Reviews by MathBrush

This is a weird game but I'm into it. You play as a doppelganger in a bizarre magical world powered by technology and fantasy. I suspect there are deeper secrets to the game, but I enjoyed my ending (1/4, Humanologist).

Gameplay consists of getting several cases in a row. In each case, you can choose what to talk to your client about, then you become them, then you have several choices on how to carry out your tasks. You get paid different amounts of money depending on your performance. You can then invest that in various things.

I liked this quite a bit, although it's different from most games I like. Every year, I come up with theories on what does well in the comp and what doesn't, and this year my theory is that choice games that give you a lot of freedom of action (like a world model you can move in or completely different paths of characterization with tradeoffs like choice of games) do better than those without. On the other hand, longer games tend to do better, and while this is long, it's not huge like some of the games in the comp. So I predict this will do well, probably in the teens. But my predictions are always really wrong each year, so who knows?

+Polish: The game worked smoothly.
+Descriptiveness: I liked the worldbuilding.
+Interactivity: I felt like I could choose my characterization.
+Emotional impact: I really immersed myself in the character.
+Would I play again? I plan on it!

I beta tested this game.

I've played a lot of the Wobbles games by the Marino Family (although apparently there's a Parrot the Pirate episode I never read?) and this one is definitely my favorite.

The Wobbles series are all written in Undum, a system that was like Twine before Twine and is very powerful but requires advanced technical knowledge to use.

Each game in the Wobbles series deals with a magical house full of foster kids where kids with various disabilities or uncomfortable real-life situations or other things that make them marginalized come to groups with themselves.

It's written at a kid or teen level, and written by younger people, too. I have a son with muscular dystrophy, so I'm glad to see representation in these games of various types of disability.

This particular game has the hero go into a world where everyone is transformed into paper on rails. The world is described with startling specificity that provides a lot of the enjoyment of this game. How would paper people eat? Sleep? Go to school? It's all laid out in excellent detail.

The other main feature I appreciate for this game is the overall. I have to say, I think this has some of the best choice structure in this competition. When I first played this game as a tester, I thought it was somewhat on rails (haha) but on my playthrough today I was able to take significantly different actions and still have it seem like the 'intended story'. That's really hard to pull off, and increases my admiration for this game.

For the detailed worldbuilding and intricate choice structure, this is my favorite of the Wobbles games. If you're going to play, make sure you realize that it is designed with specific morals (although you can go against them), a specific audience, and a distinct narrative voice (that of a talking book). Since most of the games ever entered in IFComp are either adult-targeted genre fiction or avant-garde exercises, this good-natured and marginalization-conscious series is definitely unique.

+Polish: These games are always smooth.
+Descriptiveness: Love the worldbuilding.
+Interactivity: Feels like choices matter
+Emotional impact: The parts with the King and the Queen struck home after my recent divorce.
+Would I play again? Yeah, would like to see different paths.

**Last House on the Block by Jason Olson**

This game seems like a classic first-attempt at parser programming by a reasonably talented individual.

It has a house implemented in minute detail, including multiple bathrooms, several empty closets, a tackle box with many different kinds of tackle in it, etc.

The most complex part of the game is an NPC that follows you everywhere, interacting with you and doing independent actions, very much like Floyd the robot in the ways you interact with it.

The main puzzles require some very specific actions that I'm not sure are easy to discover on your own, and the language is fairly plain. While a solid game for a first-time author, I think the next game could use less extra objects and more of the fun NPCs, as well as a more vibrant setting.

-Polish: The game could use some more work, especially in talking with your friend.
-Descriptiveness: The setting and objects are plain and plainly described.
-Interactivity: There are so many objects that the state space of possible actions is just too big.
+Emotional impact: I liked the whole 'view of an older man's life' story.
-Would I play again? I don't think so.

This is a medium-length Twine game with one overarching, fairly difficult puzzle.

You are a spirit, and have been imprisoned in a mage's tower. Your goal is to possess one of two people and escape. But the tower you're in is protected in several ways, and your quest will be difficult.

The writer of this game is a freelance author, and I found the game as a story fairly satisfying. The characters were interesting and there were several subplots.

Mechanically, it's a little bit rougher. There are usually two choices at a time, and it's usually 'guess the right action', although thankfully you can usually back out of a wrong course the first time. There are clues to the right actions, so it's better in that regards than some of the other games, but I believe it could have been improved by going beyond binary choices more often.

The writing was interesting enough for me to look up his website and see some other work. He's done a lot of advertising copy, and it reads really well. Happy to see more work from this author.

+Polish: The game is smooth and bug free
+Descriptiveness: Lovely writing, great characters.
-Interactivity: The puzzle structure didn't appeal to me as much as it could.
+Emotional impact: I was shocked when one of the guards (Spoiler - click to show)ripped up my permission slip.
-Would I play again? The story was satisfying on its first run, but I wasn't invested enough to go through and try another round.

This is a game about horrible people. It reminds me of a lot of depressing literature, like Six Characters in Search of an Author or Ethan Frome or other books about a collection of bad people gone wrong.

This game is about a family of four, all of which you take turn controlling, and their house and its environs, a map that stays static throughout the game. Each of you has your vices: the father likes lusty young boys, the mother as well; the son spends time with violent anarchists, while the daughter is a haunted by a ghost from the past.

I like hope in my reading, and that’s one reason why Verdi was never my favorite composer. He once said that he wrote operas to convince others of the impossibility of human happiness.

Narratively, this game is strong. The storylines weave together well and the writing is coherent and vivid. Visually, I found the game pretty hard to look at, like tomato soup with basil floating in it.

The game reminds me quite a bit of Pseudavid’s popular The Master of the Land.

In any case, this is an impressive piece of work and good writing. It was interesting to meet Marcel Proust, even if it was in rather indecent circumstances.

+Polish: Very smooth.
+Descriptiveness: The writing was very clear and descriptive.
+Interactivity: I felt like my choices had strong consequences.
+Emotional impact: It was good at making me feel bad, I suppose.
-Would I play again? Not my cup of tea.

This game is a classic RPG scenario. You arrive in a town cursed by darkness, get a quest at a tavern, level up by killing some mobs and getting gear, then take on the big bad.

There have been a lot of attempts at putting quality RPGs in IFComp (and there are several good ones this year, too). This one’s pretty good: lots of non-combat exploration and puzzles, some fun text effects and an interesting backstory.

On the other hand, it could use some spellchecking. One thing you can do in Twine is go to the menu where you can ‘publish to file’ and right above that is ‘view proofing copy’. That gives you an easy-to-read version you can put into grammarly to correct most errors.

Overall, this was pretty fun, but I feel like it could have used something to set it apart from other RPGs more.

-Polish: Could use some fixes to spelling and grammar
+Descriptiveness: The jokes are pretty good in this game.
+Interactivity: It's not groundbreaking, but it doesn't have to be for me to have a good time.
-Emotional Impact: I didn't feel very invested in the storyline.
+Would I play again? I might seek it out later on.

I beta tested this game several times.

First Inform games tend to have a lot of issues from authors not realizing Inform's quirks (like forgetting to describe things or making them portable). Lance Campbell manages to avoid those problems here and make a smooth and interesting parser game.

You play as the village idiot who's out of a job. You head back to the farm you live at and try to find useful things to do around the farm, including dealing with the mutated squirrels you accidentally unleashed earlier.

The writing is pleasant and funny, with what I think of as 'dad humor'. The puzzles are well-constructed, with some animal-based conversation puzzles and some construction problems. While testing, I had some difficulty at times knowing what to do, but the game has numerous hints and a walkthrough that makes it pretty accessible. I had fun testing this.

+Polish: The game is pretty smooth.
+Descriptiveness: It has a definite writing voice.
+Interactivity: The animal puzzles are pretty fun.
+Emotional impact: The game is funny.
-Would I play again? After extensive testing, I think I'm done with this. But if I revisit this in future years I'll change this point!

So the author of this game (I had wondered if there were several, but there seems to be one main author with some help from Norbez) has been advertising this on Twine for quite some Twine, and I was interested to see how it would come it.

Story-wise, this is one of the stronger games in the competition. There’s a delightful tension between the two protagonists (you get to play both): a hero named Lightbearer, middle-aged and with the ability to control energy; and Promethium, a villain who creates synthetic humanoids.

The story takes you through a strange situation where the two of you must work together for each other’s good. I found the writing and storytelling to be witty. Lightbearer is fairly generic as a hero, but interesting as a person. I wondered if Promethium was coded as autistic (reacts poorly to sensory stimuli, has a specific soothing sensory experience, and, as we later discover, ).

The graphics and styling are very nice.

Interactivity-wise, I went back and forth on my feelings. It’s the same kind of model as the successful game Dull Grey from last year, where you make the same choice over and over again leading to a final ending (although I don’t think there are any Dull Grey-style secret endings here). I think that works fairly good here, but I think there’s not very much reason in-game to pursue the ‘be mean’ options.

That’s something I’ve thought a lot about while playing Choice of Games titles this summer. Several of them offer ‘mean paths’, but it’s best when they’re strongly motivated. For instance, in Champion of the Gods, it’s okay if you are wild and kill everyone on site because the Gods commend you and the people around you are glad to be protected. It’s also okay to spare the enemies because the Gods are cruel.

But in this game it just seems set up to always pick the same choice. I’ll go back and try another run. Overall though, the story was great, and I’d definitely be eager to see a new Storysinger Presents game in the future.

+Polish: Very smooth and nice
+Descriptiveness: Loved the writing in this one.
-Interactivity: I felt like my choices could have used a little more oomph.
+Emotional Impact: Yeah, I was definitely curious about the big mysteries.
+Would I play again? I could see me coming back to this in the future.

This game is another parser game (like Elsegar I) that is simple and spare in writing, with a small number of locations, each with one task to do, and generally written in an older-school style. If anything, it reminds me of the older adventures JCompton has been putting on IFDB recently. I will say that it has less empty rooms and significantly more complex puzzles and interactions than Elsegar I.

In this game, you play an Indiana Jones-like adventurer (complete with bullwhip and fedora) that must find the Golden Egg of Man-Toomba, Along the way, you meet a jungle tribe, consult your journal, and interact with several animals.

The puzzles were interesting, but I had some trouble with guessing the verb (for instance, figuring out what to do (Spoiler - click to show)when climbing up the tree or interacting with the sun stone in the temple).

There are several beta testers listed, which is likely why this game runs smoothly in general. The hint system makes winning a lot easier, too. I guess that (like my own game) I feel like this game could be significantly expanded in scope, and maybe give a bit more direction. Otherwise, it was a smooth play.

As a final note, raiding jungle tombs doesn’t feel quite as fun anymore since someone pointed out to me online that ‘jungle tribes’ are just people of a different culture and we’re just taking our stuff. It’s kind of like playing a game where you’re a Nepali breaking into Notre Dame to steal a gilded crucifix. But I was happy that you have to pay the tribe for their skilled services in this game.

+Polish: In what it does, it does pretty well. I'll leave the synonyms to my Interactivity criterion.
-Descriptiveness: The writing seemed a little flat to me.
-Emotional impact: I didn't feel invested emotionally in the game.
-Interactivity: It was hard to know what commands to type even when I knew how to solve the puzzle.
+Would I play again? It's short enough and responsive enough that I wouldn't mind taking it for another spin.

This game is written in unity, and, unlike most IF games written in unity in past years, it actually makes good use of the processor-intensive engine.

It’s a very slick design with hover-over links and a sidebar of choices. The art on this game is great; my son kept popping up by my computer to look at it.

It uses slow text, which is fine in a short game but really not that fine in a long game. Fortunately, you can click to speed it up at least a little faster.

In this game, you are a famous governmental figure in a space coalition between various races. You are known for having caused the death of a cat-like alien years ago, and now you are threatened by the repercussions of that. The different alien cultures are distinct and well-drawn.

It’s hard to know how your choices affect the story. The game never really settled down into a rhythm or gave hints about its length, or provided saves, so I was just kind of flying blind. In the ending I received, there were several loose threads, which makes me believe that the game has multiple paths and significant branching.

The art and UI programming were excellent, and the actual story were excellent, but I wonder if they worked at cross purposes at times. I guess it was the slow text that really inhibited this for me; I think the intent is to get people to read slow, but I have a reading pattern where I look over the whole page, planning which segments to focus on and then moving in. I read non-linearly, I guess I’m trying to say, and slow text really messes that up for me. And what’s the purpose of it? To make sure people don’t miss your text? The best way to do that is just to write only what’s essential. Clicking helped but was still fairly slow.

This is a great team, though. I could definitely see all 3 of them working for AAA if that’s something they were interested in.

+Polish: Very polished.
+Descriptive: Writing was great, not gonna lie.
-Interactivity: I couldn't figure out how to strategize or immerse myself in character, and either would have been fine.
-Emotional Impact: I felt an emotional distance from the character, and the stakes felt low emotionally, due to my issues with interactivity.
+Would I play again? I'd like to see more endings.