Reviews by MathBrush

I beta-tested this game, but I never got very far. I did complete it this time! (Possibly through exploits).

This is a difficult game to play. It combines in one several features at the start that make it extraordinarily hard to get use to.

1. The online version has no way to scroll back. The game now suggests using a transcript which is good. I downloaded it and made 6 transcripts which I'll upload to the hint thread.
2. Compounding the above, the game frequently prints several pages of text at once and clears the screen.
3. You do not control the main character of the game; instead, they perform random inputs while you observe and help.
4. You cannot WAIT for the main character to do things, since the game will yell at you and disable WAIT. So you have to come up with different actions each turn.
5. The game can randomly crash; I had 4 different crashes on Gargoyle, so saving often is useful.
6. The game still progresses if you save, and at the beginning there are several help menus to navigate that are required to progress that also move the game forward, and
7. The game yells at you if you are too slow and calls you stupid.
8. The game is a surreal game-within-a-game with multiple voices and POVs, and the game-within-the-game is intentionally buggy and underdescribed.

So, the average experience of a new player may very well be trying out different commands, missing chunks of text, having the game yell at you, and being booted out to try again.

If they are able to push past that and continue, they can find some amazing concepts.

The idea of the game is that Max Fog is dead and an AI trained on his consciousness has finished a game based on his notes. Years later, you and an in-game AI have to work together to make the game run for a real-life player. So, you move objects around, queue up routines, etc. in order to get the game running. Meanwhile, the in-game AI is annoyed with how buggy the game is.

More happens, but I'd rather not spoil it. It has much in common with the ending of A Mind Forever Voyaging.

I'm in the game! A neat trick is that whenever the game crashes/reboots you read a review by Me, Mike Russo, or JJMcC, with various scores depending on how well you did running it. I laughed at mine because it was extremely similar to what I'd write, down to a typo in the first paragraph.

The game talks a lot about AI, and is set in a future where AI has caused lasting damage to the earth.

I did find the ending hopeful.

The game is very ambitious, with using Inform menus and keystrokes and regular text to progress, random commands, writing to external files (I think; I never triggered the text that I think does that), and text animations which I've rarely if every seen in Gargoyle. It doesn't 100% pull it off, since it crashed a few times, but it 90% pulls it off, which is great. I did decompile it, which is funny as the fake me in the fake review also decompiled the game (good thinking, future fake me).

This is a work made as part of a PhD project. Some college project IF games are real stinkers, while others (like Blue Lacuna) can be impressive. This one is complex and literary, and should, I believe, serve well as a PhD-level material.

I do have some complaining to do to contrast with later praising. When I saw '2 hours' and the term 'detective poem', then tried the opening page and saw the text was being slowly typed out, I was possessed with terror and flashbacks of other poetic games like Succor that used slow text for hours at a time. I even started downloading the code and opening it up to remove the timed text, when I saw it wasn't that much. Reader, I pushed onwards.

The first scene was difficult to parse, I kind of wandering through nature and establishing your physical identity. I thought at first that nothing was being tracked, but quite a bit was, and there were callbacks later on. I genuinely didn't understand much of the intro, except that there was water there.

Then we break into a more story-focused segment that was cool. You are in New Zealand in Dunedin and have to climb up a street with a map and clear out several drains to help a plumber/concrete company owner. Everything is mystical, and at first I wasn't sure if it was realism, ADHD causing us to over-fixate on every detail, or that our character was under the influence of perception-enhancing/changing drugs, but after playing later parts I think it was more magical realism. We do find a talking animal or two.
<img src="upload://jTVR2k4YLZdfyuGpOYcVxUgad9X.jpeg" alt="image|370x500" />

Once I had unclogged everything, in the evening light, I felt very satisfied with the game, which had felt lengthy. To my surprise, I saw 'End of Part 1', and was troubled. Wasn't this a good place to end the game already?

But the next part was interesting in a different way. Like @alyshkalia's Blossom, NY, this part of the twine game features real landmarks from a city (in this case, Dunedin) and gives info on them, but combines it with story. This part of the game has you exploring an underground tunnel in the city with a strange mechanical contraption equipped with periscope and walkie talkie. By rolling up and down the tunnel, you encounter different things (like a urinal that knows your name) and objects that you can acquire and use elsewhere. Meanwhile, you encounter the plumber more and more. Eventually, you can leave the tunnel and explore more of the places you passed. This final segment was bewildering with its number of possible choices but I believe it was actually funneling you all along, as I made it to an ending safely.

The best character in the game is the river Toitū itself, which is extremely prominent in all 3 parts, serving as a linear organizer of locations and as a source of refreshment and even holy water at one point.

Overall, I found the grate-unplugging to be the strongest portion, but the overall effect was good. I tend to be less open to poetic works, and have found that my reaction to such things as the games of B-Minus or furkle/mother or the poetry game Portrait with Wolf tend to be less enthusiastic than those games deserve, and the same is likely true here; others may find the first opening area to be more enlightening than it was to me.

Finally, I loved the hand-drawn maps, very cool.

PS Oh, I forgot to mention! The game also contains a dozen or mor images of pages from the works of Janet Frame, a NZ poet who was saved from lobotomy by winning an award for her works. This game shows an alternate history.

Wait-Our-Way Tower

For those who haven't played Andrew Schultz's games, he typically chooses a mechanic to center the game, often about wordplay but in other circumstances involving chess or complex movement. The wordplay games typically involve you typing words as solutions to the wordplay and navigating NESW. The storyline is generally centered around a series of surreal events, with dialogue often being discussed in general rather than reported directly and with topics like self improvement and confidence.

There are some types of Andrew Schultz games I look forward to and some I don't look forward to, and this game combines three of the positive ones. It is in Adventuron with pixel art, which I think really improves these games a lot by grounding some of the more surreal objects with easily-readable pixel art. It is long and polished. And its central wordplay system is hard enough to be non-trivial but easy enough that gameplay doesn't come to a halt as you run to a pencil and paper or online solver.

It also has people that follow you around that are also illustrated, which I don't recall happening before (I remember people following you and illustrated people but not both).

Overall, I've conditioned myself to enjoy his games by playing so many of them (I've played 31 out of 44 total). And I like this one more than most of the others.

This game will, eventually, be a live-time game, like Lifeline once was, where you have to wait in real-time to unlock new events and things.

You play as Bel, a young graduate student who is part of a startup for medicinal drugs. She also is involved with investigations into drugs and dead cats.

The game is played on a map of the world, with events placed at different times of day (in this Beta version, you can click to advance time at any time). All events in-game are in one part of, I believe, New Zealand.

The game is unfinished (which is the main reason I'm giving it a lower score). It is also long. The game ends at the end of Ch. 1. Some plot threads are well-developed by then, but almost all of the climaxes and so on are missing. I have been planning on not playing any of the unfinished games this competition, but I somehow walked past the glaring 'Chapter One' and 'Beta' in the title.

The presentation is professional. The images consistently have a nice-looking black finished image with a blue sketch layer under or over or something; it looks like a talented professional artist worked extensively on the game. The writing is professional, with real-sounding dialogue.

Plot-wise, if this game is meant to be played over an extended period of time, I'd strongly suggest adding a journal or recollection feature. I got confused as it was with all the plots running. Some, like the status of our theater we're working/squatting in, were easy to follow and gripping. Others were less so; I honestly could not remember who the person was that we were trying so hard to stalk with Paige. Looking back, was it the CEO of the company charging her $2000? Or something? I genuinely don't know. A recall feature would help with stuff like that.

I'm not sure if choices have an effect here. You often have the choice of which storylet to play, but most that I skipped came up again later. Is it mostly just picking the order you read it in? The quality of the dialogue and graphics mean that the game can kind of coast on that alone, but it would be good to know if we can adjust the story.

The game has frequent strong profanity, which I personally didn't enjoy but which is very clearly laid out in the intro. Our protagonist has a kind of crappy life. I've seen people go through almost all of these things (mostly relatives); trying to hide a non-certified or otherwise illegal business from others; hiding a drug farm; living in a building not intended to be lived in and keeping it from others; having funding pulled from a company and being muscled out; trying to move biohazards around without it getting flagged; etc. Bel seems to have the opposite of a charmed life. It makes the story more interesting; how boring would it be to have the main character just exit the business, stop committing crimes and focus on grad school? Watching everything fall apart is definitely the right choice for telling this story.

Take the content warning on disturbing animal imagery seriously; this is not a good game for those who dislike text-based animal abuse.

This is another game in the most-played top 20.

It's classic YA fare. You discover a magical world alongside the real one, discover you have powers, make friends with magical people who are impressed by your powers, and go to school to train yourself in magic while simultaneously foiling a dark plot.

It makes sense that it's popular; if someone enjoyed things like Percy Jackson and wanted a hosted game for it, this would be my first recommendation.

It has mostly good points with some rough.

One thing it does great is combining 'hanging out with friends' with progressing the plot. I complained about The Golden Rose that almost nothing happens in a million words and you just hang out with your friends all the time. This game makes the hangout sessions drive the plot, where talking to your friends gives you worldbuilding lore or info on your investigation.

The school stuff is class, even generic YA material. Classes on things like the basics of magic, potions, runes, etc., with students still complaining about the tediousness of it all.

I wonder how much branching their is; it felt like a very long game comparatively but only has 300K words. Is it because it branches less, or was it just due to circumstances in my own life?

The biggest negative to me was a certain lack of descriptiveness, and now I see where the fans of Golden Rose are coming from. I played a couple hundred official Choice of Games games first before switching to hosted, and there having literary prose is much more common (games like Martian Job, Rent-a-Vice, Fool!, or Night Road come to mind), since there's a resume/portfolio submission process and really bad writing usually get screened out (not bad plot, per se; that's harder to test for). But in Hosted Games, there are no barriers, so there is much more variety in the writing quality. This game's writing isn't bad, but it could be more. My biggest complaint was in the powerful artifacts; the whole game centers around them, and once we have them, the game just says 'use the artifacts!' and the NPCs 'use the artifacts'. How? Did lightning come out? A blast of flame? Did angelic messengers descend? It was really anti-climactic.

Some of the writing was great, though; I felt like some of the NPC dialogue felt very authentic.

I'm more of a plot person than a writing person myself, and I like this game's plot and reveals. I had a good time.

The other point I have about writing is that you get better with practice, so I'm definitely looking forward to playing the next game in the series in the future.

The Neverending Story is one of my favorite books; I got a red-and-green text hardback german version in my youth and used it as part of my tools to learn German.

The movie, while good, isn't as great as the book, which has wonderful themes about self-identity, growth, love and the meaning of life.

This game slaughters both the book and the movie and leaves nothing of their themes.

This is a text adventure for the Spectrum (it comes in 3 parts in the version I played). I played it on the fuse emulator.

You wander around a map as Atreyu. You can carry five inventory items which are represented visually on the screen. There are two main kinds of items: standard adventure items that have nothing to do with the story, and items from the story that have no clear use in the game. Puzzles consist of grabbing most things you can find (there is a 5-item inventory limit and about half of items are red herrings) and then using each item in one spot. The game has a background timer (needed for one or two puzzles) so if you take time to think it has automatic input every few seconds.

The game contains no item descriptions, character descriptions, or player-initiated conversation. You run into characters and it just says 'look, it's Rockbiter' and you get a small pixel portrait of their face. Very occasionally the characters will do something. Falkor was the worst; you can summon Falkor and it just says 'Falkor is here", then you 'take Falkor' and you have him.

I love richly described games with emotional themes and interesting interactivity. This had none of that. One of the best books I've read, with no themes at all in its adaptation. No messages of love or courage or anything. Of course this is due to constraints, but Adventure has more compelling descriptions and emotions than this (like the Bear and the Volcano, or the creepy mirror) and better interactivity/clever puzzles like the eggs.

This game is described as being by 'Rybread', and ABOUT text starts with: "Rybread returns. Funemployment has let me tackle Inform 7 or at least try."

That suggests to me that this is Rybread Celsius, who was a well-known author many years ago and contributed to the IF theory reader. The previous Rybread Celsius games that I played were often buggy but had a creativity and a surreal quality that was enjoyable, like in Acid Whiplash.

Writing for Sub-Q magazine, Anya DeNiro wrote:

When I first became involved in the interactive fiction community online, back in 2001, my head was blown open by the possibilities afforded by parser-based games. I dutifully tracked down a copy of Lost Treasures of Infocom to find my footing with the "canon" that most others were building from. But there was someone else who seemed to be working on the fringes of the community, who some people considered an Ed Wood-type figure making monumentally bad game after game. Many considered him the worst writer of interactive fiction on the contemporary scene. Still others, fewer in number, considered him one of the experimental geniuses of interactive fiction. His name is Ryan Stevens, but he wrote under the name Rybread Celsius.

This game is both similar and dissimilar to those older games. It contains a giant carpet you can search/enter for candy, like his game Candy. Room directions often don't match what's actually available. There are numerous bugs; for instance, there's a coin in a well that you can't pick up unless you are in the well. So if you drop it anywhere else or put it on a supporter, you can never pick it up again (unless you can put the supporter in the wall). There is a dead adventurer that you cannot refer to by that name. I got around this by using 'it' immediately after entering a room, but found later on it responds to 'corpse'.

Dissimilar is the tone. His earlier games were somehow more frightening and unsettling to me, almost as if designed to subtly corrupt the human soul. This game feels more gentle and fun, almost whimsical, and is inspired by counterfeit monkey.

With the walkthrough, decompiling, and an eternal wellspring of hope, I got to 13 points. One point can only be obtained by taking a certain action on turn 127, so missing that locks you out, but I swear the turn counter jumps around from time to time. I never solved the grue puzzle, found the clock room, or the false coin.

Overall, I found it fun. While it's not polished, there's always something to do, and it's nice to see a long-retired author come out again to surprise the world. I liked the use of glulx's text styling, and the counterfeit monkey-inspired machine puzzle was cool.

Dinosaur Island Escape

This is another shorter Hosted Game that breaks the traditional mold. It has a lot in common with text adventures; instead of a forward-moving plot arc, it has a world model with keys, door, and items, just like parser games.

Unfortunately, I love parser games and just got through replaying the 50 or so best parser games of all time, and this doesn't quite measure up as either a text adventure or a CoG game, perhaps due to a lack of familiarity with what's possible in that puzzle space. But, I did still have fun! (until my untimely demise).

You crashland onto an island that is essentially Jurassic Park, which the game calls out several times (using character names or a city with the name 'Jurassic City' but a lot of letters are missing). You then explore the island from a central hub, with interesting things in all cardinal and ordinal directions. Essentially, there are locked buildings, keys, and pieces of rescue equipment in all areas, as well as dinosaur encounters. Grabbing a key unlocks other keys, etc. The game ends once you complete one piece of rescue equipment.

Then there is a part 2 with another character along with you with similar themes. I got close to beating this but died when I tried running past a t-rex with an athleticism of 5 (which was enough for all other athleticism checks). There were no savepoints or retries and I didn't feel like replaying the entire game 2 more times to get back to that point, so it sadly ended there.

Overall, the writing is generally utilitarian, and the code has some errors or inefficiencies like posting the 'you've come here already' text right after visiting a place for the first time, or repeating messages that should only happen once, or keeping the underscore in stat names.

All that said, the game is still fun. For $3.99, I'd say it's worth it; I could see me or my younger family members playing this in the airport. The dinosaurs are cute and interesting. I see this author has 3 more games; I am looking forward to them because of the non-traditional setup.

This is a genuinely very funny game. I laughed at a lot of parts.

I was just thinking before this how one thing I really value in a text adventure is adding some storytelling to it. I was thinking, “like a big plot arc or humor”.

Well, this game has a lot of humor. You play as a squirrel named Slappy, and the love of your life has been kidnapped! You have to head into town to save her, only you’ve lost your car keys.

I think the moment I realized this was going to be a great game was when I bemusedly tried painting the bus stop sign. I thought it was really funny that it worked. That’s when I realized that, instead of having regular puzzle solutions, everything in the game was going to be about using the items and objects in the funniest way.

The cliff and safe gags were especially funny to me. Finding the feather, I knew what to do it with it right away, and tried it on everyone, to funny results. Over and over I found a problem and later got something and thought, “Oh, I know where to use that!” which is, to me, great puzzle design. The ambient storytelling is great too, like the signs in the Carnival. Lots of care and detail are put into some of the default messages too.

I had a few hiccups with typing things in and one weird response, but no bugs to speak of. This is definitely my favorite improvmonster game so far, and I’ve added it to my IFDB list of fun comedy games.

This unique game uses the Choicescript engine for an entirely different kind of game.

There is only one chapter. You play as a grad student interested in time travel. The science here is 'soft' science, with hints of hard science but mostly just 'cool science', which I had a lot of fun with. You basically take the idea of Schroedinger's cat and make a time travel machine based on it that allows you to remember the future.

From that point on, you have access to memories of different times in your life between 18 or 19 and 50. Once you've learned about your future, you have the chance to go back and change things.

This is definitely a 'monkey's paw' scenario for the most part (but not entirely). Fixing one problem can cause two others. Some whole branches can get pruned when you realize a person or goal is just not worth it. One particular scenario involving a farm house and a redhead took about a third or more of my playtime.

I liked the ending I had (named after the game itself), and peeked at the code for some other endings. I like time travel games a lot and the final results here were fun. The only drawback I can see is that there wouldn't be a lot of variation if I wanted to go back and replay; it feels like a somewhat ironically linear non-linear path to get to any of the endings. But there is still a ton of variation. I see the author has a lot of different games; I look forward to trying them!