Reviews by MathBrush

This game was interesting. I thought it was Twine, but it seems like a custom engine made by the author on github. It has regular links but includes a row of buttons for common actions like dropping, pushing, attacking, opening, etc.

The game has a world model with several locations and items and NPCs in them. You start with a dramatic opening: a note to yourself saying that you must kill Rodrigo.

The story is interesting and is based on a scene from a movie that left a deep impression on the author, but I wonder if it isn't a perfect fit for the UI here. I had trouble figuring out how to use a bank card to pay for food, for instance; do I click on the card itself? Open the card? Attack the card? Similarly, there were a lot of background red-herring items that had no real story use.

I felt like the story got progressively creepier, and the ending was impactful (literally). The engine overall seems very solid; I could see it working great in a larger game that was more puzzle-based.

This is the second entry in one of the weirdest series of IF games I've ever played.

Last year I played the first game, Fiesta Mortal, which was a bizarre kind of visual novel that used Sims-like 3d models with pre-Toy Story quality and a horrifying uncanny-valley look. There was a bunch of navigation and inventory trying to stop Steisy, the popular girl, from murdering everyone and you.

This game takes everything from the first game and amps it up. Steisy, now a psychiatric ward patient, looks horrifying with an immense grin and shaved head to support the Free Brittney moment (which she later finds out has already succeeded before she shaved her head).

Her brother, Marlon (I think, I can't remember), when he isn't busy spying on his 50-year old female neighbor with a telescope, wants to visit her to triumph over her. In the meantime, Steisy has to put up with rectal inspections by angry nurse Latoya and meetings with her cellmate and doctor.

Every Spanish swear word I ever learned is used a lot, as well as a few more I had to look up. The characters are oversized stereotypes and parodies, like the flat-earther who derails the game for an intense argument about how Nazis are building bases under the earth and made the south pole as a giant wall around the earth to hide the true mega-continent that lies on the edges.

Overall, the game is inappropriate or crass or over-stylized in many ways, but that is its style, and it kind of works, to be honest. It's like watching Trolls 2 or other B-movies. I think I would have backed out if it were in English due to weird content like severed PS1-style heads, but the language barrier helped provide a buffer between me and content. Wild experience.

This game is fairly complex and its a good chance I didn't understand it completely. It involved quite a bit of folklore and older time things that were hard to translate (and copy and paste doesn't seem to work for google translate), and it is written in a dialect that drops the 'd' at the end of words (like tablao for tablado), which was a bit tricky for me. It's written in Adventuron, and is actually a well-implemented example of the engine.

You play as a man in a Romani family whose name I couldn't quite understand (I think it means something like the evil eye?). The game is divided into two sections; the first involves obstacles in the path of a wagon trip, and involves both conversation and some standard fetch quests.

The second part is a loop where you sing or play guitar for money in a cafe, each time receiving feedback on how to improve. I started off with horrible music but eventually got much better. That unlocks some ending scenes that are quite shocking and weird at first, but, upon reading the beginning quotes of the game again, seem to represent a kind of catharsis. I got kind of stuck on this second half of the game, to be honest.

Overall, this game is incomplete, according to the author, but I found it complex and descriptive. I appreciated the manual and the suggestions at the bottom of each page.

I debated for a long time between 3 stars and 4 stars, but I'd rather be nice if I can't decide so I'm going with 4.

This entry in the Petite Mort portion of the French Ectocomp speed-IF is simultaneously perhaps the most ambitious of the games I've played so far but also the one with the most problems.

It is a parser game, and you wake up in the bathroom wrapped up in something. Weird objects lie around the room, and you have to find a way out.

I thought it was descriptive and had a compelling idea, but I don't think the author had enough time to finish much of the game. Lots of objects have no description or just don't exist in the room. I looked at the code, too, which was really interesting.

In the end, I guessed half of the solution to the main puzzle but had to get help with the second half. None of the mysteries really get resolved. Overall, I think this is a good game for 4 hours of work, but would need more hours to get all the way great.

This French game written in 4 hours has quite a bit of material. You, a young girl, are excited to go out and assist your grandmother, who is quite old and maybe a witch?

She has the strange ability to speak only in capital letters. She leaves you a note with chores you have to do, mostly feeding cute or spooky animals.

Overall, I thought it was well-written and looked nice. There was at least one bug that made it a bit hard, but that has been fixed since then.

The grandma is a neat character, very intriguing. And the UI is beautiful.

This is an amusing/frightening story written for the French Ectocomp competition in 4 hours or less.

It's an Ink game where you go trick or treating, and I actually found it more fun on replays to see where the 'tricks' are. You have to get a costume, meet up with friends, and choose what order to visit different houses. It's fairly short and simple, but has some strong characterization.

The writing is, as far as I can tell as a non-native speaker, slightly child-like, with run-on sentences and a carefree attitude.

I played three times, because each time I reached what I'd consider a bad ending. I think a good ending exists, but I haven't been able to find it; if anyone gets there, let me know how!

This was a fun Petite Mort game in the French Ectocomp competition (Petite Mort here meaning a game completed in 4 hours or less, quite different than its usual meaning).

This is remarkably polished for such a quickly-made game, but I think that's due to its well-chosen scope. You're in a room with just a few objects, and you have to hurriedly think of inspiration for a story. Every time you look at something, you improvise part of the story based on that object.

Each object provides a different story for each section (except maybe the very last one?), so, as it claims, there are 1024 possible stories, although there are only 20 or so distinct pieces of text to read. Still, it's fun, and includes an intro story based on an Arno Schmidt story.

This is a fun medium game. The author has a long-running series of games that feature a limited parser, where only a select few commands are recognized. In fact, you could say he's a pioneer of the field.

I've come to learn how to play these games, although they're still pretty hard for me. So I was looking forward to playing this game.

You play as a robot that has to go around zapping bugs who have infiltrated a robot factory. It kind of reminds me of the MO factory in adventure time, if it was working well (the only similarities are single minded robots, but still...).

It's kind of a metroidvania situation, as you gain new abilities and items as the game progresses. There are also codes, waiting games, patterns, etc. However, there's no sequence skipping possible like in a lot of Metroidvanias.

I did better than I usually do, completing all the optional tasks and getting all but 1 of the bugs. But man, that last bug was nasty; I looked at every hint and then had trouble. It was the (Spoiler - click to show)sculpture bug. It was fairly clued, I just forgot some capabilities, which shows how complex can get.

I liked the characters in this game a lot; they were simple and often dumb but it makes sense for a collection of bots.

This game was played at the Seattle IF Meet-up with the author narrating the game and adding her thoughts, and then I played again on my own.

You play as a future trans woman (now known as Lavernean) who has been let go and now has to do basically gig-work to make money. You also have a longterm fatigue-related illness and there's 'nanoplague' going around.

Each day you can decode more dna to make money. You also need to deal with your illness, find food, and deal with your impending eviction.

This game was hard to play because it is very realistic. I've had to do day jobs and night gig work to make food money and/or rent in the last few years, and it's pretty stressful. Three of my closest family members have fatigue-related illnesses, too, so there's a lot that hits home.

Things are pretty rough for our protagonist. It's sad but also accurate for some people I know that (Spoiler - click to show)hitting up and/or sleeping with your married ex-flame is the best way to make money.

There are a ton of endings; the writing is on-point and well-done, the characters distinct and vivid. I did find that the difficulty was (realistically) pretty high, and I kind of felt like I was slowly drowning. It takes a lot of work to be able to impart that feeling, but it was also stressful. The level of craft evident is very high, and I'm glad I played.

I'd first like to say that the art, animation, and audio for this game are very well done. I loved the style, and would be happy to see it again; it's unique, I haven't seen other games with the scribbly dark figures.

You play as a dangerous and large being that is hunting for food by a bridge. Humans pass by, and you can decide how to act towards them.

I played through to one positive ending (villager ending 1), but the way the game reacted to my choices made me feel like there were many very different endings. That's pretty cool!

There were some typos here and there (like "One of the small humans'", with an extra apostrophe). Overall, it was fairly brief. But what is here is excellent.