Ratings and Reviews by MathBrush

This is the third Magnetic scrolls game. It was meant to be based on magical spells, like Enchanter, but you have to do a LOT of work before you get any spells.

The game lets you get through deathly obstacles, but you will lose a bit of luck if you do, which blocks you out of the endgame. So if it says you lose a little bit of luck, go back to an earlier save!

Overall, a super british game, with all of the spells based on British slang for 'thing' (like wossname and so on).

Very frustrating, very unfair, but interesting and with good graphics.

After playing another of DBT's games, I looked forward to this one, because it sounded cool.

However, it just has 9 rooms, all lined up one after another, with no items to find whatsoever. You just take the exits one at a time, and at the end, you see one character, whom you can't interact with, and there's exactly one thing you can type to end the game.

Looking at the code, there's really nothing there. It's 281 lines, more than half of which is standard code for every DBT game (the text header takes up about a fourth of the code). The doll itself is referred to as the 'cusred doll'.

I'm disappointed, because this game sounded cool, and the other DBT game I played wasn't that bad.

This game take the purposeful obfuscation of the last 2 games and ramps it up even higher. There are numerous independent NPCs, every turn has an ongoing story, the stool and parts from the first two games shows up, etc.

Decompiling again got me the ending, which was a fitting ending for this trilogy of games.

The writing may be interesting to even those who haven't played the first two games.

This game is the sequel to Hard Puzzle, and like the first, it has some purposely underimplemented parts, and lies about its difficulty and even about your goals (or does it?)

I haven't finished it yet, but I've read all the text from decompiling, and I know the last command(s), just not the middle.

In any case, the game has a large number of critters with independent AI and some emergent behavior. It's fun to play around with.

Hard Puzzle is obnoxious on purpose. You need to assemble a stool, but everything goes wrong, and you start to find more and more parts.

The author intentionally makes the game underimplemented, with guess-the-verb, standard response, etc. going on. It claims to be a speed-IF that isn't too hard, but it is hard.

I decompiled it to figure it out. I'm giving it 4 stars because it's good at what it sets out to do.

This game is a clever inversion of usual goals. Playing normally as Dr. bonesaw, this is a short game; you get your vengeance.

The true gameplay, however, is more fun:

(Spoiler - click to show)You find the true ending by sabotaging yourself. It takes a few turns, but it's really pleasing to stop the unstoppable vengeance of Dr.
Bonesaw.

This game spoofs Toiletworld, so you should probably make sure to play that first.

This game just has 3 under-implemented locations with some neat tricks involving Magician's Choice and movement of scenery, but otherwise it's pretty typical for a speed-IF ectocomp game. Not bad, though. This author has a longer, fun game called How to Win at Rock, Paper, Scissors.

IN this game, you're trapped in a mirrored box as part of a Halloween stunt, carrying only a candle and some matches.

I couldn't get the game to do much, but it really had atmosphere. Just the act of lighting the matches, and the candle, and having the descriptions of your reflection described, were subtly creepy.

Most of Andy Phillips games have the same bones with different overlays. In all of the games, you play a protagonist with some sort of special features (in this one, you're an intelligent accountant), a femme fatale, and cinematic scenes with really hard combinatorial puzzles.

The special features of this one are the setting (most of it in an abandoned boarding school), and the gruesomeness of it. It was a bit over the top, even compared to his other games.

If you haven't tried any of the other games, I really liked Heist and Time.

You are a blind woman kidnapped by a sort of serial killer. The writing is pulp-y.

The big idea here is that you FEEL, SMELL, and LISTEN instead of LOOKING.

This concept is actually implemented pretty well, but the puzzles themselves are mostly of the search-everything and perform-uncued-action variety, which makes the game less exciting.