Reviews by MathBrush

Like many Porpentine games, this game is one big metaphor for the experiences of a trans individual, in this case also (Spoiler - click to show) abused by their parents.

You play a corporate executive, trying to make a million dollars. Porpentine enjoys the liberal use of irony, such as expounding on the beauty and wonderful taste of trash.

The game is quite complex, with some difficult action scenes and with one part that took me a week to figure out.

The game has a strong emotional effect. It also has a lot of sexual references and some strong language.

I put off this review for months because I hoped to find the solution to the game. But, I cant, so here goes. You play a Scottish man who is trying to stop the wedding of his love.

It has two interesting mechanics. First, you change Tartans to change how others perceive you. Second, you modify actions with adverbs.

In practice, this is very difficult. The number of possible adverbs is staggering, and there is no IF tradition to rely on. Even though the game is short, it's hard to find the solution.

Overall, an intriguing experiment.

This game is about a man with a 'twin', a doppelganger named Patrick. The game is short and straightforward, so I won't say too much about the plot.

The game has graphics drawn from day to day scenes such as conferences and streets, but faces and eyes aren't really seen.

To me, the game was much more effective on later replays, when I had time to think about it. I especially was struck on my most recent playthrough with the 'digression'.

Recommended.

Michael Lutz is one of the best Twine authors, with My Father's Long Long Legs and The Uncle that works for Nintendo. This game shares the excellent visual effects and tight writing of the original.

You play a character in an FPS, with a joystick simulate by "press A", and so on. You can play through a scenario multiple times, then enter a bizarre multiplayer game. Eventually, you enter a completely new scenario involving the bloodlord, whom you confront.

All of this gets supremely tedious; the repetition at the beginning, the final battle with pages and pages of texts, the slowly animated denouement. I lost interest multiple times, but played through out of curiosity. It makes some good points about gaming culture, though.

Contains strong profanity.

This game plays out over the course of several days in-game, perhaps a week. It is quite large, on the order of size of Twine games like Birdland, but feels a bit smaller than Spy Intrigue. I have played it once, but it seems to have high replay value.

The visuals on this game are gorgeous, especially when sleeping. The font, letter spacing, and color choices give a DOS type feel. The game is sprinkled with occasional images and animation.

You play a living firewall, an elemental charged with protecting a magic/tech network with 4 locations.

You are presented with a sequence of mysteries, one a day, which you use clues to solve. You can then deal with the mystery in many ways, raising and lowering various stats a la choice of games.

The game includes several times sequences, some violence and some sexual activity.

My only quibble is about one image, and it's a tiny issue: (Spoiler - click to show)I didn't like the illustration of the main antagonist, I thought it was cheesy.<\spoiler>

In this game, you wake in a grave near a church, and you have to explore it to discover what is going on.

The setting is Lovecraftian, and there are only a few interesting locations. The writing is not bad, and there seem to be no bugs, but some of the puzzles require extremely obscure commands (I'm looking at you, trapdoor).

Overall, not bad, but not incredible.

This twine game has an oddly kinetic interaction; you carry a gun, which you can use to shoot things (with sound) or to flip it from holster to holster with a button that changes sides.

The game is fairly short; you are a city girl trying to be an impressive cowgirl, but you find another woman whom you have romantic relationship with.

The games text is about a Lesbian relationship, but the pistol could signify a transwoman.

This is a game I played last year. You have 3 doors, 4 rooms, two keys, a container, and a button. Nothing is hidden, there are some typos, and the authors manually insert the winning text into the game without actually ending the game.

As a historical curiosity, this, along with Detective, is one of the best known games with minimal coding due to its entry in IFComp, among other reasons.

In this game, there are 69,105 keys, only one of which will open the door. The key you need is the only unique key.

There are many categories of keys, and you can count each category. The number 69105 is I believe a riff off of Zork I.

As a mathematician, I hoped that the puzzle would involve some kind of bizarre combinatorial computation; instead, it's mostly just trying every category until you find a pattern.

This game is a fairly popular horror game. With sounds on, late at night, it is pretty creepy.

You play a young woman home alone. Various ambient noises come through as you walk around. The radio says a miller is loose, but soon things get worse.

I didn't really understand the ending, even after multiple playthroughs. This game didn't quite click with my sense of hirro, but the first time I did not use sound and just played during the day.

Recommended.