Reviews by MathBrush

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.

This is a big Quest game entered into the 2020 Spring Thing.

It's clear that a lot of love and hard work has gone into this game, and it is very detailed and at times evocative.

However, adapting other works, especially static stories like film or books, is tricky. It can, as in this case, end up with huge worlds and confusing maps, tons of NPCs each with small parts, etc. This, plus the randomized combat, gives a feeling of an old western false-front store, designed to look big but needing a lot of work in the background.

A walkthrough would improve this immensely. On the plus side, it made me want to watch the original film, which I think is one of the author's goals.

This game is long, well-written in the noir style (where men drink hard liquor and every woman is beautiful.

It's framed as a radio play, and has two acts. You end up doing daring things, with cat-and-mouse chases, throwing punches, etc.

Unfortunately, many of these things are under-clued or involve non-intuitive actions. This makes a walkthrough almost required to play through the game.

I purchased this game because it seemed interesting. I'm a sucker for good horror stories.

The concept is that the dense fog in your town is rumored to kill those who have wronged others and not confessed. After an argument with a former friend, he dies, and you are the last person to see him alive.

The game is split between two main modes of interaction: deciding which of your many (well-written) friends you'll spend most time with, and deciding whether to believe in the fog monster or be a skeptic and deal with the real-life problems in the town.

I struggled with the first chapter or two, as it was more relationship-focused and I'm more into fantasy and sci-fi aspects of games. But then it picked up steam, and I ended up enjoying both facets of the game, and had a satisfying (though 'losing') ending.

This game is obscure in many senses of the word. First, it is very hard to run, intended only to run on a linux system. I was able to play it following helpful instructions at http://intfiction.org/t/reviews-for-beta-tested-games/43016/7.

Second, it's obscure because the writing is deliberately vague. Everything is allusions, none of which (maybe one?) is about Alice in Wonderland. Most of the allusions seem to be to Hansel and Gretel or Cinderella.

Third, the way forward is obscure. It is difficult to discover how movement works, difficult to find out how a room is finished, and difficult to go on to the next room. Some basics of movement: (Spoiler - click to show)Typing EXITS shows you the exits. You can move with N, E, S, and W as abbreviations. I took to the source code first and walkthrough later. The source code encourages you to look at it.

I encountered a bad ending that made me get stuck. It was when I (Spoiler - click to show)became a tree. I beat it by typing, not (Spoiler - click to show)run, which was the highlighted term, but (Spoiler - click to show)running away.

Occasionally I used the source to type the right word to move on if I got completely stuck.

One note: all of the major keywords (that give you special results) are (Spoiler - click to show)HTML color codes.

The fiddliness of interaction put me off a bit, and the game either has a few bugs or only has bugs because I played it on the wrong system. Otherwise I was impressed with the design and descriptiveness and would be interested in playing again.