Reviews by MathBrush

I love this game. Travel through the city of Khare using a beautiful 3d map and posable figurine. This city is a den of thieves, traps, liars, sorcerors, the undead, and worse. A stew pot of evil where the weak are mercilessly worn down, you must find a way to leave the city, or to save it.

By far the longest CYOA I have played. Allows unlimited rewinds to undo any number of actions. Innovative combat and gambling systems. Spells that you cast with 3 letter combinations with available letters changing at different locations. God's to serve, people to kill or save.

High fantasy at its best. Very strongly recommended.

Baluthar is an interesting mix of a game. The opening makes it feel like an alt-game for depression, which is pretty well done. But then it takes a short detour through epic fantasy into a horror game similar to the Ravenwood setting of DnD. You search a well for your son, and encounter some frankly disturbing material down here. The gore level here is roughly equal to that of One Eye Open or the Walking Dead.

The puzzles are fairly simple at first, with generous nudges in the game. I used one line of one hint near the beginning, then another hint right at the end. The end is a bit harder, as the final puzzle abuses the IF setting a little bit.

The middle of the game is the strongest, while the finale is pretty weak.

Overall, a recommended game. The imagery in the middle is truly excellent.

In this horror game, you play a woman who recently underwent radical surgery to improve their body image. In order to pay for the surgery, you must assist the doctor in other radical surgeries.

This game has a high amount of gore, and deals indirectly with issues such as anorexia and cutting.

There are multiple endings and you are essentially free to act as you wish in the game. You are given instructions throughout the game, and following them gives you the easiest ending.

Overall, it was a bit too gruesome for my tastes, but the writing was good. There were a few implementation errors, such as messages persisting after you left a room or two rules printing contradictory text at the same time.

In this game, you pay a young worker who has to go through their daily life. You wake up, eat breakfast, go to work, work, and that's more than half the game.

The fun is what happens along the way; your character has a unique perspective on life, interspersing the conversation with famous quotations, generally trying to find consistency in their life.

Overarching the game's sense of routine and mundanity is a more sinister plot. Someone is making large changes in your life and in your routine.

This game won an XYZZY award for best individual PC without being nominated for any other awards, which is rare in the XYZZY's.

This game is a short 3-act play of sorts. You have to live through a single evening through the eyes of three people. I found this story to be compelling because it asked me to identify with people I usually would not have identified with.

In each subgame, the actions are relatively basic; I did not have to use hints or a walkthrough, which is unusual for me. Eventually, the game will hint at what you want to do.

Stephen Granade is one of my favorite authors, with the ultra-hard Losing Your Grip, the comedy Child's Play, and the mid-length escape game Fragile Shells.

This game is almost like westernized Haiku, with short, clipped, uncapitalized sentences, usually of two or three words.

It is minimalistic, with perhaps less than 50 words in the entire game, two rooms, etc.

It is essentially puzzleless, but I was stuck a bit at the very end. But with so many objects, it's easy to try.

The game attempts to be one of deep/shocking/horrifying at random, and somewhat succeeds.

This game was started out of leftover, difficult to code puzzles from another game and grew into something more. You play a flight-capable superhero who must stop an evil villains plot.

You can fly to a variety of altitudes, and many of the puzzles depend on this. The very first puzzle through me for a real loop, as there is a trick to flight that you are supposed to discover on your own, with some hints when you fail.

The storyline is a bit thin, with most of the exciting parts passed over. It really seems like more of a technical exercise that grew a story rather than a story with deep implementation. This is not necessarily a bad thing.

Overall, recommended for superhero fans.

This game came in last place in the very first IFComp, but it's not nearly as bad as later last-place finishers. However, it is rather sparse and unfair. Much of the game is dependent on waiting for 5-10 turns in a row without justification.

Overall, an interesting game for those interested in the history of amateur interactive fiction.

This game was entered in the very first IFComp, which was originally intended to provide examples of code for the then-new programming language Inform. It didn't actually work out that way, because few people released code and many TADS games were also entered, but that's how it started.

This game came in 5th of six in the Inform division. It is about a library that you know contains a copy of a biography of Graham Nelson. The library also contains the Infocom games, Christminster, Avalon, Curses!, Balances, and references to interactive fiction servers.

The gameplay is fairly light, just searching and trying basic NPC actions. Many of the points are bonus points for bizarre actions.

These games are an adaptation of a series of gamebooks, i.e. paper CYOA books. They must have been absolutely incredible, because this game is rich in detail and options. The game is played on a large 3d-map which you place a DND miniature-type figure on, moving it around to indicate your choice of route (between 2 or 3 options at a time).

You have stamina, gold, rations, spells, etc. The spells are cast by using up some stamina and selecting 3-letter words out of a cloud of letters. The available words differ quite a bit from situation to situation.

The combat system involves guessing a number at the same time as your opponent, trying to beat them without using up too much of your strength. It ends up being a sort of dance between attack and defend.

There are numerous side quests; the main quest can be finished extremely quickly, while one side quest took up an hour of gameplay by itself.

Highly, highly recommended.