Reviews by MathBrush

This game is about the love between Cygnus and Phaethon (my spelling may be wrong), written for the Neo Twiny Jam in 500 words or less.

It has few options, but each paints a picture of deep love. It uses some nice color choices to complement the story.

It's also very very slow. I thought a couple of times that the game had broken or dead-ended, only to realize after staring at it for ten seconds that it was actually going to change. I think it could benefit more from 'next page' links for pacing, or from static formatting.

This is a brief game written for the Neo Twiny Jam in 500 words or less.

It's a slow game, with peaceful sound and delayed text. You have called a taxi (I got a jumpscare which was fairly amusing when I saw the driver, (Spoiler - click to show)the screen shaking and it saying It looks like Grandma ominously).

It's a meaningful story, about grief and AIDS epidemic and an anti-God/religion feeling (the idea that God is a jerk if he exists).

The best part to me was the strong friendship.

This was written for the Neo Twiny Jam in 500 words or less.

It's an introspective essay, bordering on rant, about how comparing yourself to others can be so frustrating and painful. There is bitterness and seething rage in the words. This is paralleled with dark styling, using multiple colors but mostly black and red.

The emotion feels real here. They mention how they theoretically could just walk away from it all, but the desire to do so isn't there.

This is a Neo Twiny Jam game written in 500 words or less.

It's basically a bedtime routine. You have a set number of tasks to complete before sleeping, but before each one your phone tempts you, and you have to wait to resist.

Very realistic, but waiting got tiring after a second playthrough. Another reviewer mentioned images, but I didn't see any in this one. Otherwise a nice chill bedtime game.

This is a short Twine game entered in the Neo Twiny Jam, written in 500 words or less.

It's a fairly well-written story of a woman on the hunt finding a man on the hunt and what ensues.

The styling is appropriate, with red hues. The story is entirely linear, one link at a time. There are at least two significant typos (especially (Spoiler - click to show)'hater' for 'later') which detract from the overall experience.

But I didn't mind reading it, it was pretty fun.

This game was written for the Neo Twiny Jam in 500 words or less.

It depict a Tarot deck drawing (using a nonstandard deck), and its main feature is that the cards that you draw can be entered. You don't explore them through links, though, it just describes you going and coming back.

It's not a bad idea, but could probably have benefitted from a larger game size to allow more flexibility. The overall vibes were chill and pleasant.

This was written for the Neo Twiny Jam in 500 words or less.

This one reminds me of the classic twine scene around 2015 and earlier, especially the Porpentine/Furkle style. You have bodies that are modified in uncomfortable ways and integrated with technology mixed with a vulnerable protagonist whose interior monologue is at odds with the actions around him. Another similar feature is the blend of religiosity with patriotism in the authority figures in the protagonists life.

That's not to say that this game isn't original; it has a nice poeticism to it and does its own take on things. I'm just saying that I think it benefits from having a body of related work to compare and contrast it to.

This game is about being part of a space combat squadron protecting a payload of a large bomb. It's mostly linear, but has some nice color changes.

This game was written for the Neo Twiny Jam in 500 words or less.

It's written using Bitsy (or one of its derivatives), with low-resolution pixel art that looks pretty good here.

The story itself is hard to describe though. I couldn't tell if it was a guy carrying his dying baby through an apocalyptic wasteland or a dating couple walking around the block...the ending is more clear, but earlier parts are a little vague.

The controls can be hard to figure out at first, but some parts are pretty cool as you move a mouse in a virtual device.

This is a well-produced game for the Neo Twiny Jam, written in 500 words or less.

It looks good, with a nice background and well-chosen fonts and color schemes.

The story is about a hero who is dying, and you are the one to comfort him. You can choose what to say.

It branches a lot; I don't think any of the branches reconnect. But 2 of 3 starting options end the game immediately, while a 3rd has more options.

Most of the stories seem more like intros, like a teaser for a larger setting.

This game was entered in the Neo Twiny Jam, written in 500 words or less.

It's about a real thing I never knew existed, the Orbiting Frog Otolith, which was an experiment thing where they put two frogs in space and measured the effects of weightlessness on them, with no intent of ever recovering them.

I looked up 'Otolith' and it means 'ear stone', which is a pretty weird name for a spacecraft. But apparently there's a part of the ear with that name in frogs (and maybe humans?) and the experiment studied that.

Anyway, this is a short game with a lot of branches; I got about 6 different endings, but all the ones I got were grouped into two major groups. It's pretty fun, imagining two frogs chilling and trying to talk to each other about things that are purely beyond their comprehension.