Reviews by MathBrush

This game was entered as part of the short games showcase for games under a half hour, but it is quite a bit longer than that. It's part of a larger, projected Choicescript game.

The setting for this game is a magical fantasy world where women can be born as powerful sorceresses associated to different elements and men can become Guardians who have anti-magic powers and can defend sorceress or fight them.

You play as a fire sorceress, but can choose your specialty within fire. There is an extensive amount of early customization, not just for your character, but also for the game itself. I found this a bit overwhelming as I was expecting a small chunk of game for the competition, but it makes sense as part of a larger work.

The game has an extended intro section where you meet characters and explore. There doesn't seem to be much long-term effect of your choices here, besides setting a couple of romantic options. It's more flavor, but it's well-written flavor.

Later on the game hops into an investigation mode which I think has close to twenty subsections (which again shows how large this game is, as to fit under thirty minutes each subsection would have to take less than a minute to read). In this section, you can investigate three suspects' rooms with a time limit, and also different areas of the castle. In between investigation segments, you must attend a party, with choices of who to dance or flirt with.

Some investigation options let you use magic to solve them. This consumes the magic.

I was able to solve the puzzle the first try, although I wasn't sure until later on, and I thought the game did a good job of steadily building clues.

This PunyJam game shows a lot of skill at different programming tasks but feels like it was incomplete. I'd be happy to bump up the score if it were expanded.

You wake up in your room on a day that feels like it will be long. There are no instructions besides telling you that you should wake up.

So I wandered through the building, picking things up as I went. On my way out I grabbed some coffee, and then I went to a new building, solved a simple puzzle, and the game ended.

The game does enough that I can tell the author has some pretty good programming and the writing was interesting (like with the three objects in the box at the beginning of the game). It just felt like a lot was missing, like overall guidance or more material.

It's possible I missed some secret that hides the 'true' gameplay so feel free to let me know if that's true!

In this game, you are a teenager who was so focused on playing arcade games in the mall that you ended up locked in after hours.

It seems set in the 80s, with the arcade having Galaga and the character not having any cell phone (looking back, the game description actually says this explicitly). It includes other 80s signs like a poster of Madonna.

Gameplay is mostly classic adventure gameplay, moving objects, searching, codes, etc. The game is coded well, and the abandoned mall vibe has some great moments, especially with encountering things that frighten you.

It kind of felt like the protagonist was getting more and more into trouble, starting with just being in an area they shouldn't be and ending up being a kind of teenage vandal, in a funny way. It would make for a pretty good TV episode.

I did feel a bit frustrated with the lock, as it's intended that you brute force it (once you get some more info), but other than that the puzzles were fair.

This game was written by one of the co-developers of PunyInform, and it shows off a lot of programming complexity.

You wake up in the aftermath of a party, and need to make sure that the evidence is taken care of. I found this the most difficult part of the game, requiring multiple attempts and close inspection.

The rest of the game is a timed series of events. You are required to act in certain roles throughout the day, and you have to be in the right place at roughly the right time. You have a variety of choices in how to act using menu-based conversation.

I was deeply impressed by the tricky programming. The NPCs all have their own agenda, their conversation topics change throughout the day, you can give orders to NPCs, and so on.

This complexity was also a bit overwhelming. Even though the solution turned out to be simple, I felt intimidated by the timer and had trouble engaging emotionally with the game because of that.

Overall, though, the game was impressive and I've added it to my TV and Film list.

This is a large and complex game with several independent NPCs spread out through a large hospital. Someone has died, and you (a teen volunteer) want to both find out who and also get enough recommendations to be able to move on from the place.

I was impressed and overwhelmed with the size of the game. The hospital has four floors, each with a hallway with 3-5 spaces, with each space having doors to the north and south. In addition to that, there are a dozen or so NPCs and complex devices like elevators, safes and a walkman.

Gameplay mostly revolves around going into every area possible, identifying issues and collecting objects, then finding which objects solve which issues. There were two puzzles I couldn't figure out involving NPCs, and I ended up using invisiclues with them.

Overall, the story didn't land for me emotionally. The NPCs were varied, had interesting comments about each other, and had realistic relationships and plots, and the locations were varied, and there are some active events that are creepy or threatening, so all of those things are good. So I'm not actually sure what I felt was missing.

On the other hand, there was something about the mechanics that really appealed to me, which is hard to put into words. It was really satisfying unlocking different areas and using ideas, and there are multiple solutions.

There were a few times I was frustrated by synonyms or getting default responses (like (Spoiler - click to show)trying to push or pull the tile without the ladder). Overall, though, I think people who enjoy exploration and note-taking in parser games should like this.

This PunyComp game had a nice concept and was pretty fun, with a few caveats. It looks to be the first game by this author, which is pretty impressive if true and I would definitely play more games if they choose to write more.

You play as a paranormal investigator who comes up on the scene of a crime. Your goal is to figure out who died, how, and what to do about it.

You're equipped with two helpful sidekicks (who are later contactable by radio) and a protective amulet and an EMF reader. You explore a big mansion, solving a variety of puzzles and interacting with a few 'unusual' characters.

I was impressed by the implementation of things like the characters and a lot of the default messages. There were two big sticking points for me, though:

1-The game has an extremely small inventory limit. I was trying to carry around the 'default' gear the game gave me (radio, EMF reader, and amulet), and I could only pick up 3 items. I know some people go for realism, but these items are things like a lighter, sage, cigarettes, a pocketknife--I could easily carry all these things in real life, especially with pockets! I'd give a full point higher score if the inventory limit were removed or doubled or if a backpack were provided, or even if the amulet and/or meter were 'wearable'.

2-The game is missing a lot of scenery objects and synonyms. One really noticeable example is that the beginning of the game (so not really a spoiler) tells you that you see a lot of blood. But "X BLOOD" has no response. This is a frequent issue throughout the game, where the text prominently mentions an object but doesn't implement it.

Outside of these two factors, I enjoyed the game a lot, as I like supernatural things and mysteries. I especially liked the ambient messages about the radio and the overall thematic unity of the house.

I found the beginning of this game to be somewhat unusual for a Jim Aikin game, but it later turned more into what I expected. I associate this author with complex puzzles in elaborately detailed worlds that contain fantastical elements.

The beginning of this game is a mostly exploration-based segment set in the real world with 4 friends exploring an island in Greece. You can chat about luggage, visit the seashore, and explore a town.

Later on, that changes, in a way that becomes apparent early on.

I enjoyed messing around for a while on my own, then peeked at hints before going on. I found that there were several actions I had missed which were things I don't think I would have guessed at. Things like looking in, searching, looking under, and looking behind various objects. I had tried such things early on, but found nothing, so assumed it wasn't that kind of game, but alas, it is the kind of game where you have to try every action in every room.

Later on, I found that game had quite a few other actions which were hard to guess. That was compounded by the game not understanding some synonyms which would have been useful (Spoiler - click to show)like 'furrows' for 'furrow' or 'knock door' for 'knock on door'.

Story-wise, I thought the game had great atmosphere and that the opening had a lot of character as well. As time went on, the puzzles seemed to lead the story and the plot became pretty muddled.

Overall, though, this is a long, polished puzzle parser mythology game for those interested.

I've been playing through old Spring Thing games, and several of them have been really large, which makes sense; Spring Thing was originally established in part to have a release venue for games too large for IFComp. Nowadays large games often get released in IFComp and the main draw of Spring Thing seems to be its non-ranked awards system and less intense competition.

This game is big. You're investigating a mage's tower, and just 1 or 2 levels alone would be a normal-sized IFComp game. I thought it was a 5-level tower, and felt that was long, but it's actually 9 levels, and they get harder as you go. And there are 3 class choices that change how you can act!

The gameplay resembles are more cheerful (but only slightly) version of Bronze, in that you are in a castle with servants bound by enchanted objects (in this case, crystal), all of whom you can free by breaking the crystals. Many of the captives are mystical nine-tailed cats forced into new bodies and with mouths fused shut.

Many of the puzzles are fair and interesting. As time goes on, though, I found several that I found a little unfair and others that were just too hard for me. There is a lot of work put into this game but with its expansive scope it just wasn't all 'filled in'. Conversation is a notable weak point, with exotic and wild creatures who just respond "I don't know much about that" when asked about themselves and things in their vicinity. There just wasn't enough polish to put in, which makes sense, as in a game this large it would have taken months and a small army of beta testers.

I played until I had rescued about 7 or 8 of 18 servants and found around 12 treasures, then used a walkthrough. I did the Mage path, and had fun with the spells. There is a lot of good content in this game, so I do recommend people play it, but to just remember that the odds are stacked against you finishing without a walkthrough due to missing synonyms for reasonable actions.

This game took me a week to get through, often using hints and cheats and occasionally a walkthrough.

This is a big game, and one of his earliest outside of mini-games like Fingertips. It's a sequel to Shuffling Around, his most popular game on IFDB and another anagram game.

This game follows the pattern of many of Andrew Schultz's games. It takes a wordplay theme (in this case, anagrams) and crams each room and object description with as many examples of that theme as possible (in this game, the opening rooms started out with fairly normal descriptions and only the later ones used a ton of anagrams). As in these other games, you navigate through various rooms encountering objects whose names fit into the theme, which you must then solve with wordplay. Typing the solved wordplay word changes the object in accordance with what you've typed. Many themes revolve around groups of people who are arrogant who must have their ego taken down a peg.

I think anagrams work well with this kind of gameplay, so I enjoyed the puzzles in this game more than usual. I do 'cheat' quite a bit, using online anagram solvers when stuck and so on. I used those the least when the areas had a 'theme' like conjunctions or adverbs.

Due to the proliferation in later text of anagrams for the sake of anagrams, some of the text became confusing. Here is an example piece of dialogue I had difficult understanding:

> "Opinions! That BS idea abides, biased!" Gunter glosses over Blue Frog Urbfogel, Bugler of Foulberg, and how he beat up monsters that came back anyway til he could beat her up? Talked to people who knew where hidden items like the horn-o-honor and gavel of Fogvale were. It was rigged! Now, with her dynamite, tidy name, oh, the soaring signora! Her vast harvest, her mystic chemistry-, her tact-chatter. Her lean elan's made Yorpwald go real galore--be aliver--a praised paradise--with her ReaLiv initiative for the Sunnier Unrisen Inner Us! From arsey years to so sane season! Had us voting her overnight the roving virgo then! Became a rowdy pal! Yorpwald was old, warpy, but now it's more wordy, pal! A Yapworld and Payworld! Oh, her good deeds!"

Because of that, I didn't try forming a mental model of the plot and instead just looked for obvious things to try making anagrams of, relying on the scanner first, then hints, then walkthrough if I got stuck.

Overall, I had a lot of fun. I did encounter a lot of bugs though. Both version 2 and 3 begin with a note from the author to himself to absolutely make sure to comment out beta testing commands and then lists them. At the very end of the game everything ends fast and it gives a yes/no questions, but answering YES ends up saying that there was a bug in the game or something didn't go right. There's a toaster that gives some buggy responses about xrays, as noted in the walkthrough (and which I experienced).

So, overall this game was great for me because I like trying to figure out anagrams, but I wouldn't recommend it in general except for other fans of anagrams, mostly due to the currently-existing bugs. I played it in my quest to play all Spring Thing games.

This game is mostly a chore simulator. You are in a village, and all the villagers ask you to run errands for them, like grabbing nails or wood. They take time to teach you how to do each task. While condensing it all into one day feels pretty overwhelming and would probably be a nightmare for a kid, it makes more sense if you envision it as just being a lifestyle where everyone works hard and this tutoring replaces school.

The game is in three acts, each more active than the previous. The first is chores in a familiar location. The second is unfamiliar chores, with a magical surprise. The third is in the middle of combat.

This feels Norse-related, with ocean-themed life and wolf mythology, but it could be a lot of places.

Some people mentioned that this game seems like it's telling the wrong moral. To me, it seems like this game is saying 'Fit into society, obey, don't stray from the path and have honor'. This is in distinct contrast to many children's tales which are about the wonders of imagination and of accepting things outside of your culture. Both though describe the perils of breaking one's word with magical creatures.

I did have trouble figuring out commands in a few points.