Reviews by MathBrush

This is another game by tzbits using a custom javascript framework. This one uses choice-based links rather than parser verbs.

You stand on rocky terrain near an angel and a woman named Rebecca. They are trying to tell you something, but it's difficult for your character to get the message at first. There are some twists as the game goes on, but it's fairly short, as makes sense for a speed-IF.

The choice-based links all resemble parser commands, like X ANGEL or just NORTH or SOUTH, which I thought was interesting given the other verb-based framework. Maybe they're similar under the skin, like Robin Johnson's versificator.

Like the protagonist, I had a little difficulty grasping what was going on; I could think of 2 or 3 scenarios that would fit what was going on, but I couldn't tell which. But maybe the ambiguity is the point!

This is the only Grand Guignol game that I tested.

This is a large and complex choice-based game with a strong emphasis on place and inventory. It has stylized text and background images, and uses a variety of fonts to indicate different character voices or special events. It has an inventory sidebar and uses graphics and animations to track your 'panic'.

You play as someone visiting an old abandoned asylum in an attempt to recover treasure from within. Once you get there, you discover that things are much worse than you could have ever guessed: this aslyum is haunted!

The author mentions in a note that this story, which was started 25 years ago, evolved to be one where the patients are victims of mistreatment by a cruel facility.

The panic meter is the key factor in this story. Getting a scare can raise it by 1 or 2. But confronting a ghost can fill up almost half the meter, which can lead to instant death in some cases. Fortunately, you get one 'free life' to keep going if you do, but it can be useful to keep a lot of saves and only push past warnings when you're sure your panic can handle it.

I found the panic meter engaging, keeping me more on my toes and more engaged in the gameplay, rather than just trying every option one by one. At times I found myself lost in the maze of links, but I eventually constructed a mental image of what the asylum looks like.

This is a big, polished game and was a pleasure to test and play. There are a few bugs here in there in the current version but the author has already described plans on fixing them after the competition.

In this game, you end up at a Farmer’s Market in Amish country (or equivalent) a little too late at night. You have enough time to buy something from each stall (which are all arranged in a circle you can traverse clockwise or counterclockwise).

But then, disaster strikes! A dramatic change happens, and you have to use your newfound inventory to find a way out.

I used to live in Philadelphia and we’d drive out towards Amish country every month or so. I have found memories of the pretzel cheeseburgers (a whole cheeseburger cooked into a big pretzel) and shoo-fly pie (basically pecan pie without pecans).

This craft fair is unfortunately not as fun, featuring things like head cheese and hairy squash. But those all come in useful at night!

I think there are multiple endings to the game, as I pursued a singular ‘defeat everyone’ strategy and the text sounded like I was committing to that and locking off other possibilities by doing so. Interestingly, I thought it’d be a complex game of strategy, but the winning method was exceedingly simple. More interesting was the commentary and backstory revealed about our character, making me wonder if that was the true point. I liked the twist at the end.

This game had a really interesting structure. There is a framing story (you’re a trick-or-treating kid competing against a bully) but after that it’s essentially 19 Halloween-themed short stories. You navigate around a map shaped like a calculus fence optimization problem and interact with people to get candy.

This includes a maze (which was thankfully very simple), a fetch quest or two, and even a miniature CYOA-game (which I think was acting like Mad Libs a bit, as there are tons of options for what character you can pick but it seems written in a way to easily adapt to different characters).

You can end the game at any time, and the ending doesn’t vary too much if you end soon or late (only the result of your contest changes), so if you decide to skip out after a few houses you can still get a good feel for the game.

This definitely had a 90’s or earlier vibe. Kids go trick-or-treating alone, people in the neighborhood seem to know each other, the only computing devices used are plugged-into-the-wall computers. The bully plotline is really reminiscent of 90s media (and IRL, in my experience) as well.

The candy descriptions definitely made me hungry, and the coding and creativity in house/host descriptions was impressive.

This was a pretty grim short story with a lot of room to explore and contemplate. In it, you play as someone estranged from an abusive father who has now died in hospice at your sister’s house.

The death of a close relative who as abusive is especially upsetting, as you have grief without anything to offset it. Or you have neither grief nor happiness at first. I had two grandfathers die within a few years of each other; one was beloved and surrounded by multiple generations that he had raised, even down to a great-grandson he had raised as his own. The other grandfather had been physically abusive to his children in their youth, and when he was older he smoked so much that none of the grandkids wanted to visit much due to the smell. His death felt so much less to me than the other grandfather. Years later, I thought about him more, and performed some rituals for the dead (part of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints), and that helped me connect with his memory more.

Sexual abuse can dig even deeper; I’ve met several friends and extended family members whose most deeply held secret was sexual abuse by someone close to them, often someone they still saw on a regular basis and cared for as a relative while simultaneously being hurt. So many kids have a putative dad or presumed-absent dad in public and a ‘real’ dad that can’t be made public because they were an abusive uncle or grandparent.

This game captured all of those feelings really well; everything felt so authentic, down to one relative denying the abuse ever happened and kids having trouble talking about it as adults.

The end I found was fitting. It took me a second to realize it was the end; it might have helped me process it more quickly if there was a signifier of the ending, like a horizontal ruling or the words “the end” or “fin”, but those are stylistic choices up to the author.

Good writing, bad feeling.

This is another game by DissoluteSolute, and is the one I connected with the most so far. You play as a pet bug of a woman who was murdered by flies, using her last breath to curse them and ask her pet silkworms and tarantula to take revenge on the flies.

It is grotesque, short and focused on the story, with little implemented outside the main loop (including words mentioned in the room descriptions). In those regards, it reminds me of Baby Tree, a game that I frequently recommend to people who’ve never played IF as a way to immediately capture their attention.

I felt like the writing was solid and the main couple of puzzles were well-clued and simple but utilizing the classic parser gameplay loops.

Very short, but good.

This was a downloadable game where you navigate by clicking on parts of an image, needing occasional searching.

It’s a translation of a Spanish game (I found a tiny fragment of untranslated spanish early on, for ‘leave to the corridor’). It regards a legend of a local kind of monster called the Vunche or Invunche, in connection with witches.

It has three main gameplay segments: an intro on a ship, a larger village exploration section, and a short finale.

I liked the mysteries and legends aspects, and the slow unveiling of the plot was intriguing. Gameplay was generally satisfying, just clicking to each area, going through the possibilities, then following up on any directions in the Notes tab.

There might be two endings; I picked up a special item in the ship early on but didn’t use it. Actually, while writing this I loaded up my save game and tried using it but to no avail. So I wonder if more options were planned at one point but not implemented; that would make sense, as there isn’t much freedom to stray off the game’s chosen path, and most of the characters feel like they could use another scene or two for a full story arc. But the game that is here is polished, well-written, and fun.

I was bewildered by this game when I started it. Most moves result in instant death. A lot of words in the description are bolded, but typing them does nothing. I downloaded HTML tads on my work computer in case there were supposed to be hyperlinks.

Eventually, I typed random verbs, and shout took me to a new room! Trying to figure out the connection and dying a few more times, I pondered more on the name of the game and realized what was going on.

This game has numerous strange and surreal vignettes. My favorite was a car ride with someone who has strapped knives onto all the surfaces, that was an interesting image.

The writing and the initial mystery are the two main components of the game for evaluation. Like I said, a couple vignettes really called out to me. I didn’t grasp a larger pattern or see a common thread (however, that’s pretty common for me with poetic IF, and I’ve had discussions with a few poetry authors on how poetic IF should be evaluated. But this is a rated competition, so I’m comparing to other games, including by the same author! So for me the vivid imagery and the frustrating beginning are the parts I think of the most).

This is a long videotome game with custom characters and a variety of backgrounds. It is mostly linear but has some important choices and uses of options near the end.

The beginning was ambiguous enough that I had a lot of different potential scenarios in my mind. It started with characters named Thirsty and Kill who host a TV show called Love it or List it (connected to the name of this game itself) who are talking with someone named “Cont.”, and I thought it could possibly be like SCP 2030 “Laugh is Fun” (game show where people are murdered) or a more philosophical game or a continuation of a long-running series of visual novels that I didn’t know. It really did feel like the game assumed I knew who these people were or who they were referencing. It wasn’t until I had played for ten or fifteen minutes that a more clear picture emerged (especially when I realized this was connected to the GUTS series of games, a great collection of short IF with interesting interactivity and bizarre stories). And I’m just now realizing that Cont. must have stood for Contestant.

What it comes down to is that we have a lesbian couple named Franzine and Eiric who have reached a doldrum in their relationship where each thinks the other hates them. Eiric gets to make the decision to stick with Franzine or date someone else.

In the meantime, each of them spends time with one host. Franzine gets remodeled, constantly worrying that she’s unchangeable and can’t be fixed in the process of trying to get fixed to bring back Eiric.

Eiric goes on to meet three other people. The first one I went on had nude images, which I would usually stop playing for, but the art style renders it less erotic and more as a sign of vulnerability. The story at this point is rough and sad, showing the awful reality of cheating (in this case, with an asexual person). The other dates aren’t much better.

In the end, it’s a dismal picture for the couple. The ending I chose in hopes of change and a better future did not result in what I hoped for but is completely realistic for the story being told. It also jibed completely with my experience of the 30’s-40’s dating scene.

Overall, I became engrossed in the story and in imagining the feelings of the two protagonists. Despite my initial confusion and my haunting feeling that I’m lacking the background of the setting, I felt like this game had something to say about the human condition that was valuable to experience.

This is a short, atmospheric game about a ferry at night with surreal overtones. It reminds me a bit of the game Cactus Blue Motel, with a magical world of horror mingled with wonder. This game tones down the wonder and cranks up the horror and wistfulness.

You are on a ferry, and it’s mostly abandoned. A series of unattended but distubring cars is near you. You can wander around, but the only people you meet are also alone, and are uniformly described as a ‘stranger’, which I found effective at setting the tone.

I felt like I had a lot of choices. There were many places to navigate to and people to talk to; there were cycling choices letting you create your own backstory with real differences (like, you could want to be a shaved-head punk or a braided-hair linen-sewing person). And there were things you could learn about or do in one spot and have it referenced later. Finally, there were multiple ending choices. So this game is actually fantastic in the variety of interactivity it offers, in addition to the creepy atmosphere.