Author: Abigail Corfman Year: 2016 Development System: Twine (browser) Cruelty Rating: Merciful (there is no way to die or get stuck) Length Of Play: 5-10 minutes per playthrough
My Rating: 9
Awards: Best Puzzles — 2016 XYZZY Awards
The first Twine game I played was a fantastic introduction to the system. About twenty years ago I played Will the Real Marjorie Hopkirk Please Stand Up?, a game about trying to find 100 ways to kill 100 clones. I was enthralled by the premise and disappointed it was a demo with only five solutions. So I was thrilled to finally get to play something similar that was less intimidating and more lighthearted.
Author: Adam Cadre Year: 1998 Development System: Inform Cruelty Rating: Merciful (there is no way to die or get stuck) Length Of Play: 1-2 Hours
My Rating: 9
Awards: 4th Annual IF Competition: 1st Place 1998 XYZZY Awards: Best Story, Best Writing
In 2019 I played Photopia for the second time, almost twenty years after my first playthrough. I worried that time or perspective would change my opinion, and while that did indeed happen, it remains a treasure I will still recommend to anyone who delves into the world of interactive fiction.
Developer: Revival Publisher: Revival Year: 2007 Platform: Windows
Rating: 4/10
A film-noir interactive movie with point and click adventure elements, Fate By Numbers is a free, short indie game that while entertaining, feels incomplete and unfortunately didn’t launch the company forward.
As I’ve grown older my love for the franchise has abated, and not because of the quality or lack there of with newer additions. I think I just don’t identify with the ethos. While I can certainly endorse the notion that there’s good and evil within all of us and the choices we make matter, the evil people in this galaxy are often sneeringly evil and inexplicably stupid. And in good stories I should be able to either identify with the antagonist or at least understand them. And that never happens here.
A full-motion video flash game released as a companion to the BBC show “Rome,” CDX is an episodic thriller that follows a prop man working on the show getting embroiled in a dangerous conspiracy. There are multiple paths and hundreds of videos, not to mention an historical education waiting the player.
Knowing that this game only took a few hours to complete and it won many accolades, I went into knowing virtually nothing. I’m confident just about anyone could do the same.
Arkangel is the first episode of Black Mirror to be directed by a woman (Jodie Foster) and focuses more on family than most. The set up is right in this show’s wheelhouse too. Unfortunately, the execution is lacking, focusing on the wrong themes.
A fifteen minute bit stretched out into a full episode, The Waldo Moment predicts Trump’s rise to power if Trump had a modicum of talent and was occasionally funny.
Set in a post-apocalyptic world, we follow Stripe (pictured), a military grunt whose job is to hunt down mutant humans and exterminate them while arresting anyone harboring these dangerous beings. The new technology here are neural implants the soldiers use that not only enhance their senses (making them better killing machines) but also gives them incredibly realistic sex dreams. The sex dreams, of course, were added just in case the viewer wasn’t tipped off already (by the whole killing machine part) that this technology might not be altruistic. Or maybe Netflix just wanted to show some boobs.
Death By Troggles 
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