Reviews by MathBrush

(Warning: This review might contain spoilers. Click to show the full review.)There's not much to say about this game; it's just an old short story/novella, with all the genders swapped, and implemented in big linear chunks in Twine.

Why not just read the original book? Not much to see here.

This game has a beautiful backdrop of a mirror, and has unusual fonts and styling.

It is a parser conversational game. You type topics (about 1000 are recognized) and thus explore a a conversational thread.

The writing is good, but the biggest issue is the lack of control. I felt like I was just getting random snippets, even though there were threads. The vagueness of the writing contributed to this fact.

As a technical work, though, this is extraordinarily impressive.

This game was written by an established board game maker and writer. Caroline Berg had a forum thread (located at https://videogamegeek.com/thread/1117906/you-are-standing-cave/page/6) where she was narrating an adventure game to the board members.

This game is the implementation of that forum thread. It was written in 2 weeks, after 1 week spent learning Inform.

The current implementation was not beta-tested, so it could really use some fixing up, but the core of it is good. It could do with a walkthrough.

This mid-length TADS game has a strong writing style and uses various colors. It has unique, alien world-building and an interesting map.

It also has puzzles that can be hard to guess. Using the walkthrough is fun, though, to get the whole story. There is one strong profanity, for no real reason, but it won't happen if you follow the walthrough.

I really enjoyed the setting and backstory here, it really is unique.

This game is a long, well-written, and exciting creepy game set in a house.

You are a young child at night, whose family seems to be missing. You explore the house, gathering various objects, and discovering more about the truth of your family's disappearance.

I created a textadventures.co.uk account, but the game interface was still infuriatingly bad. If I typed in a command too fast, the game would freeze, making me need to restore a save. You can only have one save at once.

Also, I followed the walkthrough, but I couldn't get the main opponent to spawn in the game. I still have never finished the game, even though I've started over 8 times.

**Edit** I finally got the game to finish; I realized that the walkthrough didn't say what I thought it did, and there's nothing you need to 'spawn'. This does, though, make the big puzzle unmotivated.

In this game, you are the daughter of the famous founder of the n/a movement, which somehow focuses on those with subtle powers, whether supernatural or based on refined psychology, I couldn't tell.

This game has many endings, based on how you react to 1-4 visitors that come to your office. The game has large blocks of text either a few, but varied options at the end.

I found the game not very exciting, but I liked how differently you could actually on different playthroughs.

This is a choicescript game with several short chapters and 2 longer chapters that involve cycling through similar events.

You start out as a small being in primordial ooze, then grow into a creature, then a tribe, a city, and a spacefarer.

The game is well polished and has a consistent tone that's not bad. Some of the cycling of similar options seemed a bit tedious at the end.

Overall, I would put it in the top half of the competition.

This is an entry by Megan Stevens, who has been doing her own thing in IFCOMP for several years. She doesn't focus as much on styling or complex link structures. Instead, her games focus on serious life events and a sort of grey evocative feel.

This game is about depression. It's short, but I found parts of it effective, especially the scene displayed in the cover art.

This game has a single, pretty much unnecessary strong profanity. It also references depression, obviously. If you like this game, you should try her other work.

In this game, you face a series of combat challenges, one after another.

Each challenge is in one location, and you use a variety of methods to attack your opponents.

Before Superluminal Vagrant Twin, this was probably Pacian's best known game. It has some violent and suggestive elements. It features a romance and several friendships, often with the people you are battling. The setting is rich and evocative.

In this game, you play an evil genius taking over the world. It's a Twine game with some hand drawn graphics, an invebtiry, and non-trivial branching.

It's a goofy humor game. The author did a good job with descriptive language and polishing up the links and graphics, and the interactivity is definitely non-trivial, but overall it didn't gel for me.