Reviews by MathBrush

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.

This is an entry in the 2022 French IFComp written in Ink. It starts off in an intense situation in a haunted house before flashing back to 'how it all started'.

It includes several possible relationships, the possibility of death for you and others, and a lot of state tracking. A typical portion of gameplay is reaching a room or series of rooms with the option of looking at several different sub areas. In each sub area, you can grab an object to use or attempt some kind of action. Keys are common.

The storyline and puzzles are satisfyingly good; I think both could stand to be improved and rely too heavily on tropes. However, I found the characters interesting and the puzzles much more fun than most Ink games.

There are few bugs (I think I found one about a drawer being stuck but it tells you what's in it anyway?). Overall, I found it mostly polished, pretty descriptive, interesting interactivity, emotional impact from exciting scenes, but probably won't play again.

This is a French IFComp game.

I think a lot of the interesting parts of this game come from the first few moments, so I'll put most of the review in spoilers in case you want to try it out real quick. I can say that it should be apparent fast what is going on, and that the first few seconds are interesting, and that the comma in the game title is not a typo.

(Spoiler - click to show)This is a game where you have to type out journal entries over several 'days'. The twist is that the entries are pre-determined: you have to guess what someone would type in a journal and hope that you're typing what they want you to. Every character you get wrong (including punctuation!) deducts a point. Every correct word adds a point up to 50. When you lost all 50 points, you have to restart that day.

The game doesn't last too long, so it can be completed in one sitting. This was intimidating, though, as a non-native speaker, but there are mechanics that help with that over time. The game did pull a couple of tricks on m though.

+Polish: The game is very polished.
+Interactivity: It was weird and I don't think it would work for other games, but I liked it in this one.
-Descriptiveness: The actual text was quite vague.
+Emotional impact: I was impressed by the cleverness.
-Would I play again? Not much replay value.

This French IF Comp game has you sent as a spy to an alchemists lair to search for evidence of misdeeds.

You are equipped with a camera of sorts to take images of suspicious things. There are several secrets to find and a few hints of world-building.

This is written in the Donjon language, a native French language alternative to Inform 7 but also done in natural language. The file can be read in plain text, which I had to resort to to solve it.

My experience with the implementation was mixed. Playing IF in a language I'm not completely fluent in is always a challenge. It was hard to tell if something was implemented weird or if I was the one who was being weird.

But here are a few things that I think are definitely the game's issue:
-Several nouns are mentioned but not implemented. For instance, a desk has notes on it, but the game doesn't recognize 'notes'. In the end game, there are (Spoiler - click to show)chains but trying to 'regarder' them or 'prendre' them makes the game confused.
-There's a big issue with the 'taking' code: (Spoiler - click to show)the source code has special results if you 'deplacer' the rug or the alembic, but the game also lets you just 'prendre' those things without triggering the special event.
-Many objects have an adjective+noun name, but you have to type both. I became deeply frustrated with a 'livre verte' because I couldn't P Livre or P Verte.

So, overall, I thought the worldbuilding was cool and the camera device. But the frustration prevented a totally enjoyable experience.

Edit: as a side note, I had a little trouble due to my silly american keyboard not having any accent symbols. I got around it by copying and pasting words from the text, though.