Reviews by MathBrush

Now that Adrift games play online through parchment, I've been enjoying them a lot more than before.

This is an old Spring Thing game that is really very long, spread out over many years with significant puzzles and challenges in each time segment.

You are a superhero sidekick. Your boss can change shape into anything, while you can only change the shape of your hand. You also have a friend named Waterfall, a kind of overly-sexualized woman whose body is made of water.

Your main enemy is named Potter, a villain who can make sentient clay creatures.

The plotline has a lot of good elements. The paragraph-by-paragraph writing and the coding could use the help of a good editor. Near the end I was hit with a weird bug where events and conversations were printed before the room descriptions. Overall, though, this was a pretty solid story.

This is an exceptional story for Fallen London, which fits into the overall storyline and mechanics but has its own mini storyline, and is available to subscribers or for individual purchase.

I had mixed feelings going into this. Gavin Inglis has written some very good stuff, but I saw that this story had slipped low in the overall 'best exceptional stories' poll on reddit.

The idea is that Mr Pages (the master in charge of books) is upset about a new book of poetry that has been written about a mythical city called Ys. Some think that Ys is a standin for the bazaar!

My hopes dimmed for this story as I hit a very long segment that was a kind of repetitive chase. It took a big chunk of actions and didn't have much variation (although I did like a part involving trenches).

But the part after the chase where you have a chance to peruse the books was honestly very funny, I got a good chuckle out of it, and it made me feel better about the story overall.

If anyone reading this hasn't tried this author's game Hana Feels, I can recommend it! It's a nice heartfelt story about self-harm written as a government project.

This is an Exceptional Story from Failbetter Games, part of Fallen London. It ties into the larger overall experience but has its own storyline.

This is a love story between an ardent man and a scientist who is also loving but reluctant and cuts ties.

The opening of this was unremarkable enough that I lost interest in it and never finished it by the time I stopped playing Fallen London 2 years ago. I've restarted now and have picked up this story again, and the ending was quite a bit better than before.

This story features Mr. Apples, a master I don't remember seeing much about. More interestingly, it includes bits of all of the Fallen Cities' lore, including a big chunk of First City material, which is rare. Also has some Neathbow content. Pretty nice!

This is a Fallen London exceptional story, which is something accessible only to members or those who pay extra money. It follows the mechanics of Fallen London but is completable in a few hours of time (or less if you pay for more actions).

This story deals with the Presbyterate, an underground empire that lives near the Mountain of life. They had a colony founded by separatists who had a mythical chalice that seems like a parallel to the Holy Grail. You encounter an archaeologist who leads you to the sea in search of this chalice.

This story gives you some pretty good agency as there are multiple directions you can influence the outcome. It has some rich and vivid imagery in the archaeological digs that does a good job of both being cool and showing the differences between the archaeologist's idealism and the more grey reality.

This one was pretty good. It didn't stand out as one I'll always remember but it was interesting enough that I used some action refreshes on it.

This was a fun game in a style different than that which I usually play. It's an ADRIFT game that is pretty long, with more than 8 'acts' and 43 rooms, but with puzzles that are locally self-contained and generally well-clued (with a couple of exceptions).

You show up to Sherlock Holmes' apartment determined to prove he is a fraud, only to discover it full of bullet holes and menacing notes. You have to track down Shakespeare and foil a plot by the evil Moriarty!

Much of the game can be completed by examining everything and showing things to people. The game is fortunately almost completely devoid of having to 'look behind' and 'under' everything (although looking under is useful in obvious cases).

I did use the hints a couple of times, and every time was for a window or door. The second to last puzzle (a grill) wasn't hinted and I struggled for a long time. I eventually opened up the game in the ADRIFT 4 coding app and found out that I had the right idea but the wrong direction (full spoiler: (Spoiler - click to show)I was trying to LOCK it but had to CLOSE it.).

Overall, I didn't encounter many bugs (a couple of times the screen just printed a single letter when I doubt that was what was desired; most likely because I was playing online). I had a good time with this game.

This is the only Spring Thing game that has never been reviewed on IFDB. I think I can see why; it's a longer game with a big, nonlinear map, a few different ways to die, and puzzles with difficult timing.

You play as a protestor at a nuclear facility who gets lost and then bitten by a camel. You wake up in a hospital with another protestor chained nearby. The hospital has a lot of floors, each with hallways filled with room. There are myriad keys and you have to do a variety of heroic actions that aren't well-clued.

You also gain the ability to bite hard and spit but the game doesn't spell this out and you almost never use them.

The story is interesting, but I remember an Emily Short blog post about how you should make a nonlinear game designed in a way that it's impossible to progress without encountering the story, and I think that would have benefitted this game a lot. Also, there could be more indication of when puzzles exist, as often there are things you need to do that you don't even know you need to do!

However, I do think people could enjoy this game and hope it gets more reviews.

I learned a lot playing this game.

I was most familiar with Richard Otter as the author of Word of the Day, one of the largest Inform works of all time in terms of wordcount. It did well in IFComp and even picked up a nomination for an XYZZY award. It was about a mystery in space and included tens of thousands of words on alien biology and evolution.

So I was surprised to see this 2009 Adrift 4 game that reference all of his previous games, of which there were a ton. I had no idea! I also didn't know that his username was Delron, which is the name of a website I've seen pop up a lot before. It also seems he had two earlier IFComp games that I had played and just not associated with his name.

This game is pretty big and I had some trouble and didn't know if the webplayer would save, so I used the walkthrough. It was like a guided tour of his games. Basically, there is 1-3 rooms for each game, and each world contains a piece of paper with the name of a game on it and a person who accepts the correct piece of paper for that world. Your goal is to match them up.

The most interesting worlds to me were the robot world of Unauthorized Termination, the world where you're a germ infesting a human, and the world where a decaying but alive Lion is in a room with a statue of King David after an apocalypse.

This is a visual novel entered into Spring Thing about a decade ago.

In it, you play as a young woman torn between two brothers, one who is an evil murderer who is willing to harm you and uses dark magic, and another who is noble and wants to replace monarchy with democracy (this is a really hard choice for you). The setting is in an alternate version of the American Southwest that has a royal kingdom.

The novel is pretty long; I got tired of clicking to the next line (as there are often 50 or more lines between choices) so I decompiled and read it. It has three acts, and includes a surprising transformation partway through.

There is a lot of worldbuilding here, and the characters felt distinct and memorable. I felt like it could have used a bit more interactivity, even if it was just letting us comment on events. But the art was well-done.

Dust is about a man in the Wild West who comes to town looking for his wife when he comes across trouble. It involves a lot of conversation and the use of a lot of tools.

This game was entered in the German IF Gran Prix earlier this year, where I personally found it the best game of the competition. I enjoyed the characters and the western setting.

I love foreign translations and foreign things in general (maybe I’m a xenophile?) so it’s always hard to know when playing a game in another language if it is the language that attracts me or the game itself.

In this case it’s a little bit of both. One reason I liked it in German was its simplicity, with descriptive but mostly non-figurative language and the use of menus in conversation and some actions. While in German it was brilliant for someone with a weak vocabulary in another language, in English I could have enjoyed some more complexity in writing, and perhaps a slightly expanded map.

But there’s a lot here that I loved in the original and now in the translation. I like how you collect various tools and apply them, giving the game a physical feel. I like the social dynamics, with the non-violent but still substantial threat of the sheriff holding onto your papers while you investigate, and the tavernkeeper urging you to grab a cookie. I also enjoyed the townsfolk popping in and out, from mean grandmas to ball-playing kids.

I helped test this game a little by reading through the English transcript looking for any errors (of which I found very few).

I'm going to review all 3 acts here.

This a Baldur's Gate game. It is possible to play and generally understand it without having played the game (I'm in that scenario) but it generally builds off the associations, motivations, and understood characteristics of that game, which I've only partially absorbed through meme osmosis.

The story is that Astarion (here's where the pre-existing knowledge deficit kicks in) and you have been sucked into a nightmare world by a creature that feeds off of suffering. Astarion who, in the 'real world', has made great progress in escaping from an abusive vampire overlord, has now regressed and in his mind is back where he was at the start, hopeless and alone.

Gameplay in all three acts revolves around a combination of exploration and conversation. All significant actions cost energy, which you only have ten units of at a time. In the first two acts, energy is replenished every night, and you also level 3 skills of manifesting as a dream ghost: Speech, Sight, and Touch. In the third act, energy is replenished by finding secret 'gleams', and you can no longer level your attributes.

In all three days, Astarion has a health bar which, if it goes low enough, will cause him to die. Each day has other important meters as well, such as Astarion's mood, or the attention that can be drawn to you. Basically, this game is an Astarion Tamagachi.

For the first two days, the main goal it to keep him from dying. I discovered after some experimentation that the amount of health he loses or gains each day is based on his mood. I kept dying over and over early on from trying to max my stats first, but in fact there is plenty of time to boost stats with leftover actions. The main goal here is to please this man.

The main difference between the first and second days is that the second day adds more 'special' events with objects and intruders, while the first day just sets up the rhythm of the game as a whole.

The third day is very different, as you are pulled from encounter to encounter, where Astarion talks to people while you explore or interact.

This game is brutally hard (for me!). I died many times trying to complete Act I. There's just almost never enough actions to go around. I found it useful to save every day and reload if I don't achieve my goals. I made over 50 save files through all three acts.

The third act seemed impossibly hard and frustrating until another reviewer pointed out that you can get new actions by finding 'gleams'. I'd spoiler that but I think it's a fundamental part of gameplay and shouldn't be difficult to find in the first place. Finding that, and realizing the 'conversations' often stalled, giving you enough time to explore, helped this section work out better.

Visually and auditorially, the game is beautiful, with nice styling, transitions, fonts, colors, and sound choice.

Conceptually, while this game is symbiotic or even parasitic object, only able to exist in tandem with the resources provided by Baldur's gate, it still (to me) had a generally satisfying plot arc and some nice power progression.

Many ifcomp games are made for ifcomp. This seems like a passion project that just happened to be good enough to enter into Spring Thing and IFComp. I like it.