Reviews by MathBrush

In this game, you are diving to explore the ocean as an underwater photographer. As you do so, you run into a real, live mermaid!

Interspersed with mermaid dialog, you can explore a little bit, with the game having a small world model. I played once and wasn't able to see everything, so it seems like the game makes replays worth it.

The character dialog was convincing and the game made use of its format effectively with its cheerful drawings and appropriate music. Short but fun.

I'm going to structure this review in three parts.

-A brief description
-Something for authors (players don't need to read)
-Something for prospective players (not intended for authors)

First, a description. This is a game that uses Vorple to combine nine other games. It was built around a code scheme that autosaves information from Inform and shares it with other games. Clicking links in one game autosaves your info and opens the other seamlessly, with a color-based transition. Two of the games are special: one is completely choice-based and the other is a hybrid parser like Gruescript (I believe it's in the author's custom language though).

The idea is that you are exploring an abandoned resort just for fun. As you explore further you realize that there is a rich group of other explorers and former workers that have both left clues and still explore to this day.

Okay, first for the authors:
(Spoiler - click to show)Congratulations! You all did something remarkable. Each area seemed like it was made with love. The writing was all good, all contributing to a feeling of decay and exploration and wonder and feeling. Something I loved about each area:
-Shore: I love language puzzles so this was fantastic. Favorite part of the game.
-Fortune teller: really clever meta puzzle, and the change of pace was relaxing and fun. Really adds to the piece.
-Tunnels: creepy. I love your work in general and the one easter egg reminded me of the chumba wumba earworm in your Cragne Manor piece. Best atmosphere imo.
-Gardens: I was so shocked during the big change in this area, great effect, and love how the area is initially so surprising in its change in interface.
-Moonlight Meadow: I felt like I was really there. I could smell the rotting, sodden tent in the pool, feel the plywood on the slide, feel the damp concrete under my feet, hear the creaking of old equipment in the wind, see the color of the sky. Great writing.
-Shopping Center: This had the most variety and reminded me of my favorite old parser games, especially Not Just An Ordinary Ballerina.
-Lunarcade: This had the most interactive content (imo) and felt like a really substantial complete game on its own. Most well-rounded area I think.
-Sanctuary hotel: the emotional centerpiece of the game, great character work and lovely feeling. Gross tangle of sheets in that one room.
-Monorail system: Loved the mechanical feeling. Reminded me of Fitter Happier from radiohead. The extra dials were neat.


For prospective players:
(Spoiler - click to show)This game has a lot of great content but it's spread out and mixed with red herrings and unnecessary or empty parts. Think of it like the best drink you've ever had that fills a glass, poured into a pitcher and filled with water to reach the top.

The beginning is just a vast empty void where you do little besides find room after room where you can do nothing. Objects in one area are used far away in areas you might not even conceive of.

Room descriptions are vital. Important exits can lurk in the middle of dense paragraphs. Over and over again key items and objects are named in inconspicuous places. Sometimes you just have to hit every room over and over to see if new things you have are useful.

This game is best enjoyed by those who enjoy detailed maps and careful lists of inventory and unsolved puzzles. Running through recklessly is futile, especially with tons of non-intuitive map connections and diagonal or vertical directions.

Is it worth it in the end? The journey is the real goal, here; the ending is neat but not substantially more than the rest of the game, so I'd take your time and enjoy the roses.

This was a neat experiment in a game jam designed to use non-gamemaking tools to make games.

This is a forum thread where the idea is that you read through the edit history to see what happened. It seems to me like someone having a breakdown and then it being covered up. Who covered it up, though? The government? Another personality? Parents?

It's a fun concept. Its open nature allows you to think of many possibilities but also hampers the story due to not providing enough answers to really pull you in. But a fun and unique idea.

This was a pleasant, compact Adventuron game. It had a feature I’m not used to seeing, where right-clicking on yellow words brought up possible actions. I don’t think it was all possible actions, because in both cases I tried it it only brought up ‘Examine’, but I thought it was cool!

The idea is that you’ve accidentally released the ghosts of your ancestors and you have to capture them back into the box you got them from.

There are two main ghosts to catch, each with a couple of puzzles. These puzzles were well-thought out; it looks like this Petite Mort game went for polishing a smaller-scope game rather than pushing out a bigger untested game. I think that was a smart choice! This setup would easily allow expansion if the author ever desired to do so, and I would look forward to that. Still, it’s pretty good as-is.

This game is a great example of a game that uses minimalist techniques to make a satisfyingly long game.

You start the game with a mission that's backwards of most kid's movies I watched in the 90s: you have to save ghosts in a mansion that's going to be demolished to turn into a rainforest!

There's no real attempt at storytelling in a traditional sense; it's more like Scott Adams' Adventureland in that regard. There are several locations in a kind of 3-d grid, each with a couple of interesting objects. Commands are done with 1-2 words each (although occasional 3-word commands are allowed). Art is blocky and pixelated with low resolution, but is interactive and creative in the use of color.

I explored the world and had a good time, but got really stuck at only one ghost solved. I was dismayed and used hints for a bit, only to find that I had just not know the verb to use for 3 of the ghosts: PUT. The game has a VERBS command, so I recommend using that. Once I realized that, I decided to set aside the hints and proceed normally, and I found the last 3 or 4 ghosts on my own.

The endings are pretty good. Overall, a great game if you just want a wide variety of fun puzzles.

I will say that a lot of times objects and puzzles in one location will have an effect on something in the distance, so it can be useful to explore after doing something that didn't seem important at the time.

I saw this game that had recently been released on IFDB outside of any competitions and wanted to try it.

It uses different colors for text, which is neat. It starts with you injured and in the dark outside a creepy building. It builds up to some creepy shenanigans with a computer in an office.

I couldn't finish it, though, due to implementation errors. Most scenery is not implemented, like debris or our wounds. So if you try to examine them or search them, they're not there. Most objects are just listed at the end of the paragraph rather than being incorporated into the text. I needed to get an important item from a cup, but trying to take the item from the cup said that I had to take it out of the cup first, and trying to take the cup said that I had to take the object first.

The design decisions seem punishing for no reason. There is a strict 7 item inventory limit. The game starts you on a timer before you die that barely gives you enough time to reach something to bandage your wounds, but trying to reach that part of the house encourages you to visit other areas (which can't heal you at all) first, so you have to dip in and out in one second. And the game ends the game and closes the whole interpreter if you UNDO because you're not a 'real adventurer'.

So, I was unable to finish it. I think the author has a lot of potential (so one of my 2 stars in the rating is for that potential), but I don't find the game enjoyable in its current incarnation.

This game is a longish twine game with lush but sometimes confusing writing.

In it, you play as a woman who is to be married off to settle her father's debts, but is late to the wedding. You stumble, chased by wolves, into a cathedral that is abandoned and stripped of religious symbology. You then dive deeper into the earth, discovering a series of trees that give sin-related dreams.

This felt pretty long. The writing has me going back and forth. On the one hand, it shows skill in word use and sentence formation. On the other hand, I had great difficulty keeping track of what's going on. Sudden shifts in perspective and topic aren't just common, they're essentially the majority of the game. Here are a few excerpts I had trouble parsing:

(Spoiler - click to show)There’s something happening at the police headquarters. It is an invitation, something thrilling but also dangerous. You had invited him over, for beer, for weed, the usual dissolutions, to assay your desire. This change of scenery could represent an escape procedure; the police headquarters, the inkcloud from a squid’s mouth. Yeah? Shall we drive over?

Clogged up, I imagine. I came by bike. He did not even intend to down his vodka club. You invent an obstacle. Bum tire on mine. Haven’t had a chance. An embarrassing fabrication: your life is nothing but chances. Hop on mine. He finishes the drink in the end, two thrilling gulps, pulls you from the bear trap of a lounge chair, positions you at the rear, to the private torments of discretion. Keep hold."

Another one:

"You keep turning over the question of death as if it were a weekend trip to the zoo. You’d heard about the albino crocodile, of course, the caged mandrills, the rhino whose tusk is slowly curling back into his skull. I’d like to go into town this evening, for an hour or two. Do you feel up to being alone? It’s a matter of practicalities, really, that’s what everything comes down to. Do we have a gun? She is sniffing at an orchid even though it’s plastic. Of course we don’t have a gun. The coffee is undrinkable. She must give you back the machine at least. Not even in your purse? It’s a rough-and-tumble neighborhood.

The storyline is interesting, and every part involving the marriage story was great. I just got bogged down in the middle and very intro and am not sure what was going on or what the themes were.

This game kind of threw me out of whack for a while and is one reason I was late playing Shufflecomp games.

I started this Gruescript game (which is parser-like but with buttons for actions and inventory items). In it, you play as someone in a post-apocalyptic world that has been flooded and where most people seem to be dead or gone. You invite a neighbor over for coffee, and they offer you drugs that enhance your memory.

I had fun in my initial experience with the game, running through it and getting into my first memory. But I got really stuck after that. The game says (early, light spoilers) that the pills give you memories when (Spoiler - click to show)you smell two things. But it didn't say you had to do that simultaneously, so I just thought the pills were good for 2 memories. I got super stuck.

I eventually tried the hints, and saw the file was big, so I got overwhelmed and put off both this game and the whole shufflecomp. I ended up playing this one last, expecting it to be huge, but it wasn't overwhelming. Each memory is just a couple of rooms. Even with the walkthrough, I tried to just guess what needed to happen, but even my best guesses were often wrong, so difficulty-wise this game kicked my butt. (Also, wouldn't (Spoiler - click to show)potato chips and (Spoiler - click to show)mashed potatoes have almost the same smell? The texture is the biggest difference to me).

Writing-wise this game is exactly the kind of game I like. Very cool Inception-style plot (a bit more literally than the term is usually used but not quite). Lots of revealed mysteries and a great ending that ties it all together.

Someone else may not have the weird intro I did, especially if you realize you need to have (Spoiler - click to show)simultaneous combinations of two smells.

This game is about you, a vampire, being offered a cure for vampirism. But it's more than that.

It uses a variety of multimedia to enhance the experience: unusual colors and fonts, scrolling tickertape that changes depending on what you mouse over, music, and stock photos in the background.

To me (and possibly the author, although I don't want to attribute intent when I don't know it), the game is mostly about the relationship you have with the vampire who created you. It turns out then when a vampire makes another vampire, they override the personality, emotions, and memories of their victim, making essentially a new person. That new person is completely changed to be the image of the one who made them. And you have a chance to undo them.

It made me think about relationships, like one I witnessed where one person did everything they could to make the other person be like them, including having them stop talking to their family, move away from friends, be rude to people at work, play the same games, watch the same shows, have the same religious beliefs. And, just like the vampire creators in the story, they moved on afterwards (although our personal vampire 'sire' is different in this story).

Overall, I thought it was effective. The game has some variation; I played it 3-4 times to try to understand it and I saw some significantly different content each time.

This game, like many in Shufflecomp, makes extensive use of public domain art.

In it, you play as two characters who died in a dangerous mission at sea and are now stuck in purgatory.

The game is fully voice acted. The two main plots that I found were the resolution of their feelings about life and death, and one of the characters coming to grips with their gender identity.

I liked the writing and voice acting, and the images contributed a lot. However, out of the three games entered by Bez in this competition, I think I preferred "A Little Guidance for A Big Heart" for its quirky ensemble. This one was meditative and thoughtful, though.