Ratings and Reviews by MathBrush

This game has you speak completely in symbols.

You are bird, a child living with a single male named Ty. Ty has problems, and so do you.

You communicate with Ty completely in symbols. What this means in-game is never explained.

This story didn't grab me, but the presentation was slick, and it's a game worth replaying. Sometimes technical stuff is enough to impress me on its own; however, the author has a great knack for characterization as well.

Ojuel is a master of setting, and this is a great game. You play as an former dancer in 1958 in a communist Carribean country. You have to extricate something from a house party, but you don't know what it is.

The game has great storytelling, using flashbacks and conversation to good effect. I see it getting nominated for several XYZZYs.

There were several implementation difficulties, though, because it was sometimes hard to know what verbs to use. A post-comp release that implemented every command response contained in judges' reviews would not take much time, and would add the finishing touches to this already great game.

This was a strange game. It has some great ideas: extricate yourself from a pile of rubble (which reminds me of an old comp game where you start in a pile of dead bodies and have to crawl out). You then explore a small underground complex with a Lovecraftian vibe.

But the game has a lot of implementation problems, leading to numerous judges missing out on big chunks of the game.

I didn't have too much trouble getting out of the pile, like some judges did, but I didn't even so the cabinets or the slicing machine.

Worth trying. I wish it were expanded.

This is a cute little game. You play as two kids who are searching for their pet named Sicomore.

You pick the order to visit three locations, then finish off the last location. So there's not much interactivity.

What makes it charming is that it seems like it was designed around a series of characters drawn and named by children, which I liked. The illustrations are provided in the game.

I beta tested this game.

This is an intense puzzle game, and it has some small graphics, background sounds/music, and timed responses.

This is a tricky, tricky puzzle game. You have to redeem yourself after destroying your father's pocket watch. The game sends you on a journey with several axes: time, space, size, etc.

I like it quite a bit, even writing down a walkthrough for it.

I only give it 4 stars because timed text delays drive me crazy. But not everyone may feel that way.

I could see myself picking this book up and reading it in the library. You play as an orphan who gets sucked into another world by a mysterious stranger.

This other world is an Oz-like fantasy world that is creatively engineered. A long story plays out.

There's not much interactivity to speak of, though there are options scattered throughout. But I liked this; it reminded me of 'pulpy' kids books that I read when I was a teenager, like Deltora quest.

I beta tested this game.

This is a TADS game where you are on a spaceship, and anything you do (for long enough) results in a different wacky ending.

The author keeps you from meeting too many error messages; if you try to do something usually not allowed (like going down when you shouldn't) it justs adapts the game (like having you burrow through the metal). It even includes a battle-ship type game.

It made me laugh, it is pretty descriptive, but it's not polished in some sense that I have trouble grabbing hold of; and I felt confused without the hints.

I beta tested this game several times, and work with the author.

This is one of the best big games released in recent years. It's a mathematical puzzlefest, and it's huge; I'm a math professor, and I used the walkthrough, and it still took me 4 hours.

You travel through the history of mathematics, or more over a mind-map of theoretical concepts: the number line, arithmetic, algebra, all the way up to fractals.

The game is completable by non-math majors, according to several reviewers.

This is an old-school game; puzzles are unabashedly complex, each room is its own set-piece, NPCs don't engage in deep puzzle trees. I liked it, and I especially like that people are still making 'big games'.

This short Quest game has you go into a mysterious house. In that house, you have to solve a few short puzzles and meet a stranger.

This game felt insubstantial to me; I wished for more: more puzzles, more backstory, more descriptions, more conversation.

This feels like the seed of a bigger and better game. I could see a 2.0 version of this game being very enjoyable.

You play a government censor in this game. You are given a series of incriminating documents which you have to censor; clicking on various sentences blacks them out.

You are graded on how you do. This doesn't matter quite as much as you'd think, but it does affect the final ending.

I loved the feel of this game, the feel of manipulating documents and being in control. I do wish it had been longer or the the censoring had been more closely integrated with the story.