Alicia Morote. 28th place, IFComp 2022.

I think it’s very down to taste, but I didn’t like Let Them Eat Cake. I found it unpleasant. That… might be what the author is going for? There’s a Lovecraftian “something is wrong in this town” vibe. I think it just wasn’t my thing. To be honest, I’m still trying to put my finger on what bothered me.

I find the character portraits creepy, and I think they’re designed to be. But maybe a little distracting too. There are a few typos, and in some cases they feel almost intentional.

You leave the house feeling slickly, as though you heard something you weren’t spposed to.

I hit what seemed like an early continuity issue: I met the young woman outside and she led me in to meet her mother, but in the next scene with her mother, the young woman seemed to be absent. I wasn’t sure whether this was intentional or not.

The game delivers on its supernatural horror promise, and some more straightforward horror (severed hand in the pig trough?) as well. But in other ways it’s oddly light: We’re baking a cake for a party? We can try on the priest’s clothing? All told, it evoked more disgust than fear or dread in me.

Then we got to the end and I got to pick who eats the cake (and in turn gets eaten, which I’d guessed) but I really wasn’t clear on what the game wanted me to be thinking about when deciding. Is it a judgment of some kind? I didn’t like anyone particularly better or worse than the others; I picked someone I was sure had done something bad, they got eaten, that was it. Finally I landed on a kind of records screen, suggesting the game is designed for replay, but I am ready to leave this town.

Is any of that really enough reason to dislike it? Not exactly. It’s like… it lacked a wholeness, a coherence that I need to feel present in a world. But again, that feels subjective. I’m finding it frustrating that I can’t quite articulate what didn’t work. I won’t be surprised if other reviewers really like this. I just didn’t. Sorry!