Reviews by MathBrush

This game is part 2 of the 3-part Claw, Shadow and Sage series.

I really enjoyed the first game, and this game lets you import your save directly, with a lot of different opening scenarios depending on how you ran the last game.

This game opens with a couple of chapters of a jailbreak sequence, a genre I enjoy but which sees little play in interactive fiction.

Once you escape, you (in my playthrough; it branches a lot) joined a camp of essentially outlaws trying to survive in the wilderness.

As opposed to the brutal Colonel Williams in the first game, the standout character in this game is Maker, a werewolf scientist who stays in her human form a lot more than she ought to and seems to be around anytime trouble starts.

I look forward to the final game, when it's released. This game is very replayable, and has several romances with adjustable levels of detail in your relationships.

I just wanted to comment before the main review. I plan on reviewing every single Choicescript game. My 5-point rating system is weighted heavily in favor of these games. Every game I've ever seen from Choice of Games is polished, descriptive, replayable, and has some form of good interactivity.

So I don't anticipate giving any number of stars either than 4 or 5, unless there is something deeply offensive in one of the games.

With that out of the way, this game is fairy hefty in length and in content. You play as a young werewolf in a world where werewolves have been hunted almost extinction and forced into an internment camp on the east coast of the US.

Unlike most works that deal with 'other-humans' that are persecuted, like X-Men, the werewolves in this game don't seem to be a code for human ethnicities or sexualities.

Instead, at least in my violence-and-fury centered playthrough, it seems to be an honest attempt to see what it would be like to be a predator, thought sentient. My hypothesis is bolsetered by the large number of friends and others I see online who discuss and write about being sentient animals. The story deals with bloodlust, and in no way does it punish you for violence and murder, treating it as natural for wolves.

There are several romantic options, and quite a few opportunities to act on them.

The worldbuilding is the main focus here. There is an elaborate back story, characters with huge histories (there's got to be a spreadsheet or book of lore kept by the author somewhere), detailed topography (that book/spreadsheet has to have a map attached).

The plot is designed to get you through this worldbuilding and the main plot points. Others online commented that they felt railroaded in this game, and I can see where they're coming from. But I enjoyed the setting and the characters, especially the storyline around the main rival.

I received a review copy of this game.

This game is pretty different from other Choice of Games titles. Its core gameplay is driven by a series of monthly budget meetings, interspersed with an ongoing mystery/action plotline.

You play as the new CEO of of Metahuman Inc., being forced into the position after the disappearance of the previous owner. Metahuman Inc. secretly uses both magic and extraterrestrial technology to modify humans. Unfortunately, for legal reasons, they've lost all their previous tech an rely on you to decide what to purchase next.

The core budget cycle is complex. You can invest your funds into different stock portfolios, or develop new personal enhancements (your main source of income), or invest in research to make future products better.

The 'action' portions revolve around the missing CEO, and include opportunities for romance (I found the romance plotline I chose satisfying). The two intermingle as your business decisions impact your personal life, and your personal goals require you to divert business resources.

The first scene was a bit odd for me, as the game labelled me as duplicitous when I didn't feel I behaved that way, but then it took off into a satisfying sci-fi story. I got a lot of satisfaction out of this game, found the characters memorable, and enjoyed the storyline. Many COG titles feel rushed at the end, as (from my own experience writing them) you have to write so many endings that each one can get a bit diluted. That wasn't the case with metahuman.

I received a review copy of this game.

Edit: I realize now that this game reminds me of Actraiser, which had a sim-portion and a fighting-portion, and that was one of my favorite games growing up. This game definitely ranks in the top third of Choicescript games I've played.

Choice of Ninja was the 13th or so Choicescript game put out, and I found it one of the weakest games at first, but it grew on me as I played.

I happened to play this as I was watching Naruto Shippuden for the first time, and the parallels are easily visible. You play a young orphan raised in a village in the woods, and it starts with you having to pass a test at your school to become a full ninja. There is magic, most of which involves invisibility, but becoming a duplicate is another skill. There are other parallels, like escorting a crotchety old man and dealing with a friend on the dark side.

But in a lot of ways its more realistic. Evil monsters are hinted at but not shown. There's no real magic past stealth magic and duplicate magic. So the over-the-top magical fantasy of stories like Naruto are toned down, and the parallels become less and less as you play.

The last half of the game is where I feel like it came into its own. Other reviewers have said that this game is very linear, and choices don't matter, but I felt like my choices mattered quite a bit when it came to the plans on infiltrating the final fortress. It was fun.

That said, I don't think this one holds up as well as other older Choicescript games, especially when compared to Slammed!, which came out around the same time. Slammed! is in the top 5% of all IF games ever, to me, with a story that has you hooked from the beginning and gut wrenching decisions at the end.

So, as an overall IF game, compared to most games in IFDB, Choice of the Ninja is high quality and worth playing, but compared to other commercial Choice of Games stories, I don't recommend it unless you're playing through them all.

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.