Reviews by MathBrush

MTW tends to make games that have similar strengths and similar weaknesses.

Pros:
-Large casts of interesting characters that talk to you and follow you around
-Big maps and inventories
-Compelling plot points and settings

Cons:
-Only one path is implemented
-Difficult to predict correct paths
-Typos and bugs

This game is no exception. A mysterious mongoose/cat and a mysterious woman come into your life, and you investigate a weird house with links to the past.

I used the walkthrough because, from experience, it's difficult to play a MTW game without one.

Edit: For some more specific feedback on this game:

(Spoiler - click to show)Consider the following exchange when meeting the first human NPC:
>talk to woman
That's not a verb I recognise.

>ask woman about woman
sleeping young woman doesn't have anything useful to say about that.

This is a game filled with NPCs. It takes only 5 minutes to put in a response to TALK TO WOMAN that suggests using ASK/TELL instead. The capitalization and/or article usage for "sleeping young woman" is harder but is doable.

The default responses for many simple verbs like JUMP, PUSH, and EAT have all been left in.

Error messages make up the bulk of text you see when playing a parser game, and they need a lot of work here.

Homebrew parser games are notoriously difficult to get right. Most are frankly bad, with poor parsing and tiny games.

Bradford Mansion is one of the better downloadable, executable homebrew parser games I've seen. Sensible floor layout, puzzles tied by common themes, most puzzles relying on simple verbs.

But the parser isn't completely up to the challenge. There are small inconveniences (like L not being recognized as LOOK), but larger ones as well. A few key puzzles require extremely precise commands, with anything just a tiny bit off being unrecognized. This makes the game extremely difficult to solve without the walkthrough.

It has some tricky combinatorics/code puzzles, which are not completely covered in the walkthrough (being part of a hidden track). A plus for the puzzle fiends out there!

This game is set on the Titanic, and borrows a small bit from that show. There's no romance, but you play a thieving character who must hide from the law on the ship, including using an axe on metal and having a special painting.

The game is huge, but it comes with a very helpful map.

The main puzzles are fairly well clued, but there are a host of other puzzles. The fussy mechanic of opening and closing the suitcase, as well as the maze-like map, is fairly frustrating, though.

This game was actually pretty good. You are on a different planet, but in a very grungy-noir city. I didn't think of it at the time, but the aliens take the place of non-white races or transgender individuals or any other minority you want to think of.

A murder has occurred, and soon enough the mysterious artifact known as the Myothian Falcon (a direct nod to the Maltese Falcon) shows up missing as well.

Two things make this game problematic: guessing conversation topics (often impossible feeling!) and a few bugs. I asked out an encryptionist on a date, didn't do so hot, was told not to bother again, but when I talked to her, she acted like she was still on the date.

Beating without restarting or using a walkthrough seemed impossible for me, but otherwise this was a great game.

This game is so similar to other games that I kept having deja vu. Games where a master wizard gives you tasks are very old and very common. It reminds me of Berrost's Challenge, Risorgimento Represso, the Erudition Chamber, Junior Arithmancer (althugh the twist makes that one amazing), the Enchanter series, etc.

This game doesn't really bring anything new.

I wouldn't usually give 1 star to this game, however, I found it not very descriptive, with a bit wonky interaction via the puzzles, not emotionally touching, and not a game I'm interested in replaying. These are 4 of the 5 stars in my rating scale.

The biggest achievement of this game is an impeccable rope. Emily Short once described the challenges of programming rope:

"This is one of those things that has received so much attention that it almost seems pointless to recount the variety of the challenges associated therewith. First of all, a rope has two ends, so you have to remember the state of each (and disambiguate between the player's references to them, of course.) Then there's marking what the rope can be tied to; the possibility of cutting the rope in the middle, making multiple ropes of new lengths; the problem of using the rope as a fuse, of tying it to something in one room and then carrying the other end, of tying the ends together, etc., etc., etc. Ultimately I think the very trickiest part of all this is the disambiguation problem, ie, figuring out exactly what the player means when he says >TIE ROPE TO X (which end? Do we untie something that's already tied, if both ends are in use?) But it's all pretty grotesque, frankly."

All of this is handled in this game except for fire.

Basically, you wake up for an exam in a simulated world, but everything is strange. You have to enter a robot's body and do some odd IP-address voodoo to fix everything.

This involves finding cables, which you can combine or cut, and which trail from room to room.

There is a secret path (kicked off by (Spoiler - click to show)looking at yourself). Fun game!

I just felt a bit of an emotional barrier between me and the game, which makes sense, as you are a robot.

This reminds me of a John Evans game. John Evans used to write games that had these absolutely crazy mechanics, like teleporting anything in the game to you or being able to wish for anything.

This game revolves around the mechanic of comparing, where you find things that are similar and say COMPARE [THING] TO [THING], when the first becomes the second. Or something. Not a single time it appeared in the walkthrough did it make sense to me.

The story is kind of odd, too, a bunch of rabbits on a rampage. But it was overall descriptive and fairly fun.

The Xen games in general are well-described, with extensive backstory and compelling characters.

In this sequel, the powers you discovered in part 1 are out of control, and the police (and others) are hot on your trail.

The game includes chase sequences, extensive conversations, cutscenes, etc.

Unfortunately, the author didn't find a good way for people to discover this stuff on their own. It switches between extreme railroading and extreme lack of guidance. But I enjoyed it.

This is a big game that is (I think) written by a couple of kids and a parent. It's scope far exceeded the team's grasp, and what's left is a bizarre and difficult game that is clearly under-implemented and nonsensical.

Items require non-sequitur interactions, the setting leaps from place to place, and even the format for score increases changes from brackets to asterisks. The walkthrough is filled with moments where the author messed up and tried something else. The only saving grace this game has is the cheerful enthusiasm behind it and the sounds, colors, and images early on.

This is a game almost all of whose problems could have been fixed with beta testing. The author did much of the work for a great game, but it's that testing and polishing that makes or breaks games.

This game has mislabeled exits, strange computation problems that make it chug to a snail's speed at times, unimplemented scenery items, guess-the-verb problems, and a 'kill people and impress women' play style that was never my thing. I was frustrated with playing, and one of the last things I saw was 'a cloud of liquid gas'.

But the core of the game is extensive worldbuilding and intricate characters. This could have been a great game. The author of this, 14 years later, could likely produce something truly marvelous. But I don't think this is it.