Reviews by MathBrush

For several years now, Ryan Veeder has entered a game with a variation on th name Tales from Castle Balderstone. Previously, these games were parser games that contained many 'mini games' with a framing story that you were being guided around a castle that was holding a contest or reading of short horror stories, with each story being one game. The narrator of the framing story speaks to you directly as a guest, and is usually Ryan Veeder himself.

This game spoofs that general idea, but instead of parser games, it uses Ink, Twine, and Choicescript (possibly more). In an interesting twist, this year's real Castle Balderstone game also blends platforms by using both Twine and parser.

This game uses the same framing device, except now there are more Ryan Veeders; in fact, everyone is a Ryan Veeder.

The overall switching between systems is impressive, but the game has numerous errors, such as doubled periods in the Twine system and a game-crashing mis-defined variable 'raven' in the Choicescript section. My game ended abruptly after the Choicescript section with a screen that I could only see when not in full screen but couldn't click on, so I assume that was the ending.

Overall, the game has funny elements (such as the stats screen of the Choicescript section). I feel, though, that it misses the mark a bit. Castle Balderstone is already a humor/parody series, so making a parody of it is like making a copy of a copy, kind of how Scary Movie made fun of Scream which made fun of earlier horror stories. Part of what makes Castle Balderstone games work so well is that, within the framing, the stories can be seen as completely earnest and actually work quite well as sincerely creepy or heartfelt stories; the games also serve as a combination dumping ground/testing ground for interesting game concepts, many of which are completely new or at least relatively uncommon in the parser scene. This game has a touch of that (with blending Ink, Twine, and Choicescript), but in the end I was left a bit disappointed.

-Polish: I found several bugs, including game-crashing
-Descriptiveness: The game is pretty vague
+Interactivity: I liked the switching systems and some of the mechanics
-Emotional impact: Like I said above, it didn't really grab me.
+Would I play again? Yes, especially if the bugs were fixed!

This is a Petite Mort game, meaning it was created in 4 hours or less.

The author has chosen two lovely Emily Dickinson poems focused on death and the afterlife. The author has turned them into a parser game as minimally as possible, so that looking or some other simple action is all that is needed to get the next action.

Most adaptations fail when they go 'off the rails', since people's writing is rarely as good as the original they're adapting, so choosing to be faithful to the original was a great choice.

Of course a game written in 4 hours tends not to be super polished, but I like the imagination here and the concept is done well.

This is a fairly short horror story set in space.

You wake up in a food storage area of a ship with all the food running out. You have to exit and explore your ship. The general feel is uncertainty, terror, and wistfulness.

It's a small game, only 4 locations. The writing has a nice creepiness.

Overall, it felt a little spare, a little far in the direction of minimalism, especially the final room.

This game is fabulous plot-wise: you encounter a mysterious deer beast in the forest and track it back to a farm. There you discover a strange series of events in the past through the use of journal entries.

Getting that story, though, can be a real pain. Many commands go unrecognized. Here is an example from early on in the game:

(Spoiler - click to show)> x door
A solid front door made of heavy wood. The green paint has all but peeled away. You see a tarnished door knocker in the shape of a Fleur de Lis.

> knock
I don't understand your command.

> knock door
I better use the knocker to do that.

> knock knocker
You can't knock it.

> x knocker
A tarnished door knocker in the shape of a Fleur de Lis.

> use knocker
You use the door knocker and knock loudly... Nothing happens. Looks like no one is home.
(You unlocked an Achievement.)

A lot of the wording is confusing or misspelled (like 'Knock arrow' instead of 'nock arrow'). Overall, the game could've used less time in making its huge map and more time in polishing a smaller segment of the gameplay.

I really like the story, though, which is why I'm giving it a rating of 3 (for descriptiveness, emotional impact and the fact that I'd play again).

This is an entry in Ectocomp 2021, in the Grand Guignol section.

You play as a young person who is able to see ghosts, or at least a specific ghost named Jack. Jack urges you to solve his murder and stop another which is about to occur.

The map is pretty large, extending over three different main locations, each with 8-20 rooms.

Interaction consists of classic parser gameplay (one puzzle (Spoiler - click to show)is familiar for fans of older games, although with an unusual twist) as well as topic based conversation.

The game has an interesting premise and excels most at setting and scenery.

The implementation could be more thorough. Many synonyms are not implemented (for instance, in the final scene, (Spoiler - click to show)the service box only works if you UNLOCK BOX WITH KEY, and not if you TURN ON BOX, RAISE LIFT, go UP, etc.) Many key items are not implemented, and some verbs that are directly suggested in the text do not work. An important PC's name isn't capitalized in responses.

I think this game could benefit from being ported to Adventuron. Adding some nice pixel art would improve the overall appeal, and the (large) Adventuron audience is generally less concerned about small details of implementation and appreciates the classic gameplay and interesting maps of games like this.

This game, entered in Ectocomp 2021, is a brief Twine game in which you recreate the Chaucer story The Pardoner's Tale as one of the main characters.

For most of the game you have two choices: follow the story, or go off the rails. Going off the rails generally results in your death. There is no undo, so you'll have to replay, which can be mildly slow due to some timed text but not too bad.

There are three main endings: death, the traditional Chaucer ending, and, the game insinuates, a victorious ending, which I eventually found.

I think the Chaucer original is neat. The gauntlet story structure here was a bit rough, since you saw the same text over and over again and the extra deaths didn't really add much value. It was essentially a 'do you want to continue the story or start over from the beginning?' button.

The layout was a bit hard to read, with some paragraphs being centered and the lower paragraphs being left-justified. Also, the author used a serifed font on a pure-black background, both of which made it harder to read.

There were many stats displayed but they were a bit confusing. At one point I think I had -3 money.

Overall, the strongest points here are the interesting story and the characters.

I was interested to see a game described as 'Mormon horror' on the IFDB feed. As a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, it's rare to see interactive fiction that's connected to my church.

This game is a take on Bluebeard, a topic I enjoy (one of my favorite opera's is Duke Bluebeard's Castle, which has a lot in common with this game).

However, it differs from traditional Bluebeard narratives by putting a religious spin on things. The religion in this game isn't the same as my church; instead, it's an amalgamation of the culture in Utah, especially Provo, some esoteric doctrinal references, and some new innovations I've never really seen before.

The Utah culture shows up in things like 'dirty coke' (which is soda with mix-ins like coconut or flavored syrups) and 'Sunstone' (the name of a magazine that does academic/critical studies of the religion), or people using 'Brigham Young was my ancestor'. The main NPC is an area authority, which I think is an in-joke as they are in real life distant, benign administrators that are rarely seen (most real-life church figures that people take issue with are local like bishops or global like apostles). The new innovations are things like having an estate with a chapel on it (?) that is also an official temple for marriage purposes (?) or talking about early settlers being called skillet-lickers.

The main horror components are centered around common concerns that women (especially in Utah) experience in marriage: feeling pressured into early pregnancy, feeling socially inadequate due to infertility, feeling a loss of ownership over the body, and feeling pressured and grossed out due to a new husbands request for (metaphorical) frequent sexual relations, or being worried that you'll be forced into a polygamous marriage in heaven against your will. These are things I saw a lot in my town growing up and which I've seen almost not at all in every other state I've lived in. Utah can be pretty weird some times.

You have a health meter which results in your death when depleted, as well as faithfulness (which (Spoiler - click to show)takes you to a depressing heaven) and unfaithfulness (which (Spoiler - click to show)gets you kicked out but safe).

The game was polished in general, with custom styling but a couple of issues with paragraph breaks. I found the writing to be evocative. The various stats made for good interactivity in a fairly brief game. And the horror was true to real emotions and experiences I've seen before (in particular, part of it reminded me of a (Spoiler - click to show)traumatic miscarriage my former spouse had which I helped/supported during).

I felt like the game had very little to do with the Church of Jesus Christ itself; the vast majority of messaging in the actual church is 'God loves you' and 'if you've messed up Christ will help you if you let him'. But I do think it represents the experience of many women, especially in BYU/Provo/Utah, and that many people could see themselves in this game.

It's become increasingly hard to review Ryan Veeder's games because they're generally all the same: 'This game does something very creative that I hadn't really seen before and is polished and funny. One of the best games I've seen in a while yada yada yada. If this game was by a new author, I'd think they're one of the best new authors out there.'

And that's all true here, too. This game does something I had once considered the 'holy grail' of modern IF, which is to combine parser choice in a logical way. In this game you use Twine in an overworld with a map, which leads to Inform 7/Vorple mini-games that seamlessly transition back into Twine. Its all hosted on the authors website using the autosave feature first used in his Fly Fishing game. My only concern is for preservation; is there a way to ensure the game could be saved for posterity?

Storywise, the framing story is the same as last year, a funny take on literary culture and the way we handle celebrity writers. It contains 5 (or so) mini stories:

Letavermilia: This is a linear (story-wise), puzzle-based space game. You play as a bounty hunter chasing after a criminal who is also named after a horrible plague. You chase them from world to world, with each world having a puzzle you must solve to find the 5-digit autopilot code needed to move on. Solutions range from exploration and mapping to a straight-up cryptogram (the latter being my least favorite activity of the whole game, but easily solved online and solvable by copious in-game hints). This game features some genuinely chilling moments and some funny ones as well, and demonstrates Veeder's predilection for deeply implementing unnecessary side systems. This one takes an hour or so to play.

Nyvo the Dolphin: This is a Metroidvania-style game where you as a dolphin explore a wreck filled with scientific equipment, which grants you increasing capabilities. This was horror in the sense of Beetlejuice or Addam's family, where our cheerful protagonist blithely navigates the remains of past human devastation and death. This one took about 30-45 minutes. I had a little trouble navigating, so mapping might have been good, but I enjoyed the power curve and the finale.

Singing for Me: this is a Lovecraftian (or maybe, more Blackwoodian or fae) small town living simulator, in many ways reminiscent of AKheon's recent Ascension of Limbs or titles like Stardew Valley. You play as a recent move-in in a cabin, and typing LOOK gives a list of places or people you can visit. Each visit takes the entire day. You can also buy stuff, where buying one thing takes the whole day, or sell many things at once. As you explore, you discover more locations and people. Like Stardew Valley, there are significant holidays that you can experience on a set schedule. Through these, the main story is developed in a classic 'creepy small town' style like Midsommar or The Village. I enjoyed this one; I was worried I wouldn't be able to see everything, but the game gives you plenty of time to focus on one or two goals that matter to you. I spent a couple of hours on this.

Visit Skuga Lake: This game had the most traditional gameplay but used a mechanic with quadratic complexity. Basically, you start locked in a closet, but soon break out with the help of (Spoiler - click to show)an amulet with an empowering eyestone. You then wander a large map, gaining two new classes of powerful items that interact with each other in an enormous amount of ways. I'll admit that I ended up 'lanwmowering' many options to find what worked, but it was also fun to experiment so it didn't really feel tedious. I played this for about an hour and a half.

Finale (called (Spoiler - click to show)Hunted): (Spoiler - click to show)This story was a bit confusing, but felt fast-paced and appropriate as an ending. It was Christmas-themed and felt like an action movie. Scenes focused on movement and basic take/use gameplay. It wasn't as compelling mechanically as the earlier pieces but story-wise and emotionally was satisfying. This took less than an hour.

Additional comments: (Spoiler - click to show)There is a secret fifth game. I was able in this one to read many books, see a family tree and look up people in it, make coffee, and find a nook, as well as talk to Allison Chase. I wasn't able to find any use of the nook or book or tree, so either I missed out on the point or this was just a 'chill and vibes' section like the end of Rope of Chalk. If the latter, I think it worked well.(Spoiler - click to show)

I've enjoyed all of the Vampire the Masquerade titles from Choice of Games.

The first game in the (loosely-connected) series, Night Road, won an XYZZY Best Game award and a had a very out-of-this-world style with cray labs, magicians, ancient vampires, and a CRPG-style quest structure you could pursue in multiple orders.

The next game, Out for Blood, featured a human protagonist in a small town and focused on running a shop, developing abilities like intuition or gaining weapons, and handling a small-town vampire clash. It was lower-powered and a smaller focus.

This game sits nicely between the two. You play as a powerful but out-of-shape vampire in Ottawa whose Prince has gone missing at the same time that Anarchs are raiding the city. You have to rediscover your old strength while solving multiple mysteries.

The number of stats is heavily decreased in this game compared to the other VtM games (and Choice of the Vampire). Now there are only 9 or so main stats. Disciplines can be used, which is my favorite part of VtM games, but you either have access to a discipline or not, no growing it. The disciplines basically operate like a 'be awesome' button that is later penalized by high hunger, which can take away your freedom to choose as your are forced to feed. I played as Toreador, and enjoyed using Auspex and Celerity the most.

Focusing on a big mystery is a bit of a gamble in a big Choicescript game, since the player always knows the truth after one playthrough. This game deals with the issue by having many endings depending on what you do with that information and how you resolve the issue. In the end, there are several factions you can unite with. Also, there are many sub-mysteries to solve.

There are two romances for now, but each is fairly well-developed. The one I went with seemed much better integrated into the game than most romances, probably because the author was able to focus more deeply on each romance rather than fitting in a ton of different ones.

On an individual line-by-line basis, the writing is entertaining and flows well, and the pacing in scenes is well-done, with few slow spots, making this a page-turner.

I've written for CoG before and previously received a lot of review copies of CoG games for free, but this is one I bought myself for fun.

For the better part of a decade, Arthur DiBianca has been putting out limited parser games, where most commands are shut off and only a few work.

This game is kind of an opposite version of that. Instead of few commands, there are tons of commands, some of which you have to guess (for full completion) and most of which you don't know what they do.

This is a game that invites experimentation and discovery. Part of the fun is trying out a command and having it do something surprising but, in hindsight, reasonable.

There's not much storywise, but a lot of depth. Reaching the first winning situation isn't too hard, but getting all the points is very difficult (I admit I looked at the intfiction thread for most of the extra credit points).

Overall, I found the game enjoyable.