Reviews by MathBrush

This is a pretty weird game. It's a horror game written for the Spanish division of Ectocomp, and it has tons of illustrations that are made by posing some 3d models whose quality is somewhere between roblox and Sims. It's intentionally garish and pretty funny.

In the game, one of your old friends who had been ghosting you invites you to a party hosted by the most popular girl in school, Steisy. Unfortunately, dastardly things are happening there.

I got a bad ending, but didn't feel like replaying, as I prefer text-only games (or at least games where the text is the primary source of interaction). There were several puzzles involving movement and collecting objects. There are some sexual references and a variety of profanity (I learned some new words!) Overall, a funny experiment.

This game was entered in the Spanish division of Ectocomp as a Grand Guignol game, meaning it took > 4 hours to complete.

It is an excellently written game, using amusing and complex writing to tell the tales of a haunted castle. It has the form of a CYOA book, with different 'page numbers' references (although they aren't actually numbered). Different branching paths let you experience different monsters.

As a non-native speaker, I found a lot of words I didn't know here, as the author uses very descriptive and colloquial language. I found two monsters in two different paths. One, (Spoiler - click to show)the succubus, included some sexual scenes that were detailed but not explicitly describe sexual acts.

Once you've completed a path, the game gives you links to interesting facts about the creatures you encountered and lets you 'warp back' to a convenient place to find other paths. Overall, this was very well written.

For the better part of a decade, Arthur DiBianca has been putting out limited parser games, where most commands are shut off and only a few work.

This game is kind of an opposite version of that. Instead of few commands, there are tons of commands, some of which you have to guess (for full completion) and most of which you don't know what they do.

This is a game that invites experimentation and discovery. Part of the fun is trying out a command and having it do something surprising but, in hindsight, reasonable.

There's not much storywise, but a lot of depth. Reaching the first winning situation isn't too hard, but getting all the points is very difficult (I admit I looked at the intfiction thread for most of the extra credit points).

Overall, I found the game enjoyable.

This is a pretty long game content-wise but pretty short choice-wise.

You are a new legal expert at a firm (I think?) and you're asked to look through evidence in an old case.

The case is described from beginning to end, primarily through PDF documentation that opens in another window. Your character can react to what they find, but opening and reading the documents is the main form of interaction, kind of like the more involved SCPs on the SCP wiki.

The game does touch an several important points in law like he said/she said and the balance between punishing the guilty and protecting the innocent.

I found the writing overall strong (with one caveat: I don't think the (Spoiler - click to show)child's writing is accurate. Children tend to use correct rules in the wrong places (like 'I goed to the store') instead of just having random misspellings (like 'I like stiks)). Characters were highly dramatized but were differentiated from each other.

The interaction style isn't what I usually go for in games, but it is what I like in SCPs and other collaborative static fiction sites. However, since I'm reviewing for an IF site, I'll stick with my usual rubric, for which I'd give this a 3.

This game is a polished Choicescript cat breeding simulator.

You have $10,000 and a small monthly income, and have the opportunity to buy several different varieties of pedigree cats while buying different supplies and living areas for the cats.

Simultaneously, you have to deal with a new disability, which costs money and takes up your time.

I had remembered hearing before that buying pedigree cats was unethical, and you should get them from pounds. But looking it up, it seems like the main reason people say that its bad is because they have puppy mills or cat mills where animals are stored in unhealthy conditions. Even 'backyard sellers' can be problematic, with one website offering these red flags:
(Spoiler - click to show)
-The seller has many types of purebreds or “designer” hybrid breeds being sold at less than six weeks old.
-Breeders who are reluctant to show potential customers the entire premises on which animals are being bred and kept.
-Breeders who don’t ask a lot of questions of potential buyers.
-No guarantees-responsible breeders make a commitment to take back the pet at anytime during the animal’s life, no matter the reason.

Anyway, the point of the long digression is that my character did none of these things; quite the opposite in fact! So I was happy to do some ethical cat breeding.

The biggest strength of the game is, absolutely, its cute cat pictures. I like cats, but I spend very little time looking up pet pics online and don't really feel interested in such pictures in general. But the cats in this game are very cute, especially since you follow their story.

There are also several romantic options. It was actually a bit too easy to romance people; I thought I was picking a 'be nice' option but my character ended up asking the person out.

Overall:
+Polish: The game was smooth and looked good.
+Descriptiveness: The game had plenty of detail.
+Interactivity: It was clear what different options I had and how it could affect my strategy, without being too easy
+Emotional impact: It was pretty cute
+Would I play again? Sure

This game is, as far as I can tell, written in a custom javascript engine, since you can see how its constructed in the JS and I don't think Dialog does that (but it feels like Inform or Dialog).

This is a pirate racing game with a multitude of different puzzles, some optional, including a maze, a crossword puzzle, traditional parser puzzles, directing people, shopping and economy, logic puzzles, etc.

The idea is that you are entering a racing competition with pirate ships and have 1 day to get and spend money and time to prepare your ship for the race. Then you enter a choice-based segment where you race, encountering various threats and making choices you don't know the consequences of ahead of time, like classic CYOA books.

I found the game overall enjoyable, but I felt like it was missing some key direction at various points. In the beginning, it wasn't clear what was desired or what was possible. Similarly, during the parser interlude in the race, it was unclear what form commands should take, and it was somewhat fussy overall.

That's my only real complaint with the game. Otherwise, it has excellent polish and a fun setting.

This is a choice game with some images and sound. In it, you play as a poor young thief whose father was the architect for Nero's palace. With the insight that gives to you, you decide to rob the place.

It seems that your choices matter quite a bit in this game. You can choose three different companions. My companion had a major effect on the story, so I can only imagine the other paths were very different. Also, the game referenced how I treated my companion and several other choices.

So there's a lot of replay value here, quality writing, good interactivity. There was some strong profanity and a few filthy-minded romans I met that put me off, so I don't plan on checking the other paths. I also learned some history from looking up things related to the game.

This game is meant to emulate an older teenager or young adult hopping on Discord and hanging out with friends by talking about a Japanese virtual idol group and making a wiki together.

The friendships in the game are uncomplicated and straightforwardly positive. All drama and tension come from the (Spoiler - click to show)abusive situation that the author finds themself in.

I feel like the representation of discord is accurate, and overall the writing was authentic.

The display was a bit puzzling; it's flat white text on a flat white background with no special styling or extra polish. The puzzling part is that one of the major focuses of the game is the protagonist's growth in the use of CSS, with the code listed in-game. Why not use CSS to make the game itself look fancier?

Finally, I feel a bit spoiled here, as one of my favorite games from last year (Lore Distance Relationship, which I voted for in several XYZZY awards) was also about fandoms and also treated the same real-life scenario (the authors are siblings). This game, while having emotional authenticity, doesn't have the same depth and polish of last year's game. But I am glad that both seem to be in a better situation.

This is a long Twine game that uses distorted sounds and AI-generated art to tell a story about a being in a world where astral projection is real. You discover in the first half of the game that (Spoiler - click to show)you are in a simulation of a universe that is roughly 9 simulations deep.

Much of the game is about gaining different versions of ascended consciousness, mixed with what I'd call 'stoner-dude' conversations with a lot of profanity and 'woah man!' type of interjections.

I liked the storyline, but didn't really care for our character, who had a lot of jerky options.

Overall, there was a high level of polish and descriptiveness and the interactivity worked for me. However, due to the dialog style I didn't really connect with the protagonist and don't think I'd replay.

This is a Twine game with multiple worlds that all seem to represent the same allegory. Each world contains 4 women, who travel with you, and the worlds have symbolic meaning.

Simultaneously, you're searching for a woman, with an inventory of items and a mental retreat called 'the void'. Your character's name is He, and her name is She.

The game is not too long, but it is quite dense allegorically. One gets the sense that everything has deep inner meaning. However, I had difficulty teasing it out. Given the names and the quotations, the game seems to have originally been in Italian, and while the translation is generally good, it can be difficult to get 'vague but powerful prose' to work right across language barriers, and in this game I wasn't drawn in emotionally by the prose.

Overall:
+Polish: It had a few cool systems. I was able to create a bug early on that I think exists in some of my own Twine games where clicking on the inventory when you're already in a sub-routine with its own 'return' link will trap you in a loop forever, but besides that it seemed generally smooth.
+Descriptiveness: While the characters are vague, the description of the strange smog and the computers was vivid.
-Interactivity: It was hard to grasp what to do or what mattered. I went to the void a lot, but did it matter? I bought three pills and took one, but did it change anything?
-Emotional impact: Like I said earlier, I wasn't really drawn into this game.
+Would I play again? There are a few key points I'd like to revisit and understand better.