Reviews by MathBrush

This is a KPop simulation game. You have several stats (such as physical appearance, singing ability, dancing) and different challenges you can meet with your stats.

The game is pretty rough, and needs a lot more testing. The overall storyline seems interesting (reality show + mystery subplot). But this is a good reminder that authors should run through their games right before submitting to check if its completable!

-Polish: Too buggy, several typos
+Descriptiveness: The author has interesting descriptions
-Interactivity: Too many options are 'Do the right thing' vs 'Do the wrong thing'.
-Emotional impact: The choppy writing style and bugs made it hard to enjoy.
-Would I play again? Not until it gets some bug fixes.

If you're interested in seeing more of it, you can get past the first place the game becomes impassable by opening the file in Twinery and going to the passage Song A and deleting the first time it says to display untitled passage 12.

I beta tested this game.

This is a really technically impressive game that uses Vorple for a cool layout, a single graphic and some fun music.

It’s a cyberpunk world where people jack into cyberspace (presenting Wild West/Fantasy and Ancient Japanese settings in this game). You’re asked to infiltrate a base, but chaos ensues.

The game is exceptionally well-polished, with very few bugs. It’s also fairly linear. Most conversations end up with you saying all available options, and most settings are constrained, with the most freedom being late in the game.

This makes the puzzles simpler, aided by the nice keywords, but comes at the expense of freedom. I’ve realized as I study the comp that players value both polish and freedom, so I’m really interested in seeing where this places!

+Polish: Looks great
+Descriptiveness: I liked quite a bit of the worldbuilding
+Interactivity: I found the puzzles enjoyable
-Emotional impact: I found myself at an emotional distance from this game, and don't know why.
+Would I play it again? I've played this game twice, and enjoyed it both times.

Joey Acrimonious has been posting great reviews of other games so I was interested in seeing how this one plays out.

This is an enormously ambitious and complicated game. I thought it would be a relatively mild real-world game, but it includes a ton of worldbuilding and even two different protagonists!

Your goal is to shave some chest hair before a date. There are many things to try, almost all of them ending badly.

Your house is absolutely full of stuff. Stuff in the bathroom, stuff in the bedroom, stuff in the closet, stuff in drawers.

So all of this has the hallmarks of a first (or early) game by a talented author: it models an apartment, has lots of extra things, and has a lot of implementation into tricky things while neglecting a few of the smaller things.

What are the smaller things? Well, the game mentions that you can see the exits by LOOKing, but some rooms have no exits listed at all (like the bathroom as Marigold). Room names are all lowercase, which is a common mistake in Inform (you have to capitalize them the first time they appear in the code, wherever that is). When you use the special device, it doesn't indicate a change in location (by LOOKing), which may be intentional but is kind of confusing.

The game indicates several beta testers, and it is more polished than many games in the comp, but I think that having some more people beta test next year that have comp experience could help, and of course the feedback from this year will be very helpful. This game is well-written, funny, complex, and generally polished; but there are some things that I think would be better left off the next game, especially the large groups of unnecessary but well-implemented items. I definitely think there should be a next game, as I would expect this author to be capable of coming up with several interesting stories and some very fun game mechanics, if this game is any indication.

-Polish: The game could use some touchup for sure.
+Descriptiveness: It can be confusing at times, but this game is definitely descriptive.
-Interactivity: I often felt at a loss what to do, and beat my head on the wall a lot as I got lost moving around (probably because the device mechanic didn't make sense to me early on).
+Emotional impact: I definitely experience a lot of interesting feelings while playing this game.
-Would I play again? Not until there were an update.

This is a weird game but I'm into it. You play as a doppelganger in a bizarre magical world powered by technology and fantasy. I suspect there are deeper secrets to the game, but I enjoyed my ending (1/4, Humanologist).

Gameplay consists of getting several cases in a row. In each case, you can choose what to talk to your client about, then you become them, then you have several choices on how to carry out your tasks. You get paid different amounts of money depending on your performance. You can then invest that in various things.

I liked this quite a bit, although it's different from most games I like. Every year, I come up with theories on what does well in the comp and what doesn't, and this year my theory is that choice games that give you a lot of freedom of action (like a world model you can move in or completely different paths of characterization with tradeoffs like choice of games) do better than those without. On the other hand, longer games tend to do better, and while this is long, it's not huge like some of the games in the comp. So I predict this will do well, probably in the teens. But my predictions are always really wrong each year, so who knows?

+Polish: The game worked smoothly.
+Descriptiveness: I liked the worldbuilding.
+Interactivity: I felt like I could choose my characterization.
+Emotional impact: I really immersed myself in the character.
+Would I play again? I plan on it!

So this is an interesting game. Basically, it’s a time travel plot involving two of the great physicists in history.

The implementation generally worked well, although it seemed to kind of push me around a lot, especially when entering or leaving the cottage, almost like no direction I went mattered, the game would send me where it wanted.

The writing goes back and forth between very plain and more elaborate. The story is full of grand ideas, but I think it could have used a little more spacing between big reveals.

Overall, though, it was a quick and simple parser game with an interesting concept. At first, I was skeptical that things would have played out the way suggested in the game, but the more I think about it, the more I realize that we don’t really know how great discoveries and scientific innovation are pushed forward, and it’s difficult to understand why there has been such an acceleration in technical innovation in the last few hundred years.

+Polish: I didn't find any real bugs.
-Descriptivenss: The game was plain in some parts, especially the library.
+Interactivity: While I felt like I was being pushed around, it ended up working out smoothly.
-Emotional impact: I don't think the big reveals 'landed' for me.
+Would I play again? Maybe; it's interesting to see the past tense and third person, and to consider the way it pushes you forward.

Like many have said, this is quite similar to The Turnip. It's by the same author, they're both the same length, have the same styling, have the same setup. They also feature large and puzzling agricultural specimens and kindness to animals.

Is there some kind of meta puzzle here? I don't think so, judging by opening up the code and peeking at a few of the boxes. In any case, this is fun writing, and slightly more interactive than the other piece. It reminds me of Sub-Q Magazine's pieces before they stopped printing, albeit a little shorter. I'm glad to have it in the comp; it's not the kind of thing that I'd seek out normally, but it's so short and well-done that I happy to see it.

+Polish: Very polished.
+Descriptiveness: I think the writing is very well-done here.
+Interactivity: There's not much, but it's interesting and a little puzzle.
+Emotional impact: I liked it.
-Would I play it again? I think once is enough.

I beta tested this game.

What can I say? I love this game. DiBianca is well known for making themed games with constrained commands and one type of puzzle.

This is the first one not to include movement (at least since Grandma Bethlinda’s Variety Box), and instead we have a series of dozens of word puzzles.

This is a big game, and, as many many reviewers have found, it sucks up hours of your life if you’re into wordplay puzzles. I spent easily more than 4 hours as well as thinking about the puzzles quite a bit, and this is with emailing the author for hints.

I haven’t played all the way through the newest version (just the first few puzzles again, and I already see some improvements). I’d love to wait a few years to forget most of this and do it over again, maybe with my son when he’s older.

There is an overall story that, for me, became more coherent as the game went on, but it’s still very abstract. But I definitely think this game ranks up there with Counterfeit Monkey, Ad Verbum and the Andrew Schultz canon as one of the great wordplay games out there.

+++++Polish, Descriptiveness, Interactivity, Emotional Impact, Would I play again? This is exactly the kind of think I like. Love it!

Custom parser games only available as windows executables are always a mixed bag, but this is one is better than most.

You play as Prince Charming (or Cinderella) and you have to get yourself and Rumpelstiltskin back to a wedding. Along the way, you have to complete several fairy tales such as Goldilocks and the Three Bears and Jack and the Beanstalk.

The map is expansive, with a lot of diagonal directions and several little colleges.

The parser is definitely better than most custom-made parsers but has a lot of work it still needs. Conversation especially is very picky; I had to use the walkthrough a lot. I don’t think TALK TO or SAY _________ TO ________ or similar constructions work, and you have to use quotations in a way I’m not used to. There is a provided manual, though it is very long.

The puzzles are logical, and the included art looks nice, although it started bouncing up as soon as it came down later.

Rumpelstilstkin got a little annoying as he says ‘Let’s hurry’ pretty much every 3-5 lines.

Creating a parser from scratch is very difficult, so this game is a technical feat. But unless the author is planning on making several games with this engine and refining it over and over (like Linus Åkesson with his game engine Dialog), it might be worth using previously-refined engines instead.

+Polish: Despite the problems with the parser, the setup here is clean and looks great for a Windows executable.
+Descriptiveness: The characters and locales are described in detail.
-Interactivity: I was frustrated by the specificity of required commands.
+Emotional impact: I was fairly amused by a few parts.
-Would I play again? I think I've found everything I wanted to.

I suppose this game achieves exactly what it wanted to achieve. It took a fairly funny story (in the way that Kafka would write a comedy if the mood ever struck him), added some interactivity and a lot of polish, and turned it into a short game.

The writing is good, the game is short, and there’s not much to do but read it and contemplate. What does it mean? Besides my Kafka comparison, it also reminds me of Regina Spektor’s song lyrics.

+Polish: Impeccably polished.
+Descriptiveness: Some of the better writing of the last few years.
-Interactivity: It wasn't trying to achieve it, and it failed successfully.
+Emotional impact: It was thoughtful.
-Would I play again? Not unless I forget it.

So this one has a lot of good features and some that didn’t mesh with me. I’m not sure I’m the target audience.

This is a long Twine game with a mechanic that I’ve not really seen in IFComp before. There’s a long, mostly linear prologue where you meet all the main characters, then you’re given a bunch of journal entries/case files to go through. As you go through them, you can type them into a database to learn more, kind of like Her Story.

This is a game about a serial rapist/murderer. In fact, it’s the third game I’ve played in this comp that prominently features a kidnapper/sexual assaulter. This game specifically seems heavily influenced by stories like those featured in true crime podcasts and documentaries, and by the Golden State Killer specifically.

+Polish: A lot of work went into this game.
+Descriptiveness: Has a level of detail similar to true crime podcasts.
-Interactivity: The main mechanic was overly difficult to me. Typing in things that I knew were important (like 'bulger') didn't always work.
+Emotional impact: It was an emotion I didn't like, but it did it.
-Would I play again? Not my cup of tea, content-wise.
The graphic depictions in one of the assaults and the extensive profanity/abuse definitely set me on edge, and I don’t think I’m the target audience for it. Writing-wise, this game is good on the individual level, but some of the twists didn’t make much sense to me, especially the ending sequence which changed the genre of the game completely.

The mechanics are interesting, but I think they could use more testing for robustness. I will say if you haven’t played it yet that it keeps a running notebook for you at the very bottom, which I didn’t notice until near the end.

Overall, the author seems very talented. This game was beta tested by several people, but I think the next game in the series could use a couple of more people, especially Twine authors who have done well in the comp before. I’m assuming there will be more in the series, and I’d be happy to see that, especially ones with less sexual violence (for my personal taste, may not reflect all readers).