Reviews by MathBrush

I thought this IFArcade game was by Cadre, but i guess I was wrong. This is an intense alien war drama, copying numerous movies/books in that style (Aliens, Catch 22, Starship Troopers, etc.) It has violence and profanity.

It's based on the arcade game Centipede. You land in a swamp with several marines, and you are in a field of poisonous mushrooms with ticks, scorpions, and centipedes attacking you.

It's incredibly difficult to win.

This game is a variant of the arcade game Asteroids. It has a backstory, and then has you flying through a two-dimensional grid, letting you change your direction and fire at will.

I liked it, but it was too fussy. I think I encountered a bug, too; going off the edge of the grid said I was getting sent back, but the truth was that it didn't send me back.

An entertaining concept.

This game is part of the incomprehensibly large subset of 'a wizard asks you to collect items' games.

It's also part of the 'parser likes to insult your character' genre.

It also begins with 'my lame apartment', including waking up with a hangover in just your underwear, which is also a surprisingly large genre.

However, it also lets you make about 15 different objects with origami, which is pretty cool.

This game, similar to Sylenius Mysterium, has you entering an arcade at night and playing a variety of arcade games in IF form.

Some of the games work out really well (I like the way that Pong was presented). Others are just bizarre (what game corresponds to the politics scene?).

Overall, fun with a walkthrough.

This is just a demo game, but I found it amusing in a sort of way. It is clearly just set up to show off features of glulx.

There are images (including in-line) and sounds, both background and controllable. Hearing what I assume is Plotkin's voice going 'whoosh whoosh' at increasingly loud levels is enjoyable, as is switching around background colors around a photograph of his face.

I'd love to see someone remake it with backstory and more interactivity, but keeping everything that's already in it.

Best experienced downloaded.

This game is the French translation (by Hugo Labrande and Monsieur Bouc) of Shade. I found it very useful to use Emily Short's French IF manual (translated by Eric Forgeot).

The translation is implemented very well, with many synonyms and verbs allowed. Due to my difficulty in completely understanding the French, I appreciated having the to-do list; it made completion much better (I had never used it in English; some of the lines made me chuckle).

A worthwhile play, both for Francophones and for others trying to learn French.

This game is perhaps best left undescribed, as its core mechanic is so unusual. It helps to type ABOUT or (I think) COMMANDS.

The story is based off an old Dunsany Story, just like Nepstad's The Journey of the King. But this game is much more constrained than that one.

I would have rated the game higher if I hadn't been stuck so many times, trying to search for the correct commands to advance the game.

This is a game of the same sort of Wrenlaw, but smaller and less well implemented. You try to examine a variety of objects in your college dorm to unlock memories about a former love

It is not polished, but I enjoyed playing it, and it didn't overstay its welcome. If you like On Optimism or A Moment of Hope, you'd like this.

This is one of the best selling IF games ever. It has graphics and runs on Spectrum emulators (like Fuse).

It has graphics, and is intended to cover the same material as the book The Hobbit. It does so with a great deal of NPC independence, which ends up (to me) being somewhat frustrating. Back in the early days of text adventures, many of the companies (especially outside of Infocom) hadn't really thought about player guidance, and so games devolved into 'guess the verb' on every occasion.

Still, this game has a good deal of charm, and I've had fun exploring it.

This is a SubQ magazine game that has a pleasing atmosphere. It has graphics and background noise.

You are on a train with your significant other. It's going through a long tunnel. There are a few other people on the train. It's a moody and introspective piece.

I could go into more detail, but playing the game does not take much longer than reading this review, so why not just try it?