Ratings and Reviews by MathBrush

Surface stories generally aren't my favorite in Fallen London. To me, it feels like being in a dark room telling ghost stories at a sleepover, then going out into the brightly-lit kitchen to say hi to your parents and grab some snacks before going back in.

That said, the player agency in this story is impressive, and mechanically it is one of the best stories, and has poignant moments of writing, especially the drawn-out ending. Reading this made me feel that Failbetter made an excellent choice hiring Short as their creative director; the grasp of the world of Fallen London as a whole and the creative mechanics are exactly what I'd hope a creative director would bring.

In this game, the oldest daughter of Queen Victoria, called the Empress's Shadow, is the only normal child she has left, and is coming down to the Neath to visit for unknown reasons. She is the empress dowager of Prussia, just like in real history.

You want to get close to her. It turns out that she desires a revolving suite of new servants to keep from getting too close to anyone or revealing too many secrets. So, for you to get her secrets, you become a teacher at Sinning Jenny's finishing school, training your own set of spies (chosen from 6-8 of the factions already in Fallen London), and using them to find out more about her.

Her motives include both romance and power, which is interesting, and the game gives you a permanent carousel that can result in a favor (although I failed the 50% luck check all 3-4 times I tried, which is just what luck is).

The only drawbacks to me personally are the lack of engagement I felt with the surface-based story. Otherwise, it is very well-done and was interesting to play.

I have to admit, I didn't have high hopes for this game coming in. My own game is usually near the bottom of the barrel sales-wise (according to the 'bestselling' section of the iOS omnibus app), but Sorcery for Saps is usually right around there, too.

So I was pleasantly surprised by the involved and intriguing mystery story that played out over the couple of hours the game lasted. You have to impersonate your master sorcerer at the king's court, where he has been cursed by an unknown person at a critical time in negotiations.

There are many suspects and many side-intrigues going on, and it all ties together nicely. Even if you guess some of the secrets, it's still fun to see the others.

But this game had a few things going against it.

For me personally, I disliked that many choices were forced on you. So instead of 'Would you like to talk to the servant or do one of these other options?' the game would say, 'You've decided you like the servant, feel sorry for her, and go out of your way to cast a specific elaborate spell to fix her problems and gain her confidence. Why did you do that player?'

Imagine someone doing that when making dinner plans or game mastering. Instead of, 'Where are you thinking of eating tonight? We could go to Taco Bell or Mcdonalds since they're close,' it's more like, 'Well, I can tell already you're going to tell us to go to Taco Bell and get supreme burritos because you love their beans. What made you think of it?'

It makes for stronger storytelling, because you (the author) have complete control of what happens, and perhaps that's one reason I found the story so engaging. But I found it less engaging as a game.

The second issue that a lot of games lower on the bestselling list have (and mine does this too, though I've updated it a bit to work on it) is 'bad stat disease', where you can end the game with pretty much all of your stats between 50% and 60%, and your opposed stats at essentially 50-50, due to a combination of infrequent, low stat boosts, confusion about what tests opposed stats vs setting it, and difficulty figuring out what skill is used in each test.

The last thing is that the game has zany, silly humor, especially in the first chapter, with spells like 'CTRL-Z' or 'Thingius stoppius' (not a real spell, but similar to ones in the game). I've noticed that games with silly humor tend not to do well, even if they're actually pretty fun (like For Sale:Haunted House, Yeti's Parole Officer). The same goes for anything that seems targeted towards children (like my own game or Demon Mark).

So, if the authors read this, I really liked your game, and I think there are some things that can be improved, but overall your mystery was great and I'm going to be thinking about it for a long time. Loved the characterization of the ferret.

This game was ranked highly on the 'best exceptional story' poll on the fallen london reddit recently, and I wanted to check it out.

Turns out that it gives out huge chunks of backstory and lore regarding the royal family. This one story helped clear up the plots of Ambition:Nemesis, Sunless Sea, and Sunless Skies more than any other single story I've read on there.

You are given a strange doll, and it eventually leads you into the depths of the Shuttered Palace. There you encounter the royal family as they now are, after the transformations of the fall.

It's not as long as some of the other fate stories (most of CMG's are longer), but it has a hefty chunk of content, especially if you slow down and read everything. In terms of impact of the lore revealed, it is very high overall.

The writing on this piece was well-done, exactly the kind of thing you want in Fallen London (where you're left wanting more, but then more is offered...at a cost).

This game has a cute concept but needs a lot more work.

Right now, it starts when you are born and stop right when you get to school.

It will detail an event in your life, possibly unlocking a new skill. Then you can use a new skill, continue, or pick from different baby language like 'gaga' or 'ouuiiiinnn' ('whaaaahhhhhh').

Choosing to use your special skills generally seemed to have no effect except possibly on one occasion. The baby language was confusing, and the game ended very quickly.

It definitely has promise and possibility, but needs far more work before it is complete.

-Polish: The game is not finished
+Descriptive: The text is fairly generic, but it's engaging enough that I would have kept reading.
-Interactivity: Hard to know what options do, many similar choices
-Emotional impact: It was hard to engage due to all of the above.
+Would I play again? If it were finished. And I would definitely increase the score then!

I am absolutely not a fan of visual novels usually, as they're harder to pick up and put down due to timed text and the graphics usually take up most of the screen making it harder to multitask.

Despite that, I found this game great. It's an entry in the French comp for 2021. The gameplay is spread over 4 days and several locations, each with their own theme music.

While art isn't usually part of my review criteria, they really nailed it here, and the art is very responsive, with parallalax movement following your mouse, different animations at key points, etc.

The characters are all unique and I definitely had favorites early on.

There's not many choices compared to a typical Twine or Choicescript game, but they seemed to have some kind of longer-term effect. There is one huge choice at the end. I translated it for my son who was walking by, and we cried a little at our ending.

Great game. I thought of giving it a 4 right after playing it, but after several hours I definitely think this is a 5 game.

This game is just straight-up a 'you are piloting a giant robot, go out there and fight' choicescript game. And it does really well.

The plotline is exciting. You are one of the best ace pilots in a resistance movement, and there is a hotshot pilot on the other side who keeps challenging you while both sides work on superweapons. The game is set at the culmination of a 5-year war.

Characters are varied, each with a couple of strong traits. I didn't romance anyone in my playthrough, but that's because I played a completely aggressive jerk.

The stats are simple and easy to understand. Difficulty comes not from guessing which stat to use, but about weighing your decisions, with some decisions and plotlines better motivated by different stats. So, for instance, you might have to choose between being cautious and saving civilians or being bold and striking the enemy while they strike you, with different stats helping different strategies.

I ended up with what I'd consider a 'bad' ending, but the game is smooth and varied enough that replay wouldn't be bad. I wouldn't say the game is short at at all, but it went by faster for me than most games of its size due to my interest in the plot and the lack of obstacles in terms of stat confusion.

I believe this one was very popular in past years and probably popular now. It makes sense; it's fun.

I've noticed that most Choicescript games' quality matches up pretty well with the total and number of ratings on the omnibus app, with most of the lower-scored ones ending up being confusing or dissappointing.

This game proved the exception for me. While it had problems, especially near the start, I ended up enjoying it quite a bit especially the ending.

In this game, you play as a monk/scholar in 1000 AD who is entrusted with a book of marvelous prophecy called the Chronicon Apocalypticon. At the same time, you discover a disembodied hand running around. You embark on a quest to save (or destroy) England, meeting many weird characters and discovering the magical side of the world (with undead, elves, dragons, etc.)

The NPCs all are very different from each other and creative. They include a beekeeper and his special bee helper, a Joan-of-Arc type woman, a conflicted nun, a bard, and others.

I enjoyed the fact that 'being good at reading' is a superpower in this game. At least, it's a skill that can be used to save the world.

Overall, the main characteristics it has with other less popular CoG titles is its weaker/confusing stats and it's lack of flexibility when it comes to romances (there are romances, but gender of ROs is fixed and many will only specific types of romance or none at all).

By 'weak stats' I mean that I ended the game with almost all skills at 50%, one in the 60's and two in the 50's. This can cause a lot of problems, such as trying to figure out if you just screwed up your stats royally, or figuring out what's enough to pass challenges. My personal analogy for stat growth is that it's like walking speed in a 3d game: really low stat boosts are like having a character move at 1/10 of normal speed.

By 'confusing' stats, I mean that it can be really hard to figure out which stats are which; for instance, the game frequently asked me if I would do things myself or work as a team, but I cannot identify any skill that that corresponds to. On the other hand, there are many tracked stats that I can't for the life of me tell how they apply in the game.

Many people in reviews for this game mention difficulty with stat checks, which I think is a result of the above issues.

So that's a lot of time spent on the weaknesses. The good thing is that the game is at its worst at the beginning and only gets better with time. The final chapter was great, on par (in my opinion) with Heroes of Myth, another excellent Choicescript game. The actual last page was one of the best I've seen (in my playthrough).

As the game progresses, you can figure out the author's signposts for the stats. It's usually the simplest possible: he mentions the name of the stat in the choice.

As the game goes on, there are many factions you can choose between and many ways to influence the world. The choices are great. The whole game story was really compelling for me, better than most of the games I've played in the last few weeks.

I think this game most appealed to me because of my love for reading and my enjoyment of monastical, historical, and/or fae-based narratives with a bizarre cast of characters, as well as my patience for puzzling stats. If that sounds like you, you'll probably enjoy this game.

Jim Dattilo is a good interactive fiction author. He's great at creating a variety of characters.

The power to affect time is a fun subject in IF, and has a lot of potential.

However, I think this game misses at its aims a bit.

You play as an insurance salesman who one days realizes they can stop time. You can use this to enrich yourself or help others, and you can attract the attention of many might people or romantic interests.

I think where the trouble is is that Jim's strengths are a vibrant cast of NPCs and a superhero game's strength is the hero's growth, and they don't mesh well.

Your character in this game has almost no development; all the interesting personal plotlines are pushed on to other people. There is an enemy, but they enter pretty late in the story.

The problem is the NPCs with the interesting plotlines don't have powers, so the game basically alternates between two chunks: interesting, non-supernatural segments with NPC's personal lives, and exciting but aimless explorations of your powers. So, for instance, you might go to a party with someone and learn about their childhood, then go out to a park and decide to steal a bike or help a kid not scrape their knee. And that's the bulk of the game.

The writing is good, though, and over time I found the characters interesting. The workplace subplot is fascinating. I definitely feel like playing this game was not a waste of my time.

The other main problem I had was a 'sudden death' ending in Chapter 12. I don't mind sudden deaths in Choicescript games, but these are essentially 'hardmode' games where a death wipes your whole file and you have to restart. If there was some kind of denouement to your death (like in Mask of the Plague Doctor) or options to restart a given chapter (like Choice of Rebels or Cakes and Ale), it would be a lot less painful.

So I can't strongly recommend this game, but I can recommend it to fans of Dattilo's other work and fans of slice-of-life style superhero works (or corporate drama; honestly, if you're into that, that subplot alone is a pretty good game in and of itself).

This game has an awesome concept. You are a Death Collector. You have an invisibility cloak, pretend to be death to get people's tongues wagging before they die, then harvest the tongues which now contain that person's memories.

There's all sorts of creative worldbuilding, with different houses, abundant hidden secrets, etc. This is a long game with tons of tiny effects on the text due to your stats.

Unfortunately, there were several aspects of the game that I did not enjoy.

First, I was very confused by the stats. It's typical in choicescript games to have fluctuating personality traits represented by 'opposed stats' that add up to 50%, allowing the player to change over time. You also have skills that (generally) only go up, representing your wisdom over time.

In this game, your 'skills' are all things that seem more like personality traits: 'procedural', 'intuitive', 'cunning', and 'charming'.

This wouldn't be that bad, but they overlap in myriad ways with the opposed stats. For instance, if you decide to break rules to sneak into a room, are you being 'cunning', or not 'idealistic', or 'shameless', or 'maverick'?

If you talk kindly to someone who's dying, is that 'charming', 'honorable', 'empathetic', or 'idealistic'?

This makes it almost impossible to guess which choices affect which stat; similarly, it's hard to tell if you're adjusting a stat or testing a stat.

It's like playing a racing game that never explains which keys do what and sometimes randomizes them; it increases difficulty, but not in a rewarding way (for me).

The tone is very negative as well. It's basically choosing 'what kind of loser are you'. For instance, here are the options for one choice:

-I'm horrified this place is riddled with incompetence. Something must be done.
-I don't want to jump to conclusions. It might backfire.
-Pretend I disagree, so I can use the knowledge later for my own ends.
-I have no sympathy for whiners who blame their problems on others.

So you can do snooty, cowardly, sneaky, or haughty. I know some people enjoy playing as 'the bad boy/girl', and I've enjoyed doing that in other games, but it's not as fun when it's forced on you.

Finally, the narrative just kind of drops out at the end. At what feels like a couple of scenes before the climax, the game just stops with one page. It would be like if, in Empire Strikes Back, right after the scene where they meet Darth Vader in the 'dining room', they got on the Millenial Falcon and fly away, with the credits scrolling.

Despite my many troubles, the basic idea behind this game was great, and I encountered very few bugs/typos. The writing was interesting (it was several strong profanities, as a caution), and I thought the scenarios were individually compelling.

It took me (an anglophone with moderate French skills) about two weeks to finish reading this, on and off. I expect a native speaker could finish it in 1-3 hours.

This is a very long twine game about a future earth where we have been visited by aliens and a New World Order is in charge.

It's in several segments that differ quite a bit from each other. The first is working on a space station; the second is engaging in combat and exploring ancient greek ruins underground; and the last is fighting in an arena.

The worldbuilding is intricate and silly (spoiler for midgame): (Spoiler - click to show)the gods you discover are Athena, Ares, and Trollus, who writes in emojis only.

The biggest drawback is the extreme restrictions on freedom. There are only 3-4 'real' options in the game, and those options are just which order to experience content in. The vast majority of choices are 'continue'.

This is listed as just a prologue. Overall, I found it funny, but would have preferred more real (or even pretend) agency.