Circus Reviews - Yesterday, You Saved the World

To get back in the swing of things, here's a game I won in a contest held near the end of last year by Astrid Dalmady. I was given the chance to suggest an idea, and in the end I settled on "magical girls with PTSD" because I'm a dark and strange individual.

Yesterday, You Saved the World takes place in the aftermath of an epic magical girl battle that saved the world...well, yesterday. We follow eighth grader Lucy Newman, the only one of the girls to make it through the fight without having to be hospitalized, as she struggles to readjust to a normal life without her old powers.

The game is divided into "yesterday" and "today" segments. The "yesterday" segments gradually tell the story of the fateful battle that ended Lucy's run as a magical girl, and the "today" segments show how Lucy is dealing with the fallout. You're periodically given a choice menu like the one above with four options, "Attack," "Strategize," "Talk," and "Give Up," and have to exhaust all of your options before the solution of "Do Something Desperate" will present itself to you. While the menu can get a bit repetitive, it does a good job of illustrating the hopelessness of choosing an option among a bunch of bad ones, and also gives an interesting look into the mind of a teenager trying to save the world and basically just going "What the heck do I do?" as any teenager would.

Lucy is the only real character of importance; Alpha Centauri, a teammate of Lucy's that disappeared after the battle, is pivotal to the final choice, but outside of that, there isn't anyone else mentioned much. I like Lucy and find her portrayal quite refreshing. Don't get me wrong, I love a good magical girl show with all my heart, and I know that deconstructions of the genre are more common since the release of Puella Magi Madoka Magica. But the occasional more realistic depiction of a teenager tasked with saving the world and freaking out about it still catches my eye.

The game is rather short (4000 words or so), but it feels like a good length; it says everything it needs to say and nothing extra. Lucy's story completes itself well, but I wouldn't mind another story set in the same world, perhaps. It might just be my long-standing love of magical girls speaking, but I had a good time with this one.

Yesterday, You Saved the World is available to play in browser on the developer's website.

Final verdict: Comparisons to Madoka Magica are noticeable and perhaps inevitable, but Yesterday, You Saved the World presents a strong and believable portrait of a teenage girl who is nowhere near prepared for the world-saving duties she undertakes.

Yesterday, You Saved the World is developed and published by Astrid Dalmady. The opinions expressed in this review are my own. I was not compensated in any way for this review. This game was created for me as a prize of a contest held by Astrid Dalmady for a custom game. While I did provide the game's concept and was given early access to the finished product, I did not have any input in any other aspects of the game's production.

Circus Reviews - Beware the Faerie Food You Eat

There are a few fun things about IFComp. It got me playing more interactive fiction games, which was rather refreshing, not to mention it helped relieve some stress. It also introduced me to some cool developers I hadn't heard of before, one of whom is Astrid Dalmady, author of Arcane Intern (Unpaid). I took a look through her catalogue and wound up attracted to Beware the Faerie Food You Eat, a somber and depressing story that makes you feel bad. I thought, "Hey! Such a thing fits me perfectly."

You play as someone who knows how to enter the faerie world, though they don't have a defined reason for wanting to do so; you get to choose that in the opening. You have a long, difficult journey ahead of you, and you're in no way guaranteed to get what you want at the end of it...But what are you going to do about it? Turn back? Not go at all? Or just keep pressing on regardless?

If your idea of faeries is something akin to Tinkerbell and friends, go ahead and throw that notion out the window. These faeries are nowhere near as nice, and it's made abundantly clear throughout the story that you shouldn't trust them one bit. They will take any opportunity to fuck you over, and this is how most of the game's ten endings come about. Even completing your quest won't guarantee you a happy ending...but not going at all means you never tried.

The main character is pretty well-defined by your choices despite the game's short length. Your beginning choice of why you want to go to the faerie world affects how things turn out if you make it to the end of the journey. Despite the player character's single-minded determination, though, there's a sense of hopelessness throughout, like you're only persevering because you have no other choice, not because you have hope of reaching your goal. It plays a bit with the entire idea of such a quest, making you realize: surely not every hero succeeds on a quest. What happens to those who don't? What happens to a hero who sets forth despite overwhelming odds?

Perhaps it's just my inner brooding coming out, but I'm left with an overall sense of wondering at all the many stories in the world. Everyone is the lead in their own tale, but it's impossible for every tale to end happily like so many of the fictional ones do.

So if you feel the same brooding, or if you just want to read a fractured fairy tale with no clear "good" path, then give this game a shot. It's well worth it.

Beware the Faerie Food You Eat is available for free download at itch.io or to play in browser on the developer's website.

Final verdict: A dark and somber fairy tale that explores the hopelessness of the hero's quest and deconstructs the true nature of the "friendly" faeries from other, happier stories, well-written and with ten different endings to explore.

Beware the Faerie Food You Eat is developed by Astrid Dalmady. The opinions expressed in this review are my own. I was not compensated in any way for this review.

Circus Reviews - Arcane Intern (Unpaid)

Next up on the list of IFComp reviews is a game about being an unpaid intern. I've never had the pleasure of being an unpaid intern, but from what I hear, I wouldn't do it for anything. I have bills to pay; they don't just go away because the job is unpaid, right? And throughout this whole game, the omnipresent question of how the protagonist is keeping themselves off the streets doesn't ever go away, but maybe you just have a really awesome roommate.

The game follows YOU, a commoner who has just been hired to work as an intern at a publishing company enmeshed in a world of magic. You are given a special amulet that allows you to interact with the regular world; everyone else instantly forgets about magic once they hear about it, so people like your roommate Taylor won't find out things they shouldn't know. But other than dragons, the Otherworld, magical snakes and mongooses, flying memos, and mystic sigils, this internship is like many others: you're stuck with a bunch of grunt work and desperate to prove yourself worthy of better assignments.

The setting combines a bunch of magical cliches into a stew pot that works surprisingly well despite not being too specific about the world. Harry Potter is the most obvious inspiration (and it's not-really-but-totally named with an in-game series about Rebecca Butler), with some notable sparks from series like the Bartimaeus Trilogy scattered throughout. Character-wise, you have a fair number of choices to define how your protagonist acts, although the only ones that affect the ending seem to be in the final chapter. Characters outside of your protagonist are pretty much just there to further the plot, with the possible exception of Taylor, your completely normal roommate, and even she only really factors into one of the endings.

There are a few weird things about the technical design, chief among them the lack of a back button. If you accidentally progress too far, your only recourse is to go back to the title screen. If you've previously completed the game, you can access a chapter select feature, but it can only start you at the beginning of the chapter. There's also a few quirky coding choices, such as a point in the first chapter where you're taking coffee orders for the office. One of the office workers has a few options of things to ask her, one of them being her coffee order. But you can't just ask her this and then leave; you have to ask her every single question possible for the game to recognize your conversation with her as complete. If you just get her coffee order and then try to go get the coffee, even if you've gotten everyone else's orders, the game will say that you haven't gotten all the orders yet. It's pretty clear it was coded to only let you go if you read all the passages, and it was probably easier to code than the alternative, but it's unfortunately noticeable.

The story isn't particularly deep, but it's enjoyable nonetheless, and all three of the endings feel like realistic outcomes. I would have liked a bit more polish coding wise, but overall a solid title with an interesting vibe to it.

Arcane Intern (Unpaid) is available to play in browser or download for free at IFComp.org.

Final verdict: While a few quality-of-life changes to the coding may have made for a slightly easier experience, Arcane Intern (Unpaid) has a nice aesthetic and the story feels very believable, with well-connected paths.

Arcane Intern (Unpaid) is developed by Astrid Dalmady. The opinions expressed in this review are my own. I was not compensated in any way for this review.