Reviews by MathBrush

My kingdom for a crumb of context!

I liked the setup of this a lot. The art, intro and the fact it was in the Dialogue jam got me in the mindset “I will enjoy this”.

And I did. This is a brief dinner conversation between two individuals, the text spooling out in a format like SMS messages in different colors, but representing a spoken conversation.

I felt like I had a lot of control over how I reacted. I could be the overly fussy partner, the silent one, the gently encouraging. Despite only one ending, my oath there had agency.

However, almost all context is absent from the piece. I have started drawing a lot recently, and I usually spend 90% of the time getting the outlines right and 10% shading. I’ve noticed that the shading tends to add a lot more than most of the rest of the work, even though it’s small.

I feel like context is like the shading here. The format of the story is perfect, everything in place is right. But who are we? What kind of situation is this? What are we? Who is “him?” I don’t think everything needs to be spooked out, but it would be nice to add little grounding touches. Are we cooking on a wood stove? Was our train late? Do I hang up a wet overcoat? Was “he” smoking again? Little details like this could add so much flavor to this.

However, it’s not completely necessary. This works in its own sense, formless and abstract, but it may be nice to state that as a goal to prepare readers for a state of mind ready to accept an abstract situation.

This game was fun. I immediately felt invested in my little rat character. I learned more about the little world I was part of, my fellow rats, my simple life.

Alas, it ended quickly, and before I could interact with this ratty world. The description given is fun to read, but this felt like the beginning of a narrative arc, rather than a complete one.

This game features a portrait of a single person, currently resting.

It’s a fairly compact game, arranged in a network of interconnected nodes rather than a linear or branching narrative. Each lingers on a distinct feature of the man in question (I believe it’s a man due to pronoun use).

The writing is evocative and clear, making it easy to imagine this person. The narrative voice seems to care about him quite a bit. And the game is thoroughly polished.

However, despite the clear vision, I didn’t connect emotionally with this guy. Maybe because a purely physical description of a man isn’t something that interests me in real life, unless it were a relative or a friend. Maybe some extra background revealed through hints could carry this even further, or a mystery that can only be pieced together in pieces.

But it doesn’t have to be expanded. What’s here accomplishes several things, like providing a vivid picture of one person. It is labeled as following the rules of the former IF art show, and would be an appropriate entry for that former comp.

This fairly short game uses old German lettering and a conlang, or constructed language, (with some translations given) to show you as a soul who desires to achieve their true body.

You have to interact with a doctor’s office, every choice you make (including your use of the conlang)showing what you are like. When you reach the doctor, you ask for your true body, but the doctor will only grant this if you have modeled the right behavior.

It’s easy to read this as a trans metaphor, whether it is or not, with some doctors requiring you to exhibit “correct” dysphoria before receiving hormones, but it has enough of common experience in it to apply to many situations.

This game seems to be one giant loop. It's a pretty amusing representation of the frustration of starting a new board game and trying to get everything set up.

It's just a small bit of game, so there's not too much to say. If there were some explanation that was missing, that could make it more interesting, or if there were some hidden code, but the twine file doesn't show any interesting hidden material.

I saw spoilers already on this games secret, but I've only played this game for now so I'll judge it on its own.

It's a fun parser game that reappropriates directions N/E/S/W to be the initials of your friends. Directional movement corresponds to visiting your friends and talking to them.

Your goal is to convince your 4 19-yr old friends to come together, to be reunited again. Each friend you talk to can bring up different topics. Mentioning those topics to others can provoke new topics.

I had fun with this, and convinced 2/4 friends and had a third ready to go. But I couldn't logic out how to help the 4th one, so I just threw everything I had at them repeatedly until I solved it.

Neat idea!

This is a brief Adventuron game with some fun graphics that seem custom-made and a few rooms.

I was able to complete it very quickly. There were only a few rooms, and each room only had one way to go forward. There was one puzzle which I solved by using the pictures, as the text didn’t seem to provide many clues.

There were several errors. The game started by saying that some settings were not configured, and the first page has a big typo in capital letters. The puzzle solution also acted a bit weird, like it was reacting to keywords rather than commands. The very ending didn’t make sense to me the way it was written.

Overall, it feels more like a programming exercise than a full game, but this is exactly what a good game can look like early on in the process before it’s fully developed, so I would tell this author this isn’t really bad, just needs more work.

This game is about Pride (and given the rainbow flag, I assume with LGBT pride and pride month). However, it doesn't really talk about that in the game at all.

Instead, there are six paths, each corresponding to one letter in 'pride' (and an exclamation mark). Each of the letter paths has part of a hidden message that unlocks a final message.

On the letter paths, there are copies of the letter that you are currently learning about, each corresponding to a positive word, like Respect or determination.

However, all of the connections are really tenuous. The words don't have anything to do with Pride specifically; they're just describing positive traits in generic terms. It could equally as well be Pride in your local grocery store, patriotic pride, religious pride, pride in rehab, etc.

I think it might have been neat to tailor the message more to the theme.

This game is centered around three essentially immortal space marines (or equivalent) who love to make out and who are the last resort for armies to employ.

The game looks cool visually, and the writing is descriptive.

The plot was a bit hard for me to follow. A lot of it is just the main characters really enjoying laying on top of or close to each other. There is a fight, and at first I thought there'd be a big twist as they see something amazing, but it's just (Spoiler - click to show)the other side surrendering, which is what was implied would happen anyway.

Some of the links move the story forward and some are 'asides', but there's no back button and no way to distinguish the two links. I'd appreciate some way to know if a link is side info or 'go forward irrevocably'.

Overall, I found it polished and descriptive, but had difficulties with the interactivity and felt a reduced emotional impact due to confusion with the story.

If there were more games in the series, it would really cool to learn about the characters backgrounds, or major differences between them, or how they 'work'.

I need to preface this review by saying that I'm giving this game 5 stars only because it specifically fits some very niche interests of mine. I think if I was just giving recommendations for general audience it would likely be 3 stars due to being short.

This game starts with you inside a school looking out on a courtyard, seeing some people arguing. You approach them, wanting to learn more, but you realize you have nothing to offer them.

The plot then swerves in several ways. The rest of the review is in spoilers:
(Spoiler - click to show)
It becomes clear this is a post-apocalyptic world. There are few enough humans that the group you've found just calls themselves One, Two, and Three.

The big twist is that you forget everything every 30 minutes or so. You've established a routine for yourself to stay alive, but you weren't aware of the forgetting fact. You discover that someone stayed with you previously and took care of you, but also manipulated you.


The game is definitely short, which is why I hedge my recommendation, but I love the concept and the combination and it inspires me to think of the possibilities. I'd love to write a game with similar mechanics (it used to be very popular in parser games twenty years ago but I think it died out).