Reviews by MathBrush

This game is a superhero Choicescript game whose main draw is that it lets you deeply customize your character’s superpowers through a point based system with different difficulty levels. You can be a super intelligent rich person with a robot suit, or a speedster with time powers, or a psychic with mind control, or combinations of the above. Or you could fly or have huge armor or all sorts of things.

More than that, you can choose to be good or evil! You can use violence to get what you want or peaceful ways. You can stop villains or join them, attack heroes or befriend them.

Customization-wise, this game is deeply impressive. However, I felt the story, while competent, was weaker. I remember thinking “this dialogue is stilted”, and when I searched other reviews they said the dialogue is stilted as well, so it’s not just me. And the story arc feels a bit flat. I beat the game after an event that just felt like another chapter, not a culmination of things.

But it wasn’t unpleasant or bad. The sandbox aspect was fantastic and I can heartily recommend this to people as a superhero wish fulfillment game with strong mechanics.

This game is a remake of a text game that came out before I was born, back in the early 80s.

The author has fully updated it, but it comes from a different tradition than the IF tradition I typically interact with. So in some features it's definitely an upgrade over most IFComp games, and in others it lacks features that I missed.

You play as a detective hired to break into a house and free a girl that has been taken hostage. Along the way, you'll encounter some chemistry, several animals, criminals, and some fun retro electronics.

The game's big features are its graphics, some of which are animated. It opens with a typewriter scene that spools out the backstory before jumping into a deserted town.

Other nice features are the game letting you hold down a button to see convenient names for interactable objects. The two-word parser (occasionally three-word) will block you from typing if you start entering an invalid command.

One nice part was finding an old electronic game of a sort I had recently been thinking about and talking to my son about. It was one of those retro ones that has the images literally baked into the screen and all the game does is choose which one lights up.

There are numerous achievements you got. The first time I died, I got around 12 achievements. It was pretty fun!

Other things went against the grain of what's considered common wisdom among the groups of authors of games I generally play. There's a 2-hour timer, frequent deaths, and no way to save. It doesn't recognize the command X as an abbreviation for EXAMINE (but LOOK ____ works). To fit onto an older platform, the text is sparse. I didn't end up finishing, as I had trouble with a crafting puzzle near the end where many actions result in death, and on replaying I found new deaths that set me back.

This design seems to me to be intentional; this is a commercial release, and players want things to feel substantial. By forcing replays that make you memorize a 'best path', it significantly increases playtime. The original Adventure did something similar with the time limit on the lantern. So, for someone looking for one game to occupy some time, these features help. For someone looking to play a lot of games in a short time, it can be frustrating.

This game has a target audience and I think they'll love it. If you can name a British microcomputer from the 80s, you should definitely try this game. If not, it still has enough charm that it could be worth your purchase.

I was given a review copy of this game.

This is a long simulator Hosted Game, similar to Life of a Mercenary, which I played recently. In this game, you are a medieval lord who has recently ascended to the throne.

You have 3 main stats (combat, knowledge and social), a revenue stream, soldiers, and four advisors, one for each main area of interest in your life.

Most of the game consists of a free-form ruling sandbox where you can visit the temple, train or recruit soldiers, read books in the library, or, most often, just hold court.

Holding court causes random events to occur. Frequently you have the chance to pass judgment in trials or decide how to invest your money.

Occasionally there are big story moments. One includes a mysterious meteorite. Others allow opportunities for marriage (I went for a political alliance marriage with a neighboring lord's daughter).

Near the end, the story becomes more prominent and sandbox options decrease. In the early game, it feels much more 'game' than story; in the end it switches and is almost all story.

This is labelled as a grimdark game but I would say it's fairly mild for grimdark. The grimdarkness comes from the opportunity to do things like cheat on your spouse or be villainous by killing peasants, and story elements involve differing amounts of blood and gore. The content warnings include rape but I didn't encounter that in my playthrough.

Overall, I generally understood what stats did and story elements seemed fairly clear. I did at first think it was going in a pretty boring direction with religion (the standard 'haha we're enlightened medieval people who realize that religion is fake even though our world has supernatural elements'), but near the end it took on a lot more creative role which I liked quite a bit.

I did feel like I was meandering a lot in the middle, having exhausted every single book in the library. There were numerous opportunities for big spending early on that I skipped and few in the middle. Overall, though, I liked the money balance in the game.

Compared to the most similar hosted game that I've played, Life of a Mercenary, I'd say that this game gives you more power, authority and agency, while Life of a Mercenary has a lot more character focus.

Glad I played this game; I spent around a week on it, and instead of binging it I just popped it open to play through a few days in-game, and I found it great as a time-spender when bored.

This game was written as part of the Iron ChIF competition with a week of writing time and the prompt of 'scroll that alters the world around it'.

This game does a lot of worldbuilding. There are two protagonists, each a different type of bird-person (a buzzard and something else I don't quite remember. There are also ravens. Which makes me wonder; in this world, are the animals named after the people, or vice versa? Or are their no bird animals at all?). It's a fantasy medieval world with royalty and a royal guard.

Scrolls are powerful artifacts kept in capsae which, when opened, influence everyone nearby with their powers. Your goal is to steal the healing capsa.

The game is relatively short but has a well-defined plot arc. It has two main phases: an exploration/puzzle solving phase and a conversation phase.

Both have their pros and cons. The exploration utilizes 3-d movement and interesting location-building, and the capsae can be combined in interesting ways, but I felt like there were so many possible actions and it was difficult to discover what the author intended without accidentally stumbling into it. The map layout was asymmetrical and I'm still not clear how momentum helps us with the first puzzle.

The conversation section has nice stakes, good worlbuilding and plot, and were fun to read, but I felt like the ending tried to simultaneously give the appearance of choice while having a clear 'correct option'; I think I would have preferred fleshing out the 'true path' more or having truly conflicting options.

Overall, I had fun with this game, and was very impressed by its short writing time. I consider it a solidly successful return to IF for Lucian Smith, who was previously best known for winning one of the earliest IFComps almost 30 years ago.

I was interested upon seeing this game, as I had heard of the author a lot before due to his frequent participation in discussions on the CoG forums and for the name of one of his WIPs (Mass Mother Murderer) and his saga of going to another company at one point.

So I really wondered what to expect here.

What I got was a tale that at its core is about belonging. You play as a young person in a crappy dead-end job with no money and no future. Following a fallen meteor, you stumble upon a demonic-looking microphone that promises you riches and fame in exchange for an unknown price.

Following the microphone's prophetic urgings, you audition for a death metal band, winning the lead spot over a serial-killer obsessed would-be singer named Larry, who instantly becomes your nemesis.

The word that came to mind the most as I played the game was 'alienated', and later when Larry was explicitly described as alienated, I felt validated. I also thought of 'disaffected'. Our main character suffers from many fallacies that I learned as part of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. Their biggest fallacy is 'the fallacy of control', where either they have a complete lack of control in their own life and suffer the whims of others, or they have total control and everything is their fault.

We see this in the way our character mentally divides people into 'good' and 'bad'. 'Bad' people are like the cop and the manager or Larry. They inflict bad things onto our protagonist which we are unable to resist. All bad things in our lives are the fault of 'bad people', who have no redeeming features.

In contrast, our band members are 'good people', the kind of people we always dreamed would find us. 'Good people' never get mad at you for anything, are completely understanding, nurture you, find you strong but also help out at all times. If we can only find 'good people' and keep them from finding out how bad we are, we will be happy; but in this fantasy, even if they find out our problems, they won't care. (Wayhaven has similar fantasies)

Our character really reminded me of an alienated youth I worked with once. He was handsome but thought himself ugly, and had good male friends but said that women hated him. I had quietly asked some of the girls his age what they thought of him and they said positive things, so I decided to observe him. He came into a class and the first thing he did was tell a joke about how much he hates women! I couldn't believe it. Step 1 of getting people to like you is 'don't say you hate them'. That reminds me of this character; both don't think that they have control over their lives, so if people don't like them, it's not because of their own actions, but because they're 'bad people', and all you can do is wait for a 'good person' to come along.

Anyway, I think a lot of people will find this character relatable. The story has an actual really positive overall arc, almost wholesome. Our character finds community and fulfillment.

The writing is intensely physical and sensory-based. Dripping blood, cold mists, trembling knees. The prose isn't purple, as it uses simple sentences, but is focused on these physical feelings to the extreme. That made it more compelling to me; I liked the writing quite a bit.

The choice-structure is unusual. I was annoyed at first that I found it hard to tell what choices had what effect, but I slowly realized that the first option always increases Toughness, the second one always increases Charisma, third Intelligence, and fourth something I don't remember. This makes replays a lot easier. It's not completely trivial, though, as each action also has an effect on which band member likes you, and that's not always fixed in the pattern.

Stats could use some tuning. Relationships start at 50 and end at 60, so the numbers 61-100 are essentially useless. That could be fixed by just adjusting all the numbers to be bigger (both for boosts and checks) or switching to additive stats the way that the main stats are.

I did encounter a few minor bugs, which I'll pass on to the author.

I think this game was less popular for a few reasons, the main being the low wordcount size (I've seen that in my own games of the same size!) and the way that the blurb and art don't quite match the game itself (I didn't know it was a rockstar game until I started, I thought at first it was a superhero game). I could recommend it to several people though, especially on reddit where people often ask for games with found family, or where you have imposter syndrome, or where you can be a jerk or have someone be a jerk to you.

This game is a bit off the beaten path for most Choicescript games I've played. It's long but eschews most numerical stats, instead giving you a variety of personality traits that come in threes and which you can switch between (I think, I was never quite sure).

There is a lot of worldbuilding here. There are many races, including one of scaled magic users and another of cannibalistic giants.

There is a pair of kingdoms with two rulers, each of which has their own consort. The consorts are the only people that know the identity of the heirs, who are camouflaged by being raised in orphanages. The current consort is the consort of both houses at once, which causes problems.

We follow four protagonists, with two making up most of the game. The first main protagonist is an orphan raised in one of those orphanages. The other is one of the scaly magic-users, embarked on an expedition to save their people. The two others appear in the prologue and in intermissions.

The stories are primarily relationship-centered, and not romantic ones, more like friendship, clanship, bullies, etc. There are some fights and several action scenes, but they mostly revolve around whether to help or protect others or to be selfish. I liked that.

For most of the story, I enjoyed the writing, characters, and worldbuilding, but I felt that the plot arc was kind of flat. It started off with bold moments and then just kind of simmered for 12-14 chapters, occasionally rising up and down. Important things happened, but it didn't feel as coherent as it could, especially with switching viewpoints so often.

In the end, it is revealed (massive spoilers) (Spoiler - click to show)Our two protagonists are actually the same! The scaly one is a partial reincarnation of the orphan's soul. This definitely raised my opinion of the game, but I'm not sure it makes up for the slow-paced early development.

Being part of a series means that slow development early on isn't too bad, but the ending of this game bursts with combinatorial explosion. It's no wonder the author hasn't finished the sequel; just resolving the loose threads from that last one would make the first chapter enormous (I had a similar issue when I helped revive a WIP by a different author, with permission, and my first task was to resolve an enormous combinatorial explosion with about 120 options on what kind of club activities you were going to have at a school festival).

So, as this game stands itself, it was very enjoyable, great writing and development, but could use better pacing/rising tension for my personal tastes.

I was given a review copy of this game.

While this isn't the Hosted Game with the highest wordcount (coming in at 380K words), it's really big gameplay-wise, as it uses simulation-style gameplay to get a lot of mileage from less words. I played it over 2 weeks.

You play as the head of a mercenary company, and you have a variety of stats like intelligence, stamina, health, etc. You also have money, guards, healers, etc. Together with you are your stalwart companions Arlo (level-headed and kind) and Anne (cutthroat and mercenary). You can also add other characters to your roster.

Rather than a strong central storyline, the game progresses through missions. Each mission has some fights you have to do and some gold. Missions often have ethical problems; a common one is 'will you help these people and lose money, or get money by letting them suffer?' Sometimes it is more complex, though, like 'will you help this group of people if it hurts another group?' There are also investigation segments where high intelligence or wisdom lets you take new conversation options.

There are tons of missions. The game was nudging me strongly towards retirement at the end, but I had about 4 or 5 big missions I could have done as well as a few tournaments I missed early on.

In between sessions, there is plot, as your advisors come to you with questions. I enjoyed seeing Arlo's backstory in a side-quest; perhaps one of the quests I missed had Anne's. I retired as a noble with Vera by my side.

There were bugs, as others have noted. I had negative soldiers at one point. Sometimes choices felt weird in ways that are hard to nail down (at one point I died and had to restart at a checkpoint while at other points I died with no lingering bad effects). But the overall quality of the game overwhelmed that negative point for me.

I also found the writing sparse and even dull at first, but as it progressed the quick dialog and fun characters grew on me, even though it never became very descriptive or florid. I think the author grew in skill while writing this.

Overall, I think I could recommend this to others. I think it has a demo, and gameplay is pretty similar throughout, so I'd recommend people to check out the demo and get it if they like it.

I received a review copy of this game.

This is a visceral and fun werewolf game where you, a medical resident, become turned into a werewolf by a teen girl werewolf looking for family.

The game has restrictions on gender; you can use she/her or they/them pronouns, and you can choose to be cis or trans, but not male (either cis or trans). This allows the story to explore themes related to the treatment and marginalization of queer women, including by straight/cis women (represented here by an evil vampire overlord).

There is a focus on found family, and many choices are between conforming to society or being wild and free. The first 4 or 5 chapters are dedicated to setting stats while the latter chapters only test stats, which was explicitly announced (I liked that feature). I did have trouble figuring out which choices affected which stats in the early chapters.

Despite its shorter length (50K words) I was really pleased with how many consequential choices there were in the game. Each chapter had a few choices that felt like they could really influence the future (trying a bit of a replay, some did [like skipping whole scenes] while others had cool flavor then went back to normal).

The only thing that threw me off was the ending section. First we find what feels like an insert from a different piece of fiction by the author (an Isekai-d OP character without a lot of connection to the rest of the world and who is 'cooler' than the protagonist). The very very end was also kind of confusing; there was one page about (Spoiler - click to show)another version of us from a mirror, which I couldn't tell if it was literally our AU self or if there was another werewolf who was like us.

Overall, though, if you want to play as a woman eviscerating sheep or if you like werewolf media then this game is for you.

I was warned ahead of time that this game was different than the others in the series, and that's definitely true. It feels more like an intermission of the series as a whole or a denouement of the first two games.

The first game tells the story of you leaving home, meeting everyone, and getting your soul stone. The second game has your friends finding their stones and culminates in a raid on the enemy base. Both of these feel like a full 'act' to a larger story.

This one doesn't quite feel like that. There's a lot going on; you've found the revolutionaries against the high king, and yet again you get chances to trust or distrust them. There's a lot of time recuperating. Everyone reveals their darkest past, even you, and there's some library and magical artifact research about the history of the Dragons.

While it's shorter and less full than the other games, it does take the time to relieve a lot of dangling plot threads, especially the lingering 'backstories' threads. It allows the player to process everything that happened to them and their loved ones, and introduces your Soul Stone as more of a character.

I would not enjoy this as a standalone game, but as part of a longer series, it makes sense. Writing big games is hard enough; writing a series of over 1,000,000 words is an immense chore. Given that this is the third of five planned books, I suspect that readers will look back from books 4 and 5 and see that this book was a good breather (a lot of long-running plot heavy media do this; manga for instance, often do time skips or training arcs after heavily dramatic episodes).

So, overall, I'd say this entry gives me good hopes for the series as a whole, even if this particular episode didn't have a strong self-contained plot arc.

I liked this sequel better than the original game. In that one, you were a frail weakling protected by four big powerful love interests. I enjoyed it, and enjoyed the romance aspect (which was the majority of the game).

This game builds on those strengths and adds more. After obtaining a soul stone in the first game, you now are quite a bit stronger, able to directly steer events and take charge.

I liked the interactivity. Rather than focusing on success and failure of skills (which did exist in some form, especially when choosing how to attack), the game features more strategizing, especially 'who do you spend time with' and 'who do you trust'. There are several strangers, friends and foes who have propositions that you can accept or decline. There are definitely 'failure states' but the game did a good job (to me) of making a failing, struggling story just as interesting as a winning one.

Plotwise, we spend a lot of this game gathering the other soul stones and preparing for a raid on the evil Vampire Lord to rescue our friend (I only played one path, so there may be more variations). Like the first game, there are so many options that pace feels a bit slow when it comes to the plot, but big when it comes to people and characterization.

I'd say this game/series is best for people that want the experience of camaraderie/ a large group, and the feeling of becoming more powerful over time.