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Showing posts from March, 2015

MEAN STREETS by... BadDog?

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CONTENT WARNING - THIS GAME CONTAINS DESCRIPTIONS OF GRAPHIC VIOLENCE, AS WELL AS MILD LANGUAGE AND DRUG AND ALCOHOL REFERENCES AND SHOULD ONLY BE PLAYED BY MATURE PLAYERS Whoo, I'm already excited. I appreciate this. I'll have to find a senior citizen to supervise my play. Ahem . Just because someone is "mature" does not necessarily mean that content is appropriate for them. (Does "mild language" really warrant scary all-caps? Heck ! Darn ?) In fact, it's older people who tend to be judgmental of all the "pronography" that us "whipper-snappers" are "into". Despite that I am no longer a whipper nor a snapper of any type, we did kick up quite a bit of a tussle cruising in our jalopy rumble-seats to the malt shops and telling the owner what a "square" he was... But I digress; well-written content warning preambles are an art form. I'm ready to wade into the muck of the Mean Streets which purports to be  an ...

ENDLESS SANDS by Hamish McIntyre

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Endless Sands is an episode where the player is a vampire cast into the desert several hours before sunrise by someone whom they have wronged. The whole affair has the feeling of a mob hit by some kind of shadowy vampire mafia as in the True Blood series, or the Masquerade RPG. No real explanation of what you've done is given, and the resulting game is a timed "escape the region" puzzle. It has some really nice and original-looking cover art.

OPPOSITELY OPAL by Buster Hudson

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I must plug Steph Cherrywell's Chlorophyll because it's a lot of fun.  I beta tested parts of it so I won't be casting any votes, but  I love her zonky sense of humor and world-building sensibilities.  I hope it places nicely. Buster Hudson's Oppositely Opal is also a delightful piece, and so far I've got to say is probably one of the best examples of the type of game only a parser can do best.  The player must make experimental leaps of logic regarding how, why, and where to employ specific game mechanics which are infinitely more fun to experiment with than they would be if the options were spelled out in a list for the player to lawnmower through. Opal also provides the kind of humorous flourishes that only work when discovered by accident; something that just doesn't happen in a choice-based medium.