Reviews by MathBrush

This is perhaps paperblurts most compelling story for me, but also the most troublesome content. You play a serial killer who just can't get enough of killing.

The pacing, the graphics and animations, are all excellent, although it drags on to six acts.

It goes into detail about the gore, but it's over the top, silly gore.

The story gets interesting with the addition of a couple of major npc's. Both of them get wrapped up in a somewhat rushed way. Also there is no save feature for this long game with many slow pauses.

This is a short hypertext game about two people, one on a bike and one running. The screen is split into two windows, one for each story.

Each story has a sequence of 8 or so binary choices. You can either play as one character the whole time, with the other character's choices proceeding on its own, or you can play both characters at once (although you still make just one choice each 'second').

I found the story to be really short, and looking back and forth at the two panels detracted from the slice of life style of the story. However, it was well done in a technical way.

Tower was the second game entered by Simon Deimel in ifcomp 2014, and to be honest, I prefer Enigma, a well-written drama.

This game, Tower, leans heavily on classic IF tropes: locked doors and keys, amnesia, a dragon, an unusual combination lock, a generic fantasy setting. The descriptions are spare, but everything runs fairly smoothly.

Still, I wouldn't mind playing this game again. It's fun wandering around and trying everything.

Andrew Schultz is known for taking a word puzzle idea (like anagrams or reversible compound nouns) and running with it. Most of his games encourage you to explore the world first to figure out what the theme is, so I won't give away the theme in this game.

The world is spare and empty, but this helps identify key items. The game is also highly polished, with no bugs or typos that I am aware of.

The mechanic in this game is harder to do by hand than his other games, resulting in either frustration or grinding, unless you're in the mood for it.

Overall, this game works, but his other games (especially shuffling around, threediopolis or their sequels) worked better for me.

This game starts out as an illustrated twine implementation of Hugo's House of Horrors, an old game similar to Maniac Mansion.

The author has added vivid descriptions of the graphics. Not all the original game is implemented. The game has not been implemented in exactly the same way as the original as there is, for instance, new dialogue, including strong profanity.

The game begins to glitch out, as in the classic glitch creepypasta.

I felt like the horror never really took hold, although it was better at times.

It took me 20 minutes to finish the game.

This game was entered in IFCOMP 2014. Like Robin Johnsons draculaland, this game implements a hyperlink based parser system. Unlike Johnsons game, this game doesn't have scrollbars capability.

You have about a dozen verbs you can click at any time, which then gives you a menu of choices, or just guesses what you want to do.

The storyline is interesting but not gripping. You are in prison, and can bend through bars. You want to get out and bring your friends.

The interactivity in this game had some issues; actions often bring results quite different than what you would expect, making it very difficult to know how to proceed

Zest combines the talent of Richard Goodness (who later made the amusing and thoughtful Tombs of Reschette), lectroniae (a musical artist), and PaperBlurt (a frequent author of well-illustrated twine games).

In this rather long Twine game, you play as someone who works at some sort of fast food place, and can go to church or the tobacco shop to buy tobacco to 'zest'.

The game has a mix of the absurd, the mundane, and the thoughtful. You have 3 meters, including grossness, and you have to repeat the same options/tasks each day.

The game is at its most absurd in the store, or in dreams; its at its most thoughtful in its depiction of the poor, and of Christian prayers and sermons. And frequently it is both.

This game contains frequent use of the f-word.

This game is unusual in that is written in the Scots dialect, which is quite different from American English, my native language. However, the author has provided in game translations, and it's not too hard to see the meaning in Scots even without translation.

The game has two parts, a Scots part about a modern day person who is trying to resist a panic attafck, and a standard English part about a person on a Celtic quest for a magic staff.

The game was not too long, but the combination lock required some research and there are opportunities for losing in the middle. There is also a maze.

Overall, I liked this game, but the Celtic part seemed just added in; I wished it was integrated more fully. I did not play the commercial version, which may have resolved this issue, being twice as long.

I really enjoyed the concept and execution of this game, except for some slow points at the beginning and end.

This game is, in fact, an enigma. You start in an almost blank room, frozen in time, and must slowly recall and piece together what's going on.

The story that unfolds is gloomy and perhaps over dramatic, but I found it intriguing.

The main mechanic, which I won't describe here, is almost like a hunt the pixel game, but in text. The initial hiccup is finding out how the mechanic works. The final hiccup is trying to figure out which thing you have neglected to search.

As Emily short said in a review of Toby's Nose, that game has a similar mechanic that was also effective.

This game was well known a decade or two ago. This is a dark and moody, puzzleless game. You go to a funeral, meet with some NPCS, and experience some moody set pieces.

The interactivity is off; you have to guess a lot what to do, from beginning to end.

This game was ahead of its time in many ways. It doesn't use the compass it was puzzleless 2 years before photopia, and it restricted the parser. It is descriptive and polished.