Reviews by MathBrush

I think I can summarize this game for me by saying that it very effectively told a story that I didn’t like.

It is a long twine game about a sniper fighting in Afghanistan, told in non-linear style through different points in his life. It uses a lot of interesting styling, has music, and uses images generated by OpenAI, according to the end credits. The images look almost like hallucinations, fitting for this grim and unpleasant story.

As the author has stated, this story includes scenes of torture and violence. The author writing this has talent, and has used that talent to effectively show the horror of torture. This is not something I enjoyed or wanted.

With multiple wars going on and massive disinformation campaigns causing me trouble in real life it was interesting to spend some time thinking about the game. It does show (and this is something I believe) that most people at the ‘bottom’ on both sides aren’t there out of hatred or desire to kill but because their government or other leaders have pushed them into it. It’s a terrible job where the better you are at it the more lives you ruin.

On the other hand, it depicts the Afghanistan enemies as being particularly despicable in terms of torture and murder. I’ve always thought that in the past, having grown up during the 20 yr-long war in Afghanistan, so I looked up ‘torture in Afghanistan’. The first thing that came up was the long-term torture and death of two Afghani citizens carried out by the US. The second was the torture of a British officer by the Taliban.

I don’t know, this isn’t the kind of stuff I want to read about or really even think about. I would like to help end war, for sure, and I think there are ways I can do that privately and publicly. But I don’t think even people who were captured and tortured want other people to learn to vicariously suffer for them. And I don’t need more convincing that war atrocities are a very bad thing.

So, the writing on the story was very effective, the use of media and nonlinear narrative was expert, and the math calculations were interesting. But I did not enjoy the game and certainly don’t want to play it again.

This is a longish Ink game where you are Osiris, recently deceased pharaoh and newly resurrected God.

Most of the game consists of travelling to different locations and interrogating different Gods. There is some freedom (in which Gods to visit first) and some saving of state (some topics only come up after you talk to others elsewhere).

There was one math puzzle which I both overthought (by getting tripped up by the mention of Base 12 beforehand, which turned out not to be important) and underthought (by just not getting it).

The characters were very diverse and interesting. Some gods were nice; Geb was a big loser who smoked weed and acted like a peeping tom.

I classified murder mysteries in an earlier post. This one was the kind (as far as I could tell) where you complete puzzles and the mystery solves itself in the process.

Overall, the setting and characters were the biggest strength to me. I didn’t derive enjoyment from the sex scenes. I did like the reimagination of the Egyptian mythological world, and thought the styling looked good.

This parser game had a really strong storyline and distinct worldbuilding, with some pretty fleshed out characters and interesting UI.

You are a beat witch; you see, some adolescent girls wake up one day with the power to be hurt by music and to use music (and other things?) to affect others.

The entire city has been blasted by an EMP and thousands are dead, so everyone’s blaming you, and you have to set things straight.

Music is frequently mentioned in the game, and is included in the game itself through vorple. Color is also used, and there is frequently either timed text or text that scrolls when you hit a button (I think it’s mostly the latter).

The story is at times gruesome and at times cruel, with some kindness mixed in. There is a lot of control, whether through magic or force, and a lot of deception. The villain is a definite villain, and some of the lines are darkly effective, although some are a bit weird (I swear at one point they said (Spoiler - click to show)I’m gonna squeeze you like a fart.)

The gameplay seems entirely linear; at times there are choices you can make which are remembered and mentioned later on in the game, but mostly it seems like the game is designed for you to find the trigger for the next cutscene. Its generally smooth and I rarely had difficulty finding what to do.

So, overall I’d say this is pretty high quality. Something for me seemed slightly missing from the story; maybe more breathers from the intensity of the action? Something to add more contrast to make the dramatic moments pop out more. But the styling is excellent and the writing is very descriptive.

This is a game by Andrew Schultz, an author who excels at wordplay-based games.

But, instead of a parser game, it’s twine!

The conceit of this one is taking pairs of words in pairs (so 4 words total) so that if you switch the first letters or (or chunk of letters) of the first pair, you get the second pair. Just like the name: ‘Trail Stash’, if you switch the TR and ST, becomes 'Stale Trash".

I wondered how effective Twine could be in this format. After all, this is a similar concept to the parser games; would it be less effective here?

But as I played, I thought, ‘hmm, this is great!’. One of the difficulties I often have with the parser games by Andrew Schultz is that it is often uncertain how to interact when you have an item in a location; do you type the solution of the wordplay puzzle, or use a verb with the object?

Twine solves this problem by limiting possible interactions.

This doesn’t make things easy, though! I had difficulty near the end game where just nothing seemed to work. Then I realized that I had missed an important solution early on and missed out on three locations!

So overall, this worked well. The only caveats I had are below:

My one caveat is that there was no apparent connection between some of the items and the solutions. For instance, you have to detect losers, but the object is . Although, now that I think of it, I guess ’ has multiple meanings. So maybe it’s just my lack of imagination.

I’ve liked Xavid’s parser games before, so this twine game looked interesting.

It reminded me of an extended version of Astrid Dalmady’s game You Are at a Crossroads, which is the first Twine game I really liked and the game that got me into choice-based games originally. Both of these games involving ritualistic revisiting of locations, unlocking more content by having net items in an inventory.

I like Astrid Dalmady’s game, but it’s pretty small. So this game is nice way to get that same kind of feel, although this game has quite a bit of its own structure and story that is unique to it.

You are packing up, ready to move out of a home, but every in your house are pictures of a man who is someone close to you, a boyfriend or spouse or lover. You have worries and fears and concerns, and you begin to explore those in a symbolic way.

Several helpful people guide you as you go along, exploring memories of the past in a symbolic format. At first there is much you can’t do, which can get frustrating, but eventually your new capabilities give you more strengths.

The feel is almost a parser/choice hybrid, with its extensive set of locations and inventory items. But it manages to tread the thin line between too many options and too few; I occasionally found myself trying to lawnmower all options, but in each case I realized that it would be easier to just step back and think.

So overall, a strong game. The psychology of it isn’t unusually insightful, but the symbolism employed was enjoyable and interesting to me and the descriptions were evocative.

This game was loosely based on 'The Blessings' by Dar Williams.

This game was good to read. I’ve known Bez for several years, and while I have not been able to be as helpful as some of his other friends, I’ve been able to watch his journey over time and follow along.

This is an interactive museum of Bez’s experiences through several different locations, with one exhibit per living location. There are photos, transcribed documents, and music from several indie musicians, which sounds good.

The museum is a well-written and fascinating look into the life of one individual. It is frank and open about challenges like debilitating illnesses (the pseudo-dementia, for instance), suicidal thoughts and impulses, homelessness, unsupportive staff and family, and so on. The fascinating part is how relatable it is; this is a very specific life with considerations that aren’t universally applicable, and yet for me the writing was relatable and approachable, and I could connect with it and consider similar challenges in my own life.

It’s not all challenges though. There are many successes and realizations and small happinesses mixed together with the hard times.

Bez has written solid games before with interesting mechanics, as well as interactive essays that are more limited in scope and linear. This game combines a lot of the best of both, with a non-fiction emphasis but with more ways to interact. There’s no need to make autobiographical fiction ‘fun’, since it’s just a story of life, but I think that the features like graphics, music, and navigation improve the reader experience and increase the connection between writer and reader.

This game features a magical protagonist that goes away to camp for magic kids.

At first I thought the game had read my mind; I named my protagonist Eduardo, and I was shocked to see Eduardo raised in a Spanish family! But then I realized it was just part of the story, especially when I saw that Eduardo was chosen to be a girl (I had imagined a boy), although gender is explicitly stated to be somewhat flexible".

The game treats many social issues, with a heavy emphasis on climate change and corporations destroying the wilderness, which gave me fond flashbacks to movies like Ferngully and Ernest Goes to Camp from my youth. Many of the NPCs were black, indigenous and/or hispanic, with a wide variety of hair types, skin tones and backgrounds. Mention was made of differing family types, including having two moms or being orphaned. And there was a discussion on how magic had been stigmatized in women more than in men.

So it seemed like social issues were a heavy topic in the game, not as a side tangent but as the central focus.

There’s a lot of promising features in the game but it is incomplete. Only the first chapter or so are finished, and there are some typos here and there, not enough to be distracting but enough to be noticeable. So once things are fleshed out I could see it being pretty solid.

There’s a lot where it’s hard for me to say if it worked or not. The personalities of the NPCs, the voice in the player’s head. A lot of it depends on where this ends up going. So I think my rating might end up a little in the middle of the range, getting bumped up or down if a continuation is made in the future. But overall there’s a lot of promise here, both in the writing and the art.

Last year’s game ‘Who Shot Gum E Bear?’ by the same author had a deeply amusing concept (hardboiled noir detective where everyone is candy) coupled with some solid writing but sketchy implementation.

This year’s game ups the notch a bit on the implementation but uses a more secluded setting.

You are called to an abandoned factory which is scheduled for demolition and tasked with finding out what happened to a missing husband. You get locked in, and have to use your wits to solve the case and to get out.

I’m going to quote my classification of (many but not all) interactive fiction mystery games:

1-Have a standard puzzle game that happens to be about murder mystery, with solving the puzzles leading to solving the mystery. This is like Ballyhoo.
2-Modelling evidence and clues in-game, which have to be combined to form a solution. This is how Erstwhile works, and most of my mysteries.
3-Collecting evidence through puzzles and conversation and then having a quiz at the end (where you have to accuse the right person). This is how Toby’s Nose works.
4-Collecting physical evidence and showing it to someone, being able to make an arrest when you have enough evidence.

This is the first type. Solving puzzles involves collecting evidence as well as escaping and once all puzzles are solved the game is over. Accusations, motive, etc. are all handled by the PC rather than the player, and I think that works well here.

The game has some suggestive/racy elements, enough that I wouldn’t want my middle-school age son to play it but mild enough that if he did I wouldn’t be especially upset, just have to explain the use of certain items.

The implementation is both really neat and kind of bad. The neat stuff is how the puzzles go beyond ‘one item one use’ in clever ways. The bad is that most of the standard responses aren’t changed. It might help for next time to use RESPONSES ALL while programming to get a list of responses and then changing a lot of them. But it’s not necessary; if the goal is just to have a snack-size fun game, that’s already being achieved here. The responses would only be if the author specifically wanted a more polished game. I think I mostly would want that because the writings so good everywhere else that seeing it in the standard responses would make the game even more fun.

This is a game translated from Russian that has quite a bit of twists and turns in it. Most are discovered early on.

I’ll say that a game with a sleeping woman and ‘16+’ and referring to ‘your mistress’ turned out to be something very different than I was expecting. It turns out to be a grim tale about the effects of war but with a sweet perspective.

More on the setting:
(Spoiler - click to show)The gameplay style is Twine with inventory management and location state tracking. So you can move objects from room to room, and your constant inventory of things like hands and feet change in their function over time.

The puzzles are fairly tricky but logical. One thing I might have appreciated was automatically ‘looking’ after travelling to each new location, since what’s in each location often changes due to your actions. I also had a bit of trouble some times mentally picturing how all the different locations related to each other.

I think this is around a 1-2 hour game, although I used the walkthrough for part of it. I like the concept, and appreciated the dedication at the end. I think there are a lot of strong story elements here and puzzles. There are also some neat images, although playing online on the ifcomp website I didn’t see some of the images, and they were broken. You can still click on them to advance though.

Part of the game is designed to show the horrors of war and for me it was very effective, the way the protagonist just didn’t understand really helped drive home for me how scary it must all be.

I have to preface this review by saying that I have always that that Francis Bacon, the renaissance guy, was the same as Francis Bacon, the scary pope painting guy. I thought it was just some kind of über-Protestant thing. This game really cleared that up!

I was excited while playing this game, although perhaps not for a reason the author would have foreseen. I’ve been making an area in my own game which is a puzzleless museum placed adjacent to conversation heavy areas, and I was wondering how many conversation topics would be appropriate, and how large of a museum would make sense, and whether players should be able to lawnmower all topics or have to pick and choose.

So when I saw this puzzleless museum conversation game, I was very intrigued to poke around at the mechanics and see my overall impression. So while the game seems far more focused on story than mechanics, this review will focus a bit more on the latter.

The setup is that you are in a museum with three main rooms, each with a triptych of paintings. The paintings are real paintings by Francis Bacon; I was able to look them all up and see what they looked like in real life.

Examining the paintings and walking around the museum gives you the opportunity to converse with various figures, each of which has their own opinion on Francis Bacon. The NPCs are also adaptable, and you can change their opinion of you and willingness to talk by various actions, in a way I haven’t seen much of since games like Galatea and Blue Lacuna (although on a smaller scale here).

Topics are listed, and as you talk they change, although the change isn’t notified. You can ask about some things not on the list (for instance, I asked an early character about Christ, since the topic of the painting was Golgotha).

There are also several achievements, allowing for some puzzle elements. Some of them are straightforward, while others might be difficult to think about. Several achievements involved exhausting conversation trees, which I honestly did not want to do; not because I didn’t want to see more text, but by picking only the topics I wanted, I felt I had agency, but exhausting the tree didn’t feel ‘agent-y’. ‘Agentic’?

This game has some very heavy themes: sexual abuse and rape, violent assaults, traumatic death, obsession, religion, broken relationships, and so on. But all of it is examined in a thoughtful way, from a distance. None of these things are glorified; instead, different observers comment on it, some finding it deeply repugnant, others finding beauty in pain.

There is a great deal of strong profanity, and some of the language around Christ made me feel uncomfortable (as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints), but I understand the author’s choices here and the effect they were going for. So while those parts weren’t for me, much of the game was, and I plan on rating this very highly. Beyond just appreciating the game’s messages, I also learned and grew as an author by reading this work, which is the highest compliment I am capable of giving.