#Jkj Yuio

[manonamora-if-reviews]

The Tin Mug by Alice E. Wells, Sia See and Jkj Yuio

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============= Synopsis

The Tin Mug is a short illustrated children's story of around 10 minutes. Meet the Tin Mug and his friends, Colin the colander, Silvia the spoon and Stu the stew pot as well as several others. Find out what happens in the magic of the Mug's birthday!

============= Other Info

The Tin Mug is a Strand game, submitted to the 2022 Edition of the IFComp. It ranked 51st overall.

Status: Completed Genre: Fantasy, Children's story

CW: /

============= Playthrough

First played: 3-Oct-2022 Played: 13-Dec-2023 Playtime: around 15min Rating: 3 /5 Thoughts: But we investigate little...

============= Review

The Tin Mug is a fairly short choice-game where you play as a tin mug, on its birthday. It is a fairly linear story, with the binary choices leading to the same ending. The game is maybe more meant for children, but it's enjoyable nonetheless.

Spoilers ahead. It is recommended to play the game first. The review is based on my understanding/reading of the story.

Though it is your birthday - as a tin mug - you are faced with many challenges: fancier china and crockery looking down on you for being so cheep, rowdy children not caring much for things, and well... the lack of birthday wishes. Through trials and tribulations, things take a charming turn, leading to a well deserved send-off. It is simple but hits the mark. Good deeds always pay off.

And had cute illustrations to accompany the text!

While it was very cute, I struggled most with the program used for this game. Strand is a parser-choice hybrid format (though it uses only the choice mechanic here), where the formatting of the text leave to be desired. - For longer passages, the program would force you to scroll back to the top of the added text to pick the story up from your last choice. This was particularly egregious when illustrations were added through the new bits of text. - As for the illustrations, their scaling didn't quite work, covering often too much of the page, forcing you to zoom out to get it in full. - Often, the dialogue would be formatted in ways that made it difficult to distinguish who was speaking when, as the speaker would change multiple times within one line/paragraph.

It is an entry with lots of heart, but needs a little tweaking still.

=============

OG Review during the IFComp:

Among the swarm of serious, scary and strenuous entries, it is nice to find sweet and soft ones to balance it out. Like Esther’s, The Tin Mug is a short children story with a lovely heart. The Tin Mug uses his birthday to do some good deeds :slight_smile:

While it was very cute, I had some issues with it (I think most of them are related to the program used):

The way the dialog was formatted made it often difficult to distinguish between speakers (some line/paragraphs would change speaker multiple times).

After some options, the text would move so far up, that you had to scroll to catch up. It mainly happened when new chapter started and when an illustration you appear.

In a similar vein, I feel like the game would benefit from breaks between chapters by starting a new page altogether.

Aside from the last illustration, I think the pictures are too large. I had to zoom out for some of them to get it in full.

Your choices make very little difference. There is a slight variation in the text, but the story is very much a straight line.

Overall, a fun cute play.

[manonamora-if-reviews]

The Enigma of Solaris by jkj yuio

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============= Synopsis

Amidst the stars, Solaris stands as a beacon of human achievement and discovery. A space station dedicated to unravelling the universe's deepest secrets, it has been a centre of groundbreaking research. But now, Solaris faces a crisis. A mysterious power loss threatens to destabilise its orbit hurling the station into the planet below, jeopardising thousands of lives. Agent Elara Grey, a master trouble shooter, is sent on a perilous mission to Solaris. As she delves into the heart of the station's secrets, she'll grapple with the consequences of obsession, the balance between knowledge and humanity, and the ultimate choice between saving lives and unlocking the cosmos.

============= Other Info

The Enigma of Solaris is a Strand game, submitted to the 2023 Edition of the IFComp.

Status: Completed Genre: Sci-Fi

CW: /

============= Playthrough

Played: 3-Oct-2023 Playtime: around 10min Rating: - [IFComp vote] Thoughts: Just pull the plug...

============= Review

The Enigma of Solaris is a short interactive game set on the Solaris station, where you must find the reason for the power loss threatening the lives of its inhabitant, fighting any hurdles along the way. It can be played as a choice-based or (limited) parser. There seemed to only be one ending.

Spoilers ahead. It is recommended to play the game first. The review is based on my understanding/reading of the story.

The story was reminiscent of those old pulp sci-fi stories, with the strive for advancement at the cost of human life, and the hubris of it all. The game is not afraid to go at full speed into those tropes, which makes it a bit comical (in a good way). The visual characterisation of the NPC add a bit of creepyness to the situation, with it's uncanny valley-esque vibe.

Though I quite enjoy bite-sized games, this one felt somewhat incomplete - as if a whole part of the story or a different angle to it was missing. Starting strong with multiple options to explore the station, interact with different elements, and diagnosing the issue, the player sees its agency disappear by the second half of the game - railroaded towards the ending, with not even the illusion of being able to make a choice.

I think it could have made the ending a bit more satisfying if you had a final choice between fulfilling the mission to save lives or being persuaded to take a path of higher purpose just before the end. Maybe even a bit more choice in conversation with the second NPC.

There was also a bit of friction with the engine used, with the image messing a bit with the placement of the text (if they were more to the side, it would be nicer), or the longer portions of the text forcing you to scroll up and down to read the new bits.

[manonamora-if-reviews]

The Peter and Paul Case, by jkj yuio

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an incomplete interactive mystery

In this pulp-like murder mystery, you play as Detective Picton (the same as in Murder at the Manor), now accompanied by his strangely attired assistant (a sci-fi suit?? in a 70-80s-like setting? the uncanney valley of her face creeeeeps me out), set to solve a new murder! This time around, the suspects are Peter and Paul, the nephews of the victim.

Visiting the murder scene, you get to investigate different rooms of the victim’s home, under the watchful eye and comments of your not-always-so-professional but very competent assistant. After finding a couple of required elements, the game ends abruptly, like it was bugging/freezing - but it is just the end of the demo.

The game does an interesting thing, mixing choice-based actions with point-and-click mechanic on images (I liked being able to “move” around the room and get a different angle)… though it is a bit finicky getting the element to click rather than bringing the image forward (a white outline above bright images are pretty hard to see). The images sometimes disappear when clicking on certain elements (the ones that display a new interactive picture). It would be nicer if those interactive pictures could be set more apart from the text…

[manonamora-if-reviews]

Murder at the Manor, by Jkj Yuio

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So… why was he murdered again? (2/5)

Murder at the Manor is a short pulpy murder-mystery game, where you play as Detective Picton, tasked to solve the an unsolvable case. The game, however, only lets you interrogate the different suspects. The corpse and murder weapon have been sent for testing, and you don't even get to investigate really where the murder took place. You only get information about the case through the suspects' answers (who give very little, throwing blame on one another).

With the murdered chosen at random with every game, the whole mystery relies on a he-said-she-said about each other's alibis - each suspect never changing their location but sometimes changing their stance on whether they saw the other NPCs. After talking to everyone (which you are forced to because the butler is weirdly invested in being part of the investigation), you can accuse someone and the game ends. You are told whether your choice was correct or not in an ending sequence, which, if you were successful, mention how tight your investigation was, with a folder full of evidence (WHERE?).

Because of its length, and the surface-levelness of the investigation, neither the good or the bad ending feel quite satisfying. You accuse someone and thrown forward in time to after the court case, told only of the result. Not knowing why the suspect would murder the major, or even how they could have done it… what was the point of it? Where is the conflict? Why was there a murder in the first place? How could they have done it?

I restarted the game a handful of times, randomly picked a suspect without going through the whole interrogation… and managed to get the correct murderer half the time. I think it would have worked better if you could actually do some investigating, searching for actual clues, maybe get the coroner's report or more information about the weapon, or pressing for motives.

On the interface side, the chosen colours for the links made it pretty hard to read with the dark background. The "Undo" button wasn't working either when you reach the end. There didn't seem to be a "Restart" button either.