Reviews by MathBrush

If you told me there was a game whose villain was catapulted by reality tv into the presidency, who had had several spouses and relationships, who ran on a platform of locking up his enemies and keeping 'others' out of America, who employed his children in government positions, I would have told you that it was a heavy-handed ham-fisted commentary on modern life.

Well, this game came out in 2014, a year before Trump started his first campaign. So it's interesting to play a game that directly speaks to current issues without being affected by them.

This is my favorite game of the series, probably because I'm emotionally invested by now. You have the chance to work with former enTheYour first game let you save a city, the second let you be known to America, the third lets you shape the future of the nation.

This is a hard game, and it's definitely possible to lose. You can buy an in-game hint system for $.99 (or use in-game money if you got rich in the other games), but I followed a playthrough I found online (although they made different choices than me, so I had to adapt).

You can play this game separately from the others, although I'd recommend starting at the beginning. You could always play the first chapter of this game to get a feel for it, though.

I received a review copy of this game

This game is firmly in the drama camp. It had a lot of action and intrigue and less, if any, humor.

The setting is detailed and vivid, and is the best thing about the game in my mind. Its set in a Borgia-era Venice, albeit with different names, and you are part of the crime family. Your parent has died, and there is a power play between you and two siblings. You are the only one, however, who is a blood mage, an illegal type of necromancer who can see and influence spirits.

This is in the category of Choicescript games like The Martian Job or Rent-a-Vice where there are a lot of ways to go wrong and it doesn't feel like you have complete power, as opposed to pure power-fantasies like Creme de la Creme (by the same author) or Choice of Robots.

This game has more options to violent or dark than most Choice of Games titles. Murder is a possible solution to many problems. And there is no way to please everyone. One of your siblings is an ineffectual pacifist and the other is a violent war hawk. At least twice in the game you get urgent messages from multiple people and have to let someone down.

I had a satisfying romantic arc in my game. Some reviewers have complained that romance is less of a focus, but the game was updated this June to have additional romance.

This is a long game. While having a lower wordcount than Tally Ho or Creme de la Creme, the playthrough length feels comparable. I felt like I was playing a quality game. I am glad, though, that the tone is lighter in Creme de la Creme.

I received a review copy of this game.

My rating for this game went back and forth quite a few times while I was playing it.

This is a very long game. I played this over two days. Its wordcount is 610,000. There are only 2 other published Choice of Games titles bigger than it.

Tally Ho, one of the games that is slightly larger than it, has a shorter play length, due to having more branches. This game has 9 very long chapters.

It's really three games in one, each of which could be separated into its own, shorter game.

The first is cat life. You are with a family and there is a kid and a dog and a wild neighbor cat you can interact with. Over and over again, you choose where to sleep, how to get the best scraps of food, and how to treat the humans and other pets. This is fairly entertaining at first, but gets pretty repetitive by the end.

The second is Claire (the mother) and her political career. She is an MP trying to win power in a party that centers on ecological concerns. You can influence this by affecting her mood during talks, distracting her during important moments, or trying to 'show her a sign'.

Similarly, the husband, Andre, is working on a musical career. He's pretty bad at it, and the grouchy neighbor behind you is a musical producer. You can influence him like Claire.

Of all the plots, I found the beginning cat bits and the political segments the most interesting.

One frustrating aspect was the large number of overlapping stats that were constantly being both tested and changed. For instance, is looking sweet to get food a test of being manipulative v demanding, of being audacious vs cautious, of being feral vs domesticated, or of contempt vs affection? Or is it a way to change one of those stats?

I became invested in the storylines eventually. I know one of the paths can lead to divorce, so I managed to avoid that. I imagine there are many branches possible, so I may have to replay.

I received a review copy of this game.

This game has been at the top of the bestseller charts for Choice of Games since it came out last November. I've been interested in it for quite some time, and it exceeds my expectations.

The best Choice of Games stories are those which allow your decisions to matter with meaningful branches (like Choice of Robots), which have a strong narrative arc (like Slammed!), have a lot of customization (like Hollywood Visionary) or which invite strategy (like Choice of Robots again).

This game excels at all of these features. Set in a fictional, more open version of Europe some decades past, this game features you as the scion of a disgraced family, sent to a finishing school to redeem their failures. At school, you can attend to any number of activities, including academic studies, meddling with teacher romances, witchcraft, leadership, and quite a bit of romance (with 9 possible romances and 10 possibles marriages, including marriage of convenience and a royal).

The last few chapters can really throw some gears into your plans. I planned on restoring my family's honor and marrying the headmistress's child, and achieved both of my goals.

It really captures the essence of the boarding school story, like Jane Eyre's early chapters or an ethically-sourced version of Harry Potter. This game allows quite a bit of customization with regards to genders of romanceable characters, and your own appearance and personality.

It's also very long. While it has a smaller wordcount than the enormous Tally Ho, my playthrough length was longer than any Choicescript game I have played, lasting several hours (although I read everything carefully).

In a way, it was a lot like epic fantasy. Not the Hero's Journey (it's not rigidly in any tradition like that). Instead of a hero from a destroyed village, you're a student from a destroyed family. Instead of gaining experience through battles and sages, you engage with rivals and teachers. And instead of facing Mt. Doom, you face the truth behind the school, which is just as destructive.

I was provided a review copy of this game.

I'm a big fan of the Sorcery series, with part 3 being my favorite.

This one is an appropriate ending for the series. It's huge, absolutely huge compared especially to part 1, and the magic you can gain here is powerful and mysterious.

The ending sequences can be nervewracking and difficult. The art is great, and the music good.

While I like this episode, I still prefer part 3, as part 4 is a bit one-note with its feel of a final confrontation.

I played this game on this Apple II emulator: https://www.scullinsteel.com/apple2/

It's a parser game with one or more custom images per location. The parser isn't super responsive by modern standards but is reasonably understandable.

Beyond normal puzzles (like capturing a lizard or shooting an allosaurus with an improvised slingshot), each time you meet a dinosaur you have to type in its name. If you get it wrong, it zooms in and gives you a hint. Getting it wrong again makes it tell you to look at the Dinosaur Handbook which, unfortunately, does not seem to be archived along with this game. I got stuck on a horny-beaked dinosaur I could not identify.

The game was interesting but didn't move me emotionally, and I wasn't invested in completing it.

The Hard Puzzle games have always been odd-balls. They tend to be extremely fussy sandboxes with mechanics you can use over and over and whose solutions require enormous leaps of intuition, endless experimentation with absolutely everything, or just dumb luck.

This game honors that legacy by having many, many sandbox commands and requiring some outrageous leaps of intuition. I had solved some of the previous Hard Puzzles by decompiling them, and this game has some good-natured nods to people who 'cheat' at games like that.

This differs from the other Hard Puzzles, though, in that it can be solved piece by piece, instead of an all-at-once lightning bolt thought like the former ones.

I won by cheating in three different ways (including (Spoiler - click to show)'decompiling', the intfiction forums, and decompiling).

I beta tested this game, and I love it.

You play as a contestant on a reality show that apparently involves finding antiques while wearing a chicken suit (?).

You run around a mansion gathering items while a timer ticks down each turn. Some items are easy to find, while others require a great deal of ingenuity.

Knowledge is the key in this game, player knowledge and not character knowledge. You can learn secret codes that help you succeed. There are secret bonuses. On top of all of this, all of the items have an 'optimal placement location' that gives you even more money.

This game has more narrative than most shameless treasure hunts, and a lot of funny lines, but the focus here is on getting the best prize. Your host comments on your score each time, and you are able to replay as much as you want in-game, with it being interpreted as re-takes of the show.

Love it, think it's great, and I think people will be playing this one for years. I play IF for many reasons: love of stories, love of characters. This game satisfies my itch of 'take/drop/N/E/S/W', which is the same reason I love the original IF game Adventure.

This game takes about 30 minutes to finish the first time but hours to get a good score.

I beta tested this game, and was delighted to do so.

This is a big game, DiBianca's largest (except perhaps for The Wand). I played it for well over 2 hours (maybe 4 or 5) while beta testing, although I was trying to be exceptionally thorough.

Basically, the game is full of little minigames which give you better and better rewards as you understand them better and as they synergize. Your airship captain gives you goals to hit and you do them. There's an economy that grows in scope over time, and a lot of little lovely surprises.

There are puzzles here, but not in the traditional sense. It's technically possible to win just by doing the simplest of tasks over and over and over. The real joy here is in optimization, similar to Sugarlawn from this year's comp.

Strongly recommended, and lots of fun!

I beta-tested this game, but only got to the first part/tutorial.

Now that I've seen the rest, I'm really amazed. I love it!

I don't know if I can recommend it to the general IF populace. In this game, you have a very restricted programming language that moves a block one tile at a time based on conditions that only detect the block near it. This is very similar to my PhD research in almost convex groups and subdivision rules (which were also determined locally by rules), so I have a soft spot for this kind of thing anyway.

The framing story is very light. There might be a big reveal at the end for all I know, but everything else is just sort of fluff to introduce the puzzles. The puzzles are quite hard, and require a great deal of trial and error and a little bit of praying for success or cursing at failure.