Family Review: Two Days, Two Thousand Feelings, and Why That's a Problem
Owlskip Games spent two days making an interactive fiction piece about loss and legacy. I spent ten minutes playing it. One of us got the better deal, and it wasn't me.
The Premise (Which You've Already Guessed)
Family opens with you sorting through a deceased relative's belongings. Yes, that premise. The one every interactive fiction writer discovers in their second year. The game wants you to feel something about objects and memory and the weight of inherited things. I've played this exact concept so many times I could write the parser commands in my sleep. 'X photograph.' 'Take letter.' 'Read diary.' The mechanics of grief, reduced to a four-letter verb. What frustrates me isn't that the premise is familiar. It's that Owlskip Games had two days to make something, chose the safest emotional territory in IF history, and then executed it competently enough that I can't even get properly angry about it. The writing is fine. The structure works. The emotional beats land where they're supposed to land. It's like watching someone perfectly recreate a recipe they found online instead of cooking something that might actually surprise me.
Parser Interaction, or Lack Thereof
The gameplay consists of examining objects, reading things, and occasionally making a choice that doesn't actually change anything meaningful. This is parser-based IF at its most passive. You're not solving puzzles. You're not exploring a complex space. You're clicking through a linear story that occasionally asks you to type 'north' to continue. I spent more time trying to find alternative actions than the game probably took to write. Can I refuse to look at certain objects? No. Can I examine things in a different order that might reveal new connections? Also no. The parser accepts standard IF commands, responds appropriately, and guides you down a predetermined path with the gentle insistence of a funeral director. Which is thematically appropriate, I suppose, but mechanically it's the equivalent of a visual novel that forgot to include the visuals. Spider and Web taught me that parser IF could be genuinely interactive. Photopia showed me it could be emotionally devastating. Family shows me that someone can build a functional parser interface in two days, which is technically impressive but experientially underwhelming.
The Writing Does What It Needs To Do
Here's where I have to grudgingly admit something. The prose is actually decent. Not groundbreaking, not particularly poetic, but solid and occasionally affecting. Owlskip Games understands how to describe objects with emotional weight, how to let silence do work between lines, and when to pull back instead of overselling a moment. There's a specific passage about photographs that almost got me. Almost. The writing knows how memory works, how looking at old pictures makes you realize you remember the photo more than the actual moment. That's good observation. That's the kind of detail that comes from actually thinking about the subject matter instead of just writing about 'loss' in the abstract. But then it ends. Right when it should be building toward something bigger, right when I thought maybe this was going somewhere unexpected, it just stops. Ten minutes. That's it. I've read Steam reviews longer than this entire game. The emotional impact the game is reaching for requires more development, more time with these objects and memories, more reason to care. Instead, you get a brief tour of someone else's grief and then credits.
What This Game Actually Accomplishes
Family works as a proof of concept. It demonstrates that Owlskip Games can write competent prose, build a functional parser interface, and structure a brief narrative with proper pacing. For a two-day creation, those are legitimate achievements. The problem is that 'made in two days' stops being an excuse when you're asking players to engage with heavy themes like death and legacy. I don't need innovation in every game I play. Sometimes I want comfort food, familiar mechanics, the known emotional beats of a well-worn genre. But interactive fiction about sorting through dead relatives' belongings isn't comfort food anymore. It's the genre's default setting. If you're going to write this story again, you need either a fresh angle or exceptional execution. Family has neither. The Spring Thing 2017 festival context matters here. This was a jam game, meant to be experienced alongside dozens of other experimental pieces, judged on ambition and execution under time constraints. In that context, Family probably stood out as a polished, emotionally coherent entry. Removed from that context and presented on itch.io years later, it reads more like a writing exercise than a complete experience.
Rating Breakdown
Functional parser, clean interface, no bugs â which is impressive for a two-day jam game, but also the bare minimum I expect from IF in 2017.
Text adventure about family and loss? Photopia did this better in 1998, and I've played forty variations since.
It's free and takes ten minutes, so the value proposition is solid even if the experience isn't particularly memorable.
Standard parser commands, minimal interactivity â you're mostly reading and occasionally typing 'examine' at highlighted nouns.
Text on screen. That's it. Which is fine for IF, but don't expect any atmospheric music or even basic sound cues.
I can't imagine why anyone would replay this after one sitting â you've seen everything, felt everything, and there's nothing left to discover.
What Didn't Annoy Me
- Clean, functional parser that accepts standard IF commands without frustrating edge cases
- Prose that occasionally captures genuine emotional observation about memory and objects
- Completely free, so the only thing you're risking is ten minutes
- No technical issues or bugs despite the rushed development timeline
- The pacing works for the abbreviated runtime, nothing feels artificially padded
What Made Me Sigh
- Premise so familiar I could recite the emotional beats before starting
- Minimal interactivity, you're mostly typing 'examine' at things the game already highlighted
- Ends right when it should be developing into something more substantial
- Zero replayability, no branching paths or alternative perspectives to discover
- Doesn't justify its own existence beyond 'I made something in two days'
Family is competent, brief, and ultimately forgettable. It does nothing wrong, which is precisely the problem. Owlskip Games clearly has writing ability and technical skill. The parser works. The prose occasionally resonates. But making a functional thing isn't the same as making a thing worth experiencing. If you've never played interactive fiction about sorting through a dead relative's belongings, maybe start with Photopia instead. If you have ten minutes to kill and want something mildly affecting, Family won't waste your time. But it also won't give you anything you haven't felt before, expressed in ways you haven't already read. The 5 out of 5 stars rating on itch.io comes from exactly one person, which tells you everything about this game's reach and impact. It exists. You can play it. Then you'll move on and probably forget it by tomorrow. Sometimes that's enough. Usually, it isn't.