Author: Mark Sample Year: 2020 Development System: Twine Cruelty Rating: Merciful Length Of Play: 30 minutes
My Rating: 9
There are many types of games that can be made with Twine, but seemingly the most common and to this reviewer’s opinion the most frustrating is the game on rails that pretends it’s not on rails. The last thing I want to do after spending an hour playing a game is to replay it with all the different choices and discover that other than some flavor text, nothing has changed.
Author: Andrew Plotkin Year: 1998 Development System: Inform Cruelty Rating: Cruel, but necessarily so (and short anyway) Length Of Play: 2-4 hours
My Rating: 9
Awards: 1998 XYZZY Awards — Best Game, Best Puzzles, Best Individual Puzzle, Best Individual NPC, Best Use of Medium
Synopsis: You are breaking into a top-secret facility to foil enemy plans. However, you are playing in the past as every time you take an action that didn’t actually happen, the interrogator admonishes you (as you’re tied to a chair) and makes you start over.
Author: Josh Labelle Year: 2020 Development System: Twine Cruelty Rating: Merciful Length Of Play: about 30 minutes
My Rating: 7
Awards: 26th Annual Interactive Fiction Competition — 1st Place
I don’t love RPGs as much as I did when I was younger, but can still get roped in if the focus on story outweighs the focus on stats. Tavern Crawler does just that and succeeded in keeping me interested for a couple playthroughs.
Author: Linus Åkesson Year: 2020 Development System: Dialog Cruelty Rating: Merciful Length Of Play: 3-4 hours
My Rating: 8
Awards: 1st Place: 26th Annual Interactive Fiction Competition; Best Puzzles, Best Individual Puzzles, Best Implementation, Best Use of Innovation: 2020 XYZZY Awards
What initially appears to be a charming slice-of-life about a six year-old girl helping her dad get ready for a dinner party turns into a old-school puzzlefest with an extraordinary mechanic that I’m embarrassed to admit I needed the in-game hints to even discover. Discovering the mechanic is part of the fun so I won’t spoil it here. I’ll just say it involves changing things in your environment with some magical thinking.
Author: Robb Sherwin Year: 2004 Development System: Hugo Cruelty Rating: Tough (save frequently and you’re fine) Length Of Play: 2-3 hours
My Rating: 5
Awards: Best Individual NPC — 2004 XYZZY Awards
I fell in love with New Haz and its universe while playing Sherwin’s Fallacy of Dawn. The story in Necrotic Drift occurs mostly in a nearby town with an entirely different cast, though frequent references are made to the events in the first game. And while this entry into the series is more focused, I unfortunately found myself missing New Haz and its citizens.
Author: Andrew Plotkin Year: 1995 Development System: Inform Cruelty Rating: Cruel Length Of Play: 2-4 hours, depending on how quickly you look up a walkthrough
And so sets the mood for A Change in the Weather: dark, dreary, and unforgiving.
I tried this a couple of times in my youth and could not get into it. I think knowing going in that you could lock the game out victory near constantly kept me from immersing myself in the world. I recently gave it another shot and I’m glad I did.
Author: Eric Eve Year: 2006 Development System: TADS3 Cruelty Rating: Polite Length Of Play: 2-3 hours
My Rating: 5
Awards: 3rd Place: 12th Interactive Fiction Competition; Best Game, Best Individual NPC: 2006 XYZZY Awards
The Elysium Enigma is a competently made game that easily drew me into its world of intergalactic politics and subterfuge and I eagerly rushed through it. Unfortunately, the story and plot turns were unsatisfying and I felt like a spy left out in the cold.
Author: Adam Cadre Year: 2002 Development System: Inform 6 Cruelty Rating: N/A Length Of Play: About 5-10 minutes for each run through; took me a few hours to solve the puzzle.
My Rating: 7
Awards: Best Individual Puzzle; Best NPCs; Best Individual NPC — 2002 XYZZY Awards
I was a senior in college when this game was released and played it the moment it dropped. I took copious notes while playing and brought those notes to my classes, occasionally ignoring my professors to hammer out this puzzle. No regrets.
Author: half sick of shadows Year: 2004 Development System: Inform 6 Cruelty Rating: Cruel, but the game has a finite number of moves Length Of Play: 5-15 minutes each playthrough; about 3 hours for me to solve the puzzle
My Rating: 9
Awards: 3rd Place — 10th Annual Interactive Fiction Competition Best Individual Puzzle — 2004 XYZZY Awards
“The encounter could create a time paradox. The results of which could cause a chain reaction that would unravel the very fabric of the space-time continuum and destroy the entire universe!…Granted, that’s the worst-case scenario.” — Doc Brown, Back to the Future 2
And such is the world logic of All Things Devours. The inventor of a time-travel machine, Natalie Williams comes to the same realization about paradoxes and sets out to destroy the machine. However, she soon realizes that her plans have been taken and she must find them so that the machine can never be made again. And soon the player realizes that time travel is necessary to find those papers, and there’s a total span of nine minutes in which to work to avoid the guards, avoid your present self, and avoid creating a paradox for your present self.
Author: Ian Finley Year: 2000 Development System: TADS Cruelty Rating: Polite (can’t get stuck if you save reasonably) Length Of Play: 2-4 hours
My Rating: 7
Awards: 1st Place — 6th Annual IF Comp
With a Kafkaesque dystopia the author must be very careful that while the world is constantly spinning around the protagonist that the viewer in addition to being misdirected doesn’t feel cheated. For the most part Finley does his job here.
Death By Troggles 
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