Reviews by MathBrush

Tin Star

I had heard of this game long ago. It was famous for being the first million word game, I think, for Hosted Games.

It holds up great! Plays a bit differently than most Choice of Games, has a lot in common with Magincia series but with more story. Overall I'd say it's great, up there with my highest tier of Hosted Games.

You play as someone set to be hang who is instead made a marshal and sent off (with a tin star) to Nevada. I grew up in Utah and my grandfather's family was from Elko, so it was fun to see it mentioned here (they use to joke about going to prestigious Elko University). We used to drive from Utah to Nevada every couple of years as a kid and I remember them telling me it was the loneliest highway in the US, and that if you saw anyone whose car was broken down you should stop and help because there might not be anyone else for hours (this was before cellphones).

Gameplay has interludes where you train or buy things or build. Like other resource and upgrade-style games (Magincia, Adrao's games, Night Road), there are a ton of options, from social to combat to self-aggrandizement. I liked how many small little details there were here, like going to the general store and finding books about you, or all the training dialogue having details.

In between interludes are the chapters, where something bad happens and you have to resolve it. I chose to interfere in pretty much everything. The game is 1.2 million words and it didn't feel as long as, say, Golden Rose, so I assume there are significant branches I didn't see.

I made Carraway my deputy and wife. I dealt with raiders attacking settlements, disputes between friends and family, a mining town, an army, and a lot of Uptons.

Some Choicescript games are 'here is this very specific scenario with my OCs and you'll experience the events exactly as I want you to and you can react'. This game, by contrast, lets you build your own story.

The beginning let you choose to be a doctor or lawyer among other things, or both. It was really funny to me when we had to leave something behind (I chose law firm) and one option was 'a hospital for lawyers'.

I liked the representation of my ancestors, the pioneers of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (here referred to as Mormons, as was common at the time). I've seen way worse depictions (the first Sherlock Holmes book was very anti-LDS). There's a bit dodgy part hinting at some temple ceremony stuff but that wasn't too bad (members are supposed to not talk about it as a sign of respect, but all the information is online). The LDS people in this game are just another group of folks, like the native american bands or the army. In fact, they were kind of worse in real life; before the railroad came, there was a big Reformation in Utah where they especially focused on how dirty and gross everyone was, with junk in their yard and people not taking baths. This game portrays them as clean and tidy, so I feel like they're being generous. Also, there are parts here where white raiders use Native Americans as decoys to make people think they did the attacks; that's historically accurate.

I appreciated the freedom to act as I wanted. There were many opportunities to take bribes or steal. This playthrough I was honorable but not very law-keeping, shooting a lot of people rather than talking things out. But even if I didn't take the bribes having the choice made it feel more real.

Great game, I had fun playing it and feel like I can learn a lot from it.

The Golden Rose

This was a really interesting one.

There’s been a poll running on r/hostedgames about games with the best prose, best MC, etc. and Golden Rose won for best prose, so I was really hyped coming into this.

You play as a mercenary exploring an underground ruin whose existence is banned by the church. There are occasional flashbacks to a time long ago when Latin was the main language (this is like an AU medieval europe). Unfortunately, the treasure you seek has been stolen, and you have to set off to find the thief, spending a lot of time in a big city with a wide cast of characters.

The main NPCs are Alessa and Hadrian, fellow mercenaries, with Hadrian a former templar and Alessa an ice queen who wields two blades and knows more than the two of you about what’s really going on.

At 1.2 million words, I expected a long game, and having won best prose, I was looking forward to things. Then I started getting a little burnt out. Let me explain.

The author takes small events and amplifies them in a big way, letting you react however you choose to them. For instance, here’s how I feel the author would depict ordering eggs:

I look at the menu. (3 paragraphs of menu description).

Choice of reacting to menu (including grinning at the menu, saying nothing, frowning)

The menu reminds me of the hard times on the roads. (4 paragraphs of remembering journeying, when food wasn’t available.).

Reacting to those road times (including smirking to myself, saying nothing, frowning, praying thanks I’m not starving now)

Saying something to Alessa or Hardian about the road times (3 paragraphs of conversation)

reacting to comment (I can flirt, or my lips can quirk, or I can frown or be silent)

I ponder the menu. As I do, I look about the room. (description of people for a page)

Choice to react to people (I can flirt with them or smirk or grunt or pray)

Someone resembles those who are chasing us. I freeze. memories of being hunted come to mind (for 4 paragraphs)

reaction (I can weep in fear, wear a hard grin, say nothing or pray)

Thinking about those chasing us makes my hand hurt (4 paragraphs of hand hurting).

reaction (wince in pain, grin through the pain, grunt in pain, pray)

end of chapter.

Chapter 7: The Waitress Appears

Now obviously I didn’t receive this as well as many readers have (the game has more ratings on the Hosted Games app than almost every Choice of Games game, so it’s obviously extraordinarily popular). I thought it must just be a hit or miss thing, and went to Steam to see if any negative reviews agreed with me that it could get tedious, but the steam reviews are wildly over the top:

The new standard. Makes every other COYA game look amateurish. The writing was fantastic.

Amazing writing. It pulls you in and just doesn’t let go. The roleplaying opportunities are great, you can really develop your character’s personality, motivations, and skills. There’s so many choices and the game doesn’t make them for you or force you into a choice like some other text based games. It’s funny, emotional, charming, and has a lot of depth

Writing, writing, writing. The prose is lyrical and textured, but never indulgent. It doesn’t waste time describing every rock and tree, but it does make you feel things—from the weight of your sword on your hip to the quiet ache in your chest when someone you care about looks at you a second too long. It’s storytelling through implication. You feel like a real person, not a stats-driven machine.

So what makes good prose? That’s completely subjective. If someone likes the prose, it’s good prose to them. For my own tastes, I like to dabble more in the fantastical and metaphorical. I like a lot of dialogue. I like high-density information.

Let’s look at Golden Rose when it wants to have a dramatic moment. I think this is good:

Before your eyes, the Golden Coast stretches from east to west. The Mediterranean Sea, undulating gently on the surface, seems almost purple in the setting sun. The air smells like salt and fresh summer evenings.

You lower your eyes and see it.

Sitting on the rocky shores of the Iberian coast, its high walls and narrow streets jutting out, rests a sprawling city. From above, you see the soaring towers of the castle and the spiked balustrade of the enormous Cathedral.

A large dock juts out of the cliffs. The wood and black stone merging together to hold countless hulking ships with high sails and golden names on their hulls. Smaller, single-masted vessels fill the rest of the space, clogged together so tightly they seem to form an ocean of their own.

Standing proudly at the center, its masts soaring high above all, a Portuguese galleon sways gently near the pier, its white, triangular sails flapping in the wind. You see the imposing red cross and feel a weight settling on your stomach.

The Holy Cross.

So, they’re here

On the southern end of the city, facing the rolling hills and the endless flatlands beyond, is the main gate. The iron door that bars the outside world from the safety within.

Tarragona.

This is good writing! This is professional writing. 90% of the IF I’ve read is worse than this. Lots of sensory details (smells, colors, sights). We get a lot of info: There is a sea (the meditarranean, with a city with high walls, a big dock with a lot of little ships and one big ship, then a big gate.

We don’t get any real information on how we feel about this (nor do we choose our reaction here, as we do in other scenes). We don’t know what emotions are at play here. The imagery exists but is not, I’d say, vivid.

For my personal tastes, I like writing that more focuses on giving us information we couldn’t otherwise deduce, or that surprises you with it’s words. It’s hard to find comparisons to Golden Rose because these games don’t focus on long, ponderous descriptions, they use quick bites and often intersperse with dialogue. For instance, the game Bogeyman by Elizabeth Smyth gets down to the details quickly:

The window is a pitifully small square of thick, warped glass. You can’t see much through the frost crystals still thawing on its outer face: a foggy morning settling over a rocky incline.

This tells so much in two sentences: it gives a sense of claustrophobia and wrongness. It tells us the season and time of day, gives the general setting. We can imagine the world with so little.

Like I said, other of my favorite authors using a lot of dialogue. BP Hennessy’s games are just scripts:

Birdland
DAN CANOE: …It’s all about respect. You have to respect the paddle. Be one with the paddle. Treat the paddle like a lover. Or, if you prefer, a close friend. Most of all, you’ve got to stay calm and centred. The paddle can sense anxiety and if you bring a nervous energy into the canoe the paddle will betray you.

(The campers stare at him blankly.)

DAN CANOE: Now. (He picks up a paddle.) Today we’re going to be practicing some basic strokes. Remember to grip the handle firmly and make calm, deliberate motions. Any questions?

(You raise your hand.)

DAN CANOE: Bridget.

This conveys so much with just a few words. We immediately get a glimpse of this man’s personality, we get a sense of the social dynamics, how everyone is feeling, our role in the social pecking order. Without any other context you can guess a lot of the game’s structure and setting and feeling from context clues here.

I also like authors that use interesting and fun word choices that take time to read and process, like Chandler Groover in Cragne Manor:

Some instinct called them to the plant, compelled them to fall in this particular arrangement. Their limbs are like letters, their slaughter grammar. Whatever language they might embody, its blasphemy could never be written. Only erased.

Now, it’s really hard to come up with writing text like this, especially to fill out 1.2 millions words, so some kind of redundancy or filler is to be expected. But Paul Wang has similar wordcounts. I like how he describes approaching a major city (much like Terragonna):

From Guns of Infinity

The Antari write poetry about these plains. They have songs, folk tales, great epics, all about the vast expanse that now surrounds you. To read or listen to such things, you would imagine that the place would be a land of unbound wonder, a place to lift the hearts of all who would walk or ride it.

Yet you feel nothing. It is merely grass upon rolling hills, good ground for light cavalry perhaps, but you feel no different surrounded by it now than you did two days before, when you were surrounded by trees.

Your column makes good progress that day, forging forward until it is too dark to do anything except set up camp.

The next morning, you spot a grey haze above the horizon before you, the sort that only comes from smoke rising in vast quantities. By midday, that haze has become a cloud, and you begin to see the low, dark shapes from which the blackest and heaviest of the smoke rises.

By mid-afternoon, the sky grows dark from the smoke, which now begins to blot out the summer sun above you. Finally, you and your men crest the top of one last ridge, and you breathe a most involuntary sigh of relief when you finally have a clear view of what is before you.

Not three or four kilometers ahead of you lies an expanse of canvas tents, staked out and arranged neatly in rows around a large pavilion. Beyond that, there is a hellish expanse of trenches, earthworks, and fighting positions, boiling over with men in the burnt-orange coats of Tierran Line Infantry…

…and not a few hundred paces beyond them, scarred, battered, scorched, but still standing proud and unbreached, are the defiant walls of Kharangia.
Just like the Golden Rose text, there is vivid imagery, but see the difference! Action,movement, suspense, emotion, lore. We can tell right away what kind of genre this is.

Anyway, my goal isn’t to convince people that Golden Rose prose is bad since you can’t objectively prove subjective things and because it’s not, in fact bad; I just don’t think it’s revolutionary or the greatest prose of all time or even of CYOA prose or even just of Hosted Games.

I think a lot of that comes down to plot. I love plot, and this game has very little. Everything is stretched out as far as possible. Exploring the docks (which is 1/4 or 1/5 of Ch. 4 alone) is 120K words, the same as Creatures Such as We, one of my favorite games of all time. We start the game chasing down a thief, at the end we find him, the middle is all looking, but there’s no content besides the looking. 1.2 million words of looking for the thief.

The choices provide a lot of customisation. Basically, choices affect your states but never really test your stats (though some past decisions are tested). In on chapter with 96 choices, only 4 or 5 or so had stat checks.

But, 16 of them allowed me to ‘smirk’ and 25 allowed me to ‘grin’; plastering a smile on your face is one of the most common options (other variants of this personality are to laugh or to ‘quirk your lips’). After having two options in a row where I could smirk at inappropriate moments, I imagined an MC that picks these options all the time just terrorizing Terragonna with their smile. I called him ‘smirky’ and sketched him and then added some other common variants

(we have ‘Pious John’, who utters prayers to the saints. ‘Frownie’ who is unhappy or unpleasant. ‘Blusher’ who does the flirty or shy moves, the OG Smirky, and ‘Grunter’, who grunts and side-eyes or says nothing the whole time).

None of these choices really do anything; the big choices are in branching the story.

So, why is a game with solid but not enrapturing text, very little plot, and choices that don’t really do much of anything so popular? (By the way on IFDB I plan on giving this game a 5/5, and would rank 9/10 in competitions. I’m 100% only pushing back because of the extraordinary claims in the Steam reviews).

My hypothesis is that people like it less as a story and more as an experience to live in, like a Sims game. At every moment, you’re being that character, which can take on some of the tropes I listed above. With thousands of words per scene, you can take your time and spend days or weeks reading and imagining yourself there; this time makes you familiar with the characters like they are your friends. With little plot, you can pick up the book at any time, even after many days, and hop right back in since there aren’t a lot of plot points to forget. The lack of stat checks mean that you can just be yourself and not worry about anything.

So for people who want fiction that can be a reflection of themselves (which is one of the whole points of CYOA) or for people who want a ‘life experience simulator’ or for people that just want a lot of material, I think this is a good game. I’d love a 240K word version that just has the parts about the latin and sculptures and the conversations with friends.

Now that I’ve been grumpy (and I know people won’t like this, I saw how people reacted to my Swamp Castle review so I’m ready for the heat), I’ll say that Beka and Billy were awesome characters. I’ve never really seen a character like Billy (I can’t remember if I named them that, but that’s my horse); he’s genuinely funny. And every scene with Beka was a delight. I also liked the ‘corrupt older man’ depictions; a couple of people in the game (notably Aurelius) felt like Judge Claude Frollo from Hunchback of Notre Dame.

Anyway, that’s my take. As someone who like information-dense genre fiction with lots of choices and some pushback-crunchiness-chance to fail, this game didn’t enchant me, but if I were the author, I wouldn’t change a single thing I complained about here. Every single thing that rubbed me the wrong way is something that other people have liked and has spurred sales. You can’t really make fiction that appeals to everyone at once, and Golden Rose has levels of sales and popularity I will likely never achieve in my lifetime, and I think the author deserves it for finding out what the audience wants and deliver it. Never Change, Ana Ventura. But if I change my viewpoint I’ll come back one day and change my review.

This game is the third in the Infinity Saga.

One of the biggest differences between the Choice of Games games and the Hosted Games games I've played is that, due to CoG house style, most official games are pretty well-rounded, being roughly equal in the way they treat stats, narrative, romance, and plot. Sometimes they struggle in all 4, sometimes they are fantastic in all 4, but due to testing and editor help it's generally a complete, relatively uniform package.

Hosted games that I've played tend to be very strong or completely focused on one area while ignoring or struggling with others. Wayhaven and Soul Stone War are hyper-focused on romance. Hero or Villain: Genesis is maximized with respect to stats. The Aegis Saga is all plot. This isn't bad; if I want to play, say, a simulator game, War for the West or the Magincia series can really satisfy that.

To this point, the only games that seemed really well-rounded in the official CoG way were the Fallen Hero games. But now this game, Lords of Infinity, is another one in that category. The first two games in the Infinity Series were very war-focused with little romance and only a few characters.

This game expands that world. I saw that some were dismayed that it's no longer purely a fighting/army game. And that's true; but at 1,600,000 words and with 1/4 of the chapters dealing with fighting, it essentially contains an entire war game.

This game branches very heavily, so I can only offer an insight into what I played. After war ended in book 2, I had the choice to retire to my estate or spend time with political maneuvering in the capital.

I chose the estate option, and promptly found that I had huge debts and fairly bad stats (I've heard the pre-made characters are OP, so I might do that instead next time). But I buckled down, courted a neighboring noblewoman's daughter who was my long-time betrothed, improved my village, dealt with bandits, and struggled against political unrest.

Later, combat and battle occur once more. As the game series progresses, we've moved from a frontline soldier with musket and sabre to a strategic commander. We now deal with some of the highest levels of military strategy.

There are multiple clubs you can join and sides you can take. After a while, I decided to use a guide. I had heard people say this series is stat intensive and hard, but I didn't think the last two games were that bad. This game had me restarting many chapters and referring to guides a lot. I found it fun.

Giant games like this do feel overwhelming at times. While they sell very well and are obviously great, I don't feel too bad about authors releasing multiple smaller games instead. But the market will do what it will do.

Very balanced overall, and now I understand many more memes from the Hosted Games subreddit. I've wondered what a 'Wulframite' was for a long time (I thought it was related to Book 1 Duke of Wulfram, and was so confused when he was written out of the book).

The depth, replayability, and difficulty of this game make it a good choice for people who want to rack up a lot of hours of playtime.

This is a huge Choice of Games game with a lot of branching.

To me this feels like pure TTRPG. You are an orc, and there are 4 or more stages of your life. (This game branches a ton, so I'll share what happened in my experience and mention others' later).

I started as a baby, and decided to have pure violence throughout my life. By attacking and assaulting other babies, I became a proud young orc.

As a young orc, I gained a 'hub' and the option to do different things like train to be a warrior or a shaman. My hub gained in options as I became a young adult and then a mature adult.

Hub options include getting tattoos, buying magic items, training, meeting with camp visitors, or, the most expansive, going adventuring, which results in a lot of D&D style quests. And D&D/Pathfinder was the big feel for me here, with halflings, elves, dark elves, humans, orcs, goblins, a lich, zombies, a one-eyed orc god. The only unusual thing was a mind-controlling cyclops or two.

There were also war simulators, where you have cavalry, land units, and skirmishers.

I chose violence and power almost the whole game, helping me win tons of battles and kill a lot of monsters. Then, I became king.

Suddenly I can't kill everything personally! I can kill a lot of things, but now I have to negotiate. Do I regret not being nice to the orc god before I became king? Maybe.

It's kind of like Spore, going from cell stage to individual to tribal to society.

There are a lot of chances to help others, which sometimes gives you amazing benefits and sometimes bites you in the butt (I'm looking at you, goblin entrepreneurs).

The difficulty was tuned well for me. There were many save points, and I felt powerful, but at times I had to make sacrifices.

I was worried I'd not have enough time to try all the activities, but ended up circling around and doing a lot over and over again. I didn't experience everything the game has to offer, though, as others have mentioned becoming a demon, and doing different shaman activities, or a quick ending to the game focused on gluttony.

There was no romance, which I didn't really miss (although a few NPCs you meet would make pretty good ROs.).

The writing went beyond basic or perfunctory to be interesting and fun. My life felt epic, and while there wasn't one huge plot arc, each scene was well written and there were many narrative payoffs. The character art was well done, cohesive and fit with the style of the game.

My final ending was pretty great. All in all, this is a good 'meat and potatoes' game for people who like classic fantasy RPGs, gamebooks, or power fantasies.

This game is one of the more interesting branching sequels I've seen in an IF game.

I played through 2 rounds. In the first, I was married to the queen. It was up to me to participate in a fake tournament, organize the kingdom in the queen's absence, deal with diplomatic treaties, negotiate with barbarians, and engage in wars. I died in good old age surrounded by family.

In the second version, I was a minor lord in a kingdom ruled by evil, mocked and despised and humiliated by the evil king. I was thrown in jail, and took over my daughter, and ran into some familiar companions that gave me a smile. I didn't see the end of this run, as I died after finding my father but giving the reason for the evil king to kill me.

I think there are other possibilities as well, as you can play as a non-king lord and there are also some special quests from the main menu.

Overall, I was pleased by the level of detail and amount of polish. Some of the fights did drag, as other reviewers have noted. There was a lot more storytelling in this game, more descriptiveness, especially in the 'kingdom of evil' version where you rebel (there is one actual story-story that takes up like 8 pages).

One thing I like about this game is that it has clear evil and clear good, not of people (who are generally mixed good and evil, with some noticeable exclusions) but of acts and options. Mercenaries actually kill people; good people can become damaged after imprisonment and torture. Death is real and can happen; women and children can be lost in war, but relief can come and justice can be served.

When playing some of the less popular official Choice of Games, which are designed to have multiple competing interests, one common thing I see is having two or more factions set up that theoretically oppose each other but don't really do anything 'wrong'. Everything is just a misunderstanding, or a mild difference of political opinions (I've done this before myself). What a lot of the best hosted games do (and best choice of games do) is, when they come to the brink of making a character actually unethical or an act truly awful, they don't pull back, but push through it and allow evil to exist. Like Choice of Robots letting you decide to conquer the world with a robot army or develop doctor robots to save your mother's life or a companion robot to marry, you can make decisions that are actually evil or actually good or both.

David and Goliath wouldn't be nearly as interesting if Goliath was just gently bonking guys on the head instead of killing them. Hamlet would be much less interesting if it turns out the uncle accidentally gave the king an overdose and Hamlet forgives him and asks him to talk it out. If Cinderella gets along with the step-mother and sisters, then why would she even want to leave?

When I say it's good for games to allow true evil, I don't mean this in a grimdark way, like a game having a lot of murder or sexual assault with an awful protagonist is good; I don't really enjoy games like that. I like it when the bad contrasts with the good; people can die, but they can also be saved. We can let people down, but we can raise them up, too. Depicting real evil acts allows real good acts, and vice versa. A completely grimdark game is just as boring as a completely harm-free game. And like I said, it's the acts that are good and evil, not the people. This game does a good job with that, like a neighboring country that can be an ally but also can be overbearing, or a barbarian tribe that loves violence but respects you if you are a noble warrior.

Anyway, my main complaint of Swamp Castle was that it was too short, and this is the opposite of that, so I enjoyed this a lot.

This is the third game in the series.

The first game, Evertree, was a fairly short but very branched mystery fantasy game set in an inn.

The second was both long and vary varied, with a ton of different options.

This game was so big, so complex, that the author had to split it in two. So we have the first half of a great game. The combinatorial explosion does seem to have given the author some burnout, who took time off to make a separate game (Kitsune, for Choice of Games) and had a full-time job that took up time. Fortunately, he's recently come back to writing in the last few months.

In a way, the game branches almost too much, which is something I also experienced with Jolly Good:Cakes and Ale. Both games give you a ton of important tasks and not enough time to complete nearly any of them. In both games, I felt overwhelmed, but once I started I realized I had more time than I thought. I guess for me, there's a sweet spot between freedom and forward impetus; in Sordwin, there were competing goals, but I felt like no matter what I picked the main story progressed and I moved forward. Once Lux City of Lies (the projected sequel) is finished, I wouldn't mind if the next book in the series (if the author wants to continue) went back to the branching level of Sordwin.

Anyway, that's my only major complaint. This game itself is a lot of fun. I played a brownie druid and focused on going to work and meeting a fellow druid. I also focused on the main mystery of the mayor's death, and ignored all other side mysteries. I did attend events with Daisy, who carried over from the main game.

Story-wise (sorry it took me so long to get to this), you arrive at Lux, the big metropolis city, like Rome/Paris/London/NYC, and you get to have a job, find an apartment, and answer a summon from the mayor. You soon discover that the mayor has been murdered, and you are a top suspect!

In addition to this mystery, you find a big cast of new characters and reocurring old ones. Each day you choose what to do and who to spend time with, dealing with mysteries at night. Everything culminates in a great festival.

I can totally get why the author got burnt out, there are so many options and people online have really strong opinions and are asking for so much, but I just think that's a sign of how good the series is. If this were the first game in the series (and a complete game) people would be astounded and only have good things to say. It's only because it's compared to the past games in the series that people get critical. It's the way people will take a game like BTD6 or Terraria and say it's the worst game they've ever played, but only because 1)they've never actually played really bad games, or forgot about them, 2)heard a ton of people praising the game and tried it because of that, and 3)it didn't live up to their expectations. Now no one's said this game is awful, but it's in the 'famous + good series' tier which attracts more negative comments. I support the author in whatever he decides to do, even if it means cutting things I like to make a complete game.

No arcs are resolved here; each of the subplots hits an important note right near the end but there is no resolution.

This was a great game to play, definitely top 10 among Choicescript games I've enjoyed. It's a mystery (one of my favorite genres) and lets you be a mage, which is cool.

This is the second game in the Evertree Saga. The first game was also a fantasy mystery, but felt very short. This game, while each chapter can be completed relatively quickly, feels very substantial and has a ton of branches.

You come to an island which has been quarantined due to some kind of malady. Your employer has tasked you with recovering a package that was due and which is delayed on the island.

The mystery turns out to involve mysterious attacks, and everyone's on edge. You have to investigate not only the missing package and the attacks, but also your mysterious companion and the drama going on in town.

The game does great in at least 3 things that popped into my mind:

1-Lots of options. I maxed out my magic stat and used it for almost everything. The game felt like a breeze since I could read minds, teleport, fly, etc. This worked perfectly until one very crucial moment, but that tradeoff felt worth it. You can equally play as a buff or deceptive character. You can also bring in a completely different companion depending on your first game choices, which is very hard to code.
2-Good dialogue. Dialogue dominates this game, and the author manages to make each character feel distinct and fresh.
3-Real stakes. There are multiple competing goals, and it felt like I could make real progress on some if I invested time, but it meant leaving other parts of the game unexplored. However, the game manages to make you not feel like a loser for missing out on the other stuff, and all failure is accompanied by cool ways of getting out of it, often at the cost of others. This kind of thing is really hard to do, so I was impressed.

Overall, a great game.

This is the fifth game in the Samurai of Hyuga series.

I wrote a lot of this review in my head when I was 90% of the way done with the game, so I'll get that out of the way first and then talk about the ending.

I think I liked this one the best so far. One and two had too much of the suggestive content towards your minor charge, and four was super depressing. Three was my second favorite of the batch.

This one feels like the author has finally settled in and figured out what kind of story he wants to write. The ronin MC is sad but moves forward, is tortured and has lost hope but somehow continues on anyway, which is nice.

You spend a lot of this one lugging around the comatose body of your young shugenja companion. I liked how instead of focusing on gross sexual comments towards a minor it found other ways for the MC to be obnoxious/boundary breaking (like trying to clean out earwax). It made me think that the author should just go back and edit out all the crap in the first two games to make it more like this (and maybe to fix the Japanese; it might make sense to pay a native speaker a few hundred dollars to go through and redo the chapter names of all 6 games).

The game has a lot of adult content between the actual adults. I made choices that led to sexual encounters with Toshie because I felt like it fit my character, but because I don't enjoy fictional depictions of sex I skipped past them (they were very lengthy). Other mature content in the game includes frequent suicidal reasoning, torture and humiliation, descriptions of gore and rape (and the consequences of rape).

The main storyline is split in 2. In the first, you are suffering some kind of psychosis after your experience in hell and are trapped by the Silent Lady. You have to break out and then break into her stronghold to try to save the shugenja.

In the second half, you encounter nuns and christianity and have to deal with them and zombies while also being confronted with the concept of forgiveness and redemption (which you have an extreme adverse reaction to).

I liked the depiction of Christianity in the book, as a Christian. It felt very authentic. The MC hates it and doesn't believe in it and is disturbed by its teachings, but it generally sticks very close to the original source material and its believers seem sincere. So it's like the opposite of a straw man; the game kind of debates Christianity but in its full-fledged real form rather than the superficial or sophomoric takes many fantasy games set up as an evil state religion.

The game at this point has dropped almost all pretense of interactivity. At this point each choice is just for flavor text or for getting achievements, with some occasional consent choices for romance. For this specific story, I think it's a good choice. The author didn't want a branching story, he wanted to tell this story, and it feels engaging on the story alone.

Unfortunately, the last 10% of the game did sour my mood. I thought the author had maybe grown as a person and dropped the sexualizing minors idea in the last decade. And that still may be true! But the last chunk (and one fragment earlier on) has your minor companion create a fantasy world where they're older and in love with a romanticized version of you. Now that's not bad at all (when I was 14 I had a crush on Scully from X-Files, having a crush on an older person isn't weird at that age), but it does make me feel like the author has seen the relationship between you and the kid as a romance all along.

I probably won't play the sixth one for a while, because these books, since they have low interactivity, have a big chapter count (25 per most games) and take a ton of time to play (I've averaged around 10 days per book). So I'll take a break and try some others before coming back to this.

I didn't play any of the Spring Thing games until after Spring Thing finished, to get a little more neutrality. This one was one of the winners, so I was interested in playing it.

I had a bit of trepidation going in because I've historically struggled with complex timed murder games in IF; I'm think of Varicella and Make it Good, mostly.

I was pleased that this game had helpful guidance early on and I was able to have some success on my own. The game nudges you on things and places you can go to and do next.

At one point I messed up the online interpreter by undoing many times in a row while messing with the tab (a problem with parchment, not the game itself), so I restarted, and that gave me the confidence to just use the walkthrough and see the rest of the game. I'm glad I did; this game seems like one designed for careful exploration and note-taking, things I'm not too good at.

I do like mystery games and this is the kind that is mostly solved by doing puzzles using information in books and through things found in exploration. It does require looking under things (something I typically don't enjoy in large games with tons of furniture) but it is hinted when you need to do so.

The writing is often workmanlike, which isn't to say that it's bad (the flashback memories of Aelred are wonderful), but that due to the large nature of the game and the ascetic setting, writing is often utilitarian and sparse.

The time aspect isn't as big of a threat as it seems, if anyone else is worried as I was. Essentially it divides the game into segments of 'everyone is available to talk to' and 'everyone is away and you can search around'.

Overall, it's clear why it won.

This is the third Social Democracy game, a series that has proven popular outside of the usual IF haunts (even the history teacher of my school knows about them and uses them in curriculum).

They are card-based games where you have to run a government and worry about both party and government resources and budget and policies.

They tend to go over my head, as I have not diligently studied government policy. Playing this one, I trundled along my way until the senate lost confidence in me, businesses lost confidence in me, communists lost confidence in me, and I was out of a job. Alas!

Overall, though, the production quality is very high and the concept is fun. As long as people are still finding use and enjoyment in these games, we might as well keep going (it would be fun to see one with a Chinese emperor like the Yongzheng one from the Qing dynasty).