====== Hanging by Threads ======
Carlos Pamies

Confusing, exploration-focused, lets me be a tourist in a fantastic place.

What’s working for me

  * I’m immediately taken by the opening image of a city hanging by chains from two mountains.
  * Worldbuilding continues, and overall is good. I like this hanging city, I want to see more of it. I’m also pleased that on replay there’s more of the city to see - this is clearly a wide branching space. I feel like “tourism” is the strongest element of this game. I might return to this later and dig more.
  * The lantern trick is interesting. It’s probably good that it doesn’t last too long. I wonder how many people bounce off of the dark passage.

What’s not working for me.

  * Early in the game, I’m making a mostly uninformed choice about which object to take with me, given I don’t have any idea who my character is or why they’re traveling to Oban yet. This ends up being a theme: “Go left, go right” sort of decisions are common, and without any sense of a goal it’s difficult to feel the interactions mean anything.
  * The logo for The Fluffy Cloud is so modern! It doesn’t fit the image of the city that I’ve built so far, but maybe I got the wrong impression.
  * That was an abrupt end. Was I not supposed to click on the animated cloud? I played again and went another direction, and while the content was very different I still seemed to reach a very abrupt ending: I asked a man at a campfire a question, and then on the next page it’s like “You sit still. The end.” Is this a bug, or an unfinished game? If there’s a plot or puzzle I haven’t really found it in my first couple of attempts, so I don’t feel compelled to try again.
  * This work seems like it benefits from repeat plays, but there doesn’t seem to be any way to restart the game - it’s great that it saves my progress across reload, but now that I’ve hit an ending I can’t try again without opening devtools and clearing application storage.
  * Editing problems.
      * Right on the first page there’s a pluralization issue. “Once we all are out, the guide halt us right in front of the catwalk.” It recurs a few times.
      * Similarly there’s tense confusion on page 01.2 (“…I nearly trip on two occasions. On my next step, my cane get stuck in one of the intersections. I lost my balance for a second…”) and it’s difficult here to tell who’s speaking which line of dialogue.
  * On the third-ish page, the guide says “Pt 3:” aloud. I’m not sure how to pronounce this in my head.
  * No credited playtesters.

I like the setting and prose here, but I’m very confused! And there’s some friction to just exploring.

{{tag>"interactive fiction" Twine played "played in 2022"}}