Reviews by MathBrush

This IFComp 2015 game centers on understanding and experiencing OCD. It has a nice visual feel, with a fixed-letter-spacing font and some purposely grainy photos/images.

You are diagnosed with OCD, and you learn that it's not what people think it is. You experience OCD as you struggle with how to spend your day and struggle with intrusive thoughts presented in an interesting way.

Overall, a mid-length game. You get a summary at the end describing how you're doing and what your future might be like.

If you are interested in OCD, definitely check this game out.

This game resembles to me a Dungeons and Dragons type quest without leveling or classes. You play Questor, on a quest to help everyone. You have to save a man from poisoning by finding an antidote, defeat a witch, gather things in the forest, engage in combat, answer riddles, and do a few more intense Kerkerkruip-like combat segments where you choose whether to attack or defend and what to attack.

I would not classify this as an 'old-school game', but more as a 'faux-ld school game', a game that recreates what people think early parser games were like.

If you enjoy DnD type games (like Eye of the Beholder), this could be a fun mid-length game for you.

This game is almost ritualistic in nature, and I enjoyed it. The gameplay consists almost entirely of reading messages placed in each of about 12 rooms. Doing this unlocks the final step.

Everything is dreamlike in nature, a bit like Plotkin's Dreamhold, but on a smaller scale. You wake up with no voice in front of a locked door In a dark structure with symbolic rooms, some made of glass, others of iron, etc.

I'm always into this kind of game, so I had fun. However, this game is really only for fans of the genre. Intentionally few puzzles, and the story is mostly about cool atmosphere.

Pilgrimage is a deeply symbolic game. The author has based the game around several symbolic progressions, including a progression of colors, the stages of grief, and more.

It is set in a pastiche of the medieval world, and it includes almost the entire world. Typing E will not take you one room east, it sets you off on a journey of months or years, to Russia or China.

You travel around trying to gain alchemical knowledge, and acheive a kind of transcendence. You seem to worship a dark Babylonian God, because Blessings of Babylon of disputable benefit are given to several people.

The IFComp release was a bit buggy, but I hope the author will do a postcomp release fixing the bugs discovered in the comp. This would result in a great game that people could discuss for a long time to come.

This IFComp 2015 game places you in a preset underground map that is vaguely maze-like, and sets a monster chasing after you.

Although the map is preset, there are many doors that are locked, and the keys randomly distributed. Also randomly distributed are items to set traps with to kill a monster that is chasing you.

It is a fun game, with good atmosphere, but over pretty quickly. It would be fun to see the author add a version with multiple monsters, where you have to work harder to evade them and need to set multiple traps.

This game was written both for IFComp 2015 and for an undergraduate research project at Hope.

It is just a choice between three linear sequences. After each choice has been picked at least once, two more open up. There are scattered photographs.

Interactivity-wise, this game doesn't make any groundbreaking changes. But the story is great. It is based on real-life journalist Marie Colvin, a war correspondent with an eye patch who died in an explosion.

I played this game twice, 3 weeks apart. The first time, I was rushing through IFComp, and dismissed it. But the second time, it struck a real emotional cord with me, and I really enjoyed it.

Onaar is different than most games out there. It is an RPG with heavy amounts of grinding, but can still be completed relatively quickly.

You are a young person who crashes on an island with a community on it. You become an alchemist's apprentice. The game has a real economy with things you need to buy and sell, a variety of stats, a mild hunger daemon (with plenty of free food items regenerating all over), and many potions you make by gathering alchemical ingredients.

It was fun. It is not like other parser games; if you are looking for a traditional puzzler, you should go somewhere else. Traditional puzzles are here, but the RPG/alchemy system is the real star. You can make yourself incorporeal, stronger, a teleporter, etc.

Great for fans of classic RPGS.

Life on Mars? is an IFComp 2015 entry that is a translation of the winner of the French IF competition of the same year. It was one of my favorites of IFComp.

This game centers around a woman stranded in a lone base after a terrible event. Her main access to the world is a computer terminal with e-mail. The game has implemented a marvelous e-mail system, with dozens of e-mails to read, with each sender having a different personality. The thoughts and replies of the woman are typed out in real time. The speed of the typing is adjustable; the default is too slow for most people, and the fastest is too fast, so make sure to play around with it before diving in.

The atmosphere of this game worked well for me. Outside of the e-mails, there are a few puzzles and a good amount of exploration. Overall, I would highly recommend this game, especially to fans of puzzle-light games such as Photopia.

Midnight, Swordfight was an IFComp 2015 game. This game is a one-move game like Aisle or Rematch, where you are in a duel with a countess and have only limited actions available. Innovatively, these actions are listed in a playscript in your inventory.

Another innovation is that you can enter an alternate reality, where you can travel through and around time to change the setup of the duel.

The world is mysterious and bizarre, with some of the darker parts of Lewis Carroll mixed with David Eddings mixed with all sorts of things. The game is dark, and contains explicit descriptions of sex and intense violence (although the violence is not to the level of, say, One Eye Open). The worksmanship is impeccable.

I'm from Utah and I love the desert, so this IFComp 2015 Twine game intrigued me.

It's a long-form Twine game about surviving after an accident in the desert. In real life, the Utah desert is very dangerous to be lost in, and that's reflected in the game.

The main idea is that you have water supplies, food supplies, and tools. You constantly make decisions about where to look for water, where to sleep for the night, whether to risk a boat trip, etc. Each option carries an associated cost in terms of water and stamina, which you don't know ahead of time.

Overall, it ends up being a bit like Oregon Trail. There are two main ways of surviving. I came close to finishing both trails, but I died at the very end each time, which, as I said, isn't too far off from reality.

This game is well-written. I wasn't a huge fan of the visual layout, but overall, it was pretty good. I have to admit, I probably would have enjoyed it more if I hadn't died right at the end a few times, but I've heard the authors are thinking of making the ending a bit easier.