What We Keep

The concept is intriguing — memory as an object, a conservator who decides what gets kept — but the interactive elements didn’t land for me. Choices often felt cosmetic rather than consequential: I expected my decisions to reshape the political stakes more dramatically, but outcomes mostly shifted personal reproach or sympathy without altering the broader power structures. I also found the pacing uneven. Long stretches dwell delightfully on small sensory details (the chamomile scent, the brass hinge), which is lovely in short bursts, but the parts that should have delivered hard ethical consequences moved too politely. The ‘polite pressure’ of the office registered as atmosphere but not as real leverage; it was easy to shrug off in playthroughs. Not a bad piece — the writing is skilled and there are poignant moments — but as interactive fiction about political secrecy, it left me wanting more bite and clearer stakes.

I wanted to love this, and parts of it are lovely — the sensory writing and the initial workshop scenes are handled with care — but overall it felt too slow and a bit predictable. The reveal that the toy contained a recording implicating civic agents is a strong premise, but the subsequent beats followed familiar tropes: a conflicted protagonist, a shadowy broker, and polite bureaucratic pressure. None of those elements are bad in themselves, but the story didn’t take enough risks with them. Pacing is the bigger issue: some sections luxuriate in detail (which is pleasant) while other, more consequential scenes skim over material I wanted to see explored more deeply. The broker’s motives and the office’s internal politics in particular felt underdeveloped, which made some of the final choices ring a bit hollow. If you enjoy slow-burning atmosphere and don’t need everything to be surprising, you’ll enjoy this. If you want sharper twists or more political bite, it might frustrate you.

This story is quietly gorgeous. It’s the kind of piece where a single sentence — Etta arranging brushes like a quiet jurisdiction — tells you everything you need to know about a character and the world they inhabit. The atmosphere is a slow river of detail: the smell of the workshop, the mother’s clipped sentences, the wooden chest with faint leaf carvings. All of it accumulates until the ethical dilemma hits with real force. I also liked how the narrative treats secrecy as a physical thing that can be sanded away or sealed shut. The interactive design mirrors that metaphor brilliantly: you choose whether to expose or to preserve, and each choice carries consequences that feel earned. The polite pressure from the office is my favorite kind of tension — sinister because it wears civility like a glove. Highly recommended for readers who like moral complexity and lyrical prose.

I appreciated the way this interactive piece centers the act of preservation as a moral trade. Etta’s decisions are framed through the tools of her work, which is an elegant design choice: the player isn’t just choosing outcomes, they are choosing an ethic. The sensory details — oiled walnut, dried chamomile, the pitted brass hinge — are used economically and effectively. Mechanically, the game avoids cheap binary outcomes. Different decisions reveal different shades of complicity and care, and replaying yields genuinely new emotional information rather than just branchy plot points. The political angle (recorded night implicating civic agents) lands because it’s couched in intimate harm rather than broad conspiracy rhetoric. If you want a clean, polished interactive experience that asks you to sit with ambiguity rather than solve it, this delivers. One suggestion: a touch more background on the market broker would’ve made one of the choice paths even more compelling.

I went in for the political intrigue and stayed for the craftsmanship. The prose is the main draw: specific, tactile lines like ‘she soothed surfaces, coaxed fragile impressions into silence’ do a lot of heavy lifting in building Etta’s inner life. The reveal of the recording is handled with such a careful hand that it becomes almost unbearable — you’re not just uncovering evidence, you’re learning about a family’s trauma and a city’s rot. Interactions with the market broker felt especially ripe — there’s a delicious tension in deciding how much to monetize truth, or whether anything should be monetized at all. The pressure from the office is the kind of slow, bureaucratic menace that’s more frightening because it’s polite. Great voice, great setup, and morally messy choices that stuck with me long after I finished. Recommended.

Okay, I did not expect to be so invested in a conservator’s work life, but here we are. Etta Crowe is 10/10 for the ‘soft-spoken person who holds the world’s mess in her hands’ archetype, and the story plays that role with such care I forgave nearly everything else. The wooden chest scene was cinematic: the swollen seams, faint leaf carvings, the mother’s trembling hand — felt like a short film. I have to give props to the writer for resisting the urge to make every antagonist a mustache-twirling baddie. The office pressure is polite, chilling, and very believable. And the market broker? Deliciously ambiguous. The interactive bits are smartly designed; choices feel morally weighty rather than performative. Also, yes, I cried a bit during one ending. No regrets. 😉 If you want atmosphere and moral knots rather than shootouts, this nails it.

Quiet, measured, and quietly unsettling. I loved Etta’s rituals—the methodical recording of temperature and odor, the brushes arranged like a quiet jurisdiction—and how those tiny actions mirror the bigger moral work she’s asked to perform. The scene with the mother holding the wrapped toy is small but loaded; you can sense everything the mother isn’t saying. The interactive elements feel natural: your choices don’t feel like gimmicks but like extensions of Etta’s tradecraft. The political implications (that recording implicating civic agents) are handled with restraint, which I actually preferred to full-on exposé. It leaves room for ambiguity and second-guessing, which fits the theme of secrecy and memory. My only minor quibble is that one of the broker scenes could have been fleshed out a little more, but overall this is an immersive, thoughtful piece. Highly recommended if you like moral dilemmas delivered in quiet prose.

As someone who reads a lot of investigative, morally ambiguous fiction, I appreciated how What We Keep balances craft description with political tension. The protagonist’s conservator skills are not just window dressing: Etta’s ability to ‘coax frames of sensation into form’ becomes the story’s central mechanic — she is literally the one who decides what memories get air and which stay buried. The story does a good job of staging choices without reducing them to binary good/evil. The recorded night is handled with careful restraint; the accusation against civic agents isn’t sensationalized, which makes the stakes feel more plausible and scarier. The broker character introduces commerce and rumor as forces that complicate consent and ownership of truth — smart. If you enjoy interactive fiction that foregrounds ethical puzzles over action sequences, this one’s for you. The writing is precise, the atmosphere convincing, and the replay value solid because different decisions reveal distinct moral consequences rather than just mechanical branches.

What We Keep hooked me from the first paragraph — that opening image of a workshop smelling of oiled walnut and dried chamomile is tangible enough that I could almost taste it. Etta Crowe is a beautifully realized protagonist: practical, tender, and haunted by the ethics of her craft. I loved the quiet ritual of her workbench (the neat row of glass lenses, brushes like a quiet jurisdiction) and the way small details bloom into moral weight. The toy chest scene — the mother clutching the bundle, the brass hinge, the folded leaf carvings — is heartbreaking and almost holy. When the recording reveals civic agents in the night, the book pivots into a slow-burning political drama that never feels heavy-handed. The choice architecture of the interactive sections is smart; you can feel the tug between exposing the truth and preserving lives. The market broker and the office’s polite pressure add texture — neither is cartoonishly evil, which makes the decisions sting. I replayed one path to see a different outcome and the emotional payoff was worth it. This is a tender, morally complex piece of interactive fiction that respects both character and reader intelligence.