Reviews by MathBrush

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 The NPCs are a bit outdated, but the puzzles are fresh and fun.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.

Early Grey is a game about wordplay and puzzles; you have the ability to remove letters from words and put them back in. By doing so, you change the environment around you.

I found this game extraordinarily difficult. Of the two dozen or so puzzles in the game, I figured out maybe 2-3 on my own, which is the worst I've done in any wordplay game (Ad Verbum, Counterfeit Monkey, Shuffling Around, Threediopolis).

However, someone else could definitely have more luck. The world building in the game is fun, and the dialogue and characters you meet are truly interesting. However, I had no idea what was going on in the ending.

Overall, I was left frustrated and confused. But I feel that another player may have much more fun.

Square Circle has many of the best parts of an Eric Eve game. Great NPCs and conversation, an expansive map that doesn't need too much mapping, a large number of items, and smooth writing.

The plot wasn't as compelling as other Eric Eve games, but it was still pretty good. You are put in prison, your memory erased, until you can make a 'square circle'.

The solution to this puzzle was unexpected to me, and I used a hint, but it was fun. What was much more fun, however, was the psychological drama that unfolded for the rest of the game.

This game was well-regarded for its puzzles, and I found them fun as well. I prefer Nightfall, Blighted Isle, and All Hope Abandone by Eve to this game, but it is still a very good game.

Recommended for everyone.

Escapade! did well in the one-room competition in 2008. In this game, you are captured by screaming communists and placed in a cell with a dark and mysterious figure who turns out to be of some use.

The idea is that you have to repeatedly escape from the room using a variety of methods. Some things that I didn't know beforehand that were helpful are that you only have to find a fraction of the escapes (a little more than half) to win, and that some escapes are no longer possible after a while.

This is a funny game, and the humor was dry and situational (Except for the guard's voice), making it pretty funny to me. I enjoyed the puzzles; they were of the same style as Enlightenment or To Hell in a Hamper, where you take a bunch of items and run with them. If you enjoyed those two games, you should really enjoy this one.