Reviews by MathBrush

This review is part of the Official Ryan Veeder Weekend Review Communal Effort with Guaranteed Prize.

This is a spin-off of Robin and Orchid. You are investigating a haunted house, and fall down a hole.

The best part of the game is the demonstration of the three main methods of conversation.

The least best part of the game is the hinting. While it is generally good, there were times where the hints just kind of kicked out at important moments. The inexperienced adventurer that I was playing as got frustrated at not, for instance, knowing how to get through the door.

I enjoyed the ending considerably, though.

This review is for The Official Ryan Veeder Weekend Review Tournament with Guaranteed Prize.

This game is a prequel to The Statue Got Me High, but you don't need to have played the latter game.

It contains classic elements of the Veeder mythos, such as red herrings, consumable food, actions that seem simple but maybe take a little longer to type than the other anticipated but you never know, and NPCs whose tone of voice is in direct contrast to the content of their conversations.

This game makes a 5 on my scale, but only barely. According to my criteria, it is polished (no bugs here), descriptive (why not?), has an emotional investment (I hated Edward), the interactivity is okay (I had to decompile it once, but I wanted to decompile it, so that's something), and I would play it again.

But it just scraped by in each category, so it might not be as good as a 4 star game that did great in one category.

This game combines an unfortunately too common theme in IF (waking up in an apartment after drinking and/or romantic affairs) with another too common theme (office bureaucracy) and another (wacky weirdness), but somehow without fully committing to any of them.

The ADRIFT parser is really poor here. "Two dollar bill" is recognized, but not 'two' or 'bill' or so on.


There was a bug partway through that kept the walkthrough from working for me.

This review is part of the Official Ryan Veeder Weekend Review Competition with Guaranteed Prize.

In this game, entered in the Haunted House Jam, you play (in 3rd person) a (winsome) character named something with an SH that I forgot.

There is a small map, and a puzzle involving a stick (which was listed as a rope in the inventory) that failed to draw me in.

However, the quality of the writing was par, and the experience with the dark figure and the other experience with the empty bedroom were vaguely similar to experiences I've had. I would play it again.

This review is part of the Official Ryan Veeder Weekend Review Challenge with Guaranteed Prize.

In this game, our intrepid author programs an entire game without a single (actually, with A single) glance at the source material.

The source material was, from the recollection, somewhat disturbing, but the retelling is much more disturbing if approached in the right vein. Have you ever faintly recalled a movie, or story, or dream from your youth that deeply disturbed you? I have half-recollected versions of both It and Castle in the Sky that are much more haunting than the original.

That's what this game is; it condenses all of the most disturbing parts of the game. What's disturbing is not the game, but what it reveals about the human mind, about Veeder's mind, about the things that his brain decided to store up for the future.

This review is part of the Official Ryan Veeder Weekend Review Contest with Guaranteed Prize.

While I was alarmed by the 'vitesse alarmante' of the 'eau' entering my ship, I was able to escape towards 'la poupe'.

While the addition of extra French improved the game considerably, it had no effect on pre-existing French. I would have preferred seeing Capitaine Earthworm or some other variation thereof.

This game has you find the secret of invisibility.

The base concept is really good; you have to remove clothes and not carry stuff to avoid being caught. You can find bandages, etc.

Unfortunately, the game is a bit too fiddly to work with. It's difficult to know what to do, due to undercluing.

This game has you exploring a small area with a Zorkian feel (a living room, a cave, transportation items, gemstones, etc.)

The puzzles are a bit underclued. Several of the puzzles involve a monster running at you. You have to be holding the correct weapon and use it to defeat the creature.

This game is split into two parts. The second part is pretty cool; you are a power-ranger sort of person who gets a robot and can form a Zord type of thing.

The first part, however, is incredibly dull, having you trudge through swamps requiring 15 or 20 movement commands in a single direction (like n.n.n.n.n.n.n....)

If the first half were shorter, this would be pretty fun.

This game is written in its own multiple choice system, which allows you to check inventory at any time.

This game is almost entirely in German. I like German games, so it's not so bad, but in my version of windows, the umlauts display poorly, making the German not as easy to read.

Overall, the game is not as well developed as the system is.