Reviews by MathBrush

Fallen London is all about the impermanence of death in the Neath (the enormous cavern below the earth where cities get sucked into when they 'fall').

But this story follows a strange assassin who uses frogs and somehow manages to permanently get rid of people.

It ends up being quite charming. Here's my score:

+Polish: It worked smoothly and seemed well-thought out. Pretty much all Fallen London content is polished.
+Descriptiveness: I played it months ago, but I still remember the frogs and the (Spoiler - click to show)factory that threatens their wetlands
+Emotional impact: As I said it above, it's charming. Johnny Croak is a sweety.
+Interactivity: I definitely felt like I could make real choices.
-Would I play again? You can pay to replay (or play for the first time if you missed it) Fallen London's exceptional stories. This one was fun, but I wouldn't go out of my way to play it again, especially with some other very good stories out there.

I have a fondness for summer camp settings. Birdland is a game I really enjoy and recommend a lot of people, and it's set in a summer camp. Several tv movies and shows from my childhood and my son's are set in summer camps.

Also, Psy High is high on my list of best Choicescript games.

So I enjoyed this game. It's more serious in some ways than the first game.

You play as a camp counselor, and you make a big discovery about the camp. You have the opportunity to radically change your life and the life of others.

More than any other Choicescript game I've played, I experienced a lot of temptation here. I usually pick a role early and play along, and this time I played the 'help everyone as much as possible." But the game sets up competing goals really well, and by the end I had ended up acting very selfishly and killing several people.

I like how the game has truly meaningful choices interspersed with reflective choices; for instance, you can pick your relationship with your parents, which makes you feel powerful in and of yourself.

I saw someone complain on Steam that the game had a high school setting, so keep in mind that this is absolutely a high school game. I loved this game, and intend to play it again in the future, maybe try and change some of the darker choices I made.

I received a review copy of this game.

The Last Monster Master is a game very different from most Choicescript games in some respects.

First of all, the bulk of the game is a simulation like Metahuman Inc, another unusal CoG game. About 60% of the game consists of taking 4 monsters with different personalities and strengths, training them and getting various amounts of money for it, spending the money on improved training facilities, and seeing how they respond to different scenarios.

The main stats are discipline/compassion, nerve and respect, but there are also two 'power' stats: telepathy and body language. I focused entirely on body language. These two abilities aren't used to do things directly. Instead, in many options in the game, you can either guess what to do from 3 normal options or use telepathy/body language to get a hint.

The weird thing is that the hint is often not apparently useful, and the game frequently has you try everything from a list, exhausting all your options, with the last option frequently being something out of character. So I'm not sure how useful getting the body language hints actually was.

The beginning is a bit slow, and the end a bit abrupt. The characterization of you, your helper, and your monsters can shift quickly.

But the premise is fantastic, and it allows enough flexibility to make the game overall enjoyable. I guess it's kind of like a Choicescript version of Pokemon, but you can talk to your monsters about their feelings and what it's like living in human society. You get to visit them after they graduate and see how they turned out.

Be warned that the game changes the goalposts on you frequently.

Definitely recommended for fans of simulators, not so much for others.

I received a review copy of this game.

Pros: It was much easier for me to choose the stats I wanted to have than other games, and to get them high. I chose to be like Heracles, and was a completely brutal and narcissistic champion of the Gods. The game absolutely let me take this path, and justified it in-game as being a champion of the goddess of war.

I enjoyed the writing quite a bit. The characters were on par with other good Choicescript games, but the overall plot and themes are what resonated with me.

There are several romance choices. At least two are thrust upon you in terms of their attraction to you, but you have a lot of agency over what you'll do.

This game is inspired by Greek mythology, but has its own pantheons and cities. I suggest that you try the opening before buying to get a feel for it. I'm excited to try its sequel, which is substantially larger.

As a final note, this game does something I've never seen in a Choicescript game before: (Spoiler - click to show)it has you switch to another character briefly mid-game, with a different stat set you can adjust to.

Cons: The game has a fairly linear main story (though I've only played once, many choices seemed to converge, and other reviews confirm it). Until the end, that is. However, in a game centered around destiny, that's not so odd a thing. But I bring it up because some have questioned its replay value. It felt quite long to me, though, and it had enough choice in characterization that I feel who I was as a character could be completely different from playthrough to playthrough.


I received a review copy of this game.

This is definitely one of my favorite Choice of Games so far, for my personal tastes. It manages to make you feel powerful while forcing you to choose between competing goals, and has great options and fun writing.

It has a lot of mysteries and it has a character with psychic abilities, and both of those things are personal favorite genres of mine, so I think others may not have the same response I did. But I can definitely say I enjoyed it quite a bit!

You play as a clairvoyant teen in a high school where much of the student body has unusual powers which sprang up the year before. Other students look to you for investigating strange or missing things, and there is a general conspiracy.

It had a lot of good romantic options. One is kind of pushed on you (in regards to your feelings), but in a way that feels true to my experiences in high school, when your emotions and feelings are out of whack anyway.

One thing that I've noticed is that as I play more Choicescript games, I enjoy them more. A lot of them have similar rhythms and expectations, and it helps me strategize and find a way to enjoy them more. I would definitely put this game in my top 10 Choicescript games so far.

I received a review copy of this game.

Out of the Choicescript games I've given 4 stars, this is definitely at the higher end. It's a pirate game, felt fairly long, had great worldbuilding and nice action scenes and romance.

The main thing holding me back from a higher rating was my lack of emotional investment, most likely due to the characters. Outside of the main character I romanced (the pirate captain Redwing), I couldn't tell you who any of the other characters really were or looked like. What side was Maurice from? Who is Lex? Pretty much everything else about the game was enjoyable.

There are a few sea monster fights. The game is set in an alternate Atlantic, with countries similar to England, France, and Haiti, among others. The main conflict is with slave traders.

There was also a bit of an issue with stats. I was disappointed at first that there were many stats and not many boosts in the opening chapters, but that soon went away as the game provides many opportunities to boost stats throughout the game.

But a bigger issue was confusion of stats. There was too much overlap. How can you tell the difference between a check for wits or cunning, or finesse for that matter? What is the difference between your combat skill and being straightforward in battle? I was able to succeed more often than not, but it made me realize that having closely-related skills may be a bad idea (something I've struggled with in my own game, having a stat for being friendly and a stat for having friends).

I received a review copy of this game.

This game, like so many other Choicescript games, has a pretty bad beginning followed by a much better middle.

I found the opening very slow, with children's book-style writing and very slow plotting. The second chapter was also fairly slow, and I found it difficult to push through, one of the openings I struggled the most with.

The middle was wonderful. I enjoy being exposed to other cultures, and Baba Yaga is about the extent of my knowledge of Russian folklore. However, every Russian I've seen comment on the game says that it portrays the folklore inaccurately or poorly. On the other hand, though, every such comment I've seen has also included a complaint about how the your sibling is non-binary (which you find out by them telling you they don't think they're a girl or a boy near the beginning). So I can't tell if it's actually really bad representation, or if people hate the non-binary thing and that makes them inclined to attack the rest of the game.

But as a fantasy story in general, I liked the middle. You have a choice of three extremely powerful villains to deal with. I faced a seven-headed dragon and a necromancer.

The ending was fairy tale-like, with simple surroundings and simple solutions. It felt like it fit the story, but wasn't the most satisfying ending, as it didn't tie up every narrative arc (the most thorough tying-up I've seen is in Herofall).

This game's approach to challenges had a lot of pass/fail with no real benefit to failing. That makes sense in some games; but with no undo (like in parser games or in Heroes Rise's legend-point-retry system), a long linear game like this with many chances of failure is too tedious to replay a lot. And another thing this game does that some other Choicescript games do is having a long series of difficult tests right after each other, where failing even one is heavily penalized. Much better is the system in Choice of Robots, Creme de la Creme or Tally Ho where your failures provide as compelling a story as your successes.

Nevertheless, the game was polished, descriptive, I found much of the interactivity interesting and I was emotionally invested. I'd probably give this a 3.5, but rounding to a 4.

I received a review copy of this game.

I was interested to play this game, as I know that on one hand it's been one of Choice of Games' best-selling titles for years, and that on the other hand its frequently vilified by a subset of the Choice of Games forums.

It's one of the oldest Choice of Games entries, the fourth one ever made. I've played a lot of the old ones recently, and have a lot more variation between them in length, use of stats, linearity, and romances as the company hadn't settled on a house style yet.

And this game has a lot of peculiarities as well, but manages to be more polished than many early games. The stats are clearly communicated. In fact, they are spelled out in the game. Your choices matter; occasionally you are presented with binary choices, but one is grayed out. That doesn't mean (as some steam reviewers thought) that you never have that option; it means that the game is keeping track of your past actions.

One peculiarity in particular is that there is a single forced narrative of who you are and what you feel. That doesn't really change from playthrough to playthrough; you're always the child of disgraced, incarcerated heroes; you always experience the same trials and betrayals; you always have the same powers. There's only one romantic option, and its fairly forced on you, the game describing in detail how you feel about the other sexually, one of things I found least enjoyable.

What changes, then, is how you get through these opportunities. Do you follow justice or fame? Are you defensive or offensive? Do you have hero worship or work on your own?

So I see why it's popular and I see why people on the forums don't like it. It doesn't fit the ideal of the current, refined in-house style of Choice of Games, with plethoras of backgrounds, branches and romances. But it's also a compelling story with good emotional involvement.

In my playthrough, as a hetero male, all of the female villains and the main romantic option were consistently described as sexy, busty, working in prostitution or seduction. I didn't find that enjoyable, and I considered taking off a star for that. But I believe that many people will enjoy playing this game, and for that reason I'm giving it 5 stars.

Edit: On a side note, after I played it last night, I had terrifying superhero dreams based on it that woke me up with fright. I guess its descriptions are pretty vivid!

I received a review copy of this game.

This is very entertaining title from Choice of Games.

It's a self-aware farce with characters drawn from broad fantasy/fairytale stereotypes.

You play as a royal heir who is constantly surviving kidnapping attempts. The bulk of the game concerns one kidnapping attempt, which involves you and four heroes (a bold knight, a proud Amazon, a peasant, and human raised by faeries) descending layer by layer through an enormous tower full of traps.

One compelling thing about this game is that it rewards bad behavior. Being a helpless drama magnet is one of the strongest ways to make it through the game. So is being selfish and mean, but being kind is okay.

It even makes good use of bad relationship stats. You have plenty of opportunities to decide who to throw in the mix of danger.

Some people have expressed difficulty knowing which stats connect to what. I admit to being a little unclear on the use of strategy vs intuition (neither of which I maxed out), and I stayed almost exactly 50% on 'ready for the ball' vs 'ready to fight'. I think one issue is that much of the humor relies on you making specific choices, so it can feel forced at times because it IS forced due to the humor requirements. I also found it a bit hard to get started.

I received a review copy of this game.

This game is one of the shorter Choicescript entries, around 80K words. It still had a comparable playthrough length to bigger games, so I suspect it just has less paths than most games (my game is in a similar spot branching-wise).

You play as a news reporter who is investigating criminal activity. Unlike most Choice of Games entries, the main character gets their butt kicked frequently. It can be a bit frustrating having so many negative things happen.

There are three main stats, and many parts of the game involve choosing your best stat. When I was writing for Choice of Games, they mentioned the 'three stat trap' a lot, and I wonder if games like this is where that comes from (just having every choice be an option between three stats).

It sounds like I'm being pretty negative about the game. The truth is its hard to design a satisfying story arc for one of these games in 80K words, unless you paint everything with broad strokes and have a lot of life-changing choices (like Choice of the Dragon).

Nevertheless, I enjoyed discovering more about the mystery, and the characters were vividly described, if somewhat one-dimensional (especially villains!). I don't regret my time playing, and the game was polished.

I received a review copy of this game.