Reviews by MathBrush

I was provided a review copy of this game.

This is one of the most popular Hosted Games of all time, and, by extension, one of the most popular Choicescript games of all time. On the Choice of Games subreddit, it's a running joke that people will sincerely recommend Fallen Hero for literally every possible recommendation request that gets posted. Want to play a game with an older love interest? Fallen Hero. Experiencing meaningful gender transition during a game? Fallen Hero. Play as a villain? Fallen Hero.

So it's difficult approaching the game objectively, after hearing it built up so much (and also not having, at the time of this review, played the second game). But I can certainly say that if I had found it with no prior warning, I'd regard it as one of the best Choicescript games out there.

In this game, you play as a villain who was once the telepathic hero Sidestep. Due to a traumatic event in your past, played out in small flashbacks throughout the game, you have decided to go full villain and commit terrorist attacks in service of your true goal. Things get rough when the heroes that haunt your memories start crossing your path in real life.

Complicating things, you have a second body, a comatose individual that you pilot telepathically. You are boring; your other body is exciting. You try to hide; your other body tries to stand out. You can meet people in this other body. You can romance people in the other body.

This is another facet of the game, which is that it allows truly villainous acts. But, since the game hides your true purpose, it allows you to imagine any justification for those acts. I was on board with almost everything my hero was doing until I was given the option to just straight-up murder innocent bystanders; I can't imagine any background that would justify that. The issue of deceiving others into romantic relationships with a fake body is also addressed. We can also manipulate people telepathically, and commit a whole assortment of crimes that are more common in fiction (theft, assault, embezzlement, violating OSHA, etc.)

I started playing the Hosted Games to see the contrast between them and the commissioned Choice of Games line. One thing that really stood out (and this was true for Wayhaven as well) is the lack of the classic CoG lineup of 4+ powers that are used in different encounters. Choice of Games style is to have a variety of attributes, including skills that go up and opposed personality attributes that go back and forth. A lot of CoG games (including both I worked on) tend to use these powers heavily, with a large number of encounters relying on you choosing your best 2-3 powers and using them each time. The best CoG games mix this up a lot more, adding unique flavors to each element (I loved how Choice of Magics gave a curse to each power), but I've struggled as an author on how to mix it up.

In this game, we only have 2 real 'power bars', and a small number of opposed stats. The vast majority of choices are just 'mixing it up', which in this case looks like strategizing and then carrying out a plan. Often there are just binary choices or 3 choices. The most common choices are to be risky or to be safe, or to affect a romantic interest (getting closer or pulling away). There are also moral choices like trolley problems (do you possess an innocent bystander to keep yourself safe?) and style choices (like the design of your villain outfit).

Perhaps the biggest positive aspect of the game as compared to the lowest-rated Choice of Games games is that there is almost no messaging of 'you, the player, messed up and failed'. Things definitely go wrong in this game, but it's usually due to outside circumstances. Other people's failures. You can make wrong choices; on one playthrough, I stole an item without a hitch and got an achievement; in another, I got critically and barely managed to scrape by and got an achievement. The achievements are part of that good design; you may have made risky or bad choices, but the game frames it as a cool thing that you did. And that's throughout the game. Compare this to my own game In the Service of Mrs Claus, where most choices, if you pick an option you're not good at, have failure text that makes it clear that you, the player, are at fault here. That failure text doesn't reward gameplay. Fallen Hero: Rebirth, on the other hand, doesn't divide the game into pass/fail; it divides into one version of a good story vs another version of a good story.

To be clear, I'm not saying that it's better than all official Choice of Games titles. It definitely ranks highly with them; but there are several high quality official games that share in some of the same qualities as this one. Here are some recommendations:

-For people who liked the edginess, ability to be a jerk, and darker/mature tone, Werewolf: The Apocalypse -- Book of Hungry Names would be a good choice. It has a very dark tone, with the ability to do things of dubious moral quality, and with heavy violence and a lot of relationships. While completely unrelated, the other Werewolves triology has similar good attributes.
-This game has a really strong central storyline that elevates the overall game quality, and which has the nature of a gritty hero's quest. Choice of Rebels, Vtm: Night Road, and Champion of the Gods have some similarly excellent storylines.
-This game lets you be a strong villainous character. The games Grand Academy For Future Villains (much less dark and more humorous) and Choice of Robots (allows you to be pretty ruthless) have good villain paths.
-For games that handle failure with grace and fun, I really enjoy both Creatures Such as We (which actually doesn't track stats at all) and Mask of the Plague Doctor (I loved the ending I got which would have been just a death/failure in other games but gave me a lengthy epilogue instead).

There are several other great games I didn't mention, but that's because they're good in different ways than Fallen Hero (for instance, Creme de la Creme has a huge selection of romantic interests, while Fallen Hero only has 2. They're great ones, but the focus is different).

Does the game live up to its reputation? Certainly. The story was gripping, the mechanics were seamless, and I look forward to the second book, which I've heard is even better.

I played this game as it was one of the least-rated games in the Short Games showcase.

It's a visual novel about a girl who meets a witch who's broken her broom. The pictures are drawn with bold colors and depict colorful characters.

The story is pretty simple; you walk around town viewing halloween decorations and trying to find a new branch for the witch's broom, and you intermittently get binary choices on how to treat people. While the game was short and its branching simple, I enjoyed the decisions, had to think hard about them, and experienced real consequences.

I found this piece charming, and enjoyed playing it.

This was the least-played Petite Mort game on my list. I wonder if people might have been off-put by thinking the cover art is AI, but the credits link to the different components it was built out of (some pixabay resources), so it’s legit.

This is a pretty brief Choicescript game. Most popular choicescript games boast of their vast length, so it’s a difficult medium to do an Ectocomp game in. Here the author handles that by reducing branching in the early parts and replacing it with player reactions, leaving stronger branching for the end (unless I misread that; it’s just the impression I got).

The story is based on Irish folklore. Late at night, you find a strange feathered cap near the ocean, of the type that your family used to tell you was worn by fairies. Keeping it, you begin to find strange occurrences around your house. It kind of made me think of Tailypo, but more like ‘what if Tailypo was hot?’

Overall, it was fun. I didn’t find any bugs, and I’ve always loved Gaelic, so seeing it in the game was a bonus.

This parser game takes you to a mountain town in Europe where you have to foil an evil villain. You'll explore a casino, tunnels, hotel and lair, have a car chase, use gadgets, and commit sabotage.

I started this a few times and stopped each time. The game is really open early on and the parser isn't 100% responsive so it was hard to know if I was on a wild goose chase or if I was close to figuring out the right thing.

I ended up trying a third time and followed the hints file pretty much exclusively. There were a lot of clever things in there that I probably wouldn't have thought of on my own.

The game leans heavy into genre stereotypes but it feels like it comes from a place of love, making for a generally enjoyable parody.

I was having a mental mini-crisis before playing this game. I had found that I hadn't been interested in playing IF as much in the last week, and wondered if I just wasn't enjoying the field as much as a whole or just the individual games I had been playing.

I sorted IFDB by latest publication to see what interesting games were newest and to see if there was any pattern. I was surprised to see a game had been released less than an hour ago, and by Jacqueline Ashwell. I've liked several of her games before, like the Fire Tower and her Fingertips game, but she hadn't released anything this decade.

But no, it was a new game. Booting it up, I thought, 'okay, this is the kind of IF I like. It's the kind of well-implemented strongly voiced style that was really prominent in the 00's.

I was slightly dismayed to see that the game invited you to follow specific actions in real life. I haven't really engaged will with games like that in the past. I didn't, I'm afraid, draw sigils on my arm when playing With Those We Love Alive and I didn't relate to the self-help in a recent IFComp game designed to help with heartbreak.

So I did skip a step or two in the instructions (I live in a one-bedroom apartment with my son and there's not a lot of space for turning off lights or shutting out sound), but I followed the journaling part. It was really therapeutic; I realized that I had had a huge number of positive and great things happen to me this year, and that the bad things that happened I could be proactive about next year (like getting proactive car maintenance). So I found that very satisfying.

This was a good interaction and restored my faith in IF and helped me decide my next move in IF (I was debating whether to release my new game I'm working on into IFComp next year, meaning I wouldn't be able to help out that year, or in a different competition, but I've realized I enjoy the helping out aspect a lot, so I'll release it separately).

Garry Francis has a longstanding series of polished, relatively 'meaty' parser games with traditional puzzles and a variety of settings.

This outing isn't up to his usual standard of excellence. It has a very small map, with no 'special' room descriptions for items, so most rooms end up with default listings like 'there is a lamp post here' or 'In the fountain you can see water' (not taken directly from the game, but similar). I found myself fighting the parser for basic interactions. For example, with the monkey, (Spoiler - click to show)it suggested giving a donation. I tried GIVE DONATION. That wasn't understood. I looked in my inventory and found cash. I tried PAY CASH. It needed a second noun. I tried PAY CASH TO MAN and PAY MONKEY. Both weren't undrestood. I tried TAKE CASH. I was unable to do so. I tried PUT CASH IN CUP. It said, 'But you are not holding the contents.' I later realized that there was a separate source of cash I needed to find. There weren't really any puzzles beyond (Spoiler - click to show)finding the coin, which is okay, but that's usually a highlight of Garry's games.

I'd usually say at this point that at least the setting was charming, but each room is given a minimal description, as are the vendors, and there is little emotional exchange between us and our three-year old child. My character felt detached, irritated.

I can say though that this out of the norm for Garry, who usually has very solid games, like The Mystery of Winchester High or Search for the Lost Ark.

This PunyComp game has you, a person with extremely good hearing, wandering around town in an attempt to stop a witch later on.

The game has a compact map with relatively few items per location. It has the traditional parser pattern of 'find either a solution looking for a problem or a problem looking for a solution and bring them together'.

It has amusing parts. My early death at the hands of my eventual nemesis was funny, and the response to my first UNDO was very funny.

There are a bunch of side plotlines which are quickly introduced and then quickly resolved. The fog and the tree in the graveyard, the doghouse, Mrs Green. The fact that the (ending spoiler) (Spoiler - click to show)actual witch was exactly who we thought she should be. Every thing in the game is smoothly implemented and the little story bits work, I just wish it was more of a coherent whole. (Spoiler - click to show)What connection is there between the witch, the priest, and the graveyard?

I appreciated the customized responses to actions and the smoothness of many of the puzzles; the mechanics of the game were a pleasure to play.

There's a time limit which is clearly stated early on. It is very generous.

This game was entered in PunyComp.

It has a lot of interesting elements that I would love to see more of or more polished.

You're on a boat drifting in an ocean. The setting and tone, which were my favorite parts, is dark and distressing, like a survival game like raft or subnautica where you are in danger of your life at all times.

There's a mysterious voice that comments on things you did. I was interested in seeing this expanded on, but the game ends before I could discover more. It reported a score, but no score was used in the game (so it was 0 out of 0). I found directions difficult to understand; the game used non-standard directions, and while the correct word to use was in the text, it might have been nice to have it bolded. Later, while I could leave the boat with (Spoiler - click to show)swim to debris, (Spoiler - click to show)SWIM TO BOAT or SWIM TO DINGHY to try to get back did nothing; some kind of response might be nice.. There were some whitespace issues, with missing line breaks before the command prompt most of the time.

If this game were polished more or expanded on, I'd definitely be happy to rate it higher. The concept is great and the author(s) did a good job of establishing tension and mystery, I think it just needs a little polish.

I played this during a punyinform competition.

It's an interesting game, with two different endings and a dreamlike atmosphere (well, it's more than just dreamlike, it is a dream). You are a little kid stuck in a pit and you're trying to find your stuffed animal.

As you explore, you find a lot of symbolism around foxes and implications of strange changes to either reality or your dream.

It's not very long, but its descriptiveness, use of senses, and unusual interaction mechanics were fun for me.

I had both a good and bad reaction to this game.

On one hand, it's well-polished and I found it a smooth and non-frustrating experience (I did peek into the source code for a hint at one point, but I realized I had ignored a major clue). I liked the puzzles that involved lateral-thinking, and they were the best part of the game.

On the other hand, I was a bit disappointed with the plot. I like Dark Star's past games (I gave the last two five stars) and thought they were creative and interesting. This, though, is a pretty standard fantasy plot and a lot of things just feel both generic and not commented on. We see something, we kill it, we keep going. We wear a loincloth, but I didn't discover any backstory; are we a barbarian? Two moments that would be emotional (the thing that happens to your friend at the beginning and the final battle at the end) pass by relatively unremarked-on. If it were an experiment in writing an emotionally-restrained protagonist, that would actually be pretty cool and it would fit (like there is an enchantment where they can't feel and have no problems with hurting animals or stealing). But I feel like I'm complaining too much; the puzzles work, the writing is descriptive and has some highlights (liked the ghosts). I just really like Dark Star's past work.