About

Hi. I do interactive fiction stuff sometimes under the handle ProP (derived from ProtossProbe).

I’m an interactive fiction amateur, and a professional researcher in cognitive psychology specializing in language processing in adults, infants, and computer models. Sometimes I publish short fiction, which skews horror/weird lit/surreal.

I’m always hesitant to post public reviews anywhere, but this blog is part of my attempt to start.

What you should know about my reviews:

Things that are important to me, personally, as a player, that I will take into account when I play an IF game:

  • writing: I know that for some people, strength of puzzles, in terms of fairness, creativity, etc., is an important factor. I’m not one of those people. I get where they’re coming from! But to me, personally, the one thing that really separates IF from video games is its literary nature. A good point-and-click game will have good puzzles. But a solidly-written story, something that reads well while you play it, is unique to IF. To that end, I personally place a lot of value on the strength of prose.
  • bugs: a typo or minor bug here or there won’t ruin my experience. What I will take into account is something like a game-breaking bug, or major errors that ruin my immersion.
  • technical presentation: probably what it sounds like on the tin.

Are these things objectively the most important or fair when rating interactive fiction? Beats me, dude.

Lastly:

  • I will not be posting any numbers in my reviews. No one needs my help to quantify their experience(s) into actual ratings, and I’m not comfortable sharing the scores I give games.
  • I think it’s kind of bullshit to give a poor rating to a game because its theme or genre isn’t my speed. I’ll try to be objective in this way. I’m personally bored to death by relationship sims, for example, but I ain’t gonna give a poor review to a well-done game.
  • ProP is pronounced however you feel like. Personally, I think of it like the word ‘prop’. It’s short for ProtossProbe, make of that what you will.