Ratings and Reviews by MathBrush

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?

This is an ADRIFT game from 2008, and like most ADRIFT games (especially from that time), it has quite a few bugs.

It's not terrible; it has some fun moments as you wander around a bizarre, goofy landscape. But eventually, the bugs pile up and it gets too hard to play.

This game has you trying out various products in a puzzly environment. It has a snarky parser that jokes about a corporate environment, uses text pauses extensively, and has you assemble a complicated system.

It's actually pretty interesting, but the implementation has increasingly greater issues, making the latter half impossible to complete.

This is a big game. You have a long, opening sequence (very long!) that is entirely linear, then you begin the actual game, which is one of the best RPGs I've seen in text (Kerkerkruip is the other, and they're roughly equal in quality).

You are on a sort of elevator-like platform, and you ascend from level to level. To ascend requires 3 keys; each level has 8 doors with a variety of challenges. These challenges include trap-filled pathways, combat, mini-games of cards/fantasy chess, and occasionally some bizarre extra paths.

Everything is hyperlinks, making combat much more enjoyable than usual. Magic is simple. There is a complex money system, and most levels let you pick between seeing an armorer or an apothecary.

More than anything, it reminded me of Final Fantasy VII and Conan the Barbarian. The enemies start out as zombies and humanoid fungus, but you eventually find Guards of the Tower, Captains of the Tower, and Swordsmen of the Tower, much like Shinra Tower in FFVII.

I got to the 7th stage, but was unable to defeat the end guardian.

The story and writing is exactly the sort of thing TSR was putting out in the 90's. You're in a sort of dreamworld that is stable, and are hired out as an assassin, with the king as your target. The monsters are generally right out of a D&D handbook. There seems to be some mild racy parts, but my French vocabulary doesn't include that sort of thing, so it's easy to self-censor.

This game has the same sort of superhero tone as the Frenetic Five games. You are a superhero that isn't really that super.

The game had a fun tone, with some fairly silly humor. It's long though, and somewhat buggy. David Whyld's games tend to be fairly similar, so if you like one, you'll like them all-and vice versa.