Reviews by MathBrush

This game starts with you finding yourself suspended in the air so that all of your weight is concentrated on a single point halfway down your spine. Things do not improve for you after that.

The idea is that you are skewered on a hook and have the opportunity to flail about in different ways. Your different choices are pleasingly displayed for you in blood-like red. While you're doing that, in differently colored text, you hear your wife and her mother moving around.

This game isn't long, but provides significant variety in interactions for its length and tells a story with a real plot arc (intro, buildup, climax/denouement) in just a few words. Pretty impressive. And violent but it doesn't lean into it, which in many ways increases the horror.

This game was written for the Bluebeard Jam and Neo-Twiny Jam. It's short, and recounts the events that happen right after the climax of most Bluebeard retellings.

I like the presentation style with differently-colored and -justified text on black background and with multiple options even for a short game.

Its voice is distinctive in that it uses thee/thou while also using modern profanity. I generally avoid games with strong profanity in them and that's the main reason I've avoided playing this series for the last half of a year, despite seeing extensive praise from others and despite loving this author's game. And I do admit, it is grating here, like a spicy hotdog with just too many jalapenos on it.

I know this sounds really strange but I actually love the opening title screen that explains how to play and understand the game and gives a brief preview. I'd love for that to become common in more games, and it looks really good.

This is a visual novel that consists of one scene between two old friends/partners/lovers(?), consisting of yourself and a polish model named Kaja.

The two of you haven't seen each other for a while, and it seems your relationship has been fraught with difficulties in the past. Kaja is famous, and has had trouble connecting with others.

There are a variety of choices in the game that let you roleplay how you'd handle the relationship. The art is on-point, and the UI looks smooth and made play easy, especially going back and forth between passages. The art really fits the mood.

There is some strong profanity.

Overall, I thought this was a good 'doomer' kind of game, like the kind you could play on a melancholy rainy Friday night. But 'doomer's not the right word since there's a kind of quixotic hopefulness that pervades it.

I also liked the sign language parts.

I've been interested in Chinese poetry the last few years as I help the mandarin students at my school and I've been watching C-dramas like Empresses in the Palace. I also visited China last year and saw a lot of the older stuff up-close. I like Du Fu's poems in translation.

So it was fun to see this. It's pretty simple; each page has two options you can click on, each associated with nature or something else lovely. At the end, you get a poem based on you choices.

I thought this was fun, and the choices of imagery were pretty.

In this game, you play as a trans girl explaining why she doesn't get haircuts anymore due to experiences as a kid.

You go to a barbershop and have choices thrust upon you that you don't care for. The game includes some helpful graphics to indicate what's going on.

It ends a little abruptly, but that's intentional and adds more force to the ending. There are some choices that lead to internal dialogue that varies depending on your choice, and I thought that that was well-done.

Edit: Upon talking to others I decided to replay and pay more attention to even the smallest details. I found some variations I hadn't noticed before and some funny patterns in the small text.

This is a darkly humorous game about amazon reviews for a portable battery-operated mini chainsaw.

Each review describes how the person used it, ranging from reasonable to typical-online-customer to dangerous to surreal. You can rate the ratings as helpful or report them.

The story progresses over time, advancing to a final culmination.

Someone on itch said they figured out how to get two different endings, and the creator confirmed that choices matter, but I don't know how. The first time, I rated all the nice ratings helpful and all the murder ratings 'report'; the second time, I reported everything; the third time, I rated everything 'helpful'. I got the same ending both times, but the last time the screen was dark with creepy music (but the text was the same). If anyone knows how to get multiple endings, I'd be interested!

This twine game starts with a phrase that can be clicked on, which makes one word unclickable while new clickable words appear, forming a sentence the longer you click.

I thought at first there was one link per page, and so I just clicked quickly, and I got the same result a couple of times, so I figured it was just random.

Then I realized that you're actually building sentences one word at a time, which I thought was really neat.

All the messages are related to the kinds of things people say to each in heated or repetitive forum threads. They are vague enough to be generally applicable in many situations. I think I might have liked even more specificity, more details to make it feel more grounded, or a variety of distinct 'voices', but this was pretty fun.

This is a brief story that is advanced by clicking. Every time you click, words fly up of the screen and new ones come in. After a few clicks, the lovely background changes, and this repeats until the story ends.

The story is about some kind of dying being who is travelling with you and plans to be part of the stars.

It's a short, pleasant experience with no kind of interactivity.

In this brief choice game with less than 500 words, you can choose to receive letters or send letters.

Both options cycle through a list of short letters that vary between poignant and witty. At the end, you get a brief extra letter.

The design was charming, and the letters were fun. Not a lot of content or choices, but what's here is well-done.

This is a pleasant game by the accomplished author Autumn Chen. In it, you are making dumplings with your girlfriend.

For both you, dumplings remind you of family, in both good and bad ways. Making them is a good excuse for both revisiting your past as well as figuring out how well you work together.

This also serves as a nice sequel to the earlier games in the same continuity, where we could only hope for moments like this.

Gameplay is card based, where you draw ingredients from the pantry or fridge and decide how to handle them.

Neat concept, well executed.