Ratings and Reviews by MathBrush

I’m not finished with this game, but have played more than 2 hours. I’d be happy to finish it later, though!

I’ve seen this game before in the German Grand Prix. I had a goal to beat every game, but when I saw this very large puzzle fest with many complex German words I was overcome by the difficulty and gave up on the Grand Prix.

So it was nice to see an English translation! It also seems to have been updated with new puzzles and more points (2000 vs 810).

You play as a magician seeking a mystical jewel of life hidden in a master magician’s lair. Once you find it, though, you realize that getting out is a whole different problem.

The game has a humorous tone and a wide variety of puzzles. It leans a bit to the risque side, as the master has pornography and is known for seeking after young women.

Gameplay can vary between traditional parser and choice-based, depending on your settings. In choice-based mode, nouns have a drop-down menu with actions, some of which involve other nouns. There are many possibilities, which is good and bad; good because you have to think and can’t just lawnmower through all choices, but bad because it can be hard to find the right option.

I found the puzzles very interesting, especially those involving the stuffed animals. My biggest difficulties were with objects where you need to USE one object WITH another, but if you get the order wrong it doesn’t work (so, for instance, using a key with a door might work but not a door with a key).

There are some minor errors here and there that can be confusing. I had a problem with a snake that I messaged the author about but which I think might be soon fixed, so I’ll update once I get past that part. There is a very helpful hint system with three levels of hints, although occasionally some things don’t have hints or the hints aren’t a complete solution.

I think the only drawback some people may not like is the sheer number of options, with many rooms having many objects which have many interactions. Playing it as a parser game can help, but some objects don't respond to their in-game names (like 'left shelf' must be referred to as 'leftmost shelf', I think). I think the people who will like this most are people who like Steve Meretzky’s games (I feel like the tone and puzzles are similar) and are patient with working through puzzles involving a lot of careful examination.

This is a windows executable game in a custom system. It runs in the command line but also has pop-up windows with html-style formatting for things like hints and pictures.

It describes itself as an old-school 80’s type game with minimal story and mostly puzzles, several of them timed.

The idea is that you are on a mission to help rescue a kidnapped girl but your plane crashes near a pyramid and you find out the kidnapper, a shaman, died and the girl has disappeared.

The game is ultra-minimalistic in text. For instance, the description of the first room is:

You are in the desert.
So from here I can go north south or east.

I see the plane.

Wandering around, there are several interesting things, like a foggy area called 'Perdition" and a strange altar.

I had some trouble with the parser. Early on, I was trying to answer the phone, and I had the following exchange:

I see the plane
Incoming video call…
What now Me?
> answer call
Ok.
Incoming video call…
What now Me?
> i
You Own:
a mobile phone
Incoming video call…
What now Me?
> x phone
Let’s see…
Incoming call 0331785692
What now Me?
> push answer
But… the cell phone isn’t ringing
What now Me?

My character’s name was Me because the way the game asked for my name was:

Are you the chosen one?
Who knocks at this door?

and I answered ‘Me’.

Sometimes when I got an error in the game, no matter what my next move was, the error would repeat. For instance:

> x mantle
MANTLE ? It’s not relevant now.
What now Brian?
> go in house
MANTLE ? It’s not relevant now.
What now Brian?
>

There is a help system, that first gives your a kind of riddle hint and then an explicit action. In many places, the only hint is a picture of a mummified hand and the phrase “Do you want a hand? Not now…;-)”. In others it’s more explicit. The hints often refer to things that aren’t in the room description, like walls.

I was able to get into a house with drawings in it, and the hints include a picture with a reversed message, but at that point I got stuck. I’d be happy to try again with a full walkthrough, or if anyone else can get past that point.

The best parts of this game were the cool audio messages and the very nice drawings; very nice additions for a custom command line parser!

While I am giving a 1-star vote at this time, I don't think the game is horrible. It's just that my criteria are:
polish (where the game could use some more commands it understands),
interactivity (where I was lost on what to do a lot),
descriptiveness (the game uses a minimalist style),
emotional impact (which I do think is good and is worth a star with the cool pictures), and
would I play again? (and right now I do not feel that way).

I'd be happy to bump it up one star if the author requests it, but right now those are my feelings.

A while ago I wrote on intfiction talking about a trend of games that followed a similar pattern:

"The text is usually a variant of ‘Oh yes, I am the bonecrusher, and I love crushing bones! The sound my victims make when they squeal is delightful’

and then choices are like:
-BREAK MORE BONES
-DELIGHT IN BONEBREAKING
-LICK THE MARROW"

People were questioning whether such games even exist, but this is another one in that category, almost exactly what's described above (down to being excited about removing body parts) even if (Spoiler - click to show)we find out some of it was an act later on.

The majority of the game is a person who livestreams vivisecting and torturing a criminal while describing how much they enjoy inflicting pain and hurting them. It has some illustrations, but they are very 'clean' and more like an anatomy book and not very realistic (thank heavens!)

This genre continues to be popular among those making games, so I assume it has an audience somewhere who loves it, and I hope they find this game. For me, I don't think I'll ever see the appeal.

The ending twist doesn't make much sense because (Spoiler - click to show)removing someone's liver is already a death sentence measured in hours, there's no reason someone capable of removing a liver and a stomach during a vivisection wouldn't know that. So why react so differently to murder when you've already murdered?

This story is the first in a series about a world where soldiers craft living weapons that take the appearance of humans.

In this story, a man and his male-looking weapon are travelling in a deep snowy region. They love each other, and are searching for something that even they don't know everything about.

The writing and worldbuilding were solid. This is part of the single choice jam, so it wasn't amazingly interactive, but my only choice felt real and led to some pretty different results.

I would definitely play more games in the series.

This is part of the Single Choice Jam, and is inspired by a short Japanese film called Boze.

In it, you are a weakened and forgetful god who is disturbed by the approach of a visitor. Fearful, the visitor has to select between ritual items, each of which reveals more about him and about you.

It's a short game, but handles the 'forgetful god' concept well, and made me interested in looking up its inspirations.

This is a short game that depicts a scenario that is all too human but phrased in fantastical terms: deciding whether to remain home with uncomfortable comforts or to strike out into the unknown and frightening outer world.

More specifically, you a young woman who has run into the woods in the hopes of finding a witch and leaving home behind. But that may be harder than you thought.

The writing is, to my taste, overwrought. This is subjective and not objective, but I think that the elaborate analogies and similes can get confusing. For instance your heartbeat is described as:

Your heart thuds in your chest, the reverberation of an ancient drum that has beat and beat and beat since the beginning of time. It echoes with the cries of a hundred anguished souls, tied by the same thread that follows you from home, stretching across acres of flat, empty land before it becomes a tangled mess in the trees that shield you from view.

I wasn't aware until after I had played and until I was writing this that (Spoiler - click to show)the thread mentioned here is 'real'-ish and story-important, while the ancient drum is not.

Similarly, we meet someone described thus:
(Spoiler - click to show)She smiles and the rows of her sharp teeth—thousands upon thousands of them, lining her palette and receding into her throat—shine and gleam in the total darkness.

Thousands is a lot! I looked up (Spoiler - click to show)how many teeth sharks have, since that's an animal with a lot of teeth, and they only have around 100 or 200, but the whale shark has thousands, and to fit them all in they're really, really tiny.

So I think that for my personal feelings the writing could be toned down a bit, but I did enjoy the setup and the choice, it was one of the better choices I've seen in this jam (the Single Choice Jam).

This is a brief story entered into the Single Choice jam.

It is the climax of a story with no buildup: a queen is in full rage and despair, throwing things and overall suffering because her husband, the king, has caused the death of her brother. She then has a choice on how to react.

As part of a longer work, this would work really well, but for me, in its snippet form, it had less of an effect. It's like seeing a car crash on the side of the road with ambulances; it can be sobering and make you think, but you won't remember it much a day or two later. But for the family of the person involved, it can be traumatic and life changing.

So here, I felt like an event of massive importance was happening, but it wasn't one I had established a connection to yet. The author did use a variety of emotions and offered several paths, and the writing is overall solid.

This visual novel is part of the Single Choice Jam. In it, you play as a researcher on an underwater base where everyone has been slaughtered after a humanoid creature was dragged up out of the abyss.

The highlight here is seeing the beautiful artwork, of which there is quite a lot for the brevity of the game. It has a style that is distinct and fits well with underwater horror.

The storyline is gripping and intense. I did find a couple of typos, and some analogies didn't land for me (specifically a part about 'not an oz' when referring to information). Overall, though, I was glad I played and found it interesting.

This is a brief visual novel entered into the Single Choice Jam.

It has some moody background music and background images that set the tone appropriately for a conversation that has undercurrents of tension. You play as someone eating a meal with a person they haven't seen in a long time. There's a flood going on in town, too, which becomes a metaphor for the emotional story.

In the end, you come down to a single choice. Both options had realistic-feeling effects. The writing on the whole thing is solid, and it generally feels polished.

This game paints you as a character who wants to ask out someone in a market who you've seen before, but you have to settle on the right approach.

Unfortunately, our protagonist does not know that they are in a game entered into the Anti-Romance Jam. How unfortunate!

This is also part of the Single Choice Jam, so we only get one shot. But quite a few of them end pretty bad.


One that made me chuckle was (Spoiler - click to show)"Look, I'm just going to lay it out: I've noticed you here before, and I would really like to kiss you. So... what do you say?" and the reaction that followed.

Overall, the game definitely hit home, and having little choices right at the front made the interactivity work well.