Ratings and Reviews by MathBrush

This is a weird game.

It's a unity-based visual novel with some video title cards, jazz music (or maybe ragtime?) and static cut-outs of animals.

You play as what I can only describe as a deeply disturbed squirrel, one out of touch both with the thoughts and emotions of others but also with physical reality itself.

While the game isn't super long (about 5 or 6 vignettes), each explores a dark facet of the human existence. It feels like the 'depressing half' of Anna Karenina (the one centered on Anna, as opposed to Kitty and Levin).

But in the end, even a narcissistic and untethered-to-reality squirrel deserves to live and has some human worth, and is perhaps deserving of love (although this goes against the squirrels own desires, so maybe not).

All in all, I didn't expect the pieces of this game to fall together for me the way they did, but I think I'll end up contemplating this for a while.

This is a game from the recent 'Running out of Ink' itch anthology.

In this Twine story, you play as a tired author who just moved out of her parents' house and is trying to write a story over 3 days. Your choices during each of the three days affects the resulting story, which you can read at the end.

A lot of it is very relatable; trying to manage your creative output by procrastinating through playing games (something I've been doing myself except with writing reviews), writing for the 'wrong outlet' (where you are verbose) instead of the 'right one' (where you get stuck). I especially related to listening to podcasts while playing grindy games (I can highly recommend mixing the Magnus Archives podcast with Sunless Sea/Sunless Skies).

The character is depicted clearly and the variable story at the end is neat (the code for it is basically a time cave, with three possible first pages, 9 second, 27 third, etc. approximately).

My only caveats are that the game could be tidier. Paragraphs run together; I'd rather see each new paragraph indented or a full line left between them, like the finished story at the end. And there were a couple of noticeable typos (like 'to' for 'two') that could be caught by using Twine's text dump feature and running the result through Grammarly.

This game is part of the Running out of Ink: Limited Spaces anthology recently released on itch.

The story is about you, a youth who discovers a mysterious door in the forest. You are barred from entering, but when you return as an adult, no one can hold you back.

Gameplay is centered on finding journal entries and tapes. The tapes have very nice voice acting, although I was playing around my kid and the first tape started with some loud profanity, so I ended up just reading the thoughtfully-provided transcripts instead lol.

The feel of the game is simultaneously full of terror but also calm. All of the damage is in or from the past. There are lots of spiders, claustrophobic situations, darkness, hints of obsession, etc.

There are some puzzles in play. The first puzzle completely stumped me. I was flabbergasted, not knowing if I had enough info. Then I realized (moderate-to-strong hint)(Spoiler - click to show)certain parts of the documents are highlighted.

Overall, I found the storytelling high-quality, professional tier; this reads like a sci-fi story in an anthology you'd see displayed at a Barnes and Noble table. The design and layout are custom Twine that look very nice, especially the tapes.

Overall, it's a strong game. I don't know if I'd replay it; while every piece was strong, games also some times need a je ne sais quoi that ties it all together, and for me I didn't get that overarching sense of completion that would make a game perfect. But it is a game I can recommend and praise.

This 2022 French IFComp game really reminded me of 60s and 70s science fiction books of my dad's, which often had hard-hitting social issues not as an allegory but as the main feature of the story, with the science fiction only serving to shed light on the bigger issue.

This game is about androids but also about young white men, incel culture, etc.

In 5 short vignettes (and an epilogue), we encounter a growing number of young men who are convinced that they are not human, but are, in fact, androids.

But strangely it is only androids, and not gynoids. No minorities think they are androids either.

It's worth reading. For a non-native speaker, it felt long, but it was around 7K words total in my playthrough, so definitely doable. Gave me a lot of thoughts and taught me a lot about French slang and 'cuisine bretonne'.
Your choices in each story generally are about choosing between making a situation more volatile or making things more calm. The interactivity felt a little weak; occasionally it seemed clear my choices were doing something to the story but often it didn't feel that way. The excellent writing did a lot to mitigate that.

This is an entrant into the 2022 French IFComp. It is a prologue that covers the first scene or so of Mozart's opera Cosi Fan Tutte.

It's very appealing visually, with a detailed backdrop and avatars for speakers.

Overall, I found it solid, but I felt less capable of making decisions that change the story. Most options were about reacting, with a few important actions. I wasn't sure if anything was being tracked, but at the end it listed my stats and showed that I had changed things a bit. It might be good to have a way to check that more often in the finished game!

Though just a demo, this a pleasant experience overall.

It uses a custom interface that is made with Moiki, a system I've never seen before but which seems like a smooth, stats-based hyperlink system with good graphics integration. My first impression is 'choicescript mechanics and Twine styling options', but I'm not sure how accurate that is.

Game-wise, I'm going to call it 'Bohemian' as it's focused heavily on wine, food, culture and literature. It has some darker undertones as well.

The stats at first felt like perhaps they weren't used very much, but as the game progressed I saw them more. It was a bit odd seeing some choices where you have to be good at a stat to use them, but your reward is just more of that stat (I swear I read an Emily Short post where she calls this 'rich get richer'). But the demo didn't last long enough to show the long game, so it's possible this won't be a problem in the long run.

My only other (small) complaint is that the text when gaining something special just flashes on the screen for a second, so I (a non-native speaker) couldn't finish reading it.

Otherwise, a good story, reminding me of an Edgar Allan Poe story adapted by someone who owns a vineyard.

This is entry in French IFComp 2022 written in Twine.

You sign up to be an adventurer, giving your name, age, description, etc., and get to choose between swords and magic.

The game has an odd structure. It splits in wildly different directions a lot, like a Time Cave, but many of them are dead ends, like a Gauntlet, but the ones that don't often allow you to visit one of the other main branches.

The writing is classic fantasy, with wizards and wyverns. While pleasant, I didn't feel a strong emotional connection to the game. And some of the structure I feel could be improved; there is only one save slot, and no undo, and if you reach a good ending while you have a full save slot, there's no way to start over without clearing your cache. And on my chrome browser, there was a graphical glitch with scrollbars appearing out of nowhere.

But it was enjoyable enough if you just want a bit of fun on an afternoon.

This is a game I'd happily replay in a better state and which is fairly descriptive. However, I had numerous problems with it that I'm not sure are solvable.

This is the author's first IF, and takes place on an island you sail to in a canoe. On the island you can disembark and discover a huge, bustling city with a complex web of possible trades and an economy.

It's a very cool idea. The problem is the bugs. The author had to try and work around several implementation issues and their solutions don't always make sense. For instance, instead of typing HELP or AIDE for help, there is a manual floating by you you read. Similarly, the walkthrough is just an item in a different room you can read, and so is an 'indice'.

The canoe isn't a vehicle you enter; instead you have to TAKE the canoe to use it. There is an object that guides you through the forest but it is purposely left vague and it disappears from your hand at some point.

More distressingly, the seashells used as currency seem to disappear as soon as you enter the village, which means I can't give them to anyone. Rats also appear which you can kill for money, but they are seemingly random and also pretty uncommon after the first one.

Over all, it has cool ideas and I would like to see a more polished version, but I had to give up.

This game is most likely the first Dialog game written in French (for the 2022 French IFComp). As someone who's currently writing an English Dialog game, I was intrigued by this.

The author admittedly had to rush this game, but it feels pretty smooth overall. I only found one error message not translated ('You can't go in that direction', I think). I did feel like a lot of synonyms and alternate solutions were missing (especially for [mild early spoiler](Spoiler - click to show)trying to get the shining object stuck in the rubble; I tried PRENDRE, PRENDRE AVEC BRANCHE, POUSSER AVEC BRANCH, etc.). Thankfully, there's a walkthrough.

Story wise, your mother always told you sweet stories about a mirrored princess in an enchanted land. But when she dies, the journals she leaves you have notes and maps that indicate it all may be true.

I found the story quite cute and liked the ending. If the game were polished a bit more I think it would be quite good, despite its brevity.

This is an interesting game from the 2022 French IFComp. You wake up in the back of a limo having lost all of your memories and have to discover who you are and where you are going.

It's written in Twine using a retro-looking font (appropriate for the name Retrospection, but not otherwise pertinent to the story).

Perspective and identity are a major component of the game. Both first and second person are used, as are gender-neutral french language (the pronouns iel/lea, as well as ending adjectives with .e like 'fiancé.e'). Your opinion of yourself evolves as memories trickle.

This game is a good example of how 'bad' design principles can work well if used judiciously. This game contains examples of 'gauntlet' design (where you have to pass certain trials and need to restart if you 'fail'), as well as having large chunks of non-interactive text that fills the whole page. Despite this, the large chunks are well-written, and the game is structured in a way that replay is quick and not tedious.

The game even includes a very fun visually interactive element a (spoilers for mechanics but not content (Spoiler - click to show)jigsaw puzzle), and possibly more; there are many endings, of which I saw two 'losing' endings and one ending I consider a 'winning' ending (mega spoilers for content)(Spoiler - click to show)deciding I wasn't worthy to return to life.