Reviews by MathBrush

This game has quite a bit of history behind it. It was the fourth Choice of Games title, when they were all named 'Choice of' (the ones before it being the Dragon, Broadsides, and the Vampire). A year later, it received an update with an entire new chapter, and then another update.

It's power fantasy in its purest form. You are young and gorgeous and everyone wants you, including the king/queen. You can choose everyone's gender in the game and due to magic any two people can have a baby. Tension in the kingdom is preserved, though, by replacing gender with magic. The type of magic you are born with determines who can rule.

Every choice you make has massive consequences. You are constantly romancing someone or making backroom deals or starting a war or revolutionizing the system or jousting in a tournament. I found it very similar to Sims in the way you can meddle with everything and everyone.

Being so early in the history of the company, it has a lot of odd quirks. It has three major paths you can choose, but only one leads to the updated content, the others ending with your old age and death after seeing only a third of the content. There is a lot of customization of your appearance that ends up not mattering. Some of your bases stats are rarely checked. There are a lot of binary choices, and there are several 'huge list' choices where you have 7 or more choices. The narrator comments on your choices to you directly, something I only remember seeing in Choice of the Dragon.

The game is full of the eponymous affairs. I do not support affairs in real life, but this is a fantasy, and more than that, it's a fantasy that shows the real-life problems, jealousies, and conflicts that are the natural consequences of affairs. I think it's worthwhile to play and fun, to boot.

As I've been playing through Choice of Games stories, I've found ones that are touching, majestic, goofy, weird, and high-quality.

This one is just plain fun. It's a James Bond-type thriller, and it does interactivity right. I was able to really customize the kind of person I wanted to be, pursue the relationships I wanted to pursue, and have moments where I really felt torn between two goals but knew what I had to do.

The game revolves around investigation of a tech firm that has experienced recent layoffs and a suspicious employee death. There is a lot of worldbuilding, but in a mostly easy-to-understand way, like the enemy agency DIABLO which uses codenames based on devils.

I found this easy to play, engaging, and long enough that I felt satisfied. If Choicescript games were food, this would be meat and potatoes (if you're into that thing). Simple and especially, especially when done right.

Content-wise it's very similar to Bond films. There was one instance I found of strong profanity, some heavier violence towards the end (including alluded torture and some gore depending on your choices). My playthrough had heavy flirting but no explicit sexuality, but the game lets you customize this quite a bit so I'm not sure about other paths.

Would definitely recommend.

I received a review copy of this game.

I'll discuss this game on my five point scale. For an overview, you are a former safecracker who's running out of money and is looking for a new job. This one's a casino, on Mars. You have to work with a team and pull of the heist; but things go wrong.

Polish: This game is thoroughly polished. Even the stats screen looks nice, and the names of stats are a clever treat (you have three stats about your interactions with Mars, named 'Curiosity', 'Sojourner', and 'Spirit').

Descriptiveness: This is where the game shines. This feels like the kind of writing you'd expect picking up a crime or mystery novel from the bestseller table at a bookstore. It's a higher caliber than most the IF I've played, for sure.

Interactivity: This is where it differs a lot from other Choicescript games, and the area I have the most to say about. Most Choicescript games are power fantasies where you max/min or strategize and get to do all sorts of great things, but at the same time sacrificing other goals. This game felt less powerful and more by-the-skin-of-your-teeth. There are very few opportunities to raise your stats. Many choices were more about reaction than action, and I could see that be why another reviewer gave it less stars. I'm a fan of games that invite reflection (ironically, one of my favorite such games is Polish the Glass, which has a similar writing style and features the same day job as this game's protagonist). There are still power fantasy elements; you can fall in love with many people, change the whole world, become rich. I became rich, but it felt hollow. Maybe I should try again?

Emotional Impact: I felt it. The game had an intense blackjack simulation that I liked. I don't gamble in real life, but in the game it was fun (lost everything, of course). I felt tense at times, laughed at the portrait in the crime lord's office. A strong area for the game.

Would I play again? Absolutely. If I time traveled to tell my past self about which Choicescript games I should play, I'd definitely include this one, and I want to see if I can save Mars this time.

I was provided a review copy of this game.

This game is one of the older Choice of Games entries, and one of the shortest.

It's a comedy about you, a parole officer for all of the aliens that live on earth (which is now a galactic penal colony). There's a single romantic option (that I found, at least).

I found quite a bit of it funny, and there was quite a bit of local idioms from different cultures I learned, but this game suffers by comparison. In the six years since it came out, the standard for these games has generally crept higher and it shows.

The text feels sparse, often just a couple of paragraphs per choice. Many of the choices feel very on-the-nose and in-the-moment instead of the slow build-up of small choices leading to big consequences that marks newer games.

Some though, may find these characteristics refreshing, giving a quicker game with less labored choices and less weighty subject matter. In any case, it was polished, descriptive, and funny, and I might play again.

I received a review copy of this game.

This game reminds me a bit of Old Jim's Convenience store from IFComp 2019. Both feature an old, abandoned structure underneath which is a large mining area.

This game is the author's first game, and the lack of beta testing shows. The interesting layout and rooms are negatively impacted by under-cluing and by exits which stop working once you use them and runtime errors.

My 5-point scale:
-Polish: This game is not polished.
+Descriptiveness: It is relatively descriptive
-Interactivity: Bugs cause quite a few problems
+Emotional impact: I found parts of it quite fun (like the result of using dynamite)
-Would I play again?

Andromeda Apocalypse is one of the best-crafted games I have seen. In this mid-length sci-fi game, you explore an abandoned station that is part Sphere, part 2001: A Space Odyssey, and a little part Alien.

The game features a compelling main NPC, a map that flows well in your mind, and puzzles that lead the player on from piece to piece in a natural way.

Instead of traditional scoring, the game includes achievements. At first, I thought this would make the game worse, but the achievements became a puzzle themselves. ('How do I get the 'Ellen Ripley' achievement?', I found myself asking.)

I would recommend playing Andromeda Awakening first, because this game is a sequel. Awakening is a good game, in and of itself, but Apocalpyse is the better of the two.

I recommend this game for everyone.

This classic game is exceptionally well-written and implemented, together with a well-done hint system.

The game features a pretty small playing area that is packed with objects and several NPCs that take interesting actions.

The game is hard, and I had to rely on hints much of the time. The puzzles require creative uses of a large number of objects gathered from different areas, and some large leaps of intuition.

The plot is about the nature of reality, and it has several mind-benders, which is why I am not describing it as much.

Tally Ho was recommended for me to play in a poll on Games that Need More Reviews.

This is a big Choicescript game with 600,000 words total. In it, you play a butler in the Wodehouse style.

Your client is a spendthrift who needs to impress a wealthy aunt in order to pay off a debt. Hijinks ensue.

I'm not too big of a fan of actual Wodehouse novels, but this game managed to be outrageously funny in several ways. There are many paths to success, including theft, romance, intrigue, intellectual endeavors, and secret clubs.

The characters are refreshing as well. They are all deeply flawed but also have, generally, good hearts. You generally have many goals at once that completely contradict each other.

I appreciate that the author in fact wrote much of the game intending you to frequently fail checks. It's supposed to be fun and rewarding whether you do 'good' or 'bad'.

This is a well-written Exceptional Story for Fallen London.

In this one, you find odd pieces of sentient Paisley clothing scattered about Fallen London. As you engage with it, you discover a strange past.

The story ends up ranging around several of game's most important factions.

The writing is tight and clever, with complex characters. There is a climactic battle that is more action-packed than most of Fallen London. Overall, highly recommended. Has Groover's signature creepy style and contains a great deal of Wilde references.

This game is one of the most interesting of Spring Thing. You have to explore a 4x4 grid of planets, with 4 'safe' planets in the middle, 8 dangerous planets on the edges, and 4 really dangerous planets in the corners (at least, that's how I interpreted it).

The writing is grounded in the pulp sci fi of decades ago, and has a lot of tropes from an older time, like 'impressing the natives' and taking treasures from their holy sites back to your society's museums.

The gameplay has a good rhythm of exploring, buying and selling, kind of reminiscent of Fallen London.

I really enjoyed this at first, but on each of my playthroughs, I hit a kind of wall at the end where I knew exactly what I needed to do but the resources seemed like a lot to acquire. There are some shortcuts (like special ores giving tons of crystals), but I felt each time like the interesting content ran out before the final quest did.

However, that might be due to my timeline in playing every game. Perhaps if I took it at a more leisurely pace it wouldn't be a big drawback, and I don't know if the author should change it.