Reviews by MathBrush

This game is part of a peculiar brand of IFComp games that are very large, moderately well-implemented, and deeply underclued. Someone said that such game suffer from Erden-itis, from "Travels in the land of Erden', an exemplar of this class of games. Other such games include Town Dragon, The Sueno, Varkana, and a host of others.

You have a big city here, a castle, and a very large endgame. Most of the puzzles involve things that would never occur for you to do on your own.

(Sort of like if you meet a random person in a game. Are you supposed to attack them? Say 'hi'? Ask them about themself? It turns out you are supposed to 'INSULT PERSON'. Why? It makes sense out of the world, but why would it make sense in the world?)

I downloaded this game and got it to run with the batch file. However, it was buggy; I couldn't figure out how to throw the soup on the fire, one of the earliest commands. The soup kept being an object ON the fire. And examining the hat at the very beginning was supposed to send out a dove, but that never happened.

It seems like a complicated game, but it is just intractable.

This is a standard epic fantasy quest exploring a temple, just like a DnD module.

You find a variety of keys and hidden passages, and different pieces of things that look like they go together, and magical clothing.

It's just not clued well, and its tedious. Keys are used multiple times, without much sense to it, so you end up trying every key on every door.

It's pretty long, and could be fun for fantasy fans.

This game has a long prologue as a young woman who dumped her boyfriend. After the prologue, you play the boyfriend.

The boyfriend's game is nonlinear and interesting, as you explore a mad scientist's house. It suffers too much from 'flail about until something interesting happens' syndrome, though. Its hard to know exactly what they want you to do.

But the writing is good and there are several interesting and well-written NPCs.

This is a mid-length game that has you trying to find, then deliver, a letter to Dr. Aardvarkbarf.

The game has a fairly large campus. Puzzles mostly focus on examining items, and physical things such as PUSH and PULL.

The game is clever, but the map is large and many things aren't clued to well. Nothing about it really stuck out.

I love Snyder's games. TotTS is an excellent linear mid-length game with not-too-hard puzzles that has a fantasy feel not found in many places, kind of like the story The Fool of The World or the beginning of Princess Mononoke.

You play a swordsman who travels the land searching for a village under oppression, righting wrongs along the way. You use several items in rather creative ways, and puzzles have multiple solutions.

I found the ending unusual, and extremely satisfying. It made a few points in the game much more understandable, and tied everything together very well. I wanted to go through and play again with my new understanding.

Strongly recommended.

This was the only IFComp game to never be rated at all. It's a german language game in an unusual file format.

It's quite large, and involves exploring ruins to find relics of ancient gods.

The engine could be better, and the game has some tedious puzzles (like opening 30 similar-colored baskets to find which basket an item randomly appears in).

This game reminds me in length and quality of a hosted Choice of Games commercial game. It has similar amounts of text per choice, and has 9 different relationships you can work on.

The main difference between this and choice of games is that there are frequently just 2 choices, while CoG tends to have 3 or more choices.

However, the author did a good job at making the game interesting by not making it clear which, if any, option is the 'right' option. I think this game provided a very clear picture of what a psych ward might be like. I chose to ally with a friend with borderline personality disorder.

This is one of my favorite Choice of Games games. You play as Eratosthenes (male or female), a real historical figure who estimated the radius of the earth and advised Ptolemy IV.

In this game, you have to deal with snarky advisors and scholars, reign in ambitious kings, work on engineering, romance a variety of people, or study mathematics. I felt a good deal of flexibility.

The writing is good, as is to be expected of the author of Choice of Robots, one the best Choice of Games of all time.

I enjoyed this game, because I'm a mathematician, and the game allowed me to hang out with with a female Euclid and with Archiemedes.

This game will appeal to fans of the Civilization series of games, and fans of math, classics, history, or engineering. The human emotions investigated are universal.

This game was nominated for an XYZZY for best game, and for best NPCs.

This is one of the larger Choice of Games, with quite an epic storyline. You conceive of a movie using a large amount of customization (how many leads? what genre? what subgenre? What other subgenera? Highbrow or lowbrow? Who directs? Who writes? Who stars?). The number of possibilities here really unlocks the game's potential as a wish-fulfillment device.

But making your movie comes with its own challenges. Getting a studio running, winning financial support, dealing with deadlines and spotty talent. I spent a large amount of money to get Frank Capra to direct my ensemble western.

Overarching everything is the shadow of repressive anti-communism hunters. You have to choose how you interact with Hollywood black listers, and what to say in communism hearings.

All of this makes the games general goal (making a great movie) very difficult; I found it more rewarding to focus on personal goals.

Finally, this game includes some parts quite unlike the standard choice of games format; for instance, there is a large puzzly section that has a well-developed location and object model as you search for a dog. This part feels a lot more like a parser game or like a twine game with strong world model (like Hallowmoor).

Overall, I believe this game deserves the XYZZY nomination, and stands among the best games of 2015.