Playing “The Girl In the Haunted House” gives a general outline for the best way to design this sort of game in a way that branches well, yet provides enough cohesiveness to the different branches. While there wasn’t much stylistically here, the font choices (small, white font with little kerning) and a black background fit the theme. I wish that the game was more visual, with sound or other media that helped to relay some of the action and events, but I was satisfied with the dialogue.

The opposite is true of “The Uncle Who Works for Nintendo.”  The sound design was excellent. With the clock chiming, the sound of the storm outside, and the other ambient noises, the game became unsettling through the way that those pieces enhanced the dialogue. To me, the most haunting, impressionable effect was the “voice” of the “uncle.” The distorted, echoing, moaning, churning voice made the appearance of the uncle mysterious but also incredibly dreadful. I did not even realize that the voice was speaking until I listened closely through the distortion. When I figured out that it was saying “Child…” repeatedly, it somehow became more unsettling. Presenting the uncle like this was great though because it never quite let through a solid idea of who or what it was.

There was a sense that the story was unpredictable because the true nature of the “uncle” and what he was is hidden from the player. In all of my playthroughs, I had to piece together who or what the phenomena was through context and without being directly told the information. In that way, I believe that the story maintains a sense of discovery which helps it feel even more like a game. Finding new information through exploration and through the contextual pieces gathered from multiple playthroughs gave me a feeling that I had to play through multiple times to find more. I enjoyed that aspect of it, and it made the new dialogue options feel more varied and unique.