Reviews by MathBrush

This game takes the structure of the first Open Sorcery and fits into a Christmas theme.

Like the first game, you are a sentient fire spirit that is also part computer program. It follows the 'canon' ending of the first game where you save everyone. In this game you find spirits by identifying their 'matter' and 'motive'. There are a lot more nice spirits in this game (although I did find out that I murdered a potential nice pet in the first game. Oops!)

The biggest new addition is that each dream is its own playable game with a variety of puzzles. They can be pretty hard, but you get multiple attempts. An optimal playthrough of the game is very hard, requiring a guide or lots of attempts. A fun but okay playthrough is pretty easy.

I was a little torn on this game. I love Christmas and it was fun seeing a sincere appreciation of it, especially through a new lens. On the other hand, part of my love for Open Sorcery is for the sense of growth and development and newness, and progression, and this game had less of that. It's like the difference between Season 1 of a show and season 4 or 5 where they're really established.

I did love the gnomes in this, very fun. And the emphasis on us learning how to give gifts. For its small price, I'd definitely say it's worth it; while it's not as fun to me as the original, it is still more fun that most games.

This is another Hosted Game that goes completely off the beaten track with its own mindset. So, another caveat here that while it's not what I was seeking when I started playing Hosted Games, I believe it achieves its goals well of providing a progressive strategic gambling experience.

You enter a casino with 5 floors, and are given some tokens. Each floor becomes progressively more strategic.

Floor 1 is purely random, with games like roulette or lotteries. Higher floors include things from Blackjack to poker all the way to a variant of Risk.

I get easily addicted to things (and so do my family) so I generally do my best not to enjoy gambling, so I was at odds with the game's desire to be entertaining to me. Instead, I tried to maximize my success.

The game is like a reverse casino, because you have an inherent luck trait that gives you an edge over the house. Once I realized that, it was easy to get past the first few floors. The reason casinos work so well is that the law of large numbers says that the longer people play, the closer their winning average is to the theoretical average. And every casino game is designed so that the house, on average, wins. That's why high rollers get so many perks; the longer they stay in the casino, the more likely they are to lose it all.

In this game, you have the edge. So, for instance, I can just go to roulette and pick any bet and blindly play over and over again until it gets high enough, then increase the bet and repeat. The standard deviation isn't 0, so you can run out of money, but there's a bank with infinite loan amounts with no interest, just repaying.

Blackjack was easier since I learned how to deal it for a fake school casino event. Poker became a little harder; it's 7 card poker (2 in your hand, 5 on the table) and you can pick the best hand of 5 cards, so flushes almost always won.

Commander, on 4th floor, is the one that really got me. I wanted to rush through since I had been playing an hour longer than I had planned to, and it has a system where you have to guarantee you know whether a certain hand will win or lose, as well as winning 3 out of 5 hands each round. I eventually realized a way to guarantee I'd know.

Each floor has minimal story, with an option or two to get a little text. I did like the building up of the story over time, and the shape of the plot arc is solid.

There are essentially no advantages to the text format here; seeing the cards would have helped a lot. I realize that the graphical gambling game market is already heavily saturated, but if you take an overly common game format and remove helpful features, it doesn't bring extreme joy. IF often thrives when it does what graphics can't or allows much more content than the artists of a graphical game could be paid to create (and that is achieved here in the narrative portions, just not the rest).

The progression worked well for me, although like I said commander was pretty hard for me. I don't think that the author could have done better with the goal in mind (to make a text-only progressive gambling casino with a focus on games and a de-emphasis on narrative).

This is the series I didn't know I needed. I never was a big 'military' guy outside of a book I read as a kid called "Arms and Armor" that had pictures of English, well, arms and armor throughout history; I used to use it to look up what weapons in D&D manuals and David Eddings books looked like (like Lochaber Axes).

But I always thought things like rank and chain of command were interesting. One of my closer coworkers is a marine veteran and talks about things in the military a lot, and my ex-wife's grandfather was a lieutenant colonel when he died, which I found out is what most officers retire at.

This game really helped explain everything a lot. Now I know that doesn't sound like a resounding endorsement, but one thing I like about really peak media is how it teaches you something about the world or makes you think that it's teaching you about something (a non-real example would be like Mistborn's system; a more realistic example would be Moby Dick, which I enjoy quite a bit). This game made me feel like I really was an officer, climbing up the ranks.

It is a continuation of the last game in the series. You engage in a series of serious battles, and can gain temporary authority even up to lieutenant colonel. There are two main branches, and competent women make a significant appearance (unfortunately, my character, while interested in the spy woman, failed to make a good impression on her, to the point that she hated me).

I was dismayed to import my character from the first game only to be essentially told "Your character will fail. Make a new one." I appreciated the warning though. And it's not wrong; I had made an uncharismatic, boneheaded soldier who mastered individual warfare.

Once again I died at the end; once again I didn't mind due to the save and the realistic circumstances (many battles are lost due to random chance or poor decisions).

I'm looking forward to the next game. I heard the fourth game is on ice, and read the authors's Jan 2025 post about it, which puts a lot of things into more clear context. I definitely wish him the best!

The art for this series has been fun so far as well.

I really liked the writing in this game. You play as a soldier in a time of sabres and muskets in a fantasy world that only has light changes from our own (in this game, the only different was some sensing abilities and magical fire).

I'm posting these reviews on IFDB and the Choice of Games forums simultaneously, and I was really shocked when I came to IFDB and saw the most common rating for this game was 3 stars. I thought it was great! I think the interactivity might have been what turned people off; while there is significant, signalled branching, there are also long chunks of 'next page'. I don't mind that nearly as much when the story is solid, as it is here.

This games serves a specific niche. You are genderlocked male and war, training, and comrades are the main focus. There is no romance that I saw, although the relationship with the two main male NPCs can definitely be coded as yaoi-esque (using that term rather than mlm because it really reminds me of manga ships that my students really like, like Gon/Killua, Hinata/Kageyama or Deku/Bakugo where there's nothing canon but you can infer tension). I interpreted the relationships as friendship, doing my best to be a buddy to the grim and glum illegitimate nobleman I was rooming with.

You choose your overall stats fairly early on, with some chances to adjust them here or there. Time and money are perhaps even more important as stats; I chose to spend money on lodgings for my soldiers.

I died once, but the chapter save helped. I played the entire time as a combat maniac just wanting to bash everything.

My dad growing up used to spend a lot of time on wargames, buying those old tabletop hex wargames that were largely replaced by computer games such as Fantasy General and Panzer general, which he also played. He also liked (he's still alive, just not into this stuff as much) civil war stuff. I'd watch the shows with him and play the games, this really gives me that vibe. Also reminds me of war books like All Quiet on the Western Front. Very excited to read the rest of the series.

This game is one of the smaller Hosted Games. It contains a full story and a systematic scoring system, and if someone I knew personally told me they had made it, I'd be proud of them for finishing an interesting story.

As I've been reviewing all hosted games, it inevitably falls into some comparisons, and I'd have to say it is on the weaker end of the scale for my personal tastes.

It riffs on the Wizard of Oz books, and includes characters like Ozma. You are a young person (a wannabe witch or wizard) and its your quest to ask Glinda to make you a real witch or wizard.

You travel through Oz, running into familiar faces and deciding to either do good (for which you get goodness points) or wickedness (for which you get wicked points).

It looks at first like there's a lot of branching, but in most scenarios that aren't good vs wicked, only one option will be 'real' while the others send you back to the choice until you pick the right one.

The author does seem to have a big love for different parts of the Oz series, including a lot of scenes with the powder that makes things come alive.

There were some noticeable typos every few pages. Overall, while this feels like a labor of love, I didn't have quite as much fun as I could have due to the lack of substantial choices or character arcs (except for gaining wizard merch, that part was fun).

This is a huge Choice of Games game with a lot of branching.

To me this feels like pure TTRPG. You are an orc, and there are 4 or more stages of your life. (This game branches a ton, so I'll share what happened in my experience and mention others' later).

I started as a baby, and decided to have pure violence throughout my life. By attacking and assaulting other babies, I became a proud young orc.

As a young orc, I gained a 'hub' and the option to do different things like train to be a warrior or a shaman. My hub gained in options as I became a young adult and then a mature adult.

Hub options include getting tattoos, buying magic items, training, meeting with camp visitors, or, the most expansive, going adventuring, which results in a lot of D&D style quests. And D&D/Pathfinder was the big feel for me here, with halflings, elves, dark elves, humans, orcs, goblins, a lich, zombies, a one-eyed orc god. The only unusual thing was a mind-controlling cyclops or two.

There were also war simulators, where you have cavalry, land units, and skirmishers.

I chose violence and power almost the whole game, helping me win tons of battles and kill a lot of monsters. Then, I became king.

Suddenly I can't kill everything personally! I can kill a lot of things, but now I have to negotiate. Do I regret not being nice to the orc god before I became king? Maybe.

It's kind of like Spore, going from cell stage to individual to tribal to society.

There are a lot of chances to help others, which sometimes gives you amazing benefits and sometimes bites you in the butt (I'm looking at you, goblin entrepreneurs).

The difficulty was tuned well for me. There were many save points, and I felt powerful, but at times I had to make sacrifices.

I was worried I'd not have enough time to try all the activities, but ended up circling around and doing a lot over and over again. I didn't experience everything the game has to offer, though, as others have mentioned becoming a demon, and doing different shaman activities, or a quick ending to the game focused on gluttony.

There was no romance, which I didn't really miss (although a few NPCs you meet would make pretty good ROs.).

The writing went beyond basic or perfunctory to be interesting and fun. My life felt epic, and while there wasn't one huge plot arc, each scene was well written and there were many narrative payoffs. The character art was well done, cohesive and fit with the style of the game.

My final ending was pretty great. All in all, this is a good 'meat and potatoes' game for people who like classic fantasy RPGs, gamebooks, or power fantasies.

This game is one of the more interesting branching sequels I've seen in an IF game.

I played through 2 rounds. In the first, I was married to the queen. It was up to me to participate in a fake tournament, organize the kingdom in the queen's absence, deal with diplomatic treaties, negotiate with barbarians, and engage in wars. I died in good old age surrounded by family.

In the second version, I was a minor lord in a kingdom ruled by evil, mocked and despised and humiliated by the evil king. I was thrown in jail, and took over my daughter, and ran into some familiar companions that gave me a smile. I didn't see the end of this run, as I died after finding my father but giving the reason for the evil king to kill me.

I think there are other possibilities as well, as you can play as a non-king lord and there are also some special quests from the main menu.

Overall, I was pleased by the level of detail and amount of polish. Some of the fights did drag, as other reviewers have noted. There was a lot more storytelling in this game, more descriptiveness, especially in the 'kingdom of evil' version where you rebel (there is one actual story-story that takes up like 8 pages).

One thing I like about this game is that it has clear evil and clear good, not of people (who are generally mixed good and evil, with some noticeable exclusions) but of acts and options. Mercenaries actually kill people; good people can become damaged after imprisonment and torture. Death is real and can happen; women and children can be lost in war, but relief can come and justice can be served.

When playing some of the less popular official Choice of Games, which are designed to have multiple competing interests, one common thing I see is having two or more factions set up that theoretically oppose each other but don't really do anything 'wrong'. Everything is just a misunderstanding, or a mild difference of political opinions (I've done this before myself). What a lot of the best hosted games do (and best choice of games do) is, when they come to the brink of making a character actually unethical or an act truly awful, they don't pull back, but push through it and allow evil to exist. Like Choice of Robots letting you decide to conquer the world with a robot army or develop doctor robots to save your mother's life or a companion robot to marry, you can make decisions that are actually evil or actually good or both.

David and Goliath wouldn't be nearly as interesting if Goliath was just gently bonking guys on the head instead of killing them. Hamlet would be much less interesting if it turns out the uncle accidentally gave the king an overdose and Hamlet forgives him and asks him to talk it out. If Cinderella gets along with the step-mother and sisters, then why would she even want to leave?

When I say it's good for games to allow true evil, I don't mean this in a grimdark way, like a game having a lot of murder or sexual assault with an awful protagonist is good; I don't really enjoy games like that. I like it when the bad contrasts with the good; people can die, but they can also be saved. We can let people down, but we can raise them up, too. Depicting real evil acts allows real good acts, and vice versa. A completely grimdark game is just as boring as a completely harm-free game. And like I said, it's the acts that are good and evil, not the people. This game does a good job with that, like a neighboring country that can be an ally but also can be overbearing, or a barbarian tribe that loves violence but respects you if you are a noble warrior.

Anyway, my main complaint of Swamp Castle was that it was too short, and this is the opposite of that, so I enjoyed this a lot.

This is the first and smallest of the Magincia games by Philip Kempton. From the other games I've played by him, I associated this author with stats-heavy, highly mechanics-driven gameplay in a relatively low-fantasy medieval world where you manage combat and troops.

This game was more of the same, or, rather, less of the same. I kind of spoiled myself by playing the big classics first and then playing the smaller, earlier prototype.

In this one, you're placed in charge of Swamp Castle, one of the worst castles around. You have to manage finances, troops, and scheming neighbors, as well as barbarian attacks and what may or may not be a dragon.

The game does punch above its 100K wordcount, as this author uses terse descriptions but a lot of actions, but it's still over pretty quickly. More importantly, I think it was less well-tuned than the author's other games. It's very easy to die if you don't know what's coming, requiring you to replay several times to make it to the end (unless you have a good strategy from the get-go). I even tried easy mode, which gave me tons of money, but still failed a few times. It's short enough that replay isn't that bad, though, so I didn't mind trying a few extra times.

But, I felt like the sequels were much stronger and didn't really depend on this one. I don't think anyone would be missing anything if they skipped out on this.

(After writing this, I looked around online and found quite a few fans of this game, so take everything I'm saying with a grain of salt! The main features that I didn't like as much, like easy deaths, short length, high replayability, etc. may be exactly the features someone is looking for in a game).

This is the third game in the series.

The first game, Evertree, was a fairly short but very branched mystery fantasy game set in an inn.

The second was both long and vary varied, with a ton of different options.

This game was so big, so complex, that the author had to split it in two. So we have the first half of a great game. The combinatorial explosion does seem to have given the author some burnout, who took time off to make a separate game (Kitsune, for Choice of Games) and had a full-time job that took up time. Fortunately, he's recently come back to writing in the last few months.

In a way, the game branches almost too much, which is something I also experienced with Jolly Good:Cakes and Ale. Both games give you a ton of important tasks and not enough time to complete nearly any of them. In both games, I felt overwhelmed, but once I started I realized I had more time than I thought. I guess for me, there's a sweet spot between freedom and forward impetus; in Sordwin, there were competing goals, but I felt like no matter what I picked the main story progressed and I moved forward. Once Lux City of Lies (the projected sequel) is finished, I wouldn't mind if the next book in the series (if the author wants to continue) went back to the branching level of Sordwin.

Anyway, that's my only major complaint. This game itself is a lot of fun. I played a brownie druid and focused on going to work and meeting a fellow druid. I also focused on the main mystery of the mayor's death, and ignored all other side mysteries. I did attend events with Daisy, who carried over from the main game.

Story-wise (sorry it took me so long to get to this), you arrive at Lux, the big metropolis city, like Rome/Paris/London/NYC, and you get to have a job, find an apartment, and answer a summon from the mayor. You soon discover that the mayor has been murdered, and you are a top suspect!

In addition to this mystery, you find a big cast of new characters and reocurring old ones. Each day you choose what to do and who to spend time with, dealing with mysteries at night. Everything culminates in a great festival.

I can totally get why the author got burnt out, there are so many options and people online have really strong opinions and are asking for so much, but I just think that's a sign of how good the series is. If this were the first game in the series (and a complete game) people would be astounded and only have good things to say. It's only because it's compared to the past games in the series that people get critical. It's the way people will take a game like BTD6 or Terraria and say it's the worst game they've ever played, but only because 1)they've never actually played really bad games, or forgot about them, 2)heard a ton of people praising the game and tried it because of that, and 3)it didn't live up to their expectations. Now no one's said this game is awful, but it's in the 'famous + good series' tier which attracts more negative comments. I support the author in whatever he decides to do, even if it means cutting things I like to make a complete game.

No arcs are resolved here; each of the subplots hits an important note right near the end but there is no resolution.

This was a great game to play, definitely top 10 among Choicescript games I've enjoyed. It's a mystery (one of my favorite genres) and lets you be a mage, which is cool.

This is the second game in the Evertree Saga. The first game was also a fantasy mystery, but felt very short. This game, while each chapter can be completed relatively quickly, feels very substantial and has a ton of branches.

You come to an island which has been quarantined due to some kind of malady. Your employer has tasked you with recovering a package that was due and which is delayed on the island.

The mystery turns out to involve mysterious attacks, and everyone's on edge. You have to investigate not only the missing package and the attacks, but also your mysterious companion and the drama going on in town.

The game does great in at least 3 things that popped into my mind:

1-Lots of options. I maxed out my magic stat and used it for almost everything. The game felt like a breeze since I could read minds, teleport, fly, etc. This worked perfectly until one very crucial moment, but that tradeoff felt worth it. You can equally play as a buff or deceptive character. You can also bring in a completely different companion depending on your first game choices, which is very hard to code.
2-Good dialogue. Dialogue dominates this game, and the author manages to make each character feel distinct and fresh.
3-Real stakes. There are multiple competing goals, and it felt like I could make real progress on some if I invested time, but it meant leaving other parts of the game unexplored. However, the game manages to make you not feel like a loser for missing out on the other stuff, and all failure is accompanied by cool ways of getting out of it, often at the cost of others. This kind of thing is really hard to do, so I was impressed.

Overall, a great game.