Shufflecomp Reviews Index

Progress report as of 5/28 2PM Central: DONE.

* = tested P = played
1982, by Iblis Snowsdottir
50 Shades of Jilting, by Lankly Lockers
Bound, by Starfinger X
Cryptophasia, by L. Starr Voronoi
The darkness of mere being, by a lost kitten
Dead Man's Party, by Morrissey *
An Earth Turning Slowly, by Mæja Stefánsson
Eight Miles High, by Lambert Lambert
Fallout Shelter, by Histroy Gloam
Fallout Shelter, by Amadeo Voss
Flotsam and Driftwood, by Conrad Elton *(note: initially left out of the post. Sorry, C.E.!)
Groove Billygoat, by Efrain Finnell *
HOLY ROBOT EMPIRE, by Ralph Gide
Illuminate, by Summer del Mono *
Invisible Parties, by Psychopup
The Legend of Wooley Swamp, by Elizabeth Jones
Light My Way Home, by Venus Hart
Little Bird, by Dick Dawson
Lobster Bucket, by Lady Tallhat
Look Around the Corner, by Robert Whitlock
Mirrorwife, by Virgil Caine
Monkey and Bear, by the opposite of sublimation *
More, by Erin Canterbury
Nothing but Flowers, by Crabby O'Crankypants
Nova Heart: Don't Be Around While The Earth Dies Screaming, by Zenith J Clangor
Out the Window, by Bramble Bobonong
The Peccary Myth, by Pergola Cavendish
Sequitur V1, by Tin Foil Jenny
Sparkle, by Karly Di Caprio *
A Summer's Rose, by Jed Brockett
Tea and Toast, by Maria del Pangolin *
Truth, by John Earthling
White Houses, by Mr. Stamp *

Nova Heart: Don't Be Around While The Earth Dies Screaming, by Zenith J Clangor

Hm, a very big title that promises zaniness, and it gives that, but unfortunately without much meaningful interactivity. Telling the player what to type avoids guess the verb but immediately shrinks the world.

I like the fake journalism angle, and the editing scenario is evidence of technical ability and social snark. The looping end is also disturbing, but ... such a long title, such a short story. The absurdist trick has been done before and doesn't quite work, but it doesn't fall flat on its face.

More, by Erin Canterbury

This game is a one-trick (one-puzzle) pony, though I enjoyed the room names and descriptions. Another puzzle or two and some more memories of Tommy would've made it something very cool. I got sidetracked a bit digging the wrong noun, but eventually I found my way through. Given several songs inspired this, I was surprised they were so short.

Sequitur V1, by Tin Foil Jenny

This game disoriented me from the beginning. I was eventually able to figure you could HINT and learn which tracks should be placed in which slots. This was enough of a puzzle for me that, along with What Comes Next, I gave up. The logic puzzle took too long, and I was exhausted. I couldn't find the verb to listen to the tracks.

The random background text is interesting.

I hope this game has a post-release version that clears things up, as well as how to progress without the hints. But I was too confused for the time frame of the competition--having so many text dumps early on didn't help matters. But I like the combination of logical and (I assume later) intuitive puzzles the author tried to create. It feels like it SHOULD work, but it doesn't.

The Darkness of Mere Being, by a lost kitten

Wow! Heavy philosophy in the title, and emotional stuff with the name. That's a cross-up.

I hadn't looked at inklewriter much but this game uses the format pretty well. It starts innocently enough with you trying to fix up two friends--then bang, a terrorist incident, or maybe it's something even bigger. This game did a good job of capturing the mudanity before a Big Incident and swerved effectively into how the heck we survive with our infrastructure gutted--alone, or with people, or even hiding from them. It's not exactly cheery, but the different out-in-the-wild endings left me unnerved when I played them at 1 AM.

Then I went back and meaninglessly browsed the internet for 30 minutes because people are wired like that, not to get too close to disturbing stuff, & I didn't want nightmares.

So, yeah, I found this game simple but effective, although the character switch to part 2 was a bit jarring and made me have to reread to check what was going on.

Holy Roman Empire, by Ralph Gide

Hi Ralph. Your pseudonym was 10th in my top-9 poll. No name rec for you! Well, you wrote a fun game, so that's consolation.

This game plays on if people worshiped numbers instead of religion. It's a pretty grim world, and the satire generally works except for the room names grating on me a bit. I like "mathedral" as a portmanteau but I think the author was showing off a bit and didn't need to. Or maybe, being a math person myself, I wish the author had used more mathy terms to show off with!

Other than that the game is pretty smooth, and I liked how you had to skirt the crowd--perhaps trading with the hermit could be cleaned up--and getting the prayer helmet was clued well too. What to do with the bowling ball was an odd bit of slapstick I kind of brute forced, but it was the end of an inventory juggling puzzle I overall enjoyed. I guess I'm sometimes tough on things that I feel should work even better.

The game also mentions ways to get killed in ABOUT, which I looked for but didn't find. Well, except for the blatantly stupid act of attacking the Pope. It would be fun to retry to find them. Apparently there's a ClubFloyd transcript already up.

I recommend you play the musical instrument both ways, for fun.

Also, spoilers of my riffs on what you get when you win, below:

Cryptophasia, by L. Starr Voronoi

Smuggling pastries through space--or at least selling them for top dollar. Interesting concept, for sure, with a bit of humor even, and not too mad-libby. I like the random space port names too--makes me feel a bit more at home where sci-fi is not my thing, but I sure like cool names.

You apparently have memories of murdering your brother, and the various endings that appear slowly give the idea this isn't the case. However, the random names made it tougher to judge if they were in fact random or you could click through a certain way to get a certain ending. I mean, there are fixed choices, but they felt arbitrary too. The choice of ASMR, for instance, is rather neat, though it feels a bit too done-before.

I still feel like I stumbled on to the other endings by random mistake. Eventually I ripped oepen the souce and had a few aha moments but between the enforced pauses and unclear random stuff and repetition each time I played, well, I think the author wanted to sow some feelings of confusion and disturbing. but I got a little too much.

Still, this was worthwhile. And I'm not one for aesthetics but I did like the background. & text effects.

An Earth Turning Slowly, by Maeja Stefansson

Now this is a tricky one. It's five chapters, and you control someone different in each one. You are part of a research group that has found dinosaurs, and a data book comes up missing. The suspect is always the same, and so is the result.

This was a tough game to read but I'm glad I did. Trying to figure everyone's motivations is key to replaying, and I wanted to try to change the plot though I knew I couldn't. This echoes some of the characters' fears/worries.

The Undum controls are quite nice--thy provide you with useful verbs and give you a subject e.g. LOOK AT allows you to look at Morgan or Joanna. I only wish that this had been used a bit more e.g. a panel on the left shows all the verbs and also profiles the characters. As is I felt thrown in the deep end but the writing was clear enough that the scientific bits didn't elude me.

This is another game it would be tough to exclude from recommendation.

Mirrorwife, by Virgil Caine

This is an interesting mythical piece about a mirrorwife, someone the King had created and killed to punish his wife for infidelity--because he knew he could never kill her. How and why is revealed as you journey to the Queen's castle. though no names are given, there are plenty of other details worth following, and you can take side visits down the locations where you stop, e.g. a courtyard to observe a fountain or flowers. You can also do the whole click-and-change-the-link-name thing to somewhat alter your options when you visit the Queen. There are no ways to lose, only delay, and the game establishes your hesitance pretty well if you stand back and examine stuff.

This is straightforward and well-written and I can see it getting a recommendation.

Light My Way Home, by Venus Hart

In this game you're something that can't pick things up and with no memory. I think it's pretty clear what the author means, but it gets even clearer once you POWER various electronic things. You eventually find someone else. Manipulating them by POWERING this and that is key to narrative progress, and it's a good mechanic to keep the game simple.

This game has some don't-think-of-a-bear psychology I won't spoil. I'm glad one game in ShuffleComp did something like this, and while I usually don't like playing with the volume on, I recommend it here. I don't care if the tone doesn't logically fit. With your memory loss, this thing-you-shouldn't-do is especially amusing.

The end I got is a nice riff on the usual YOU HAVE DIED/WON. I wasn't able to get the person to go to the suburb in the end. I don't know if you can. It'd be interesting to know. But the ending I got makes emotional and logical sense as is.

This game felt like ...

Look Around the Corner, by Robert Whitlock

Given I hadn't used TADS much I figured I had to steel myself for the game. Maybe new verbs, new conventions, etc.

However, this game was short enough I didn't need to. You shouldn't, either. It's a two-room escape the room style game, to be reductionist. But I sort of need to spoil it to see what it's about.

A Summer's Rose, by Jed Brockett

This is a visually appealing effort that (to me) represented the best flow between the pseudonym and the title. In it, a woman tells her daughter how she met her father. That's the daughter's father.

The story itself is not long, and it's actually a retelling of the song which is a retelling of a fairy tale, itself. That loses a few points with me as I reflexively think back to Geoffrey Braithwaite, the main character in Flaubert's Parrot (which is a quick read that mucks around with lots of fiction elements. It's Ulysses without the pain, to me,) and his rules for books: knit your own stuff! Though the comp somewhat limited this, the writer's skill with just writing sentences left me hoping for more.

I liked how alternate choices believably funneled me back to the main path. I sort of wished there were more ways to derail things, or try to. And ending such as the Calvin and Hobbes strip where Dad changed the ending of Hamster Huey and the Gooey Kablooie would've been tone-inappropriate, well, it would've been funny to have the mother sigh patiently and tell the kid she wasn't ready to hear it all, or something. This is probably me putting on my pedantic proofreading visor, though.

Truth, by John Earthling

This is an amusing game about Finding Truth. Or rather dispelling untruths. They're everywhere! There are 21 of them to get! The world isn't especially rich, and it's filled with easy targets like politics, religion and general silliness. You get a point for dispelling untruths, such as the stained glass in a church that depicts the beliefs of a sect you disagree with.

I got 19 of 21 and found the way to actually win amusing. (I also found it very quickly.) The game never quite gets too silly--I enjoyed the one puzzle (not really,) turning the radio on and the general tone of narrative self righteousness. And stuff like putting the batteries in the wrong way at first. Very good for a Z5 game.

This won't be my favorite game, but it will encourage me to try to go off the deep end a bit more often, as I wanted those last 2 points not just to win it all and be done with it but to have a couple last laughs.

UPDATE: I got all 21 a bit later. Though I think it's kind of a mean trick to (rot13) abg tvir n cbvag ng gur pebffebnqf gvy lbh unir gjragl cbvagf. THUS THE GAME ITSELF IS INCONSISTENT AND NOT 100% TRUTHY. AND THAT'S THE TRUTH. But given the game's tone, this isn't really a sin.

Invisible Parties, by Psychopup

This has a rather big map and some textdumping to start, and I got a bit swamped. The author admits to a lack of testing, and while the mechanic (USE ABILITY X) seems neat, I couldn't do much more than learn sign language and move on.

Being able to see a coffin and worry it wasn't you was cool, and with a walkthrough I'd like to evaluate more what there is to do, but I wound up muddling around and trying powers that never quite worked.

Little Bird, by Dick Dawson

Well, here's another effective reverse. I was expecting something much more sentimental bu got...a bizarre world where President Bastard has declared birds, and helping them, illegal. You can save the birds if you want, or you can be out for yourself, but either way you find out they're pretty nasty too. So are the cops, including a fat cop who didn't ask to be a fat cop.

The structure of this twine game is pretty straight-up CYOA with a new area unlocked once you get most of the endings (which it handily tracks,) and it has a number of just random choices coupled with a few that are obvious but amusing losers. It even has a helpful back button. That, plus "cussin' is rad/horrible" gives an overall helterskelter feel without being disorganized. I had lots of fun.

Bound, by Starfinger X

This wasn't what I was expecting at all from the author name or title--it's a timed puzzle where you are a cleaningperson who gets your employer's ring stuck on your finger. You need to use household items to take it off. The game map is nicely laid out below game text (much like Gregory Peccary's--ok, that's ABOVE, but no real difference,) with a separate screen for inventory, which makes for pleasing production values. And with the timed puzzle, yes, it's VERY good to have a map beforehand. And it makes sense that you know the house, since you cleaned it.

It took me two times to get through the game. Well, technically three. The in-game restart left the game thinking I had gotten the bowl when I didn't, which may've made it unwinnable, so be sure to use the manual restart. This isn't a mortal sin, but FYI.

I think I'd have been able to guess where to go and what to do first time through, which is a plus for the game because it's logically laid out, but I wanted to poke around all over. I also liked how you slowly remove the ring up your finger--it reminded me of trying to remove a too-tight shoe--and if the game doesn't vary items for maximum replayability, it still works as a puzzle and a riff on the standard "your apartment" game.

I was slightly disappointed your employer didn't totally lambaste you for not trying to get the ring off--but I WAS interested enough to check & I did enjoy the advice column on the coffee table too.

Fallout Shelter Deathmatch

Fallout Shelter, by Histroy Gloam

versus

Fallout Shelter, by Amadeo Voss

Who will, ha ha, survive?

Amadeo Voss's is a cute little riff where you have a security blanket (!) and not a whole lot to do, but it made me smile a bit. Maybe more items like this?

Histroy Gloam's is a bit more ambitious, where you explore the drain beneath your fallout shelter, and it took me a while to figure how to put the final crystal in the final slot. I eventually discovered it by accident but it was a bit obscure and I only figured it out due to lawnmowering. With some other disambiguation (I'd like PUT ORANGE IN ORANGE to work) and more implementation it might be better, so yeah, post-comp updates. A walkthrough or hinting how to get the alien to release the orange crystal would be nice too. I was messing with the red and yellow panels.

Well, I'll give it to the parser game, because that's how I tiebreak. Both have their moments, but each could be tweaked a bit.

1982, by Iblis Snowdottr

This is a relative quickie about a car you want to take for a spin--if you can find the keys and survive being zapped by a government eye. The puzzles are comfortably silly, and you have a few endings--successful and failing. I like the eye-killing vs non-killing, and the car chase is funny, too. It's a bit random, but it's not profound, but I like it, and I guess most people will, if maybe not quite enough to recommend.

The Peccary Myth, by Pergola Cavendish

I'm not a big fan of music + text adventures--I play text adventures to isolate on the writing--but with this game I really wanted to listen to the song while playing. I've never really paid attention to Zappa's work, but it's always been something I'd probably liked, if they inspire something like this, I should. From what I know of Zappa, this game fits with the overall oddness that made him a critical success.

As for the game, first, I like how the map is laid out--it's a great use of twine, simple and effective--and I still had to click on the RESTRICTED links just to see things. This allows for a pretty straightforward clickfest to find what nonsense word to create to invite the aliens, but it's just fun to unlock the industrial sector, the secret tunnels, and the posher area, and even the nonsense words are fun to scroll through. Your superiors are quickly but nicely drawn up, and the only thing I object to is the game overusing LOL...I mean, this was probably on purpose when people say it to grate a little, but it did its job too well, and I'd have liked to see other acronyms for variety.

I'm not sure if this game will get an ultimate best-of-show recommendation, but it looks like it's easily going to be in the top half. It feels like it should appeal to just about everyone, but it still saves plenty of its own quirks.

The Legend of Wooley Swamp, by Elizabeth Jones

The writing here is good, but unfortunately this doesn't feel interactive enough. Which is too bad--I was up for a hunt the mugwump style game from what I saw of the start.

Lobster Bucket, by Lady Tallhat

Hooray for randomly-generated maps! This feels like Kerkerkruip light, where you can actually win quickly, but there aren't that many items. This is also the 2nd game with a specifically named item to find (see: 8 miles high.) Maybe there is a meta-puzzle like with IFComp 2011 and the man with the hat.

My first experience with the game, I won in 5 moves. I thought, is this a bad joke? Then I realized stuff was randomly generated and tried for an easy setup to get all 9 points. Nothing, alas. I may return to poke around, but the monsters do seem to be good at sitting and guarding important areas. Even save-scumming, I didn't get more than 8/9.

I think this is a nice experiment, though, and it works. It's a bit sparse, though.

Nothing but Flowers, by Crabby O'Crankypants

This is a pretty simple twine effort that pretty much goes through the lyrics of a song and ends. I like the effects of changing the chorus that repeats, though unfortunately there's not any conflict that might give an emotional jolt e.g. what led to there being Nothing But Flowers? You don't have to be perfectly faithful to the song.

Still, despite the simplicity, I found this more effective than I expected.

IFComp 2013 entrants may know/remember why this song title got a laugh from me. Or you may not.

Eight Miles High, by Lambert Lambert

This game seems a bit sparse, though the hyperlink/twine hybrid is intriguing. I actually gave up early on because I thought the street names might indicate a hueueuge grid. But there aren't many rooms (five, I think,) and I suspect I missed something before I found an item that seems an homage to Kingdom of Loathing.

The links seem a bit wonky...say you move east from room x to room y. Then, you can click on room x's "east" link to try going east in room y. I got a bunch of you can't go that way messages, though, so unfortunately the game has no easter eggs. Or seems not to. I didn't check everything, but I should have.

Out the Window by Bramble Bobonong

So, this is a Twine game where you--throw stuff out the window. It's good for a few giggles at first, but unfortunately I just think everything I see is second rate to this scene (profanity warning at start, extreme skeeviness warning at 45s) of which I've watched too many greatest moment compilations. (Yes, window glass should fall with the TV. No, that's far from the worst mis-step in the movie. Yes, the painting IS resting on the camera at the start.) It doesn't quite seem to work with the messy apartment angle for me, but I think it also has the good sense to stop at squalor and disillusionment before overstaying its welcome or getting into offensiveness. (Okay, the game recognizes throwing stuff out the window is a disturbance.) This is a good comp for this sort of work, though I'd guess more ambitious ones will move ahead of it.

50 shades of Jilting by Lankly Lockers

This is an amusing little one-mover jaunt about dumping your boyfriend Sam at a diner. I guess we most of us know Sam Barlow's Aisle was the first game to try this. This one allows a ton of ideas but the entries are a bit long-winded, and I wasn't able to get clues.

I liked other Apollo 18 one-movers better but I did enjoy the title, the idea, and the energy. It's just--brevity is the soul of wit, and I really enjoyed the responses AFTER you tried something that worked more than the initial responses. And though I had to plug this into the TXD disassembler to get the rest, I still had fun. It's good to see a new game like this every few months but it'd also be easy to overdose. Still, worth a look, even if it probably won't make my top 9 if I play all the games.

Spring Thing 2014 Reviews

This will be my index post for Spring Thing 2014 reviews. If you don't know what it is, which is highly unlikely, it's a review of text adventures people worked hard to create. Go here to see all the games. (Note for people viewing this before 5/12: this is intentionally postdated so you see this post first and also probably avoid spoilers.)

Links to reviews (or reviews-to-be) are above the cut, and my own blather is below. Authors, feel free to contact me for clarifications. I hope to be sending out transcripts to people whose games support that, though in the games I've tested, y'all may have had enough. I may be open to replaying a game that's been updated, if it is not too long, as well. I know how mistakes are made--in stuff you thought you checked, no less. And while I can't drop everything to look at them, I do encourage people following up. Announce it on IFDB, too. It does get noticed!

Asterisked games are ones I beta-tested. I enjoyed my experiences with all of them.

As for my reviews, I want to give a combination of stuff I liked and stuff I'd like to see in an update. One of the big draws for IFComp, for me, is that there's an intense period of working to update my game, reacting to a wider group of reviews, and adjusting to what people saw or wanted or thought would be better. Now Spring Thing apparently has it too, and whether or not the authors take advantage, it will be neat to see what goes down.

You can filter my thoughts by actual reviews or testing thoughts.

Adventures of a Hexagon, by Tyler Zahnke
Bear Creek, Part 1, by Wes Modes
The Bibliophile, by Marshal Tenner Winter *
A Game of Life and Death, by Kiel Farren
The Price of Freedom: Innocence Lost, by Briar Rose
The Story of Mr. P, by Hannes *
Surface, by Geoff Moore *
Through Time, by MC Book
Weekend at Ruby's, by Liam Butler and Jackson Palmer
The Wyldkynd Project, by Robert DeFord *

Surface, by Geoff Moore

Surface is probably the most intuitive games in the comp. The dual story is not hard to guess at, but not in an 'oh, DUH, obvious' way. You know, because the writing is more than competent, the two protagonists will meet. The question is how and why.

The Wyldkynd Project, by Robert DeFord

I tested mostly the first half of this game, leaving the second half open. Unfortunately I lost touch with Robert about when he solidified the first part, and I worried he wasn't going to get the second done. I was thrilled to receive a mail he'd entered the Comp, and I'm glad this game got an above-average score.

It's too bad the Mac Alan interpreter didn't work, because this game deserved more votes. Hopefully people weren't intimidated by An Unusual Language. I'd say I like ALAN a bit better than QUEST. It feels like a good lightweight Inform. I'd like to see more games with it as I thought Anssi Raisannen's Ted Paladin game was a nice success. While Inform 7 is in my opinion superior to ALAN and more flexible, there's a whole lot to be said for a lightweight language people don't feel they have to learn back to front.

The Story of Mr. P, by Hannes Schüller

Master P, who wrote the song I ripped off in this meme picture of Joseph Ducreux is probably best forgotten. But is this game? I really enjoyed being given the source to look for a German translation--a certain amount of trust there--and finding the eight different entries. It also got me looking at Inform 6, which is less scary now that I've worked with I7 and said, well, I7 is expedient but how do I do x, y or z which is more detailed?

One of the inherently difficult things in a game like this is, how do you evoke a feeling of frustration without frustrating the reader? I enjoyed it, because I enjoy games about frustration with everyday life, and I particularly enjoyed shuffling among the houses at the end through the passage which sort of mirrored things.

The Bibliophile, by Marshal Tenner Winter

I beta-tested this game...there was a lot of work and love put into it, and a lot of testing. The author has a good formula down for getting stories off the assembly line, but I'd like to suggest upgrading that assembly line. The "test X" command in Inform is valuable. So would expanding the "think" command to give hints every turn e.g.

section thinky - not for release

every turn:
  say "Current hint: ";
  try thinking;

Hints make a game more robust and also expose the more arbitrary or unclued puzzles e.g. "I did tell the player this, right?" & you have to go check. I've slipped, myself, forgetting to make an important hinting device visible, and hints don't prevent that, but they've made it less likely. They force you to pave over things. In a game this big and long, anything that can help the player keep on track is good, and I've also found that if my interest flags in my own game when I walkthrough, what does that mean for someone not as invested in it?

I really want to see the author throw away the Call of Cthulu-world style crutch he's relied on in previous efforts and to make the jump to write his own stuff, however crazy he worries it might be. Because I think that is what is most memorable about this game...the touches like the cat, or using the Psychognomy spell.

Shufflecomp Judging Intro

This is my intent to judge shufflecomp. And what better judge of a contest inspired by music than someone who hates hearing music at his athletic club and has finally stopped being annoyed by other people's music on trains or buses? Why, someone who has been distracted from writing his own text adventures by music coming from below, that's who!

I wound up testing 8 of the games, and as such, I don't really feel comfortable saying too much about them besides that every one of the authors got back to me more than once--probably more than twice--and made some really good fixes. If every author in ShuffleComp was able to do this, then this really will be quite an event. I'd like to mini-review the authors I tested for to give a point according to the judging rules, in alphabetical order. My nine votes for best game will likely be confidential.

In the all-important (or at least easy to evaluate) pseudonym department, I give my nine votes to:

Starfinger X
L. Starr Voronoi
Histroy Gloam
Amadeo Voss
Efrain Finnell
Bramble Bobonong
Pergola Cavendish
Jed Brockett (bonus point for best author name/song name mixing)
John Earthling

How I broke into the scene

This is my first post that goes out to planet-IF, and I hope it's relevant, in that, if you want to start contributing, it can really be anything that helps you do so. I started in the most abstruse way.

There'll be other posts on this blog, too, to planet-IF, but they will probably be more summaries of a week's writing, so as not to detract from more serious and higher-level stuff. I'm glad to be accepted by the planet-if Big Man, and I hope you find my writings interesting and relevant.

More below the cut,
  Andrew Schultz

Lessons from Kingdom of Loathing

Kingdom of Loathing is a clever game disguised as a stupid game. It's even more than that! You may or may not have heard of it before, but I'm going to discuss how it's helped me with Fundamental Principles school failed to impress into me.

KoL's taught me a lot of things, from practical applications of economics to how people work together in projects to how to update a game or deal with feedback, to lessons of just plain generosity and decency. It's helped me build my own games, when it didn't suck too much time away. I was amused to see that someone else also quit because it took too much time.

Plus Mr. Skullhead, the head Funny Text Guy (IIRC) sent me a nice mail back after I told him basically this--that I needed to move on, and his going ahead with a comic book was way cool. But I was glad to support other projects, and I didn't regret my donations for those lovely Mr. A's that let you buy Items of the Month.

I came back. They added new gadgets. I remembered people, and people remembered me. I have to say that a full-blown MMORPG would be too much for me, but Loathing--well, it's quite a place. You can explore it without exploring it on the fan-maintained wiki. Or, if you like, it's on TVTropes.org. Here's the funny bits, or the best of them.

If you haven't played for a few years, it's a totally different looking game now, and not just because Jick's stick figures have gotten retouched extensively. The sea is (finally) complete.

Spoilers for KoL and Randy Pausch's Last Lecture are below the cut and potentially TLDR. It devolves into a story, but I hope the main point isn't lost, that--you have a funny cool idea and there's always room for development. Sharing that idea can inspire others to do so.

Miscellaneous e-readings

I'd meant to do more with this blog for Spring Thing, but ShuffleComp testing has taken up a lot of my time & I've enjoyed looking at what people did. There are still a few days left, though if you have seen this blog, you probably know about this link.

So I'll have to settle for mentioning a few e-texts I've been enjoying: Who Killed Harlowe Thrombey in e-text. It's probably one of the best CYoAs out there, and definitely the most ambitious--a detective story with relatively good internal consistency for a CYoA, but disappointingly hard to find in local libraries compared to others. The structure is unusual for a CYoA and it even goes left to right instead of jumping around. Best, you won't spoil things or get exasperated flipping through it due to the neat GUI.

Other books I poked at include Richmal Crompton's Just William and (for all the wrong reasons) Amanda McKitrick Ros's Irene Iddsleigh which is impossible to read in one sitting because...err.