Ratings and Reviews by MathBrush

This is very entertaining title from Choice of Games.

It's a self-aware farce with characters drawn from broad fantasy/fairytale stereotypes.

You play as a royal heir who is constantly surviving kidnapping attempts. The bulk of the game concerns one kidnapping attempt, which involves you and four heroes (a bold knight, a proud Amazon, a peasant, and human raised by faeries) descending layer by layer through an enormous tower full of traps.

One compelling thing about this game is that it rewards bad behavior. Being a helpless drama magnet is one of the strongest ways to make it through the game. So is being selfish and mean, but being kind is okay.

It even makes good use of bad relationship stats. You have plenty of opportunities to decide who to throw in the mix of danger.

Some people have expressed difficulty knowing which stats connect to what. I admit to being a little unclear on the use of strategy vs intuition (neither of which I maxed out), and I stayed almost exactly 50% on 'ready for the ball' vs 'ready to fight'. I think one issue is that much of the humor relies on you making specific choices, so it can feel forced at times because it IS forced due to the humor requirements. I also found it a bit hard to get started.

I received a review copy of this game.

This game is one of the shorter Choicescript entries, around 80K words. It still had a comparable playthrough length to bigger games, so I suspect it just has less paths than most games (my game is in a similar spot branching-wise).

You play as a news reporter who is investigating criminal activity. Unlike most Choice of Games entries, the main character gets their butt kicked frequently. It can be a bit frustrating having so many negative things happen.

There are three main stats, and many parts of the game involve choosing your best stat. When I was writing for Choice of Games, they mentioned the 'three stat trap' a lot, and I wonder if games like this is where that comes from (just having every choice be an option between three stats).

It sounds like I'm being pretty negative about the game. The truth is its hard to design a satisfying story arc for one of these games in 80K words, unless you paint everything with broad strokes and have a lot of life-changing choices (like Choice of the Dragon).

Nevertheless, I enjoyed discovering more about the mystery, and the characters were vividly described, if somewhat one-dimensional (especially villains!). I don't regret my time playing, and the game was polished.

I received a review copy of this game.

This game is firmly in the drama camp. It had a lot of action and intrigue and less, if any, humor.

The setting is detailed and vivid, and is the best thing about the game in my mind. Its set in a Borgia-era Venice, albeit with different names, and you are part of the crime family. Your parent has died, and there is a power play between you and two siblings. You are the only one, however, who is a blood mage, an illegal type of necromancer who can see and influence spirits.

This is in the category of Choicescript games like The Martian Job or Rent-a-Vice where there are a lot of ways to go wrong and it doesn't feel like you have complete power, as opposed to pure power-fantasies like Creme de la Creme (by the same author) or Choice of Robots.

This game has more options to violent or dark than most Choice of Games titles. Murder is a possible solution to many problems. And there is no way to please everyone. One of your siblings is an ineffectual pacifist and the other is a violent war hawk. At least twice in the game you get urgent messages from multiple people and have to let someone down.

I had a satisfying romantic arc in my game. Some reviewers have complained that romance is less of a focus, but the game was updated this June to have additional romance.

This is a long game. While having a lower wordcount than Tally Ho or Creme de la Creme, the playthrough length feels comparable. I felt like I was playing a quality game. I am glad, though, that the tone is lighter in Creme de la Creme.

I received a review copy of this game.

Some Choicescript games stand out to me in different areas. Choice of Robots has a real sense of freedom. The Martian Job has beautiful wordcraft. The Treasure Seekers of Lady Luck has memorable and original characters.

This game had perhaps the most satisfying story I've played so far. Part of that is my personal tastes. I love mysteries, and Christopher Huang is one of my favorite mystery authors. This game is a superhero game, but it definitely has a mystery feel.

You play as a news reporter who must assume the mask of the hero when your (Spoiler - click to show)twin brother gets kidnapped. You have to face off against three superhero villains to get to the core of the plot.

The story has a definite narrative arc with a good buildup and one of the best denouements I've had in Choicescript games, which usually end quickly.

If I had a gripe, it's in the game having a lot of romantic options but having you start off engaged (though not married). It seemed kind of underhanded, though (Spoiler - click to show)upon replay I felt better about it.

I felt like I had real agency in the game. And Christopher Huang nailed something that I've found lacking in many choicescript games: making failure feel worthwhile. Failure in this game doesn't lead to messages implying "you are bad at this game". Instead, it leads to dramatic tension, the 'calm before the storm.'

Stats aren't superpowered in this version, making this less of a power fantasy. But that makes sense, considering you're a civilian that only recently took up the mask. There seems to be no way to manage your stats to pass every check somehow. But it's okay.

I can see why some people might not like this game. But it has all the things I personally look for in a game.

I received a review copy of this game.

This game is basically exactly what the title promises. It is a sword and sorcery game with dinosaurs everywhere.

Strip away the dinosaurs, and it is polished but generic swords and sorcery. The only real weapons mentioned are swords; there is magic, but it generally just does whatever you want without any sort of system; everyone has a class of some type, either a bard or a ranger or a wizard. The enemies are (Spoiler - click to show)dragons and a necromancer.

It's also oriented towards a younger audience, I believe. The language seems intentionally simple, the romances involve mostly hugging and kissing (which is fine with me). Everything is telegraphed and/or on-the-nose. Although you are an adult, there are segments like seeking admittance to wizard school or looking up info on dinosaurs that are more reminiscent of junior fiction.

None of this is necessarily bad. I think this would make a great Wesnoth campaign, for instance. And it had a definite narrative arc and some great characters. I enjoyed my neurodivergent partner who disliked crowds and touch, as well as my velociraptor Rex.

I had the chance to be evil at one point, and I took it. The game didn't really seem to want to commit to me being evil, but I did anyway, although I betrayed my new ally in the end and sided with others.

This game is currently the lowest-rated game on the Choice of Games omnibus app.

That doesn't correspond directly to quality; the two Nebula-nominated games (Rent-a-Vice and The Martian Job) are in the lower third of the app store, and I enjoyed both of those quite a bit.

In this game, you play as a young heir to a railroad line. As temporary president, it's up to you to prove you can be permanent president. Also, your favor wants you to get married.

There are an enormous number of romantic options (at least 8, I think?). There is also a recurring monthly budget meeting, similar to Methuman, Inc. but less consistent.

An unusual feature of the game is that its difficulty is set by the very first choice, which is not advertised to you directly. It asks if you are ready for the game, which I thought indicated some kind of 'intro to choicescript' or stats explanations.

I'm going to break this one down with my 5 point system:

-Polish: The game is very uneven at times. It swerves between the railroad management, playing with your cat, and romances. I found several bugs, including raw Choicescript code, getting an ending saying I never had my company sold to a larger company when I did, and getting engaged, then having a failed proposal, then having a marriage to the same person all in a row.

On the other hand, it has to be weighed against the games big ambitions. The more a game attempts, the more forgiving I feel towards bugs. On the other other hand, even larger and similarly ambitious games like Creme de la Creme and Tally Ho seemed more polished.

+Interactivity:This is a bit hard to measure,as I accidentally chose the greatest difficulty. I felt like I had real agency. I got frustrated with the money management so I sold the company, and the story let me do it, presumably changing quite a bit. The romantic direction I pursued had several scenes set up for it which were clearly tailored towards just this person. I was able to enter into and back out of anything I wanted at any time (except once when my father offered me a favor; I didn't have the chance to turn it down).

+Emotional Impact: Well, I certainly felt a lot of things while playing. The unevenness of the game blunted the emotional impact, but I was genuinely invested in my character's life and quite alarmed by several developments (in my hard playthrough, I had disasters ranging from passenger to death to industrial sabotage to extortion).

+Descriptiveness: This game is very descriptive. I was able to vividly picture everything. This is perhaps its best trait.

+Would I play again?: Yes. The numerous branches and the different difficulty levels make me want to return to this one eventually.

The original Superlatives game (Aetherfall) is one of my favorite Choicescript games. It provided a tale of a small group of young Victorian superheros trying to survive without leadership and exploring a fascinating world built by the author.

This game more or less puts that at a distance. Your powers and friends from the first game are shoved away. Alternatively, you can start a new character without a connection to them.

This time, you aren't weak, you are essentially an envoy or almost an angel for higher powers. Everyone respects the authority you bring.

This makes the game (as others have sad in reviews and discussion on other sites) that this is less a direct sequel to the first game and more its own standalone game. I agree with that, and will evaluate it as such.

This game has a lot more big politics. The two main threads are a delicate balance between three parties (Earth, Mars and Venus) to a peace treaty, and a series of strange rifts bringing strange and violent people.

The political balance was interesting and delved into worldbuilding. The rifts scenario had a twist halfway through the game that made it far more interesting.

The writing for this game is good, I think even an improvement on the first. I wrote down or screenshotted a few things that I thought were especially good. The love interests in this game are detailed and have their own private dates and side quests.

Overall, as a game, I loved it. As a direct sequel to the first game, pretty good. I would feel comfortable recommending it even to people who haven't played the first one, if they're interested in things like major diplomacy and dating spies.

I received a review copy of this game.

This was one of the most enjoyable Choice of Games titles I've played. You play as a new recruit to a superhero society in Victorian London. It has an HG Wells feel, with brass mechanical creatures, airships, and aliens from each planet in the solar system.

You lead a team of superhero trainees in an attempt to discover the fate of the more trained superheroes, who have disappeared. Your team is very diverse: some essentially human, others from other planets, and another that's quite a bit like you.

The game offers a satisfying narrative arc and a variety of ways to interact. In one part, you can choose between three missions. In another, you explore a house for clues to a combination. In others, you choose how to allocate your assets and can even end up in a courtroom trial.

I thought it was great. Some of the achievments are a bit difficult to achieve, but I enjoyed it immensely, and look forward to playing the sequel.

I received a review copy of this game.

My rating for this game went back and forth quite a few times while I was playing it.

This is a very long game. I played this over two days. Its wordcount is 610,000. There are only 2 other published Choice of Games titles bigger than it.

Tally Ho, one of the games that is slightly larger than it, has a shorter play length, due to having more branches. This game has 9 very long chapters.

It's really three games in one, each of which could be separated into its own, shorter game.

The first is cat life. You are with a family and there is a kid and a dog and a wild neighbor cat you can interact with. Over and over again, you choose where to sleep, how to get the best scraps of food, and how to treat the humans and other pets. This is fairly entertaining at first, but gets pretty repetitive by the end.

The second is Claire (the mother) and her political career. She is an MP trying to win power in a party that centers on ecological concerns. You can influence this by affecting her mood during talks, distracting her during important moments, or trying to 'show her a sign'.

Similarly, the husband, Andre, is working on a musical career. He's pretty bad at it, and the grouchy neighbor behind you is a musical producer. You can influence him like Claire.

Of all the plots, I found the beginning cat bits and the political segments the most interesting.

One frustrating aspect was the large number of overlapping stats that were constantly being both tested and changed. For instance, is looking sweet to get food a test of being manipulative v demanding, of being audacious vs cautious, of being feral vs domesticated, or of contempt vs affection? Or is it a way to change one of those stats?

I became invested in the storylines eventually. I know one of the paths can lead to divorce, so I managed to avoid that. I imagine there are many branches possible, so I may have to replay.

I received a review copy of this game.

This is a Choicescript game which feels like a streamlined, story-fied text version of some war game like Alpha Centauri or one of those boxed set tabletop games with hex maps (but only in spirit; it's shorter and more linear than those games).

You have stats like energy reserves, fighter pilot strength and fighter pilot numbers, etc. There is no romance at all, and all of your decisions are on how to manage your fleet, its strengths and its political positions.

I enjoy simulation games, but this one had a few flaws that prevented total enjoyment. I had trouble deciphering why some of my actions led to some of my skill changes. One complaint I've had with a few Choicescript games is that it can be difficult to tell when your stats are being tested vs when they are being changed.

Another issue is the lack of narrative surprises. For me at least, everything was telegraphed from very early on and never really changed. I read something about tips for writing heist movies and novels once that I think applies here. Paraphrased, it said, "Either the audience knows the plan ahead of time or the plan works perfectly, but never both at once." There just wasn't enough dramatic tension.

Fortunately, the strategic elements were engaging and well-thought out. Overall, worth playing if you know what kind of game you're getting into and enjoy that genre.

I received a review copy of this game.