Reviews by MathBrush

This game is a parser game written in QuestJS and entered in the 2026 Text Adventure Literacy Jam.

In it, you enter a strange villa with a number of rooms accessible one at a time, each with a diorama or statue representing a stage in human progress (from hunters and gatherers to mathematics). Gameplay mostly consists of finding something missing and assembling it, or finding a code and applying it elsewhere. Doing so unlocks the next room and part of one meta-puzzle.

Overall, the concept is an intriguing one and one that has been explored in a satisfying way in other games like The Edifice, though this game has a unique take.

That writing is not bad. I poked at the code at one point and there is a version in German as well, so I suspect it may have been translated at one point, but there's no sign of that really in the version I read.

Why the low score? To me, the parser was just a lot to wrestle with. I constantly felt like I was typing the wrong things. A lot of nouns were missing synonyms (especially a headboard that was prominently mentioned and part of a major puzzle). The author decided to eschew compass directions, so doors had to be typed out instead, but you can't ENTER DOOR or GO DOOR, you have to USE DOOR, except when you're in a room outside the main hall, you don't USE DOOR you USE HALL.

I eventually had to download the game and pop open the code to figure out how to get to the ending. Each individual puzzle has some nice creativity to it, it's just hard to figure out how to deal with the parser. This game would have benefited from more testing and feedback, but it's also the kind of game it's hard to get testers for, which is kind of a vicious loop. The overall plot felt a bit missing as well; while there was an overall progression, nothing much is explained or even hinted at. That's kind of par for the course for old-school puzzlers, though, so it's not a big complaint.

I always look forward to Daniel Stelzer's games now because they've basically become like Ryan Veeder, in that both have a good track record of consistently putting out well-polished games with interesting mechanics that are easy to finish and have a wide variety of settings.

The setup in this game is a kind of medieval alchemical heist, which made me realize several of the games in this competition have similar themes, which made me look up and discover the theme is 'archaeology'. The mechanic in the game is an object that vanishes things (discovering what that exactly means is the major crux of the game).

The map is compact, with most of it forming a 3x3 square. Elementals guard the different parts of the map, requiring some ingenuity in how to deal with them.

Overall I found the game solid and good for beginners while still being fun for experienced players (one optional puzzle was too hard for me as I hadn't experimented enough, but it was, fortunately, optional). To me the only flaw (if it can be called that) was that in my subjective opinion it stopped just short of greatness in story and mechanics. I feel like if it had just one more puzzle in the main areas and one more paragraph at the end with some kind of new interesting info or twist or hook then it would have been awesome. Even without that je ne sais quoi, it's one of the best games I've played this year.

This game was part of the Text Adventure Literacy Jam.

It's written in the Thinbasic Adventure Builder, and is quite a bit better of an experience than most Basic-written download-only windows-only adventure games I've played: shortcuts like X and I are recognized, for instance, and there's a character that can move around as well as context-dependent hints.

It's still a bit rough, but I only ran into one or two actions I really struggled with (one of the last actions of the game is to (Spoiler - click to show)POUR VIAL ON PEDESTAL but I kept trying (Spoiler - click to show)POUR MERCURY ON PEDESTAL, POUR MERCURY IN PEDESTAL, PUT VIAL IN PEDESTAL, POUR VIAL, PUT VIAL ON PEDESTAL, etc.).

The map is a bit confusing, especially as magical connections open up that lead in circuitous loops.

Story-wise, you're in search of the elixir of life and have to find ingredients in a monastery. Puzzles typically revolve around getting info for passwords or codes in one room and using them in another (like asking a character about 4 items and then combining the ones they tell you to).

The writing and plot felt very standard Catholicism-influenced fantasy, like the Deryni books or parts of David Eddings, but with a lot of elements that were both hyperspecific and generic. Orders and symbols were alluded to and not explained, characters were introduced but not commented on or involved, and there wasn't a clear progression or escalation of story. All in all, it reminded me of AI-generated plotlines and text that had some human editing mixed in, not necessarily because AI was used (it might not have been), but perhaps because AI was trained on a lot of stories similar to this one.

Samurai of Hyuga 1 was a game heavily influenced by samurai films and edgier anime, with a main character ronin who has killed countless people as an assassin and is assigned to guard a smart child while hunting demons.

In this game, you play shogi! For most of the time.

It actually works out well. Our character is kind of OP, so it's hard to think of creative obstacles for them. Rather than having more fighting, they are first severely injured and then roped into a shoji tournament where you have to take down a variety of foes while also being an uneducated and kind of dumb ronin.

The game broadens the world of the series by bringing in European influences. There are some opportunities for serious romantic moments. There are also a lot of dramatic deaths and bits of violence, making it one of the goriest IF series (compared to things I've read recently, it's similar to Centuria or maybe Kagurabachi in terms of gore).

This book also continues the trend of being plagued with questionable japanese translation and indecent behavior toward minors. The most egregious japanese example was translating the gold in 'gold general', a shogi piece, as 'gorudo' (the katakana transliteration of the English word gold, which is sometimes used for the color) rather than 金 'kin', which is both the native word and the actual word that is printed on the pieces themselves (including in in-game screenshots). Like the first game, other characters insinuate that our character is sexually attracted to our minor charge, and our character can attempt to flood the minor's mind with sexual images and takes a peek at them while changing. This is while the game frequently reinforces how young our character is, with chubby cheeks and being really small. I was recently on jury duty where we gave a guy 60 years in prison for abusing a dozen or so children, and witness testimony included families where he was starting the grooming process but didn't finish, and we also heard his own testimony. It was strange how many actions in the game were identical to things I heard that man say or heard testimony that he did, with the kids shaking and talking about their lives being ruined and not being able to trust anyone ever again, etc. And the minor grooming parts aren't necessary for the story at all; the 'innocent smart person that you're not allowed to be with' could just as easily be a celibate young adult nun or a monk, which have existed in Buddhism for centuries.

In any case, I'll finish the rest of the series, since I'm doing a survey of all the hosted games, but definitely would drop the series on my own because of the bad memories it brings up (some of the other jurors were vomiting during the trial and I was crying a lot).

This game is a collection of 55 very short stories, each of which has a quiz at the end. In hard mode, you have to type the answer; in easy mode, you have to select from a list of choices.

They're organized in groups of 10, with 5 bonus questions at the end. Some segments parody famous mystery characters like Encyclopedia Brown or the old Clue books.

The level of difficulty for most mysteries is incredibly low. Some mysteries are literally like 'Mr A, Ms B, Mr C and Ms D walk into a bar. Who walks in next?'

=Mr E
=Mr F
=Mr G
=Mr H

I can only assume that the target audience is fourth grade or younger. I remember reading much more complex mysteries in sixth grade, so it can't be that old.

The writing has a selection of jokes but is overall fairly non-descriptive. It is polished. The interactivity is relatively low, and I didn't feel strong emotion from reading the stories.

This game was entered in the Text Adventure Literacy Jam for 2026.

I came in expecting a large, sprawling game, as most of the authors' games have been, which gave me a crumb of trepidation as I've had less time recently. Fortunately, this one was intended for beginners and so is fairly brief, with the time and work going into polish rather than size.

This is a very trope-y, old-fashioned Native American adventure in the vein of Indiana Jones (and old black and white serials and such). Cultures are mixed together (including Egypt and Native American cultures) and there is a distinct lack of respect for native people, to the point that it feels like the character doesn't see them as human. As I discovered, this is intentional to the piece and is addressed in what was to me a satisfying way.

The puzzles were satisfying and relatively straightforward. I got stuck twice, once because I for some reason kept typing (Spoiler - click to show)SQUIRE instead of SQUIRT and didn't notice it, and again because of what I think is an intentional soft-lock where I used an item too early (fortunately, I had saves, and the game warns you that you may need to save. Even if I hadn't, it wouldn't take too long to replay to that point using knowledge of puzzle solutions).

Overall, I found this game fun. It wasn't super-descriptive, but that could be a bonus for any second-language speakers or young readers just learning about text adventures.

This Hosted Game places you in the role of an extradimensional incomprehensible monster who is forced into earth in the body of a small infant, forced to hide from a horrific hunter.

It then skips far ahead and focuses on events in a small town between you and a cast of characters including your sister and her weird 'friend', a single mom waitress, a mysterious drifter, a cult leader, and a grungy store clerk.

Much of the story revolves around your choices to act more human or to act more like your true self, as well as the ever-looming threat of the hunter.

To me, this felt a lot more like an 'official' Choice of Games game than most Hosted games, with its 4 or 5 opposed stats, frequent adjustments, frequent pass/fail checks, and, like a lot of the Nebula-nominated CoG games, a more-or-less set 'main' storyline with the player's actions more determining their internal state and relationships.

The characters are well-developed and you have a lot of scenes with them. I focused on romancing Roach, and it was one of the more well-developed and in-depth relationships I've seen in Choicescript games. There were a few chapters where I really wondered, 'what on earth are we doing here? Just kind of chilling?"

I had expected the game would deal with a sense of alienation a lot, but as others have mentioned, that's not a huge focus.

I think this will most appeal to people who like nuanced and morally ambiguous romantic partners, good writing, and either very powerful or weak/afraid protagonists (ironically, we are both here).

This game has you face the most pernicious of puzzles: checking out at the grocery store.

You have a wide variety of items you have to balance, include the screwdriver of your friend Nils (this is a joke that I wonder how it would be translated; screwdriver is 'bohrmaschine', this this is Nils' Bohrmaschine, a pun on the name of famous physicist Nils Bohr).

You navigate the various buttons and weighings and so on. Then the game gets weird. (complete spoilers) (Spoiler - click to show)Trying to leave, I found myself entering again, starting the game over again. I feel like that was due to the screwdriver which acts as Chekhov's gun and Schroedinger's Cat at the same time. So I tried again, this time changing things up, since in my first playthrough I scanned a deposit slip and ended up with a negative balance, but this time I didn't. Also, this time I saw a portal and entered it, which gave me a third playthrough. This time I didn't scan the deposit slip and didn't leave anything on the 'waage' (scale?). I was able to leave normally, although I had to enter my pin twice.

This game really shows to me how close the relationship is between westerns and samurai movies (and how much they consciously imitated each other), because it has so much in common with older western films: the old, bitter gunslinger hired to escort the city slicker, always running into outlaws who tested his quickdraw, making acquaintances with local prostitutes and having the one friend from a race that's persecuted, with a lot of bar scenes and the sense of unwashed clothing.

This game focuses mostly on the story and the setting, leaving choices to vary what is written in that set storyline rather than having significant branches that are left unplayed on each route. You are a samurai escorting a young scholar as a bodyguard while simultaneously stepping in to help when called. Partway through the game, you get a big mission you're asked to take care of which I believe extends through the entire series of books (the sixth is coming out soon).

It's a gritty game. It's listed as having mature themes; you kill tons of people and an animal or two in the book, and one of your stats is 'perverted'; it doesn't go into sexual detail or close details (that I found), and doesn't go into huge detail about the blood, so in some ways I found games like Evertree Inn (a fantasy tavern mystery) more mature than this game, but gore and detailed sex aren't my preference in games, so I was happy with that.

I had heard controversy before about the game sexualizing minors, and that is true to a certain extent and definitely feels unnecessary. The minor you're accompanying is set to the gender you like to romance, and, when a girl, is described as being barely over 4 ft tall and having some baby fat. Depending on your choices, your character can be described as teasing her and making her blush by discussing your escapades with older women, and there's a part of the book where your character ogles what turns out to be an (Spoiler - click to show)older version of her. So it kind of skirts around the issue, but it's unpleasant. It's like playing a game where a character keeps thinking about eating his boogers or has the option to pretend to eat a booger. Even if there's no booger eating in the game, why have it at all? It's so small that just 3 or 4 paragraphs would need to be changed to take it out of the book as a whole. It reminds me of reading David Edding's books as a kid where a 40 yr old guy marries a girl he protected her whole life once she hits 18; as a kid I thought, 'huh, I guess that's something that happens in books for adults' but later found out that David Edding locked adopted kids in cages in the basement and beat them so maybe that was just the author being weird.

The other characters are pretty interesting. There's some fantasy racism baked in (your character is racist by default, part of the 'gritty' aspect) and the character of the unfavored race (called 'kondos') is a well-written and interesting nuanced character with a balance of danger and vulnerability. Your companion, when they're allowed to be a kid, has a real fun blend of being obnoxious and helpful, powerful and clumsy.

Overall, the game is like red onions, a very strong flavor that is overpowering but can enhance the flavor of the rest of the dish (being the Choicescript stat system and setting) as a whole.

On a side note, the Japanese is a bit better than life of a sensei, but even as a weak japanese learner I can tell a little bit is off. A mountain pass is called 'pasu' in katakana, and I knew there is no way Japan, a mountain country, wouldn't have a native word for it, and I was right, they're called 'toge' 峠. Similarly, the lion temple was just called 'laion/raion', the romanization for lion, which is the right word for the actual animal, but as a mythological temple I figured it would borrow from the chinese word for lion shi, and looking it up it seems like 獅子 (shishi) would probably be more appropriate.

Anyway, long story short, if you want to play as a greasy drifter with ambiguous morals and a penchant for trouble, this is the game for you.

This game has an impressive 22,000 (!) ratings on the Hosted Games app, more than any Choice of Games official title and only surpassed by Wayhaven.

It's one of the older games, too.

It's similar to Life of a Mercenary, which is set in the same world and comes afterwards.

Despite the smaller wordcount of this game, it is quite large due to re-use of text and terseness of description.

You play as a young boy who is in awe of a famous knight name Sir Robert who is known for travelling the land, fighting in tournaments and earning 'boons' from mayors and governors who run them. You, along with your rascally best friend, sneak out to watch him.

Together with a ragtag band of friends, you enter a tournament open to kids. Eventually, you become Sir Robert's squire, and grow and train with him.

The game includes a war section, then a tense part involving Sir Robert. Finally, you become the main hero, able to wander around the map for 360 days, making money, buying items, and entering tournaments.

This builds up to the final Great Tournament, ran by the King Himself, who is willing to grant any boon to the winner.

There are a lot of romantic interests, including the royal princess and some scrappy fighter women.

Combat is generally taken care of for you, with occasional strategy choices. There are a lot of stats that you can boost. The time leading up to the actual great tournament has the most options.

Like the other game by this author, I found the characters interesting but the setting and locations rather dull. I can't picture any town; the castles could be made of crystal or mud and I wouldn't know. The only focus is the characters. And with that, it succeeds; this is a fun game and I would be happy to recommend it to others.

But, I feel like Choice of Games has some strong rivals for this kind of play. Vampire the Masquerade: Night Road comes to mind, which is just as strong as this in terms of stats and characters but more polished in terms of sensory writing.

Overall, I was glad I played!