Play book
The Library of Alysaril's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Originality | #20 | 2.777 | 3.857 |
| Narration | #24 | 2.263 | 3.143 |
| Overall | #25 | 2.160 | 3.000 |
| Theme | #25 | 2.366 | 3.286 |
Ranked from 7 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
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Comments
Feels epic in scope, with the various civilisations, their rise and fall and the impending end. Was very disorientating to begin with, but then you start to settle into how the story is developing only for the end to come, which mirrors the AI's own 'impotent wisdom' very well.
I could feel a love of world building in here.
I spent most of the play disoriented before I realized most of the meat was in looking in the mirror and realizing most of the "move-forward" was in that option.
The pamphlet was a very cool and unexpected moment, and I did have a strong sensation of looking into some kind of unknowable world.
I found it difficult to connect as a player with the lore (though I suppose this is less a game and more a "book", as it were,) though I got a strong sense of consistency within it - this looked like it was a lot of fun to write.
It was a lot of fun indeed and I do love creating. I appreciate the different feelings people got from it and I think that is the greatest compliment after all. I mean, it's mostly for me but seeing what every person got out of it and how they worked through it is the most rewarding thing.
This was challenging. Disorienting navigation/spatial understanding. Story fragments I was trying to stitch together. But then I settled in to being unsettled and got really into it in a William Burroughs cut up technique sort of way. Plus I enjoyed the breadth of your imagination.
Thank you. All valid points that I too was wrestling with as I was creating it. And the comparison with Burroughs is humbling.
Super atmospheric writing (was the writing also procedural?), and the world-building went very interesting places. I like the idea of having infinite time to read and observe but still being doomed for destruction. Not totally sure I grasped the point of it all, though.
Thanks! The main story isn't procedurally generated. The zines and tiny plots spat out by the machines are. To be quite honest, maybe I don't grasp the point of it either :P I tried to touch on many ideas, finding meaning when not much makes sense, infinity even in the tiniest things (for example, here is a not-so-well-kept secret: there is only one "room" in the library, you just keep reentering it from different points). For me the point of the story is mainly choice in making your own meaning, even in death. Not going gently into that good night, type of thing.
Wandering library halls, disoriented, finding meaning, finding evidence of self in the face of inevitable destruction; felt like a wannabe anthropologist, flipping through documents I didn't have the context to understand.
I feel like you are describing almost perfectly what I wanted to achieve and yet I can't tell whether you enjoyed it or not :P I'll take it though, it's very insightful. So thanks :)