Itch.io games that have been featured on the Talkin' 'Bout Tiny Games 'zine. Done for the joy of the games.
Between children’s rides based off of a fictitious children’s show structured around personality profiles and a clothing store rack with jackets labelled with things like ‘parents’, ‘significant other’, and ‘friends’ on a scale from most to least important, the mall is less a real space to engage in commerce and more a loci for an examination of the self. [Full issue.]
"[L]ike what toys looked like in one’s imagination as a child. [...] [has] the simple joy of poking and prodding until you figure out what comes next."
"[T]he game [has an] epistolary focus. In all but one of the vignettes, the writing you’re doing isn’t of a framed narrative, but of in-universe documents[.]"
"[T]he unfolding format of the rulebook does a lot for the tone and pace of the game [...] for its duration, I was caught up in the world of my character."
"The Ground Itself is not focused on images [...] and snapshot moments, but more concrete systems of culture, society, and history."
"The collaborate storytelling process is a quietly companionable one, as the focus on a location allows your story to escape the traditional framing around Ego and instead explore a biological network of sorts."
"The experience of playing it is one of scattered attention [...] [y]our attention will flit between these linked memories as you piece together the shape of them, if not the exact details."
"[A] narrative pilgrimage into the meaning of chosen family, community, and love[.] [W]hat a world [Mutazione] is: the construction paper cut-out aesthetic is absolutely gorgeous, and bigods I wish it were real – beauty and danger alike."
"[You] suss out secrets by pointing out details in the objects you’ve found and making logical connections through a roulette of sentence fragments to truly get to the truth like Sherlock Holmes, instead of the game feeding you answers like you’re Watson."
"A slow, glacial drift of dread and unease and distance."
"An endless airplane terminal at sunset [...] [r]elax in a liminal environment, at a liminal hour."
"Slice-of-life snapshots of a morning routine, with the pedestrian choices and actions being transformed into minigames."
"A one-sided conversation of interactive fiction, about [...] saying everything but what needs to be said."
"A tactile and comforting game that slices up the act of meeting up with a friend in Melbourne into tiny point-and-click interactions[.]"
"Beautiful scenes of normal life that blend into the surreal, building off of associations, and glimpses of a narrative and a world through a keyhole."
"An awkward, earnest bit of interactive fiction about the kind of conversations and connections you can strike up with strangers, and how they can grow."
"The cool inside of a lighthouse on an island in the middle of an ocean, against the bright overhead light of day."
"A storybook landscape built on the fluidity of water, with softly fading details, where time drifts off to the distance."
"Spend what change you have to get life events in tiered capsules, and see what little stories come about from the memories that machine dispenses."
"This in turn, along with the lush and dreamy aesthetic allows you passage into a brief headspace of quiet and connection, before you get on with your day."
"Subtle-toned pixel scenes accompanied by their background noise. Soundscapes that encapsulate the often-muffled score that surrounds us."
"A comic game about a slapdash bodge-job [...] one of the first games I played when exploring the small gamespace, and a staunch favourite."
"Short, frenetic, and tactile - a execution-based puzzle game lamenting the constant Sisyphean task that is keeping tidy."
"Just breathtaking to exist and wander around in, and marvel at the spectacle of the photorealism[.]"
"Two people watch an experimental documentary, in the middle of a highway. [...] A fake film game within a game and a twisting projection of transience."
"Click and drag your various ingredients onto the plate into a tasy arrangement, or get creative. Make a sandwich. Get it classified."
"[T]he gameplay loop of setting up cameras based on where you saw your target scamper off to the night before, betting on which positions will have the best chances of revealing the most information, seeing the results that night and then relocating the cameras based on that hooked me hard."
"Oh, Reader is a short piece of interactive fiction that had me on the edge of my seat, eager to savour every little detail and scrap of the story I could."
"It’s a thoroughly relaxing experience - the act of piecing together smooth, curved puzzle pieces instead of jigsaw shapes just feels satisfying[.]"
"Therein lies the joy of the game - without any verbal direction, using only trial and error, the foreign system used for navigating [Mu Cartographer] will become completely decipherable."
