Reviews by MathBrush

This game received very low ratings in the 2014 ifcomp. I feel like most of those votes are in error.

First, the game starts with a series of multiple choice answers filled with semi-gibberish. Many people likely saw the first few questions and quit.

Second, after the intake form, you go through 4 rooms, and the second room purposefully contains Twine code, revealing what would have been various choices and reveals. Many assumed this was a mistake.

B-minus has a style that is part impressionistic and part Dada. The gibberish evokes a variety of feelings in a primeval way, and the 'hacked' parts of the game completely change the way you interact with the world.

Overall, a technically brilliant game. However, it was not a joy to play or replay, but more of a crazy experience where once was enough for me.

This Twine game was written by 3 community college students working together. It is about valkyries, spirits that aid the residents of Valhalla. Early on, the game splits into three very different branches, the first two being relatively short, the last having a few huge pages of text.

The stories generally are about a non-Valkyrie helping retrieve a necklace that Freya made and Loki stole. Two of the stories mention the ability to see when people die.

Overall, there are many typos and formatting issues, and the story swerves wildly. However, there are many options in the game, so you feel in control.

This game has a well-simulated house. The writing has many typos and grammar errors. You have to go pee, eat food, play with your hamster, and follow various other urgent needs.

This gets tedious eventually. The puzzles are unnecessarily fiddly in many places.

This game came in the bottom half of the ifcomp the year it came out.

Thus is a fairly short game about a friend who died and their funeral. As you begin to remember more about them, the plot thickens.

The writing is descriptive and pleasant. Unfortunately, there is a bug with the album which prevents you from winning. Otherwise, an intriguing slice of life.

Edit: Okay, I found another review online that says "Read Album" is the correct move. The game ends in a shockingly stupid troll message, and gives you a new verb to get two other dumb endings.

I agree with one reviewer's hypothesis that the author couldn't finish it in time and made a troll game.

This game was one of the last place entries in IFComp the year it came out. It's a traditional treasure romp where you gather 4 gems and then put them in a museum.

It's buggy quite a bit; examining a sign can switch the room you're in, there's no way to get a "You've won" message, and some items have names like pedestal3.

Someone went through several years later and decompiled the game and wrote a walkthrough and made a map. The map and walkthrough are fascinating, and provide an interesting insight into game design.

Recommended (with its walkthrough) for those who are interested in writing games.

I don't usually like super goofy games, but this one combines silliness with some earnestness and good descriptions. You play a conspiracy theorist with a talking British cat. Your house is small, with important objects clearly marked in descriptions, and only a few secrets.

This game has a timer of about 75 turns, displayed every turn. In this case, the timer served as a reassurance to me that the game would be small and solvable in a few turns. Unlike most timers, this one improved the game experience.

There were some typos, but I found this to be a better experience overall than I expected. Most people would probably find this game to be a 2-3 star experience.

In this game, you are in a seminary and are trying to do... something. The game is never clear about what you need to do.

The game is short, with a few puzzles. I kept trying things on my own, then looking at the walkthrough for the next step, but there are so many ways to lock yourself out of victory.

In the end, I think that this game is a bit too fiddly for my tastes.

This is essentially a tourism game, like the non-puzzly parts of Bolivia By Night or The Race.

You are late to a tour of a Plaza in New Mexico. The game shines in its wonderful descriptions of New Mexican history, and the feeling of wonder. However, the game is under implemented and puzzles are a bit odd.

A short game.

Great for fans of the American Southwest.

This is one of my favorite Choice of Games games. You play as Eratosthenes (male or female), a real historical figure who estimated the radius of the earth and advised Ptolemy IV.

In this game, you have to deal with snarky advisors and scholars, reign in ambitious kings, work on engineering, romance a variety of people, or study mathematics. I felt a good deal of flexibility.

The writing is good, as is to be expected of the author of Choice of Robots, one the best Choice of Games of all time.

I enjoyed this game, because I'm a mathematician, and the game allowed me to hang out with with a female Euclid and with Archiemedes.

This game will appeal to fans of the Civilization series of games, and fans of math, classics, history, or engineering. The human emotions investigated are universal.

This game placed in the lower half of IFCOMP the year it came out. Unlike many lower placing games, it has a sincerity and a good overall plan that made it enjoyable for me to play, though I skipped out on the 3 mazes.

You are searching for the tomb of an ancient warrior king. You have to explore an abandoned, rotting town, a tower, and a cave. There are some silly instant-death puzzles that undo solves nicely, but what I found nice about this game was the underlying story concept.