Ratings and Reviews by MathBrush

Luke Jones has released many games, and has a definite style. His games are whimsical, kind of roguish (with a foul-mouthed pigeon), sprawling, with a big cast of NPCs.

They are also a bit spare. When he started with Quest games, they were above average for Quest games in terms of implementation. Inform games (which this one is) generally have room for smoother programming, and this game could use a litte bit of polish, both in synonyms and in typos (especially the problems with stray punctuation that inform has).

This is a sequel to The Bony King of Nowhere, featuring the same map, just a few years older. I played with the walkthrough, as some puzzles I had great difficulty in guessing.

My favorite part about the game is the frank and friendly NPCs, like Donella or the Wizard of Ounces (Oz). I also liked the tie-in with other games by this author.

This game is the kind of thing Steph Cherrywell is known for: smooth humor, a large, easily navigable map, genre tropes pursued to their logical end, plenty of polish, and vivid characters.

I found this game's puzzles more logical than some other Cherrywell games, though I had trouble with one particular artist. Looking back, I ignored many, many, hints.

You play as a flapper (with all the 20's lingo) who's desperate for a drink. But it's all been soaked up by ghosts, so you have to hunt them down one by one!

I really enjoyed this game, and I think that it has a great chance of wining this year's comp.

This game meets my criteria for five stars:

Polish: I found no bugs, and everything ran smoothly. The game logic was sound.

Descriptiveness: I learned new things. I was intrigued by the game in ways that bled into real life.

Interactivity: This game explores parser space in a way that (Spoiler - click to show)Take, The North-North Passage, and Lime Ergot did. These games take the player-parser interaction and do 'variations on a theme' like composers.

Emotion: I felt a warm glow.

Play again: Sure!

Sobol's been reviewing games for at least 5 years, it's high time he post one of his own. This is a lovely game.

It's a real shame. This game has a sandbox environment, reasonable puzzles with multiple solutions, several endings that require completely different strategies and have distinct results, no bugs or typos that I found. Basically, everything you'd want a comp game to me.

The problem is that it's super offensive. You play a morbidly obese teen that is so fat they can eat anything and smash things with their fists. Your eyes and ears are so full of cholesterol that you have to type 'WUOOO' for echolocation every few turns.

There are other instances of, as the game calls it, 'crass humor and worse'. I didn't like that, not at all.

'Wizard/Witch's Apprentice' games are very common, from old ones like "The Wizard's Apprentice" and "Berrost's Challenge" to more recent ones like "Charming" and "Oppositely Opal" (one of my favorites!).

This game avoids many of the problems of the genre. It restricts its state space nicely both with regards to books (there are only a few, and only a few topics to look up), locations (only about 7), and ingredients (about 4). Most of these witch/wizard games just open up too quickly.

I found the puzzles very satisfying. My most negative experience was right at the beginning with the crystal ball. (Spoiler - click to show)I couldn't reach the ball, but there were length-enhancing things around (like the duster). It was not intuitive to me that you could climb up).

I felt like the ending could have used a bit more build up or that there could be more details here and there. But that's more of a design preference, and not a bug. This is a solid game that will please parser fans.

This polished but small Ink game has you trying to rescue 7 cats from a cruel breeder.

You have three different places you can go to earn 'coals', the currency in the game. Each cat costs 3 coals.

There are many ways to get money, including some dark paths, some scientific. While the game is very short, it has 10 different endings, and is worth replaying a few times.

I may have given an extra star just because I love cats. But what's wrong with that?

This game is essentially a home-made remake of the obscure old CD game Bad Milk.

In both games, there is no text, only videos or audio. You pass out after consuming something bad and must go through puzzles.

The interactivity baffled me here, with spinning icons and bizarre link options.

I don't decide what's interactive fiction and what's not, and I think this is fine to have in IFComp. But I really don't know how to play and find the whole thing pretty opaque.

This is one of two clear fan-fiction games this comp (the other being one set at Hogwarts).

This game is based on the Zelda game Majora's Mask. You and your buds are NPCs in that game, and since the moon is going to kill everyone, you sit on a hill drinking beer, shouting at the moon and waiting for the world to end.

It has some good animations, and some interesting text effects (such as giving you a five minutes time limit). It has some strong profanity. I found it descriptive and enjoyable.

This is a mid-length story, kind of between a creepypasta and fable in tone, presented as a completely linear story with a single link on each Twine page.

It has a few typos: wading instead of fading, for instance.

So the interactivity, polish, and replay value are low here.

But I liked the descriptions. Not everyone will like this story, but I have a very specific niche that I like, which is games/stories where you are transported to a dark shadow world and must conquer it with the power of light. (Eidolon, Kingdom Hearts, Zelda: A Link to the Past, Twilight Princess).

This seems like it's drawn from some game design, though. It mentions stuff like 'a ladder 30' above you', 'a 10' monster', 'a 10' globe of light'. The character (in this completely static story) collects globes of light to upgrade their weapon.

So, it's interesting, and weird, but I enjoyed the story.

There are some things that definitely need trigger warnings, and the warning for this game is self-harm.

(Spoiler - click to show)This game uses bare styling in Twine, but it's text layout, pacing and link structure are very polished. The writing is descriptive, with some profanity appropriate to the situation you're in. I felt strong emotions during this, first feelings that drew me in and helped me identify with the character, and then feelings of horror as I chose the 'bad' choices later involving self-harm. I didn't know it would be that bad, which perhaps is how the protagonist feels.

A powerful game.