Ratings and Reviews by MathBrush

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View this member's reviews by tag: 15-30 minutes 2-10 hours about 1 hour about 2 hours IF Comp 2015 Infocom less than 15 minutes more than 10 hours Spring Thing 2016
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No Time To Squeal, by Mike Sousa and Robb Sherwin
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
A multiple-viewpoint game about saving a newborn girl's life, September 25, 2016

In this game, you play as a variety of characters who are all tied up together. The story is simple; a pregnant mother is injured, and the baby needs to be delivered. You need to help.

The game starts out in reality and veers into allegory. As others did, I enjoyed the real part more, if only because the symbolism later was hard to puzzle out. The game contains extreme violence.

Overall, the writing was excellent, as was the polishing. An interesting game.

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Who Created That Monster?, by N. B. Horvath
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
A sarcastic political game set in Iraqis future, September 25, 2016

This is a large, spare game where you are sent out to discover who was behind Sadam Hussein and the weapons of mass destruction or the conspiracy.

You wander from embassy to embassy and so on until you discover the truth. The game is frequently under clued, and the writing is often spare. It makes its point, but in an ineffective way.

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Tailypo, by Chandler Groover
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
A retelling of an old folk horror story , September 24, 2016*

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 review was last edited on December 11, 2020
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The Test is Now READY, by Jim Warrenfeltz
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
A series of moral problems in parser form, September 24, 2016

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.

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Fabricationist DeWit Remakes the World, by Jedediah Berry
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
Excellent sci fi game about rebirth , September 23, 2016
Related reviews: 15-30 minutes

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.

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I'll, by Sean Barrett
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
An apocalyptic riff on Aisle, September 23, 2016

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.

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Castronegro Blues, by Marshal Tenner Winter
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
A large Lovecraftian horror game with some rough edges, September 22, 2016

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.

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The Fairy Woods, by rosencrantz
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
A charming fairy tale about a quest for a lost love, September 22, 2016
Related reviews: 15-30 minutes

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.

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All Hail the Spider God, by Nelson
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
A brief surreal Spider horror game, September 21, 2016

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.

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The Surprising Case of Brian Timmons, by Marshal Tenner Winter
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
A solid but flawed mid-length Lovecraftian detective game, September 21, 2016

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.

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