Reviews by MathBrush

This game has an interesting opening; you are in a movie theatre, watching a giant monster movie. The game is in third person, with the main character's actions being narrated by the observer in the audience.

The actual action has a brief intro, followed by the actual puzzle. You move in 3d on a map with a ton of fake locations and some (labelled) real locations. This puzzle seemed really hard, but it turns out that there are 4 different solutions.

This is the only giant monster attack game I have played, and it was really fun in its sphere.

Atomic heart is a good game at heart, but with an annoying number of missing synonyms, unclear descriptions, and a lot of tedious commands. It prominently features a cable and socket system which reminds me of Jack Witham's later Final Exam.

You play a nanny robot protecting a boy. After a brief introductory segment, you enter a larger and dangerous world. With a fragile companion, you explore a landscape fraught with danger and cables.

A key object in the opening area gave me no indication of what I was able to do with it. One room had no description except for "This is Gary's room", or something like that.

If these flaws were patched up, this game would be pretty sweet. But as it is, it's an exercise in frustration.

In this darkly atmospheric game, you play as two different characters bound on a train. The game allows you to switch back and forth between these characters.

The main gameplay is set in two seemingly disconnected areas: a giant pit of hell, and a vast machine chewing up the earth and feeding it to a horrible beast.

In both areas, you are trying to collect pieces of yourself or your memories. Painful recollections come to mind.

This game is nonintuitive; there are some pretty crazy leaps you have to make to get the game started. The very biggest leap (which you need to know pretty early on) is that (Spoiler - click to show)by destroying something in one world, you can make it appear in another. A much milder spoiler is the command to switch between worlds: (Spoiler - click to show)BE [PERSON].

I got one bad ending and one good ending. I like this kind of story. If you like this game, you may like Sentencing Mr. Liddell.

Frobozz Magic Support is a game that emulates Infocom's Spellbreaker, as well as Zork; you use a white cube to travel to six different locations, where you deal with a pot of gold over a rainbow, a dark room with grues, battery-powered lanterns, scrolls, etc.

It was an enjoyable game. The NPCs are a bit outdated, but the puzzles are fresh and fun.

Zork-based games are not as popular now, though they still come out (Scroll Thief came out in 2015), but as a fan of the Enchanter series, I enjoyed this game.

Contains a hard cryptogram.

Everybody Loves a Parade is a mid-length puzzle game in which you are stopped by a parade. You have to explore and scrounge up a variety of items to be able to escape.

The puzzles are old-school flavor; find items by searching or carefully reading room description, use them in unintuitive ways, and do some unmotivated actions. However, it is pretty fun, and I solved a few puzzles without the walkthrough.

The game is implemented well, with a lot of background character.

Many reviews at the time this came out mentioned a big surprise late in the game. The years since this game came out have significantly softened the surprise here (I thought it was going to be the standard 'this was all a dream' surprise, but it wasn't). This gives an interesting commentary on the changes in interactive fiction in the last couple of decades.

There are some lewd parts (a pornographic magazine, some dirty-minded individuals), but overall mild.

This game reminds me of a mix of Lime Ergot and Lord Bellwater's Secret. As in Lime Ergot, you investigate an object, then examine something in its description, then so on for many levels, discovering information.

Otherwise, the game is a close relative of Lord Bellwater's Secret. In both games, you explore a study looking for secrets. You examine a variety of objects in order to find a code, open a safe, and get out. You have to find every single part of the code, in a tedious affair. I used a walkthrough and never looked back.

This game has a few issues. For instance, other reviewers noted that you can't use the adjective of an object to refer to it, or just the noun if there is a disambiguation; you must use both. Some objects are never mentioned; you just have to assume they are there. You have to look behind stuff in the oddest locations, and interact with objects in unusual ways.

I recommend this only to those who love games like Lime Ergot with incredible levels of detail. The game is very rewarding in this way.

In this game, you're being tested to see if you belong to warriors (who use force), artisans (who use mechanical skills), alchemists (who alter the chemical nature of things), or seers (who look at and think about everything).

You are given four puzzles, each of which can be solved in any of the four ways. At the end, you are given one of 6 possible endings, depending on which route you picked.

I enjoyed this game; I tried the seers route first, and got through all the puzzles without a walkthrough.

I then tried the warrior path, but had to use a walkthrough.

Overall, a fun short game. If you are interested in this kind of personality-test-via-choices, as I was, you will like this game.

The Duel That Spanned the Ages is a fun mid-length sci-fi adventure about exploring an asteroid with a base and engaging with mechanical aliens.

Some people seemed not to like the infodump story at the beginning and end, but I enjoyed it. It was envisioned as the first story in a sequel, and I think people don't like being able to complete stories. But I've found that your imagination is often better than any actual sequels, and so the unfinished business was fine for me.

I couldn't figure out at first why this game was nominated for a best puzzle xyzzy when the first few scenes were completely linear. But when I reached the base, the game opened up and became really enjoyable. You have to figure out how to use a variety of equipment, including a giant mecha suit of armor, machine guns and rocket launchers, and medical equipment.

The game was not too long, and the provided map was very helpful. I strongly recommend this game.

Goose, Egg, Badger is a charming mid-sized game about fixing things on your exotic animal farm after an intruder enters your farm. You are Hope Lee, a farmer/repairer/etc., and you have to put your badger, ape, yak, and duck back in their pens while cleaning up your house.

The puzzles are a bit spotty, as the actions you have to perform are often unmotivated, or require you to try something out on every animal before discovering the right combination.

Now, below all of this is another layer, an entirely different game. This extra layer was inspired by a quote from an imaginary review from an earlier competition: (Spoiler - click to show)“I
didn’t even notice that every noun was also a verb until my second time
through.”


The author took this quote and ran with it, and it is possible to complete the entire game using only such commands. This is clever, and very fun to play with.

Recommended for fans of goofy slice-of-life or wordplay.

This game by David Whyld has 52 rooms, 5 npcs, and a ton of puzzles. These puzzles were hard and confusing to me, except for one thing: you can skip most of them. You are assigned a etc number of hit points, and each time you reach an enemy guard or a cliff, you can just rush through and get hurt, or be clever.

Even the real solutions usually have multiple options. However, I ended up being frustrated a lot. One thing to know is that if you know a password, you just type the pazsword, not SAY or anything like that.

You are a commando type guy rescuing a princess from a Nazi-style fortress. There are some intriguing locations.

Overall, this is off the beaten path of IF, but I didn't regret playing.