Reviews by MathBrush

This game would work great as a text adventure (which it is), a point-and-click, a sidescroller, and frankly just about anything.

You are stuck with a rat captain and have to get out of sinking ship as fast as possible, grabbing whatever treasure you can. There are some mild puzzles (and probably some harder ones I couldn't figure out), but mostly you just try to figure out what's worth saving.

This is pretty fun. I enjoyed spending a ton of turns trying to get an obscure object only to discover it was completely worthless. Sometimes things are not what they seem (diamonds in the rough) and sometimes they are what they seem (dirt clods in the rough).

Lots of fun, and super short (to maximize replay value). I recommend a few playthroughs for fun.

Changes is a fairly long game, about as long as, say, Spider and Web. It is set on an alien planet with a variety of animals that move about and act independently. There are ten or twenty locations, and not that many items.

The game has a very curious mechanic, which I didn't really figure out without resorting to the walkthrough: (Spoiler - click to show)You have to kill other animals in order to become them. This mechanic means that your abilities are constantly changing, and you have to reevaluate the environment that you are in and what it can do. The ability to see the same environment from multiple perspectives is a real treat, similar to Heroes.

As some have said, the puzzles are fairly frustrating. I didn't complete any protagonist's quest without hints, although I knew exactly what I needed to do for the second one.

The writing is beautiful and evocative. Some have compared it to Avatar, and that is fairly accurate. It is also very similar to the Ender's Game series (specifically, the pequeninos), and uses some of the same terminology.

The game includes cut scenes after every major success. I loved them; they were wonderful. The ending left me wanting a bit more; it felt abrupt and unsatisfying.

Overall, a fun game. Not likely to be completed without a walkthrough; like most such games, the walkthrough tells you shouldn't use it. Authors frequently overestimate readers' abilities to complete games without hints. I recommend this game, with hints, after exploration.

Doctor M is perhaps most famous for being part of the 4-game 'hat puzzle' (involving 3 other games from the IFComp). However, it stands well on its own.

There is a subgenre of IF consisting of games where you reflect on a life through flashbacks, and have to decide if you did the right thing or not. Tapestry, Photograph, and Map are examples.

Doctor M takes this on with panache. You have to revisit the death of three victims of you, a mercy-killing doctor. You then can choose your interpretation of the events.

There are some mild puzzles, including hunt-the-scenery and read-the -descriptions-carefully puzzles. There is one or two problems requiring a leap of intuition.

The writing was good. I believe some people said they didn't like the heavy-handedness of the moral dilemma presented in the game, but it's what's needed for this type of work.

The game has a literal angel and devil, and has 3 endings.

I enjoyed this game. I recommend it for fans of the afterlife genre.

FIrst and foremost, this story is (in my opinion) in the top tier of all interaction fiction stories. The author has done an excellent job of painting a world, people, and a mystical system that draws you in.

Some of the fun in the game is figuring out what is going on, so I won't go into too many details. Suffice it to say that this game uses a setting that is rare in interactive fiction, and seems to be based off of extensive research.

I played without a walkthrough through the opening section, which most reviewers agree is an incredible part of any game. Then the game opens up and dumps you in the middle of nowhere. I had fun exploring for a while, and picked up a few tricks. I tried over the course of a couple days to see how far I could get, then turned to the walkthrough.

I'm glad I tried on my own first. The walkthrough works, but is confusing if you haven't tried the game on your own first (some actions get hinted later on).

The NPCs are amazing. Those taken from the author's research are vibrant and rich, with striking imagery. I will probably play this game again just for fun. Recommended, with a walkthrough, after an attempt.

Deadline Enchanter was one of the first IF games I played, 5 years ago. I remember that it's bizarre atmosphere and self-awareness really attracted me to IF in general because it showed me what was possible.

You play someone in a magical city that has appeared in Detroit. You've been given a message from the Folk, a magical race, and the message is a parser game. This game has a walkthrough. So you walkthrough.

The beauty of this game is seeing the story unfold and seeing the guts and edges of the parser. The world it paints is beautiful. When it came out, it was very controversial, but since the Twine revolution, I believe this game can be better appreciated. In facta, the author has moved on to Twine, making great games like Solarium.

Like I said, this is one of the games that drew me into IF and established my perceptions of the whole genre, together with Curses! and Not Just An Ordinary Ballerina.

This is an entertaining ADRIFT game which I played on Gargoyle on Windows. You play as the grim reaper, getting your daily list of souls to reap. You can complete your tasks in any order, and every puzzle has multiple solutions.

As you complete your tasks, you get page-long textdumps of truly entertaining material about your targets. There is a timer, but it is very generous. I usually use walkthroughs extensively, but I only required one hint in this game.

The humor is similar to Terry Pratchett or even Douglas Adams, just dry situational comedy more than slapstick. Some unusual settings for English-language IF (Himalayas, France, etc.).

I came to this game after playing the sequel, and I loved learning more about the protagonist. This series is about a young girl who has deep secrets, and the men she is involved with.

The links in this game are cleverly colored, with one color for cycling text, another for branches, etc. This makes the game much more enjoyable than standard Twine.

The story is about a date with a boy after ditching school. Both of you have secrets. The game is pretty complicated, with many options to branch out on.

The one thing I didn't like as much was the styling. It looks like an aquarium, which really fits the story, but I found it mildly irritating. I loved the CSS of Thanksgiving, the sequel. However, this is a minor complaint.

Choice of Robots is a game that has received high accolades, such as an XYZZY nomination for Best Game, and very favorable reviews from the general video game community.

I loved it. A very long game, perhaps of novella or screenplay length, and that is just in one playthrough. You can take wildly different paths, from prison to riches to love to all sorts of things. You keep track of 10 relationships, 4 robot stats, personal stats and political stats.

You are a young robot researcher, developing robot technology, and you have the chance to guide the development of robots toward autonomy, acting like humans, giant tank missiles, or advanced surgeons.

The gameplay can either be free-flowing, answering each question as it comes, or you can develop intricate plans to minimax your characters stats.

Well worth the money; this was the first commercial game that I bought since I purchased the complete Infocom collection.

This is just as good as Creatures Such As We and Choice of the Dragon, but longer. The only hiccups I found were inconsistent branches; when someone I married quit my company, the game said I wouldn't see them for a long time, for instance, without mentioning our relationship.

Thanksgiving was my first Hannah Powell-Smith game, but I'm going to play her other games now. Before I talk about the story, I have to mention my favorite part of this game: the use of color on links. I think everyone should copy this: cycling text is one color, expanding text is another, and branching text is a third. This makes it so much easier to know how to explore. I really support this.

As for the story, it was one I haven't seen done before. As you go to Thanksgiving with your boyfriend, you come under pressure due to your hidden past. It's hard to say more without spoilers, but this game made me nervous in a good way.

I've recently discovered Kathleen Fischer's games, after playing Masquerade and trying Cove a bit, and I love her writing. This is a short game about a prisoner confessing to a friar. The game is primarily conversation-based, although some non-conversation actions are required to win.

The game is a conversational maze. Most conversation options lead to bad endings. The good ending requires some very specific and perhaps non-intuitive choices (being a good boy and a yes-man don't help).

The story was a bit hard to piece together, but it really looked good overall. Recommended for fans of conversation games.