Reviews by MathBrush

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.

This twine game was entered in the 2013 IFComp. It takes about 10-20 minutes to play.

In this game, you play someone confined to an apartment with a few furnishings like a futon, tv and game console, like Howling Dogs, you spend each day interacting with the same items in a confined space. However, each interaction brings on a strange sort of surreal narrative.

Some parts were done very well, while others felt less effective. I couldn't decide if it was genius or madness.

This game is full of empty locations and mazes, with a light sprinkling of items. Many items have one chance to use them correctly, which, if you miss, there is no way to fix it.

You are trying to get into a castle to rescue a princess. Or are you? It's hard to tell. I felt a good Scott Adams vibe from this at first, but the sheer number of mazes and empty rooms became frustrating.

This game uses a complicated custom interface to tell three stories at the same time. You play as three agent:, agent Alpha, agent Bravo, and agent Charlie, whose job is to prevent certain secrets from falling into the wrong hands.

You can push time forward or reverse it at any time, and hop between the three threads of the story. There are only a few decision points scattered between the different stories, so you have to hunt for them.

I felt that the interaction didn't quite work; it ended being a hunt-the-pixel game translated to text. It wasn't obvious what different elements in the interface did, or what consequences your effects had.

This choicescript game was entered in ifcomp 2010. It was one of the first choicescript games ever entered in ifcomp.

This game has the unusual setting if the American revolution. You play as a witch using one of any variety of kinds of witchcraft. You can tailor your character quite a bit.

The game isn't quite polished, with some heavy-handed choices (basically 'give up' or 'continue the story'). But I liked the overall result. It is shorter than most choicescript games.

This game is just a string of puzzles with a thin story set up around it. The first few puzzles are fairly fun, though occasionally underclued. The last puzzle is just brtual, involving a machine that transforms playing cards.

The game doesn't seem to be butgy, and it seems to be intended to be frustrating and difficult, so it succeeds at what it wants to be. But it is under described, and too hard for my taste.

This game has descriptive writing and a good story. You wake up on an exam table in a bare room.

This game is short, with 3 total points to earn. However, the sequence of actions necessary to get those points is arbitrary and difficult to come up with on one's one. This is further muddled by implementation bugs (especially the 'violence isn't the answer to this one' me tinned in other reviews).

I recommend playing this one with the walkthrough.

This game is inspired by a book written by the creator of Conan the Barbarian. You wander about a dark and grim city after reading the book in-game.

The atmosphere is creepy and the writing starts out descriptive, but the game sort of devolves into sparer writing later on.

The biggest trouble here is the very difficult set of puzzles, requiring you to carry out a large number of very unintuitive actions in order to progress.

The first Manalive game, constituting the first part of the book, did not impress me very much. It was confusing and difficult. I liked the second one much better, as it has better mechanics and wraps up the plot in a pleasant way.

On the other hand, the game is still rather finicky about commands, and has huge, huge text dumps directly from the novel.

If anything, the best parts of this game are those from the novel itself.

This is a short, fast paced game. You are a Roman and a user of magic. The local officials are storming your house, and you must hide all incriminating evidence.

This game uses the linking magic popular from Emily Shorts own Savoir Faire. You can create direct links and reverse links, although I had trouble distinguishing the two.

The game includes the possibility of violence, but it is not necessary. It lasts at most a few dozen turns.