Reviews by MathBrush

I tend to be very positive in reviewing but almost every interaction I had with this game was troubling.

Leaving the first room puts you immediately in a losing position, where you have to answer a question or die. I only figured out what to do by googling, hoping that it was an obscure reference, and I found out that it was (I read the books years ago and loved them, but I didn't form a strong memory of this particular creature).

After the first room, most reasonable directional commands don't work, requiring the use of 'ENTER ---' instead. An object that is essential to the game is undescribed and can't be interacted with most verbs (that describes several objects). The main way of gaining points is a verb that is nowhere indicated in the game. And the final puzzle of ending the game requires an exact, non-idiomatic three-word phrase ((Spoiler - click to show)BOARD SHIP REALLY).

Fortunately for the author, all of this is avoidable in the future by having more testers. If this had been tested by a few people who could give good feedback, it would be just fine, and so it casts no aspersions on the author's skill.

Edit: Also, UNDO is disabled, despite having insta-deaths without warning.

This game is part of the PunyInform competition. It's fairly polished, and features an quest to go looking for pirate treasure.

In the tradition of classic adventure games, the puzzles don't really make much sense, but they're fun. One involves a 2d block pushing puzzle (easier than the infamous Royal Puzzle from Zork III, but generally similar), and there are some math and logic puzzles.

The game has two endings, one easy to achieve and another harder. The game eschews walkthroughs and hints, but I decompiled the game to find the 'good' ending, which is significantly harder.

The largest negative in the game is the pedantry. Very frequently the game knows exactly what you want to do but forces you to phrase yourself a different way.

Examples include:

">UNLOCK BOX

I think you wanted to say “unlock wooden box with something”. Please try again."

and

">ROW
I think you wanted to say “row something”. Please try again."

A particularly egregious example (spoilers for the 'good ending'):

(Spoiler - click to show)
> lock chest
I think you wanted to say “lock treasure chest with something”. Please try again

> lock chest with golden key
Sorry, I don’t understand what “golden” means.

> lock chest with gold key
First you’d have to close the treasure chest.

> close chest
You close the treasure chest.


This is the equivalent of eating at a restaurant but the chef occasionally grabs your hands to make you move your knife to the other side or to drop your salad fork and take your regular one, to ensure that you are eating the meal in the proper way.

Overall, I think this will please people who primarily look for IF to have fun scenarios and puzzles that aren't immediately solvable but are fair.

I purchased this game on my own recently because I wanted to explore the less-played games on the Hosted Games app on my iPhone. This game was the least-rated one on there, with 3 ratings since 2018.

I was expecting something much worse, to be honest, but it looks like Hosted Games' requirement for a public beta test ironed out a lot of problems that you might see in, for instance, the least-played IFComp games. I found no bugs and only one grammatical error ('would of' instead of 'would have').

Storywise, you are a host for an antique appraisal show when someone comes in with a mummy to get appraised. A horde of people come in chasing the mummy, including someone with a scroll that brings it to life. The majority of the game involves trying to stop the mummy with the scroll.

+Polish: No problems with the game.
-Descriptiveness: A lot of it feels bland. I have trouble picturing any of the characters.
-Interactivity: A lot of the choices are the same.
-Emotional impact: The jokes mostly didn't land for me.
+Would I play again? Honestly, yes, it was a pleasant way to pass a short amount of time.

For me, the game felt pretty flat. Characters are generally indistinguishable, with everyone's personality being 'kind of selfish and likes to make witty remarks'. Most scenes are the same: you try to take the scroll and someone stops you. Most of your choices are the same throughout the game, either 'pick one of these punchlines for the author's jokes' or 'keep filming/help someone off-camera'. I think this kind of general ambiguity is the main thing that decreased my overall enjoyment.

I still finished and it definitely wasn't terrible, and took me around an hour (would have been 30 minutes if I read quicker). Overall, I'm definitely pleased by the quality of the least-played Hosted Games, especially since my own game is one of the least-played Choice of Games.

This game pulls off a difficult feat: there are 3 characters you can play as and you can swap between them at will. That's fairly difficult to pull off, but the game does well.

Puzzles are reasonable, as intended for a 'tutorial'-type game. The story is kind of random, but the characters are well-defined, have distinct personalities and see and interact with the world in different ways.

Your friend ends up locked in a strange compound after a tour and needs help escaping. You have to go and save him!

Overall, I didn't feel a real emotional investment in this game, but it was pleasant, one of the smoothest to play out of this game jam.

I beta tested this game.

In this vorple/inform game with illustrations of plants, you play as a young creature eager to eat every magical plant you can get your hands on.

As per the text adventure literacy jam rules, you are expected to only use 2-word inputs and have simple language.

Caleb is a great author, and this game shares features with his earlier work, Starry Seeksorrow. It is intended for kids, but I enjoyed the puzzles, and I especially appreciated that solving them all is not necessary for winning. When I beta tested, I missed a couple the first time around.

Somewhere between the time I tested and the time it got put up on itch, the vorple framework seemed to get weird (maybe from itch interactions?), so that each image only shows up halfway until more text appears underneath it (such as when hitting enter).

It's a simple game, but I'm giving it a 5 as I found it polished, descriptive, enjoyed the interactivity, felt an enjoyable emotional impact, and would play again (and did play again!)

This game was pretty fun, although I think it could use a bit more hints or subtle nudges for incorrect actions.

It's made using pre-existing 3d RPG assets, including chests, goblins, skeletons and spiders. These form static background images for an adventuron game.

This is like a little AD&D 1st edition dungeon as a warrior, with randomized loot. You explore different areas, find hidden traps, etc.

I thought this game was too hard for me, but I found that carefully noting all items and examining things helped quite a bit.

The game suggests there are non-violent solutions to some encounters, but I fought through most of them, including the werewolf, where I had to restart the game a few times until I found both helmet and armor. Apparently I missed one secret room (probably the one hinted in the note), but otherwise did okay.

I would have been a bit less frustrated if the game had hinted more when I was doing things the wrong way. Otherwise, pretty fun if you like TTRPG fantasy modules.

I found this at first to be one of the best games in the Text Adventure Literacy Jam, and one of the better games released this year, but I got a bit worn out by the end.

The game handles the narrator/pc split of parser games well by having you, the player, command a robot. The robot goes around measuring scientific things like light levels and oxygen percentages, and collecting specimens which are hid all over.

The graphics are great, the puzzles are interesting, I really like this game. But I got a bit overwhelmed. There are so many different specimens to find, I got kind of worn out by the end. Perhaps if I had approached this over a longer period of time and played with another, it would have been perfect.

This game has a cute theme: you wake up with a strange cat on your chest and must deal with it.

The name of the game changes: it starts with 'don't wake the cat' and goes on to other names, each hinting at the required action.

There aren't pictures, but I found the puzzles fun, as I had to think outside of the box a few times. Unfortunately, there were a few times I knew the solution but didn't know how to word it (especially with the front door). Overall, love the idea but could use a few tweaks here and there. If you like cute pet games, though, definitely check it out.

Someone's been talking on the IF forums recently about games that don't have involved puzzles or deep narratives, and I think this is a good example of how to make a successful game without worrying too much about these things.

This is a small adventuron game with a compact, 3x3 map. There is pleasant music, pixel art with lots of abstract triangular textures, reactive NPCs, a variety in types of interaction, and some fun responses to player actions.

It's a simple game, designed for the text adventure literacy project, and I think it's done really way. I don't think it has much in the way of replay value, but other than that it is a rewarding and fun short game.

This was part of the Text Adventure Literacy Jam. It starts off in a creepy, horror-type room, then moves into more fantasy or abstraction.

Each room has generally forgiving puzzles, and overall I generally enjoyed the atmosphere. However, there was no real connection between anything, and there were a few odd bugs (for instance, a door in one room affected passage between two other rooms in what seems like a buggy way).

I don't think a game has to have a coherent narrative to be fun, and a game doesn't have to have clever puzzles to be fun, but I feel like this game could use something more than it has now before it is entirely enjoyable.