Reviews by MathBrush

I often leave Arthur DiBianca's games to the end as a treat, but I decided to play this one early as part of my effort to play longer IFComp games.

You play as a hacker with a device that lets you hook into any system that has a certain kind of computer component. Your goal is to infiltrate a building and wreak havoc on an Agency, following a list of objectives. I'd definitely take inventory first in this game!

This game took me 2 hours, with 1 hour for a single puzzle (one of the last ones) and 1 hour for all the rest put together. I also ended up using the walkthrough for that puzzle.

This game is a limited parser game where all puzzles involve moving a character around a screen. There are a variety of mini-puzzles, although almost all have blurred in my mind after the time spent on that one puzzle. Many of them require optimization, memorization, and experimentation. Gameplay is closer to Baba is You or Adventures of Lolo than standard interactive fiction gameplay. This is a series of graphical games written in Inform connected by an interactive fiction overworld.

Some of the subgames involve clever gimmicks that require some sideways thinking. Others can become tedious; one such game was a game where you have to memorize a map before navigating it in the dark, with any mistake sending you to the front. The first few of these were really fun, while the last few felt like homework with copying down lists of commands.

One of the very last puzzles had a countdown timer based on moves, and that's the one I spent an hour on. It's an optimization puzzle with a very large set of parameters. I attempted it from a lot of different mental angles, trying different strategies and approaches. I often got within a single move or two of the finale, after shaving off ten or twenty moves from my first approach. In the end, I followed the walkthrough, and there were just a few moves off of my approach.

I think most of the game was pretty fun, and I enjoyed the final door puzzle especially.

This was a refreshing game to play. In a time where a lot of games are using AI art or text that is bland and often nonsensical, this game stood out to me for its distinct art style (I think a combination of watercolors and something else?) and its well-planned, symmetric plot and characters.

This is one of only two games marked 'over two hours' on the website, and I spent about 4 hours from start to finish, but it would probably be about 2.5 hours if I locked in.

It's a wholesome game, the same way Eikas by by Lauren O'Donoghue is (for those who remember it from last IFComp). Both focus on relationships and nature in a nature setting and take place over a long period of time.

This game has its own unique elements, though. You are a newcomer to a town with a magical villa, with beautiful gardens, a mysterious library, and four characters, each having a tragic element in their lives as well as an interest in you. You yourself are afflicted by sleepwalking fits that take you into the garden at night.

All four characters have friendship paths and romance paths on top of that. I ended up romancing Penny the botanist and befriending the others.

Design-wise, some of the game does suffer from from having large, complex option and dialogue trees but requiring you to plow through almost all of them, which can feel like a chore at times, although the writing is charming. There are also options where you choose how to react, but these often boil down to "Be nice, be indifferent, be mean," with little use for the mean option (that I found). On the other hand, the ending choice was very well done, and I had to sit and contemplate for a while on what I'd pick, and there were both good and bad consequences to my choice. It's one of the best ethical dilemmas I've had in a game for a while. Similarly, there are some puzzle elements which are pretty fun, most of them relatively light but requiring at least some notetaking (one puzzle in particular feels like an Ocarina of Time reference to me).

Overall, I think that it would have been better to slow down and take the game in at a relaxed pace rather than rushing for the competition, as this is a pretty mellow and chill game to settle down with; a good game to play while drinking warm cider, snuggled up on the couch when it rains or snows outside.

There are two other games by this author in the competition; I definitely am looking forward to them now!

Murderworld, by Austin Auclair

I had both high and low expectations for this game. Austin Auclair previously wrote His Majesty's Royal Space Navy Service Handbook, which I enjoyed quite a bit. On the other hand, this game is X-men fan fiction, and many fan fiction parser games in the past haven't been that good.

Overall, I had a good experience with this game. It's big (it took me exactly 4 hours to play with total concentration, and the file is 6mb. I swear I saw Austin on blusky with an image showing this game has over 500K words, which I would believe, but I'm not sure it's the same game).

The idea is that you get to play as a ton of different x-men. You start off with a brief tutorial on a plane, then you have a chance to pick one of six different X-men to use to solve a major problem at the X-men's mansion. You don't swap between them; instead, the game just has six different paths through this section, which is quite long in itself. I played as Storm, which was fun given her powers.

This is about where the title screen drops. I'll spoiler the rest, although everything in this spoiler is only about as descriptive as the above and doesn't give much away (it's essentially the same as reading the table of contents of the walkthrough).

The game contains a set of young characters that I thought came from other media but which seem to be completely invented by the author. They fit well enough that I didn't really suspect that they were OCs (if they're not, someone can correct me!).

This game managed to avoid several of the flaws that very long games often have in IFComp. Instead of one sprawling world where everything is interconnected and you have to lawnmower trying every item in every room, the game silos off each section, so each section uses only the objects and people immediately available. It essentially is a collection of minigames with an overarching story, and I love that setup (I've used it for several games myself). It is also much more polished and fair than many long IFComp games, which can at times be very buggy or filled with impossible puzzles. I never had to consult the walkthrough, although I did use 'mission' a lot to remind myself of the goal, only realizing a little later on that it functions as a kind of in-game hint nudge (which I really appreciated). There are lots of blank white lines (a common issue for all inform programmers) and I did frequently try typing things that didn't work, but the VERBS command always got me back on track.

I like the plot; I'm divided on the writing. It's clear that Austin Auclair is talented at executing his desired goal, I just have some minor quibbles with the goal itself. Two things that stuck out were character descriptions and overall emotions. The descriptions are focused on detailing the costumes of the characters in minute detail; this seemed more like a replacement for visual media rather than writing for writing's sake, if that makes any sense, kind of like alt-text for a picture. The descriptions for the OCs were much more natural which makes sense, as that was 'pure Auclair' and not a reassurance that the x-men are in their authentic costumes. As for the emotions, I felt like the setup made this game very dramatic, but when we arrive at the disaster everyone seems relaxed and chill, joking almost. This fits in great with the comedic later segments (appropriate for the 'Murderworld' setting) but that initial dissonance of 'why are we pranking each other with the phone when people might be dying?' threw me off.

Dialogue is appropriate for X-men. I thought Storm was stilted and Scott was cringe, both of which are 100% accurate. Nightcrawler's segment had some great dialogue, and I enjoyed the final battle (and the reveal of who the true instigator is and why (Spoiler - click to show)Storm was spared).

I think people will like this. You don't have to be an X-men expert to solve this, as there are numerous help systems (especially VERBS) to remind you of what the powers are. This is probably one of the best superhero parser games I've played, similar to the Earth and Sky series' later entries. My big gripe with most superhero games is that I really want to use my powers, but most games limit you severely in how you can use them. This game really thinks out the limits of your superpowers, and lets you use them quite a bit (Storm gets a big playground for doing all sorts of weather shenanigans, Wolverine can chop up almost everything, etc.). With my minor gripes, I'd rate this a 9/10 or 4.5/5, which I'll round up to 5 on IFDB. (I won't mention most of my ratings here on intfiction, but I thought this one would be good).

I've been going through the cheapest Hosted Games, which are self-published games hosted on the Choice of Games platform.

This game has you play as a young adult in a war-torn kingdom who bounces between rival factions for the government while escaping a cult and gathering magic items.

The core concept of the game is a good one, and there is some fun in using magic spells and working with your one-eyed friend/romantic option partner to face off against enemies, and there are some mysteries set up with satisfying payoffs.

It needs a lot of work, though. There are numerous typos, including on the first full page of text. The pacing in terms of paragraph breaks, reactions to significant events, page breaks and word choices is really off. In four succeeding paragraphs, the player can have a loved one violently die, train for a week to buy a horse, ride it for a couple of days, then leave it behind, all while cracking jokes. Your partner can randomly offer you sex 'with no strings' despite very little other romance happening in the game. For some reason, the country map is a map of Turkey.

I think the author is capable of making this very solid; typos can be fixed with more beta testing, and the pacing whiplash could be solved by putting each major event on its own screen and fleshing it out with some more reactions by the player or descriptions of the surroundings or events. This definitely seems like the talent is there, but more time could be invested.

This game starts out with abstract text in an unreadable font. It soon changes, so I'll put the rest in spoilers.

(Spoiler - click to show)You discover that you are in the arms of your mother, who can provide you with drinks, words, etc. You can look out the window or at your mother. At times, it seems like there is no way to progress, but as you complete the cycle, you can. There are 3 achievements; I got one of 3.

The more you play, the more you realize that there is something else going on here, a different genre and setting. The vocabulary used is grim and strong in this game. I found it interesting and was glad to play it.

This is a Neo-Twiny Jam game about a relationship where you and the other person meet and care about each other but there is, it seemed like to me, space between the two of you, a lack of complete emotional intimacy. I enjoyed the writing, and it brought to mind some close friends of my own in a positive way.

The text is on a timer, specifically a very slow timer and it refreshes to a new screen each time the timer goes off, with no way to go back, so you have to sit very still and watch carefully to avoid missing anything. Text comes in passages with each passage having three sentences followed by a binary choice. The game lasts around 4 choices, so it doesn't take too long to play. I found this pretty frustrating, which was balanced by my enjoyment of the lovely way the writing connected with me.

This is a Neo-Twiny Jam game written in 500 words or less. Its text is rich and symbolic, though difficult to understand. I felt that it was saying that I was some kind of monstrous creature, part lizard and part bird or maybe even insect, whose body was bleeding and rippling and changing in a liquid way.

The writing had a lot of good similes and metaphors and strong verbs. The game doesn't last too long, and it all ends up kind of in the air. Fun for its length.

First, some long background not relevant to the gameplay itself much:

(Spoiler - click to show)At one time, I had played every Choice of Games game up until 2021, but after that I couldn't quite afford to play all of them. So I've only picked up a few over the years.

Having loved Vampire: the Masquerade -- Night Road, I was excited to try this game, even at its relatively high price point, since I knew how high quality this author was.

It said the game was mature and I had to verify age, which I hadn't had to do for most other Choice of Games games. I foolishly ignored that, and when I started playing I realized it was filled with constant strong profanity, which I don't really enjoy in games. I tried refunding it, but I had played too long, so I just hid it from my library.

Eventually, I wondered if I could access the code somehow and put a filter on.I messed around with it but couldn't figure it out. Then I realized I could transfer steam purchases to my choice of games account and play online, so I did that and got the filter in. It was really funny to see stuff like 'ruthless motherfreaker' but it got the job done.

The game itself is based on the ruleset for Werewolf: The Apocalypse. In that setting, you have a list of around 9 core attributes (like strength and intelligence) and a lot of skills like computers, aim, etc. You get opportunities to raise these skills at the end of each chapter. During chapters, you frequently get challenges where you test one attribute + one skill. For instance, strength+combat is frequently tested.

In addition, you have five or so damage markers and a maximum of five rage points. You also have five possible werewolf forms (ranging from fully human to hybrids to fully wolf). Shifting forms heals wounds and gives advantages in fights similar to passing challenges, but it costs 1 rage for each step of shifting you do. Running out of rage makes you lose the ability to transform. You can increase rage by getting hurt or at the end of each chapter. If your rage goes over 5, you go into a frenzy and kill all around you.

Like Night Road, the game has a few central chapters that occur in a fixed order interspersed with 'mission' chapters that can be done in any order. Throughout the game, you can meet allies and romantic partners (I romanced Nin, a wolf turned human who plays rock music) and gain gifts from spirits that let you do supernatural feats. You can also join a tribe which incurs advantages and prohibitions.

It can be difficult to keep track of all of this. I was completely overwhelmed with reading all the spirits texts'. It helped me a lot to realize that I can just try every one of them and most of them are out of reach (you need specific requirements for them). There's also DLC that unlocks new gifts, good for people who want to replay in a different style.

I was averse to the first chapter; I found it relentlessly negative to the point of parody, like an 'unfavored child' Gacha Life story, a genre of youtube video where a child is hated by their family until they're rescued by someone dreamy. In this game, you're poor, unhappy, on the run, the world is dying, everyone around you hates you and cusses you out and even attacks you and blames you for everything. It's a completely miserable life.

Fortunately, you quickly escape and move onto a land recovering from a devastating attack years ago that killed almost all werewolves and drove spirits into hiding. Your goal is to restore the nature around you while dealing with white supremacists, evil corporations, and a horrifying werewolf whose spirit ally can create convincing false worlds and who yearns for an end to all existence.

The characters are pretty diverse, from a posh British shadow lord werewolf to a bloodthirsty hacker werewolf to a non-binary reporter who gets into harms way a little too often.

Overall, the game is very weighty and complex. I was on vacation when I played, and would play a chapter at a time before doing a chore or task. It took me 4 days to beat it, putting it at around 15-20 hours (could be much faster if read without interruption and with clear focus). I played with storyteller mode on, which told me which choices tested which attributes.

I felt like Night Road had slightly better and more coherent content, while Book of Hungry Names had more total good content. I like these big, complex RPGs and find it difficult to finish IRL campaigns, so this is my shot to see what it would be like playing these settings.

I can recommend this to others for sure, with my caveat about profanity. There is also pervasive and constant violence but it doesn't dwell on it or seek to make it excruciating. You're werewolves; you kill things. It's what you do.

In this Choicescript game (which I played for free by watching ads), you play as Vivien, a recently-out queer woman who has fallen in love with a witch.

And, unfortunately, died.

Fortunately, your witchfriend has a solution for that. But it causes a lot of problems.

This game feels like an inentional metaphor for loss of both people and relationships, and for slow grief.

Many of the choices are binary, but there are some more involved options and even a set of riddles which I did not quite solve on my first playthrough.

There are some endings that require clicking the same screen 50 times, but I found a more normal one. I thought that the writing had personality and I was engaged with the story. At times I felt lost due to the non-linear narration.

At 4900 words, this is the shortest game you can purchase from Choice of Games, and is listed under its Hosted Games label.

It’s a gauntlet-style game with two chapters and no save. At any point, most options will kill you and make you restart the game. I replayed around six to seven times.

You wake up next to a dead body in your bed and need to figure out what happened. I was able to reach an ending where I was alive and powerful but never really discovered the truth.

The writing is terse and characters, plot and themes are underdeveloped. However, it’s not horrible, and can be played for free after an ad. It’s managed to get a 3.9/5 rating on the app (around 20th from the bottom) and hundreds of ratings.