Reviews by MathBrush

This game is a typical Eric Eve game:

Good points of Eve games: several NPC's, large map that doesn't really need mapping, optional side quests, great writing, interesting plot.

This game is a bit like Dante's inferno, but with a more 'modern' take. In particular, there are forces that disbelieve the truth of heaven and hell, and the game doesn't say who's right and who is wrong. As a case in point, one of the first things you see is that hell is closed, due to mythologicalization.

The general gameplay was very enjoyable. It felt like Blue Chairs without the drugs and profanity.

Bad points: trophy-ization of women.

Just like Elysium Enigma with the naked Lena and Blighted Isle with Betty the buxom, All Hope Abandon is chauvinistic. The main woman is referred to frequently as just 'the blonde', and there is a green-skinned demon, who makes you uneasy because they 'use sexuality as a weapon, just like many mortal women'.

It's a shame that these games all pigeonhole women, as otherwise I would strongly recommend them to everyone.

I discovered Once and Future when looking at old XYZZY awards. The author of this game worked on it for 5 years in the 90's, frequently posting on forums about it, building everyone up to a huge excitement. It was released as the first big commercial game in years, and a whole issue of SPAG magazine was dedicated to it.

How does it fare? It is a fun, well-polished Arthurian game. An American soldier dies in Vietnam, and is taken to Avalon, being charged with a mission by Arthur to stop a terrible event in America's history.

Many reviewers noted that the writing is uneven, with the author having written it over 5 years and improving it in that time. Parts of it, like those with the (Spoiler - click to show)Straw King, are stirring and powerful. Others just seem like the author gave up; for instance, at one point your character openly complains about the endless scavenger hunts, and it is just laughed off.

This is a puzzle-heavy game, with two exceptionally hard puzzles. Fans of Mulldoon Legacy will get a kick out of this.

It is very long; following the walkthrough, I beat it in 1338 turns.

I believe I actually prefer Eric Eve's Arthurian epic, Blighted Isle, to this game. Eric Eve has more and better NPC's, more optional quests, lighter puzzles, and a better (though similar) backstory. My only quibble with Blighted Isle was its treatment of women, but Once and Future suffers from similar issues at times. However, Once and Future is more poetic/trippy than the prosaic Blighted Isle.

This all sounds negative, but I recommend this game to everyone. There is scattered strong profanity (mostly by soldiers in life-or-death situations), as well as a few mild sexual references.

One eye open was an IFComp game much longer than two hours. In it, you play someone being tested for psychics powers.

Without giving away too much, this is a search-the-lab game similar to Babel, but with gruesome gore in the vein of the SCP foundation (like SCP-610, for instance). The horror has also been compared to the Poltergeist.

Somehow Vespers and Varicella disturbed me more than this game. In a way, the horror are not as scary because of the way that they are described, but they provide a coherent atmosphere. There are many endings, many Easter eggs.

There was no profanity, no sexual material. Not recommended for most people, due to the gore. I probably won't play it again because of it.

Note: This review was written months in advance. A week before this review was published, another review came out saying that counterfeit monkey was overwhelming and was very negative about the author and game in general. While I was overwhelmed, I think this is an incredible game, and that the author is extremely talented.

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Counterfeit Monkey is a technical marvel of wordplay and implementation. The game is a large exploration game where you can alter almost any item by adding or removing letters, reversing letters, performing anagrams, etc.

This game has been rated highly by the majority of those who played it, and I must praise its puzzles, writing, implementation, and craftsmanship.

These very qualities led me to feel overwhelmed playing this game. I had a similar experience with Blue Lacuna. In both games, so much is implemented that I had a hard time thinking of what to do next. In both games, you have a certain sense of urgency, so you want to move forward, but both reward experimentation. So I have a feeling of being torn in two directions (much like the protagonist of this game).

I wonder if the reason I feel drawn to interactive fiction in general is its minimalist, constrained atmosphere. Games like Zork or Curses! where you are noone, and exploration is the only goal; games like Glass, where you can only steer a conversation; games like Rogue of The Multiverse that are split into several parts with clear goals. Even games like Ad Verbum, which mirror the puzzle parts of Counterfeit Monkey without the plot.

Most will not feel the same as me, but I love the minimalism and asceticism of classic games, and I don't know if I enjoy those games which have been built up into a rich, huge world.

Spider and Web is one of the most famous interactive fiction games, appearing at or near the top of several lists of Best IF. While I personally have enjoyed some other games more, Spider and Web is still in my top 10. I believe that part of its fame is its ability to draw in every kind of gamer; the story is interesting, the puzzles are hard but get easier with each failure, and those that don't know what to do after the transition mentioned in the game's ABOUT text can still feel great about their accomplishments.

In this science fiction game, you encounter a wide variety of technological devices. You must learn how they work. It' shard to be more specific without giving away plot details.

The game has two brilliant innovations. One is the puzzle it is most famous for, which causes the big transition I mentioned above. Most walkthrough said refuse to give the solution to this puzzle, as a gift to first time players. It took me a day to get over the shock of solving it.

The second innovation is the narrative structure. It frames the game in a way that no one had done as successfully before, and provides an interesting mechanic for hints.

Everyone should play it at least once. I played it the first week I started IF five years ago, and I played it last month, and it was great both times.

This ultra-long game will appeal to three kinds of people: Shakespeare fans, Lovecraft horror fans, and realistic simulation fans. The amount in which the game succeeds will vary depending on the audience.

As a fan of Shakespeare, this game was wonderful. I was skeptical of someone trying to write dialogue for Shakespeare, but this game succeeded fairly well. Shakespeare didn't necessarily talk in as flowered language as he writes, so it works out. The game contains several references to plays William is considering writing (a story about an island in the New World, a story about witches written, etc.). It contains numerous quotations, mainly from Hamlet, and your character (Spoiler - click to show)attends the premier of Hamlet. Other people involved in the game include Christopher Marlowe and John Dee. If you are a fan of Shakespeare or Elizabethean times, you will love this game.

As a Lovecraft game, this game must stand under the fierce gaze of its predecessors, including The Lurking Horror, Theatre, Lydia's Heart, and of course the almost-genre-killer Anchorhead. This game acknowledges its roots; at one point in the game, you can view scenes from many of these previous games, starting with Anchorhead. The King of Shreds and patches offers nothing much new in this area; it has a little bit more gore than some of the other games, but only in one or two scenes (the rest of the game is fairly clean). The main nemesis has more character than most Lovecraftian foes. The obligatory elements (cult, language, mist, visions, etc.) are well-crafted. The game does drag in the middle a bit, but it's huge. I think, overall, it is one of the best of its genre.

Finally, the game contains several simulations of Elizabethean technology. Fans of simulations (such as flying the Ghost Plane in Jigsaw) will really enjoy this game. Others can consult the numerous hints to bypass these segments.

Overall, I resorted to the hints 2 or 3 times, generally finding out that I had missed some text. I highly recommend this game.

This game has really grown on me. When I first played it, I found the atmosphere a bit depressing and the puzzles underclued. However, after revisiting it, I've realized that this game is a true classic. Especially when compared to other mystery games; this one really stands out.

The writing has a very strong style; for instance, we have the following:

"This room is long and thin, like a jailhouse corridor, from the doorway in the northeast corner to the large bay window opposite which stretches the length of the room, overlooking the street outside. The colours are your eyes on a Sunday; red like blood, red like the leather of the over-stuffed chair, which sits a cheap trophy by the main desk. A bookshelf fills the east wall."

The whole game is filled with a feeling of inevitable loss or failure; not of the game itself, but for life in general.

The puzzles are difficult to figure out. For more casual players like me, I recommend exploring until you feel you've seen everything; trying to solve every puzzle at least once; revisiting it after a day; then using a walkthrough. The ending surprised me twice, and even now, I don't really understand all of its implications. For me, this game only improves more and more with time.

Christminster is set in a British University, where you are looking for your lost brother. You encounter a variety of obstacles and discover various ancient secrets.

This game has a host of well-crafted NPC's, timed events, and other difficult-to-implement concepts. The puzzles are logical, and exploring around for long enough is enough to get many of the puzzles. Several of the NPC's are quite funny, and there is a fun cryptographic puzzle.

Even though this game is well-crafted, it didn't really call out to me at first. I have realized that I am prejudiced against upper-class PC's, and against college-related games. I've had similar issues with Savoir-Faire, Violet, and the Lurking Horror. However, when I finally reached the end of the game with a walkthrough, I really enjoyed it.

This game was one of the most popular games in the mid 90's, along with Curses!, Jigsaw, and Theatre.

I first played All Things Devours 5 years ago as one of my first pieces of interactive fiction, and was very confused and felt it was impossible.

All Things Devours is a time travel game, where you must work together with past or future selfs to navigate several puzzles, subject to certain restrictions.

This game can be solved much more easily if you keep a detailed list of where you are and what you are doing at each turn. That way, you'll know where (or when) to be with other incarnations of yourself.

Fortunately, it's not necessary to jump around too much. A similar game called Fifteen minutes involves 8 or more copies of yourself in the same room, and it gets very tedious by that point.

All Things Devours is a classic.

In this Infocom game, you play PRISM, a sentient computer who has been designed to simulate the future for planning purposes.

This game has no real puzzles until the end. You simply explore. First, you explore your interface, which is very large (having 30+ distinct files you can open). Then you explore the actual simulation, which is a large downtown city, with what felt like 30-50 locations. Once you explore it long enough, the simulation accumulates enough data to simulate another decade into the future.

You must record interesting events and places in the future to bring back for planning purposes. I somehow missed out on a simple mechanic, and got very stalled in the game. (This is not a spoiler, because it is not a puzzle or a surprise, more of a guess-the-verb): To present your recordings, you must tell people "look at recording".

The developer has stated that the game was intended as a criticism of Reagan's policy.

The game is fun. You need to explore; don't just rush through, trying to do what they say. You need to record a lot of each decade to win, so try and get a mental map of the game.

I played this game on the iPad's Lost Treasures of Infocom app, which provides most of Infocom's games (except Nord and Bert, and the already-free Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy).