Ratings and Reviews by MathBrush

This is a large Adrift game, in which, after an extended prologue, you are cursed into a form of your choosing: rat, fox, or snake.

As an animal, it is your job to be restored to your original form and find your lost love, Princess Tevona.

Overall, this was done pretty well, but the Adrift parser was pretty frustrating (I used Adrift Runner 4.0).

This is a really big game, with some really big bugs.

I played this game for the first time a few weeks ago, and I never realized there was a fire in my room or that the door was supposed to be blocked. Instead, I wandered around the rest of the building for a while.

Following the walkthrough, this game does have some fun elements. The huge maze is not one of those fun elements, though.

Interesting when used with the walkthrough.

This game has you descend on a train to the depths of Erebus, where you have to find your way around in total darkness.

This game is centered on wordplay, involving letters (similar in a vague way to Threediopolis).

I don't want to spoil the main mechanic, but I also found it very hard to figure out the main mechanic. Lack of cluing seems to be one of the biggest issues here.

This is my final review for the Official Ryan Vedder Weekend Review Contest with guaranteed prize, giving me a score of 8 (due to having reviewed the other games earlier). Due to lack of publicity, the contest has been extended until Monday night at midnight Moscow time. Just post your Veeder reviews on ifdb (the Veedercomp games also count). 2nd and 3rd place winners get something too.

This game confused me at first; I didn't Get the mechanic that advances the game until my second playthrough.

You are in a park, looking for a geocache. There is a satisfying trash minigame.

I found it touching; if it is a parody, they say that parodies of extremism are indistinguishable from extremism, so the extreme schmalziness is something I enjoyed.

I love this game, but it was too hard to figure out how to progress (it's probably my fault for not reading the text after a major hint in my first playthrough, but oh well).

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

For some reason, when I saw this game, I didn't want to play it. Then many people reviewed it, and I still didn't want to play it. It seemed like it would be confusing with a lot of red herrings.

Then I tried it, and stopped, because I am overwhelmed by red herrings and use walkthroughs on every game.

Then I had to write a review for this exposium, and I played it. The writing is great. Unplugging the router was a joy in itself, despite its lack of gameplay effect. The juxtaposition of the wooden caterpillar with the other objects in its room frightened me (I think I thought it was on the bed?).

The combat was satisfying once I worked it out, and conversation was surprisingly good.

This is a good game, but it stressed me out due to my gaming style.

This review is for the Official Ryan Veeder Weekend Review Salon with Guaranteed Prize.

This Ryan Veeder game had me very confused, and then pleased, then more confused; then I read the source code, nodded, and understood.

You play a doctor trying to help a sick patient named Pauline. You are in a small hospital that is very... unusual, to say the least, in its geography.

The lack of cluing got to me, though, and the strong branching made each playthrough less memorable.

But the twist was pleasant.

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.