Ratings and Reviews by MathBrush

This is a medium-length Twine game with one overarching, fairly difficult puzzle.

You are a spirit, and have been imprisoned in a mage's tower. Your goal is to possess one of two people and escape. But the tower you're in is protected in several ways, and your quest will be difficult.

The writer of this game is a freelance author, and I found the game as a story fairly satisfying. The characters were interesting and there were several subplots.

Mechanically, it's a little bit rougher. There are usually two choices at a time, and it's usually 'guess the right action', although thankfully you can usually back out of a wrong course the first time. There are clues to the right actions, so it's better in that regards than some of the other games, but I believe it could have been improved by going beyond binary choices more often.

The writing was interesting enough for me to look up his website and see some other work. He's done a lot of advertising copy, and it reads really well. Happy to see more work from this author.

+Polish: The game is smooth and bug free
+Descriptiveness: Lovely writing, great characters.
-Interactivity: The puzzle structure didn't appeal to me as much as it could.
+Emotional impact: I was shocked when one of the guards (Spoiler - click to show)ripped up my permission slip.
-Would I play again? The story was satisfying on its first run, but I wasn't invested enough to go through and try another round.

My only real experience with the Tarot deck is from the Deck of Many Things in AD&D and also Stardust Crusaders, so games featuring Tarot symbology significantly always mystify me somewhat.

In this game, you play as a deck of Tarot cards brought to life. You help design your own life story, then make several predictions for others.

There’s a lot of metafiction here about how we construct our own narratives. It reminds me of the 2015 game A Figure Met in a Shaded Wood as well as SCP-3939, both of which make the shape of the story an integral part of the narrative.

The graphics here look good. The writing is interesting. I felt it hard to either strategize with choices or roleplay as a character, which are my usual two ways of interacting with a game. This game definitely shows a lot of craft, though, and I respect the one who wrote it!

+Polish: It looks and plays great.
+Descriptiveness: The writing is vivid.
-Emotional impact: I wasn't invested in the character, perhaps due to my unfamiliarity with the tarot
+Interactivity: Despite my struggles, the self-referential nature of the game validated my actions.
-Would I play again? Not at this time.

I taught a summer camp in Twine a few months ago. We spent about a week going over adding multimedia, setting variables, beta testing, etc. They liked it and kept working on games even after the camp, some which were pretty cool and impressive.

This game reminds me of that, the game of someone who has recently learned twine and puts in 10-20 hours of work making a fairly complex game. It has a soundtrack, custom styling, and non-linear puzzles.

It reaches for a few things without quite making it. I vividly remember when I entered my first IFComp game, one of the most famous people in IF made a comment about my game:

"I found *Ether* least effective when it explicitly went for pathos in the writing, because it was asking me to empathize[...]and it hadn’t put in the time to build up that empathy."

I was hurt by that at the time, but it's true, and it's true about this game, too. The violence and the blood in the snow aren't as frightening because there wasn't enough buildup. The game is asking us to be afraid or to be disturbed by the death of others, but we know nothing about them.

It wouldn't take a lot to fix that. The difference between an okay story and an awesome story is usually just a few tweaks. In my experience, the best thing to do is just try something, see how people react, and change it if it doesn't work, then repeat. That's why I usually have 10+ beta testers, it lets me work out all the questionable parts of a story before I release it. In this case, if I had to suggest anything specific, I'd give our character some more personality: maybe this is their first cross-country road trip as an adult and they're a little lost and terrified of how dark it is. Maybe they run out of the room at the first sight of blood. If you say something is scary, the reader isn't usually scared. If you say the character is scared, though, then a lot of times the reader will empathize with them.

The puzzle parts of this game weren't too bad. There are a lot of unfair deaths you can't undo, but the game is short enough that you can try over and over again. I still would have liked a few more hints at what works and what doesn't, and maybe expand the story and game a little longer. Overall, I definitely think the author should keep writing; I'll keep an eye out for any future games.

+Polish: I didn't notice any bugs, and the multimedia aspects worked well.
-Descriptiveness: Like I mentioned above, I think the story could use some work.
-Emotional impact: Same as above.
+Interactivity: The puzzle structure wasn't too bad.
-Would I play again? Not at this time, but I would play another game by this author!

I was surprised to see this game has no relation to the classic Captain Verdeterre's Plunder, but it's a good name style so it makes sense it would come up more than once.

This is a short Twine game with one big idea and it does it well. You are a pirate captain who has been forced to retire to his library. You have only one plan left: (Spoiler - click to show)to reconstruct a pirate crew and ship from the texts of classic books.

It's a nice concept and the books involved are fun to learn about or to remember. The game is over very quickly, so it's worth playing through while the comp is running just to enjoy some of the fun. This review is brief because there's not much to say that doesn't spoil it.

+Polish: The game looks great and plays well.
+Descriptiveness: Yes; some from the source texts and some from the author.
+Interactivity: It's short but has several interesting options.
-Emotional impact: It was interesting but I didn't really feel invested.
-Would I play again? It's a good game, but I think I've seen enough of it.

I tested this game.

Pseudavid has really turned out to be a Twine master in the last few comps, placing in the top 10 each time and making technically proficient games.

This game is more understated than the other games, but still complex and thoughtful. You, a night guard at a soon-to-be-abandoned housing complex, gets into a fast and stormy relationship with a remarkable woman.

The story takes place over three days simultaneously, with your choices in each day affecting the others (so a choice in the future can be a flashback with affects the choice in the past).

The effects in this game aren't as obvious as in Pseudavid's other games, but the ending I got was very nice. If this game has faults, they lie in it being somewhat opaque or dense, leaving the player to sort through several narrative threads at the same time. But taking that away would fundamentally change the nature of the game, so I'm not sure it's a bad thing.

+Polish: This is what Pseudavid is known for. At least to me.
+Descriptiveness: The characters were so vivid it hurt a little.
-Interactivity: It was hard to figure out what's going on at times. I was a tester, so I had a leg up, but still it was a bit rough for me. Like I said, I wouldn't recommend changing that.
+Emotional impact: I felt very invested in the character I was playing as.
+Would I play again? I'd like to explore other paths.

This game had a ton of buzz on Twitter and received a lot of early reviews, so I was interested in playing it.

It turns out to be really good. Raban seems to have a firm grasp of storywriting and interactivity. This is a perfectly well-crafted game, limited only by its relatively small size. I imagine, though, that many judges will be happy to find a quick and enjoyable game with excellent handicraft.

In this game, you are texting with your mother. You come from a family of immigrants, and your mother decides to try and teach you Tagalog over the phone. She quizzes you on your life and choices while trying to introduce you to various grammatical rules which, of course, you could never absorb in a single sitting, but which she seems determined to impart.

This game uses slow text to good effect, which is really rare. I think the keys are having a very short game with well-defined parameters. Here, we know we're in a text message conversation which can't last too long, and the game is advertised as short. The delays are realistic and not too long.

I think the best part of the game is showing the tension between a mother (especially a southeast asian mother), her desires for her American-raised children and the children's own personality and feelings. I think this is great.

+Polish: Very polished.
+Descriptive: The characters really came alive.
+Interactivity: I felt like my choices really mattered.
+Emotional impact: Felt some tension. Worried I'd say the wrong things.
+Would I play again? Sure!

This is a game about horrible people. It reminds me of a lot of depressing literature, like Six Characters in Search of an Author or Ethan Frome or other books about a collection of bad people gone wrong.

This game is about a family of four, all of which you take turn controlling, and their house and its environs, a map that stays static throughout the game. Each of you has your vices: the father likes lusty young boys, the mother as well; the son spends time with violent anarchists, while the daughter is a haunted by a ghost from the past.

I like hope in my reading, and that’s one reason why Verdi was never my favorite composer. He once said that he wrote operas to convince others of the impossibility of human happiness.

Narratively, this game is strong. The storylines weave together well and the writing is coherent and vivid. Visually, I found the game pretty hard to look at, like tomato soup with basil floating in it.

The game reminds me quite a bit of Pseudavid’s popular The Master of the Land.

In any case, this is an impressive piece of work and good writing. It was interesting to meet Marcel Proust, even if it was in rather indecent circumstances.

+Polish: Very smooth.
+Descriptiveness: The writing was very clear and descriptive.
+Interactivity: I felt like my choices had strong consequences.
+Emotional impact: It was good at making me feel bad, I suppose.
-Would I play again? Not my cup of tea.

This game is a classic RPG scenario. You arrive in a town cursed by darkness, get a quest at a tavern, level up by killing some mobs and getting gear, then take on the big bad.

There have been a lot of attempts at putting quality RPGs in IFComp (and there are several good ones this year, too). This one’s pretty good: lots of non-combat exploration and puzzles, some fun text effects and an interesting backstory.

On the other hand, it could use some spellchecking. One thing you can do in Twine is go to the menu where you can ‘publish to file’ and right above that is ‘view proofing copy’. That gives you an easy-to-read version you can put into grammarly to correct most errors.

Overall, this was pretty fun, but I feel like it could have used something to set it apart from other RPGs more.

-Polish: Could use some fixes to spelling and grammar
+Descriptiveness: The jokes are pretty good in this game.
+Interactivity: It's not groundbreaking, but it doesn't have to be for me to have a good time.
-Emotional Impact: I didn't feel very invested in the storyline.
+Would I play again? I might seek it out later on.

I beta tested this game several times.

First Inform games tend to have a lot of issues from authors not realizing Inform's quirks (like forgetting to describe things or making them portable). Lance Campbell manages to avoid those problems here and make a smooth and interesting parser game.

You play as the village idiot who's out of a job. You head back to the farm you live at and try to find useful things to do around the farm, including dealing with the mutated squirrels you accidentally unleashed earlier.

The writing is pleasant and funny, with what I think of as 'dad humor'. The puzzles are well-constructed, with some animal-based conversation puzzles and some construction problems. While testing, I had some difficulty at times knowing what to do, but the game has numerous hints and a walkthrough that makes it pretty accessible. I had fun testing this.

+Polish: The game is pretty smooth.
+Descriptiveness: It has a definite writing voice.
+Interactivity: The animal puzzles are pretty fun.
+Emotional impact: The game is funny.
-Would I play again? After extensive testing, I think I'm done with this. But if I revisit this in future years I'll change this point!

This is one of two games co-authored by Xavid, both making use of the same kind of cool map code Xavid used in Future Threads a few years back.

This game is definitely my sort of thing. I love games with two worlds that are mirrors of each other, and this game has four.

In this game, you’re sent back in time to stop an apocalypse from being cause by a cult. For some reason the cultists seem completely unfazed by your presence, and you can’t understand their spoken language but can understand their written language. But this is a fairly mild concern.

There is a compact map that persists through four different time periods you can warp through. At first, you are heavily constrained, but over time you unlock quite a bit more.

Some of the puzzles were real headscratchers, but other reviews and the in-game hint system got me through. One of the main puzzles and one of the optional ending puzzles rely on urban legends about animals that may not actually work in real life.

Overall, I definitely enjoyed the game. Thanks for making it!

+Polish: Very smooth.
+Descriptiveness: There was a lot of creativity with the different rooms.
+Interactivity: Cool time travel makes up for weird puzzles.
-Emotional impact: It was fun, but I didn't really get 'in character'
+Would I play again? Definitely!