Reviews by MathBrush

This is a game for the text adventure literacy project. It has some nice art and is written in adventuron.

I struggled a lot with this one. To begin with, LOOK doesn't work, but only LOOK AROUND does. Since LOOK usually works with adventuron, I can only assume the author intentionally disabled it.

There is a strict inventory limit of four items, although almost all items in the game are pretty small.

Many commands that should work are not recognized. The game has a helpful tutorial mode, but many of its suggestions do not work. There is a walkthrough provided on the game page, but much of the walkthrough is incorrect.

At one point, following the walkthrough, I forgot something, so I tried to get back to the office, but locked myself out of victory with all items inside the castle. I was frustrated, but replayed to the end.

There is a second day available, but the first story was complete, and as the second day has less bugfixes, I'd rather not play it until it's more tuned-up.

The game does, though, have some fun art.

This game is part of the Text Adventure Literacy Jam.

You are tasked with finding 5 reflections of yourself. There is a helpful tutorial that's optional.

There are about 10 locations, and the game has some graphics that add quite a bit to the charm of the game, and to its utility, with the map.

The puzzles are fairly simple but hard enough to be rewarding.

I had a few hiccups here and there. The game wouldn't recognize commands like X RED, only X RED CRYSTAL. Overall, I found the game charming and with a few fun surprises.

This Adventuron game was designed for the Text Adventure Literacy Project, and it seems designed to be safe and simple. Only two-word commands are used.

It has a fairly large map with around 20 locations (?) and a few puzzles, including a combination safe, keys, and examining puzzles. The idea is that you are exploring an old mansion and discovering its secrets.

There aren't a lot of surprises here, except perhaps the ending. There is a light puzzle that was kind of interesting, though.

I beta tested this game.

This is a Twine game with great multimedia. You are exploring a derelict space craft under the auspices of an evil capitalist organization. Something is following you.

There is a map on the lefthand side, different uses of text coloring and some impressive animated pixel art.

Gameplay consists of moving around the map, picking up items (you can hold one at a time except for a few special items) and learning more about the spaceship.


I find the writing funny and the art well-done. The map and the sense of movement makes this at times a fairly difficult puzzle game.

One thing I could have wished was for more items with easily apparent uses. Other than that, this is a fun, funny, replayable game.

This game is written using the Strand Games engine, a nice and smooth interface that was developed to 'restore' the Magnetic Scrolls games from a few decades ago.

I like the way it looks and moves, it feels very smooth. The voice acting option (I think it was different text-to-speech readers, at least for some of them?) are a nice change of pace after how hard it is to get sound working in Inform.

The game itself isn't quite as alluring. It's a collection of fairly tropey characters in a fairly tropey setting (a major, a dilettante child, a butler, etc. in a manor). And the puzzle seems to consist in just asking who was where and figuring out which one person was lying.

In this game, you have to get your dog to go outside and take a walk, solving a few puzzles on the way.

It's an inform game, and I believe it's the first one by this author. There are a lot of things here that are common to first games: a detailed depiction of mundane tasks in a familiar setting (here, an apartment/house), some white space errors, puzzles that are interesting but perhaps underimplemented.

I feel like the author's writing voice has a lot of personality, and I bet that the feedback from this game will help the next game be even better. Right now, though, there's just not much there.

In this game, you play as a corgi who comforts a girl on a summer vacation with one parent soon after a divorce.

There are many minigames you play over 8 days, building up seashells to upgrade your shanty.

Each day you sleep you get more story, with one interaction per story segment.

There are a lot of games implemented, but most of them are somewhat confusing for now or simple, and I think that's what's going to be tweaked later on.

The story is sweet but doesn't have real emotional stakes, in a way. Tension only builds during the 'sleep' scenes but could benefit more from significant changes in the game world over time. As a reader, we know the girl will be sad, then come to accept the divorce, so it would be interesting to have some extra tension as well through a side story, maybe one the parallels the main story.

This is a raw, uncompiled Quest file with a few locations and items. Many actions are built in to the descriptions and the only properties that seem to be used here are descriptions, locations, items being portable or not, and containers. For instance, the front door is a location you can enter and it contains a lock.

There is no ending, but there is a suggestion of an ending given in the description printed when trying to take some items.

This is essentially an outline for a game.

This game is about you, recently immigrated to an alien planet, learning to handle the customs since everyone speaks in 'puzzlespeak'.

In reality, this means the game has three different threads: one about your emotional life, one about the political and racial situation on the world, and one where you solve puzzles.

I like puzzles, crosswords, cryptograms, etc. but I wasn't feeling some of these puzzles. Like a beta tester recently said about a game of mine, some of the puzzles are obviously telegraphed and some aren't communicated very much at all. I left 3 or 4 of the puzzles unsolved, such as the ascii one and one that seemed cryptographic but had some kind of twist that I couldn't figure out. Others may have more success than I did!

Storywise, I liked the friends subplot. I thought the racism subplot was a mystery story, not realizing it was just straight-up racism. And the mom plot seemed kind of disconnected from everything.

The game has a couple of built-in failures, which I think is tricky in a game like this. Specifically, there are times when solving the puzzles prevents social embarassment, but there are times when you experience it no matter what due to your character's (not the player's) failures, and I think that's not a good design strategy. That only occurs rarely, though.

This game is primarily about the romantic relationship between two men, a superhero and the doctor boyfriend that patches him up all night. It focuses on feelings, passion, includes photographic images of the main characters kissing.

It's quite long, and has a recurring mechanic where you have to select the correct option for treating your boyfriend out of a dropdown menu, using a medical guide you wrote yourself for guidance.

The interactivity is pretty great in this game. The main mechanic mostly worked for me; if you get it wrong, it just sends you back.

The writing was pretty lush (I don't know if that's the right phrase), almost over-the-top. In general, with the plot and writing, it felt like a light romance novel in a dark and gritty setting. Your boyfriend is tormented by the fact that he violently attacks criminals and puts them in the hospital, but feels morally obligated to do so.

There were enough typos that it was a noticeable problem, although many pages had no errors and most that did only had one.

This is one of the longer games in the comp. Interestingly enough, the longest game in the comp is also a gritty doctor-themed romance. Here's my rating:

-Polished: Looks great visually but needs another pass with editing.
+Descriptiveness: Very descriptive, grounded, uses various sense.
+Interactivity: I liked the doctor mechanic.
+Emotional impact: It didn't completely grip me, but I was invested in the characters.
+Would I play again? I might check to see if there's another ending.