Author Archives: mzspivey

Happyland is a Deadline-style murder mystery set in a combination hotel and theme park. It needs some polish, but overall it’s a really good IF mystery.

(spoilers below) In Deelzebub you play as Reginald, an unemployed young-ish man with not much going for him. Well, technically you’re a voice inside Reginald’s head, which is a nice way to explain the parser. It doesn’t take you long to discover that the new community Reginald has joined is a cult — a cultContinue reading “Deelzebub”

(spoilers below) The Land Down Under is part four of a series of interactive stories entitled “Mrs. Wobbles and the Tangerine House.” Mrs. Wobbles lives in a magical home and takes in foster kids. The Land Down Under is about three of those children who have an adventure after entering a part of this magicalContinue reading “The Land Down Under”

Vain Empires is an ambitious puzzlefest of a game. You play a demon, spying for Hell, and you have the power to manipulate people by placing “intents” inside them. Thus, for example, you can place the OPEN intent or the WAIT intent inside someone to give them the desire to open an object in theirContinue reading “Vain Empires”

By about ten minutes into Tavern Crawler I was coming to the realization that it is not the game I had thought it was. Unlike its title and blurb seemed to indicate, it is not a boozy farce. Instead, Tavern Crawler is a surprisingly thoughtful RPG, with a lot of interesting content and multiple endings.Continue reading “Tavern Crawler”

Jay Schilling’s Edge of Chaos is a modern take on noir. It clearly draws on classic hardboiled crime stories, but it also contains variations that fit more in the present. Like noir, Jay Schilling features a detective PC, hired by a mysterious guy to find a woman but not provided much to go on. TheContinue reading “Jay Schilling’s Edge of Chaos”

#VanLife is yet another game about money and power and how much control they have over one’s emotional state. This one isn’t social critique, though: It’s resource management. You start with a certain amount of cash, and you’ve got to carefully balance that and your watts usage in order to last 32 days in aContinue reading “#VanLife”

(some spoilers) Phantom is a choice-based work that revisits the tale of the Phantom of the Opera. As the game’s opening text reminds us, this story has taken on many forms — from Gaston Leroux’s original novel from the early 1900s to the classic silent film version to several other movie versions to the AndrewContinue reading “Phantom”

(This review will be in two parts, for reasons that will become clear. Also, major spoilers below.) Hanon Ondricek’s The Cursèd Pickle of Shireton pulled me in at the beginning, with an opening screen that contains nostalgia-heavy 80s-style pixel graphics. I had a quick flashback to playing King’s Quest III on a PCjr some 30+Continue reading “The Cursèd Pickle of Shireton”

Where the Wind Once Blew Free is a hard story about hard people — a soldier who’s watched his friend blown to bits, a kind but weak man whose courage will determine others’ fates, a young girl running for her life. There are moments of softness in the game — such as a shared embraceContinue reading “Where the Wind Once Blew Free”