Reviews by MathBrush

Felicity Banks has entered IFComp many times before with clever Choicescript games that contain themes like magic, alchemy, cats, and Australia (many of which show up in this game as well). Those games often get a post-comp release that is expanded and then put on Hosted Games.

This game is about a world where magic can be awakened in anyone through unknown means. It's treated like an infection, and society is built around blocking any access to magic-causing things, like using plastic plants instead of natural ones.

When magic awakens in you, the government enforcers come to get you and throw you into a magical prison/school where rival gangs attempt to fight or kill each other and people are sorted into magical categories (like elves, trolls, etc.) based on their abilities (I recommend reading the notes in the stats section).

Speaking of stats, I didn't check them during the game. Some games have really hard stat checks that constantly get in your way, but this game I just roleplayed and I generally did pretty good and only messed up once or twice.

The story and characters were fun, although some things really stretched my suspension of disbelief: (Spoiler - click to show)Are literally all of our friends non-magical people pretending to be magic? To be thrown into a prison? Where it's said that people die?? But they don't really die. Except people are fighting with bladed weapons and pretty much do get close to dying. Also magic has no visible drawbacks whatsoever but is locked down. It's the kind of story where hand-waving makes sense, but sometimes there was so much handwaving I almost thought *I'd* start flying!

I only used magic a couple of times. Besides my awakening, I only had one chance to learn more magic. I thought there'd be more, so I just focused on fiery magic, my strength. But no other chances to learn came up, and I'm not sure I ever actually used my charm. So if this gets a post-comp release, adding more magic-learning and magic-using opportunities and more time spent with friends/relationships would be great. What we have here fits well into the time constraints for the comp well.

I waited to play this until I had more time because I generally enjoy Felicity Banks's games and find them substantia, and I'm glad I did.

**The Den** by Ben Jackson.

It's been interesting tracking Ben Jackson's IF career. *The Kuolema* used Google Forms, a highly unusual format, and was choice-based but required text entry. It had lots of open exploration.

Then we had *Lunium*, a tightly constrained Twine escape room that also featured both choice and text entry, and included several visual puzzles. It kept most puzzles at all time.

Now we have *The Den*. While it keeps the choice and text entry hybrid of previous games, it has (in my mind) a stronger plot arc and better pacing than the other two, and features two protagonists, Aiden and Vee.

Our two heroes live in The Den, an underground area controlled tightly by Father. My first impression of the game was that it was similar to 10 Cloverfield Lane, where a tyrannical man imprisons others, and in this case was abducting children for experiments. I later decided that (Spoiler - click to show)this was some kind of lab with artificial beings and near the end it was clear that this was (Spoiler - click to show) a retelling of the story of Adam and Eve.

This game gave me big Subnautica vibes, with regards to storyline.

Puzzles in this game are the classic type you see in two-person games like Fire Boy and Water Girl, where one player opens passages for another or one player finds passwords for another.

There is also a Wordle mini-game, which I thought was amusing. I also found it a bit contrived, but that is later resolved.

The game is long, a bit more than 2 hours for me. I found the writing good; the two main characters manage to be neither cloying nor obnoxious, and the character of Father grew on me throughout the game.

The only things that I didn't much like during the game was how many options were 'Continue the story' or 'stop right now'. I usually didn't try the 'stop right now' choices, but once when I did the game ended (near the end) and another time it just ignored my choice, essentially (near the beginning). I understand the need to both move forward the plot and also maintain agency, but we usually reached those points by player commands in the first place, so I don't think we need additional confirmation so often. On the other hand, I'm not sure what the fix would be, as it's nice to have a little more interactivity like that. This is just a minor quibble; I think this game is great, and has the same high quality that proved popular in the author's earlier games.

Finally, I liked the use of all sense in the descriptions. There are a lot of smells and temperatures, along with the feel of wind, the hum of fans, the taste of food, and these sense come into play with the puzzles. I like that quite a bit and would like to incorporate that more into my own games.

Well, this was a pleasure. It’s rare (to me) to find a long, well-paced, polished Twine game with nice presentation, few bugs, good characters and a satisfying story arc. Usually games have both significant strengths and significant flaws, but I really didn’t find any major flaws in this game, which was very pleasant. (Of course this might just be to my tastes, of course; other people may have a different reaction)

You play as a chef who has been hired on to cook every 5 days at a community canteen in a magical village. There are several characters you can interact with, each of which is going through their own issues and having their own successes. Your goal is to be able to stay as a chef permanently, with side goals of improving relations with others.

The majority of the game is part of a 4-action daily cycle, where you can choose to cook things to sell at the market and then to buy things at the market (probably the most common option), interact with your friends, make special meals for the community, buy seeds and books (useful early on), go foraging (useful later on, etc.).

Every 5 days you make a special meal which gets judged. Despite my best efforts, my first meal got 1 star, so I worked hard to get better. I ended up getting exactly the amount of stars I needed to ‘stay’ (having only played once, I don’t know if it’s designed always to play out that way or if it was due to my eggs-and-cheese heavy strategies of making deluxe meals).

Overall, the tone is pleasant. There are some stresses, especially with friends, but the tone is one of peace and warmth. It’s not overly cloying to me, when it could easily have been so, and the game doesn’t force you into specific actions of reproach or forgiveness, instead allowing you to chart your own path.

Overall, a great game for someone looking to relax and cook.

This is a longish parser game set in a time with horses, wagons, and captains but not electricity. In it, you play as a soldier who is ordered on a special mission involving the Triskelion, a powerful weapon.

The game is divided into two parts. First, there is a long linear opening sequence which the author has designated as 'training', and that's a good description, as it gets you used to basic verbs and actions. Then there is a longer exploration part in a graveyard.

The puzzles can be tricky at times but not too bad. I used the walkthrough a couple of times, but only one puzzle would, I think have been really hard without it (finding a certain key).

There are a lot of red herrings. I found numerous items that presaged more puzzles and adventures but which were ultimately useless. It did add to the worldbuilding, so that's a tradeoff.

Some of those items could be implemented a bit more. I had this exchange in one late part of the game:

What do you do? x cannister
The green cannister is three feet tall, six inches in diameter, and made of heavy metal. On the side of the cannister is a red warning label. The cannister has a turn-valve on its top but the handle is missing. The valve cannot be opened without the handle.

>
> What do you do? read label
> That is not something to read. Try examining it instead.
>
>
> What do you do? x it
> A bright red square with a picture of a yellow flame on it. Beneath that is the wording "Hazard: Extremely Flammable"
>
>
> What do you do? take it
> That's hardly portable.

Somethings can only be EXAMINEd while some can only be READ.

The '>' prompt has been changed to 'What do you do?', presumably to help new players, and I thought that was neat. Many error responses have been changed, most of which I liked. The one I didn't so much was the error for when you type something that's not there; the game says things like Seriously?? and You must be joking! which is mildly funny the first time, but wears thin over time.

The game did a good job with pacing the puzzles, as I didn't usually feel overwhelmed or not having anything to do. The exits bar at the top is key; many puzzles can be solved by exploring all exits.

I thought the ending was a little anticlimactic, but maybe there will be more Triskelion in the future; I'd like to see it.

What a fun little game!

This is a single-stroke parser game, a genre which I've seen a few of in the last year or two and not many more before then. So a single keypress becomes an entire command. It was disconcerting at times (especially trying to repeat past commands by hitting the up arrow, which maps to NORTH) but I eventually got the hold of it.

The idea is that you're kidnapped by aliens who submit you to nonsensical tests, until disaster strikes. Now they rely on you for help!

Gameplay is limited to only two action: eXamine and Touch. A few other commands like LOOK and WAIT also work. This may not seem like a lot to work with, but it's like the Library of Babel. That library is a conceptual idea where every possible 410-page book is in a library, containing essentially any novel that is ever written. Someone once pointed out that it's not as weird as you might think, as you could make your own 'library of babel' with two books that only have one page each (one with a 0 in it and one with a 1 in it); by reading them in the right order, you could reproduce any possible text.

So it's the same idea here. The simple two commands are made more complex by having cycling environmental elements, like buttons that do different things every time you touch them, or timers you can set off, or additional attributes you can acquire and then remove (which behave like extra verbs). So the limited command set is just a blind.

This is really hard to come up with puzzles for; I wrote a giant game last year with different areas, and one I specifically wanted to mimic Arthur DiBianca's style. It was by far the hardest to code, the most buggy, and the hardest to figure out, trying to wrassle tons of moving scenes and machine parts.

The puzzles in this game are similar to math research, where you just try to find patterns or loopholes and bang your head against a wall until you solve it. I got stuck in the middle, and was typing up a question to ask for help, but as I typed I figured it out. The final puzzle stymied me too; I had the right idea, but my timing was off.

The story is sparse but has funny parts. Everything familiar has a goofy name and everything goofy has a familiar name. Objects are clearly chosen so that they start with distinct letters of the alphabet (like 'yo-yo'). Overall the aliens reminded me of those in the movie Home.

I had fun with this. Several of the puzzles were very frustrating before I solved them and fun after.

This game is a long choice-based game where you build a character who is a hobbit and live through a year or so of local hobbit life.

It seems built on the same general model as Choicescript games, where your choices influence your stats and relationships with delayed effects in later chapters.

However, the effects of your choices are pretty opaque. Unlike Choicescript games, there is no stats page that I could find, and many of the options you can pick from are very similar. On top of that, several chapters are built up as a 'win/loss' scenario where you either make the right choices and get a good result or just fail. When I played every commercial Choicescript game a few years ago, those were all common things that made games more frustrating.

On the other hand, the characters and setting here are fun. A lot is taken directly from Lord of the Rings, but the individual characters are all new. There is also a lot of branching, especially with romances. I did two playthroughs, one pursuing Patty the 'witch' and one pursuing Lily the mayor's daughter. The last 3 of the 7 chapters in these playthroughs were very different from each other.

Everything is pretty low-stakes. Someone steals a sword and runs away with it, but not you. The most stress you have to deal with is social judgment and a pie contest.

So, I'd recommend this to fans of 'coffee shop AU' or Stardew Valley. I liked it enough to play it twice, and the price I paid (I think $3.99?) was definitely appropriate for the size (a lot of such games are $10 to $20 now).

This is the 8th entry in Andrew Schultz’s Pro-Rhyme Row series, which is truly astonishing; how there can be so many paired rhymes in the english language blows my mind.

I really enjoyed this one for the first half or so. There is a feast of remembrance among the gnomes, and you are chosen to prepare food for it. Most of the rhymes in the game deal with food or appliances of some kind.

There is a map with a central location and four branches. Each branch has objects in it which you must find a rhyming pair for (or for the room itself).

Compared to other games in the series, this game made it easy to identify what the puzzles were and had some fun responses.

Some of the words made me laugh. My juvenile response to ‘tree troop’ made me laugh (although it wasn’t recognized) and I had the wrong answer at first to getting out of the ‘stuck state’.

I did run into some bugs though, especially with some repeating text. It was enough to hamper my experience. I did see a call for testers before the competition so it’s at least partially my fault for not responding, but fortunately the bugs seem not too bad to fix.

This is an ADRIFT game, which I played by downloading the ADRIFT 5 Runner (There are like 3 versions you can download, and google flagged 2 of them as viruses but the third was fine).

This game has a cinematic opening and first few areas. An international space laboratory has been able to cure numerous diseases, but a test virus got out and infected everyone on board! You are chosen to try to clear the contamination (which threatens to infect earth due to an automated shipment) or to die trying.

The initial exploration of the ship was suitably mysterious. After a time, I began to get stuck pretty early on. I consulted the hints, and would a few more times, and found that careful examination of everything was usually the key.

However, a few times I missed some puzzles I don't think I would have gotten because the game gave some negative feedback early on. For instance, I knew that many ADRIFT games have puzzles where you have to (Spoiler - click to show)X something, LOOK UNDER it, SEARCH it, or LOOK BEHIND it, so I spent the first twenty minutes of the game trying all of those things and (Spoiler - click to show)LOOK UNDER IT consistently said I can't do that or there's nothing there. It turns out that very late on in a timed sequence you have to (Spoiler - click to show)LOOK UNDER (or have already done so) to a scenery item. It just doesn't make much sense to me to have an action that the whole game has told me to be useless (and I was only trying anyway because of past ADRIFT experience) turn out to be super important in the end.

The story was pretty fun, especially the beginning and ending, but I was a little disappointed in the middle. The space station inhabitants are Chinese, and two rooms have Chinese names on them, but one was just Mao Zedong and the other was a title like 'fellow Scientist'; I was looking forward to some thoughtfully chosen bespoke Chinese names, but maybe that was just a weird expectation.

The best part to me was the initial exploration.

This is both the highest-rated and most-rated game on IFDB that currently doesn't have any reviews. I played it in preparation for the IF playoffs.

This game is a downloadable executable. It simulates the look of old windowed (not windows!) computers, like Amiga style. It gives you a couple of programs, at first just messages and a way to connect to BBS (bulletin board systems, and old style of forum), and then more over time.

A major facet of the game is typing in numbers to connect to Bulletin Boards, some of which are very convoluted. A common experience in the game is typing in the local number for long distance lines, typing in a long distance card number, finding your card number is expired, typing in a different local line, getting more card numbers, typing in the long distance line number, typing in the new card number, finding its also invalid, typing in the long distance line number, typing in a second new card number, then typing in the long distance number you want to enter.

This is repeated several times in the game and is mind-numbing, a major drawback for me.

Outside of that, it's a great game. You encounter the wild word of the early web, before the public knew much about it, before there was really any government oversight, and even before it was actually a 'web'.

You meet tons of people arguing about things they care about, like Star Trek TNG vs TOS, or hacking Sprint phone lines. But you also meet a woman named Emilia, who writes poems and wants to learn more about you.

Eventually drama ensues, and the game expands in scope and genre.

Like Emily Short in her Game Developer review, I found it very effective that we never see 'our' messages, only the replies to them. The power of imagination helps us build up a relationship.

There was a point early on where I felt genuine panic and an urge to try and move quickly as possible. Right after that is when the game's pacing plummeted. But the content was good enough that I wanted to keep going.

This is an Ink game that takes a couple of hours to play. It's set in the world of Vampire: The Masquerade, where a powerful vampire asks you to help cover up a murder.

Along the way, you meet a lot of different groups of interest, a talented artists, several unusual and uncanny vampires, and a whole lot of trouble.

I'm a fan of the choice of games line of Vampire: The Masquerade titles. This one is smaller in scope than those, but has its own satisfying storyline.

I played as a Malkavian (sp?) and enjoyed numerous opportunities to use my abilities. That's usually my favorite part of these games, having a chance to flex supernatural powers.

I did encounter one bug, which I'll pass on to the authors, and I got confused at one point when the game wanted me to go back to places I had already 'completed' because it had added new material but didn't tell me that (so I thought it was bugged, asking me to complete something I already had).

The two parts of this game that shined out the most to me were the descriptions and the multitude of options.
-The descriptions, especially of the art, the occult shop, and the Malkavian visions, was really vibrant, like the textual equivalent of a Van Gogh painting with adjectives and senses slathered thickly on the canvas.
-The game gave me huge freedom near the end, including selling something really important to several different groups and whether to fight or run. I backed the anarchists all the way and ran.

But I think the large amount of groups was also a weakness, because each one was thinly developed. To really flesh out each group would make this game enormous (which is one reason Vampire: the Masquerade--Night Road is so big). By fleshing out, I mean that most of my interactions with any given faction were limited to one area, asking a few questions, and offering them something. Perhaps I'm being too greedy in asking for the factions to have more character, more interactions or side stories, etc., or perhaps I missed some content.

Overall, though, I think this was a successful game. It might be slightly less accessible to those who aren't fans of VtM but it does a good job of explaining core concepts.