Reviews by MathBrush

Fort Aegea is a well made game about a priestess dealing with a dragon. After a brief prologue, you confront a dragon who challenges you to evade them for a day, or else they will kill all virgins in the area.

The map has 4 subareas that you can run off too. Each contains its own miniature quest. Some are much easier than others.

This game has unusual amounts of violence, in the sense that many people die in scenarios that would not kill them in most IF games.

Recommended for fantasy fans.

In this game, you get grounded in space and have to go asteroid mining as punishment.

As you mine, you are confronted with pirates who shut down your ship.

The bulk of the game is a complicated puzzle with reflecting mirrors and xy coordinates and angles. I just followed the walkthrough, and have no idea what clues you would have or how difficult it would be without a walkthrough.

A New Day has an interesting concept. An IF creator died before they finished their game, and one of the NPCs still wants the game to get attention, so the NPC enters it in the IFComp.

The game is mostly unfinished, but as you play, you reach some finished parts. For instance, you go to Greece and uncover a terrorist plot which you have to stop.

The game reaches some parts with messed-up text and weird descriptions you have to get through, before reaching an ultimate scene that is a commentary on text adventures in general.

The ideas are fun, but some of the execution has difficulty. For instance, this time I couldn't use the commands (Spoiler - click to show)PULL ROD or PUSH ROD, although I've completed the game before and thus must have had access to another solution. Also, the puzzle solutions are unlikely to be solved on one's own.

Recommended for fans of IF about IF.

This is a text adventure version of The Tempest. This is the entire play, just slightly reworded and split up into various pieces. As you move about the game, you unlock different conversations which get pagedumped onto the screen a line at a time.

I love the Tempest, but I didn't really enjoy reading it this way, if anything because Parchment kept scrolling to the top of the screen whenever a new line of text occurred.

You can't really do anything besides try to trigger the next section of the game. However, all of Inform's basic messages are changed around, and the parser itself is changed all around.

You play Prospero, commanding Ariel.

In this game with only 4 or so locations, you have a variety of fishing equipment and have to try to catch a giant old fish called the Old One.

You have a variety of options for bait and weights and so on. The actual puzzle, though, is solved by lateral thinking.

It's interesting seeing this and other games from the very first IFComp. It seems like there was more originality and experimentation in the first competition than in the others, where originality was often localized in a few entries.

Somewhat unfair. Recommended for fishing fans.

The Island is a relatively short surreal game with some straightforward puzzles (guess a riddle, search every item, push everything, follow instructions, etc.). It includes some old-school puzzles that are tricky to program (like a raising/lowering bucket puzzle similar to the one in Zork I).

I actually like surreal creepy games like this. The plot structure was strongy reminiscent of Recorded, from a later IFComp.

The ending implies that (Spoiler - click to show)everything is a loop, with you becoming the new screaming man and the screaming man becoming the new guy in the coffin.

This is one of my favorites. You play as one of four characters who stole a gem from a dragon, and then lost it. You want to get it back. You can also be the dragon.

There is the adventurer, who plays as a Zork-type PC, gathering items and chatting with guards; the thief, who remains hidden and has special tools; the wizard, who can use spells; and the royal, who can command everyone and has an entourage. The dragon does, you know, dragon things.

The game is hard, but you can switch between characters at any time, and one character can see things that will help another.

Location and object descriptions are different with each character, giving the game a really varied feel.

By far, this game is the closest to a straight-up D&D type setting, which I love.

This is a highly unusual game. It is written about Jack Pudlo, an infamous troll on the r*if forums. I think the game hints that he is the author.

The game seems like a big trolling on one hand, while on the other hand, it is highly polished.

For the polish: the writing is smooth and clear, with really vivid images. The game borrows heavily and openly from Shakespeare. It delves deep into Jewish culture. There were no bugs that I noticed. The ending was very clever until the last bit. Overall, a game with a lot of polish.

On the other hand, it trolls you. It uses sensuality and profanity from time to time in crass ways (not to arouse or for art, just to be gross). The character has an odd relationship with God that is hard to describe. And the ending openly insults the player. The ABOUT text is bizarre.

Overall, a weird game. It's like a very nice cake flavored like mustard. I'd love to learn more about its background.

Augmented Fourth is one of those games that everyone hopes for, a longish, well-implemented parser game with great writing and fun puzzles.

You play a court musician cast into a pit. After a couple of linear puzzles, you're brought into a large underground town where you have to complete a sequence of unlikely tasks.

You learn to play a variety of magical musical song spells. These affect the environment around you.

The game is fun, amusing, but also hard. Many logical ideas don't work, and some illogical ideas are needed to complete the game. However, this is normal for oldschool games, and Augmented Fourth is something of a homage to oldschool games.

I recommend it for fans of Infocom games, which is quite a few people. It really brings that same feel.

This game was one of my favorite Ectocomp 2015 entries, and later was polished into a Sub Q magazine game.

In this game, you play a young woman in a post apocalyptic world where humans are hunted down by (Spoiler - click to show)things that mimic human appearance/voice and consume flesh and memories. You

This is effective, similar to the early mind manipulation episodes of Dr Who before it became ridiculous.

The Sub Q release has beautiful illustrations that contribute significantly to the feel of the game.

My favorite Sub Q game to this date. Strongly recommended.