Reviews by MathBrush

Archive 13

Well, I can definitely say that this is the best untranslated Russian game I've played in IFComp (it's the only one; we've had several dual-language games before though).

But I actually do think the story's cool. It's a branching Twine game with a surreal atmosphere, almost like a Magnus Archive statement or an SCP Class of 76 thing, and you work at an archive full of police records and such while your memories changes (or the world around you).

Google's automatic translate didn't load, but then I reloaded the page; once you do that, it loads and you can play it in English in Chrome.

It has some interesting endings, but one of the endings just ends on a blank page, which I thought could have been a hint, since the game suggests looking into blank spaces, but opening it up in Twinery shows nothing. Overall, it remains a short, mostly-linear game (diverging into 3 branches) with an interesting premise and in a non-standard IFComp language. I'm glad it was entered.

Enkii

Upon completion of this game, it states that it won't accept any rewards from IFComp. In accordance with its wishes, I'll extend that to also mean I won't write a full review.

In fact, if you plan on playing this game, I strongly suggest you play a different game. The walkthrough of this game agrees with me.

Under Loch

This game had a pleasant presentation, with a nice background color. It has a secret you need to beat it, so feel free to check out the well-guided walkthrough, which doesn't give much away.

Once I got the game started, it became an interesting back and forth. You play as two characters, one who is visiting the UK on a pleasant excursion to a loch and another who is trapped in a hotel room near the loch. Together, the two of you coordinate a search to help her get out while getting some life details.

The conversations feel nice and genuine, which, since the game is mostly linear, is its best selling feature, outside of the initial puzzle of getting started.

I genuinely am quite confused by the ending. If it's meant to be supernatural or sci-fi, that would make sense. If it's meant to be a 'the reader will likely be confused like the protagonists, but should be able to figure it out', I'm afraid I didn't figure it out. I'd love to hear from others.

Given that the names of testers were anonymized, meaning that they're likely recognizable people, and that the author uses a pseudonym, and that it uses interesting technology features and pleasant styling, I'm going to guess this is by Allyson Gray.

On Repeat

When I got divorced I realized I had never really formed my own musical tastes. As the second child in a family of 9, I usually just went along with whatever was around me, like musicals and pop. In college, when I got a smartphone for the first time, I asked girls I like what music they liked, some of which I enjoyed as well and some of which has remained on my phone for over 20 years with perhaps less than 10 plays ever (sorry, Matt Acosta's Songs we Sing and Carrie Underwood's Carnival Ride). I did pick up a fondness for opera. When I married my ex-wife, we mostly compromised on generic pop.

After my divorce, I was emotionally shattered for a long time. I looked up the 1000 best albums of all time on some website and tried listening to them. Radiohead's OK Computer was number 1. I ended up really liking Radiohead, Pink Floyd, and Kanye West (censored versions). I bought every Radiohead album except the first one (can't remember the name, just remember it wasn't as good) and I listened to basically nothing but Radiohead for 2-3 years. It was the kind of depressing music that matched my mood (along with Kanye's online clean version of "Runaway" in a movie form, which I typically listened to more than watched). I stopped listening as much when my emotional health and confidence improved in the last few years. While not relevant to this game, I then got into video game and cartoon music through my son (like Adventure Time, Undertale, Steven Universe), and currently have been listening to a lot of Daft Punk and French, Spanish, Chinese and German songs (French and German for when I teach the classes as elective, spanish and chinese to have something to talk to the spanish and chinese teachers about). (I was looking through and found my recap for June-August 25. It's trash but that's okay. The number one song on there was, slowed down, the background music for a swimming video, and someone said it was the worst song they had ever heard, but I liked it and listened to it a lot. A lot of other videos on the list were only on there because of autoplay; I don't even like some of them. https://youtube.com/playlist?list=LRSRApzxWf1UTFGSjbiKiaPMz-XzR-n1g777u&si=LZMb5TNIQUK5OUtf. I also just found my 2023 recap which was in my transitional period between Radiohead and other stuff and has a bit of everything above https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=LRYRWuIJu55ZElFFBGjagoHV69yXEJSAsAJdt)

Anyway, this game reminded me of that Radiohead period, I'd put it on all the time when feeling bad.

In this game, you are going through a kind of funk and can spend each day cycling through calling your mom, listening to a new album, getting coffee, etc. with the same options each night and day. Different options can help you feel good or bad.

On my first playthrough, I did nothing but listen to the album at all times, and, predictably, I was sick of it at the end. This playthrough was kind of boring. On my second one, I played a variety of links, going back to the album only when I needed a pick-me-up. That was nice.

The game did make me reflect a lot; it's filled with relatable things that most people would experience, though a few things differed from my own. I like calling and talking to my mom, but I don't do it very often; typically when I do it's because I'm feeling down and I know she'll make me feel better. I don't hear about protests and don't even know what news I'd have to listen to to get protest alerts. I have a cat, but not one I got for myself, one that ended up with me, and we both coexist with each other but don't have dedicated playtime together (she's pretty antisocial).

The game serves as a mirror, reducing our PC and their lived experience to bare essentials to better reflect our lives. It's not substantial, but we can easily make it substantial through our own impression of it.

The Very Last Night I Spent at Ethelred Estate

When you're making a surreal horror game where you doubt your own reality, it's hard to tell if the story has problems or if its accurately simulating the protagonist's mental state. I think this game has problems, though. I reached a point where I could no longer play (with the only choice being 'listen close') and there were several types (like "It's if" where it should have been "It's as if".) Other things could be mistakes or intentional. At one point the game says you're "pregnant again" right after saying you're pregnant for the first time; that would fit with the game's blurb ("the details in her mind keep changing").

The plot that I saw (starting from a wedding) has the player's mother warn of a huge problem that will occur related to firstborns in the family. Something's wrong with the estate itself, with cracked mirrors and a cockroach infestation.

The core concept is something I've seen executed well before, and if the bugs and typos were fixed, I think it would be worth putting out an updated version of the game. I would immediately increase my score from a 1 to a 3 (I only have it lower since my rubric penalizes buggy games).

Golden King

Damon Wakes likes to push the boundaries of what is considered IF. This year I'm thinking of it less like a 'this is really important for me personally to establish what is IF and what isn't' and more like 'this is a poll by Damon and it's my turn to vote'. For me, I wouldn't want to see more like this. Fullscreen 3d engine games with sound go against most the reason I like IF (discreteness, gameplay that can be started and stopped). I did like the Ultraviolent Unicorn game and would like more of it, and have been avoiding UI3. Sometimes even the 'bad' games are 'good'. I rated The Miller's Garden very low and it's currently the lowest-rated game by Wakes that isn't an Uninteractive Fiction game, but I included it in my longlist of favorite games, because it just stuck in my brain for some reason, the mundane inevitability of loss.

Anyway, this game, as I said, I didn't like as much. It's not even the 3d engine and voiceover; the game 2/5 by BenyDanette is a french/english bilingual unity game where you make choices walking down hallways that have printed text in them and voice overs. I liked its introspection. I think the reason I liked this less was simply the lack of printed text.

Morality-wise it was interesting. It's a gdevelop game where you play as a chess king and everywhere you move, things turn to gold. I intentionally turned trees to gold and got a voice over and guards to gold. The whole time my wife and child spoke and laughed with each other. I knew there might be some ending, but I decided to simply stop playing. The laughter of my child was beautiful, and in my immersion I didn't want to silence it, and only not playing could guarantee that it wouldn't permanently end (though of course, ironically, turning off the game silences it).

Skeletrom Crew on the Loose

This is a short anthology of skeleton stories, a cast of characters rising from the ground to have adventures. You pick a skeleton then get to see what it does.

Each one is brief, though I only played through two. The game includes goofy things like spelling Skeleton differently every time and it also goes for more serious moments, kind of like Nightvale/reboot Doctor Who type humor.

I thought it was fun. If it was an ectocomp entry it would probably do really well. It was cool to experience in this competition. I'd likely have played all the branches if I wasn't trying to knock out the last IFComp games I haven't reviewed before I go on a trip.

Alana's Dungeon

When my son was much younger, we made some fun interactive fiction games together, including a twine game about a haunted hotel and evil easter bunny that I think is now lost forever. We also started a bunch of simple Inform adventures, including one where you wander around a map and meet pirates. It was all pretty buggy and simple as he was just a little kid, but fun.

This game seems like a similar result of parent-child bonding. As a way for a family to spend time together, it is beautiful and sweet and will likely bring lots of good memories. As a game for people to play for fun, it falls short. Its mostly finding keys an unlocking things, but some of the things you have to unlock aren't mentioned, and some descriptions make no sense (like interacting with the cage after the orc dies).

So, I'll likely rate this as a low score, which doesn't mean that it was bad to make the game or that the authors did a bad job, but because I don't think that the score really matters in a game like this. Winning the competition would be nice but the excitement would just last for a short time, as kids change hobbies so often. But the memories will hopefully last a lifetime.

Ass in the Woods

This was a brief Twine game that had a cool-looking background, colored text and text effects, and some impressive moments of description.

It's fairly short. I can't tell if it branches a lot or not; I played once, and there were a lot of options on how to react to things, which was nice.

It's a retelling of part of A Midsummer Night's Dream, but instead of Bottom being pampered by Titania from a love potion, the fairies seems to be pranking him by treating him like a theatrical star.

In the path I played, Oberon came, with a cool intro where the game described trees stretching into antlers with gore on them and such.

The game uses a time text mechanism at time but can be skipped.

I like the UI things and I enjoy Shakespearean works. I didn't end up feeling a strong emotional connection to this work, but its hard to pin down why. Maybe because it missed some of the things I like most about Shakespeare like the wordplay and word choices, and because the new material was fairly simple (mostly about a person being stuck up). But I feel glad I played the game.

The Copper Tavern

A lot of times when I'm making a game, in the first day or two I'll make a toy model with some of the items and people in it just to play around (like for Never Gives Up Her Dead, one of the first things I did was make Frankenstein from the horror psychology area and give him some dialog).

This game seems like it never made it past that stage. Like its apparent sister game, Gambler's Quest (both made in punyinform by one-named people with no links, similar walkthroughs, uploaded at around the same time as indicated by adjacent numbers in the urls, both unfinished games), this game has just a few rooms with a couple of interactions in them and not a lot of coherence. It does have a complete story, but some things don't make sense (I never found an eviction notice but its mentioned that I found one) and many things aren't implemented. The AK-47 makes me wonder if it was intentionally meant to be random and buggy and score low in IFComp, but it's hard to tell.