Reviews by MathBrush

This game is written in a custom parser-like engine (similar to Robin Johnson's Gruescript and also to Texture) where you can click on items to reveal more options with them and/or to drag them to other objects. Each new description results in the whole text box flipping over in a 3D animation. This is cool, but slows the game down a bit when running through already-seen areas.

The main part of the game is a large library (inspired by Borges' classic tale) that is organized in a very confusing way, accessible by selecting 'left', 'right', or 'back'. If there is a pattern, I didn't see it, so it's either random or a maze or I'm just dumb or all 3.

Each room has a book by a famous author, which you can enter. Each book world has a single room with one or more interesting items and a mini-puzzle. Solving the mini-puzzle allows you to take items to other rooms.

I found the idea clever, but the need for tons of clicking between rooms, slowness of the transition, and the tricky logic of the puzzles sent me to the walkthrough early on. If you want a real headscratcher it would be good to go through more slowly.

+Polish: Very polished.
+Descriptiveness: Some of the rooms are very vivid.
-Emotional impact: Nothing seems real, and I saw it more as a logic puzzle than emotional story.
+Interactivity: While the slow transition and maze were less fun to me, the idea of taking items from one book to another is fun.
+Would I play again? Maybe, this time without a walkthrough (and doing the other path).

This game is played on Facebook messenger, and requires you to be logged into Facebook to play it.

This is a choice-based comedy spy thriller. Most choices are out of three options.

The story is set in a future where everyone is controlled by a PLUS chip, especially you, an Enhanced cyborg, the first of your kind and the number one assassin for the United States government. You are asked to assassinate a man and his 2 young children to preserve the current regime.

This heavy story contrasts with the goofy and often mean-spirited writing. Your choices are often reactions like 'OMG?' or 'This is nuts', etc. Your character frequently insults each other and seems to have problems with women. There are several errors (such as a character whose name changes from Roosk to Roost and back), and characters often seem to change motivation or personality without warning.

Overall:
-Polish: The new system is very impressive, but the game itself could use some more editing.
+Descriptiveness: The author is good at vivid descriptions.
+Interactivity: At first I felt like almost all choices were meaningless, but some later on seemed definitely to matter. Whether or not it's true it was good at making me feel like it was true.
-Emotional impact: I tried to get invested in the story but the stakes and goals frequently change. Our character is a jerk, and I've realized that, while many people like playing as a villain, few like jerks, and the difference is that well-written villains have strong motivations for their evil actions, while jerks go out of their way to cause harm for no benefit to themselves.
-Would I play again? The somewhat slow performance of facebook messenger and the difficulty with backtracking or saving, combined with the length of the game means that I don't plan on replaying.

This game uses only the letter A in all of its descriptions. It retains inform's original error messages though.

Like SCP-5251, the puzzle here is figuring out what words would fit into the given spaces. Fortunately, it's based on (Spoiler - click to show)a classic type of adventure puzzle. I only figured that out by looking at the comments of other reviews.

-Polish: The game could certainly have commited harder by implementing more error messages and nouns.
+Descriptiveness: The whole puzzle depends on the way the descriptions are written.
-Interactivity: There could have been a lot more meat here.
+Emotional impact: I found the idea fun.
-Would I play again? No.

This is a very long Twine game from early on in the history of the medium.

Anya DeNiro has a long history of making games exploring non-human or surreal viewpoints and the interface between reality and virtual reality.

This game uses features like text that shifts and disappears on a timer and other, normal twine features like cycling text and text-replaces.

The story is hard to grasp, especially as I play it late at night. In my first playthrough, I thought there was no story, just a mishmash of words and metaphors. But as I played through all 12 branches and found the ending, I realized that there were several stories, including human trafficking, artifical intelligences, a bloody edutainment math game whose players were a victim in a cyber terrorist attack.

I felt as if I grasped less than half the overall story, but it was an interesting and thoughtful combination. There is a long history of very long, surreal twine games by trans authors that straddle the boundary between reality and virtual reality (Porpentine, Phantom Williams, Furkle, etc.) If you like this genre, this will be a good addition.

This is a lovely little game by Caleb Wilson, one of many games of his involving magical plants.

In this one, you are at the bottom of a well with a piece of nearby sunlight. You want to grow but you just aren't strong enough.

This game is brief but with excellent characterization and strong writing, reminding me a bit of Out by Sobol, although less metaphorical. There are nice bits of world-building as well.

I've been playing Fallen London for at least 5 years now, with a few different characters. I never wanted to review it before because I was worried it would be transitory, and that once the company went under no one would ever be able to play the game I had written about.

But it has been doing better than ever, and has in the last few years added a ton of new content which has significantly improved it.

In form, it is similar to old facebook text games like Mafia, where you have a bunch of numbers for resources and items that change around as you click. The difference is that this has really nice backgrounds, a ton of well-written text (I think a couple million words?) and a card-based system for storylets.

The game is set in a version of London that was sold to dark Masters by queen Victoria. It was taken underground, where the laws of physics no longer apply and death isn't permanent. Hell is a neighbor, and fungus and candles replace plants and sunlight.

It really is two games in one: the first is a time-gated system of customizable stories, with sixty or so actions spread throughout a day (or 80 if you pay a monthly fee). These stories include sweeping epics of revenge or battle against extradimensional beings that changes entire countries or the world, as well as smaller stories like fighting a spider in the sewers.

The other game is a carefully-balanced resources game. Each 'click' has an optimum number of resources available, growing larger until the endgame, and some powerful items take months to save up for. Some hardcore players compete to buy extravagant items like a hellworm or a cask of immortality-inducing cider.

Many storylets are re-used; so, you can bust a 'tomb colonist' (kind of a decayed sentient zombie) out of prison over and over again. Some are only done once, like deciding whether to support a local mob boss or his cop daughter. The re-used ones tend to occur in 'grinds' which are pretty common in this game, although much less than they once were in the early game.

To me, the best stories are:

-Making Your Name, early storylines that help you progress the four stats: Watchful (used for detective work with a Sherlock Holmes substitute, archaeology or university work studying bizarre magical languages), Persuasive (used for romantic and creative work, including writing operas and engaging in courtly romances), Dangerous (used for fighting duels and capturing monsters), and Shadowy (used for pickpocketing and elaborate heists)
-Ambitions. These are stories that span the entire length of the game, starting from something simple (usually tracking down an old friend or lead) and ending up dealing with godlike beings. They include a horror story, a revenge story, an adventure story and a sort of legend or fantasy about wish fulfillment.
-The final stat-capping storylines. These include the railway, an end-game segment where you become a railroad baron, building a railway to hell that gets stranger and stranger the further from London you get; the University Lab, where you discover the dark secrets of the Masters; a series of wars that you lead as a general in a bizarre place; and elaborate thefts that make you a legendary thief.

The game can be 'completed' without paying, but the monthly fee makes grinding a lot easier and provides access to some amazingly good short stories called 'exceptional stories'. Older exceptional stories are available for a fairly hefty sum, but they are generally worth it (especially ones by Chandler Groover and Emily Short).

There's a lot of interesting material up front in the 'making your name' segments, so it's worth checking it out just to see the overall style and feel.

Edit: Looking at the other reviews, I'd say their criticisms are absolutely true (stories can be shallow, clues and hints are items instead of actual stories). I just can't give 4 stars after having played this game for hundreds of hours and honestly investing over $100 or $200 in bits or pieces after years.

The author of this game has made several other very successful twine games, including Birdland and its related works and Known Unknowns. Many of them are smooth and enjoyable LGBTQ YA stories and this is in a similar category.

You play as a young woman whos prom date gets publicly ruined as embarrassingly as possible. Unfortunately, this prom is also on a boat.

There are many characters, and all choices are dialogue options. This author tends to have a ton of little options hidden in the code, but each path you can take in this game feels like the 'intended' one.

There's nothing to see here in the way of puzzles or major decisions; the real draw is the witty dialogue, teen-relatable situations and, for those interested, LGBTQ representation.

For me, what it keeps it from being 5 stars is its lack of the extraordinary. I enjoy this author's games the best when they become bizarre and absurd, like weird dream birds or raccoons speaking in emoji. For me, this was like very good cake without frosting: delicious, but leaving you wishing it had that extra ingredient.

This game was directly inspired by the Hard Puzzle games in its difficulty level and clarity and by Junior Arithmancer in its actual puzzles.

Hard Puzzle was mainly known for being intentionally poorly-clued, with numerous red herrings and puzzles that aren't quite fair. The idea was to have a kind of game you can beat your head against for a long time before finding a solution.

This game is similar. You find yourself in 4 rooms with a helpful fairy. Each room has a number on the floor and some other object of interest in the room (either a door or a clue). There is a recess that is common to all the rooms (essentially in the center of the circle) with a book.

Puzzles involve the book and the numbers and the clues (which makes sense, since that's all there is) and is similar to Junior Arithmancer a bit.

I found the game very unfair and very confusing, but that is the intent. I got a lot of help from the fairy (enough to solve one of the clues) but looked on the adrift forums for the other 2.

I wish I were able to type and execute a list of commands on one line, separated by punctuation. Once you know the answers to the puzzle, it can be pretty tedious to enter.

Overall:

+Descriptiveness: It's effective for the style it's going for
+Interactivity: I didn't like the tediousness, but the game was trying to be frustrating and hard, and it was
-Emotional impact: I saw this entirely as a puzzler, removed from emotional ties
+Polish: I encountered no bugs.
-Would I play again?: The value's all in the surprise, and there's not much replay value.

Liminal spaces are popular right now; my young son enjoys playing liminal spaces games on Roblox and I've seen bots about them on twitter.

Whatever the original definition of liminal spaces was, they are now dominated by endlessly repetitive/abandoned/mass-produced areas. The Backrooms is a classic example (an endless system of hallways with boring carpeting and yellow walls). Another common kind of liminal space is something designed for entertainment but which is now empty, or uncanny valley areas.

This game involves you travelling between several such regions. Interestingly, just like liminal spaces in popular culture are often worn down, this game is underimplemented, missing several exit lists and lacking custom responses for many things.

Here's my rating:
-Polish: The game is missing exit listings and just feels kind of undercooked.
-Descriptiveness: The areas that are described are evocative, but some are given just a single line that is rather unclear.
-Interactivity: I had to decompile to finish it.
+Emotional impact: It has the kind of liminal feeling that I assume it was designed to create.
+Would I play again?: Sure, why not. It's short and good at creating the feeling of low-key chills.

This game is the second in Choice of Games's deluxe series of Vampire the Masquerade games. It is long (the 12th longest CoG game), has at least a dozen high-quality character portraits, and uses the White Wolf system of attributes.

Inevitably, this game will draw comparisons with its (unrelated, story-wise) predecessor, Vampire: The Masquerade—Night Road. That game featured you as a solo vampire making their way up the ranks of the city's undead through elaborate and high-powered missions. This game, in contrast, focuses on a human protagonist inheriting an old shop in a small Illinois town that has a dark presence lingering. I can't think of a more apt comparison than Jojo's Bizarre Adventures. Night Road is more like seasons 1-3 of that story, big battles and crazy powers, while Out for Blood is more like season 4, a smaller story where we meet locals with different interests and abilities and the main enemy is a sort of lurking, hidden figure.

Mechanically, there are a lot of statistics to sink points into. This is an RPG, so we get a lot of experience points over 12 chapters. I sank most of my points into Intuition and the Occult. I found this satisfying, as I was able to get flashes of insight at different points (although I'm not sure if this was from my ability or built into the story), and I was able to use magic extensively to curse people, place wards, and to scry. Given the different achievements and options I saw, I'm sure I would have had a very different experience with a different stat build.

Mechanically, the game has a few distinct threads.
-You have ownership of your late grandfather's shop, and you can decide who to hire to work there, what to invest in, how to pay for it all, etc. It starts you off seeming like it will have numerous recurring options, like Metahuman Inc., but it never really circles back to it, so you only get one real shot at setting up the shot and then many sub-choices after to affect minor details.
-There are numerous romantic options, including the sultry vampire villain, a goth/punk human friend, a handsome disabled attorney friend, a friendly vampire hunter, etc. I had numerous romantic encounters with my chosen relationship and it seemed fleshed out better than many CoG games. Occasionally there were scenarios with my love that may have seemed out of place given our current history, but they were few and far between and none spring to mind immediately.
-(Early spoilers)(Spoiler - click to show)A wealthy and powerful vampire seems to have set up in town and is manipulating affairs. This thread forms the main plot.
-(Middle spoiler but not giving a lot away)(Spoiler - click to show)A group of weaker vampires is also in town.They form the second-biggest thread.
-A lot of complicated town history is also floating around.

The game definitely was affected by my choices, and I re-evaluated my viewpoint multiple times as I realized a group I trusted was pretty bad, etc. Near the end, I felt like the whole weight of complex machinery the game is built on began to break down, as I double-crossed a lot of people without too much punishment. But while it pushed up against disbelief, it never really crossed the line. I think a lot of things depend on the relationship statistic alone, and I had had a lot of built-up trust before the betrayals.

Overall, the game is very long, but many people have said it feels short. This is likely because the game has so many options and avenues mid-game that it doesn't really get a sense of building to something. The other VtM game, Night Road, had the regular structure of missions and payments and handled increasing tension well, but here it's hard to feel much progress until near the end. I don't think this game is short or small or linear, but I think it could be paced or structured a bit better to indicate its length. Someone in the CoG forums said it has 12 chapters and 12 endings, and that really helped me set appropriate expectations.

Overall, I would rank this as one of the better Choice of Games titles. I think it is worth its purchase price, and that fans of Vampire the Masquerade or White Wolf in general will be pleased, as well as fans of small-town stories. It's a story that I wish I had written, and one that I thoroughly enjoyed.

I received a review copy of this game.