Reviews by MathBrush

I played this long (but purposely repetetive) IFComp 2015 Twine game twice, about two weeks apart.

Let's just say what it's about now; this is a game whose experience does not depend on spoilers.

You are enacting an ancient scottish ritual where you are trying to summon a demon by roasting cats alive over several days.

In the game, you repeatedly click on the same thing over and over again, with some procedural text generation changing some minor details.

The game changes over time, but it takes a long, long time to do so. In the mean time, you can, as I did the first time, just start letting cats go and give up on the whole ritual. In fact, it may be cathartic for some (including myself) to play again and just let all the cats ago.

You have to roast somewhere between (Spoiler - click to show)40-100 cats to reach the ending.

I did not listen with audio, as I never do, but many say it contributes to the experience, for good or for ill.

This was an IFComp 2015 entry. This is a mid-length Twine game with an interesting format: each page is written somewhat like a play, listing the location and people present, each in their own color. Then dialogue appears a line at a time, each in the color belonging to the person.

The game is set on a space station. You are a computer, and there has been a murder on the station.

I enjoyed the story, especially the 2nd and 3rd times I played it. Most of the interactivity is found in selecting the order of presentation. I am beginning to become a fan of dialogue-only games, like this and Birdland.

This IFComp 2015 game starts off as a time-management baking game that I at first found very difficult to keep track of, and several non-standard inventory items.

Eventually things start to happen. The game gets much more interesting. However, micromanagment still abounds. Things can get frequently lost; things have to be replaced. A dozen or more NPC's of various types come and go, doing what they please, and it is difficult to keep track of everything.

I played through this game twice, a couple of weeks apart, and it was still hard to juggle everything the second time, knowing exactly what I needed to do. However, I understood the game much better the second time, and I appreciated it more. Some of the meta techniques are incredibly clever.

This excellent IFComp 2015 game is a bizarre, surreal journey. You choose one of several 'origin stories' in a sense; for instance, once my father carved miniature cathedrals that played music, and once I lived in the swamp and sold frog skin.

The game consists of a journey towards a distant summit. You reach many places in between, in almost a surreal(er) Gulliver's Travels.

As you travel, you deal with an odd thing called a fishstomach, whose details I leave to the game.

Overall, I found the game emotionally satisfying, especially near the end. Well-chosen graphics help the game.

Occasional profanity and some body horror, but milder than Porpentine's games in general.

Switcheroo is part of a family-friendly series of stories about a witch who runs a foster home. All parts of the story involve a certain writing style, where the narrator is a magic book that coughs up 'pageballs' from time to time.

In this tale, the focus is on Derik, who goes to sleep as a boy in a wheelchair and wakes up as a girl.

Later, some good things start happening in their life due to the switch. And they have to decide whether to keep their new body and identity, or go back to their old.

This game has affected a lot of different people in different ways. There is an obvious interest from the transgender community to see how this story is represented, and those who have experience adoption have responded to it as well. My family includes some who are permanently disable and use wheelchairs, so it was very interesting for me to think about this game.

Overall, I had fun playing through the first time, but I didn't look forward to replaying this game for the review. I would recommend this game to those looking for a family-friendly game or for a game that examines social issues in detail.

This is an interesting pirate world, where magic is prevalent and women have a much stronger place in the world.

This is a choice-of-games style game, which means that it's a CYOA, with choices affecting different 'stats' you have (like magic ability, gun ability, drunkenness, sneakiness, etc.) You have to build up different stats for different challenges.

Overall, a very fun game. I really enjoyed it, first as a beta tester, then playing it in the comp. The story is fast-paced and exciting.

This game focuses on a career involving mood-altering or mood-activated equipment; however, the real story here is a slice-of-stressed-out-life story of a woman, her career, and her love interests.

This game responds with story text no matter what you do, and it's purposely written in a style that can jump back and forth between different topics. This allows the transcript of the game to read as a short story.

It also presents a novel challenge: decipher if your text comes from real commands or the 'floater text' (the name for the text from wrong commands). It helped me a lot to just type important keywords. You'd think UNDO would help you figure out what's real and what's not, but it's cleverly been disabled.

Worth checking out.

(note: I beta tested this game.)

I enjoyed Sub Rosa, and rank it in the top 5 of IFComp. It's world-building is marvellous; you explore a strange house in a strange world consisting of different 'planes' (in the Dungeons and Dragon's sense, and in the mathematical sense, and in the geographical sense).

The house and the backstory are weird and interesting, like a 1001 Arabian Nights written by Steven Moffat and David Eddings.

As your find out very early on, your goal is to find 7 secrets to destroy someone. Your secondary goal is not to get caught or noticed.

The game is enjoyable, and the puzzles are great, but it suffers from a bit of hunt-for-clues, like Where's Waldo. There is a library with 101 books, some of which are obviously important, and others which are necessary for winning but not clearly marked out.

As another example of the hunt-for-clues issue, there is one puzzle you solve by examining a background item not usually implemented, interacting with it in an unusual way, using that to interact with another important thing in an unusual way, and then examining two things in succession.

Thus, this game is best-suited for the meticulous. Fortunately, its rich backstory makes such meticulousness very rewarding.

Spy Intrigue is not my type of game. But it is an incredible game, which I have played through twice, and is excellently crafted.

It is a game of layers. It literally has two layers of text, interwoven within each other.

It also has two levels of meaning. The top level is just crazy and silly (you very quickly learn that most spies have died of "spy-mumps"). But there is a much deeper subtext in the game, much like another 2015 IFComp entry TOMBS of Reschette. Both games encourage you to look under the standard shoot-kill-loot structure of normal games and see what existence would really be like for protagonist and enemy.

That's probably the deepest contribution of this game: to show the protagonists humanity. The author has succeeded in a very well-crafted game, which I feel should be nominated for several XYZZY awards. She has done an excellent work here.

As I said, this isn't really my type of game; I'm not into profanity or sex, of which the game has it's fair share. But it's certainly never exploitative, and it all makes sense in the context of the game. I will also always fondly remember (early spoiler)(Spoiler - click to show)"OATMEAL TIME."

Second Story features a web-based parser that is, in my opinion, a quite nice visual improvement over several other parsers.

The story is about a catburglar who has changed their life, but has to go back to work to save their brother.

Gameplay is straightforward, taking, opening, and dropping things, but the story drives the game forward. It's fast and fun. I especially liked the twist at the end.

I recommend this game to those interested in developments in parser technology, and for those into crime-based stories (it reminded me a bit of the story of PataNoir, stripped from its mechanic).