Reviews by MathBrush

Caribbean Nightmare

I originally tried the German version of this, then gave up and waited for the English release.

I've played several games by this author. They tend to have gigantic maps with a ton of puzzles and allow play by dropdown menu or by parser entry. They also tend to be a little underhinted and a tad undercoded, but with enough hints to help out.

This game was better than usual. I liked its 4 chapter structure. I did end with only 2600 points instead of the full 3130, so I must have missed something, but I found the storyline more engaging and the puzzles more interesting than before. It just felt like things were mostly thought through well. I did find the pseudo-jungle maze a bit annoying, though each part of it eventually gained another exit, making it easier to distinguish them.

There were a few unfair-feeling puzzles, but many of the puzzles were very fair. Maybe using the flashlight is a bit unfair since there are so many places you can check (and using the rag or even knowing it exists), but for the flashlight there is a bit of a hint for part of it. There's a lot of dialogue in the game, which I think significantly improves it.

The idea is that you have amnesia on an island and have to explore it, finding shipwrecks, a parrot and a monkey, zombies, dancing skeletons, and, of course, treasure. There's a giant plot twist in the middle that changes things significantly.

Overall, I found myself enjoying the game. There is still some strangeness; UNDOing at one point instead reloaded the entire game and then ran through all my previous commands, but left me in a completely different place with a completely different score. Tying the string to a tree and then taking the string made things weird (as I didn't use 'UNTIE'). So it wasn't perfect, but it was fun.

This game will, eventually, be a live-time game, like Lifeline once was, where you have to wait in real-time to unlock new events and things.

You play as Bel, a young graduate student who is part of a startup for medicinal drugs. She also is involved with investigations into drugs and dead cats.

The game is played on a map of the world, with events placed at different times of day (in this Beta version, you can click to advance time at any time). All events in-game are in one part of, I believe, New Zealand.

The game is unfinished (which is the main reason I'm giving it a lower score). It is also long. The game ends at the end of Ch. 1. Some plot threads are well-developed by then, but almost all of the climaxes and so on are missing. I have been planning on not playing any of the unfinished games this competition, but I somehow walked past the glaring 'Chapter One' and 'Beta' in the title.

The presentation is professional. The images consistently have a nice-looking black finished image with a blue sketch layer under or over or something; it looks like a talented professional artist worked extensively on the game. The writing is professional, with real-sounding dialogue.

Plot-wise, if this game is meant to be played over an extended period of time, I'd strongly suggest adding a journal or recollection feature. I got confused as it was with all the plots running. Some, like the status of our theater we're working/squatting in, were easy to follow and gripping. Others were less so; I honestly could not remember who the person was that we were trying so hard to stalk with Paige. Looking back, was it the CEO of the company charging her $2000? Or something? I genuinely don't know. A recall feature would help with stuff like that.

I'm not sure if choices have an effect here. You often have the choice of which storylet to play, but most that I skipped came up again later. Is it mostly just picking the order you read it in? The quality of the dialogue and graphics mean that the game can kind of coast on that alone, but it would be good to know if we can adjust the story.

The game has frequent strong profanity, which I personally didn't enjoy but which is very clearly laid out in the intro. Our protagonist has a kind of crappy life. I've seen people go through almost all of these things (mostly relatives); trying to hide a non-certified or otherwise illegal business from others; hiding a drug farm; living in a building not intended to be lived in and keeping it from others; having funding pulled from a company and being muscled out; trying to move biohazards around without it getting flagged; etc. Bel seems to have the opposite of a charmed life. It makes the story more interesting; how boring would it be to have the main character just exit the business, stop committing crimes and focus on grad school? Watching everything fall apart is definitely the right choice for telling this story.

Take the content warning on disturbing animal imagery seriously; this is not a good game for those who dislike text-based animal abuse.

This is another game in the most-played top 20.

It's classic YA fare. You discover a magical world alongside the real one, discover you have powers, make friends with magical people who are impressed by your powers, and go to school to train yourself in magic while simultaneously foiling a dark plot.

It makes sense that it's popular; if someone enjoyed things like Percy Jackson and wanted a hosted game for it, this would be my first recommendation.

It has mostly good points with some rough.

One thing it does great is combining 'hanging out with friends' with progressing the plot. I complained about The Golden Rose that almost nothing happens in a million words and you just hang out with your friends all the time. This game makes the hangout sessions drive the plot, where talking to your friends gives you worldbuilding lore or info on your investigation.

The school stuff is class, even generic YA material. Classes on things like the basics of magic, potions, runes, etc., with students still complaining about the tediousness of it all.

I wonder how much branching their is; it felt like a very long game comparatively but only has 300K words. Is it because it branches less, or was it just due to circumstances in my own life?

The biggest negative to me was a certain lack of descriptiveness, and now I see where the fans of Golden Rose are coming from. I played a couple hundred official Choice of Games games first before switching to hosted, and there having literary prose is much more common (games like Martian Job, Rent-a-Vice, Fool!, or Night Road come to mind), since there's a resume/portfolio submission process and really bad writing usually get screened out (not bad plot, per se; that's harder to test for). But in Hosted Games, there are no barriers, so there is much more variety in the writing quality. This game's writing isn't bad, but it could be more. My biggest complaint was in the powerful artifacts; the whole game centers around them, and once we have them, the game just says 'use the artifacts!' and the NPCs 'use the artifacts'. How? Did lightning come out? A blast of flame? Did angelic messengers descend? It was really anti-climactic.

Some of the writing was great, though; I felt like some of the NPC dialogue felt very authentic.

I'm more of a plot person than a writing person myself, and I like this game's plot and reveals. I had a good time.

The other point I have about writing is that you get better with practice, so I'm definitely looking forward to playing the next game in the series in the future.

Maximilien

This is an interesting game. I've decided to write my views based on a games individual merits rather than investigating them for potential AI use.

Maximilien is a highly polished game, and is destined for a future Steam release according to the author and website. The author's name on the IFComp page links to a page about the game, and that includes a page about the author and the creation process.

That polish includes several pictures, many of which are morphed or animated with various techniques, giving distortion or fire effects. The opening screen includes a particularly detailed-looking demon embryo thing, made in the author's style (who has been doing digital art for years).

The story is that you are living in Boston in the 1800s and have horrific and surreal nightmares that end with you waking up covered in blood. You have to investigate what's happening to you. Investigations increase your progress on 4 tracks of knowledge and hints, with each track giving different ending possibilities. I got the bad/possession ending, but I thought it was good.

You investigate through a map where you can choose where to go and spend action points on each of 4 days. You also have an inventory you can read, and there are several text-box entry 'tests'.

The original was in French, and the translation is extremely ornate and rich. Combined with the necessarily non-linear nature of the investigation and the surreal jumps in location and space, it was often difficult to keep track of the story. Here is an example of the ornate text:

After a moment of eternity, I finally rise with a soft hiss. A sweep of my gaze lets me take in some twenty yards, where I make out a tangle of tombstones merged into the night. I curse myself for not having made use of one of the two fellows’ lanterns ; and despite a careful look, I cannot see them. A curtain of trees a little farther off, its shadowed rim standing out against the sky, seems to mark the cemetery’s boundary. A little path of pale gravel stretches before me, in one direction toward the tree line, in the other toward the thickening mist at the heart of this resting ground.

or another:

The spectacle unfolding before my eyes defies even the oldest myths, whose obsolescence could not withstand the apprehension of the world through the prism of the most enlightened minds. Even the most unbridled imagination could not have engendered such a syncretism of credibility, belief, dreams, and nightmares, in this vision my senses transcribe with a pernicious exactitude, as only madness can produce.

Writing styles and preferences differ from person to person and culture to culture. For me, I like precision of language, where simpler words are preferred and complex phrases are only used if the provide clarity. All of the sentences make sense, and the meaning, once deciphered, is interesting, but like I said, combined with the jumping around and the surreal environment (and the distortion and warping of the text as play progresses), it can be difficult to follow the story thread.

The story that I did perceive is interesting. It reminds me of the Cognomen of Edgar Allen Poe game from a few years ago with its city investigation or aesthetic. This game includes a lot of details about Judaism, Boston and I think Ukraine.

Overall, I had a polished experience. I didn't feel compelled to replay, but I admire the effort put into the game and found the villain compelling.

The Neverending Story is one of my favorite books; I got a red-and-green text hardback german version in my youth and used it as part of my tools to learn German.

The movie, while good, isn't as great as the book, which has wonderful themes about self-identity, growth, love and the meaning of life.

This game slaughters both the book and the movie and leaves nothing of their themes.

This is a text adventure for the Spectrum (it comes in 3 parts in the version I played). I played it on the fuse emulator.

You wander around a map as Atreyu. You can carry five inventory items which are represented visually on the screen. There are two main kinds of items: standard adventure items that have nothing to do with the story, and items from the story that have no clear use in the game. Puzzles consist of grabbing most things you can find (there is a 5-item inventory limit and about half of items are red herrings) and then using each item in one spot. The game has a background timer (needed for one or two puzzles) so if you take time to think it has automatic input every few seconds.

The game contains no item descriptions, character descriptions, or player-initiated conversation. You run into characters and it just says 'look, it's Rockbiter' and you get a small pixel portrait of their face. Very occasionally the characters will do something. Falkor was the worst; you can summon Falkor and it just says 'Falkor is here", then you 'take Falkor' and you have him.

I love richly described games with emotional themes and interesting interactivity. This had none of that. One of the best books I've read, with no themes at all in its adaptation. No messages of love or courage or anything. Of course this is due to constraints, but Adventure has more compelling descriptions and emotions than this (like the Bear and the Volcano, or the creepy mirror) and better interactivity/clever puzzles like the eggs.

The Count and the Communist

The original French version of this game was one of my favorite games of 2025 when it originally released. Alas, mine is the only review on IFDB. Hopefully the English version will meet a broader audience.

The design is daring. Every page has ASCII art, either of people, a map, or something else. These drawings adapt to different circumstances, changing clothing and items carried.

More daring is the command input structure. Like Superluminal Vagrant Twin or Skybreak!, it's a menu-based parser system. It also has many parts that require typing a period followed by enter to get to the next page, which slows down things a bit. In French, it was perfect, as my slow reading speed benefitted from a slow input system. In English, I found it annoying, until by the end (5 or so hours later) I was quickly double tapping the keys.

Everything is accessed through menus, including saving and looking around. Again, some shortcuts were very annoying at first. EXAMINING and USING items that are carried requires an entirely different menu than objects in the area around you. Yet the game is long enough that, by the end, these menus can be mastered.

The game is very long, taking place over about a week. You are a communist spy supporting the Red faction after the Russian revolution, and you are sent to a count's household in France to support him as a laundress. The game tackles themes of communism, misogyny and homophobia in the early 1900s.

As a spy, your main job is to gather information. At first you are strictly limited to a small set of rooms, and you quickly learn your duties as a laundress. SAVING often is good as UNDO doesn't work here (due to the complex structure producing the images).

Over time, you gain access to many more areas. This game is huge; the wordcount is higher than Never Gives Up Her Dead, though much of it is from the ascii images. But over and over more areas and events unlock in the game, including complicated devices (some requiring pdfs of old French war manuals) and code transcribing.

The attached hints are absolutely useful, especially later on. It is possible to beat the game without doing everything; I didn't bother doing the last 3 optional puzzles as I had played the game all night for 2 nights and was reaching midnight and wished to finish.

The characters are well-developed, including the beautiful spy Marceline who leads you and the complex housekeeper whose young dreams of fame and success have been subverted by the cold Count.

The communism propaganda is huge here; our character spends every night trying to teach herself communist theory. Tons of conversations and lessons on communism are had. It is essentially like playing a religious crusades game with heavily Christian themes, except the all-consuming religion driving one to violence has been replaced with communism.

Overall, I think this is a fantastic game. It is clunky, sure. Some puzzles are not fair without hints, true. It is probably too long and too hard for IFComp. Fine. But I think it's a fantastic game, and my time playing it was worth it.

This game is described as being by 'Rybread', and ABOUT text starts with: "Rybread returns. Funemployment has let me tackle Inform 7 or at least try."

That suggests to me that this is Rybread Celsius, who was a well-known author many years ago and contributed to the IF theory reader. The previous Rybread Celsius games that I played were often buggy but had a creativity and a surreal quality that was enjoyable, like in Acid Whiplash.

Writing for Sub-Q magazine, Anya DeNiro wrote:

When I first became involved in the interactive fiction community online, back in 2001, my head was blown open by the possibilities afforded by parser-based games. I dutifully tracked down a copy of Lost Treasures of Infocom to find my footing with the "canon" that most others were building from. But there was someone else who seemed to be working on the fringes of the community, who some people considered an Ed Wood-type figure making monumentally bad game after game. Many considered him the worst writer of interactive fiction on the contemporary scene. Still others, fewer in number, considered him one of the experimental geniuses of interactive fiction. His name is Ryan Stevens, but he wrote under the name Rybread Celsius.

This game is both similar and dissimilar to those older games. It contains a giant carpet you can search/enter for candy, like his game Candy. Room directions often don't match what's actually available. There are numerous bugs; for instance, there's a coin in a well that you can't pick up unless you are in the well. So if you drop it anywhere else or put it on a supporter, you can never pick it up again (unless you can put the supporter in the wall). There is a dead adventurer that you cannot refer to by that name. I got around this by using 'it' immediately after entering a room, but found later on it responds to 'corpse'.

Dissimilar is the tone. His earlier games were somehow more frightening and unsettling to me, almost as if designed to subtly corrupt the human soul. This game feels more gentle and fun, almost whimsical, and is inspired by counterfeit monkey.

With the walkthrough, decompiling, and an eternal wellspring of hope, I got to 13 points. One point can only be obtained by taking a certain action on turn 127, so missing that locks you out, but I swear the turn counter jumps around from time to time. I never solved the grue puzzle, found the clock room, or the false coin.

Overall, I found it fun. While it's not polished, there's always something to do, and it's nice to see a long-retired author come out again to surprise the world. I liked the use of glulx's text styling, and the counterfeit monkey-inspired machine puzzle was cool.

Dinosaur Island Escape

This is another shorter Hosted Game that breaks the traditional mold. It has a lot in common with text adventures; instead of a forward-moving plot arc, it has a world model with keys, door, and items, just like parser games.

Unfortunately, I love parser games and just got through replaying the 50 or so best parser games of all time, and this doesn't quite measure up as either a text adventure or a CoG game, perhaps due to a lack of familiarity with what's possible in that puzzle space. But, I did still have fun! (until my untimely demise).

You crashland onto an island that is essentially Jurassic Park, which the game calls out several times (using character names or a city with the name 'Jurassic City' but a lot of letters are missing). You then explore the island from a central hub, with interesting things in all cardinal and ordinal directions. Essentially, there are locked buildings, keys, and pieces of rescue equipment in all areas, as well as dinosaur encounters. Grabbing a key unlocks other keys, etc. The game ends once you complete one piece of rescue equipment.

Then there is a part 2 with another character along with you with similar themes. I got close to beating this but died when I tried running past a t-rex with an athleticism of 5 (which was enough for all other athleticism checks). There were no savepoints or retries and I didn't feel like replaying the entire game 2 more times to get back to that point, so it sadly ended there.

Overall, the writing is generally utilitarian, and the code has some errors or inefficiencies like posting the 'you've come here already' text right after visiting a place for the first time, or repeating messages that should only happen once, or keeping the underscore in stat names.

All that said, the game is still fun. For $3.99, I'd say it's worth it; I could see me or my younger family members playing this in the airport. The dinosaurs are cute and interesting. I see this author has 3 more games; I am looking forward to them because of the non-traditional setup.

This game was very interesting. I am actually really impressed out how it handles complex geopolitical issues. (I’m going to over-exaggerate somewhat but this is the impression I got):

It’s hard to confront topics like racism, the Israeli-Palestine conflict, colonialism, and other issues in games. People can get upset, it can come off as manipulative or stolen valor, it can be appropriation, it can be done wrong.

This game doesn’t worry about that at all. It’s like, “What if we put Hitler and Martin Luther King Jr in a room and give you a machine gun and you can just blow away anyone you want to? Or, form a polycule? What if it shows the Chinese as Triad gangsters that smuggle goods and also as murderous oppressors of the Tibetans, but also the most murderous individual Chinese oppressor had a serial killer alternate personality that you thought was super hot and you wanted to kiss? What if you plundered Jewish antiquities in Palestine to avenge a dead Jewish woman while making out with a hot Arab man who is part of a swingers couple?” Well, the first one was a metaphor but the other two are real. I don’t know if this is excellent representation or horrible representation, but it gets the job done.

The game centers around the recovery of 6 artifacts in the 1930s, with you as the swashbuckling archaeologist who recovers them along with reams of potential paramours. Each one features its own mini-games like ancient riddles, dangerous traps, a small-town murder mystery, tower defense minigame, etc. Every chapter is action-packed.

I thought the writing was good and the plot was good, and the characters interesting. For some reason, though, I found it a lot of work to get through. At no point did I think it was bad or low quality, it just felt like each chapter was really meaty, more like a million word game than a 400K word game. I think having just 6 chapters total + epilogue might be part of it, as well as a lot of branching that comes back together quickly (like conversations where you have to lawnmower through most items before moving on).

I’m interested in the second game. I wonder where things will go next. I think my kill count in this game is one of the highest I’ve ever had; I have no idea how I wasn’t arrested in America after gunning down ten or more people during a standard police investigation.

This is a genuinely very funny game. I laughed at a lot of parts.

I was just thinking before this how one thing I really value in a text adventure is adding some storytelling to it. I was thinking, “like a big plot arc or humor”.

Well, this game has a lot of humor. You play as a squirrel named Slappy, and the love of your life has been kidnapped! You have to head into town to save her, only you’ve lost your car keys.

I think the moment I realized this was going to be a great game was when I bemusedly tried painting the bus stop sign. I thought it was really funny that it worked. That’s when I realized that, instead of having regular puzzle solutions, everything in the game was going to be about using the items and objects in the funniest way.

The cliff and safe gags were especially funny to me. Finding the feather, I knew what to do it with it right away, and tried it on everyone, to funny results. Over and over I found a problem and later got something and thought, “Oh, I know where to use that!” which is, to me, great puzzle design. The ambient storytelling is great too, like the signs in the Carnival. Lots of care and detail are put into some of the default messages too.

I had a few hiccups with typing things in and one weird response, but no bugs to speak of. This is definitely my favorite improvmonster game so far, and I’ve added it to my IFDB list of fun comedy games.