Ratings and Reviews by MathBrush

This is a really creative and original game, with a nuclear apocalypse and a sort of dual-world situation.

Despite its many plot innovations, the implementation itself is sub-par, making it difficult to play without the hints (which are split up into 5 sub-files, and seem intimidating, but which are fairly simple).

Definitely a good play (with hints) for fans of apocalyptic things.

This is a shortish, underclued but interesting surreal game where you explore the inner workings of your own mind. It reminds me of Blue Chairs, but shorter and less humorous.

This game is has elements similar to Mikko's last game. Both games were written in a couple of weeks. It contains some juvenile bot non-explicit references to nudity.

I found it difficult to know what to do next, but the walkthrough was helpful. It has a very clever puzzle involving mutating words that accounts for many false attempts.

There is a dragon in town, and it's your job to rescue the mayor's daughter from them.

This game has more of an open-world feel, with many challenges that can be completed in any order, and a slowly unveiling realization of what's going on.

The problem, though, is that only a small slice of that open world has been implemented, making it very easy to do the wrong thing due to lack of guidance. It also has a really, really big maze that can be hard.

Interesting concept, and fun to play with a walkthrough.

This game is part of a peculiar brand of IFComp games that are very large, moderately well-implemented, and deeply underclued. Someone said that such game suffer from Erden-itis, from "Travels in the land of Erden', an exemplar of this class of games. Other such games include Town Dragon, The Sueno, Varkana, and a host of others.

You have a big city here, a castle, and a very large endgame. Most of the puzzles involve things that would never occur for you to do on your own.

(Sort of like if you meet a random person in a game. Are you supposed to attack them? Say 'hi'? Ask them about themself? It turns out you are supposed to 'INSULT PERSON'. Why? It makes sense out of the world, but why would it make sense in the world?)

This game was withdrawn from IFComp 1997 due to bugginess. It is big and enjoyable, but there is a hunger timer that I believe cannot be stopped.

It was large and ambitious but not beta-tested at all, which explains the problems. Marnie Parker later went on to write the graphics-intensive Carma, about punctuation coming to life.

The ghost house here is impressive, and looking at the decompiled text, it had a deep backstory going back hundreds of years.

Plotwise, it seems to deliberately be copying Hollywood Hijinks plus maybe something else (Casper?).

This game uses the relatively unknown JACL engine, but it plays pretty well.

This game is a sleeper hit; I hadn't heard of it, but it's well-put-together. You are on a floating scientific base on a small island that has experienced a recent die-off of fish, and a loss of all juvenile population. You are brought in from the outside to what is essentially a military situation.

The game has espionage, science, etc. Some of the puzzles are unfair a bit, but the game responds well to things you attempt to do, and contains a number of action scenes.

This game is about a typical introverted boy with a long ponytail and an interest in computers and fantasy-type things who matches in an online dating program with a vivacious and popular girl.

This just kills (metaphorically) the boy, who can't handle the intense polar opposites of excitement and nervousness.

The game was well-written and pretty well-programmed, and it produces some real emotion with its intense, up-close-and-ugly examination of the young adult brain.

There is a surprisingly large amount of interactive fiction where you play as a fish. This is one of them.

This game does a great job of showing how horrifying ice fishing is to the fish involved. There were some odd interactions, and the game was short, but it's a speed-IF ectocomp game, so I can't complain.

This game has you wandering around a spooky halloween town and branches a lot, like a time-cave structure.

It starts with a parody of adventure games (a room full of boring furniture), but gets better afterwards.

This was a speed-IF for ectocomp, which generally means guess-the-verb issues and underimplementation.

That happens here, but not as much as I thought it would be. I didn't read the initial text, and that made the game harder for me, but once that was fixed, I was able to beat the game without a problem.

I found the horror effective. You are a late-night janitor mopping.