Ratings and Reviews by MathBrush

This ifcomp game was a demo for what was apparently a beta parser system (version 0.75).

In this game, you are a cat who helps their owner get dressed and go out, and nothing much else.

The parser is okay, but not equal to inform, tads, or Robin Johnson's parsers. An interesting artefact for those interested in various parser systems.

This game was entered in a 24-hour speed if competition. For a speed if, it is surprisingly detailed and polished, on the order of Emily Short's Lavender or better.

In this game, you play three different characters. To do so, you use various props in many ways.

The writing is descriptive. The puzzles are tricky but fair; when I resorted to the hints, it turned out that my next idea would have worked, so I just should have tried a bit longer.

My one caveat is that the difficulty of the puzzles and the frequent motion on and off stage drew me out of the story of the play itself.

This game has a framing story about visiting the house of a friendly old man who you knew as a kid who recently passed away. You explore a treehouse and his house, with some weird happenings going on.

Once inside, you experience two strange episodes based off of classic television shows.

The puzzles are a bit odd, with mechanics that mostly involve trying everything.

Somehow, though, the game had something appealing in the descriptive writing which would make me play again.

Stone is a beautiful, short, ambiguous game. Its blurb says its about aromanticism, but it could have many interpretations standing on its own.

It's a very short game, more of a poem than a story. A sentence is presented, and clicking on the few highlighted words will shuffle the text around, frequently leaving blank spaces to present staggered words in an unusual effect.

The tale presented is surprising, and, like I said, ambiguous, making it easy to apply it to yourself.

Very successful in what it attempts to be, a short poetic experience.

In this game, there are two cats, a camera, and a device in a box. Moving around changes what you see, and you can take pictures.

The game is small, and it has no ending. The author poses it as a challenge; once you understand it, you win.

I played with it enough to get some basic ideas, but I did not find it inspiring.

This game is apparently a big in-joke about ifmud, an online forum/interactive multiplayer world that many IF authors and players once used.

In ifmud, there were many monkey jokes, and people would pass 'bananas' made from text to each other. It includes a parser that allows people to play games together known as Floyd, modeled on the robot in Planetfall. It's main area is an adventurers lounge, with maps and a trophy case.

This game takes those elements and makes a tiny game out of it. That's really all there is to it.

This game is one of those "mess with the player" games, but it's better than most. It seems bug free (one apparent bug is actually the final joke), and the writing isn't bad, although it tries to be offensive to the player at times.

It's on rails, and goes through a variety of scenes. It seems like a troll game, to be honest, but many people might enjoy it if they like abusive language from parser and fun ridiculousness

In this game, you play a thin, waifish man who constantly wears all black and is reminiscing in his bedroom.

You explore a variety of vignettes from your past, related to women you had loved. Locations are detailed in loving care, and the writing in this game is quite descriptive.

As a general spoiler, though it's not too hard to figure out early on, (Spoiler - click to show)your character seems to be transgender. As a late spoiler, also not too hard to guess, (Spoiler - click to show)you are a serial killer. These two facts are presented in interesting, allusion ways, but at times the interactivity seems off, especially when wandering the beach for a long time.

It was an interesting game; I'm not sure what I thought about it. There are 7 endings.

This is a tiny game, whose tininess is enhanced by the central joke, which is a commentary of sorts on actions and 'helping' features of interactive fiction.

The setting is ancient Greek myth and Heracles' labor with obtaining the skin of the name and lion. It can be finished in two moves.

In this game, you try to act out Pascal's wager, which is that serving God has an infinite reward if God exists, so you should serve him no matter what chance he has of existing,

In this game, there are six possible gods you must serve, including quite a wide variety. You must do everything you can in three periods of your life to show the God that you serve them.

The game is well put together and descriptive. Some of the gods are absolutely horrible in ways that are rarely exceeded in If, but the game warns you ahead of time to steer clear.

I would not play some paths again, but I'm interested in some of the paths.

My own quibble is that actual gameplay is very opaque, making hints more necessary.