Katie Benson. 53rd place, IFComp 2022.

Short, Gentle, all the feels.

What’s working for me:

• Captures the arc of a slip into a sad fog and the beginning of the climb out of it perfectly.
• The series of “stop doing” lines at the beginning is an effective depiction of feeling crushed by the weight of the world, referenced later by the weight of the blanket.
• Feels very complete. No bugs, lots of good editing choices in here.

What’s not working for me

• Interactions are pretty limited to advancing the story, and sometimes expanding a phrase for a little more detail. These additional details don’t add a whole lot. They might be intended to capture that spiraling feeling, but maybe don’t go far enough; letting each go three or four clicks deep might create that feeling better. There’s a couple of tiny branches (tea/no tea) of intentionally minor consequence, tuned about to the kind of decisions one is capable of making in this emotional state. Overall there’s a little justification for “interactive” here, but not my favorite use of the form.

So I think this would be about as strong if non-interactive, but that’s not to say it isn’t very effective at communicating this experience. What is there is so well done and I like it very much.