Reviews by MathBrush

This game is almost a pure 'time cave', a style of game structure that was popular with a lot of paper CYOA books. Basically every choice branches, with each branch having a different ending. I say it's almost a time cave, since some paths end up recombining later on, but there's not a lot of state tracking in the story itself.

The main drawbacks of such a story are a lack of coherence in the storyline and boring repetition of early material. This story addresses the first by being wacky and nonsensical (so incoherence is a plus) and the second by adding a 'checkpoint' system once you find enough endings, of which I found all 26.

I'm usually not impressed by zany humor but I genuinely found this game funny. It reminded me of Simpsons humor a bit. I've seen that it fell flat for some other reviewers, but humor, especially surreal humor, is so subjective that you're always going to have enjoyers and disenjoyers. I liked this enough to play through all endings.

This game pokes fun at fantasy tropes with a lot of silly dialogue and 4th wall breaking.

You (Elftor the Elf) and your manservant (Manny) have to save a king and kingdom from a terrible plague that makes everyone shout at the top of their lungs.

Along the way, there are plenty of sidequests--sidequests you have specifically been instructed not to fulfill.

There are quite a few endings. Overall the game is pretty goofy but I laughed several times. I also had the issue other reviewers did with the 'stats' part at the top disappearing at inconvenient times, like when it was being referenced in-game.

Overall, I liked the 'good' ending the best. A slight game, but fun for people who like dumb humor.

This is an Adventuron game with some good pixel art and intended for beginners.

Your mistress, a witch, has been hexed by a wizard, and you have to help her! To do so, though, you'll have to go through strange lands, frightening areas, and combat.

The setting is reminiscent of Howl's Moving Castle, an industrial area town where magic is common and regulated in a guild while a war drags on in the background.

There are multiple characters with distinct personalities and the puzzles and quests are varied and interesting. On those few occasions were I got stuck, the HELP command listed all possible verbs and talking with people gave gentle nudges.

It appears there is a secret ending, but I did not feel a need to go back and replay.

Great for a beginner or for an experienced player who just wants to play a chill game. Doesn't feel kid-oriented but is appropriate for kids.

This games has a parser written from scratch in Twine.

Making your own parser is a fraught thing, and many people have tried and failed over the years. The last-place entries of IFcomp are sprinkled with poor parser of years past. The biggest issue is that there is a bewildering amount of tradition in parser games that varies from group to group, all of whom may get upset if your style doesn't match theirs (like GET vs TAKE, X vs EXAMINE vs LOOK [object], G for again, Z for wait, abbreviations for cardinal directions, hitting 'up' for copying an earlier command). A few people have managed to make very robust custom parser: Robin Johnson, Nils Fagerburg, and Linus Åkesson.

This one is better than many I've seen, especially since it doesn't require downloading a Windows Executable and it has fairly quick response times. However, there are a few oddities that got in my way a bit: compass directions are part of play, but the text does not indicate possible compass directions to go in. Some basic actions are not repeatable, although no reason is given for it (generally things that give you one-time info). On the positive side, keyword highlighting is in use, similar to many Aaron Reed games, where you can interact with objects by typing their names. On the neutral side, much of the game occurs by typing Continue.

On the story side, this is reminiscent of books like The Giver or Divergent, where you are in a futuristic society and your role in life is chosen in a big ceremony.

I liked the overall story, and found it fun. I ended with a pretty big surprise in my playthrough, which was good. Some of the individual word choices stuck out as strange to me; one guy was referred to as 'the being' and 'the male' a lot, which made him sound kind of alien, and there were a few other choices that were a bit odd.

I enjoyed this dark game. You play as a young child bartered away to be the spouse of a pale and fitful girl, scion of a rich family.

The text is dark, but themes of light and the color white prevail through the game, with the light presented as being more evil and twisted than soothing darkness.

There are numerous endings to the game, and a variety of conversations where you can choose between topics.

I enjoyed the game's depiction of helplessness in the face of unspeakable horror, as well as its blending of dream and waking.

Surreal gothic horror is on of my favorite genres (such as the game Heart of the House or the book The Haunting of Hill House), so I think I enjoyed this more than most people would. So while I'm giving it a five star rating, I could see other people having different opinions.

This game definitely brought back a lot of memories. I had a long relationship where I had a lot of work-life balance issues, and it eventually ended up falling apart, and this reminded me of that.

There are several endings, so there are likely different versions of this game depending on how you play, but in my playthrough, there were two main characters: a wealthy government official, and a young, poorer-class individual.

They love each other, but there are tensions. The poor one is concerned with fairness and trying to find beauty in day to day moments, while the richer one is trying to 'bring home the bacon' and do well at work.

An argument about one partner staying home late and missing an appointment because their boss corralled them at work reminded me of times that my boss in my first job wanted me to stay home late while my partner was caring for our newborn.

It's a tough situation. So I think there's a lot of emotion in this game. Your choices have a lot of freedom, too.

The only thing missing for me is length; I felt like the pacing in the first half was more drawn out and set up expectations for a longer game but that was rapidly concluded in the ending, leaving me wanting or expecting more.

Apparently this game is a kind of in-joke parody of a German game from years ago about going south.

This game is about going north in the desert. It requires a great deal of repetitive commands (I found it useful to enter commands like n.n.n.n.n.n.n.n to get through faster).

The idea is you're marching through a very, very large desert to get to the north. The narrator occasionally throws in funny quips.

I got to a point I could go no further, and I decompiled the game to get a hint, but I couldn't figure out how to move on. Eventually, I tried (Spoiler - click to show)take all, noticed (Spoiler - click to show)a shovel in my inventory, and the rest was easy from there.

No bugs I could see, and an amusing concept, but not much else.

For a more serious but still funny take on the idea, you could check out The Northnorth Passage. But I didn't mind this game, it was amusing and very simple for me, a poor German speaker, to play.

This was a pretty entertaining German game. Due to my weak German skills, I relied heavily on the accompanying map for help, so someone who solves the puzzles on their own may have a different experience. I also appreciate the fact that HILFE lists every verb needed to complete the game.

You play as the captain of a fishing vessel where things aren't going so well. You haven't found any fish at all! And so your crew has nothing to do. Maybe that's why almost all the food is gone. And why your dishes are covered in weird slime. And why your first mate seems to be chanting praises to unspeakable gods...or just talking to himself. One or the other.

This game has horror elements but also is self-conscious and amusing about it. I enjoyed the scripted events, active NPCs and adapting environments, and I appreciate that it was more story-focused and not too long or complex, although there were definitely a couple of puzzles that took me a while to figure out. Fortunately, there's a nice mechanism when dying that takes you to a recent 'checkpoint'. Had a good time with this one!

This is a Twine game with some well-done styling that runs for a little over 15 minutes for me.

In this game, you are (I believe) a young Chinese girl at an American high school in Japan. Hannah, a friend of yours, has died, and her ghost is haunting you, but in a mostly positive way, like helping with homework.

Outside of death and ghosts, the games secondary emphasis seems to be sex; although no explicit scenes are shown, there are discussions about the relative attractions and submissiveness of different ethnicities, and of high school girls in general. I felt uncomfortable at times, but it never went beyond talk.

The story centers on finding more about Hannah and the reason for her death, as well as a couple of bullies in the school who do more and more over the top actions.

Gameplay was pretty linear at first; each screen had multiple links, with the last one going to the next page and the earlier ones revealing hidden text. Eventually there were more choices, with two major choices in the game providing the four endings (although the first choice, (Spoiler - click to show)taking the umbrella or not, may not seem important at the time).

The endings vary significantly. Some were about building friendships, but the others felt more shocking to me. One involved (Spoiler - click to show)violently dismembering a girl because she used anti-trans language and revealed she had bullied Hannah prior to suicide. The author in the authors note said that they could have seen themselves doing that to someone in their own life. Another involved (Spoiler - click to show)the bully pushing herself romantically onto the heroine, explaining that all the mean stuff she did was because she was attracted to her.

Overall, I think the interactivity could have used a slight tweak; either having more options early on, or, if it was intended to be read straight through, adding a smooth transition to the link-clicking effect (like a .3 second or less slide-in animation) to give a little more satisfaction with the links.

I didn't strongly connect with the story, but as a roughly 40-yr old cis man I'm not the audience this is going for. I could definitely see someone in a similar situation deeply appreciating and feeling touched by the story.

This game has you enter a place you shouldn't, a portal, an actual liminal space between the real world and the world of dreams.

The main gameplay loop is looking at a subway map, picking a station to go to, and exploring, with items you pick up at one station coming in use at another.

Each station is a pure fantasy, mostly disconnected from the others. It's reminiscent of Miyazaki films like Spirited Away or My Neighbor Totoro (with their subway/catbus). The locations aren't intentionally scary, although some are pretty trippy.

I forgot which station I entered in and it was literally the last one I went back to. I ended up seeing everything, and it was a lot of fun!

To describe the vibes, one early station has a market run by people made of wood; another is a station almost identical to our world, but subtly not.

There were some spelling errors, mostly in the first few pages (like 'rennovating'). There was a pretty bad bug where trying to click on 'alight upon water' to transfer from the brown line to purple line going north gave a twine code error. You can get around it by going south instead and turning around. I think that one other station was like that as well.

Overall, a pleasant game with a few bugs.