Reviews by MathBrush

I played this game on BlueStacks, an Android emulator.

This is a short game with a few options, each of which seems fairly strong. It uses a variety of Japanese words, often with explanations. There are several points where it seems like the game gives you freedom to make big choices; I didn't replay to verify.

It's hard to explain the story or to check the interactivity, because the game was really hard to understand. Usually a game is hard to understand because the author struggles with grammar or the story was written by AI and is bland, but this story seemed like it was written by someone with perfect English and unassisted by tools. It just is...weird. There's a lot of elaborate high language interspersed with random curse words. The language used is full of metaphors that didn't quite make sense to me. I think there was an experiment involving reviving someone in a relationship, but beyond that...I'm not sure.

An impressive amount accomplished in 4 hours, but it remains a mystery to me.

This is one of the more serious Ectocomp games I've played. It can be hard to write interactive fiction that has gravitas and purpose to it, as giving players agency can take away from overall arcs.

This game handles it well. You are in a hotel room, a haze filtering in through the curtains. War is going on, bombings and violence. And you are confronted with the memory of someone who is no longer there...

The game is short, so there isn't much to say, except that this is written well and was poignant.

Every year when I play Spanish Ectocomp I encounter a game by this author and it's always wild. They usually have 3d models that are in the uncanny valley, as well as choice-based gameplay where you can move around. The stories are always wild, often about crime or insanity.

This game restricts the 3d models to profile pictures, and they actually look pretty good. But the story now is some kind of procedurally generated thing, where 4 students have kidnapped and are verbally abusing and torturing a professor. Every action gets a reaction by everyone in the room (even actions you don't take), and you get the same choices over and over (my character drank at least 7 cups of a mixed drink of three heavy liquors with no ill effects). There are a few more dramatic choices, but overall this is mostly just seeing a wide variety of Spanish profanity interspersed with torture and the decision to drink or not. It's full of drama and mechanically interesting to observe but narratively a little weak.

This was the first Ectocomp game I played. I played the French version, then later ran through it in English.

It's very extensive for a 4-hour game. It's an Ink game, and you have quite a few different choices throughout the game. The author has used several interesting techniques, like branching and bottlenecking choices, choices that allow users to lawnmower through items in any order, and choices where you have a limited number you can select.

The story is a bit haphazard, as would be expected in a speed game. It had so many elements...there was a jaded romance which I found quite interesting, and then more chance for romance later. But there are also competitive game aspects, and some mystery. To me it felt like three ideas for great games, all rolled into one small game, and so it didn't gel. But I like each of the ideas! Impressive for a work of 4 hours.

This game was entered in several minimal jams, including the Single Choice jam. It is the author's first game.

It's a visual novel with one main image of characters with slight variation. The writing is intense and earnest: you, a time traveller, have been stuck in a loop over and over again with one person at its focus: your love.

The image used is high-quality and is very stylized, more anime-style. The story reminds me of fanfic in its genre conventions.

Though this is in the single choice jam, there's not really any story choices, but it is rewritten in as a 'restart/quit' option, which I actually thought was pretty clever.

I think if there's anywhere this game could be improved, it's in specificity. Right now the writing could apply to almost any time travel seting and situation: it could be a WWII era drama set in France, a turn of the century New York tale, a futuristic sci-fi set in China. And the lover could be anyone; we meet with only tiny details that fit in every life, like grabbing a cup of coffee or going on the bus. Part of that is intentional and works, in that it could be read as a MC/reader fic that needs to be vague to allow you to insert yourself. On the other hand, those incidents could be expanded on; there could be conversations that were had; there could be specific incidents recalled that are unusual and remarkable. IDK, I felt like I went off on this a long time but only because I feel like this author actually has a lot of talent and so I'm kind of imagining a really good story that could be written by them, if there were some more concrete details in it.

This visual novel was entered in the Single Choice jam.

My overall impression of it varied over time, as at first I thought the story was a bit trope-heavy but later on I enjoyed the progression it made.

You play as the husband of a recently deceased witch. After her death, you discover a letter from her telling you how you can contact her spirit.

You adventure through dungeons, killing goblins, to get a spirit orb to contact her with. Eventually, things come down to a difficult choice.

Overall, a lot of the game could have had more specific descriptions instead of relying on implicit common knowledge (like the fact that dungeons exist with goblins who are enemies, who the Lord of Light is, how heaven/hell work, etc.). But I liked the main narrative thrust of the story.

This is a Ren'py game entered in the single choice jam with some other minimal constraints.

It's go-go-go from the start, with flowery and/or extreme language choices, intense scenario descriptions, harsh music, etc. It tells a lurid tale of someone kidnapped by a jealous rival and tortured over and over.

I only played through one ending, so there were likely chunks of story I missed, but what was there was very descriptive. Aside from the game itself, I'm surprised that ren'py has over 1700 files to unzip when you download a python game.

Overall, a good exercise in writing stressful or tense situations, but the one-note harshness and intensity could have been balanced by contrasting scenes.

This is a game from the Single Choice jam written using Ren'py.

It depicts an annoying situation edging towards disturbing where the main character 'you-chan' meets 'yandere-chan', who is cosplaying as a yandere girlfriend from an anime (here 'yandere' being part of a classification of character personality types, including tsundere and kuuder, with yandere being the personality type that is obsessive and mixes romance with violence and abusive behavior).

There are two endings depending on your single choice. Mine went from a kind of cutish, annoying meeting to a deeply disturbing one, as is appropriate for a yandere situation. I didn't feel super invested in the storyline, but the descent into danger was handled pretty well I think.

Although short, this game satisfies all my criteria for 5 stars:
+Polish: This is a short twine game with custom styling and no typos or errors that I saw.
+Descriptiveness: The three main characters are painted vividly, with distinct and well-defined personalities and motives.
+Interactivity: As part of the single choice jam, there is only one option to choose, but it's an interesting one: which perspective to see the story from. It was fun to contrast the different perspectives and viewpoints.
+Emotional impact: I chuckled after the first story, not so much that I found it amusing but that it managed to pack in so much in a short time.
+Would I play again? I enjoyed playing it three times to see all endings.

This game was written in Narrat, an engine I hadn't heard of before but which worked very smoothly; this was a visually well-done game, with an appropriate stock image, nice styling/layout and smooth scrolling.

This story was entered in the Single Choice Jam, and features exactly one choice in the center of the story, at what felt like a powerful emotional moment.

Content wise, the story revolves around remembrances of Girl's Day, which I assume is the Japanese holiday, as the imagery used reflects that, and I'm not currently aware of other Girl's Days out there. The protagonist is old now, but reflects on the generations of women in their past. There are strong implications of the narrator's changing gender identity, but nothing explicit.

Overall, a thoughtful, reflective, and well-done piece.