Ratings and Reviews by MathBrush

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.

I found this system to actually be fairly impressive; you have multiple choice menus, but can check your inventory when you want to.

Unfortunately, this version is just a small demo, with little of the real action you might get in a full game.

Trap Cave, released the next year, had a larger game in the same system.

This game has an intro involving you escaping from and surviving a terrible disaster, separating you from your friends.

It then opens up to an open world where you have to gather money, clothing and weapons to survive the apocalypse.

One of the better Adrift games.

Like all other John Evans games, this is a really big game that promises some cool stuff (being able to cast all sorts of spells and having a portable house), but is not able to deliver on its promises.

The walkthrough is interesting, though, and worth checking out.

This game has an interesting setup where you wake up, with amnesia, in a forest, wearing a tunic with a skull embroidered on it.

You have to fight your way past beetles to get upgrades to fight more beetles to leave a tutorial area which ends the game.

The problem with the combat system here is that small steps take a lot of effort. Typing takes much more effort than clicks; either typing needs to be reduced to superfast shortcuts, or each command typed needs to have significant effect. This game strugles to find that balance.

This is an old game that was released in IFComp purporting to be from 1981, complete with an old manual.

It was, rather, a new (for 2000) homebrew parser game about being a spy. I found the parser difficult to wrangle with and the story hard to piece together.

This game has a homebrew parser that doesn't recognize most commands. In this short game, you have to work very hard to keep from urinating yourself.

It has several bugs and overall just doesn't make much sense, except for the anti-Barney rhetoric.

This game starts out with you answering several survey questions about music and its role in your life.

Then it has a major shift, and ends up employing some interesting narrative techniques and text styling tricks to make some unusual points.

I like the trick, but I found it hard to pick choices that reflected the persona I wanted to put off.