Ira Vlasenko. 42nd place, IFComp 2022.

That was kind of neat. There were some moments that didn’t work for me, but the sort of surreal space and drifting through memories and alternate realities worked well and sort of tickled a nostalgia for me.

I didn’t ever develop a very clear sense of what was going on, or who the player character is supposed to be. I mean, I gathered from context that there was a witch trial and that we’d somehow fled to a mental space from which we emerge in the end. But the relationship between the player/player character and the protagonist (who I named “Moll”) was fuzzy for me. It was a little like being a familiar, or an accompanying daemon, but the power dynamic between the two seemed very balanced in a way I don’t associate with either trope. As a result I didn’t really build a mental model for when Moll would know/do something, and when I would.

In practice this isn’t a big deal - you are playing as both characters (hey, another parallel to Esther’s!) I enjoyed the light puzzling. The labyrinth up front leading to a hub-and-spoke section was a really effective pattern for creating the sense of a maze-like space, then supporting structured exploration through mandatory scenes. I also thought the use of a single image near the end was very effective.

The description of Moll as the “witch that held back the darkness” in the epilogue didn’t quite land for me, since I thought I had characterized her as taking both sides. I didn’t encounter any bugs besides a few typos, and the game had credited testers.

Quite competently done, didn’t especially capture me, but feels coherent, complete, and I’d be glad to play more with from this author.