Ratings and Reviews by MathBrush

The Unnkulia games filled the gap between the end of Infocom/Magnetic Scrolls and the beginning of Inform. They were juvenile, focused on 'bro' type humor, misogyny, and underclued puzzles.

This game manages to ampmlify all of that. It suffers from several problems, including an overly large scope. Every location has several paragraphs of text, frequently a whole page. The puzzles use moon-logic where it's very hard to know what will happen next.

This game displays some bold text at the top, and then you pick out keywords from that to type in, which then changes the text.

This is essentially a short twine game years before twine was developed. It has short but intriguing thoughts on the nature of IF games.

In this TADS game, you spend much of the time smoking marijuana and passing it around, before later taking peyote.

The author's note claims the game isn't about getting enlightened for drugs, but it's hard to know what it is about if not that. It definitely seems like a good anti-drug advertisement, given that following the drugs leads you to being a dirty, unwashed bum that children run away from.

Scattered strong profanity, extensive drug use.

This game purports to be an exploration of the Christian faith. You are the son of the centurion who stood on Golgotha, and you are sent on a quest to explore various cities.

In each city, you explore different areas, and see NPCs, but you don't have to do anything.

As you leave each city, you are given a choice of three directions to go in corresponding to 3 beliefs. You have to choose the correct belief to progress.

The game seems to me to be a subtle parody. The graphics are at times ridiculous (the meditating shopkeeper); the character is very excited at how clean the angel is; your character ends up suffering quite a bit, but is grateful that thieves left him his shoes; it all seems a sort of fun-poking 'from the inside' the way that Jacek Pudlo troll RAIF 'from the inside' (where you pretend to be a fan of what you hate, and then say things that other fans are embarrassed by).

This game has you house-sitting for your friend, but problems begin to show up.

It's bold and innovative: there's a responsive cat NPC, there is a system where you read and study books to memorize them, a slick TV hint delivery system, and so on, but it seems like it never got that last month or weeks of polishing that would have pulled it all together. Like Happy Ever After from this comp, this game seems influenced to a degree by Mulldoon Legacy, with a mysterious friend who has left, leaving their house open with a portal in it to a more rustic world.

This game starts with several puzzles involving climbing out from a pile of corpses.

After that, you need to memorialize the dead.

This is certainly an unusual game. It could have been far better if the various puzzles had been better clued, and synonyms for verbs and nouns implemented.

In this game, you have to pass four or fives puzzles to open a safety deposit box.

These puzzles are based in reality, but have little basis in reality. Just taking a ticket from the machine involves deciphering a complex sequence of button presses.

These puzzles are exceedingly illogical. But the game is otherwise competently written and bugless.

This is a wacky/goofy game with humor typical of the early 2000's (think Strongbad-era).

You are a penguin and have to do a variety of bizarre things. The game is a one-room-at-a-time game. You can experiment, but reading the hints is probably the best way to go.

This is a sort of cross between Zork and arabian nights. You have on the one hand sultan's guards with scimitars and bazaars, and on the other hand you have soda vending machines and currency based on King Mycroft.

I found a few game-killing bugs in Gargoyle (when asking the merchant about a few things), but it might just be my interpreter.

I liked the puzzles, though they were hard to guess at times. A lot of people liked the original way of getting past the dog.

This is an interesting game, with many elements reminiscent of Infocom's Suspect, but much simpler.

You are attending a Faerie masque that a neighbor has thrown; in this masque, everyone has a costume and a role to say.

About half of the game consists of listening to the gala instructions (basically a big cosplay or LARP, all in rhyme), and solving easy riddles. Then it gets harder, and weird.

I liked it, though. It has some layers of mystery that are never unveiled, and which you are left to deduce for yourself, which I was unable to do.