Reviews by MathBrush

This game follows fairly closely the story of a song called Monkey and Bear, whose lyrics you can look up online.

You play as a dancing bear, muzzled and wearing dancing clothes. Your compatriot monkey helps you escape and run away to the hills.

This is a shuffle comp game, which means it was created in a fairly short time period. However, most of this time seems to have been used to take a short concept and make it very polished, with innovative setting and writing, an XYZZY-nominated NPC, and text effects.

A short game, and an interesting one. I had some trouble guessing commands, but that was my only hangup.

This game is hard for me to describe. It is a long Choice of Games work, polished, descriptive, with a well-thought out underwater setting involving a complex relationship between merpeople, whales, giant squid, and humans. The majority of the game deals with navigating and adjusting this complex relationship through diplomacy and combat.

The combat is centered on strategic choices rather than rng's or blow by blow play. All of the aspects I have mentioned so far worked well for me.

But I struggled with the story. I kept having surprises where I realized that the game was not going where I thought it would as a result of me misunderstanding what I had read earlier. I think the best way to describe the plot structure is that there are several major threads that seem like the focus of the whole story, which then get buried and resurface later. Each one is interesting, and each one I wanted to see the end of, but I felt like none got the screen time they deserved. Only by playing 3 times was I able to get a satisfying resolution to threads like the mermaids' past, the squid-whale conflict, and gender issues.

That said, there were many moments of brilliance in this game, clever plot choices that made me want to play it through multiple times. Its treatment of the nature of reality resonated with me, and the mythology behind the merpeoples origin was very well done. I feel like I paid a very reasonable amount for a lot of excellent writing and gameplay, and I recommend this game.

This was an ectocomp game where most of the time seems to have been spent on a charming setting. You are Maurice Ravel, and your friend Debussy has been zombified.

The writing is very descriptive, and I didn't encounter any bugs. The game is quite short, with just a puzzle or two. As a speed-IF, this is a decorative gem.

Recommended for fans of great settings or the impressionistic period.

The atmosphere in this game is great, an odd post apocalyptic trick or treat adventure et near a crater. With a 3 hour time limit, this game didn't get everything implemented, including hints for directions.

It is written in a vague style, with no capitalization in room names and allusive texts. This worked well for me.

There were two things that would have made the game much easier for me: (Spoiler - click to show)The verb Trick or Treat and the ability to go west at first.

This game is written in Robin Johnson's own engine, one of the best home-brew parsers available. It is a Scott Adams-style puzzlefest, with smaller room descriptions, lots of places to explore, and 0-1 items in each location.

Some of the puzzles are quite hard; this game is for fans of old-school design.

The game mashes up several Shakespeare plays, primarily Hamlet, but also Othello, Macbeth, Richard III, the Henry IV/Falstaff plays, Romeo and Juliet, and so on

Overall, this is one of the best theatre-based games available, and one of the best old-school games.

This is an ectocomps game, so it comes equipped with spare room descriptions and under implemented items.

The overall storyline idea isn't bad, but there wasn't enough time to implement everything fully. There are some well-done secrets, and for me, the highlight of the game was the dog.

Took me about 15 minutes to finish.

This game is a gunfight and/or conversation with someone who chased you down for shooting a relative.

You can select between a few preset verbs like attack, ready, explain, placate, etc.

There are multiple difficulty levels, some randomization, and an interesting story. Howver, the combat system didn't really work for me, and I wasn't drawn in by the writing.

This game is a short, linear time travel story about a person working for a time traveling antique company. A system of technology is developed, and a complex and intriguing backstory.

The writing is adequate and doesn't get in the way of the action. Navigation takes a bit of getting used to, and I didn't like a few sequences where you are told to wait but 'wait' doesn't work (you have to complete tasks in your area first).

There was a bit of gender stereotyping and some hamminess, but I would recommend this story to fans of time travel stories.

I really enjoyed the story of this game, which makes sense, because it was adapted from a famous Conan the Barbarian story. The author has done a good job adapting it.

The game could use more synonyms; you often climb by going east instead of going up, and up doesn't work.

The action sort of slows down in the main conversation part of the game.

This game is fairly short.

The Endling Archive manipulates Inform 7 in a truly interesting way.

The game treats the player as someone using a database written in the traditional Inform menu system (using N, P, Enter, and Q to navigate). As you read more of the database, more and more becomes unlocked.

The game uses interesting pictures. The story is based on the idea of survivors, the last of their kind. The database starts out with different real-life examples of endlings, and then transitions to different material.

I really enjoyed it, although the ending fell a bit flat. It took 10 or 15 minutes to play.