IF Comp ’12 – Ethan Rupp’s Fish Bowl!

Ethan Rupp’s Fish Bowl sounds like, oh, what kind of bar does it sound like?  I see vinyl booths, pink neon, laminated menus boasting inscrutably-named cocktails with which business casuals drink away the daily indignities of their lives.  I may have to do some heavy drinking myself, given that this is a horror game and I’m playing it alone, at nearly 4 AM, like an idiot.  Maybe the apple cider in the fridge has fermented by now?  Nope, seems fine.  How ’bout you, coconut milk?  No?  Well, dammit.  I don’t even have any nutmeg.  I have, let’s see, salt, pepper, cinnamon, cumin, rice vinegar, sesame seed and peanut oils, fresh basil, and South African smoke spice, which is delicious on cucumber sandwiches.  I wish I had a cucumber sandwich.  I have one tortilla and no vegetables of any kind.  I am the worst foodie ever.

Yes, dammit, I’m hungry.  I am going to quick make some onigiri or this review will be even more about food than it’s already going to be.

[spoilers begin om nom nom]

IF Comp ’12 – Porpentine’s howling dogs!

mysterious game…hyperlink powered, yes, but what ethos does it promote? a death ethos? my god…or perhaps it is for those interested in visions, gender, peradventure, the hyphen between dream-notdream, fascination?

I’m not going to lie, it’s like this blurb was written specifically to make me not want to play this game.  I say this more as an acknowledgement of my own failure of depth than an indictment of the game and its blurb.  Know what kind of blurb would make me want to play a game?

You are on the moon and it is awesome and there are robots and then you get to eat cake.

Huh.  In other news, Dinner Bell now takes place on the moon.  Anyway, I’m going to play howling dogs, because I hear the author’s last game had sex in it, and I like sex.  And cake.  Sometimes I like to have sex while eating cake and you can’t stop me because I am a grownup.  I sure do wish I had a robot.

[spoilers begin here]

IF Comp ’12 – Robert DeFord’s The Sealed Room!

The name Robert DeFord makes me feel like I am a failure at raising chickens.  Let’s see if we can hatch any new associations with it.  Oh ho ho I made a chicken joke!  Hey, which one of these games do you think he wrote first?  Get it?  Which came first?

I am on fucking fire tonight.  If I were a chicken, I would be fully cooked and delicious by now.  Wait.  I just made myself hungry by imagining that I was a delicious chicken.  That’s kind of messed up.

[spoilers begin here]

IF Comp ’12 – Jim Redacted’s The Test is Now READY!

Searches What Brought You Here Fun Time!

naked manpissy
put this sentence “you have to figure it out yourself” into one word
kitten in a party hat
drivefs ed pacin car to play
conine alkaloid
peanuts grammar
stool eating & pissying
handkerchief on park bench
banjo hell
naked unicyclist
something interesting

That was fun; now what should we play?  Let’s read blurbs.

A train hurtles towards your son – or five strangers.
Five strangers are hurtling towards my son?  I guess that is what they mean by “stranger danger.”  Hey, are you sure you don’t mean the sun?  That’s usually what things hurtle towards, in my experience.

Later in the same blurb:
You’re kidnapped and forced to save an innocent life.
OH POOR ME

Okay, I guess I have to play this game, if I’m going to make fun of its blurb.  I’m scared, though.  There are zombies and potentially dead kids in it.  I am not a super fan of zombies and potentially dead kids.

[scary spoilers begin here]

IF Comp ’12 – Emily Forand’s Valkyrie!

This game was authored by the guild, Valkyrie, three students enrolled in a Game-based Learning Developmental English course this Fall semester at Pikes Peak Community College in Colorado Springs, CO.
But what is it about?  Let us find out together, you and I!

[spoilers begin here]

IF Comp ’12 – Jim Munroe’s Guilded Youth!

This year I am dispensing with the “save the stuff you want to play for last” policy, because it is stupid.  I like Jim Munroe.  I like adventurers.  I like the 1990s.  I am going to play this game.

[spoilers begin here]

IF Comp ’12 – Scott Hammack’s Murphy’s Law!

Matt Weiner tells me to play this one, and I have not gotten this far in life by failing to do everything Matt Weiner tells me to do.  I got here on a bus.

[spoilers begin here]

IF Comp 12 – M4u’s Signos!

The essence of the game is the essence of any human life: fullfill our purpose through our mistakes to finally find our truly selves and reach our destiny, the one destiny.
I’m playing this one next to find out what the hell it is, primarily.

Destiny’s weird, right?  Because you can say to yourself “I don’t believe in destiny; I believe I have free will,” but you can’t deny that at the end of your life you will be in one very particular place as the result of your by-then-inevitable choices and actions, so what actually is the difference?  Maybe I should have taken a philosophy class.  Or maybe it is my destiny not to?

[spoilers begin here]

IF Comp ’12 – Ruderbager Doppelganger’s Last Minute!

So, let’s see, looks like fish, zombies, and amnesia this year.  I wonder to what extent IF Comp themes reflect the zeitgeist.  I know zombies are big amongst the population at large, but I am not sure about fish or amnesia.  Sadly, there doesn’t seem to be a game where you play a fish with amnesia.  That seems like a winning combination.

> swim around castle
In the time it takes you to swim around the castle, you forget who you are and what you are doing.
> swim around castle
In the time it takes you to swim around the castle, you forget who you are and what you are doing.
> x castle
Huh?
> x me
You have a lot of tattoos explaining what’s going on and who murdered your wife, but you can’t read them because you’re a fish.

Fishmento.  I’d play it.

Also sadly, there don’t seem to be any games about people’s dirty apartments this year.  Let’s go with the closest thing we can find, a “desperate attempt at a story about a desperate attempt to enter into the 2012 IFCOMP at the last minute.”  Do you think he’s going to make it?

[spoilers begin here]