Reviews by MathBrush

This game was kind of a rollercoaster experience for me.

I started it up, and it looked like a simple tutorial adventure, like a TALJ game intended to be succinct.

But I soon found that I couldn't type, as it looked like it was auto-completing everything I typed, and into weird things.

So I tried experimenting a while but just didn't get it. I saw that ? gave instructions, so I tried typing that.

It turns out that different keyboard keys are mapped to whole actions, and typing that key will give that action. It's not quadratic in complexity, it's linear (1 key 1 action, no nouns as they are context-dependent).

So overall it's an interesting effect, similar to Gruescript or other parser-choice hybrids. Some of the choices for commands were a bit odd, and some (like arrow keys) seem like they wouldn't translate to mobile well (which I didn't try).

Overall, the puzzles were clever and the game was polished. The interactivity definitely threw me for a loop and I'm pretty sure I'm not a fan, although it's hard to say if that's just because I'm not used to it or because it would be perennially awkward. I guess I could compare it to the text adventure equivalent of QWOP.

Overall the charming and complex puzzles are why I'm giving a higher score.

This is a fairly short ADRIFT game in which you command six different soldiers, switching between their viewpoints to find aliens to kill.

Each soldier has their own mini puzzle. Some of these are pretty short, requiring little effort, while others are fairly complex and may need some repeat tries.

I found the writing enjoyable and many of the interactions were clever and well thought-out.

I found a few small bugs. Ducking if nothing is around acts as if something is there; most interactions were bug free, though, and two things I was going to bring up as second examples were actually caused by own error (I kept typing 'pulse rifle' instead of 'laser rifle', for instance), so I guess there really weren't a lot of bugs (except the six you kill haha). I do wish that saving and UNDOing worked even if you had switched your player character though.

The interactions were generally pretty simple, but there is an (optional) hour long timer and a (non optional) 80 turn timer that significantly complicates things. I had to restart several times to figure out a good strategy. But I was invested to do so several times, ask for hints online and switch the version of Adrift I was using because I did want to finish the game.

Unlike Andrew Schultz's other chess puzzles, this one has a ton of flexibility. You have two bishops and a king, and have to force the other king into check.

This is a famous setup, and there are several paths to victory. I admit that although I could get it penned up in the corner, I couldn't win, so I had to look up a tutorial. But I learned some real-life skills in the process, which was nice.

Compared to the other chess games it let me do a bit more thinking; before the game would prevent me from doing something and I had no idea why. This game let me get myself into a mess. It was harder because of that, but I enjoyed the exploration more.

There were a few minor typos; the opening text could be more easily readable, with indented paragraphs or paragraph breaks instead of line breaks between chunks, and one line of text said "The two bishos drum", so overall very minor issues for a fun game.

This is probably the best game I've played by this author.

It's a continuation of the older game Jesse Stavros' Compass, but I found that this game was mostly self-contained and explained the plot of the previous game fairly well.

The idea is that there is are several underground networks of talented individuals who are able to travel through space and/or time. Your friend, the young Jesse Stavros, has gone missing after visiting the Grateful Dead in concertin the 1970s.

The game hops between a variety of distinct and well-described locations, from a lonely motel to a squatter-infested theater to a refined steamboat.

The game has a lot of rooms and a lot of characters. This kind of complexity can lead to bugs or dull repetition if not done well, but this game is very polished for its size. Most people can respond to most topics; NPCs move independently. There were only a few minor errors for me here and there; a steamboat passenger's name wasn't printed in an ambient paragraph about him; a dead body was described as if it still had a gun I took. But in a game of this size and complexity, these are only minor errors.

Puzzles are well-clued. Two or three times I wasn't sure and peaked at the walkthrough, and it turned out I had had the right idea but in the wrong place or that I hadn't tried long enough. I had some trouble with one machine for a long time until I realized I hadn't examined it; once I did there were clear instructions.

Overall, I had fun. It reminds me of Cryptozoologist or other Robb Sherwinn games, although I'd say the overall level of polish is high. I was disappointed it (Spoiler - click to show)ended on a cliffhanger, but I'll definitely be interested in a future episode.

I also appreciated that, while the tone is mature and many of the characters are used to the seedy side of life, the game doesn't rely on any slurs or racist stereotypes or misogyny and instead uses dialogue and ambient objects to establish the atmosphere.

This game is set in the Hinterlands, which I believe is a setting designed by the author (I've played another game from that setting). The setting reminds me a lot of the Max Blaster comics in Calvin and Hobbes: rayguns, oozy monsters, bizarre aliens, and a daring hero.

This game features a pretty large town with a wide variety of locations, like a farm, a temple, a distant shack, a nearby military base, an apartment building with many individual apartments you can enter, etc. However, everything is designed compactly to be easily traversible.

Your character is kind of a rogue or rascal. In the course of the game, you commit several heinous acts, but with the framing it comes of as more of an anti-hero than a pure villain, more like Rocket Raccoon than Darth Vader.

I didn't encounter any bugs. At one point there was a large rock I needed to interact with that didn't have any adjectives, while I also carried some rocks. So I had to go to another room to drop them; if the rock was 'large rock' or 'heavy rock' that could be avoided, but that's a minor quibble in a very polished game.

I had to use the hints three times, but they're organized pretty well, and each time the solution was fair, just involving more exploring and more talking.

Sometimes the logic isn't clear; you can get away with a lot of things that someone might reasonably stop you from doing. But I feel like it operates with the same kind of consistent logic as a Looney-Tunes cartoon (although darker!). It would make a pretty funny animated short.

This game uses a custom Javascript system that is similar to Twine or Choicescript in that you click from a variety of buttons to progress the story. It is optimized for mobile, and worked great on Desktop for me. The delay between clicks was just a little too long for my taste, but that was my only complaint.

You are presented as Madame Soo, a Chinese woman who is also a detective. In a classic locked room mystery, you find a man who has been strangled and have to figure out how it happened.

Overall, the writing was descriptive and the characters were fairly vivid.

With interactivity, the main mechanism for progression is to type in the name of an address you want to visit. There doesn't seem to be any way to go back, so its vital that you write down all names and locations as you go.

The clues themselves and all the deductions outside of the names are done by the character in-story. I would have liked to have had more involvement in that deduction, although I know that's a tricky thing to do in a game.

Others have mentioned the presentation of racism in the game. For me, I found it contributed more to being obnoxious than to providing key historical context.

Overall, I'm impressed by the architecture and writing of this game. My quibbles are mainly with the interactivity level and being drawn out of the game emotionally by the depictions mentioned above.

This is an experimental, somewhat unpolished game entered in the back garden of Spring Thing. As an experiment, I think it works, but it could use some touching up as a game/story itself.

The idea is that you, following the examples of Orpheus and Heracles, have descended into the underworld to follow after the woman you love.

Like other stories about the descent into Hades, you have a guide, Phos, a ball of light that follows you around, and who gives you a guided tour of the afterlife, showing you what happens to people there, etc.

This is written using Vorple, which allows multimedia and hyperlinks to be added to Inform. Most of the game, if not all, can be played by clicking links in the text, typing directional commands, and choosing menu options.

The art is Ai-generated, and looks very good; the model seems well-trained on the style used. Apparently some text is also AI, which makes sense; I had in my review notes that 'the text has strange errors at times, not like non-native English speakers, just strange placement of words'. So if it were AI-influenced, that would make sense.

The game doesn't outstay its welcome, and has some very nice moments. However, there are some stray typos, like double periods or the word 'sturggle' instead of struggle. Sometimes menu items for conversation still appeared even though I had left the area in question. But despite these rough edges, the core game is enjoyable.

Note that Vorple games such as this one don't currently work well if downloaded and played offline.

The first Marie game, Pre-Marie, was the first Adventuron game I ever played, and it gave me a good impression.

This one fleshes out the details significantly. It's in PunyInform, I think.

I'm giving it 5 stars, but not necessarily because I think most people will adore it. It simply had a nice combination of things I like: a vague conspiracy, a tense mystery setting, logical but kind of sticky parser puzzles and a lot of standard parser gameplay. And the in-game timer provided some tension. So for me that's exactly what I was looking for in a game.

The idea is that you are investigating a kind of conspiracy related to you and your town, but you've been kidnapped and stuffed somewhere. There's just a hint of the supernatural, possibly a fakeout or even unintentional. Most of the game involves escaping from your situation in progressively larger containers/rooms/locations.

Pretty fun, if you just want a brief chill parser game. I fought with the parser a couple of times, but it was overall pretty smooth.

This game has a lot more in common with roguelikes than standard IF gameplay (unless I've deeply misunderstood roguelikes). There is a fixed map with seven important items randomly generated in it, and an enemy that moves around the map and reacts to you; additionally, there are several difficulty levels that basically give you 'extra lives' or make the enemy a bit slower.

I beta tested an early version of this game.

Here are my overall thoughts:

+Polish: The game claims to be a beta, but I found the version I played (near the end of Spring Thing) to be fairly complete; I didn't find any bugs, and objects had a lot of detail.

+Descriptiveness: The map is both overflowing and sparse. Each room is detailed, but many of them overlap in the items they have (filing cabinets, screens, etc.). Items are utilitarian but hint at a greater cause. It's an interesting mix, and I found it fairly evocative. The map is very helpful.

+Interactivity: The frantic scrambling around to find the seven items isn't something I've seen a lot before, and it was a fun change from the usual staid, considered type of IF game I tend to play. There is a parkour element, but it never came into play for me, playing on the easiest non-tutorial setting. Its main effect seems to be to help with escaping, but I only ran into the Predator once, near the very end. Perhaps in harder difficulties it is more useful.

-Emotional impact: I think the writing overall is strong, but a lot of the pieces just didn't fall into place for me. The story has so many intro declarations and warnings and prefacing and guides that it almost felt bubblewrapped, designed to protect me from the game but simultaneously blunting its experience. The warnings on themselves are useful, as the game has frequent strong profanity, which isn't always in service to some overarching narrative goal. In the game itself, there are a couple of strong threads: (Spoiler - click to show)a capitalist society trying to make brainwashed slaves, (Spoiler - click to show)a fellow clone, or some other experiment, hunting you down, perhaps as a test to make you stronger?, (Spoiler - click to show)a siege wearing you down. They all tie together in game, but they feel disparate. Is your pursuer your comrade or your foe? Both are okay individually, but with both as possibilities there was less tension for me.

+Would I play again? The core gameplay loop isn't bad, and the overall polish makes for solid gameplay. I could see myself revisiting it.

This is the third Lady Thalia game; the series in general focuses around a three-pronged conversation system where you take different attitudes, as well as physical preparation for thefts.

This game focuses on the introduction of a new nemesis detective, as well as a resolution of the overarching plotline of your former nemesis, and heavily involves your husband as well.

I had a rocky start with this one. The intro heavily emphasizes your open marriage/lavender marriage, and it brought into my mind a lot of real-world experiences that were quite a bit less glamorous than those implied in the game. In addition, I found myself constantly at odds with the conversation system, not picking up on the social cues that indicate which line of approach would be best; possibly I just have brain fog after just coming back from a trip.

But the quality of the writing and characters is always, to me, solid, and as the game went on I became invested in the string of characters and situations and actions. The involvement of the husband and his lover made the game more interesting, putting you in a teaching role, which is a natural extension of the overall character arc. And unlike some others who reviewed the game, I found Mel's change of heart (Spoiler - click to show)fairly understandable; if your enemy is consistently more encouraging and relatable than your employer, who wouldn't have second thoughts about their career?

I also preferred the later mechanical segments that focused more on varying your approach rather than having 'one true' approach, as well as the 'slow finesse vs brute force' options in the physical preparation.

Overall, this one isn't my favorite Lady Thalia game, but I'd consider it one of the headliners of Spring Thing, and am glad to have it.