Reviews by MathBrush

**Hildy** by J. Michael

Whew! This was a long game! I used hints a lot but I tried to do as much as I can on my own; I think I solved around 40% of the puzzles without assistance.

This is a Zorkian game, both in style and in setting; many characters from the Zork universe appear and you use its magic system.

The game has a long, linear opening that sets the stage followed by a long open puzzle segment and concluding with an endgame and epilogue.

Storywise, you are essentially a young college student named Hildegard (or, Hildy) who is on the rocks with the superiors. After unwinding, your advisor suggests you go out and clear your head, but that leads you to a long-deserted location where many mysteries await.

The author has made some solid games in the past (Diddlebucker, For the Moon Never Beams), but I think this is the best yet. The early segment is fair and the vast majority of puzzles feel well-clued and logical.

The difficulty is pretty high, though. It's like Infocom games where sometimes the struggle is knowing that a certain verb or action is even possible. You also have to pay close attention to detail; things can get mentioned early on and then never mentioned again.

Twice I was stymied by not noticing exits, including once very early on ([spoiler]I didn't realize my bedroom extended to the north[/spoiler]).

There are some 'old chestnut' puzzles, mainly a logic puzzle involving squares. I didn't mind it, but I could see others doing so.

I used a walkthrough for much of the game, and I have always done that with large parser games; it's one reason I've completed so many. Without a walkthrough, this game could last many hours, maybe being good for playing over a week or two. Without any hints at all, some things would be very hard to guess, so that would make play take even longer.

So I'd recommend this to two groups of people: those who enjoy the Zorkian setting (who could use a walkthrough or not), and those who want a polished, longer parser game (where I'd recommend not using it).

Very much enjoyed this game.

This was a hefty TADS game that I took several hours to play. It employs a variety of perspectives and player characters, and uses literary quotes, mostly from Poe.

The game primarily takes place in two time periods. One is set in the present (or around the present), in which an author has been discharged from the hospital after a explosion in a skyscraper leaves him wounded. The other is set in 1800s Baltimore where Edgar Allen Poe lies raving in a hospital sickbed.

The modern parts, while they include puzzles, are more story oriented, light on puzzles, and philosophical, while the older parts are an atmosphere-heavy mystery with puzzles and codes.

The city of Baltimore is fairly large, although the author has kept the total number of rooms to a small amount and gatekeeps them a few at a time to keep from getting overwhelmed.

The story that plays out is one that many can relate to, commenting on writing and authorship itself in a way that I found delightful. The exact specifics of who is who and what we were meant to believe and what is true can be difficult to suss out at times, but I'm thinking about replaying in the future to nail down those parts.

I became very stuck at one point due to the nature of some of the puzzles in Baltimore that are based on elapsed time. Something had changed without my being aware of it, and I went through every hint in the help section and couldn't figure it out, and even dumped the strings in the game and that didn't help, until I wandered around a bit more. So I'd say that frequent exploration, careful examination, and gathering everything not nailed down (and maybe some that is) are definitely helpful here.

Overall, the game has a literary or cinematic feel, much like Photopia. The game itself focuses on two ideals for writers: (Spoiler - click to show)popularity with the masses vs critical acclaim. I wonder which of the two ideals the author believes this game to be aiming towards, and which the audience response will be closest to (of course neither or both are a possibility). I love the idea, the writing rolled easily over my mind. I did have to take frequent breaks as there is quite a bit of information and it could be a lot to digest at times, what with both in-game puzzles, the big area, the multiple narrative layers and the mysteries left to the reader to puzzle out even after the game is over.

The author's most recent game before this, According to Cain, won the XYZZY Award and placed highly in IFComp. I found this game fairly similar in length, quality and difficulty to that one, but with more of an emphasis on the passage of time and interactive NPCs and with more unity in the story while According to Cain had more unity in the puzzles.

This is a long exploration game involving picking up and using various tools and ammunition in a surreal technomagical future.

Many Pacian games are in such an environment; Gun Mute and Weird City Interloper come to mind. This game, though, seems to be directly set in the same universe as the game he released last year, Killing Machine Loves Slime Prince. Both involve solar royalty (the Third Prince in the previous game and the Second Princess in this one) and many of the other characters and concepts pop up in both games.

In this game specifically, the princess (your girlfriend) has defaulted on a big debt, and the debtors have come to collect. Golden roots have invaded the city and are sucking the life out of all the office workers while Mad Max-style Junkers (I've never seen Mad Max, just going off vibes here) roam the city attacking anyone they see. Your goal is to save and/or chastise the princess while rescuing the citizens.

A variety of survivors can be found throughout the city, each unique, with widely varying personalities and amounts of helpfulness. Conversation is menu-based, and can change depending on your progression.

The gameplay features simple randomized combat using rolls for attack and defence, both of which can be modified by equipping special clothing. Your only weapon is a gun which comes unloaded. You have three inventory slots (including the gun) and this is filled over time with items like lockpicks and money.

I had a bad experience at first. Combat is random, you can't UNDO, and I didn't find any ammo in the first area. There is an enemy at a bridge right away, and to use the bridge you need several actions, so I was just getting hurt with no way to fight back and the monster wouldn't go away. It felt frustrating, like the game had set up a complex system and wasn't letting me interact with any of it. I had to use all my healing items and didn't find any more for a long time, and I was resigned to not really enjoying the game.

Fortunately, past the ammo-less opening (I hope I'm wrong and someone points out that I missed some really helpful early ammo so others don't suffer my same fate--Edit: someone did find early ammo, so it's just my fault!), the game is a lot more fun. Combat can either take place through violence or through escape and patience, and I chose the latter the most often. It got really intense in one late area with tons of monsters, but I was satisfied when I was able to (Spoiler - click to show)summon an assassin to kill 3 monsters in one turn.

I was invested in the story, and the exploration was smooth and satisfying. I found no bugs. Like many of C.E.J. Pacian's games, there is a great romance element between the leads that is much rarer in parser games than in choice-based games. He's able to turn combat and parser look/take/drop gameplay and make them into acts of love, which is nice.

Great game, lots of fun!

Playing this game was a whirlwind of associations, expectations, references, and laughs.

You play as the valet to Bruce Wyatt, billionaire playboy, who is undergoing a crisis of sorts at the worst possible time. He's acting, well, like a bat, fleeing bright light sources, screeching, and crawling around. All this is happening right when a fudnraiser party/gala is about to start!

The story is divided into an act/scene structure. And my expectations swirled around. Spoiler-heavy discussion:


(Spoiler - click to show)
At first, I thought the game would be a Verdeterre-style optimization game as we struggle to make enough money, a game that would be heavily replayable but relatively brief. I thought the story was a reference to Der Fledermaus, a comic opera I've seen a few times but have mixed up with Der Rosenkavalier at times.

Then I started thinking that the money changes weren't related to optimization, but rather a way to inject additional humor into a scenario. Having someone get injured or annoyed or amused can be mildly funny in and of itself but attaching a specific dollar amount to it is especially amusing.

Similarly, I realized that this was a Batman parody when I saw the names of Bryce Wyatt's parents, Thomas and Martha (or something similar). Soon guests arrived, and I saw versions of Two-face, Poison Ivy, and Catwoman.

But others eluded me. Then the game itself mentioned Der Fledermaus, and I looked up the wiki description to refresh my mind, and saw that it included other characters that were in this game! So it was referencing two bat stories at once (and I saw later, in the credits, another one referenced).


Pacing was shockingly smooth. On several occasions I began thinking that I would run out of things to do, when subtle nudges pushed me in the right direction or major events (like the doorbell ringing) took place. Conversely, at times I'd have so many tasks piling up I thought I'd have to miss some and replay the game to see them. I kept thinking, "Surely this can't hold up, the pacing's going to go all wrong at some point and I'll be stuck twiddling my thumbs or getting too frustrated," but it never happens.

Compass directions have an in-game explanation, which I found fun given that Chandler Groover has expressed his own struggles with the compass in other parser games and his decision to keep it out of most of his own games; so having its presence so carefully justified here makes sense both outside of the game as well as in the game as a kind of tutorial for new players. Perhaps the later parts of the game where (Spoiler - click to show)the compass serves as a tool for control and destruction serves as an unconscious metaphor for the community's over-emphasis and use of the compass and the pressure it puts on authors to do the same.

Overall, this game was well-made and enjoyable. It includes some sensual material and some puerile material with bodily fluids, but both are framed in such a way that they are not really objectionable and leave more to the imagination.

Given that a few characters resemble people from different sources, I wonder about those I couldn't place, like (Spoiler - click to show)the twins. Are they from another source, or new creations?

I think this game will join Eat Me and Toby's Nose among Chandler Groover's best-regarded games, and serve as both a good introduction to new players and a fun treat for the experienced. Great work!

The Wayhaven Chronicles are one of the most popular series of commercial IF games available. They follow a detective in the small town of Wayhaven who has recently been assigned four beautiful vampires as partners, out of which the detective can choose one to romance.

This series is projected to last through 7 books, although only 3 have been released so far; with some over 1,000,000 words, it's understandable that this might take a while.

This second game furthers the romance in the first game while adding a new mystery. Now that the hero is aware of vampires, other mysterious creatures come into play, and a new carnival comes into town, complete with creepy attractions and a horrifying mirror maze.

I felt like the balance between romance and plot shifted even more towards romance here than the first game. However, due to the need to stretch the romance over 7 games, the progression of the romance is glacially slow (at least for the A romance I chose). It reminds me of the Twilight novels, where Stephanie Meyers had to come up with more and more contrived reasons to keep the two main characters apart, or of the Office and the way it dragged out Jim and Pam.

So for those reasons, I found this game less compelling than the first. The creepy carnival was fun, and getting to know my teammates and the world around me. The game is great at providing enough roleplay options to really act your personality. I played a generally positive and cheerful character who liked their mom and was happy with the supernatural, and even if sometimes there was only a single hopeful choice, I picked it.

I did encounter more failure this time around. Despite heavily investing in one skill and using it at every chance, I often failed checks for that one skill.

While I didn't like this quite as much as the first one, I consider it a 5 star game among the general field of interactive fiction.

I recently heard a theater teacher give advice on how to play drunk people. She told students not to act drunk, but to act like a drunk person trying to act sober; otherwise, it will come off as over the top.

This game is written as a romance pretending to be a supernatural police procedural. Almost all interactions, plot points, choices, and scenes are designed to progress your romances with a variety of options.

The base story isn't bad; it's mostly unresolved by the end, as the game is part 1 of 7 intended games in a series, with 3 completed so far. Still, the 'substory' is fairly resolved.

The idea is that you are a recently-promoted detective who discovers a series of grisly murders by persons unknown. Simultaneously, a team of four vampires move into town (not a spoiler, as the game uses dramatic irony; while our protagonist doesn't know what's going on, we generally do). The four vampires happen to all be described as extremely attractive (and customizable as to gender), from the intense and brooding captain A (except names depend on gender selection) to the gregarious N or aggressive M.

I was pondering Choicescript games recently and realized how much better the system is at romance than almost anything else, the way parser games are better at object manipulation puzzles than most other things. Romance naturally lends itself to choices both on who to spend time with and on how to roleplay your interactions with them. This game has much less of an emphasis on powers and win/loss scenarios than most choice-based games (though some of both exists). Instead, the vast majority of options are role-play that affects your stats, and instead of those stats determining what you're capable of, they determine the way people react to you. If you are positive and happy about the supernatural, people comment about how relieved it was easy for you to accept; if tense and fearful, they are worried too.

The game is a romance power fantasy, where multiple beautiful people care about you, are impressed by you, and are excited about you, while you are simultaneously very important and powerful but also very fragile and needing protecting.

Outside of the romantic options, the game is not quite as exciting as, say, Night Road, another vampire game with investigations, but with them it's a solid game option. It makes sense that this would be one of the most popular Hosted Games of all time. I look forward to part II.

This was the highest-rated non-commercial game on IFDB that I hadn't played (outside of Superstition Season 2), so I definitely wanted to try it out, especially after trying this author's game Eikas in IFComp.

Like Eikas, this is a daily life simulator in a small community with an opportunity to befriend NPCs, search for items, go wandering, and grow food. Both game are well-implemented and provide a variety of activities for the player to experience each day so that they don't become tedious.

Unlike Eikas, there is more of an edge to this game. Even from the beginning, you can find sadness or heartache in many places. Many deaths are discussed in the game, and blood and violence can occur. Some forest scenes are notably dark, and there is an overarching mystery that can be intense. Overall, it reminds me of things like Princess Mononoke, which can be both cozy and violent.

There are four different people to get to know, and whom you can romance (but only one per game!). I found the character storylines well-written. A gender option for characters could have been fun, as I found the storylines for the men more appealing than the stories for the woman; it would have been fun to romance a forest witch-like woman Jonah.

The writing in the game was excellent, and I enjoyed the various mysteries. The ending has parts that are very solid but overall some things feel up in the air, since the game doesn't truly end. Very fun overall.

This XYZZY-award-winning TADS game shows off a lot of the power of the engine, like tracking what the sense can detect and from how far away.

You play as an officer in an Empire of planets, sent to check on a small backwater. Your goal is to talk with the local technophobic elders and leave. While there, though, you meet a strange, disingenuous but beautiful woman.

I like quite a few of Eric Eve's games, which tend to be very polished, have highly interactive characters, and fun puzzles. All of his games tend to have attractive women who either already know you and are attracted to you or just met you and are attracted. This game leans kind of heavily on the latter; in fact, if you ignore the girl and just complete your mission, you can only score 10% of the points!

This game is both easy and hard. It has many objectives, but you can end the game at any time. Winning at all is super easy; getting the maximum score is incredibly hard.

Smells and sounds matter in this game, as does physics. Objects can be pushed around, etc.

I do think it's a bit too hard to complete fully, and somehow I found the open-ended nature of the game a little less personally satisfying than his other games, including my favorite, Nightfall, which has stronger pacing. However, it's clear why this game was a candidate for (and winner of) the XYZZY Best Game award: it is impeccably polished, responsive, and clever.

I usually write reviews for both the author and the players, but I don’t think Jim reads the reviews, so I’ll write for the players.

Jim Macbrayne is an author with a polished self-made writing system that he has used to make several parser games, usually 1-2 a year for the last several years (as well as some TADS games in the past). These games are windows executables and feature a command-line style interface with some color use. The Function keys are used as shortcuts in-game. An unusual feature of his games is that objects in containers cannot be referenced, so if there is a fish in a bucket, you can’t type GET FISH or X FISH. Instead you have to type GET FISH FROM BUCKET or GET ALL FROM BUCKET. He has reserved the F1 key to always print out GET ALL FROM IT as this occurs very frequently in the games.

The games have a standard format and this is no exception. You generally are in a world that is fantasy with some mundane/modern objects (for instance, this game has a Gymnasium with a climbing rope in it) and different devices. There are usually potions of some kind and often a teleporter device that can be calibrated to different settings (in this game, a coin-operated dial). Puzzles often revolve around entering combinations using colors, numbers, keypads, etc. with the solution to one combination found on a card or piece of paper in another area. There is usually a book of spells that you can memorize a certain number of times, each time you casting them having one copy of the spell disappear from memory.

This game has all those things. The framing device is that you have been asked to find Excalibur, King Arthur’s sword. In the meantime, you’ll pass through caves, castles, and more.

I generally find these games pretty chill and soothing. I like to play for a bit till I get stuck, get some hints, play more, and then when I’m really not sure to use the walkthrough. I got around 60 points out of 230 before using the walkthrough. I feel like playing without help would take a week or two, with a lot of time waiting for ‘aha’ moments.

I did miss some of the more exciting parts of earlier games; for instance, this game didn’t have much NPC interaction.

I expect to see more similar games in the future, and they’re nice to look forward to, and I like to play them early on in the competitions, as they don’t get many reviews (mostly due to being a Windows executable). The nice thing is if you play one and like it, there are many more to enjoy.

I knew before I played this game that it was fairly old-school, with the possibility of getting in non-winnable positions and a strict inventory limit.

I assumed that meant it would also be buggy or sparse. But I was pleasantly surprised to see I was wrong on both counts!

This is an amusing and puzzle-dense and polished game about zombies and other undead. You meet quite a few supernatural beings, many of which are pretty goofy and others which are frightening.

This is a hard game, and I used a walkthrough for the majority. I was able to get about 60 points on my own out of 300. I was glad to see that there was a 'winnable' setting you could activate to know if you had done something dumb or not.

The inventory was a major sticking point, though, and I'd probably raise the score by a point if it were removed. It is very tight, and I locked myself out of victory by bringing a shovel into the mansion, since I couldn't carry everything I needed out of it. And it doesn't contribute anything to the game; no puzzles are improved by the inventory limit. And you can take things out of the backpack but not put things in when it is being worn, which exacerbates things.

Overall this author shows great talent, and I would be happy to play more games from him (without inventory limits if possible!)