Reviews by MathBrush

The Weapon is an excellent, polished puzzler. You are handcuffed and take in to understand a piece of technology left by an ancient space-faring race. You have your own agenda, though.

There is a well-loved NPC keeping an eye on you. This makes the puzzles that much harder. But they aren't impossible. You basically have to distract her while deciphering the code.

Overall, strongly recommended.

The City has some great descriptive writing, but suffers from a few problems.

You wake up with amnesia in a mostly empty area and follow a surreal plot with a What Happened? ending. This has been done in shows like The Island, in short stories, and many times in interactive fiction (although this is an early example). The City doesn't bring much new to the table plot wise.

The game is short enough that the author felt justified in disabling save, restart, undo. This had an interesting effect on the atmosphere.

The puzzles were highly unclued with some guess the verb problems.

This may sound like a negative review, but the descriptive writing was a joy.

I found this game to be haunting, especially on the second playthrough months later. You are a young woman who experiences strange jumps, or transilience. You travel between world's when you sleep, and it leaves you disoriented and frightened.

Both worlds deal with unwanted sexual advances or effects, although there is no graphic content. In one world, you are sleeping beauty, and in the other, you are mysteriously pregnant.


Short and well crafted, and recommended.

Like many Porpentine games, this game is one big metaphor for the experiences of a trans individual, in this case also (Spoiler - click to show) abused by their parents.

You play a corporate executive, trying to make a million dollars. Porpentine enjoys the liberal use of irony, such as expounding on the beauty and wonderful taste of trash.

The game is quite complex, with some difficult action scenes and with one part that took me a week to figure out.

The game has a strong emotional effect. It also has a lot of sexual references and some strong language.

I put off this review for months because I hoped to find the solution to the game. But, I cant, so here goes. You play a Scottish man who is trying to stop the wedding of his love.

It has two interesting mechanics. First, you change Tartans to change how others perceive you. Second, you modify actions with adverbs.

In practice, this is very difficult. The number of possible adverbs is staggering, and there is no IF tradition to rely on. Even though the game is short, it's hard to find the solution.

Overall, an intriguing experiment.

This game is about a man with a 'twin', a doppelganger named Patrick. The game is short and straightforward, so I won't say too much about the plot.

The game has graphics drawn from day to day scenes such as conferences and streets, but faces and eyes aren't really seen.

To me, the game was much more effective on later replays, when I had time to think about it. I especially was struck on my most recent playthrough with the 'digression'.

Recommended.

Michael Lutz is one of the best Twine authors, with My Father's Long Long Legs and The Uncle that works for Nintendo. This game shares the excellent visual effects and tight writing of the original.

You play a character in an FPS, with a joystick simulate by "press A", and so on. You can play through a scenario multiple times, then enter a bizarre multiplayer game. Eventually, you enter a completely new scenario involving the bloodlord, whom you confront.

All of this gets supremely tedious; the repetition at the beginning, the final battle with pages and pages of texts, the slowly animated denouement. I lost interest multiple times, but played through out of curiosity. It makes some good points about gaming culture, though.

Contains strong profanity.

This game plays out over the course of several days in-game, perhaps a week. It is quite large, on the order of size of Twine games like Birdland, but feels a bit smaller than Spy Intrigue. I have played it once, but it seems to have high replay value.

The visuals on this game are gorgeous, especially when sleeping. The font, letter spacing, and color choices give a DOS type feel. The game is sprinkled with occasional images and animation.

You play a living firewall, an elemental charged with protecting a magic/tech network with 4 locations.

You are presented with a sequence of mysteries, one a day, which you use clues to solve. You can then deal with the mystery in many ways, raising and lowering various stats a la choice of games.

The game includes several times sequences, some violence and some sexual activity.

My only quibble is about one image, and it's a tiny issue: (Spoiler - click to show)I didn't like the illustration of the main antagonist, I thought it was cheesy.<\spoiler>

In this game, you wake in a grave near a church, and you have to explore it to discover what is going on.

The setting is Lovecraftian, and there are only a few interesting locations. The writing is not bad, and there seem to be no bugs, but some of the puzzles require extremely obscure commands (I'm looking at you, trapdoor).

Overall, not bad, but not incredible.

This twine game has an oddly kinetic interaction; you carry a gun, which you can use to shoot things (with sound) or to flip it from holster to holster with a button that changes sides.

The game is fairly short; you are a city girl trying to be an impressive cowgirl, but you find another woman whom you have romantic relationship with.

The games text is about a Lesbian relationship, but the pistol could signify a transwoman.