The skinny one. - Annie Z.

ifcomp.org/play/1748/play_online

I hate to say “another Twine game about mental illness”, because I like Twine and I think mental illness needs a lot more attention and understanding, but it is becoming a bit of a genre/cliche. This is explicitly inspired by Depression Quest, actually. The writing is solid, only the very occasional error; not too overwrought, but-- the thing is, it’s a piece about anorexia by someone who’s studied it a lot and never had it, and I don’t know how that sits with me. I don’t think it’s too exploitative or cliche, but I can’t really know.

The branching story paths are a bit odd-- you can definitely get quite different results from just a couple of different choices, and it’s not always clear how or why. You can also miss a fair bit of backstory with only one playthrough. Whole events happen or disappear depending on-- something. Not totally sure what. But, my second runthrough ended at an "Error: <>: bad conditional expression in <> clause: expected expression, got ‘)’ ", so I might be done experimenting. On the whole, I’d say it’s pretty good, though.

I have posted a review here: blog.templaro.com/review-skinny-one/

  • Jack