The Living Puppet

This has the makings of a horror story, but (depending on the choices) it seems to me as though a number of vital details have been left out, whereas certain less-vital details have been drawn out and given a disproportionate amount of attention.

The basic story is that our husband is a puppeteer, and he covets a certain type of puppet that would greatly enhance his act--in much the same way a violinist might covet a Stradivarius violin. One day while he's out, his old teacher comes by for a visit ... so our husband gets the puppet he wants, our life gets a financial upgrade, but our relationship begins to sour.

Depending on our choices, there appear to be a few different ways this could go, all of them kind of horrifying. (I've seen three endings. I believe there should be four, unless the one unexplored thread branches out even more.) That's not bad. But the rules of magic seem insufficiently explained prior to the denouement, so that a lengthy explanation (not always comprehensive) is needed right at the climax, which rather diminishes the drama. Most egregiously, one of my options depended on an understanding of the story that I did not currently have. ("Become the living puppet"? I can do that? How?) Imagine if, instead, hints of the rules of magic were to appear throughout the second act. That could have given us a more suspenseful buildup to the third act, and allowed us to proceed on the third act's action without having to stop (as much) to explain.

That second act is nearly impossible to read, though: silver-grey text over a mostly-grey background image. I don't know why anyone thought this might be a good idea. At least the first and third acts play that silver-grey text over a mostly-red background image.

And in case I haven't made it clear elsewhere, I hate this convention of playing the text character by character instead of just giving out the whole body of text all at once. And I hate having to click after each paragraph, especially as there is a lot of text to run through before getting to a choice. Whoever originated this needs a good spanking.

There are language issues, mostly of the translation or "not my first language" variety. In spite of this and in spite of the information delivery issues, there's a pretty cool story in there, and I like how cohesive it all feels. If it were breakfast, it might be a mooncake ... just a mooncake, nothing to drink: not, perhaps, the most orthodox of breakfasts, and the lack of a drink makes it a little hard to swallow, but it's self-contained and complete unto itself. Also, it might be a bit of an acquired taste.