Ratings and Reviews by MathBrush

When I had heard that JJ and Grim had been working on a huge Twine project, this isn't what I expected, but I enjoyed this nonetheless.

This is a fake wiki, a sprawling website with links to tons of different actors, directors, characters, episodes, and even fan theories. It reminds me of the wiki game Neurocracy, although I believe they're gated differently. In this game, the wiki is being updated as you go, with new links appearing after you explore others.

The beginning was, as another reviewer mentioned, a bit difficult; with so much information at once, I just sort of lawnmowered through it, saving the fun stuff for last. So I ended up reading the 'people' page, then 'characters', then 'planets' and then the episodes.

It was slow going, with no real plot beats in those first segments because they were order independent.

But it was fun for different reasons. This project seems to have several different goals: to be a sort of 'lost episode' creepypasta-type story, to be funny, to provide a window into 70's culture, to honor and parody Dr. Who and original Star Trek (among others), and to impersonate and parody fan wiki culture.

That's a lot to deal with. One interview snippet from the wiki is an apt description of the wiki itself (mild spoilers):
(Spoiler - click to show)"In the end, I think we were all just pulling in different directions. Carson and I wanted this quite serious Space Opera, if you like, edgy, with political undercurrents and elements of folklore. Jerry (Newbaum) wanted a children's show to compete with Doctor Who, and Derek Farland, well, he really should have been writing kitchen sink dramas. In the end, the show just sort of tore itself apart."

One issue with writing 'creepy' or 'weird' TV shows is that a lot of TV shows are both intentionally and unintentionally weird, and you run into Poe's Law.

There were three threads in the wiki about its own origins, of which I found two pretty compelling (heavy spoilers from here on out):
(Spoiler - click to show)I enjoyed the 'curse' aspect, where the crew enacted an unholy Crowley-based ritual in Glastonbury Tor, invoking the 'thelema' of the producer to enact his will, and thereby dooming the entire show to obscurity.

I also enjoyed the 'Tulpa' idea whereby the whole show (and possibly all of human existence, according to 'Hantises') is a form of haunting or mass delusion or collaborative psychic projection which, once disrupted, fades away forever. If you're a fan of this idea, I recommend this game itself (of course) and also SCP-3930 (http://www.scpwiki.com/scp-3930), a similarly masterful telling of this idea.

The least compelling to me was the idea that it was just a lie.

There's a lot of humor in the game. My favorite line was "It was later found that a fried lentil from a packet of Bombay Mix (Newell's favourite snack) had become lodged in the cavity left by the write-protect tab."

Like I mentioned earlier, there's a lot of insights about the 70's. I liked this line about that (spoilers for ending)(Spoiler - click to show)Strikes, shortages, sexism, and the Black and White Minstrel Show. Yet the way people talk now, anyone would think they were Britain's glorious heyday. And that's the point, you see. You can't go back to the way things were, because they never were like that in the first place. We create our own past, we invent it. We make it whatever we want it to be. But the reality of it is, there is only now. The eternal now.

The final theme of the wiki seems to be around (Spoiler - click to show)loss and the past, as that last quote describes. For me, the real 'ending' was when I read (Spoiler - click to show)about how the documentary-writer's friend had had an 'incident' and pulled away, in conjunction with the final episode summary about saving the world but no one remembering you. The actual ending itself was less satisfying, but I see its purpose as (Spoiler - click to show)you need an anchor point for people to say 'okay', I've seen the whole game. Perhaps I just didn't understand it. In any case, I enjoyed my own gradual realizations of the themes shortly before the true ending.

I initially was going to give this 4 stars, with a point taken off for the overly spread out info at the beginning, then 5 stars as I approached the end, then 4 again for the mild letdown I had with the actual ending. So I'll just go with my formula:

+Polished: Immensely polished. It doesn't really get better than this. Also appreciated the art, which I hadn't mentioned before.
+Descriptiveness: Incredibly detailed. More detailed than some real wikis I've tried to use to look up shows before.
+Interactivity: At first, not so much, but as it went on I enjoyed it more. A real wiki dive.
+Emotional impact: Left me quite thoughtful at the end.
+Would I play again? It doesn't really lend itself to replay. I was planning on making this a '-', but I love the story of Excalibur, and maybe one day I might (with the author's permission' do some fan fiction in the world, as it's truly delightful. But that would be far in the future.

This game is a 22-chapter work relating the story of Cleopatra in Egypt told with a dense, symbolic word style.

I am a fan of the play Antony and Cleopatra and interested in the history around that time period, and I also have at times enjoyed dense symbolic text.

That enjoyment didn't crystallize this time. The game describes its own writing very well:
"Pour pen terrene this dysnomia volta syschronicity to formendulate paragraphs smashed into spare fragments of evocative semiimagery, mimetic shards that don't quite cohere to any generative idea."

They really don't cohere to any generative idea.

When the portmanteaus include French and Latin it gets even less 'generative':
"drunken nothings fuzzed up to retend in the mode prior to resolution beatified immolution densigravitas of the decolor demolition, wickedness we entrenched cheri in jouissanceunteurre catapulted in the cancers cant,"

(I prefer when the game's language is simpler, such as 'Slurp you up a jello mistake.').

I think there are times when this writing style works wonders: when it is used to tell an brilliant and exciting story, hiding the details behind a wall of words; or when it is used in a very short game, like B Minus does, allowing the player to have time to digest and process.

But this story seems largely hung on the traditional story of Caesar, Octavian, Antony, and Cleopatra, almost as if the author wished to write as much as possible, and used the old story as a framework to drape their own words around. The end result is a like a wedding cake made of a wooden frame with heavy fondant draped over, no cake inside.

I found specific moments fun: (Spoiler - click to show)Octavian hiding, the birth of the twins, the deathloop. There are hints of a larger trans narrative, but only in the middle and later parts and even then just vaguely alluded to.

The book itself is well aware of these faults, the author offering to be attacked for the content. In the end, the best description of the book is the one given by the characters in the primer:

"Unfortunately, the finished work appears to have become a bizarre mess of unreadable nonsense. The author appears to have been far more interested in playing obscure word games than telling our story in a way that people could actually understand."

This Twine game is about chilling waiting for a tram. There are several things to explore in a world that's kind of a mild fantasy/tech blend, like FF7 or Zork.

There are a few minigames and things to explore, like gambling or buying equipment. There's a lot of fun unexpected consequences.

Overall, I enjoyed the idea. The game could use some more polish, maybe throwing it through Grammarly could help get rid of some typos.

The game doesn't really have anything tying it all together, which I think I would have appreciated. But it is a good game for meditating and feeling peaceful.

I played through twice.

This is a charming little game, partly poetic and partly puzzle.

You are an alien on your home planet and a creature has crash landed. There are 4-5 different locations you can go, each of which allows you to sleep and look around.

Time passes, and it's important to the game. Some events only occur on certain days. There is a nice graphical change when this happens.

The puzzle involves doing the right thing at the right place, and requires a fair amount of travel.

Unfortunately, this game makes the crucial mistake of combining slow text with gameplay requiring repetition. This means that if you need to check a location really quick, you have to wait several seconds to travel there, several seconds to click on a link, and several seconds to click back. If I were the author, I'd update the game to remove the pauses, as I've never seen a review praise slow text in games and many against.

But as it is, this was fun. The puzzle is simple but satisfying, and I enjoyed the ending.

This game is like a text version of the Winchester mystery house. That house was built upon continually for over 30 years, with constant extensions added, some leading nowhere, others connecting with each other in strange patterns.

This game was one of the earliest Choicescript games, and with that has some of that early-choicescript strangeness (now manifested primarily in its large number of stats and the occasional habit of the narrator addressing the reader directly). Since then, though, it has been expanded on considerably. This game contains 4 sub-games, two of them free and two not. So it's simultaneously one of the oldest and one of the newest choicescript games.

Its overall structure is very different from other titles from CoG. It has a periodic narrative arc. Instead of tension rising to a peak and falling in one grand swoop, it features a single vampire moving about America throughout the 1800s, experiencing a variety of historical events in addition to dealing with vampire society and the curse of immortality.

This episodic structure gives a sense of deja vu and ennui to the main character, as you see so many historical fads and people come and go.

Just like the Winchester house, there are a lot of dead alleys and lost construction. I tried beta testing the game before, but died in the second sub-book. Playing it for this review, I died twice at the end of the fourth book. Similarly, there are huge chunks of the story that can be skipped out on, such as romances, and the opening is completely different depending on your chosen background.

In another departure from Choicescript games, this game addresses race in a very direct way. This game is largely a history of black people in America, with each chapter containing large segments in relation to black history: the liberation of Haiti, the Exodusters, Cuba, lynchings, vodou, the treatment of former slaves after the civil war, etc. Black characters speak in heavily accented text, and for most of the game they are the only ones to do so, with Germans, quakers, and Jews receiving some accents later on.

A game that deals so intimately with black history and black stories risks embracing stereotypes or profiting on stories that don't belong to the author. However, I've seen in the forums mention of several sensitivity readers, although I don't see them listed in the credits the way that Fox Spirit has done (might be worth considering). From what I've seen from PoC authors on Twitter, many consider sensitivity readers a way to make sure that PoC voices are heard, considered, and paid.

The history in this game is detailed and heavily researched, especially in the fourth chapter. If you're interested in silver arbitrage resulting from the Coinage Act of 1873 or the invention of the modern celebrity via Oscar Wilde, the 4th act should appeal to you heavily. The third act deals with a lot of letter-writing and numerous social engagements with other vampires leading to political maneuvering. The 2nd act deals with the Civil War and deprivation, while the first has the most material dealing with you, yourself, as a vampire, and your feelings about that decision.

This game will appeal to a certain type of reader, those who consider themselves interested in philosophy and history or fans of vampires in general.

The game is not yet complete, but due to its plot structure you can pick up and stop off just about anywhere in the journey. A unique choicescript game, huge and detailed.

This Fallen London exceptional story is pretty good.

Fog has encroached on London, and out of it steps a bizarre foggy figure that walks around your house, using your stuff and playing chess a lot.

As you investigate this disturbance, you learn more about a cult and a conspiracy that draws in some of the strangest features of Fallen London: (mild spoiler) (Spoiler - click to show)unusual biology and the Elder continent. Emotionally, this game deals well with a certain kind of loss without becoming too maudlin.

Unlike most exceptional stories, this has some very different endings that can be hard to achieve. If you're really invested in one outcome and don't want to pay money for a reset, it's worth looking up or getting advice online.

This is the only game out of Choice of Games 123 existing titles I've played that I'm giving 3 stars to. Most titles are the result of years of work and careful oversight by a large crew of editors, copyeditors, testers, etc. that result in a game that is at minimum polished, replayable, descriptive, and having some kind of emotional impact or good interactivity, which are the criteria I judge games by.

This game is the smallest game made since Choice of the Dragon, is experimental, and is buggy. The size is due to it being one of the free (with ads) mini-size games available to anyone playing on the omnibus apps. Unlike the other mini games (Zip! Speedster and HMS Foraker), this one seems like it was written to be me small, with a new kind of gameplay not seen before in Choice of Games.

As an experiment, I'm not sure the game works. It has some randomization (so, for instance, going to the stats screen and back can change what day you're on). Each day is a journal entry, presenting a choice with yes/no options. These are either 'what faction do you favor' out of 3 possible factions, or 'do you try this beneficial thing that checks which of your stats are good' or a combination of the two. In this way, it kind of reminds me of Amazing Quest, a controversial tiny game entered in the 2020 IFComp.

If any of the three factions hates you, you die. The game is supposed to let you restart that day, but a game-breaking bug instead sends you back to the beginning of the game, leaving some of your stats intact which causes a couple more errors.

The randomization and binary choices make the game pretty difficult, with the bug rendering the game permanently in 'hard mode'. I did get to an ending.

I enjoyed the character Lookout and the two different machine animals I had on different runs (a copper snake and silver wolf). I love all the rest of Marquis's games, so I enjoyed getting more lore here about Empyrean, and the captain's mysterious locked room reminded me of Bluebeard, one of my favorite characters (I've sometimes considered Duke Bluebeard's Castle my favorite opera).

So, while this has many redeeming features, I can't give this 4 stars due to the fairly severe, easily reproducible bugs and with my dissatisfaction with the interactivity. But I think Marquis can handle it, as he's an amazing writer with some of the best games out there (like the Vampire Masquerade game).

I'm also looking forward to his next Pon Para game!

Grand Academy of Villains is a game I first played years ago. I found the writing funny and the class interesting, but I wasn't satisfied with the ending because I found it abrupt.

Now, after playing through essentially every Choicescript game, I realize how high-quality the first Grand Academy game is in general, with lots of valid choices and good writing. I still think the ending has some issues (with some stat checks that are too high, imo), but overall it's one of the better games.

This game builds on that, but in a way some people disliked. Grand Academy 1 had very different endings depending on your choices, but this game funnels all of those towards one 'main' choice.

I know several people were unhappy with this choice, but I saw the complaints before I played, and wasn't surprised or, really, disappointed, since this game is all about multiverses and changes in reality.

Anyway, this game was fun for me. There is a big competition all year between houses (Thriller, Horror, Sci-fi and Fantasy), overseen by an outside group. In addition, a powerful new student with destiny enters the school.

The writing in this series is exceptionally funny (if you're into parodies of both academia and writing tropes), and stats are generally clear. I do think, though, that the game suffers a bit from stat checks that become progressively more difficult, meaning that the chance of you failing during the finale is high.

Another small problem is that, due to numerous options, each option gets less time. At one point I had a choice to impress people with my grades despite never going to class and not having any grades (i.e. my grades were listed as 'unknown'). I had plenty of time to spend with my 'nemesis' (this game has both normal romances and nemesis similar to romance but with hatred, kind of like that homestuck thing), and my current romance. But everything else seemed fairly stretched or thin. Again, though, this was only due to the large variability in the game.

Some people have said in reviews that 'your choices don't matter' which isn't really true, the writing is extremely variable. However, there's an art to making it clear in writing that your choices aren't important, and I think that wasn't communicated properly here.

Overall, very glad to have played the series, and would rank it in the top 20 at least.

This game is the end of the Hero Project duology, which comes after the Heroes Rise trilogy (and has connections to (Spoiler - click to show)the author's Versus series).

I've really enjoyed Zachary's other games, but felt that the last game, Redemption season, was a bit more constrained. This game takes that further.

In this game, you take on the final episodes of the Hero Project reality show while dealing with a new independent city-state in the wilderness made up of former enemies trying to make a home for minority superheros.

I had an experience early on which really soured me on the game. In the previous game, (Spoiler - click to show)I followed Loa's instructions to the hilt, believing that she could save us. But she had said before that if I didn't win the Hero Project, the earth would be doomed. And the game also likes you to be consistent and to help your sister. So I had to choose between helping my sister and losing the project (thus dooming mankind). It felt pretty harsh. I tried to get some insights from reading the choice of game forums to see if there was a way to still win, but I couldn't find anything helpful.

Beyond that, though, (an issue which probably would have been just fine in the long run), this game feels like 80% reaction, 20% action. Over and over again, you're told what your hero does, and what other heroes do, then you're asked:
Did that make you feel:
-excited?
-scared?
-determined?

Or, someone will give a speech, and then the game will say:
In your heart, you think:
-All superheros should work together
-My type of superhero is persecuted, so we should stick together
-I don't care, as long as my sister is safe.

And these two interactions are what most of the game is. What drew me to Sergi's earlier games was the exact opposite: more action, more dramatic-feeling choices.

The high points of the game for me were seeing my old main character as a respected and powerful superhero, and the last chapter. I enjoy the character of your sister, Jelly Kelly, quite a bit, and your main character's power set is pretty cool.

Overall, I wouldn't have finished playing this one if it weren't connected to the overall Sergiverse. But it's one I wouldn't skip if you have played the other games, as it ties up a lot of loose ends.

This is a somewhat controversial game, but it was only able to achieve that controversy by being popular in the first place.

The author had an earlier 3-part series called Heroes Rise, that focuses on a superhero getting powers, beating their first enemy, going on a reality show, then becoming an influence on the whole nation.

This game is a side story with a new protagonist, a hero with a very clever power: you are an animal/human hybrid, but the animal you're mixed with changes every day.

The focus of this game is different from the earlier series. Your character is a representative of several persecuted minority groups (the animal hybrids, those with uncontrollable powers, and another one I can't remember). The main themes of the game revolve around the treatment of these minority groups. Also, your sister's powers are killing her, and a mysterious benefactor has offered to cure her in return for several unnamed favours, to be collected.

The focus on the minority groups has led to a lot of reviews and forum posts describing the game as having 'too much politics', which is usually a dogwhistle for alt-right people who don't like LGBT representation (which exists in this game; there are trans and non-binary main characters).

However, I feel like there are some issues here, but not with the content itself, rather how it's presented. The first Heroes Rise games were all about action, but this game is largely about reaction. Instead of picking what you do, frequently you're told what you or others do and then given the choice of how you feel about it. Quite frequently choices are forced on you, and you can go several pages without a choice, more often than the earlier games.

I believe that if the game had been rewritten to feature more action and choice that the number of negative reviews would have gone down a lot (except for virulently anti-LGBT people), because a well-written game can handle all sorts of diverse politics. For instance, the Heart of the House prominently features a nonbinary main NPC with non-standard pronouns, but you see a lot fewer negative comments about it.

The Sea Eternal had a similar issue, I believe, where you were frequently told what you were doing and what you thought, and I think that it just doesn't make for an enjoyable game experience. And I think it's possible to have games with strong pro-LGBT messages that give you freedom of action and feeling: Howling Dogs, Birdland, With Those We Love Alive, and Tally Ho come to mind.

Another thing that may have dinged this game's popularity (although it's still a very popular game, just not as much as the other games by this author) is having forced failures. There are situations in the game where you have to pick between 2 very bad outcomes, and Choicescript games that do that tend to suffer.

However, I've noticed that those same ingredients that are drawbacks as games (reduced interactivity and forced failures) can also help make your overall story better. It's no coincidence that the Nebula writing award nominated games tend to sell poorly: they all tend to have tight, railroaded stories with lots of failures to build up a big character arc.

Anyway, I did like the overall story of this game, I'm glad I played it, and I look forward to the next game and the eventual crossover with the author's other series.