Reviews by MathBrush

I've played through this game around a dozen without beating it, but it's just a lot fun. Once you've played through once, you can play through it super fast.

You are in a house with about six other people, all of whom have been invited to search for some lost treasure. Murders start happening, and you have to find the treasure and the killer.

The house has a ton of hiding places, with randomized stuff inside; there are around 4 different kinds of tools that you can use to open special hiding locations. At first, I kept restarting to get these tools, until I realized that you don't need to restart to get one of each tool.

There's a surprising backstory going on involving magic in the background. As usual for Emily Short, the story is intriguing, and involves a unique sort of magic.

It has overall a rogue-like feel. Good for fans of mystery or Rogue-likes.

In this game, you play a machine in a sort of factory that is malfunctioning. I assume the eventual goal is to escape; even with the walkthrough, I ended up dying at the second-to-last move.

The game is written bizarrely. Here is an example of it at it's worst, when going west at the beginning:

?w
Dir ALT{ER}DDDisplace-: 2 [west -> south]
(self.travelTo(loc) = nil && m$ve(her@) FAILED

At the best, it is pretty understandable; here's LOOK's output in the first room:

?l
Reclamation Sector (2)
Cleared area amongst to-be-reforged bodies; gap(s) movement(allow) west, north; other exits apparent lacking.
To the north you see salvager-class machine.

So you see now what type of game this is. There are enemies that will harm you, there are other units whose parts you can scavenge. It's all bizarre.

A unique experience.

This game purports to be a parody of escape-the-room puzzles, but it really ends up being a fairly standard version of the game, using the 'parody' aspect as an excuse for silly plot points or obscure puzzles.

The main difference between this and a standard game is scoring; you get no points for actions that lead to you winning. Instead, you get points for finding easter eggs.

At least one of the puzzles in the game is pretty clever, though, and not completely trivial to code.

Recommended for fans of one-room escape games.

This shortish HTML TADS game was the first to use that platform, incorporating images into the text. The images are crayon drawings and playdough photographs. These worked in HTML TADS on my Windows machine, but something was wrong with the text formatting and status line, and the game crashed. I finished on Gargoyle with no images.

The story and puzzles are simple; aliens land in your backyard and demand some items; you have to investigate them and deal with your parents, too.

Some of the puzzles were a bit obscure, but there aren't too many to go through. The writing was fun.

I was frustrated by the interpreter issues, and so I didn't enjoy it as much as I would have if it worked perfectly. This reinforces my thoughts that pure text without effects is the best for long-term use.

In this game, you play through 9 holes of golf with 3 coworkers. I never actually beat it, due to bad golfing.

It's actually fairly fun; instead of normal puzzles, you have a real-time drive meter and a left-to-right meter, and you have to get it right in correct spot to win.

I especially had trouble, thinking that a 9-iron would go farther than a 3-iron. But it was still fun.

The NPCs are entertaining, and there are some practice sessions for putting and driving.

A fun diversion.

Bolivia by Night surprised me on multiple levels, throughout the game. It begins with you as a reporter in a Bolivian city who has to interview different people, getting in some comic situations. The game has a lot of real photos included, as well as quotes about Bolivia.

Then, the game changes fundamentally, again and again. I don't think I can put into words how entertaining it was and how deeply different from the opening sequence.

The puzzles are very simple. Sometimes, though, it's just a guess-the-author's brain game. Many solutions rely on applying objects to to things that share common traits (for instance, if it were a fighting game, you would use a blue spear against a blue-eyed warrior). The hints section is well-done, and the game almost delights in guiding you through what to do.

Somehow, this game enchanted me.

Hoosegow's writing is a delight. In this straightforward but slightly difficult one-room escape game, you play a reluctant outlaw with his silly buddy and a drunken pastor trying to get out of a jail cell.

All of the standard messages have been changed to be folksy and homelike. The writing is just great, if you're into hometown western stuff.

The puzzles did not inspire me. It's one of the large class of puzzle games where one or two of the puzzles are unfair, and you could play forever and then give up. It's rare to find a game where the challenges are difficult but fair.

I recommend this game, and very strongly recommend it for group play, to get through the puzzles and have fun reading the responses.

In this game, you play a God, the parser is an angel, and the PC is a worshipper named Bellclap.

The game is fairly short with some unintuitive puzzles. Essentially, you have to help your worshipper make it to safety. He has a variety of tools, but what you have to do with them is pretty odd.

To me, this game is primarily enjoyable as an experiment in parser implementation, with the 3 main characters all working together. Also, the setting is well-described and fun.

Overall, I recommend that people try the first scene.

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.