all with the mechanics of a golf game. Wherever you're standing, whatever the situation, there's never a bad time to tee up and hit a golf ball at it. The same "tee up and hit balls to the target" gameplay is used for everything from feeding alligators to returning stolen birds' eggs to their nests to eradicating the undead, and, of course, to play actual stroke and match play rounds to advance your would-be tournament career. The World Is Golf.

The plot is pure silliness except for the parts where it sometimes pushes sports movie tropes so far over the top that the parody wraps around the other side and somehow accidentally becomes earnest--think Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story, only golf instead of dodgeball.

Overall, this was great. Lighthearted and entertaining, genuinely funny and strangely endearing, the actual golfing feels solid, and even the pixel graphics and overall audiovisual style work well. And, of course, the writing speaks for itself.

In conclusion, golf.
kjorteo: Portrait of Celine looking aroused and making bedroom eyes at the camera. (Celine: Aroused)
This was a little thing for a game jam but because I'm bad at it, it took about an hour to complete. Was still neat.

Deepest Sword is a physics game about a knight on a quest to plunge his long, deep sword into the heart of a dragon. Alas, the dragon, who has seen many a long sword in her day, only ends up size-shaming the poor knight with "is it in yet?" type comments for the inadequate length of his tool, then roasts him and sends him back to the beginning. Your blade is enhanced, the cave on the way to the dragon gains an extra room, and you repeat the process, until at long last you have the Deepest Sword, whose length and girth are unequaled throughout the land.

This is a very intentionally subtext heavy game, is what I'm saying. (Even the dragon's expression after filling her depths is a bit... hmm.)

As far as the actual gameplay, it kind of reminds me of that Getting Over It With Bennett Foddy-inspired bonus stage in Journey of the Broken Circle, sort of. It's a physics ordeal where your controls are walk left, walk right, and rotate your sword clockwise and counterclockwise, so expect a lot of using your sword to grab ledges and lift yourself up and so on, especially as it gets longer. One thing I thought was neat was how the earlier stages change in feeling as the sword gets bigger. You have to walk from start all the way to the dragon each time you get a new sword, and each time the cave has one more section in it, but as for the ones that were there already? The physics of getting through the first few rooms with a long sword are drastically different than with a short sword; some parts that used to be the entire challenge of the room are now trivial if not entirely skippable, while parts that used to be trivial are suddenly a lot more challenging to fit that bigger sword through. Every section somehow feels like an entirely new challenge each time, which speaks to some brilliant level design when one single room just works on so many different levels.

Anyway, all that said, it is a game jam thing, so there's not too much (ahem) depth here beyond the premise: There are five sword lengths and a "you win" screen at the end, with most of the playtime coming from how long it takes you to physics your way through. Still, it's definitely worth checking out if you find the idea clever.
kjorteo: Screenshot from Daedalian Opus, of a solved puzzle with the text "GOOD" displayed on underneath it. (GOOD)
Today is Easter, and Dr. Dos recommended this game, so what the heck.

Heather's Easter Egg Hunt is an old text parser adventure that appears to have been a personal project, like the father coded this as an Easter present for his actual daughter? I think? I could be wrong but it sure feels that way. Somehow it ended up being preserved on archive.org, though, so now we all can play it.

You are Heather, and you must go on an Easter egg hunt, only this one is virtual, presented in the form of this very game you are playing! Type the appropriate commands to move around and EXAMINE and GET items, UNLOCK doors, etc. Your kid brother sometimes appears out of nowhere and latches onto your leg and won't let go until you give him either a toy or one of your eggs. (Protip: He does not start appearing until you have at least one egg, so you can scope out the entire house, collect everything except the eggs, write down all the clues and locations and such, and then go back through the house again and scoop them all up.) There is a secret door and three gated hints to its location (must have four eggs to read the first hint, must have read the first to read the second, etc.) To win the game, the player must collect all twelve eggs, then find and open the secret door while still having all twelve eggs (that is, without surrendering any to your brother.) There are collectible toys that serve no purpose other than being a decoy item to give your brother to fend him off without losing your eggs, and I ended up using all of them by the time I won. The reward is a congratulations text with a blurb about the author's next upcoming game which should be ready around mid to late 1990.

Okay, so this was kind of basic, but it was topical, and it was cute. It'd fit right into IFComp and be far from the worst thing I've played there (I'd maybe give it a 7 if I were scoring it by IFComp standards.) Short and sweet (in the literal wholesome "aww" sense of the word) and... hey, I did an Easter egg hunt. Haven't done one of those since I was a kid. This was neat.
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