Reviews by MathBrush

Tailypo is an old folk tale told around campfires, about a person driven to excesses by hunger and the consequences of their actions.

This game is the quintessential Sub-Q game, with an emphasis on styling, formatting, dense & high quality writing, and short playthrough. There are also sounds.

For me, the text swung back and forth between the frightening and the silly. This is, however, present in the original tale. The writing here was most compelling when describing the hopelessness of the protagonist, and when describing the dogs.

This game has a fairly simple concept. You're placed into a sequence of distinct dilemmas where you have to choose between, for instance, killing one person or many people.

It's all pretty heavy handed, and has typos and some issues with implementation. But it's interesting to play, if for no other reason than that it's unusual.

This is a mid length Twine game set in a post apocalyptic world. You awake from a long sleep, not knowing who or what you are, but knowing what to do.

The game has only a few locations, but each one is packed with detail. The other characters in the game are vivid.

I found the general setting and characters to be very compelling. A must-play for sci fi fans.

Like Aisle, this is a one-move game where every recognized command tells a little story before ending the game.

In this game, each move ends the world, at least for you, and in a different way each time. The tone is dramatic, sometimes veering into the melodramatic; it's hard to know if this is parody or not.

The game recognizes most commands like examine and so oj, but almost none of the directional commands work, which would have provided a good amount of commands to experiment with.

This game features the same detective as The Surprising Case of Brian Timmons. This game is larger than that one, with less bugs, but also with a less compelling story.

You are investigating several disappearances, and are drawn to the town of Castronegro in New Mexico. There you explore a large map while unraveling a mystery. However, each location has only one (or none) interesting things, and each NPC can only say one thing.

The climactic scenes are often abrupt, and some puzzles are a bit odd in what works and what doesn't.

Overall, I didn't like this one as much as Brian Timmons, but it isn't bad. Like the previous game, it contains some derogatory attitudes towards women.

This twine game takes a lot of well-used tropes and works then into something special.

This is a 10-20 minute game with 9 endings. You seek a loved one in the fairy woods, and face a sequence of 2-3 choices at a time when finding them.

The game takes classic fairy ideas like fairy rings or greedy trolls and somehow gives them a sense of realness. The NPCS are all thoughtful.

The styling is individualized for this game and uses occasional special fonts.

This game is short with some interesting branching. You play as a variety of characters, all of which are tied up with a sort of Spider God manifested in webs and small spiders.

The writing is uneven, varying between creepy and jokey, which causes some disruption when reading. I enjoy this type of story a lot, but it doesn't really distinguish itself from other creepypasta.

Recommended for fans like me of surreal, amnesiatic type games.

According to my rating system, this is a 4 star game. It is not polished, but it is descriptive, it made me feel intrigued, the often frustrating mechanics somehow had their own logic that worked, and I could see myself playing it again one day.

However, my personality enjoyment was around 3 stars. In particular, I disliked the macho attitude, especially towards women, the overblown metaphors, and the unnecessary fiddly interactions.

The basic story, which is very solid, is based on preexisting content from Lovecraft, filtered through a paper RPG along the way. You are asked to investigate a young man who has gone insane and is robbing graves. You have to travel to a variety of locations to unravel the story.

You are a stereotypical detective with fedora, trench coat and revolver. The game is lengthy, and many of the programming seems to be simple hacks. For instance, all important conversation occurs on a timer, where NPCS come in, talk, and walk away over several turns. The command 'dig' returns a command that only pertains to one area as the author assumed no one would type that command elsewhere. Rooms are occasionally left empty, many synonyms are left unimplemented, etc. I encountered a bug early on where a character told me to leave, and I didnt, and they just repeated their command over and over, but I was not allowed to leave. Commands were sometimes purposely obtuse, like telling me to push doorbell instead of ring doorbell.

But somehow all of it makes a pattern; if you know a game wants to be unfair, you keep your eyes out. The author has a good grasp of pacing, and of world building. But the sexualization of women and the crazy metaphors are a real drawback.

This game is a short-to-mid-length parser game about trying to send a check to the bank. As you try to do so, things go terribly wrong.

This game felt a little bland and under implemented, but then great moments were sprinkled throughout that would make me want to play it again. A cockroach and a young child provide some memorable interactions, and unexpected events at the bank add to the story as well. But it overall feels a bit unpolished or unfinished, as if the author ran out of time.

It has a timer puzzle early on, and a couple of sticky points verb-wise later on.

This game has one big innovation, where it has a personality test at the beginning and you end up playing one of four characters. Each of the 4 characters has a special section of the game that only they play. Then you work together with one friend, and then with all 4 to solve the game.

The plot is jumbled, and the writing is spare and choppy. The game is under implemented, and very short. However, the key concept makes it interesting.