Reviews by MathBrush

This game, written in 500 words or less for the Neo Twiny Jam, is about a lost one who still thinks about home.

It can be read in many ways. It becomes apparent (and is in the cover art) that this is about a cat, but the sentiments can apply to a lot of other life relationships.

It goes through month by month, detailing the change, the hard variations between hoping for a return and mourning a loss.

I found it a sweet tale.

This game, written for the Neo Twiny Jam in 500 words or less, describes the experience of looping dreams, trying to wake up.

It's a simple concept but executed well. Everyone knows (well, at least people that don't have issues impacting their dreams) that feeling of thinking you've already waked up and then realizing it's not true.

The game branches a lot, at first appearing like a time cave structure, but it's slightly more complex than that, which I thought was cool.

This game is a Neo Twiny Jam game written in 500 words or less.

It is a triptych of vignettes, each about a different birthday, each about interactions with a mother.

It uses both changes in artwork and changes in interactivity to signal the transition between the birthdays. I don't know if it is intentional, but I liked how (Spoiler - click to show)you started with few options to interact with mom, grew to have more, but ended up having no choices.

I thought this game was sadly sweet, and I'm glad I played it.

This game was written in 500 words or less for the Neo Twiny Jam, using Ink.

It is brief and linear, but told with appropriate dualities. The design is stark white and black; the game is in either French or English; and love and marriage are contrasted with bitterness and funeral.

The story is of two men, wedded, who fight fiercely. Their story is told in reverse, from the end of the marriage to the beginning.

I imagined the envelope at the beginning to be divorce papers; I remember for my own when it became real enough to have papers to sign. That was quite the day! Overall, despite its simple structure, the strong storytelling shines.

This game was written for the Neo Twiny Jam in 500 words for less.

It uses some creative styling with black and white geometric figures (although it did overlap the text a bit on my laptop screen).

It presents three visions of anxiety: worry about the future, worry that the present is slipping by, and ruminations on the past.

Each is countered by a cat, though, which is sweet. There wasn't any wrapping-up at the end that I found, just three separate paths. Maybe there was one additional passage before looping, but it was hard to tell.

This poem was written for the Neo Twiny Jam in 500 words or less.

It is written using a variety of visual techniques, including spacing the poem very carefully using columns, lines, tabs, and spaces, and changing colors for both links and backgrounds, as well as hover.

The poem muses on the author's perception of the self; trying to understand why they look so different than others, which features that don't match the standard of beauty. They look to a distant parent, an 'other', unknown, who gave them these features, and contemplate what seeing their similarities would be like.

I definitely know how this feels! I too have been startled when looking in the mirror, realizing that I don't really look like people in the shows I've been watching or (now that college is a distant memory) realizing I don't look like the 18 yr old I imagine myself to be.

But like the author (except I don't need to imagine), connecting with family really helps. I have a big, bulbous nose that is very distinct. But in family pictures, you can trace the exact nose back to my dad, his mom, and her mom, passed on from generation to generation. When I see that, I'm proud, and I'm glad of this game for reminding me.

This game has an amazing concept with a few snags here or there.

It was written for the Neo Twiny Jam in 500 words or less.

You are a witch facing execution for the death of a boy. Your throat has been cut, but you are able to piece together words from those spoken by others in a form of mimicry.

These words are shown as golden, shinging letters floating in a void. Selecting them is simple, and it looks very nice.

The difficulty is the interaction; you can form sentences from words (and later words from letters) but there are so many possible orders and combinations (I think 1000 or so combos are available on one page) that it can be hard to figure out what works and what doesn't.

Definitely one of the most visually nice games I've seen in a while, would love to make my games look this nice (especially for a title screen or something).

This game was written for the Neo Twiny Jam in 500 words or less.

However, it contains a great deal of graphics and sound, making it a longer experience than its word count might as first suggest.

It's exactly what it states; you play as a character who keeps visiting a website called evisceratethisgirl.com where you make an avatar of yourself and then stab it.

The idea is to communicate self-hatred, loathing and despair. The graphics continually get more glitchy and dark.

For me, the narrative emotion arc was a bit off. It starts off grotesquely and with distorted visuals right off the bat. There's not much chance to identify with the protagonist because they're immediately displayed as an unusually messed up person. So when things progress, it doesn't feel like it's happening to me. Similarly, the graphics start out shocking and weird, so there's not much room for it to grow. But this is subjective and another person might have the opposite reaction.

This game is a Binksi game, which uses minimal pixel art and animations to create an environment for narrative storytelling.

The story told here is about a shut-in whose depression is keeping them from finding enjoyment in any of their previous activities.

But then checking the mail reveals numerous messages from an anonymous penpal. The sustained communication from a stranger provides some solace.

I've seen this effect before in real life; I've definitely benefited from regular contact with people I don't even know that well. So I liked that part. Some of the story really stretched suspension of disbelief though; I wonder if simulating a longer time period might have worked better, even without additional words (like having it get dark and light again each time you get a letter).

This game, written for the Neo Twiny Jam in 500 words or less, is a bunch of short rhyming stories interconnected by having names of heroes that rhyme with 'Spartacus'. Like 'Farticus' or 'Articus'.

It's a branching story, where you pick one of the heroes then select an option or two in their path, usually getting a poem out of it.

Each page of the poem/story/game has some ai-generated art in it to serve as a backdrop.

The rhyming is entertaining, but there are so many different directions here it doesn't really feel cohesive, either in design, storyline, or emotion.