Update Two Hundred and Fifty-Six: 30 November 2018

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Another Bithell short, Quarantine Circular is set on a medical vessel in the middle of the ocean rather than a train for robots circling underground. Rather than growing machine intelligence, the game is focused on first contact with an alien species in the midst of a global crisis. It has a promising beginning, but…

This game just doesn’t work as well as the first one.

This title is more ambitious, with more branching storylines and a full eight different endings… but it doesn’t mean anything. There are three different ending conversations to have, and each ‘ending’ is just one single screen worth of text. They’re abrupt and not very satisfying. It just happens. The growth was in the wrong places, and what they wanted to do is bursting from the confines of the system they have set up. Subsurface Circular was balanced finely in what it set out to do, and Quarantine Circular faltered from that.

It was still good, still interesting, just not as successful.

Next up: December’s beginning! Holy hell, where did the time go?
Like last year, I’m going to take December to play all of my SG wins chronologically. That means I’m starting with…

See you soon!