Reviews by MathBrush

This one was hard to review: didn't like it at first, liked it a lot more near the end, but not sure about it overall. So I'm going over my 5 point scale in hope it helps me.

+Polished: I didn't find any bugs or typos, which is normal for Choice of Games.
+Descriptive: The game was certainly descriptive and vibrant.
+Interactivity: There were a lot of options to fiddle around with: your sound, your relationship with your frequently-annoying brother, whether to sign with a record label or not, going solo. The ending was somewhat abrupt but fit in with the rest of the story.

Some people have pointed out that a few key points are forced on you. In one very late game move (involving relationships) (Spoiler - click to show)you find yourself in a relationship with a famous artsy person. This wasn't a problem for me, as I was pretending to be Paul MCcartney the whole game, playing bass etc., so I was fine dating 'Yoko' and splitting up the band by going solo. I suspect that a lot of the choices I made worked out for me because it was the 'ordained path'. A lot of the reports I had heard from other people seem to confirm that (for instance, the game seems to favor your brother).

+Emotional impact: I had fun. I disliked it at first but grew to like it.

-Would I play again? I feel content with my choices, and it doesn't seem like there's a lot of wiggle room, so I'm not sure I'll revisit this one.

This game has a little bit of history, much of which I don't know. It's a sequel to the original Choice of Broadsides, a navy battle game, but by a different author, Paul Wang, author of some games I enjoy quite a bit (mostly fighting games).

The original game was low in wordcount but long in feeling, spanning an entire career in the navy by having quick narration and choices that could affect months or years at a time.

This game is longer than the original but feels shorter. It is a 3-chapter game that essentially retells a specific part of history of the War of 1812, as described by the author at the end.

I believe it is related to the free games Zip! Speedster of Valiant City and Sky Pirates of Actorius as being commisioned by Choice of Games as shorter games to offer free on the omnibus app. I may be wrong there.

I think that the reason this game feels shorter is that it reads much like the intro to a longer game. Like I said in my review of Zip! Speedster, both games feel like instead of being constructed small from the get-go, it took a larger setup and shrunk it. There are very few possible changes to stats, and the plot arc seems to start slow and never really take off.

I saw a comment on Twitter by Dan Fabulich that suggested the timespan in-game can contribute to a feeling of length in a game, and I think that's true. This game takes place over a couple of months and covers the lead-up, action, and denouement of a single action.

In any case, the historicity was fascinating, but I don't feel this game succeeded in its 'small package' design. I do enjoy the author's writing quite a bit, though, and as a game free on the omnibus app and relatively short I feel that any fan of history should try this out.

This game placed highly recently on an 'underrated choicescript game poll'. It's pretty easy to see why it placed highly and why it's underrated.

The strikes against it are it's size (it's in the bottom 20% in terms of size) and the fact that it is centered on younger kids (Choicescript games that appear to be for kids tend to sell less, including my own).

The good things are the writing, the stats, and the strategies.

Writing-wise, the game has an episodic structure (about 5 mystery cases) and a lot of freedom in how your character can approach them: greedy, secretive, friendly, etc. Each of the main characters seemed fully-fleshed out to me by the end. The finale seemed fairly abrupt, but it makes sense for a game that is more a string of episodes than anything else.

The stats were great. It was generally very clear which stats applied to what, how to raise them, and where you stood.

The game kept it interesting by strategizing. Staying secretive sometimes benefits everyone but sometimes keeps you from getting money or making certain friends. Similarly, having integrity locks you out of many options but feels good.

Some events had risks you could take with rewards or failures that were logical but unknown ahead of time. I like this better than randomness (from playing a random game earlier today), but it still provides some tension like randomness does.

One nice thing I've noticed through playing Choice of Games entries is that they're willing to take chances with games, leading to some nice results like Nebula-nominated games or niche works that appeal very strongly to specific people (like Cannonfire Concerto, for me).

This game, I think, is an example of an experiment that didn't work out too well. Specifically, it relies heavily on randomization. You can train in 5-6 different kinds of pitches like curveballs and fastballs, and then a big chunk of the game is you facing different hitters with you pitches. It lists the chance for each pitch of getting a strike, a 'ball', or them hitting it, and using the same pitch several times in a row makes the batter more likely to hit it.

I appreciate the idea but both gameplay and roleplay-wise I wasn't really feeling it. In general, I just chose the best strike option, although I realized near the end that choose the lowest 'in-play' option was a different strategy. But then much of the story ended up as a result of these randomized choices.

I don't think randomization is horrible, but most games that use randomization well are games that have frequent save points and involve repeating the same tasks over and over (like gambling mini-games, RPG combat grinding, etc.). In this game, with no save points and no second chances, it's rough, and that's playing as a 'power player' (the game's easy mode).

Outside of that, the game has a lot of threads towards interesting ideas but doesn't really pursue them in depth. I did enjoy the freedom to go to a completely different country for a chapter and playing on the moon was cool. The last few chapters have a focus on preparing for your life after baseball and that was by far my favorite part, as you strategize things that might hurt you in one area (like your friendships or future income) but help you in another. Very cool part.

I can't help but compare it to Slammed!, which for me did a better job with making a story about humans. Ironically, my character in Fielder's Choice was very analytical, and when I first tried out sports broadcasting I was told to back away from the stats and focus more on the human element, and I think that this game itself could probably benefit from that advice.

I received a review copy of this game.

This is a shorter Choicescript game from 2017. In it, you play as the avatar of the recently-dead god Wolf, in a pantheon shared with Spider, Gazelle, Eel, and Bear.

The game draws on mythology from several different cultures. It is fairly quick, but has several replay options.

Most of the game feels like a spiritual journey, like an ancient Odyssey. You constantly run into the avatars of the other gods, and you are essentially judged on which God you become the most like.

Simultaneously, you can choose to ally with a group of anti-God soldiers.

There are actually quite a few Choicescript games where you play as a powerful champion of the Gods and must decide whether serve them or destroy them (the most well-known being the aptly-named Champion of the Gods). I have to admit, it's a genre I'm a big fan of.

The stats in this game are communicated fairly well, although it can be hard to know when a stat is tested vs changed. There were some story threads I feel could have been deeper, but I feel that Avatar of the Wolf succeeded for me both as a story and as a game. It has the single-mindedness and simplicity that made me like Sword of the Slayer.

This was a fun game, and I thought about giving it a 5, but it has a few issues. But it's not that bad, and if the subject matter interests you, I'd go for it.

In this game, there are 20,000,000 or more 'moreaus', or sentient creatures resembling mammals which are the result of genetic experimentation. They are second-class citizens.

You, an ordinary citizen, have a rude awakening when your building is bombed. You have to navigate between two gangs, the cops, the press, and a ton of people (both human and moreau) who are very attracted to you.

I enjoyed the game overall, but it does have its problems. Pacing is one of them. In the beginning of the game, a bomb goes off so you stand outside of your apartment. That event takes up 3 of the 10 chapters just by itself. There's just not a lot of meat to the chapters, with only 1 or 2 significant things happening in each (but with each event having a lot of detail).

The characters are both expressive and generic in a weird way. They were memorable and distinct in my mind, but don't really express themselves strongly about things and don't have much backstory.

The stat gains and checks are reasonable (although there seemed to be a lot of 'cunning' checks which isn't a listed stats) up until the end, where as others have said it gets really hard. I died, but the epilogue was just long enough to be satisfying, especially as my death fixed essentially every problem.

This game contains explicit sexual scenes, strong profanity, animal-type violence (all of those in moderation) and many mentions of both drug use and suicide.

In this game, you play as a 'thrall' (a member of a servant caste) in a community where gryphon riders are trained for war against wrym riders.

One day, a gryphon mom rejects a small egg. You hatch it and raise it, which is against society rules.

Most of the game is about hiding and raising the gryphon, with a slightly smaller chunk involving the aftermath of being discovered.

The game has a very small number of stats for yourself (with several more once you get a gryphon), but manages to be fairly confusing with the stats. It's pretty hard to know which stats are being tested when.

The game itself is oddly toothless. It sets up some worldbuilding but doesn't do much with it. There is tension between 'thralls' and 'keepers', there is a war, but what is actually going on? Everything is so vague. Are you 12, or 16, or 24? (That may have been answered somewhere, but it's hard to tell). One second you can be what seems like a highschool kid, and another you can scare a guard by saying you've killed people. The wyrm riders are different from you, but how? Do they speak another language? Wear weird armor? You are in the wilderness for months. What does that do to you, mentally and physically?

Nothing really gets answered. And like other reviewers here and elsewhere have noted, there's not really a climax; you kind of wander around until the end, with the ending final scenes very similar to scenes from the middle of the game in terms of tension and result.

All that said, the best parts for me were the ones interacting with the griffin and training it. In that respect, this game reminded of The Last Monster Master, but with less systematic training and more individual personality.

This game was pretty good overall, but had some sticking points.

You play as a Broadway theatre owner in 1849. You mingle with many historical figures such as Horace Greeley and Herman Melville.

The main challenges are to balance the demands of the people with the demands of the elite; to work with the mayor and the real government or the Know-Nothing gang; to befriend or destroy Hamblin, the rival theatre owner; discovering a supernatural mystery; deciding what kinds of plays to run; and handling romances.

I thought the opening chapter was fairly boring, but by the middle I was invested in the story and found it entertaining.

Stats were a mixed bag. It was very confusing telling the difference between acting and showmanship, between authority/negotiation/producing, between streetwise and notoriety.

The game very frequently forces you to make choices then pick why or how you do it; I was writing down every time it happened but it was too frequent. It's especially jarring since these forced choices can directly contradict your play method. For instance, (Spoiler - click to show)I worked with Ned Buntline and the gangs from the start, with no interest in the 'fancy' part of town. But the game forced me twice to confront Ned about things, and forced him once to attack me, despite us doing everything together and me keeping his secret. Similarly, you are forced to accept a possible spy into your midst, you are forced to rescue an attacked news person, etc. The effect of all of this was to feel a lot less in control of the story. Of course, it makes the overall narrative tighter since the author is in control of most things you do, but it was frustrating.

The stats are very meagre, as well. After the first chapter, I had only 3 skills which were above baseline, each by only a single boost for a total of 3 boosts. If I had chosen differently, I could have boosted only 2 skills with the other boost going to an opposed stat (which could later be erased by other choices). The author solved that by making essentially every choice in the game winnable if you have even a single boost in a stat, but made it more difficult by obfuscating which stat helps with what.

Overall, though, it was a positive story experience, and made me interested in early New York.

I enjoyed playing the Heroes Rise trilogy by Eric Moser before [edit: it's been pointed out to me that Zachary Sergi, not Eric Moser, is the author of Heroes Rise; I would never have noticed without someone pointing it out!], so I was interested in seeing this game. I knew ahead of time that it's a 'mini' game, free on the omnibus apps. designed to be a bonus to whoever downloads those apps (together with another 'mini' story, Sky Pirates of Arctorus by Kyle Marquis).

Overall, I think this game is quick-paced, charming and fun. You play a super-fast hero who is getting old (sadly, their 'old age' is pretty much the age I am now) against an enemy called 'The Sloth'. You're married, but to a person who cheated on you, and there is another romantic option (but not one you are required to pursue). The other main things you can do are getting a shoe sponsor deal, running for mayor, or training your sidekick.

This game was good, but it felt like a regular 100K-200K story that had parts removed instead of being built for a smaller game. For instance, it has well-defined, clear stats and clever use of resources, but the opportunities to build and use those stats are limited, and there are quite a few (I think 6 major skills). Contrast this to the even-smaller Choice of the Dragon, with 2 major stats (although Choice of the Broadsides has 12, so it's not hard and fast).

Another 'big game made small' feature is the numerous story threads that aren't given much treatment: your relationships with spouse, sidekick, romantic option/rival, and the CEO of a company; your background with the Sloth; handling the outbreak of other minor villains; etc. I feel like if each theme got twice the screen time it could have been stronger.

I don't have any suggestions on how to write shorter games (I know a lot of great authors have tried it over the years to varying success). This game wasn't bad, and is free with the app, so if you're thinking of getting into Choicescript games, it's one of the better free options on the omnibus app.

This is a polished parser game entered in the French IF Competition. It comes with nice feelies and runs on retro devices as well as in-browser.

You wake up in a dungeon with four exits, wearing an empty scabbard and some armor. In each direction, there is some kind of threat: a trap, a monster, a guardian, etc. and you have to defeat them all in turn.

I thought this was fun, but also very hard. It includes some forms of interactions which I consider unfair, like having to die to progress. I was very happy the author provided a solution! (although one line of it provokes an error, but it's okay and doesn't affect the end result).

The author seems to enjoy IF a lot and I look forward to any future games.