Reviews by MathBrush

This game was entered into Spring Thing 2025. In it, you play as someone near a fire in a cave. You are going to sleep, and going to dream. In the dream, you explore a fantastical dreamscape.

A recurring feature is that you continually have a timer and you die if you don't periodically wake up. I don't know what intended play is but I just woke up and stoked the fire after every choice, and used the 'back' button if I ever selected a choice with no new options.

I'm going to look at this with 5 different criteria:

+Polish: I didn't encounter any bugs and the writing was smooth and typo-free.
+Descriptiveness: The world seemed vibrant and interesting (in dreams).
-Interactivity: I didn't really enjoy the frequent waking up mechanic. It did pay off at one point, which was cool, but most of the rest of the game felt like I was just repeatedly scouring the options till something changed.
+Emotional impact: The game was amusing and the dreamscapes made me feel whimsical.
-Would I play again? I did feel kind of frustrated with the waking up thing, and the ending felt like it lacked a little weight.

This game lets you select how 'intense' you want it to be on a scale of 1 to 5.

The level 1 game version is very brief and succinct, and provides almost no information.

The level 5 is visceral, removing control from the player and filling the screen with text.

There are two layers to the game. One is the story, which is someone's authentic and personal story communicated in an effective way that fits with a lot of experiences I've seen in myself (a little) and in others (a lot) over the years. You can't really measure a story like this as a success or not, but you can say whether it was transmitted in an authentic-feeling and competent way, and it was.

The other layer is the selection of the different levels. Seeing the variety of them was really telling and compelling, because it showed what the author considered most disturbing and least disturbing, and the choice of some background information only being in level 4 was particularly interesting. I'm not sure how I felt about the response to level 3; it seems like a value judgment separate from the main message of the game. If the author had just (Spoiler - click to show)provided a description for level 3 that was in between 2 and 4, I wouldn't have thought 'that's silly, there's no such thing as middle ground.' It would have just been normal. But, the choice does provide an interesting talking point for discussing the game and leads to the name of the game.

I hope everyone who has suffered from eating disorders in the past or currently are suffering gets help, patience, and kindness from those around them, and if you're reading this while going through it, I support your efforts, whether big or small, repeated or rare.

This game threw me off (intentionally) at first when it didn't allow me to make a new save and had me continue. I thought I must have played a while ago and tried to reset, but it didn't work, so I kept going. It turned out it was (Spoiler - click to show)intentional, as the person I'm playing as was playing the game within a game. Pretty cool!

In this story, we play as a wounded soldier, and I mean really, really wounded: quadruple amputee, difficulty seeing and hearing. But you're able to interface with computers. And you can get therapy through virtual games, where doctors pose as NPCs to ask you questions.

You have a friend in the games, named Ada. While you play, you have flashbacks to your time in war. It seems like a semi-fictionalized version of America's constant wars in the middle east, with an 'endless war' in a desert-y area. The fiction part is about people surviving and being rehabilitated with expensive health care then shipped out to serve again.

I had different ideas for how the story could wrap up in a tidy way but it was left with several things open to interpretation, in a way that worked well for me. I enjoyed the variety of animations and text effects and fonts and the way the game differentiated different speakers and settings. Great work.

In this Twine story, you play as a down-on-their-luck artist who is trying to sell a painting. Unusually, you have the ability to enter your paintings and retrieve things from them, including magical creatures, called Artifexes. You usually keep one 'keepsake' from each of your 'canvases'. You need to sell a painting in order to keep on top of bills but there's a problem with your newest painting (and your newest buyer).

There are three things I liked about this game:

-The real-life parts were convincing. Our character seemed like a lot of artistic-type young people I know, in the way they act, the language they use, their relationship with family. The parts where the dishes just aren't done and that makes them too depressed to do the dishes, and that makes it hard to do anything, is very real. I also suffer from depression, and it changed my life when someone said that I shouldn't feel guilty for using paper plates if it improves the rest of my life. I do that now and it's really cut down on the amount of dishes I have to do. I also make sure not to buy too many dishes so that it can't get overwhelming. Anyway, I related to this a lot.

-The magical parts seemed consistent and well-thought-out. It felt like part of a TV show or series and the kind of thing where people could keep wikis on the info, as opposed to the kind of slapdash 'use your imagination and focus on your feelings' magic I often write.

-The choices felt like there were real consequences and reasons to pick both. Even if there weren't consequences some times, choosing to be angry at your jerky but lovable cat or apologizing to it felt like it mattered.

I like ghost stories, and mystery games, and circus settings, so this mystery game helping a ghost pass on set in a circus was enjoyable to me, though hard.

It's a choice-based game, and you move from location to location, trying to find all the information you can.

The game is randomized like Clue, with the murderer, location of the body, and murder weapon all chosen separately.

I at first thought I could play like some mystery games where it automatically records all pertinent information, so I didn't take notes, expecting the Notes tab would be an automatic collection of my thoughts. I was dismayed when I found that the notes was just a place for you to personally mark off what items you thought were most important! I played through a couple more times and used it then.

Another thing that makes the game difficult is that you have to visit areas repeatedly to see all info. Some things appear only on the second look-through.

Some of the randomized clues are much easier than others. The body location is the easiest (once you find it). Some of the murder weapon clues are much clearer than others. The person involved is the hardest; I was only really able to see what counted as an alibi and what doesn't by playing multiple times and comparing the two games.

So there are a few rough edges here and there, but I had enough fun to try it multiple times, and the art made by the artist (the author) contributed to the game.

This is an extensive story about a vampire who was both blessed and cursed with vampirism. Of course being a vampire is a bad thing, but you've been blessed to be a vampire with some control and restraint over your feeding.

Unfortunately for you, you've been trapped by an ingenious device and have to await the coming of the sun (which is the radiance inviolate mentioned in the story name).

While you're waiting, you have numerous flashbacks. You see how you originally died, how you came to be a vampire, and some other unholy creatures you've met.

While most of the game was linear, there were a few interesting choices and (I think) multiple endings. I ended up with a somewhat romantic ending.

I liked the writing in general. One effective piece of text I liked early on:

"Camille—his maker—had left him a particular imprint; a drive to consume those already craving relief from suffering.

Acts of mercy that fueled him, yes, but also brought him to face that force of nature which he himself refused and resented.

Death."

Overall, by far the best part in this story for me is the dynamic between characters. It's clear the author is talented and experienced at writing interesting conversations and relationships, and that's something I look forward to in future games from this author.

Portrait with Wolf is a poetic game. Or, a collection of smaller games. When you open it, you have a one-room game and a standard Inform header but with Info for a different game. You have 4 choices you can select from. Choosing one of them gives you a brief ending, then reboots to a new miniature one-room game with four choices.

The choices have different words each time but represent CAT, TURNIP, BOOT, and ASTRONAUT. Wolves are also a recurring theme.

After making 6 choices, you are given an ending. How much of different choices you've made affects which ending you get.

After collecting all the standard endings, you can go on to get a few more complicated endings. I played until I was able to unlock all the GUIDE options.

I initially wrote a review of this game saying that I didn't really understand it, and documented my extensive efforts to find hidden meaning in the game. I didn't feel satisfied with my review, though, so I sought out more clarification on the game, reading other's reviews and asking the author for clarity.

I found out that I had framed the game incorrectly. I had thought the point of the game was to find clues in the text to piece together a mystery. While I enjoyed the art that reminded me of Van Gogh's thick oil style (with brighter colors and subject matter reminiscent of lovingly-illustrated German fairy tale books I read as a kid), I thought it was tangential to the work as a reward for solving the text mystery.

Instead, the game is meant as an experimental work. Had I paid closer attention to the Spring Thing blurb and in-game explanation, I would have seen that it was an homage to the former IF art shows, where I think it would have fit well; Emily Short and Ian Finley would likely have seen this game as a great fit for those competitions (I mention Ian Finley as he also excelled in artistic, artwork-centered experimentation).

As an experiment, this game does many things that are highly unusual. It takes parser affordances more typical for challenging puzzle games (like careful explanation text, error messages, guides, etc.) and incorporates them into a non-goal seeking context. (I say non-goal seeking even though the game does have goals, but the goals are more 'here is what you can see', like Jacqueline Ashwell's The Fire Tower, another IF Art Show game, rather than 'solve the puzzle). Additionally, the creative use of the Inform game header was something that struck me as the game's most intriguing part, using the most dull and tedious part of a regular game and turning it into one of the more fascinating portions of the game.

Part of the poetry sections of this game have been spun off into extensions. The complex menus and ending systems are also an experiment that I could see find use in a variety of other games, especially the presentation of endings and unlocked material.

I played the original spring thing online play version, which jumps directly into the text. The new version, which I played on itch after writing my initial review, has a beautiful opening image that significantly enhances the initial impression. I'd be interested in learning more about how the image scaling was handled.

I was glad to get a new perspective on the game, as I had set out to do. It was on my mind for the whole day after I wrote my original review, and I didn't feel settled. I do now.

This game was entered in Spring Thing 25, and it was a pleasure to play. It consists of three smaller games all tied together by a larger meta-story.

The first game I played was Sticks and Stones, which reminded me a lot of Tavern Crawler, an IFComp winner from a few years ago. This mini-game is played completely by arrow keys, with arrows serving both as navigation and as ways to interact. It includes combat, a money system, two protagonists, a variety of NPCs, and made me feel like I was playing a really enjoyable game (as Spring Thing organizer, I can reveal that this game actually came in 3rd in votes, and was only off by 1 vote).

I then played Treasures of the Deep, which I had seen someone else mention as short and linear, which it was. I saw the author mention in his postmortem that he went out of this comfort zone for the writing here, and I think it paid off. It gave the feeling of 'this is a person who often writes gripping stories' rather than 'this is this author's first time.'

I then played The Labyrinth, which I enjoyed but didn't like quite as much. The escape room model matches his other games, but the difficulty is reduced, so some of it felt like busy work (this is amplified by me playing all 4 people at once. I've only ever managed to pull off one multiplayer IF game.) I saw in his postmortem that new players got confused, so it wasn't super easy, but I think the real issue here is that it's important in a puzzly game to model early on the type of content and puzzles you're going to have. The Labyrinth has a lot of frustrating things (including early deaths) and content you can't interact with yet (like door riddles and the patterns on the well) before you reach the first sharable piece of information. I think it might have been better to have an optional early piece of information you can share that just gives the other players a thumbs up or encouragement or something so they can get the pattern down early. But I'm not sure.

I enjoyed the meta-puzzle at the end. I had expected it to be more subtle and had copied down patterns of gem-pushing in each game, sure that I'd have to do something like navigate to the menu to find a secret meta-puzzle by the order I push gems at the beginning. Instead, everything was quite clear and out in the open, which was fun.

Seeing only one review on IFDB, I assumed very few people had completed the game. I was really surprised to get to the end and see that over 30 people had recorded their names. I guess that really shows that the general rule of the internet applies (10 times as many people see something as interact, 10 times as many people interact as comment).

This game is a tribute to a character (Elaine Marley) from the Monkey Island games, which I admit I've never played (I've always been more into the 'text' part than the 'adventure' part).

It alternates between notes from the author about his feelings on Elaine Marley and Monkey Island (with some especially fascinating commentary on the layers of reality in the games) and actual gameplay.

I liked both parts. The author notes were fun to read and to compare with my own experiences interpreting and understanding games.

The gameplay parts involved escaping after being kidnapped by the ghostly pirate LeChuck. You mostly explore every option until you find all the items you need, then make some whacky contraption or something to escape. To me it felt like I could feel clever guessing what I needed to do early on, but that if I were stuck, the game would let me try every option until I succeeded.

Overall, I loved the heartfelt feeling the game had, it felt the opposite of impersonal or cold.

As I was playing this game, I thought, "This is exactly the kind of game I enjoy most easily: a polished kind-of-puzzly parser game with fun dialogue." It's amazing the reach that Charm Cochran has, from the gritty choice-based game We the Remainder that I first got interested in, to short story-focused games like 1 4 the $, to meditative and poignant games like Sundown and Gestures towards Divinity, to this game.

You play as a spy who has access to word-reversing technology. With it, you can reverse words you can see. Like Counterfeit Monkey, there is some thought put into world-building; people's perception of words (including your own perception) affects whether you can reverse something or not.

I enjoyed the riff on Spider and Web at the beginning with the lockpick, that was genuinely amusing.

The game isn't too long; there's really 3-4 sets of puzzles (the initial rooms, dealing with an NPC, a locked room, and the endgame).

It's an interesting balance of open-endedness and hand-holding. On one hand, conversations can branch a lot--but it often requires you to go through every topic. Puzzles have many potential solutions--but you're often given explicit hints about it and can ask for more in-game. This balance worked really well for me for 90% of the game. It broke down when it came to the puzzle with the (Spoiler - click to show)hammer. There were a ton of items that could potentially serve as a (Spoiler - click to show)handle in my mind: (Spoiler - click to show)the lockpick, a spare part, a branch of the retem shrub, maybe even the yam. But it's probably because I didn't know what a (Spoiler - click to show)spanner is and I dropped it early on as I didn't see a use. The hints didn't get explicit enough for me to know what to do and there was no walkthrough, so I looked for other reviews and saw what to do here as well as the next step which also seemed pretty unintuitive (but for which there is a hint). Now, this doesn't mean it's a bad puzzle; I barely struggled for 10 minutes before getting help. Someone patient and methodical could easily have solved it. It just stuck out when compared to the other puzzles.

Overall this was a good experience. I spent a long time griping above, but that was a minor divot in a good game.