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.