Reviews by MathBrush

I beta tested this game.

In this game, you are bullied by cheese. In a bizarre twist, you find yourself in a sort of pocket-dimension blocked by an enormous, rude wheel of Gruyere cheese.

There are eight corridors leading from the cheese, each heading to a different area containing useful items.

Some of the puzzles can be pretty tricky in this game, and some of the concepts can be very difficult to puzzle out (like what exactly is the nature of the (Spoiler - click to show)'hole' you find). But it's compact nature means that there are only so many things you can try before finding the solution. I found this game to be pretty amusing!

I beta-tested this game.

Åkesson is one of the most successful creators of new parser languages in the last few years. His new A-machine and Dialog language have proven to be powerful and smooth, and its default messages are, perhaps, more appropriate than Inform's default messages.

This game is a great departure from usual parser fare, and a bold choice for IFComp. You are a conductor, and you must follow a real-life score (from the Nutcracker Suite) and cue everyone at the right time. The real score is contained in the game, as well.

This is like no other game I've seen before, and playing it is extremely taxing. I felt like I was burning calories as I played this game. Even slight errors can cause havoc in the orchestra. And if you play perfectly, a problem arises that is outside the scope of the score, providing a 'lousy last point' puzzle.

Is this well-done? Yes. Is it innovative? Definitely. Is it a great display of the Dialog language's capabilities? Absolutely. But is it fun? For me, playing felt frustrating, but winning was truly enjoyable. So if you're going to play it, try to schedule time to finish it!

I beta-tested this game.

This game is is a horror story that effectively borrows elements of both games and pop-culture from the 80s. This is a monster-focused horror game set with two kids driving the boy's car to prom, with the date wearing the boy's ring. It brings to mind the music video for Thriller or parts of Back to the Future.

Gameplay-wise, this has elements from older games as well. There are numerous timers on the game (including one that killed me off at 70 points as I was playing the competition version), a maze, and a complex machinery.

I like this game, both as a tester and as a player. It can get frustrating at times, though. I recommend playing past the first scene and seeing if you like the overall feel of the game or not.

Andrew Schultz makes games by taking a wordplay idea and finding as many examples of it as possible, then building a game around that list.

Sometimes, it feels a little forced. Some times, it feels great. This is one of those great times, at least for me.

I'm not coming in looking for a cohesive narrative. I'm coming in to have pure puzzling fun that hurts your brain.

I would rank this game up around with Shuffling Around, one of my favorites, but a little below Threediopolis, my absolute favorite.

This game showcase a new parser, which usually makes me skeptical.

But I was very impressed with this IntFicPy game.

Pros of the engine: Smoothness! It looked fabulous, typing in and scrolling up and down felt natural and very nice, saving and loading was easy. Different text colors worked well, timers, changing room descriptions, conversation was implemented. Many of the hard problems were dealt with well.

Cons of the engine: Could do with some better synonym handling, and especially pronouns (IT, SHE, HER, etc.) It felt sometimes like it was just reading a part of my command and not all of it.

Game wise, I love the worldbuilding here. Not such a huge fan of timers, but it seems forgiving until the endgame. I did well in the first part and then hit a big bump sending me straight to the walkthrough for the rest of the game (finding money was the bump, I think, and I could have solved that, but then the commands I saw seemed intimidating).

You play as a newcomer to a dangerous magical island where the Storm kills all who dare approach, except for you. You go about the island seeking to repair your boat and discovering a village with a large religion.

A good showcase for the new engine. Online play would be a huge boon, though.

I played this game through to a death after about 30 minutes.

You play a man who has recently moved to a small town with wells, town doctors, taverns, etc.

The interface is wild. On the left is an illustrated book, with lines in slow typewriter text appearing as you make choices. You have three categories of 'inventory': thoughts, places, and things. These appear in the lower right.

The upper right contains the contents of your current location.

Actions are done by dragging inventory onto each other.

It's a good mechanic. It's slow, though, as is the typewriter text. And the game is long. And I couldn't find any way to save, and there are insta-deaths.

So I'm going to keep my rating and review as it is and maybe one day revisit this game. A save feature would help a lot!

I rated this game on the following criteria, one star for each:

Descriptiveness: This game is descriptive. You play a man mourning his brothers death. A bizarre occurrence happens, and you must recover your five chess pieces from a forest full of wizards, dwarves, beasts, and magic.

Polish: This game is not polished. Many synonyms are not implemented and the game doesn't recognize reasonable solutions. I even received the extremely rare 'something dramatic has happened' inform library message (not necessarily a bug, but requires a bizarre combination of circumstances).

Emotional impact: The frequent praying was interesting, but praying for points seems kind of hypocritical. The dwarf seemed kind of like a bad caricature of a dumb Scottish person. Big, emotional moments were compressed over too short a time span (a problem I had in my first published game).

Interactivity: So many commands just didn't work. There were multiple devices that 'revealed' things, and it was very frustrating trying to figure out if, when one failed, it was a bug or intentional. I didn't even know I could reenter my cabin until I read a transcript. Very buggy.

Would I play again?: I would not. Parts of this game were charming, but I believe it's too buggy right now.

(Thanks to stian on intfiction for posting a transcript! Extremely helpful!)

I've seen the Alaric Blackmoon series suggested to me on IFDB for years, but never tried one of the games.

There are six or more in the series, and they involve a valiant warrior in Europe in the times of swords and armor.

In this game, you travel to America to encounter a Native American shaman.

I'd love to talk more about the game, but I encountered a game-destroying bug. A thief comes into town, and you chase him out. When I killed him, he kept appearing anyway, and so I was periodically kicked out of town and could not reach the trading post.

I'd love to update my review if this bug were fixed!

Edit: There is an updated version that fixed that bug, and I had fun exploring the town. I added another star to the review. I got stuck again, because I couldn't find Henrik, but I'll keep trying!

Luke Jones has released many games, and has a definite style. His games are whimsical, kind of roguish (with a foul-mouthed pigeon), sprawling, with a big cast of NPCs.

They are also a bit spare. When he started with Quest games, they were above average for Quest games in terms of implementation. Inform games (which this one is) generally have room for smoother programming, and this game could use a litte bit of polish, both in synonyms and in typos (especially the problems with stray punctuation that inform has).

This is a sequel to The Bony King of Nowhere, featuring the same map, just a few years older. I played with the walkthrough, as some puzzles I had great difficulty in guessing.

My favorite part about the game is the frank and friendly NPCs, like Donella or the Wizard of Ounces (Oz). I also liked the tie-in with other games by this author.

This game is the kind of thing Steph Cherrywell is known for: smooth humor, a large, easily navigable map, genre tropes pursued to their logical end, plenty of polish, and vivid characters.

I found this game's puzzles more logical than some other Cherrywell games, though I had trouble with one particular artist. Looking back, I ignored many, many, hints.

You play as a flapper (with all the 20's lingo) who's desperate for a drink. But it's all been soaked up by ghosts, so you have to hunt them down one by one!

I really enjoyed this game, and I think that it has a great chance of wining this year's comp.