Sorceress to Be

I happen to be a big fan of text-based games, probably because I fancy a little writing myself. As such, I felt very much compelled to give this TWINE game a shot. If you're not in the know on what a TWINE game is, think of it like a choose your own adventure game, but it takes all the "flip to page yadda yadda" out of your hands. You advance the game by reading along, clicking on highlighted words which will either advance you forward in the plot, or give you a more detailed explanation of what you clicked on.

Sort of like a text adventure game where a room might be described to you, and you might try things like "Look at bookshelf." or "Examine books", and things like that - A TWINE game does that, but removes all the hassle of fiddling with text commands and possibly failing. There's no way to really fail at a TWINE game in that way. You can fail, or die, but not because you can't figure out weirdly obscure text commands.

Now, to get into the game. You are a Dragon Fire Sorceress in training, and you decided to go to an amusement park for the day. If it wasn't obvious to you when you start the game, you quickly realize that she has a certain penchant for making things burn, and you will come to understand she is not the nicest of people! But that's okay, what fun is it in not causing a certain amount of mischief?

There's three basic areas you can explore, the Haunted House, The Ferris Wheel, and the Snack Area - though eventually most of your time will be spent in the Haunted House area. There's a total of 8 official endings you can get, which all vary quite wildly with your actions at the park, and possibly a few just straight "YOU HAVE DIED" moments (truth be told, I cannot 100% remember if those bad ends counted in the grand scheme of things). You can look forward to a food coma, making friends, reliving past memories, or general tomfoolery and mayhem. And as always, all shall burn.

So, let's do PROS and CONS of the game. I liked the limited timespace the game asks of the player. You could finish your first run through of the game in about 15 minutes of patient reading. To get all the endings would probably take you more than an hour, unless you were really skipping the dialogue -and, if you did, why are you playing an interactive short story!? One or two you might find pretty tricky, as they involve taking only sliiightly alternative routs on your way to other endings. The dialogue is for the most part quite fun and funny! A lot of work went into describing a great many things, so there's quite a lot to look at and try out. Also, TWINE games are nice in that you can play them on pretty much anything with a browser. Load it up on your phone, PSP, computer - whatever you have a browser on, you can play this game.

Cons, Well, just as a basic nature of Text based game is that you might get bored of reading something over and over again, if you're searching for a particular path. There's a few things that make that a bit better, though. First, areas you have no yet explored will be highlighted a different color so you always know where you've been or not. Second, if you want to go back, it's as easy as hitting the little back arrow, saving you a whole runthrough! Some of the dialogue can get a bit over dramatic in some places, which might put you off. It can make you feel like you walked into a part two of a three part story, but trust me, it's all contained here. Last little nitpick - because of how the words are arranged, sometimes it can be hard to know when clicking on a word will send you to a more in detail description, or send you on another path. Maybe that's intentional? May not? But it can be something to watch out for. As I said, you can always just hit the back button if you don't like what happened.

So, do I recommend you give this game a shot? Sure, why not. It's not ground breaking, but it is fun, and competently executed. A good little bit-size crunch to enjoy when the mood strikes you. Hopefully, it inspires you to make your own little TWINE game. I guarantee there's nothing easier or more fun. (Seriously, you can even put like images, sounds, videos in there... just check it out)

Ahem, a solid 3.5 for fun and profit!