Reviews by MathBrush

This game essentially takes a video of someone walking to school for 23 minutes and slows it down to one frame at a time, with each tap of the mouse or keyboard advancing the image and the accompanying text.

The poem felt very realistic. The person it depicts seems like he's going through a crisis in their life and are very negative; he uses strong profanity to describe many things in his life, and talks about his hatred for school and his complicated relationship with his father.

The way that text from passersby that you can overhear pops up is really cool, and I felt like overall we got a great glimpse into this person's mind. I saw others complain about the interaction mechanism and at first I thought, 'no, this is just fine!' but then I saw that after dozens of clicks I had only gotten to the first 10 minutes of the 23 minute interaction I got worn out.

Reading this does make me wonder about students at school. I'm a teacher at a private school (and formerly taught college) and I thrive around crowds (I talked to a psychologist about it once, I grew up in a crowded house and like being on the edges of sociable groups) so being around the kids and interacting with them revitalizes me and summer vacation (like I have now) is way more boring. I've heard that public school is less rewarding due to large class sizes and the lack of private school's filtering mechanisms (like just dropping students who are dangerous or problematic). This game made me wonder what public school teaching would be like.

Overall, cool concept. I agree with others that a pared-down version would be better received (just to avoid the massive clicks). Or (this is a tongue-in-cheek suggestion) making it like clicker games where every 10 clicks you can buy an auto-clicker and then upgrade.

I don't know why, but as I review this I am struck by a strong memory of the game Gallery Gal, where you can, at any point in the narrative, turn into an art gallery, thus permanently ending the game (and destroying any structures in the area).

This game has you play as a summoner who cannot talk and, instead, summons one of four people: a fairy general, a giant, a huge beast (who, much like gallery gal, destroys the area), and a 3.5th-wall breaking magical character.

Essentially all gameplay is choosing between these 4, which is a fun mechanism. There's not really anything wrong with the game, but somehow it felt like something was missing, almost like it was an early access game or a trailer for a game.

I didn't play the games during Spring Thing (wanting to preserve some neutrality) and didn't read most reviews, so I thought the whole time this was a thoughtful slice of life game about someone who had passed on and it was a funeral or something with a message beyond the grave to shame the living. I liked this, though!

This was one of the more enjoyable modern commodore 64 games I've played. Short, good parser, to the point, amusing.

You play as a schoolchild trying to break into a school in the 80s to copy the latin exam so that you can cheat on the real test day.

The school is pretty big, with some areas gating off others. Gameplay is classic parser style with picking up objects, examining them, and using them to open up obstacles.

I do recommend typing COMMANDS to get a list of commands.

There are some red herrings and an inventory limit but the red herrings added to the charm and the inventory limit was very generous (I picked up almost everything and only had to drop a couple of things).

A nice way to spend 15-30 minutes.

I always look forward to the Senica thing each year, a collection of short Twine games written by students and associated adults.

This year features a wide range of stories. What I knew Senica thing for in the past was its collection of simple CYOA-style 'do you go into the cave or follow the trail into the forest' gameplay, with simple sentences and refreshing youthful writing, often with minor typos. I enjoyed it because it feels fresh and real and represents someone stretching and growing as an author.

This year sees some of that return, but also sees some games with slick UIs and overly perfect text that was very precise but never seemed to say much of anything. Whether this is an effect of AI (either in translation, writing or in planning) or something else, it did feel less exciting than the raw, heartfelt stories.

I liked the game with poisoning the king, and the one where I could become Spiderman. The adult's game about truth and justice made me think more about civil liberties and freedoms than I usually do. Overall, it's fun to see people embrace these tools and share their stories!

This is a mystery game, one of my favorite IF genres.

It's a cozy mystery. No murder here--instead, a cake competition is sabotaged when one person's overnight dough goes missing.

You are called in as a professional to investigate what happened.

First, you go through and ask everyone questions, which can be done lawnmower style (i.e. just picking every option). Occasionally something you do in one branch will unlock something in another.

The characters include two long-term competitors, one of whom favors style over substance and always wins, vs a more traditional baker. There are also the competition organizer and the security guard to question, with another person coming in later.

The 'deduction' phase consists of filling in drop-down menus with the crime, the motive, and pieces of evidence.

This is where my experience with the game hit the brakes and sent me running for hints. The possibility space is huge; there are like 20 options in the dropdown menu, which is the same for most options, so there are like (20^5)/6 possibilities to guess from for the right answer (the /6 is because the order of the last 3 don't matter).

So the game would have to have strong clues to make this doable. And I think it could be for the right person or persons; this would be a great game to do as a group. But for me, the clues were often very far back in the game hidden as incidental details. And there are multiple solutions that aren't accepted. For instance, the first thing you can deduce (mid-game spoilers) is (Spoiler - click to show)that the security guard ate some of the cake. You find goop in a paper cup. There is also frosting on their uniform. So you'd think that the crime is he 'ate the frosting' and the evidence is 'paper baking cup'. But actually the crime is 'ate the cake' and the evidence is 'rainbow frosting.' For similar reasons, I had difficulty and basically ran to the solution for the rest of the game.

Does this mean I'm dumb? Yes. Most people play games not that require you to be smart, but make you think you are smart or good or that you learn over the timeframe of the game.

I think someone that takes careful notes and/or plays with others may get a more satisfying end out of this.

I liked the characters and the setting (circus is always fun) and the baking description made me hungry.

This is a visual novel that is a bit more complex than appears on one playthrough.

You play as a young person in a relatively small town or suburb whose friend is leaving. You're part of a friend group with girls (I believe, from the art) named Clover and Iris. You have a thing for Clover, and Iris is beginning to notice. But Clover is moving away.

The game mixes weather and feelings into a metaphor with the snow kind of being like the relationship.

There are several dreams as well.

Overall there is a melancholic goodbye feel. It reminded me of several similar situations I had when I was young and didn't have control over my location, or when I did have control but it meant saying goodbye to people.

There are multiple endings that depend on your choices throughout the whole game, I think 5 or 6 total.

This is an unfinished TADS game with some good content and promise.

You get isekai'd by two weirdos into a purple portal. The world you enter has lots of pipes and knobs and rust (feels kind of mystlike) as well as a critter (doesn't feel Mystlike).

The cool thing about the game is all the mushrooms (which you can take multiple chunks of for each fungus). Through experimentation and consultation you can determine the unique properties of each, which are quite complex. The game models liquids, multiple objects, movable 'door'-like objects, and NPCs.

A more full version would definitely benefit from hints and from a general pass of bugfixes and better implementation. I had to read two people's transcripts to see how to progress. Overall though I had a good time, it feels like fun interaction.

I helped a bit in the creation of this game and am mentioned in the credits, so this is not an objective review.

I gave a higher score than I had anticipated doing when rating this game, considering I had played it before. That's because I've been moderately burnt out on IF for a few months or a year, but somehow playing this unfolded the old magic and made me think, 'oh yeah, this is why I like IF'. So anything that can do that to my brain ought to be rated highly, I think.

This game is tiny, and very polished, like a .01 carat diamond in an elaborate setting. You basically are in a room and look at 4 things and the game ends. But, other responses for attempted actions are handled well, and there's a nice custom actions bar, and a very complex credits section that almost has more structure and words than the rest of the game.

The content is a malicious narrator talking in 2nd person, like the narrator in Eat Me. The implication is that the character has passed on and a narcissistic parent has remained, making everything about them and revealing some of the possible burdens the person had in life.

I like stuff like this because it feels real and personal, as opposed to being manufactured for mass appeal (which most of my own work is).

I started playing through all Spring Thing 2026 games in reverse order by IFDB rating. I saw this one had a 2.5 rating, and so I had low expectations going in. The first screen really surprised me: fun, inspired text, nice layout, a comprehensive help system. How could this be rated low?

Then I tried the game itself, and now I can see. There's little to no connection between individual events, and almost no wrap-up at the end. You are placed in a variety of class villain situations and act against the protagonists, but they retain no memory of events, there is no plot arc, the characters are different every time, etc.

Love the writing in this but not the mechanics so much. I'm glad that what is there is polished. I've liked work by this author before, who's done some fun forum games.

This is a very short twine game that serves as the first act of a larger game.

You can play as two characters. There is a rich businessman involved in a memory transfer exchange, putting his mind on a hard drive. You can play both as the businessman and as the doctor.

There's a lot of promise here; in fact, if the ending was left as-is, it could be seen as a complete 'lady or the tiger' type story where the ending is implied.

But it's labelled as incomplete, thus my lower rating. If this gets finished I'd love to play it, there's a lot of nice sensory details and the perspective switch completely changed my mind on what the right choices are.