Reviews by MathBrush

I hadn't really put it together that the Mary Goodden of these exceptional stories is the Mary Goodden of Ifcomp 2021's game 'Funicular Simulator 2021'. Nice!

This was a really memorable exceptional story (a supplement to Fallen London's main story). While writing reviews for these, I had to look back in my fame history to remind myself what they were about, but this one was firmly lodged in my memory.

One of the main factions in Fallen London is the Urchins, a large number of lost youth who form gangs and steal things. They tend to represent innocence in Fallen London (like in the story Hojotoho, where they pretend to be valkyries and go on 'adventures'). They also have a connection to rain and storm, as they are generally the source of the category of items termed 'Wild Words', which includes things like Primordial Shrieks, Aeolian Screams and Storm-Threnodies. In fact, in the deeper lore they are associated with (Spoiler - click to show)the somewhat-dead god Storm, a vast dragon that has power over the sea, which is what this story deals with and what most spoilers later down contain.

A young girl is marked by (Spoiler - click to show)the God Storm, but you interrupt, entangling you in her life. You are tasked with taking her around and helping her make a decision whether to embrace her new life as (Spoiler - click to show)a vessel of innocent rage or not. Your journey exposes much of the difficulties of life in a foster care system and of a poor life, as you explore the palace, an orphanage, and a former foster home she was ejected from, discovering the sources of her rage.

I found this one poignant and memorable.

This is an exceptional story for Fallen London, which is a special 'extra' story for people who pay a monthly fee or purchase the story itself later on.

In this story, you rescue three young kids who have decided to find buried treasure on the Zee but get stuck when their boat crashes on a small island. Rescuing them, you learn about their fascination with Captain Redbeard, a mythical pirate, as well as the story of their mother, a woman who died at sea and who may or may not now be a 'drownie' (in Fallen London, people who die come back, except those who die at sea, who become a kind of fish/zombie/person).

The kids are cute, and help you pick out a suitable pirate name (mine was Blood Killer). Their dynamics and their interactions with the larger world paint a really lovely picture of family and growing up.

One of the key features of Fallen London is prisoner's honey, as substance which transports its users to the world of dreams. It plays a role in society similar to opium dens from that time.

Something you can learn about in many of the stories (especially early on in the Nemesis ambition) is about (Spoiler - click to show)gaoler's honey, a stronger variant that is made by bees invading someone's brain and sucking out the memories. It lets you experience their memories but causes them terrible pain. Even further in the lore, you can find a connection between this and the Royal Family, as (fairly big spoilers for those who haven't read stories involving the royal family) (Spoiler - click to show)they all used tainted red honey and became hideous beasts, except for one who gained horrible mental powers).

This game follows a member of the royal family who stayed on the surface, a grandson of Victoria named Albert together with his mother. He wants to experience the honey drug dens and wants to be like the rest of the Royal Family. A lot of the game seems intent on portraying a weak and sad outsider trying to be part of a larger group.

It is a solid story, but pales in comparison to most other royal family stories, especially The Gift or the captivating princess storyline in Sunless Skies.

This is a Fallen London exceptional story, meaning it is a supplementary tale to the overall main game.

This story was meant to explore the bone market and its side characters more. When the bone market first came out, the Carpenter's Granddaughter was (and is) an important figure who can sell the largest bone frame and manage your market exhaustion.

In this story, you go on a journey with that character to the Gant Pole, a location first featured in the spinoff game Sunless Sea. The Gant Pole is an enormous decomposing heart of a sea creature that is lived in an attracts things that have lost all other desires or purposes in life. Gant is one of seven fictional colors in Fallen London, described as the color that exists when all else is gone.

As you search for giant bones and fossils in this story, it takes a darker turn into body horror, including a chance for you to alter yourself in disconcerting ways.

Overall, this story is an interesting character study of its main protagonist and antagonist. The interactivity aids the story but isn't memorable in and of itself. A good option for fans of the Zee and/or bones.

This is the biggest game entered into the Spanish 2021 Ectocomp.

It's a Twine game using a lot of images and sounds. There is very little interactivity; the majority of the game is long pages filled with text and images with 'CONTINUAR' at the bottom. Occasionally there are choices, but they don't always remember what you do (for instance, (Spoiler - click to show)giving an item to a teacher early on doesn't get recorded, because you can give it to someone else later).

The main interactivity is thing of incense that you have that you can burn to stop the goblins. However, it isn't always clear when you can do this; frequently when the goblins were doing something bad I tried to use it, but just wasted my 'charges'. It seems reserved for moments when (Spoiler - click to show)the game is trapped in a loop.

There were a few typos here and there. The story often switches between second and third person, although that might just be me as a non-native speaker misunderstanding. As for the story itself, it was very descriptive with a wide variety of characters and a lot of imagination. Goblins were tied together with a high school that was once a military base, and both tied to another world. It was a complex and long story, and one I'm not sure I understood very well. But the story itself, with the images and the sounds, are a great accomplishment. I just wish I could have done more myself.

This is an Adventuron game in Spanish, made for Ectocomp.

It has 4 chapters, each detailing part of the story of Sidodorf, a soldier in a war that no longer cares about living as much as writing one final amazing letter. This leads him to desperate and bizarre acts.

The adventuron programming works well here, especially since the error messages give good hints on what to do next. My frequent problem with different dialects of Spanish struck again; I always thought TAKE would be TOMAR, but in this game one must use COGER, which is a strong vulgarity in the Spanish I learned. C'est la vie.

This game was really a very interesting character study, and I think its protagonist may be worth nominating for a Best PC xyzzy award next year. Unfortunately for me and other would-be translators, you can't highlight text to paste in google translate. However, it was overall pretty clear.

This is, as far as I can tell, the only entry in the Petite Mort division of the Spanish-language Ectocomp, all others being in the Grand Guignol division.

This is also the most educational game of the competition. It's essentially a guided tour of gruesome Madrid history, from torture devices to famous murders.

I learned a lot. The main interactivity is choosing which area to explore next. There is custom styling which was slightly hard to read (for best practices it's easier to read white text on dark grey than on black backgrounds) but had interesting images and even an embedded google maps link.

Overall, fun to learn from.

This is a Spanish Twine game that is an anthology of 4 stories of a cursed family. It's contained in a framing story where you're in an abandoned house and teenagers are trying to creep you out.

The stories are all different, explaining how a member of the Ferrosa family was cursed.

Each one is fairly well written, but the interactivity is fairly negligible. There are some noticeable typos, and the story just kind of stops at the end. Each of the stories themselves left me wanting a bit more; the only one that felt really complete was the love story with fire. The others felt like a lot of build up with not as much resolution as I would have wanted.

Still, the writing is descriptive and the game is visually interesting.

There is a photo called New Year's Visit with Jizo, Niigata Prefecture by the photographer Hiroshi Hamaya, that shows three young children trudging through the snow, the first one carrying a Jizo, a type of Buddha statue with connections to travellers.

This is a medium-length Spanish Ink story inspired by that photo. Its choice structure is fairly simple, mostly linear, occasionally some choices that are more complex.

The writing is very sweet and contemplative. You are the eldest of the three children, and you have to take care of your two younger siblings as you travel to a distant location. Along the way, you must take care of each other and guard the objects you've been entrusted with. You must also deal with your complex feelings about your late father.

The language of the game is simple and meaningful, and I found it emotionally touching. I also ended up looking up a lot of the Japanese words in the game; they're described well in-game, but I found it useful to find out more about them online.

This game is really creative. Similar to the latest Castle Balderstone game, it uses Twine to create a 'hub' that you can play other, embedded games from.

In this case, there is a large page where a woman is remembering many things. Each thing you click on leads to an embedded Texture page that you can play through, employing your imagination. For instance, you can be a shadow trying to grow to scare some kids, or an apprentice witch, etc.

The game's ending has an overall positive and bittersweet message. The stories are cute, with animals and a lot of herbs and plants.

Having every option available at once was a little overwhelming, and the texture pages loaded up a bit awkwardly (after one click they looked good). The embedded gifs were a nice touch.