Reviews by MathBrush

I started playing through all Spring Thing 2026 games in reverse order by IFDB rating. I saw this one had a 2.5 rating, and so I had low expectations going in. The first screen really surprised me: fun, inspired text, nice layout, a comprehensive help system. How could this be rated low?

Then I tried the game itself, and now I can see. There's little to no connection between individual events, and almost no wrap-up at the end. You are placed in a variety of class villain situations and act against the protagonists, but they retain no memory of events, there is no plot arc, the characters are different every time, etc.

Love the writing in this but not the mechanics so much. I'm glad that what is there is polished. I've liked work by this author before, who's done some fun forum games.

This is a Twine game where you pick from 8 or so characters to form a team of 4, then investigate rooms in a house one at a time to get a key and experience an attack plus some backstory, followed by a final finish.

Each character has different thoughts and reactions to the events. On my first playthrough, I was a time travelling powerful wizard lord. On the second, I was a cyborg assassin.

One character is just a regular woman, which was a surprise. She related a lot of things she saw to romance films (which reminded me of my mom, who watches Hallmark all the time and who I've started to consult about romance tropes when I write to see what's popular these days).

A lot of the writing was funny. Much of it was also a non-sequitur. The rewards at the end made me chuckle a bit.

Overall the story didn't have much cohesion, but the concept is a fun one. Extending it further could possibly result in combinatorial explosion.

This game feels more like an unfinished prototype than a fully-intentioned game. I have no doubt it could be completed into an enjoyable game, but it has yet to be so completed.

You start with no explanation in a room in a building that has 4 floors and a basement. Items are listed in each room in the default 'you can see' listing, and most have no description. Some items are not implemented at all (like the desk in the office whose description is 'This is an office with a desk').

I am so grateful for David Welbourn's walkthrough. Most of his work is with more polished games but there is real value in a polished and complete walkthrough for an incomplete/rough game like this.

If this is ever updated I'll update the score for sure.

This was a fun, brief parser game I played as part of the 2026 French comp.

In it, you are an undercover agent with a robber gang who has hijacked a train. You pull out your gun, and so do the other three. You can talk, you can shoot, but you have to get out of there alive.

The writing was vibrant and fun, and the characters pretty distinct. (It was fun seeing a distinctly american setting and names like Joe and Jack in a French game).

The game ends after 4 or so turns, and gives you hints on how to fix things. I was able to defeat 2/3 robbers without hints (dying as I shot them), but I couldn't find the right word for what I wanted to do to get the final point, so I looked up the hints, which were pretty comprehensive.

Great for a short, fun, replayable game.

This is a French game set on a train where you wake up with your memories somewhat befuddled. Then your phone rings.

In general, the game loops and you have multiple tries to fix things. The game also includes some combinatorics, which was nice for me as I was teaching this just a few weeks ago.

Overall it was very short; I only did 2 loops and solved two puzzles in the second loop (it may be worth taking notes). I had a good time.

I'm not sure I quite understood the rules of this game, but it was fun.

Your twin brother, who is working on a play, is sick, so you have to fill in without anyone realizing it's you.

To do that, you have to use your brother's notes. Unfortunately, they have gaps! You have to fill in those gaps with words from a 'deck'. You get 5 discards. Words can be adjectives, nouns, or verbs, with I think maybe one other category.

I saw people saying it was hard. When I tried it, it felt easy. Sometimes a word got a black line across it for a second, and sometimes not, but it was hard to figure out which of those had a 'bad' effect and which ones didn't.

It all came crumbling down in the third scene when the game said I had one more chance to make things up. Then I failed that and died.

It was fun, overall. Often I only had a single noun, so I had to add it whether it fit or not. So I think it might be down to random chance.

This is a French visual novel. I found the writing very amusing, with great art to boot.

You play as an insurance adjuster during medieval battles (in a fantasy version with mud-creatures and dragons). You are getting the everloving crap beaten out of you but your boss is mad that you're interfering'. You also have the mentor the intern who looks 5 years old.

The art is this nice charcoal-y sketch with very exaggerated and amusing style. The writing is zany and over-the-top.

It does have some tricky puzzles where you have to decide whether to file a claim or not. I'll be honest I opened up the code and looked, otherwise I wouldn't have known what to do.

Overall pretty short and fun.

It's always hard to rate games in foreign languages, because how much of your complaints are due to game design and how much due to your own ineptness in the language in question?

I felt dumb playing this game. In it, you are a person on a mission, wearing a red scarf, having just come out of a train station. You have a mission you need to complete!

One thing that would have helped a lot would be reading the game's extensive instructions on Itch, which include the command 'think about' (here 'penser a _____'). This is required for many puzzles in the game. I don't think the command is listed in-game; trying AIDE or INFO didn't work.

The game itself is actually pretty polished. The train station is relatively small. Time progresses every turn, and trains come in and out, with different endings happening based on different timings.

I was just replaying the game to see if I got things wrong, and I wonder if I just deeply misunderstood things or if there is a typo. In the walkthrough, it tells you to (Spoiler - click to show)Look at the Bench in the first room. But there's no bench in the room description. Other rooms do have a bench in the room description. Is there some kind of hint that tells you 'there should be a bench here too?'

Overall, I thought the puzzles and execution, once understood through the walkthrough, were cool, but I had great difficulty. If a francophone player wants to comment and explain what I missed I'd be happy to adjust my rating!

I was pleased when going through the competition to see a familiar name I knew and which I associated with quality games, and this game was in fact well put-together.

It's brief and designed for beginners, and as such uses sparse text (which would be great for ESL players or youths). The story is interesting: you are from space and coming down to earth to investigate lifeforms. You explore a diner that seems futuristic from our perspective (but still near-future; it has automated systems for refrigeration and cooking, which probably already exists).

The tutorial was very helpful, giving details not only on the game itself but the genre as a whole. Puzzles were simple but non-trivial, and I enjoyed the environmental storytelling.

Andrew Schultz, renowned wordplay game writer, has recently been adding images to his games which I think has been a great improvement.

This game is spoonerism-based, like many of the author's other games. You wander from place to place, finding important objects and transposing the beginning sounds of the words, unlocking new places to go to or having an effect on the environment.

The plot is more episodic than narrative, focused on helping people out or bringing items together.

This one felt well-organized and the art seemed more detailed than before. It had two puzzles that I struggled with, which broke the easier pattern of 'here are these obvious words' with 'guess these additional words'. But it was harder in a good way; I wonder if I could have gotten them right without help.

There were 2 or 3 minor inconsistencies; a map said it exited east when it meant west, and a picture said something was right when it meant left. But overall it was satisfying.