Reviews by MathBrush

This mid-length parser game is the humorous story of a young woman on a date that gets worse and worse. You have to use quick thinking and a bit of slyness to get past overpriced food and clumsy waiters.

The writing is memorable and funny. The puzzles are a bit underclued, though, and many reviewers (including me) turned to the copious hints.

There are two or three puzzles in quick succession, followed by one big, mega puzzle involving a collection of obstructing waiters.

Overall, fun with hints.

This game is pretty much a short story in parser form; it would likely have been written as a web-based game if the technology was available at the time.

The story is about a boy and a girl conducting a post-mortem on their relationship (although not phrased that way, and not so grim). They revisit their past through flashbacks.

The game was short but fun, and well-written. There was one verb I couldn't guess to end the scene in Peter's house: (Spoiler - click to show)SERVE DINNER.

Recommended to fans of slice-of-life.

This is a shortish game with the almost unique trick of placing a lot of gameplay in darkness in a cave. The only similar game I can think of is Hunter in Darkness or parts of So Far.

You are searching for a magical crystal in an underground cavern. The rest of the story is mainly atmosphere, and it works well. This game was nominated for an XYZZY for best writing, and deserves it.

Overall, a short, simple game, with at least 3 endings depending on your final actions.

Recommended for its fun-to-length ratio.

This is a complex and interesting game. It contains a number of movie-like cut scenes and text effects. You play Max Blaster (with a gun and fancy force generator) or Doris de Lightning (an acrobatic hacker with special tools) as you stop the parrot creatures from attacking the earth.

You can switch between the characters whenever they are together, which is good if one path is harder than the other (twice, there was a seeming bug which rendered the game unfinishable, but I went back to my last save when they were together and switched to the other person). (Spoiler - click to show)One bug was that a key step in the sandwich machine did not work. The other bug is that I could not getup of the mud as Doris. In both cases, I was following the walkthrough when the problems happened.

The writing is fun, and the game was nominated for an XYZZY award for it. Overall, I can strongly recommend it.

This game started out relatively well, as your mother encourages you to return everything you've stolen and lose all the points you've won in an adventure.

Unfortunately, the game becomes fairly crude, with: (spoilers)(Spoiler - click to show)

1. A BDSM sex scene
2. An NPC that violently murders everyone he sees
3. two friendly NPCs that you have to murder yourself.


These things were pretty strongly offputting; I'm not sure who the target audience is here.

Not recommended.

This game is just a silly puzzle adventure with four separate areas, each with their own solution, which sometimes combine.

The puzzles are fun. As discussed on IFwiki, the first puzzle (which was too hard for me, but cool) is taken from a D&D module. There is also a classic math puzzle, and a riddle taken from The Hobbit.

There are also some other clever features. I enjoyed the bowling game, where you bowl 20 times (it can get tedious, but it's also fun). The descriptions were beautiful. Some of the capabilities of the game and its NPCs weren't made clear, but if you ask everyone about each other, it should help.

There are three endings, depending on how many optional quests you did.

Fun for puzzle fans.

Gourmet is a fairly well-known game that succeeds in slapstick comedy while having some pretty hard puzzles.

You are a chef having a disaster of a night as a well-known critic comes to your restaurant. You have to pass a linear sequence cell of challenges to have a good review.

The game felt uncomfortably complicated when I started, but then I realized that you should just follow directions at first and not stress about all the stuff. As you go, the game teaches you more about you restaurant and the system.

Then it dumps you into one very hard puzzle that includes a lot of talking and psychological work on both humans and a crustacean. This puzzle is very difficult.

I enjoyed the game. I could not finish, due to the game having a weird error with serving the final course, but I would put this game in the top 20% of all games.

Kathleen Fischer is one of my favorite writers, with the conversation game Redemption and the romance game Masquerade.

The game is a departure for her, consisting of one huge mechanical puzzle. However, it still includes her trademark writing and memory system.

You are alone on a world whose people you saw die 20 years earlier. You roam about, remembering the tragedy, and solving puzzles to get your tool to repair your ship.

The puzzles is fiendish, even on easy mode. Hard mode is well night impossible.

There is no walkthrough, but I found some hints on googles archives of the old rec.games.intfiction site.

I recommend it for fans of big puzzles or haunting atmosphere.

This is one of the weirdest games I have yet played. You are thrust into a room where every single object speaks. After talking to them, you are placed in a puzzle where you can physically manipulate the words in the room description. After that, you enter a bizarre world with doll-like humans you can move around, undress, and interact with. Then a bizarre maze, and finally a nonsensical last world with bizarre symbology.

I honestly have no idea what was going on here, but the puzzles are more or less pretty fun.

Recommended for fans of the bizarre and weird.

This game paints a unique world, where religious hierarchies are structured by the alphabet, and assassination is a good career move.

You are an A, right at the top of the line, but everyone is gunning for you. In this mid length, relatively easy game, you have to dodge multiple assassination attempts while thinking on your feet.

Wonderful for fans of atmosphere, setting, and world-building.