Play poem
ruin's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Narration | #14 | 3.450 | 3.571 |
| Originality | #16 | 3.381 | 3.500 |
| Overall | #19 | 3.243 | 3.357 |
| Theme | #23 | 2.553 | 2.643 |
Ranked from 14 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
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Comments
Quite an evocative experience. I liked how it was able to put me in a different state of mind reading it: the whole "run left/right" soon became disjointed from the actual actions I was doing and more about the mood I was looking for.
It was not very clear though what kind of overall story it wanted to tell. There seemed to be glimpses of a lot of interesting topics, but I guess the high number of optional parts of the story can make it difficult to catch them all.
I appreciate a piece that's all about the vibes. :) The whole experience made me think a lot about Invisible Cities, so was unsurprised to see that among in your literary references. You definitely matched that Italo Calvino style. Personally, I think writing in the notebook in the bookstore was my favorite bit; I really liked the short poem I composed there. Nice work!
-Anna
Sometimes works of art walk a very fine line between being profound and being pretentious. I do not know on which side, if indeed either, this errs. But there does seem to be a lot more of Joyce and Lutz here, than of Coleridge, Shelley, Yeats, Calvino, Borges, Le Guin and Crowther combined...
Oh that was beautiful. You definitely know how to write. I especially liked the little bits where we made out own poems - very similar to KRZ (that scene where you create the song that is actually sung as you make your choices? Poetry!), although perhaps lacking that je-ne-sais-quoi rural American Gothic vibe. Even so, this had plenty of its own vibes. Thank you for writing this.
This was beautiful, dizzying, and mesmerizing. I think it will stick in my mind for quite some time.
Edited: While the writing style and the overall concept are interesting, the numerous grammar and punctuation errors along with the incoherence in some passages following one after the other, disappointed my expectations.
Thanks for your feedback! What grammar or punctuation errors did you encounter? I have only noticed a couple typos since submitting this. I'm curious as to what disjointed passages you're referring to as well.
By grammar errors I refer to the typos and commas missing here and there, ofc. I'm not beta testing the game to give extensive feedback on the flow or pacing of the story itself. This is a game jam after all. We give subjective opinions on games.
As for the disjointed passages (I guess should have used a better word for it), but here is an example: (choosing to order a drink, then choosing to order something unusual (you get a sandwich), then choosing to stay silent, and then choosing to order a drink again. this is the result. Is it logical or a smooth transition? Not really.)
I’m not quite sure I understand the issue here but I’ll look into it. Thanks for the feedback!
If I can weigh in on this a bit, because I wanted to mention something similar, I think what they're trying to show is that they chose an option to order something, some choice in between, and then another option to order a drink, and the dialogue feels disjointed because the line corresponding to ordering a second time sounds as if they haven't ordered at all. They just paid for their first order in those first few lines, but then the bartender talks to them as if they didn't just get up to leave. I agree with Hyacinthos that it catches the reader off-guard and doesn't feel very smooth. I hope that makes sense?
As for me, overall, I enjoyed it. Everyone's got a different way of writing about being lost, and I like the way you did it. Having the text flow between what's expected for fiction writing into poetry and back and forth made for some nice variety. My only wish is that dialogue be formatted because I had trouble figuring out who's saying what and when dialogue is meant to end sometimes. While dialogue punctuation in the end is a stylistic choice, I think the lack of it here can mess with one's enjoyment of what I think is a pretty well-written story. The lack of dialogue punctuation might also be what Hyacinthos had in mind when they mentioned "grammar and punctuation errors" in their initial comment.
The poem takes me across locations. I'm moving from one to the next through the choices I'm making though I don't know what the options really are until or unless I choose them. It's a wandering, one that's aided by the style of writing; it's pretty intriguing. I occasionally got lost with some of the sentences though (it might be a lack of sleep, or maybe these dense parts are just not for me). By the time I got to Xanadu, locations were a blur, like I was on a train passing them by. There are a few different themes, as described in the game's page; I feel 'blink of an eye' theme is present in that when you're moved to another place it's a quick change, but a lot of other themes are also at play here.
"remember how it was"/"ponder how it is" is such a good choice. lots of interesting choices in this one, and it feels participatory. that bibliography is quite the addendum! really well done