Beneath
Fenwick is the Lovecraft-adjacent story of a remote New England town full
of sinister, malformed humans lurking just out of sight. Pete Gardner created it for IFcomp 2021, and his goal was
to create an experience that is “primarily choice-based but plays like a parser
game.”
On the one hand, I didn’t encounter the branching storylines
that are seen in a choice-based game. There is only one “correct” sequence of
links that brings an audience through to the end of the story. Readers
are free to explore detours on their journey, and they're also encouraged to
save often, because the wrong links will end things early.
On the other hand, I didn’t receive the clues that a parser might provide
when players struggle with specific puzzles. Beneath Fenwick has a “combine” command
that feels a bit vague — sometimes it involves using one object on another, and
at other times it merges objects together, but the error message is always “That
combination does not work!”
I respect the amount of effort that went into implementing and polishing Beneath Fenwick. It’s a smooth experience! I didn’t encounter any broken links or inescapable dead ends, and things functioned consistently.
My main issue
was that the interface overshadowed the story, encouraging me to ignore the
text and hunt for links. This
problem has been discussed in Interactive Fiction communities before.
The writing in Beneath Fenwick is consistent, and fans of this genre might enjoy themselves. I recommend experiencing it for yourself to draw your own conclusions.
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