Reviews by MathBrush

Rybread Celsius has been called the worst author in IF (as stated in this game). His games, such as Symetry, are poorly coded and misspelled and often laughably bad.

This game is more polished in programming, but with the same style of writing and gameplay. You go through a series of disconnected scenes, which include numerous pieces of a hilarious interview with Celsius.

The game contains some profanity, some lewdness. If you like absurd games or learning more about the IF community, you may enjoy this game. It references all of his previous games, Graham Nelson and his games, Unnkulia, Spider and Web, and many more.

Edit: Since I wrote this article, Johanna De Niro has written a very interesting article on Rybread Celsius that has made me appreciate their work much more. It is available at Sub-Q magazine.

I've rarely been as confused playing a game as I was starting this one. You wander through a house, gathering traditional adventure items (a light source, a key, etc.), but also hidden letters of the alphabet. When you find eachone, you read a letter from around WWII that has no real plot or connection to other letters. I felt frustrated.

Eventually, I began to understood. Each letter is hidden in a weird way. For instance, you might find a railroad crossing sign and take the X in it, or find a line of people and take the queue (Q). There is no real rhyme or reason to the puzzles.

There is also a cryptic crossword, which I love, although it was a little weaker than some cryptic crosswords I've seen.

Overall, a well done but flawed game.

This game claims to contain "dissociation, dysphoria and disassembled discourse", which is pretty accurate. You play as a character going to a bureau of some sorts to get a new name. You first get to pick how to travel there; once you get there, there are a few different methods of getting in; and once in, you are ambushed by a series of groups of three that you have to deal with, before confronting the narrator (in some endings).

This game is about gender identity (one speaker says they remember you as an active boy, and now you are a beautiful woman). So there are a lot of metaphors about social acceptance, feelings of loss or renewal, predatory friends or judgmental family members.

The level of detail in the purposely scattered writing and the variety of choices giving a feeling of agency really make this game effective at communicating the author's feelings.

This game is set many, many years after the other Unnkulia games, when everything has become a legend and space travel is more common.

The ACME company has survived as AKMI, and there is a whole world called Kuhl where Dudhists live, but fortunately most of the dumb humor seems to have died off.

Instead, we have a sci fi world more similar to the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy game of Leather Goddesses of Phobos. You teleport from location to location based off of RGB values for different colors.

The game has you trying to stop a virus that has been unleashed throughout the internet (or AKnet for AKMEnet).

While this game was much more mature, I also didn't find it especially exciting. This game came right after Curses, before Theatre and Christminster, and the same time as Jigsaw. The time of Adventions was coming to an end before the onslaught of theses z-machine games (TADS would experience a resurgence just a few years later). The game even references this; when you try to play the first two Unnkulia games on a computer, you are told that the z-machine does not support their formats.

This game was entered in the IF Art Show, a competition over the years that asked participants to create portraits, still lives, or landscapes using Interactive Fiction.

This is a still life of an electric guitar. Rather than playing specific chords, you have an amp and a patch cord and knobs affecting treble, bass, tremolo, pick up, and so on.

Not knowing much about guitars, I just fiddled around, but it was a lot of fun. My favorite moment was when the parser recognized "PLAY STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN".

Recommended for fans of other art show pieces like Galatea or the Fire Tower.

This is a bit longer than most IFComp games; I didn't like it at first, but it really grew on me. In this game, you have to sneak onto a spaceship (a tedious opening sequence). Afterwards, you get to space and discover the (strongly telegraphed from the beginning) secret that the aliens are out to get the humans!

The game has some unusually graphic violence for a sci fi romp as you take down 6 aliens using a variety of devices and items scattered around the spaceship.

I had trouble transferring items from one location to another for a while, until I realized that you later gain the capability of returning to some locations (not the initial one, however).

The hints were incomplete, which made this game more difficult than me (as I always use hints). But I still finished it, and enjoyed it.

Entered into the tiny utopia jam, this game presents a series of graphical vignettes, which, when examined, provide details into a beautiful but mysterious woodsy life.

Like most tiny utopias, this is a small, comfortable game. The graphics and sound effects are lovely, but I found the interaction confusing at first.

I appreciated the nature interactions and the innovative interface.

This game redeemed my opinion of the Unnkulia series. Up to now, they had been juvenile and full of lame humor, especially Unnkulia 1/2 (written as an ad for this game). However, this game seemed to have grown up a little bit more.

The game references all previous games, with locations like Dawg Rock and Dragon's Lair for Unnkulia II and the grate, lake, and some underground areas of Unnkulia I. It also openly (by name) references Colossal Cave Adventure on several occasions, including a dwarf that throws knives at you in a cave and a toll bridge/troll bridge/stoll bridge.

This game is completely overshadowed by Curses! which came out the same year, and which had a coherent, interesting plot and incredible production values.

For fans of the Unnkulia series, this is the best so far (I haven't tried The Legend Lives! yet, which I hear is good).

In this game, you play a prisoner stuck in a jail cell with a minimum of furnishings and things to do. You periodically sleep, and dream, providing more things to do and try. In this sense, it is like a stripped down version of Howling Dogs.

The game is very short, and gives you a sense of claustrophobia. However, everything is resolved too quickly and in too tidy a manner.

I believe this game was entered in a speed comp, and as such, I recommend it for fans of speed comps.

The Unnkulia games were a series of popular games that filled the gap between the end of Infocom and the beginning of the IFComp/XYZZY Award era.

After Unnkulia 1 and 2, the developers made a prequel called Unnkulia Zero, and released this game as a sort of advertisement for the new game. It hints at events in Unnkulia 0 and sets up the events of the original game. It is short and easy.

Like all the games, this is juvenile. You carry a condom made of swiss Cheez, you let a little girl (Spoiler - click to show)drown due to foolish beliefs,

It's not very large, and fairly easy. You find four keys, then you find some treasure and put it back.

If you want to try out an Unnkulia game, this is the easiest and shortest of the bunch.