Reviews by MathBrush

This is an odd game. The author coded up a little puzzle where you find answer to homework questions and then type them in, together with one or two little fetch quests.

They then spent a great deal of time polishing that game and adding extra frills. But the core game is brief, and the means of completing it are clunky.

This is certainly a unique game.

This game was funded by kickstarter, like Hadean Lands before it. It casts you as a novice magic user who is trying to save magic folk from discovery.

The magic system is a bit unusual; it seems to rely mostly on moon-logic. In fact, a lot of the game does. There's really no connection between things; it seems like the puzzles are mostly solvable by trying everything everywhere.

Many players enjoy this style of careful play, and the game has very positive steam reviews and ratings on here, and people I've talked to liked it quite a bit.

But I like puzzle games where you can plan ahead more, like Hadean Lands. I felt like Thaumistry kept saying 'I'll notice that you tried a reasonable solution, but it's not the one I want. Just wait and be patient, kid.' I ended up stopping playing halfway and through, and left it that way for months.

So it's not my style. But it is incredibly high-quality in terms of polish. It was beta tested over and over, and looks good.

This was a charming game, and in a genre I haven't seen too much of: a murder mystery set completely in a world of robots. Bad Machine and Suspended both give off the same vibe of this game, that of a purely mechanical society, but this game achieves a remarkable contrast between the impassiveness of the robots and the emotion of the investigation.

It suffers from ADRIFT's standard problems, but to a much smaller degree than usual. I did have some trouble guessing the later actions, but overall I found myself pleased by this game. I've been lucky enough to find a string of good games in a row this week.

This game was entered in IFComp 2004. It has two PCs, one featured in the prologue, and one who is a main character detective.

The opening scene was clever, but I soon find myself frustrated by small bugs and a lack of implementation. Without proper feedback, it was hard to know if I was on the right track or not.

The game has several puzzles which are fairly hard to guess on your own, and which seemed somewhat unfair to me.

Overall, it was interesting, and had a nice cat character.

This game is really interesting. By the author of Little Blue Men and Anchorhead, it is intended for children and comes with a great set of supplementary materials.

There is a sort of tedious opening with a ton of hand-holding before it opens up to a wide world. I enjoyed the islands, especially the junk and dark islands.

I felt like the author was holding back a bit on some descriptions that could have been made biting and/or sad. But the sparseness was fun.

One of the last islands seemed like a big buildup to an anticlimax.

Overall, I have to say I enjoyed it, because I couldn't put it down, and couldn't wait all the next day to play more. So that's a good sign!

One thing that can seemingly lock you out of victory:

(Spoiler - click to show)The icefruit seed doesn't respawn correctly.

So I suggest that, to be safe, you save (Spoiler - click to show)before using it.

You'll know you did it right if (Spoiler - click to show)Something dramatic happens.

This is a great one-room puzzle game in the same vein as The Wand or Lord Bellwater's Secret.

You are placed in a room and tasked with finding a certain word. This is quite a difficult task. The room is split up into 9 different sub-locations, each with puzzles, usually several puzzles. There are experimentation puzzles, intuition puzzles, red herrings, crossword-style puzzles, math puzzles, etc.

I was able to solve it without hints, but I think I played it once 8 years ago, and it gave me a hint on a particularly tricky problem.

About half of my playtime was just going to each of the 9 sections of the room and examining everything. The other half was putting the clues together.

This game purports to be the eleventh in a long series, which is a clever gimmick. The game has several clever parts.

However, it has a lot of little bugs that add up to a good deal. It's self-aware about it (the game's most accurate line is "Oh boy, you sure hope these generic messages don't mean this puzzle is bugged!").

Overall, it was interesting, but I wasn't able to complete one of the three core puzzles, the one belonging to the error message above. I did read the ending after decompiling, though.

I beta tested this game.

This is a unique concept for a text adventure. You are pitted in a Chopped-style cooking challenge against three other chefs. Your goal is to cook a certain recipe in twenty minutes.

Unfortunately, your competitors have their own ideas, and you have some trouble on your own.

This reminded me of Varicella, both in the numerous autonomous actions of others, and in the time constraint. It also left me feeling like there was more for me to discover that I hadn't figured out.

This game is billed as just a demo for doing relationships in twine, which affected my perception of it (in the sense that I assumed it wasn’t a fully fleshed game), but it manages to have a lot of heart and some neat tricks.

It is based on a riding school with three different ponies/horses, who you interact with in a couple of branching choices. Each one has its own likes and dislikes, which affect the ending.

It succeeded in its goal of making twine seem more like choicescript, and made me laugh a few times. If it was going to be fleshed all of the way out, I wish it were longer and had better cluing as to the effects of the relationship choices and more endings. But as it is I like it.

This story uses media in unusually good ways. It has audio, graphics, animation and text effects.

The game is creepy on two levels. On the first level, it has overtly 'horror'-type text, almost over-the-top. On the second level, it serves to illustrate what something experiencing sleep paralysis could encounter, and I found that much more disturbing.

The story had a narrative twist that I found lessened my enjoyment of it as a game, but heightened my appreciation of it as a piece of art or a means of communicating thoughts. Because I think the artist intended it more as a story or art, I've considered it as such and given it 5 stars

Uses slow text, but in an appropriate way. I usually hate slow text, but it makes sense here. The whole piece is well-considered and designed as a whole.