Reviews by MathBrush

In this Exceptional story, you investigate a man and a doctor who love each other but who are willing to go to any lengths to help each other, even against the others' will.

This ends up with you and them being pulled into a jousting tournament in the land of dreams, where you must decide who to support and whether you'll take the prize for yourself.

The characters in this are drawn broadly from mythology, including the legends of Reynard the Fox, Arthurian legends, and Fallen London's own chess mythology/lore. So figures include red queens and white kings, magical stags, etc.

The bright point to me were these characters, as well as side characters (including a snake jousting with multiple lances).

The drawback to me was that it was fairly constrained. We've been spoiled a bit by very nice Exceptional Stories in the past with a variety of mechanics. The bulk of this one lies in one continuous string of actions, with the main choices being who to talk to each day and who to support in the jousts. It felt like I didn't have much agency in the story, which probably helped it be more focused and well-written. It's hard to say what they could have done differently.

In the end, though, it was a fun play and one I think I'll remember fondly.

This game is part of the French comp. In it, you and a bunch of other students accidentally summon the Gods who give you two tasks to complete. Once you do so, you earn a special secret from the Gods.

I thought the idea was generally entertaining, but the game could have used more 'something'. More options, or more details, or more focus.

Here is my overall rating:

-Polish: There were various typos at different times.
-Interactivity: It felt pretty constrained most of the time. The best part was when it opened up to a whole island, but most options there had the same results.
+Emotional impact: I felt like it was a fun, silly game.
+Descriptiveness: I thought the author had some enthusiastic and fun descriptions.
-Would I play again? It's pretty much the same each playthrough.

Having played (almost) all of Kyle Marquis's games, I can say that there are some definite trends. They tend to be very long, with complicated skill checks and intricate worldbuilding.

In particular, the worlds he constructs have certain similarities, almost like half-remembered versions of the same fever dream. The worlds tend to be man-made by ancient, superior versions of humans, who are now gone, and have bio-mechanical or magic-scifi hybrid.

I like all of his games, but I think this one works particularly well (although his Vampire the Masquerade game is, I think, his best). Years ago, a group of heroes saved the world, and two of them had you as a child. When news of a foreign army comes, you have to travel across a huge continent and a variety of locales to warn others of what is to come. In the end, you have to travel to the Great Southern Labyrinth to get aid.

I can only describe the structure of this game as 'baroque', in the sense of being almost excessively elaborate. You have statistics for personal skills, as well as statistics for things you are trained in. There are many subplots running through the game (such as the fear of the gods, a lengthy murder mystery, political intrigue, your character's backstory, control over temple worship, an artifact that possesses creatures, etc.) and 4-5 villains, each of which would work fine as a main villain. It's over the top, maybe even overwhelming at times, especially given the size of the game. The great labyrinth itself is huge, but it's only in one or two chapters.

There are a lot of ways to fail in this game, both due to bad stat checks and due to built-in-failure.

I found your two main travelling companions (who also serve as ROs) interesting and varied.

Overall, a game I'd recommend if you've liked the author's other work or if you try out the free demo and enjoy.

I received a review copy of this game.

This game is pretty much exactly what you would imagine a 400K-word game about being a masked plague doctor would be like.

It's a fairly grim tale. You are a travelling doctor forced by the crown to enter a city in quarantine due to the Waking Death, a plague which makes its bearers sleep-deprived until they die.

You work with two others, a man wearing a boar mask and a woman wearing a fox mask. The town is surrounded by starving soldiers who want to sack it, is run by a despot mayor, and has at least two insurgent groups inside and multiple religious sects.

Although many exciting things happen in this game, the writing is slow-paced and dense. Here is a description of stars, for instance:
"The stonework of the courtyard fountain feels cold and uncomfortable against your back, as you gaze up at the sky. A persistent wind, the same one that caused you to bundle up your robes and seek shelter behind the stone structure, has left cracks in the relentless march of clouds, allowing occasional points of light to blink through. You ignore the creeping ache as the winter night assails your bones, focusing instead on those distant glimmers. Are they miniature suns? The faraway eyes of watching deities? Or simply another act of nature, like the snow, or the rain?"

I enjoy this style of writing. Given the large wordcount of the game and the dense prose, it took me several evenings to finish this game. And it branches quite a bit. My playthrough went against the grain, so to speak, as I supported the despot mayor at every opportunity and sought after (and found, to my detriment) the forbidden knowledge at the heart of the town.

Despite my 'losing' ending, it was written very well, with a lengthy epilogue that made the game very satisfying. It's always a huge bummer to get to the very end of a choicescript game only to have an abrupt 'you lost' ending, so having this 'you lost and here's what happened to the shattered wreck of your mind and body, and all those you loved' is definitely refreshing.

Also, I found it fun to roleplay as SCP-049 in this game.

Comparing this to Heart of the House, another long, slow-burn horror game, I'd say that Mask of the Plague Doctor is more like The Haunting of Hill House or The Turn of the Screw (more philosophical with more implied/ambiguous horror) and that The Heart of the House is more like a Stephen King novel or Dracula (events that are clearly supernatural and terrifying). Fans of both games may also like Blood Money, which has you playing a more cutthroat character.

I received a review copy of this game.

This is a polished parser game entered in the French IF Competition. It comes with nice feelies and runs on retro devices as well as in-browser.

You wake up in a dungeon with four exits, wearing an empty scabbard and some armor. In each direction, there is some kind of threat: a trap, a monster, a guardian, etc. and you have to defeat them all in turn.

I thought this was fun, but also very hard. It includes some forms of interactions which I consider unfair, like having to die to progress. I was very happy the author provided a solution! (although one line of it provokes an error, but it's okay and doesn't affect the end result).

The author seems to enjoy IF a lot and I look forward to any future games.

I love this game. It combines two of my favorite genres: high fantasy (such as Heroes of Kendrickstone or Choice of Rebels) and contemplations on the nature of storytelling and truth (like Creatures Such as We or the opera Capriccio).

You play as one of four adventurers who years ago staged the end of the world, with yourselves cast as the saviors. You, an illusionist, were crucial to making the world believe that a demon horde was going to destroy them all.

Unfortunately for you, the omens etc. are repeating, and it's not you doing it this time.

While there is a lot of action in this game, there is just as much or more political intrigue and contemplation about your past and your roles.

Most choicescript games (mine included) lock you in to certain paths after a time. This game has a lot more freedom, letting you choose over and over whether to reveal the truth about your lies or not, whether to fight the demons or befriend them, whether to pursue a romance or not.

Some people on the forums disliked that, feeling that it was the game heckling them to change their mind. On the other hand, I've been frustrated by other games where you can't change your decision once you get new information.

The author does a great job of making choices about balancing your interests and not just pass/fail. The game sets you up to be loyal to certain people before you discover awful truths about them, and sets you up to hate people before discovering wonderful things about them.

It is possible to 'fail'; early on, I had three goals when a demon came through a portal, and I failed all three, and considered restarting the game. But I didn't, and ended up having a good time anyway.

I also appreciated the ending. It provided satisfying conclusions to all stories (at least my ending did), with the characters you were invested in all going off to do their own thing and asking your final advice. It gives you a way to choose for yourself how to wrap up their character arcs. It does the same thing for you, offering you many final positions.

So, I think this game is great. If you don't like frequent philosophical introspection, it might be better to go with one of the other 'high fantasy games' (like Kendrickstone, Affairs of the Court, Choice of Magics, or Choice of Rebels), but if you're interested by the idea of dealing with a web of lies of your own creation, this is a game for you.

It's also very long. I played every evening for 3-4 days before completing it.

This game from the CYS website is a difficult, branching game about Coronavirus. I found it surprisingly informative and I learned some things I didn't know before.

You play as a professor recruited by the government in the early months of Covid to help them understand the spread of the disease and to make recommendations about it. If you do well, you have the chance of moving up and influencing public policy.

Part of 'doing well' includes doing well on difficult math questions about things like exponential growth and infection transmission.

This kind of math test hasn't always done well in IF before, with games like #vanlife and A Final Grind inserting frustrating calculations in the middle of otherwise normal stories. But in this game, the choices are fair, and undo is available at any time. It uses math to teach instead of punish.

That being said, it's pretty hard, and the questions involve policy as well. In my best run, when I thought I was very successful, I only ended up with 14/50 points!

+Polish: The game is generally well-polished.
+Interactivity: I'm not usually interested in 'only one right path' games, but it's fair and gives you a chance to try again.
-Emotional impact: The topic and mechanical approach left me feeling distant from the story, making the whole thing a thought exercise (though a welcome on).
+Descriptiveness: Especially good at putting difficult concepts into understandable language. I swear a lot of people should try playing this to understand coronavirus better.
-Would I play again? It was interesting, but it more made me interested in looking up what it said to understand it better rather than replaying.

This is a game in the french comp which is very technically proficient and uses figurative and descriptive language (which left me running to Google Translate more often than not).

You are a bestselling author who ends up on an island looking for inspiration for his next book. You have a phone with little minigames on it that remind me of Lolo on the SNES (mostly involving pushing sliding blocks around).

The island is fairly small, and soon bizarre plot twists happen.

I believe there is some branching in this game. In my branch, I found a minigame where you use a radio to solve a maze and another minigame where you visually push blocks around (like the cellphone puzzle) to open a door, but Jack Welch said he found a Towers of Hanoi minigame, which I did not encounter.

Overall, the story was interesting and it was complex, but I'm not sure how well the disparate elements tied together. Overall, though, it was polished, descriptive, compelling, and had good interactivity.

This game is fairly short (170K words but with a lot of branching, so smaller playthroughs). In it, you play as a young academic who has invented time travel. You use it to go back in time to study, hunt, or film dinosaurs while dealing with a rich kid who has stolen your credit for inventing time travel.

Skills were fairly easy to figure out, although they didn't vary much throughout the game. There are a few romance options, although most are on your rivals' team. The writing in each scene was well-done, and I felt like I had a variety of goals I could accomplish.

The overall plot, though, just didn't make sense in my head, and didn't mesh with my experiences or expectations. The way that people react to the existence of time travel, the things your character fixates on, the way people react both in the past and when you return, it just doesn't make sense to me, personally. But the rest of the game is not bad.

I really went back and forth on this game. The overall storyline is compelling to me: you are a new chieftain of a nomadic tribe in the steppes which is rapidly being overcome by an evil warlord who uses dark magic. The gods tell you of a safe haven in the far north, the Valley of the North Wind.

Gameplay generally consists of choices that affect your whole tribe and choices that affect only yourself, sort of like Choice of Rebels or Stronghold: A Hero's Fate.

This game is often morally ambiguous. There are outlaws that you can ally with to destroy towns or fight against, with little immediate impact. Frequently you yourself will be alone or in a small group and come across strangers who you don't know if you can trust or not.

It makes for an interesting game. It's also a hard game. There are several options that are literally 'go left' vs 'go right' with absolutely no strategy possible, just dumb luck. And there are definitely wrong choices in other parts of the game. I used a lot of my money early on and soon found myself with 0. It locked off major portions of the game, including one agonizing scene in a large city where you are there for three days, but every single option requires money, so I had to just pick 'do nothing' for three days in a row.

Overall, I'd say the game is a mixed bag. I definitely enjoyed it, though, and would rate it above average. Since I went back and forth on the score, I'll use my standardized scale:

+Polish: The game is very polished.
+Interactivity: Despite the randomness, I felt the game was responsive to my choices.
+Descriptiveness: The writing was pretty great, I felt.
+Emotional impact: I was invested in the story.
+Would I play again?: Yes, there were several mysteries unsolved, like the nature of the 'Eight'.