Ratings and Reviews by MathBrush

In this Ren'py game, you play as an author who is trying to write a story about a human child and a dragon whelp.

You make choices on how to write the story, but eventually you get stuck, so you go back and write something different.

This ends up mostly being a binary tree, which you can view on a map, although there are some convergences. It turns out though that you can get ideas in one branch that unlock new options in another.

There is a lot of sameness in trying to lawnmower every branch, and having both story text and commentary on the bottom meant I often forgot to read the commentary. But the main story was cute and I liked the overall concept.

This game looked familiar to me, so I know I've seen it, but for some reason I never played it. I think I assumed it had explicit content (which it doesn't, although it does have intense events and adult situations intermingled with romance, so maybe I made assumptions).

It's really well-written, as any fan of Harris Powell-Smith might expect. You play as a cob in a kind of cyber future who has to go to a nightclub to see their informant. Their is an emphasis on emotions, sensory descriptions, and music.

It's a texture game and pretty short, but there are a lot of options and it felt like I had real agency, whether that was an illusion or not. A lot of effort went into customizing the 'hover' message when dragging actions over objects.

A nice, short game.

This is an exceptional story for Fallen London, which fits into the overall storyline and mechanics but has its own mini storyline, and is available to subscribers or for individual purchase.

I had mixed feelings going into this. Gavin Inglis has written some very good stuff, but I saw that this story had slipped low in the overall 'best exceptional stories' poll on reddit.

The idea is that Mr Pages (the master in charge of books) is upset about a new book of poetry that has been written about a mythical city called Ys. Some think that Ys is a standin for the bazaar!

My hopes dimmed for this story as I hit a very long segment that was a kind of repetitive chase. It took a big chunk of actions and didn't have much variation (although I did like a part involving trenches).

But the part after the chase where you have a chance to peruse the books was honestly very funny, I got a good chuckle out of it, and it made me feel better about the story overall.

If anyone reading this hasn't tried this author's game Hana Feels, I can recommend it! It's a nice heartfelt story about self-harm written as a government project.

The games by this author have been heavily advertised across Reddit for a few weeks now, so I decided to check them out.

This game, when I downloaded it, had text that seemed to be somewhat repetitive. There were tons of extraneous details to it as well. It mentions things like a vital journal or an important clue, but if you type X Item or TAKE item like the HELP menu suggests, nothing happens. The only way I can find to interact with the world is to move with compass directions. But things mentioned in the text like a hut can't be entered, all you can do is move around.

There is a timer at the top as well. The combination of the timer, the downloadable exe, and the barebones mazes remind me a lot of the group DBT, who released 53 different similar BASIC adventures before. I don't think it's the same people (and I didn't have any problem with their work), I just wonder if there's some sort of template for BASIC adventures that includes a timer.

I'm going to put 2 stars for now, as the interactivity and polish are low due to not being able to interact with objects. It's possible I missed something really big and you can actually do more than just move around, so I'm happy to bump up the score if that's the case.

This is a game in the vein of the Arcade Pack spoof that went around a few decades ago. It's a procedurally generated version of Dragon's Lair where your options are U/D/L/R and S (up, down, left, right, and sword).

It seems to go on forever. I used cheats and undo eventually and still never found the end, but the scenarios eventually looped (but not the same order). Looking at the Club Floyd transcript, they eventually just gave up, so I don't think it ends.

I love this concept and this kind of spoof. As a game itself it wears thin really quickly, but spoofing arcade games is funny.

This is an Exceptional Story from Failbetter Games, part of Fallen London. It ties into the larger overall experience but has its own storyline.

This is a love story between an ardent man and a scientist who is also loving but reluctant and cuts ties.

The opening of this was unremarkable enough that I lost interest in it and never finished it by the time I stopped playing Fallen London 2 years ago. I've restarted now and have picked up this story again, and the ending was quite a bit better than before.

This story features Mr. Apples, a master I don't remember seeing much about. More interestingly, it includes bits of all of the Fallen Cities' lore, including a big chunk of First City material, which is rare. Also has some Neathbow content. Pretty nice!

This is a Fallen London exceptional story, which is something accessible only to members or those who pay extra money. It follows the mechanics of Fallen London but is completable in a few hours of time (or less if you pay for more actions).

This story deals with the Presbyterate, an underground empire that lives near the Mountain of life. They had a colony founded by separatists who had a mythical chalice that seems like a parallel to the Holy Grail. You encounter an archaeologist who leads you to the sea in search of this chalice.

This story gives you some pretty good agency as there are multiple directions you can influence the outcome. It has some rich and vivid imagery in the archaeological digs that does a good job of both being cool and showing the differences between the archaeologist's idealism and the more grey reality.

This one was pretty good. It didn't stand out as one I'll always remember but it was interesting enough that I used some action refreshes on it.

This was a fun game in a style different than that which I usually play. It's an ADRIFT game that is pretty long, with more than 8 'acts' and 43 rooms, but with puzzles that are locally self-contained and generally well-clued (with a couple of exceptions).

You show up to Sherlock Holmes' apartment determined to prove he is a fraud, only to discover it full of bullet holes and menacing notes. You have to track down Shakespeare and foil a plot by the evil Moriarty!

Much of the game can be completed by examining everything and showing things to people. The game is fortunately almost completely devoid of having to 'look behind' and 'under' everything (although looking under is useful in obvious cases).

I did use the hints a couple of times, and every time was for a window or door. The second to last puzzle (a grill) wasn't hinted and I struggled for a long time. I eventually opened up the game in the ADRIFT 4 coding app and found out that I had the right idea but the wrong direction (full spoiler: (Spoiler - click to show)I was trying to LOCK it but had to CLOSE it.).

Overall, I didn't encounter many bugs (a couple of times the screen just printed a single letter when I doubt that was what was desired; most likely because I was playing online). I had a good time with this game.

This is the only Spring Thing game that has never been reviewed on IFDB. I think I can see why; it's a longer game with a big, nonlinear map, a few different ways to die, and puzzles with difficult timing.

You play as a protestor at a nuclear facility who gets lost and then bitten by a camel. You wake up in a hospital with another protestor chained nearby. The hospital has a lot of floors, each with hallways filled with room. There are myriad keys and you have to do a variety of heroic actions that aren't well-clued.

You also gain the ability to bite hard and spit but the game doesn't spell this out and you almost never use them.

The story is interesting, but I remember an Emily Short blog post about how you should make a nonlinear game designed in a way that it's impossible to progress without encountering the story, and I think that would have benefitted this game a lot. Also, there could be more indication of when puzzles exist, as often there are things you need to do that you don't even know you need to do!

However, I do think people could enjoy this game and hope it gets more reviews.

I learned a lot playing this game.

I was most familiar with Richard Otter as the author of Word of the Day, one of the largest Inform works of all time in terms of wordcount. It did well in IFComp and even picked up a nomination for an XYZZY award. It was about a mystery in space and included tens of thousands of words on alien biology and evolution.

So I was surprised to see this 2009 Adrift 4 game that reference all of his previous games, of which there were a ton. I had no idea! I also didn't know that his username was Delron, which is the name of a website I've seen pop up a lot before. It also seems he had two earlier IFComp games that I had played and just not associated with his name.

This game is pretty big and I had some trouble and didn't know if the webplayer would save, so I used the walkthrough. It was like a guided tour of his games. Basically, there is 1-3 rooms for each game, and each world contains a piece of paper with the name of a game on it and a person who accepts the correct piece of paper for that world. Your goal is to match them up.

The most interesting worlds to me were the robot world of Unauthorized Termination, the world where you're a germ infesting a human, and the world where a decaying but alive Lion is in a room with a statue of King David after an apocalypse.