Reviews by MathBrush

This is a visual novel written by a large crew. It has no decision points at all, which means that its merit rests entirely on the strength of its writing and on the visuals and sound. That's always tricky for me when reviewing choiceless games because they feel like they belong to the wider comparative group of static fiction which is much more competitive.

Fortunately, this is written well and the pictures and sound are well-done. The background images have enough contrast to read the text and the focus on having only one character portrait for each conversation instead of going back and forth fits well with the writing style.

The story is about two women (seemingly in mid-20s, since one has spent time in medical school) who meet in London for the first time after having a relationship online. Things go well at first, but their differences pile up. We end up seeing first one side of the relationship, then the other, with a final perspective reserved for the ending.

The rest of the review discusses events in game.

(Spoiler - click to show)One of the characters is reeling from a breakup with a very physical relationship and tries to initiate that twice with the other. The other partner is deeply disturbed by this and tensions rise between them.

Also, the person who assaulted is very controlling. She sets up every thing on the date according to her ideas and is constantly annoyed or disappointed when the other girl doesn't fit with what she wants.

Overall, it reminded me of several episodes in my own life and the life of my friends. I saw one couple break up and learned a year or two later that one partner had assaulted the other sexually. I cut off contact with that person and supported the victim. They dated someone else and later broke up. I then found at that that person who had been assaulted went on to assault their next partner. It was all so sad. And it kind of feels like that's what's happening here; one person was in an uncomfortable hyper-sexualized relationship and was dumped, then went on to assault someone else.

The whole trip thing reminded me of something in my own life. When I was in college, there was a woman I knew who lived one dorm over, the same age of me, and she was a close friend. Our roommates were a big friend group and we'd all watch movies as a group and do activities. I'd taken her on a date before, and I knew her family well even though they lived far away (her mother liked me and showed me some neat poetry forms and became my unofficial poetry tutor). She had a really tempestuous personality and went from hot to cold a lot and had a lot of backstory from an abusive father. I ended up writing a letter saying I loved her but she didn't reciprocate at that time. We stayed friends. The summer after we moved out, I got an invitation to attend her younger brother's baptism (an event that happens in our church at 8 years old). I knew it was just a courtesy invite but I asked the mom if I could attend and she was thrilled. She even asked me to perform the baptism myself. I got plane tickets and paid for a hotel room. Wisconsin was beautiful, and I flew in a plan so small that there were only 3 seats per row (with 2 on one side and one on the other of the aisle) and, as I was the only passenger, the flight attendant had me sit in one specific spot to balance the plane. When I got there, I was welcomed and feasted. We had bear meat that the mom had shot herself. I went canoeing with the adult brother of the girl in question, and had tons of fun seeing rare native birds. I performed the baptism.

But the woman didn't talk to me the whole trip. She was completely silent. I realized I had made a huge mistake (as those reading along probably realized earlier!). I cried in the hotel room each night. She didn't say goodbye when I left, either. When I returned to Utah, flying over the Great Salt Lake, I thought it was the ugliest place in the world. (Not now, though! every time I fly over it now I think how much I love it and look back on that old memory and am glad I changed.)

Obviously I never contacted her again. Months later, though, her stepdad wrote me urgently and with great conviction. He said that she was marrying a deadbeat loser that she had recently met (his description) and said: "If you love her at all you need to fight for her!" I wrote back and said, "I no longer believe that we would be happy together." She married him and also inherited from her grandmother a ranch in Arizona, where I presume she still lives.

Years later, after I was married, some of her family members tried to add me on Facebook. My wife at the time was extremely upset, more than almost anything in our marriage, and said that that girl was trying to reconnect with me to flirt with me and steal me away. So I never added them.

After my divorce, though, I did add the little brother I baptized on Instagram. He went on a mission, got married, and seems like a great guy.

Anyway, so I resonated with this game a lot, both from my own experiences with uncomfortable 3-day visits and from seeing how assault can destroy relationships of others. So I was completely dumbfounded when they stay together at the end, it really defied my expectations. I don't really feel good for them; the hesitant one even resolves to be more physically affectionate in the future, presumably to please the other and against their earlier choices. I did the same thing at the end of my marriage and trying to save a relationship through physical intimacy alone is the sign of a sinking ship.

So, the story definitely made me think a lot, which is, in my mind, a sign of a good story.

This is an exceptional story, a part of Fallen London that is extra "DLC" type content for subscribers.

I really expected this Exceptional Story to be awful, as its description was pretty generic (woman overused honey) and the beginning of it wasn't very inspired (go to these three locations and examine stuff).

But it turned out to be about red honey, one of the best moral dilemmas in the game. Red Honey lets you see someone else's memories, but only at the cost of causing them extreme agony.

This story also uses interesting mechanics, like a complicated hidden lock and key mechanism. And the ending felt like I had real agency.

This is a compact puzzle game. You are a young keeper of time, and the time crystals have been stolen, opening up portals to famous disasters.

Disasters include a lot of conflagarations, like Krakatoa, Hindenburg, and the London Fire, balanced by the icy Titanic sinking and mediated by the San Francisco earthquake.

Some subareas are small, with most being 3-4 rooms and a couple being significantly larger.

Puzzle solution generally revolves around finding an item in one area that allows progress another, so basically like a key-door structure (with three of the items being actual keys, although none get used for doors).

The game is decidedly puzzle-oriented. Time travel is ripe for philosophical quandaries, questions of ethics, unrequited hopes, resignation, ontological paradoxes, butterfly effect, etc. Here, the author has neatly sidestepped all of this, avoiding any deep contemplation about time travel. Time resets every time you leave and enter an area, but only the watch time; all things you did remain in effect and all NPCs remember what you told them. Trying to warn individuals about disasters has no effect or reaction.

The lack of implicit actions in PunyInform is frustrating. A lot of gameplay was like:
>GO [location in water]

You can't do that while holding things.

(oh right, I'm holding a key).

>PUT KEY IN [container]

I splash around a bit and get somewhere. Now I need the key.

>UNLOCK DOOR WITH KEY.

You're not holding the Key.

>GET KEY. UNLOCK DOOR.

The door is unlocked.

> ENTER DOOR.

The door is not open.

>OPEN DOOR. ENTER DOOR.

I do what I need to. Time to leave into the water.

'You can't do that while holding items'.

That's a vague excerpt, but some implicit actions for going through closed doors and using items that are in a carried container would be nice. Similarly, X SIGN and READ SIGN are different, which could be interesting, but almost all the descriptions for X-ing things with writing just say 'This is a readable thing. It would be neat to read it', so I wonder if it would be easier to just assume the player wants to READ it whenever they X it. It would be very difficult to examine a sign in real life without reading it, since most of a sign is words.

I did softlock myself once by getting really far into an area and not being able to return to the portal in time, so I recommend saving.

Zeno Pillan has made several games in the past that were short, surreal parser games with cool ASCII art.

This game is much larger, with code at around 60K words. It's a party game; you're at a house with a ton of people in it and you can do things like watch youtube (where you physically enter into the videos), play a fighting game (with real attacks like special moves and stuff), talk to all the different friends, enter a world of books, etc.

The game also has four endings (and more if you read the code). Some endings are really easy to find, while the dance ending can take ton of work.

Overall, the atmosphere is wholesome and nostalgic, the ascii art is cool, and the different endings are a fun idea. The annotated code is fun to read in and of itself, with cool little doodles and such.

The only drawback I found was that the game seemed like it could use more time to get feedback from others and implement it, and to do some grammar and typo fixing. This isn't a 'the writing is bad' issue, the writing is fine, it's more stuff like capitalization errors and punctuation. One thing I like to do is run my text through a spellchecker like grammarly (although I usually ignore grammarly's more complicated suggestions). I know the author wrote this 60K (!) word game on his phone, so it might be harder there. Similarly, it can be hard to find beta testers. But if this had typos fixed and player feedback for bugs, I think this would be an amazing game. As it is, it's only a good, really fun game.

This is a German parser game where you have to leave your work after being fired but not before exposing your boss for all his crimes.

It's a comedy game, with gags like a slick ramp that makes you slide all the way to the bottom every time and nasty food left in the office microwave.

I thought at first that it was really buggy, as I had numerous commands that I found reasonable that had no response, and many errors. But...

I realized that there was just one small bug that I had found that caused all the others. As a non-native speaker, I only looked up words I didn't know. After already having found a hole punch, I then found a "gabelstapler". I thought, 'nice, a stapler!' and picked it up and went up stairs.

A gabelstapler is a forklift.

Having taken it up stairs, I turned it on and tried to get in, but I couldn't because I was holding it. I dropped it and got in and turned it on, but I couldn't drive anywhere by 'dreh linkrad' (or whatever) or going north. Trying to get out made me leave the whole building.

I started over and didn't put the forklift in my pocket. There was no problem!

So I won't take a point off for coding because it was my own fault for doing something stupid lol.

The game has a lot of possible variety, as you can end the game whenever you want by leaving out the front door. I 'won' with 16-18 points out of 25, so there's still a lot left to do. I found the game amusing!

It's interesting, I've seen Japanese-inspired games pop up in several non-English IF competitions in the last few years (I think Spanish had two), so it's kind of a mini-trend.

This was a fairly polished small game about two lovers separated by many miles and bad weather. You first play as the man, stricken by bad weather and looking for a place to rest.

You then play as the woman, seeking after her lost lover.

Gameplay is story-focused. There are puzzles, some I had trouble with (fortunately there are hints and a walkthrough), but they are all there to further the story, which is about the titular Snow Maiden.

I played to one ending out of 3. I did find some of the puzzles pretty hard, especially for a foreign-language speaker, as it required using some verbs I didn't know and examining, taking and using different background elements in ways that I couldn't have intuited on my own. I'd be interested in knowing from native speakers how hard they found these puzzles. I also felt a bit railroaded into actions I wouldn't have wanted to do in real life (this may be due to the ending I chose and there might be another path outside the walkthrough).

Overall, I liked the overall storyline and the beautiful imagery. I think most people who play German parser games would find it worth their while.

This French fantasy game is divided in both space and time. You have four days in which to act, and a large map where you can hop to different areas.

I found one ending, but I know how I could have gotten more.

The main idea is that a strange events has happened: the Gods that once ruled mortals have left, agreeing to deal with the human world no more. But some still cling to their worship.

Wandering around town, you follow clues that lead you to a conspiracy involving both gods and King. You must choose what to do with the news that you've learned.

Overall, it was fun. The giant map was intimidating, as well as the four days, but in the end most areas have nothing special and only one event of importance happens in one area each on days 2-4, making it a brief but interesting story with a large chunk of worldbuilding.

Like one comment said on itch, it would be fun to be able to order the tasty food described in the inns!

In this game, you are the lawyer or executor of Tatie Lucette and have to distribute her estate.

To do this, you examine each of the three objects (a fortune-granting golden scepter, a future-telling lamp, and some kind of weird sexual toy that transfers mind consciousness). You have to read many epistolary fragments of Tatie's history to figure out what she was like (a spy, a singer, actress, fighter, drug-user, extensive lover, and so on). Each of her 9 attributes maps on to one of the 3 artifacts.

In addition, there are 7 possible heirs (including a cat), each of which possesses differing amounts of those 9 traits.

So, it's pretty simple: find the three traits each object has, find the person who has those traits, and win!

Unfortunately, there is a time-limit, so you can't interrogate everyone. So you need to carefully pick what you'll ask who.

Or, like me, you can replay several times.

There are a ton of words in this. As a non-native speaker, it was a struggle to read a pageful or more for every choice when each of 8 different options on the screen leads to 8 or more options (so basically like a 50-100 page French book).

The game openly embraces drugs and sexuality, even having you show pornography to a minor at one point, which stuck out to me as something I didn't really feel comfortable with.

Overall, the writing was amusing and the puzzle structure was a good one that I could see being fun in future games as well.

This was a really clever game. It's currently implemented in Google Calendar, which means it may be ephemeral media; but the author is able to export a google calendar for download (player's can't as they don't have permissions to edit), so I hope they do so to keep this for future generations!

Playing the game means adding the google calendar to a google account (I used a burner account). You then look at appointments and the information in them. They link to real google earth locations and to youtube videos and, at the end, to pdfs.

Gameplay for me consisted of a lot of searching of names and keywords. The game is clever and makes some posts only consist of symbols to keep you from seeing everything at once by searching for 'le' or something like that (although basic words like that don't work anyway).

The story is science fiction and is non-linear in nature, and I experienced some ending things before some middle things. Themes include relationships, loss, liminal spaces, the Backrooms (?), and more. A lot of fun to experiment with. I don't think it holds much replay value but that's not intended anyway, I think.

Google translate works great for this game, very easy to copy and paste into another window and many of the links and some words are in English.

This French game in Concours de Fiction Interactive Francophone 2025 was a delight to play. It's a puzzle-focused Vorple game with extensive parser illustrations. Puzzles are fairly simple (although my lack of knowledge of a few words caused me some problems).

While the game doesn't feel small, each part of the game is pretty constrained so there aren't too many options and you are free to experiment till you figure out what to do next. There was one poem that was a bit hard to figure out, and I had the biggest trouble figuring out how to put something on something because I was bad at French (fortunately there are a lot of synonyms!).

The plot is that you are accompanying your master, a detective, to visit a monastery. You have to help him get in, then, the next day, solve a series of mysterious occurrences.

The game does take a pretty dramatic shift in what's possible in the very last act that surprised me, but the art for that part was also very nice. Overall, one of the more fun games I've played in a while.