Ratings and Reviews by MathBrush

I played the first GUTS game, which I remember liking, but I didn’t play the second.

I’m not sure what this third one is really all about. It does remind me of my favorite opera, the Hungarian opera Duke Bluebeard’s Castle, which is a surreal two-person one-act opera about 7 colored doors in Bluebeard’s castle. As each one is opened, some emblem of power is shown (strength, cruelty, wealth, lands, etc.) and more light comes to the castle, but each is also tinged with blood. The last two doors only bring darkness to the castle and the end is one of eternal suffering.

This is really four games in one. I started on the 3rd first and I don’t recommend that, as I thought the game was just being very silly (tons of links that do nothing but repeat the same text). It made way more sense starting from the first.

The fourth link doesn’t seem thematically or structurally related to the other three at all, or even really with the same vibes. It’s a cyclical story of inescapable enmity with amusing undertones.

The first three are all the kind of nightmare you have where something is hunting you but you never really see it, so you’re just nervous all the time and can’t explain why and your chest is pounding and everything feels helpless and hopeless.

While I can certainly identify with many emotions in this piece, the interactivity left me frustrated at times, wondering if I was getting the point or getting stuck. That fits thematically, yet I still felt frustration at times.

This is a short Choicescript game. I wondered if there were two endings, but I could only find one.

It's a family drama/mystery/surreal/slice of life game (?). You play as a dad whose child starts calling you the wrong name. They say it a lot, and the mom starts agreeing. Things begin to get a bit strange...

I liked this game. There is some ambiguity to it that let it apply to many things. It reminded me of relationships where people are hiding a dramatic secret, and of changing identities, and of the strange alienation that can come when you first become a parent and your entire life changes. Very fun.

This was a short pleasant story presented in Twine. It portrays, in reverse order, several Halloween celebrations of a teenage girl.

There's no overt message, but a lot of feeling and overall cohesion in atmosphere. A kind of mix of melancholy and unexpressible feelings, both good and bad, with an overall positive feeling (the way that I experienced it). Kind of game me the same feelings as *Little Women* or Disney's *Pinocchio*, like a coming of age story that is worthwhile but traumatic (I know those two evoke very different feelings but in me they both made me feel 'growing up is scary but solemnly good').

There aren't any choices in this. Choices often enhance my experience, which is why I lean to interactive fiction more than static fiction. As a story, though, this works, and the link-clicking does help with pacing.

This was a fun little game that involved writing a text that varies depending on your inputs. Given that the game was written in 4 hours or less, I doubt it uses full procedural generation, but there is at least some visible variation in text and it gives the feel of procedural generation in a good way.

You play as Edgar Allan Poe (or equivalent) and you're trying to compose what is essentially *The Raven*. You get distracted, so you you have to battle to be either gloomy or happy. Whatever you pick, it affects your writing.

I love the idea, although there's not enough time to really expand on it, so we only get a couple of stanzas. I had difficulty making and executing plans, as I couldn't figure out how to maximize gloominess or cheerfulness. I did get 2 endings, and had a good time.

This game was a wild ride. I don't recognize the engine used at all; you can cycle through choices by clicking, but then scrolling down counts as a choice. It is visually dramatic and fun, although occasionally I scrolled too far and missed a choice.

The setting is dramatic and the narrator voice fits it. You play in a world where the long peace between animals and man has fallen, and every living creature is out to destroy humanity. You have to escape dangerous krakens, rampaging birds, and murderous apes.

The game is zany and wild, but somehow still coherent, and it ends just before the concept could become tedious. Overall, very well done, and stunning that this was achieved in 4 hours.

This was a mournful, reflective, and gross game by KADW. And not gross in a bad way, gross in a cleansing way, like popping a zit or rinsing a filter until it’s clean.

You play as a wanderer in space who feels listless, uncaring of the outside world and desiring to be completely alone and shut the rest of the world out.

The prose is beautiful. One part made me think ‘I bet the author researched this and thought it was cool’; at least I thought it was cool (talking about approaching the sun):

"No. No one would see anything. At the distance where objects start to burn from approaching a star, they are already close enough to be indistinguishable to faraway observers."

The gross parts happen later, but it’s not so much a bad thing as a transformation, and it ties into the overall themes. There are two endings.

This game reminded me a bit of a fiction story about cordiceps fungi infecting humans, which I heard on the Creepy podcast as the story “madness, mutilation, death”. Very intriguing stuff!

This is an Adventuron game that is a nice small nugget of a game, with classic adventure gameplay (TAKE and DROP feature prominently).

You play as someone who often walks by an abandoned house at night but who finally decides to break in and see what’s going on inside.

The game was written in 4 hours, so many things aren’t perfectly polished. The author does foresee this issue and says ‘You won’t have to ____ in this game’ a lot, which helped reduce frustration by reducing verbs. It would take substantially more work to implement every reasonable action, but this approach isn’t bad even in a polished game.

The font and color combo was hard to read for me; I’ve seen some Adventuron games that have a font selection option, and that would have been nice here.

Fun overall!

This is a haunting twine game set in an apartment building. Every day, you can wake up and wander around the building, surprisingly being allowed in all your neighbor’s rooms. There, you can try to help them out with their problems. But, for all of you, life is kind of ‘meh’.

This is the kind of game that transforms the more you play it, which I found effective. I liked the game’s use of color and its gradually increasing use of mythological references.

I’m still not sure if I figured out the theme of the game in terms of the artwork we see at the beginning. The number 3 comes up a lot in the game, but given the prominence of that number in mythology, I’m not sure which 3 it was referencing, and would be interested in hearing others’ theories on it.

A brief but time-worthy game.

Ruber Eaglenest has made several games before with serious themes written in sensitive and poetic ways.

I found this game beautiful as I started it. The emphasis on colors and nature felt soothing, mixed with melancholy at being a ghost.

Interaction was confusing at times, perhaps to show what being a ghost would be like. You have three options most of the time, but they change as you select things, possibly in a pattern, possibly just based on how long you've waited. I never had too long to feel frustrated.

The ending was moving, and a reminder of (Spoiler - click to show)the horrors of war, and our responsibility to seek peace throughout the world. A very effective piece.

I saw the name of this and thought, ‘sounds like a Damon Wakes game’. Then I saw it was a Damon Wakes game.

What can I say? This game was longer than just one room. It seems based on Clue, with a bunch of different secret passages connecting different parts of a map.

The only real question is…when will the jumpscare come?

The actual jumpscare noise sounds like the FNAF ones but slightly different; was it homemade? Overall it reminded me of playing Ultimate Custom Night a bit. It seems like it acheived all of its goals (if its goals were to make players sigh, open up the game anyway, and then click through until jumpscared).