One daunting goal for any game designer is ensuring the player experiences the story as intended while affording them enough agency to experience it at their own pace. Immortality is the third interactive film by Sam Barlow, following Her Story and Telling Lies, the common thread between them being that their narratives are pieced together nonchronologically at the behest of the player. Much like shuffling a deck of cards, no two players will experience these games in the same order, with just a few major reveals held back until a majority of their respective tales have been told. More ambitiously than its predecessors, Immortality successfully manages to tell several stories all at once. While the audience for the stories themselves may be somewhat limited due to the nature of the material, the game as a whole is another impressive achievement of game design in filmmaking.
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.
The ending isn’t any more important than the events leading up to it.
To the Moon is near highly regarded and nearly every review you’ll see is from a dude who cried or became otherwise really emotional while played. While it didn’t hit me as much as most, it is indeed a lovely little interactive story that just about anyone would enjoy.
Developer: Cloak and Dagger Publisher: Wadjet Eye Year: 2022 Platform: PC, Mac, Linux
Rating: 4
If as a child you ever agonizingly picked your way through a bland dinner just so you could get dessert, then you’ll have a good idea what it’s like to play The Excavation of Hob’s Barrow. The good news is that with this latest point-and-click pixel art adventure from Cloak and Dagger Games (and publisher Wadjet Eye), there’s a three-layer chocolate mousse waiting for you at the end.
It’s been a long time since I played a game and, immediately after credits roll, began talking to all my friends who had played it. I had also done so with Quantic Dream’s previous adventure game, Fahrenheit. And Heavy Rain makes that game look amateurish.
Developer: Sierra Year: 1989 Genre: Card Games Platform: DOS, Amiga, Atari ST, Mac
Rating: 6
Sierra’s foray into casual games was hit and miss, but the first book of games was a solid effort. This was the first time I played cards on the computer and this got a lot of playtime when I was a kid. Thought there’s little reason outside novelty to play it today.
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.
Death By Troggles 
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