Reviews by MathBrush

I helped beta test this game.

This game meets my niche interests well. It is a combat random combat RPG in a fantasy setting, where it's mostly puzzle-based; most monsters are extremely difficult to defeat until you solve another puzzle, than become generally easy. It allows for some variability, though, as you can sequence break or die in an easy fight due to randomness.

I thought this was fun. A couple of times I felt thwarted by not knowing what to do, though.

I beta tested this game.

This is a story that only branches twice, but does so in an effective way. You are the wife of a puppet master who performs across the country, but you have to make a difficult choice when he turns to dark means to support his work.

It's fairly short, and it uses type-writer effect text on light backgrounds with music/sound effects.

I beta tested this game.

This is a short parser game in the Lovecraftian tradition. It takes place mostly on an airplane.

The game is interesting both story-wise and mechanically. Story-wise, it features a protagonist that isn't just a standard anglo-saxon. Mechanically, it features 3-dimensional movement in multiple environments. 3d movement is something I worked on in my game Ether, and I think this game handled it well.

However, the interactivity was iffy, as it was difficult to know what commands would work.

This game is about a girl named Mikayla, whose phone you find. The game consists of digging though all the apps in the phone to see what her life was like.

I enjoyed the photos (of random things like dogs and writing) and the poetry. There were text notes and voice memos that were, I think, too long for me. They seemed to be there mainly to provide a feeling of reality and background; however, in a storytelling environment, being 'true to life' often makes things too unwieldly. I feel that the purpose of stories is to condense and crystallize reality, and those two parts of the game could have used significant condensing and crystallization.

Overall, it left a good impression on me, especially the ending (which I found by poring through the code).

This short Twine game uses specialized styling to give a retro sci-fi fi feel, and the story fits that vibe as well. You are visiting a base on the moon which has been terrorized by space animals. It borrows heavily from the feel of the Alien movies.

However, it is fairly short, and the writing has a few problems that could be remediated by some more careful revision and beta testing. Overall, though, the basic storyline was interesting.

This game was one of three translations of Qiaobooks games entered into IFComp 2017. I helped organize people to test this game.

It has a really interesting technical concept: text is typed out on timed intervals with changing backgrounds and timed sound effects/music.

However, some of the execution falls down; the translation, even after a few revisions, is off, as is the typesetting (apostrophes especially have problems). The graphics render the text difficult to read.

More troubling for me is the storyline of this game, which features a fairly sexist protagonist.

I enjoyed the other two Qiaobook games entered in the competition more, although this one was the longest.

This game was entered into the 2017 IFComp. It is plagued by bugs and translation errors, and it uses a home-brew parser that is missing some of the capability of a standard parser.

The story has you searching the house to make sure your friends and family are all right after a ghost haunts the house. It has several graphic depictions of sexual violence in a crude sort of way.

I enjoyed this game from IFComp 2017. You choose from one of three character classes, and you can take a variety of characters with you, including a sonomancer (something like that) who integrates music with magic.

There is a power creep issue that several judges noticed, where pretty much anyone who makes it to the endgame can one-shot the boss, but besides that, the core concepts worked well for me. I feel like it needs more polish; combat has several blank lines requiring you to scroll, for instance.

I was glad I played this one, because I'm a fan of D&D and this reminded me of trying out someone's home-brew campaign. Your mileage may vary.

This short Twine game has you acting as a witch's assistant for fetching a magical flower.

Every choice that you make leads you either to instant death or further along the path.

The witch who owns you refers to other cats; could this be other lives, or do you play multiple protagonists? A careful reading can reveal more.

The writing was well done, but I would have preferred a different kind of interactivity.

This is a fairly long and polished Twine game with multiple branches, more or less in the Gauntlet style under Ashwell's classification system.

The game is centered around meekness. You are a milquetoast character on a train dealing with family issues and personal anxiety.

If you choose to, you can be sent on a small adventure, where you learn more about the possibilities in yourself.

The writing was engaging, but I felt like my choices didn't really matter (outside of Do you want to continue or Not), and I feel like they didn't drive the text forward. The concept was creative, though.