Reviews by MathBrush

This short game was the authors first game. They later went on to create Human Resource Stories, a multiple choice quizzes in Inform that was ahead of its time.

The author himself describes this game as buggy and unfinished. However, reading the other review on ifdb gave me fair warning about the worst problems, so it wasn't too bad, but it is hard to beat this game without a walkthrough due to reasonable commands not being recognized.

The setup is fairly clever, if short. Recommended for those who want to study first games.

This game is meant to serve as an introduction to a longer game. As such, it ends before the story really gets started. It's very similar to an opening village area in Zelda.

The author has done a good job building up an underground civilization, with a variety of npcs and some simple puzzles.

The activities you do are not compelling, but the game is polished and the setting is well done.

John Evans is known for making big, complicated games that often end up being unfinished or buggy.

This game was his first in Choicescript, and the choice of language has greatly improved the game. It is not buggy as far as I can tell, gameplay is smooth, and the game feels complete.

The story is a fun romp on Dr. Who-like themes. You go on 3 training missions and then one real mission. The amount of detail and description varies, but it's overall well done.

Recommended for fans of hard sci-fi.

In this game, you can customize your name, background, goals, etc. You then are let loose in a world where a mutant fungus makes you die if you stress out.

The customization is fun, and a sliding scale of emotions is provided in the corner.

However, this ambitious game falls short in execution with a wide variety of bugs, mainly synonym bugs. This causes frustration.

Overall, recommended for the beginning.

This game is more or less a faithful adaptation of the Paper Bag Princess with some classic puzzles thrown in.

The game is well-polished. Events occur on timers in a smooth way, the plot progresses at a good speed, most appropriate commands are recognized.

The story, taken from the book with permission, is cute. Overall though, the game felt slight and not as involving as it could have.

I loved the beginning of this game. The year is 2080 and you're headed to a base on the moon with a German colleague. You are experiencing strange flashes of light attributed to cosmic rays.

The writing is very descriptive and the setting is believable. The game is polished at first, but near the end I was picking up items that shouldn't be takable, room descriptions conflicted with npc descriptions, etc.

Overall, I would still play this again, but watch out for some bugs.

In this game, you play through 4 separate vignettes. Each one is a short, description-heavy vignette of someone in Soviet Russia. The vignettes increase in the social status of the pc.

The game is fairly serious, with some elements of parody, intentional or not.

The gameplay is fairly smooth and polished. Many people have said in reviews that they couldn't finish the game; however, every scene can be completed by either repeating some repetitive task (such as waiting) or making sure to explore each area thoroughly. The way you die usually tells you what to do next time.

Despite the heavy-handedness, the game worked for me. The last scene had a large amount of strong profanity, so I don't think I'll play again.

Also, at one point the game seemed bizarrely broken until I realized that it was displaying chess notation.

This longish game is an old-school puzzler, like So Far or Not Just an Ordinary Ballerina. It's a well-done puzzler, as well.

This game is a Western, a rare setting in IF. It starts out in the modern day, but things soon change.

The writing is descriptive and based on real locations and people known by the author.

It's hard to say more about the game without giving it away. Suffice it to say, this game is a real treat for puzzle fans, but probably not going to please those interested in story alone, as the story is 'gated' behind a series of complicated introductory puzzles.

This is perhaps the best puzzler game I have played that was not nominated for any XYZZY awards and did not enter a comp.

This is one of Pacian's best games, which is saying a lot. It is intricate but casual, and lasts 1-2 hours for the main storyline.

You play as a ship captain whose twin brother has been taken and frozen due to your unpaid loans. You must travel to a variety of worlds and systems to get enough cash to free your brother.

The world model is purposely simple. Each world and its orbit constitute a single location. Each location has 1-5 npcs and 0-2 other nouns. The only interaction available with most NPCs is TALK TO, although some can BUY and SELL, and a few other interactions pop up later.

You can't examine anything, and there's no searching or any such thing. You just travel from world to world, building up money until you're done. There's no climactic finale, but it's still rewarding.

This game is one of the best science fiction games I have played.

This is a charming short game about a person waking up on a volcanic island that's ready to explode.

You have to complete a few simple tasks in order to get off the island. The game gives good hints about this. I completely missed the last puzzle because I didn't examine carefully enough.

The game is polished and descriptive, with fair puzzles, but it didn't come to life for me, and I'm not sure I would play again.