Reviews by MathBrush

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Charlie The Robot, by Fernando Contreras
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
A massive Twine game with a tangled web of themes, November 16, 2017*
Related reviews: about 2 hours

There should be a name for the genre of 'biting commentary on society that is self-aware and occasionally dips to crudity, with hints of cheerful ideals always tinged by irony, using an overload of text as literary device.' Such games include Spy Intrigue and Dr. Sourpuss Is Not A Choice-Based Game. It seems increasingly common.

Charlie the Robot is gorgeous visually, and is innovative in its sheer variety of input methods and looks. There are 5 chapters accessible at any time, like Birdland.

The themes include surface themes of humans vs. robots, a lower layer of the mindlessness of modern office life, a lower layer of individualism, and so on.

But it was just too much filler for me to enjoy. The packing on and on and on of text is a literary device that doesn't work for me. I appreciate the themes in the game, and its cleverness, but the overall feel is just overwhelming.

* This review was last edited on November 17, 2017
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Guttersnipe: St. Hesper's Asylum for the Criminally Mischievous, by Bitter Karella
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
A dialect-heavy dark comedy Quest game with symmetric map, November 14, 2017*
Related reviews: about 2 hours

I really enjoyed this game. I had a few technical difficulties wrangling with Quest.

You play as a cockney-speaking orphan who has penned up in a penitentiary-orphanage. Your goal is to go from Public Enemy Number 2 to Number 1.

The map is large, but pleasingly symmetrical. You solve a puzzle in each room until the game is over.

Some of the puzzles were fairly nonsensical, and I had difficulty with them, but overall, I was impressed.

* This review was last edited on November 16, 2017
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NIGHTBOUND, by ProP
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
A big Twine RPG with different classes and randomized combat, November 7, 2017*
Related reviews: about 2 hours

I enjoyed this game from IFComp 2017. You choose from one of three character classes, and you can take a variety of characters with you, including a sonomancer (something like that) who integrates music with magic.

There is a power creep issue that several judges noticed, where pretty much anyone who makes it to the endgame can one-shot the boss, but besides that, the core concepts worked well for me. I feel like it needs more polish; combat has several blank lines requiring you to scroll, for instance.

I was glad I played this one, because I'm a fan of D&D and this reminded me of trying out someone's home-brew campaign. Your mileage may vary.

* This review was last edited on November 16, 2017
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The Owl Consults, by Thomas Mack, Nick Mathewson, and Cidney Hamilton
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
An over-the-top super villain game with multiple protagonists, November 7, 2017*
Related reviews: about 2 hours

I enjoyed this 2017 IFComp game. You play as a consultant for super villains who answers their questions for money. The parser becomes a phone line, of which you have 2, and your commands are commands to the villains themselves.

Each villain has unique powers. The writing for the radioactive man grated on me a bit, but overall I found it clever. This game had the most traditional gameplay of the top games of the competition, with no limited parser commands.

I recommend it, and hope that everyone reading this will take the time to try it.

* This review was last edited on November 16, 2017
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Run of the place, by WD\x1F479K
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
A bizarre text which prints out one character at a time, October 26, 2017*
Related reviews: about 2 hours

This game uses the obscure Floo text system. It has a 2-hour timer (that resets once it finishes). As you push any key, characters show up one at a time, revealing some text that seems procedurally generated, but not by the Floo engine; it seems like it was pre-generated and put into the floo interpreter, ready to be revealed one character at a time.

* This review was last edited on November 16, 2017
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The Silver Gauntlets, by Jean-Paul Peschard
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
A standard fantasy RPG gamebook, in PDF form, October 25, 2017*
Related reviews: about 2 hours

This game is written in PDF form, and you read along yourself, jumping to different pages.

I can't help but compare this game to Trapped in Time, another PDF gamebook entered into IFComp in a previous year. In that game, you had a tight series of events that were played over and over, and it allowed 'parser-like' actions where you would add 10 or 20 to an entry's number to do things like examining or using a card.

This game, however, relies more on randomized combat, and the largest parts of the game are two mazes.

It has some interesting storyline near the end, but I feel like it could have been tested out more by some experienced beta testers to help find out what works and what doesn't.

* This review was last edited on November 16, 2017
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TextCraft: Alpha Island, by Fabrizio Polo
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
A live-action parser survival crafting game, October 23, 2017*
Related reviews: about 2 hours

I beta tested this game.

This is an interesting concept: a Java game (just like minecraft!) which is a parser game with a real-time timer.

You find resources, and craft materials with them.

As it is, the game is difficult; however, a Wiki is provided that is especially helpful.

However, the difficulty was tuned just a bit too hard for me, and that made it hard for me to get sucked in.

* This review was last edited on November 16, 2017
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VR Gambler, by Robert DeFord
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
A treasure-finding RPG, October 20, 2017*
Related reviews: about 2 hours

This game is a fairly traditional RPG, where you find better and better weapons/armor and equip them, and gain gold. It's framed as a VR story in a casino to better explain why items disappear in a puff of smoke and why all treasures get converted to their cash values.

I found the game enjoyable, and fairly long, although I bug kept me from going from the novice half to the expert half. I would recommend it for fans of RPGs.

* This review was last edited on November 16, 2017
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What Once Was, by Luke A. Jones
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
An expansive time travel quest game, October 20, 2017*
Related reviews: about 2 hours

This game is by Luke Jones, who also wrote the interesting Bony King of Nowhere for Spring Thing in 2017.

This game is a treasure hunt puzzle fest type game, but it's kind of spare and with some hard-to-guess puzzles. The puzzles mostly revolve around finding the item or items that will induce NPCs to do things for you.

The game has a large cast of characters, many of which have multiple versions of themselves over 3 time periods. It has also has many rooms over the same time period. But much of it is under implemented. A porter is present in each time period, but has very little description or conversation in any, except for one short paragraph once. However, the author was explicitly inspired by Robin Johnson's minimalist games, so it is likely intentional.

The game has good bones, though, with a pleasant run through campus history and future. If the author switched to Inform 7, like Steph Cherrywell did, and budgeted more time for beta testing and polishing, they could build on the success they already have.

* This review was last edited on November 16, 2017
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The Wizard Sniffer, by Buster Hudson
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
A limited parser castle comedy involving mistaken identities, October 19, 2017*
Related reviews: about 2 hours

This is a very funny, long limited parser game about being a pig. A hero follows you, and believes you to be able to smell a polymorphing wizard. Anything you sniff, he smashes.

The first part of the game plays out in the tradition established by Arthur DiBianca, where a few key verbs are used in unusual ways to accomplish your goals. Later on, the game branches out, allowing you to switch between certain 'tools' to accomplish various goals.

This game is unusual among limited parser games in that it has quite a few large text dumps, often spanning more than a screen on a laptop computer with maximized window. The writing is good, the story is strong, but it can be a bit much, especially on a second playthrough.

This game also touches on several social issues (not least the annoying habit of young men singing Wonderwall).

* This review was last edited on November 16, 2017
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