Ratings and Reviews by MathBrush

In this game, you visit a small village and learn a terrible secret.

This game begins with a very unrealistic but mercifully short sex scene. As others have noted, the game accepts only one command in each scene to advance the plot.

The writing is vivid and descriptive, but the plot zigzags. The main path is implemented well. Overall, an interesting storyline with some potholes and weaker implementation.

I've always enjoyed Lovecraftian interactive fiction games. This one hits up a lot of the good elements: a cult, unspeakable horrors, creative monsters.

You explore a mansion, trying to rescue the father of a little girl from an untrustable friend.

Unfortunately, the game is marred by both bugs (like room text appearing in incorrect rooms) and questionable puzzle design (like having 20 hiding places to search to find 2 or 3 items).

Also, there is a lot of goofy humor interspersed throughout the game, which sometimes works and sometimes doesn't.

This game placed in the middle of ifcomp the year it came out.

You play an office workers who is excited for a date after work, but has been asked to stay late to finish some stuff up.

You go around a small, 5-room office, negotiating, searching, etc.

Some of the puzzles are clever, but others are pretty opaque. I felt like I had to really lean on the walkthrough.

The setting was portrayed fairly accurately. There was one unfortunate part with a pin-up calendar, but the game is completely tame otherwise.

This game started off with some guess-the-verb puzzles and some rough edges in room descriptions, but once the game started picking up, the storyline became very enjoyable.

You play a pizza delivery boy who has to run a pizza to a courthouse. As the game progresses, you experience ruins with the mafia, natural disasters, and essentially the collapse of society in your town. The last scene in the game is truly awesome.

Hard without the walkthrough due to a lack of synonyms

This game received very low ratings in the 2014 ifcomp. I feel like most of those votes are in error.

First, the game starts with a series of multiple choice answers filled with semi-gibberish. Many people likely saw the first few questions and quit.

Second, after the intake form, you go through 4 rooms, and the second room purposefully contains Twine code, revealing what would have been various choices and reveals. Many assumed this was a mistake.

B-minus has a style that is part impressionistic and part Dada. The gibberish evokes a variety of feelings in a primeval way, and the 'hacked' parts of the game completely change the way you interact with the world.

Overall, a technically brilliant game. However, it was not a joy to play or replay, but more of a crazy experience where once was enough for me.

This Twine game was written by 3 community college students working together. It is about valkyries, spirits that aid the residents of Valhalla. Early on, the game splits into three very different branches, the first two being relatively short, the last having a few huge pages of text.

The stories generally are about a non-Valkyrie helping retrieve a necklace that Freya made and Loki stole. Two of the stories mention the ability to see when people die.

Overall, there are many typos and formatting issues, and the story swerves wildly. However, there are many options in the game, so you feel in control.

This game has a well-simulated house. The writing has many typos and grammar errors. You have to go pee, eat food, play with your hamster, and follow various other urgent needs.

This gets tedious eventually. The puzzles are unnecessarily fiddly in many places.

This game came in the bottom half of the ifcomp the year it came out.

Thus is a fairly short game about a friend who died and their funeral. As you begin to remember more about them, the plot thickens.

The writing is descriptive and pleasant. Unfortunately, there is a bug with the album which prevents you from winning. Otherwise, an intriguing slice of life.

Edit: Okay, I found another review online that says "Read Album" is the correct move. The game ends in a shockingly stupid troll message, and gives you a new verb to get two other dumb endings.

I agree with one reviewer's hypothesis that the author couldn't finish it in time and made a troll game.

This game was one of the last place entries in IFComp the year it came out. It's a traditional treasure romp where you gather 4 gems and then put them in a museum.

It's buggy quite a bit; examining a sign can switch the room you're in, there's no way to get a "You've won" message, and some items have names like pedestal3.

Someone went through several years later and decompiled the game and wrote a walkthrough and made a map. The map and walkthrough are fascinating, and provide an interesting insight into game design.

Recommended (with its walkthrough) for those who are interested in writing games.

I don't usually like super goofy games, but this one combines silliness with some earnestness and good descriptions. You play a conspiracy theorist with a talking British cat. Your house is small, with important objects clearly marked in descriptions, and only a few secrets.

This game has a timer of about 75 turns, displayed every turn. In this case, the timer served as a reassurance to me that the game would be small and solvable in a few turns. Unlike most timers, this one improved the game experience.

There were some typos, but I found this to be a better experience overall than I expected. Most people would probably find this game to be a 2-3 star experience.