Reviews by MathBrush

This game is the first parser game by Lamp Post Projects, whose other works that I played have been watercolor-illustrated fantasy choice-based games, often with mystery elements.

This game is in the same setting, I believe. You play as a gnome working at a museum for a kingdom that recently received a crate of artifacts from a neighboring kingdom who had stolen some of your works. The artifacts are broken and/or disassembled.

Your job is to take a list of artifacts, find the pieces corresponding to them, assemble them, label them, and display them. The puzzles are not overly difficult and generally very on-the-nose, but there were a couple of nice twists and the overall interaction mechanism used the core parser game cycle of X-TAKE-DROP/USE very well.

The game is well-implemented, and I rarely if ever had to fight the parser.

Story-wise, the lore felt consistent and relevant to the game and was parceled out in manageable chunks. The kingdoms and characters felt realistic, and I could identify with the protagonist through suspension of disbelief.

Andrew Schultz, renowned wordplay game writer, has recently been adding images to his games which I think has been a great improvement.

This game is spoonerism-based, like many of the author's other games. You wander from place to place, finding important objects and transposing the beginning sounds of the words, unlocking new places to go to or having an effect on the environment.

The plot is more episodic than narrative, focused on helping people out or bringing items together.

This one felt well-organized and the art seemed more detailed than before. It had two puzzles that I struggled with, which broke the easier pattern of 'here are these obvious words' with 'guess these additional words'. But it was harder in a good way; I wonder if I could have gotten them right without help.

There were 2 or 3 minor inconsistencies; a map said it exited east when it meant west, and a picture said something was right when it meant left. But overall it was satisfying.

Like several other games in this archaeology-themed competition, this has a mash-up of different cultures, with a Sherpa guiding us into an Egypt-like crypt that includes Meso-American iconography.

It uses what seems to be a custom system used once before by this author (MAD Candy Interactive Fiction Studio). It has several good features (visually nice-looking, can save etc.) but could use some more strong features (like being able to easily repeat commands).

The game centers around the same puzzles 4 or so times in a row with slight variations each time. I was surprised that the difficulty didn't increase and that there wasn't as much variety. There was a hard puzzle for me, but that's because I didn't examine all scenery and had trouble with the parser.

I did have some struggle with the parser, especially with things like the piano keys (the F key, for instance, can't be called F or Key or F Key but has to be called F Bone).

Overall, I feel pretty neutral about the game. There's a consistent plot but not a strong plot arc; there's helpful parser features but some basic parser elements that are weak; there are interesting puzzles but most are rendered moot by using the same elements over and over. So, pretty much neutral.

I liked this game a lot more than the first two in the series. Those leaned heavily on anime tropes and picked some of ones I don't enjoy as much mixed in with the ones that do.

This entry keeps the best part of the series (good action scenes, strong themes and well-distinguished characters) and less of the bad parts. It also adds new mechanics.

The first third or so of the game finishes off Samurai of Hyuga 2 with a detective scenario. I love mystery/detective games so that colored my perception of the rest of the game in a positive light. It has an unusual pattern; I've made classifications of IF mystery games before and written about them in posts, but this is a little different. IF mystery games usually have one of the following ways to model deduction (this is copied from a different post of mine):
1-Have a standard puzzle game that happens to be about murder mystery, with solving the puzzles leading to solving the mystery. This is like Ballyhoo.
2-Modelling evidence and clues in-game, which have to be combined to form a solution. This is how Erstwhile works, and most of my mysteries.
3-Collecting evidence through puzzles and conversation and then having a quiz at the end (where you have to accuse the right person). This is how Toby’s Nose works.
4-Collecting physical evidence and showing it to someone, being able to make an arrest when you have enough evidence.

This game is most similar to 3, except instead of one quiz, there are a couple of dozen mini-quizzes to see if you're paying attention.

Sometimes the logic of the author wasn't clear to me, so I used a guide on and off, both here and to keep my attunement high later.

I felt more engaged in the game because of this. The subject matter was very heavy, but the interactions were more enjoyable than other entries in the series.

The second half of the game involves you confronting the next Demon in the series, a powerful general of an army. At this point, I got a bit confused, as I was reading in bits and pieces over a week. I somehow got roped into training soldiers for a competition, my ninja companion went away, and one of the general's samurai killed three other samurai, and I don't know why (probably because I didn't accompany them when given the choice). So I was lost a bit.

But, I ended up losing my nerve as a ronin while also training a bunch of new people. The goal became to identify each person's nature, what they needed, and to strengthen up.

Again, I liked this section a lot. Again, my mind wasn't always in sync with the authors, so I used a guide sometimes (but I do that with a ton of parser games, so...). I liked the ending.

This episode really turned around the series for me. I said that I wouldn't have continued past Samurai of Hyuga 2 if I weren't reviewing all Hosted Games, and that's true, but since I did try it, I'm glad.

This game is a parser game written in QuestJS and entered in the 2026 Text Adventure Literacy Jam.

In it, you enter a strange villa with a number of rooms accessible one at a time, each with a diorama or statue representing a stage in human progress (from hunters and gatherers to mathematics). Gameplay mostly consists of finding something missing and assembling it, or finding a code and applying it elsewhere. Doing so unlocks the next room and part of one meta-puzzle.

Overall, the concept is an intriguing one and one that has been explored in a satisfying way in other games like The Edifice, though this game has a unique take.

That writing is not bad. I poked at the code at one point and there is a version in German as well, so I suspect it may have been translated at one point, but there's no sign of that really in the version I read.

Why the low score? To me, the parser was just a lot to wrestle with. I constantly felt like I was typing the wrong things. A lot of nouns were missing synonyms (especially a headboard that was prominently mentioned and part of a major puzzle). The author decided to eschew compass directions, so doors had to be typed out instead, but you can't ENTER DOOR or GO DOOR, you have to USE DOOR, except when you're in a room outside the main hall, you don't USE DOOR you USE HALL.

I eventually had to download the game and pop open the code to figure out how to get to the ending. Each individual puzzle has some nice creativity to it, it's just hard to figure out how to deal with the parser. This game would have benefited from more testing and feedback, but it's also the kind of game it's hard to get testers for, which is kind of a vicious loop. The overall plot felt a bit missing as well; while there was an overall progression, nothing much is explained or even hinted at. That's kind of par for the course for old-school puzzlers, though, so it's not a big complaint.

I always look forward to Daniel Stelzer's games now because they've basically become like Ryan Veeder, in that both have a good track record of consistently putting out well-polished games with interesting mechanics that are easy to finish and have a wide variety of settings.

The setup in this game is a kind of medieval alchemical heist, which made me realize several of the games in this competition have similar themes, which made me look up and discover the theme is 'archaeology'. The mechanic in the game is an object that vanishes things (discovering what that exactly means is the major crux of the game).

The map is compact, with most of it forming a 3x3 square. Elementals guard the different parts of the map, requiring some ingenuity in how to deal with them.

Overall I found the game solid and good for beginners while still being fun for experienced players (one optional puzzle was too hard for me as I hadn't experimented enough, but it was, fortunately, optional). To me the only flaw (if it can be called that) was that in my subjective opinion it stopped just short of greatness in story and mechanics. I feel like if it had just one more puzzle in the main areas and one more paragraph at the end with some kind of new interesting info or twist or hook then it would have been awesome. Even without that je ne sais quoi, it's one of the best games I've played this year.

This game was part of the Text Adventure Literacy Jam.

It's written in the Thinbasic Adventure Builder, and is quite a bit better of an experience than most Basic-written download-only windows-only adventure games I've played: shortcuts like X and I are recognized, for instance, and there's a character that can move around as well as context-dependent hints.

It's still a bit rough, but I only ran into one or two actions I really struggled with (one of the last actions of the game is to (Spoiler - click to show)POUR VIAL ON PEDESTAL but I kept trying (Spoiler - click to show)POUR MERCURY ON PEDESTAL, POUR MERCURY IN PEDESTAL, PUT VIAL IN PEDESTAL, POUR VIAL, PUT VIAL ON PEDESTAL, etc.).

The map is a bit confusing, especially as magical connections open up that lead in circuitous loops.

Story-wise, you're in search of the elixir of life and have to find ingredients in a monastery. Puzzles typically revolve around getting info for passwords or codes in one room and using them in another (like asking a character about 4 items and then combining the ones they tell you to).

The writing and plot felt very standard Catholicism-influenced fantasy, like the Deryni books or parts of David Eddings, but with a lot of elements that were both hyperspecific and generic. Orders and symbols were alluded to and not explained, characters were introduced but not commented on or involved, and there wasn't a clear progression or escalation of story. All in all, it reminded me of AI-generated plotlines and text that had some human editing mixed in, not necessarily because AI was used (it might not have been), but perhaps because AI was trained on a lot of stories similar to this one.

Samurai of Hyuga 1 was a game heavily influenced by samurai films and edgier anime, with a main character ronin who has killed countless people as an assassin and is assigned to guard a smart child while hunting demons.

In this game, you play shogi! For most of the time.

It actually works out well. Our character is kind of OP, so it's hard to think of creative obstacles for them. Rather than having more fighting, they are first severely injured and then roped into a shoji tournament where you have to take down a variety of foes while also being an uneducated and kind of dumb ronin.

The game broadens the world of the series by bringing in European influences. There are some opportunities for serious romantic moments. There are also a lot of dramatic deaths and bits of violence, making it one of the goriest IF series (compared to things I've read recently, it's similar to Centuria or maybe Kagurabachi in terms of gore).

This book also continues the trend of being plagued with questionable japanese translation and indecent behavior toward minors. The most egregious japanese example was translating the gold in 'gold general', a shogi piece, as 'gorudo' (the katakana transliteration of the English word gold, which is sometimes used for the color) rather than 金 'kin', which is both the native word and the actual word that is printed on the pieces themselves (including in in-game screenshots). Like the first game, other characters insinuate that our character is sexually attracted to our minor charge, and our character can attempt to flood the minor's mind with sexual images and takes a peek at them while changing. This is while the game frequently reinforces how young our character is, with chubby cheeks and being really small. I was recently on jury duty where we gave a guy 60 years in prison for abusing a dozen or so children, and witness testimony included families where he was starting the grooming process but didn't finish, and we also heard his own testimony. It was strange how many actions in the game were identical to things I heard that man say or heard testimony that he did, with the kids shaking and talking about their lives being ruined and not being able to trust anyone ever again, etc. And the minor grooming parts aren't necessary for the story at all; the 'innocent smart person that you're not allowed to be with' could just as easily be a celibate young adult nun or a monk, which have existed in Buddhism for centuries.

In any case, I'll finish the rest of the series, since I'm doing a survey of all the hosted games, but definitely would drop the series on my own because of the bad memories it brings up (some of the other jurors were vomiting during the trial and I was crying a lot).

This game is a collection of 55 very short stories, each of which has a quiz at the end. In hard mode, you have to type the answer; in easy mode, you have to select from a list of choices.

They're organized in groups of 10, with 5 bonus questions at the end. Some segments parody famous mystery characters like Encyclopedia Brown or the old Clue books.

The level of difficulty for most mysteries is incredibly low. Some mysteries are literally like 'Mr A, Ms B, Mr C and Ms D walk into a bar. Who walks in next?'

=Mr E
=Mr F
=Mr G
=Mr H

I can only assume that the target audience is fourth grade or younger. I remember reading much more complex mysteries in sixth grade, so it can't be that old.

The writing has a selection of jokes but is overall fairly non-descriptive. It is polished. The interactivity is relatively low, and I didn't feel strong emotion from reading the stories.

This game was entered in the Text Adventure Literacy Jam for 2026.

I came in expecting a large, sprawling game, as most of the authors' games have been, which gave me a crumb of trepidation as I've had less time recently. Fortunately, this one was intended for beginners and so is fairly brief, with the time and work going into polish rather than size.

This is a very trope-y, old-fashioned Native American adventure in the vein of Indiana Jones (and old black and white serials and such). Cultures are mixed together (including Egypt and Native American cultures) and there is a distinct lack of respect for native people, to the point that it feels like the character doesn't see them as human. As I discovered, this is intentional to the piece and is addressed in what was to me a satisfying way.

The puzzles were satisfying and relatively straightforward. I got stuck twice, once because I for some reason kept typing (Spoiler - click to show)SQUIRE instead of SQUIRT and didn't notice it, and again because of what I think is an intentional soft-lock where I used an item too early (fortunately, I had saves, and the game warns you that you may need to save. Even if I hadn't, it wouldn't take too long to replay to that point using knowledge of puzzle solutions).

Overall, I found this game fun. It wasn't super-descriptive, but that could be a bonus for any second-language speakers or young readers just learning about text adventures.