Reviews by MathBrush

This is a story-driven game set in 3 parts, with a prelude, interludes, and a postlude.

The game is about two brothers who witness a new civilization come in contact with their own, the Incenders, a race of humanoid fiery beings. Over time, the brothers deal with a variety of forms of conflict.

The puzzles are a bit odd; the first big puzzle is serving drinks to a large group of people, and this can be tedious. It gets more exciting with dangerous exploration puzzles in parts 2 and 3.

A lot of world building has gone on here, similar to that on Worlds Apart, but on a smaller scale.

Recommended for fans of "hard sci-fi".

This game is generally well implemented and has smooth gameplay. You have a machine that lets you switch bodies, and you can switch with quite a few creatures in the game.

But the game is a bit weaker in the story department. You are trying to solve a mystery in a lab, and some people oppose you while some aid you. But as other reviewers noted, you can directly do crazy things around them without them noticing or caring, including setting things on fire, doing crazy and dangerous acrobatics, or even stealing important things as they watch you. Some of this is explained away later, but it is hard to stay motivated.

Otherwise, this is a nice science fiction game of moderate length.

In this short-to-mid length farm game, you are a young girl trying to help grandma and grandpa make up after a fight.

You explore a farm, learn about your family's history, and try to help the two of them out. The main puzzles of the game involve a battery used in three locations.

The writing was charming, the puzzles were mild, and the setting was fairly unusual for interactive fiction.

Good for fans of mildly puzzly slice of life.

In this game, you play a girl playing hide and seek at a party. The party is at Emma's house, and Emma's mom is the employer of your mom and some other people's mom. Emma is well-dressed and you other three are not. There is a poorer red haired girl you don't know, and Emma's croney Yvonne.

The game ends very quickly, but you can find a lot of endings. I found at least 5 or 6. The most satisfying ending to me ignores Emma and finds you a new friend.

The programming and NPCs are quite well done. It's a fun little take on girl's social structures.

This game was released in 1993. a year that saw several significant advances in interactive fiction. Perdition's Flames is one of the largest TADS games available, going up to 666 points in increments ranging from less than 10 points to 50.

You arrive in hell on a boat to discover that it's been improving it's image and applying for environmental disaster contracts to clean up hell so they can compete with heaven. But you don't like heaven or hell; you want adventure!

But adventure requires a series of magical protective amulets, the search for which occupies the bulk of the game.

This game is devilish, with some puzzles that are quite difficult. They are very inventive and fun, however. Perhaps the best sequence of the game is a detour to a haunted house (haunted by you!) where you have to get a silver ring that you can only barely nudge with your ghost fingers, all while being chased by a priest and the media.

This is just about as good as it gets for big, old-school puzzle tests, so if you're a fan of Zork, the Enchanter games, or Curses!, you should definitely check this out.

While not the first, this game was near the beginning of the wave of one room games. It was entered into IFCOMP the same year as Enlightenment, another popular one room game.

This game is just pure puzzle fest. Solve a puzzle and another pops out. There is a lights out type puzzle with pegs, a mathematical dart board, hidden objects, codes, etc. It's similar to the more recent Grandma Bethlindas puzzlebox.

Recommended for pure puzzle fans.

This game was inspired by early Infocom games. Your uncle puts you in a robot's body and sends you home with a secretly subversive employee.

It's fairly short, with about a half dozen puzzles, usually where you are presented with an obstacle and have to find an object to defeat it.

Somehow, it reminded me of the newer game Nine Lives by Merlin Fisher. Both are fun little old school games set in a house with similar aesthetics.

This game, one of the later entrants to the tiny utopia jam, has several unusual features. Fist, it uses neutral pronouns (ze, zir,..). I found that this helped with establishing the tone of the game and the allowing the player to identify with the protagonist.

The second unusual feature is in its branching structure. The game has an unusual structure in its branching that had me playing again and again. This is a strongly branching games but is short enough that replay is easy, similar to Porpentine's Myriad.

Unlike most strongly branching games this game's branches build on each other and create a unified story. Also, the author left little surprises and added variety in the branches.

Helado has written one of the more homey and comforting Tiny Utopia games. It is short, only a few choices long, but manages to evoke a feel of comfort and home.

There are 8 endings which I wasn't aware of at first. The smallness of this game works for it; it feels like the author has challenged themselves to make their 'utopia' as 'tiny' as possible. I feel like context matters for many games, and this game is well-suited to the requirements of the jam.

Overall, I didn't identify strongly with the characters, and I wished for my choices to draw me more into the game world but this is completely subjective, and may not reflect others' experiences. Recommended for those looking for a quick, feel-good game.

In this game, you are stuck in the rain when your car breaks down and come into a strange household where everyone is carrying a secret.

You explore the house while trying to patch together the truth on your own. Some puzzles are much easier if you remember what everyone is doing.

The gimmick of this game is that you can select past or present tense x and first, second, or third person. It didn't make much of a difference to me.

Overall, a nice game. Recommended.