Reviews by MathBrush

Choice of Robots is a game that has received high accolades, such as an XYZZY nomination for Best Game, and very favorable reviews from the general video game community.

I loved it. A very long game, perhaps of novella or screenplay length, and that is just in one playthrough. You can take wildly different paths, from prison to riches to love to all sorts of things. You keep track of 10 relationships, 4 robot stats, personal stats and political stats.

You are a young robot researcher, developing robot technology, and you have the chance to guide the development of robots toward autonomy, acting like humans, giant tank missiles, or advanced surgeons.

The gameplay can either be free-flowing, answering each question as it comes, or you can develop intricate plans to minimax your characters stats.

Well worth the money; this was the first commercial game that I bought since I purchased the complete Infocom collection.

This is just as good as Creatures Such As We and Choice of the Dragon, but longer. The only hiccups I found were inconsistent branches; when someone I married quit my company, the game said I wouldn't see them for a long time, for instance, without mentioning our relationship.

Like So Far, All Hope Abandon, and a large number of other games, Losing Your Grip is a trip through the subconscious.

The game is filled with beautiful and crazy imagery. For instance, the opening scene consists of (Spoiler - click to show)you standing in the mud next to someone buried up to their neck who resignedly chides you.

I tried this game without hints, and it was very hard. I explored every room in the first main area, tried everything I could think of, and I only got 2 points out of 100.

The game was previously shareware (i.e. you got a limited version, then pay for more), but now the author has released it for free (well, over a decade ago). It comes with well-written feelies, and ifdb has a walkthrough or two.

I cannot say how much I enjoyed playing through this game.

First Things First was nominated for an XYZZY award for Best Game, and won Best Puzzles, among others.

In this game that starts out very slowly, you quickly progress to an interesting situation similar to A Mind Forever Voyaging or Lost New York, where you can investigate a mid-size map over 50 years using a time machine. Your actions in certain time periods strongly affect the future in interesting ways.

This is definitely the best long-form time travel I have played, as I felt Lost New York (which explores New York over a century or two) and Time: All Things Come to an End (which explores many epochs in a linear fashion) had relatively unfair puzzles.

IFDB has version 3.0, but the walkthrough is for 1.1, so it didn't work in places. I am a walkthrough junkie, so it was hard for me to beat it, but I was able to guess from the walkthrough what I should try next, and eventually worked my way through it.

The game has good characters, beautiful settings, and a bit of a confused plot, which is natural given the main gameplay mechanic.

For simulation fans, it has an interesting money/bank account/investment system.

Strongly recommended for everyone. (Note: the first area seems incredibly boring, but it gets better and better. I started to like the game as soon as I made it into (Spoiler - click to show)the garage.)

Chancellor is a game that got a bit overlooked in the IFcomp for being long, of moderately hard difficulty, and not having a walkthrough. Later, it got more attention, being nominated for Best Game, Best Story, Best Writing, and Best Individual Puzzle in the XYZZY awards.

You play in two different worlds. The first is a fantasy world, where you must leave your father to undertake a quest. The second is (Spoiler - click to show)the real world, where you are a chancellor (like a resident aide) in an abandoned dormitory.

Both have a grim and brooding atmosphere, but also one of wonder at the world around you. The two worlds are interconnected.

The writing is excellent. The game is excellent. The author has a hints guide up somewhere that got me through a few tricky points, although the guide is very very minimal.

Strongly recommended.

I'll be upfront and say that, by modern standards, I wasn't impressed with the original Ditch Day Drifter. This sequel, however blows my mind.

The introduction is especially good. Reminding me of the hidden temple sequence in Lydia's Heart, you have to race another tech firm to pitch a product to a southeast asian company. You have to deal with both fidgety technology and a decaying factory.

The game then makes a huge transition to Caltech, scene of the original Ditch Day Drifter. As then, you must explore the campus, solving stacks, reading memos, going in the tunnels, going to the store and kitchen.

But boy, the world has changed! Crowds of independent NPCs, immersive room descriptions, real conversations, etc.

The game has a fairly unique premise: your character must learn (or relearn) about physics and engineering to crack the code on a high-tech box. Puzzles are drawn from real-life techniques, and you learn a lot; however, the game is adapted for those with no real-life experience. You convert IP addresses to hex form and back; you learn about quantum coherence and decoherence; you learn how to use network analyzers and even cherry pickers.

I enjoyed the beginning more than the rest of the game, but that's because open nonlinear games often intimidate me.

I recommend this game for everyone. Even if you're not great at IT, like me, the game treats it like any other 'magic system', telling you how to use things. It's fun.

What an enjoyable game! My heart was racing in chapter 12. This is a quite long game set in a world dominated by clockwork; the religion, the city, the people's mindset, everything is based on clockwork (a funny moment was seeing that pagans worshipped non-mechanical timekeeping devices like water clocks or sundials).

You play an assistant clock keeper who must investigate a future robbery. The game is a very long example of what I call the linear thriller type of game. You encounter a more or less linear sequence of challenges where you are given a good amount of hints on what to do, there is always a sense of urgency, and everything you do is the right thing in just the nick of time.

This game is what I wish the illustrated book Hugo had been from its cover; you jump and leap and fall all through a giant clock early on, you use an early calculating machine like a computer, etc.

The writing is as good as Anchorhead, in my mind, and the implementation is smooth. The story wasn't as compelling to me at first, but the last few chapters really got me into it.

The game has probably not received very much attention because it was a commercial game for a while. But everyone should try it now.

Spy Intrigue is not my type of game. But it is an incredible game, which I have played through twice, and is excellently crafted.

It is a game of layers. It literally has two layers of text, interwoven within each other.

It also has two levels of meaning. The top level is just crazy and silly (you very quickly learn that most spies have died of "spy-mumps"). But there is a much deeper subtext in the game, much like another 2015 IFComp entry TOMBS of Reschette. Both games encourage you to look under the standard shoot-kill-loot structure of normal games and see what existence would really be like for protagonist and enemy.

That's probably the deepest contribution of this game: to show the protagonists humanity. The author has succeeded in a very well-crafted game, which I feel should be nominated for several XYZZY awards. She has done an excellent work here.

As I said, this isn't really my type of game; I'm not into profanity or sex, of which the game has it's fair share. But it's certainly never exploitative, and it all makes sense in the context of the game. I will also always fondly remember (early spoiler)(Spoiler - click to show)"OATMEAL TIME."

Future Boy! was a commercial game from 2004. A large game (it took me about 4 and a half hours, using hints 27 times), it has illustrations with gif-like animations for every room and character, as well as voice-acting for all dialogue.

The game is split into two parts, one with the parser, and one with little windows with graphics, usually one for the room itself, one for each character present, one for the compass rose, and one for effects like rain.

The game starts out fairly linearly, with a succession of challenges that set up the story. I found some of the early puzzles fairly difficult, which is unusual for commercial IF. I resorted to the hints as early as the second scenario.

After the first few scenes, the game opens up considerably. It ends up being reminiscent of Infocom's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, with a cast of crazy characters and a variety of random locations that you can visit.

One of the highlights of the game is an unusually well developed (Spoiler - click to show)computer system. It's like a miniature game within a game, and gave me fond memories of the 90's.

My winning game was ~1500 turns long.

The plot is fairly intricate. Overall, I enjoyed this game. If it were an iPad app, I would price it at around $5-$10.

I came into possession of the game by contacting the creators using the email on the Future Boy! website.

This game is a typical Eric Eve game:

Good points of Eve games: several NPC's, large map that doesn't really need mapping, optional side quests, great writing, interesting plot.

This game is a bit like Dante's inferno, but with a more 'modern' take. In particular, there are forces that disbelieve the truth of heaven and hell, and the game doesn't say who's right and who is wrong. As a case in point, one of the first things you see is that hell is closed, due to mythologicalization.

The general gameplay was very enjoyable. It felt like Blue Chairs without the drugs and profanity.

Bad points: trophy-ization of women.

Just like Elysium Enigma with the naked Lena and Blighted Isle with Betty the buxom, All Hope Abandon is chauvinistic. The main woman is referred to frequently as just 'the blonde', and there is a green-skinned demon, who makes you uneasy because they 'use sexuality as a weapon, just like many mortal women'.

It's a shame that these games all pigeonhole women, as otherwise I would strongly recommend them to everyone.

I discovered Once and Future when looking at old XYZZY awards. The author of this game worked on it for 5 years in the 90's, frequently posting on forums about it, building everyone up to a huge excitement. It was released as the first big commercial game in years, and a whole issue of SPAG magazine was dedicated to it.

How does it fare? It is a fun, well-polished Arthurian game. An American soldier dies in Vietnam, and is taken to Avalon, being charged with a mission by Arthur to stop a terrible event in America's history.

Many reviewers noted that the writing is uneven, with the author having written it over 5 years and improving it in that time. Parts of it, like those with the (Spoiler - click to show)Straw King, are stirring and powerful. Others just seem like the author gave up; for instance, at one point your character openly complains about the endless scavenger hunts, and it is just laughed off.

This is a puzzle-heavy game, with two exceptionally hard puzzles. Fans of Mulldoon Legacy will get a kick out of this.

It is very long; following the walkthrough, I beat it in 1338 turns.

I believe I actually prefer Eric Eve's Arthurian epic, Blighted Isle, to this game. Eric Eve has more and better NPC's, more optional quests, lighter puzzles, and a better (though similar) backstory. My only quibble with Blighted Isle was its treatment of women, but Once and Future suffers from similar issues at times. However, Once and Future is more poetic/trippy than the prosaic Blighted Isle.

This all sounds negative, but I recommend this game to everyone. There is scattered strong profanity (mostly by soldiers in life-or-death situations), as well as a few mild sexual references.