Robert DeFord

The game's Comp blurb says:

 

A hypertext short story, taking the player inside the fragmented mind of John's, as he struggles to find his way through disjointed moments.

 

Disjointed, eh? Hummm... I did not like the sound of that word, but I played the game anyway. Turns out that my trepidation was warranted.

 

While the hypertext format might work well in some games, my problem with this game is that the wording of the hyperlinks did not clue me as to which link would lead me in a desirable direction. Consequently, I didn't feel like I was in control of the game. Instead, I felt like I was wandering around aimlessly, selecting branches at random. Okay, fine. In real life I do in fact enjoy exploring a park, for example, and choosing trails at random to see where all the branchings lead, a horseshoe pit here, a fountain there, and so forth. But I certainly wouldn't enjoy it if I was being pursued by an angry bear and was trying to reach safety. And that's the problem I had when I started playing this game.

 

You see, based on the opening scene, I felt like I was drowning. I don't like to be drowning. Thus, I felt a sense of urgency. I looked down at the hyperlinks and found what appeared to be a bunch of inane choices, none of which seemed like plausible routes to safety. Here I was drowning, and someone named Cherie was reaching out a hand to save me. Naturally, I, the hapless reader/player, wanted to grab that hand. But did the hyperlinks offer that choice? No they did not. Instead, I had to choose from what appeared to be a set of choices leading to various self-absorbed internal dialogs. Okay, I thought to myself, maybe the lack of oxygen was causing me to hallucinate or something. Maybe this approach to storytelling could work. So, I gave it a try.

 

Lacking any cluing as to which link would lead to safety, I selected one at random to see what would happen. As anticipated, I was greeted by a self-absorbed internal dialog that turned out to be centered on the protagonist's relationship with someone named Adam, who comes off as being highly opinionated and a little dominating. From here, the links led me to a series of disjointed memories. Eventually I ended up in a watery grave.

 

I don't like to die, even if it's a virtual death. So, I restarted the game. A different set of disjointed memories ensued. I died again. And again... Agaah... Is there a path to safety or not? After about four restarts, I did manage to be saved. At no time did I feel the path to safety was logical or even reasonable. But it turns out that was the point of the game. You see, I slowly became aware that my protagonist was mildly insane and that he had to go work his way through his own fragmented mind to find a path that lead to being saved. Yeah, it says 'fragmented mind' in the Comp blurb, but nowhere in the game iteself, so you will likely miss seeing it. (I missed seeing it even though I read the blurb because I was distracted by that 'disjointed' word.)

 

Anyway, working your way through a fragmented mind to arrive at safety is actually a pretty good premise for a game, Not too original, but good none the less. Unfortunately, it took about five restarts to get this ah-ha moment. Not good. The game would have been a LOT better, maybe even a contest winner, if Josephine had chosen a different approach to working with this premise.