Ratings and Reviews by MathBrush

This game is set in an unspecified fantasy setting. You play as a poor young woman, who, unlike most poor young women in fantasy stories, is very ugly.

You have been coerced into things that you may not want to participate in, but your actions remain your choice. There are 8 or so endings depending on what course you decide to take.

The writing is well-done, with rich descriptions and a well-conceived plot. The game is polished and smooth, and includes some text effects and images.

Overall, recommended. This was I believe the author's first game, and they have gone on to win several competitions. This first effort was a sign of things to come.

In this game, you play a medieval character who has been dared to spend the night in the house of a deceased nobleman.

This game is divided into a couple of parts, the first of which is figuring out just what is going on. The game has three inventories, including one for things worn and one for memories.

The memory mechanic works well for me, as does the big last puzzle at the end.

Overall, this is a light treat, lasting 15 minutes or less. The writing is very descriptive and gameplay is definitely polished.

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.