Reviews by MathBrush

Making a conversation-based parser game in 4 hours is dicey, but can be rewarding. I made Halloween Dance in 4 hours, an ectocomp conversation game. It wasn't really very good, but I adapted its system into later games.

This game is even harder than Halloween Dance was, because I was doing an topics inventory-based conversation system. This game is more like a chatbot, where it picks up on words you type.

So it makes sense that, despite its remarkable achievements, the game still has some rough boundaries. It also doesn't have an ending; that, combined with unimplemented topics, makes it hard to tell if you've hit a roadblock because you can't guess what to type or if there's nothing left at all.

The story as far as I can find it is that something has been watching you and wants you to die and has mingled love and hate for you. I wasn't able to find any further distinguishing characteristics, besides it not being a ghost. The line-by-line writing was good; characterization-wise, it was rather one-noted.

So for me, as a game, this seems average. As a tech accomplishment, it seems above average. It's like how lifting a 20 lb weight isn't too impressive, but doing a one-handed backspring with a 20 lb weight is impressive. Writing a keyword-based conversation game in 4 hours is impressive.

This is a twine game with visual novel-style controls. The game focuses more on story than branching, with one very important choice at the end.

The story is written in a way that is grounded in reality (with a lot of description of physical sensations) but also very disconnected from reality as it's difficult to sift out what is actually happening, what the narrator thinks is happening, and what the underlying meaning is. As the story goes on, details make more and more sense.

Visually, the game uses fixed-width fonts and (I'm only now realizing this) varies between left-justification and right-justification, with just a hint of center.

The story is about a woman who's pulled in different directions, between a new and exciting life and a life of respectable office work (these characterizations may not be those intended by the author). In this story, this difference physically manifests in two sides of the body fighting for control.

I thought the imagery in the game was unique, a blend of old folklore and modern technology.

Parts of it were confusing, but I think that's the intention. Noticing the text justification thing made a reread a lot easier!

This was a pleasant, compact Adventuron game. It had a feature I'm not used to seeing, where right-clicking on yellow words brought up possible actions. I don't think it was all possible actions, because in both cases I tried it it only brought up 'Examine', but I thought it was cool!

The idea is that you've accidentally released the ghosts of your ancestors and you have to capture them back into the box you got them from.

There are two main ghosts to catch, each with a couple of puzzles. These puzzles were well-thought out; it looks like this Petite Mort game went for polishing a smaller-scope game rather than pushing out a bigger untested game. I think that was a smart choice! This setup would easily allow expansion if the author ever desired to do so, and I would look forward to that. Still, it's pretty good as-is.

I liked the way this game was structured a lot. It has two major branch points, and at the end it lets you revisit them right away.

The game is about 9 archetypal people who land on an island in search of an archaeological treasure. Each is referred to by their profession, with you being The Linguist (like the game Clue, I guess).

In classic creepy story fashion, a curse appears that kills one and lures in others unless they can truly trust each other.

So the rest of the game is about talking with your crewmates and deciding who to trust.

I got one choice wrong the first time but replay was easy. I found the storytelling easy to read and clear in plot structure, and the countdown-days format sidesteps one of the biggest problems in choice-based IF: setting expectations for play-time. Quite of a few of the most popular Twine games are split into days with recurring patterns.

Overall, I did struggle a bit with understanding what clues were important in the choices, but this is honestly quite good for a 4-hour game and bug-free as far as I saw.

I played the first GUTS game, which I remember liking, but I didn’t play the second.

I’m not sure what this third one is really all about. It does remind me of my favorite opera, the Hungarian opera Duke Bluebeard’s Castle, which is a surreal two-person one-act opera about 7 colored doors in Bluebeard’s castle. As each one is opened, some emblem of power is shown (strength, cruelty, wealth, lands, etc.) and more light comes to the castle, but each is also tinged with blood. The last two doors only bring darkness to the castle and the end is one of eternal suffering.

This is really four games in one. I started on the 3rd first and I don’t recommend that, as I thought the game was just being very silly (tons of links that do nothing but repeat the same text). It made way more sense starting from the first.

The fourth link doesn’t seem thematically or structurally related to the other three at all, or even really with the same vibes. It’s a cyclical story of inescapable enmity with amusing undertones.

The first three are all the kind of nightmare you have where something is hunting you but you never really see it, so you’re just nervous all the time and can’t explain why and your chest is pounding and everything feels helpless and hopeless.

While I can certainly identify with many emotions in this piece, the interactivity left me frustrated at times, wondering if I was getting the point or getting stuck. That fits thematically, yet I still felt frustration at times.

This is a short Choicescript game. I wondered if there were two endings, but I could only find one.

It's a family drama/mystery/surreal/slice of life game (?). You play as a dad whose child starts calling you the wrong name. They say it a lot, and the mom starts agreeing. Things begin to get a bit strange...

I liked this game. There is some ambiguity to it that let it apply to many things. It reminded me of relationships where people are hiding a dramatic secret, and of changing identities, and of the strange alienation that can come when you first become a parent and your entire life changes. Very fun.

This was a short pleasant story presented in Twine. It portrays, in reverse order, several Halloween celebrations of a teenage girl.

There's no overt message, but a lot of feeling and overall cohesion in atmosphere. A kind of mix of melancholy and unexpressible feelings, both good and bad, with an overall positive feeling (the way that I experienced it). Kind of game me the same feelings as *Little Women* or Disney's *Pinocchio*, like a coming of age story that is worthwhile but traumatic (I know those two evoke very different feelings but in me they both made me feel 'growing up is scary but solemnly good').

There aren't any choices in this. Choices often enhance my experience, which is why I lean to interactive fiction more than static fiction. As a story, though, this works, and the link-clicking does help with pacing.

This was a fun little game that involved writing a text that varies depending on your inputs. Given that the game was written in 4 hours or less, I doubt it uses full procedural generation, but there is at least some visible variation in text and it gives the feel of procedural generation in a good way.

You play as Edgar Allan Poe (or equivalent) and you're trying to compose what is essentially *The Raven*. You get distracted, so you you have to battle to be either gloomy or happy. Whatever you pick, it affects your writing.

I love the idea, although there's not enough time to really expand on it, so we only get a couple of stanzas. I had difficulty making and executing plans, as I couldn't figure out how to maximize gloominess or cheerfulness. I did get 2 endings, and had a good time.

This game was a wild ride. I don't recognize the engine used at all; you can cycle through choices by clicking, but then scrolling down counts as a choice. It is visually dramatic and fun, although occasionally I scrolled too far and missed a choice.

The setting is dramatic and the narrator voice fits it. You play in a world where the long peace between animals and man has fallen, and every living creature is out to destroy humanity. You have to escape dangerous krakens, rampaging birds, and murderous apes.

The game is zany and wild, but somehow still coherent, and it ends just before the concept could become tedious. Overall, very well done, and stunning that this was achieved in 4 hours.

This was a mournful, reflective, and gross game by KADW. And not gross in a bad way, gross in a cleansing way, like popping a zit or rinsing a filter until it’s clean.

You play as a wanderer in space who feels listless, uncaring of the outside world and desiring to be completely alone and shut the rest of the world out.

The prose is beautiful. One part made me think ‘I bet the author researched this and thought it was cool’; at least I thought it was cool (talking about approaching the sun):

"No. No one would see anything. At the distance where objects start to burn from approaching a star, they are already close enough to be indistinguishable to faraway observers."

The gross parts happen later, but it’s not so much a bad thing as a transformation, and it ties into the overall themes. There are two endings.

This game reminded me a bit of a fiction story about cordiceps fungi infecting humans, which I heard on the Creepy podcast as the story “madness, mutilation, death”. Very intriguing stuff!