Reviews by MathBrush

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.

This is a well-coded TADS game about coming to grab your things from an empty house after a divorce.

Play primarily revolves around exploration and discovery of key items that advance the story in some way.

The theme is about divorce, loss, and 'what might have been?' I took these themes seriously, as I am recently divorced and could understand some of what the narrator was going through.

This is a pretty messy divorce, though. Unhealthy events and actions abound. The narrator is regretful, of course, but regret can only take you so far, and I think that's one of the main themes here.

Overall, the mechanics and story work for me, but there are a few sticking points here and there. I had a lot of difficulty getting started. The game provides no hints, and takes the position that players should take careful notes and that some info won't be repeated. I figured things out in the end but I was frustrated (spoiler for main mechanic: (Spoiler - click to show)more specifically, I noticed that some objects wouldn't go through the shadow, so I thought none could, and didn't try taking the soil through. I thought I had left the shards behind and the pot appeared, so it too me a while to realize what was going on).

For the story, I felt like things were perhaps spelled out a bit too much for my personal taste. This is a real, visceral story, but I feel like a lot of art that I find 'magnificent' has a sort of ambiguity to it that allows you to draw many interpretations from it. Having our feelings and reactions to everything and the 'meaning' of it all spelled out at the end felt somewhat restrictive.

Overall, I think people who play this will be pleased, especially for those looking for mild but non-trivial puzzles mixed with emotional storytelling.

This game takes the classic, depressing/sacrifical tale of the little matchgirl and uses it as a setting for a larger story.

In the original story, each match a girl lit gave her another vision of brighter things. In this game, each match is used to teleport to the user to...whatever location Ryan was interested in talking about that day?

The overall puzzle structure is fairly lenient; it is generally a fetch quest, and each task can almost always be solved by brute force, but has internal logic.

+Polish: The game is smooth. I had a couple of issues with synonyms here and there (literally can't remember what, but it was me typing dumb stuff), but the vast majority of possible actions I tried worked great.
+Descriptiveness: Very clear and easily envisioned settings and characters.
+Interactivity: The quest structure is simple, but I felt allowed to go off the rails at times.
+Emotional impact: It didn't have quite the gut punch of the original, but was more fun.
+Would I play again? Sure!