Reviews by MathBrush

This is a shortish parser game that has a main game and three subgames. You are the help system for several interactive fiction games, but something keeps malfunctioning.

I tried this game with and without the walkthrough, and it was honestly bewildering. You can spend a long time on things that turn out to be completely unimportant. You frequently have to repeat commands multiple times without feedback that you are on the right track. Several areas require you to wait and wait and wait and wait.

The three minigames are interesting; I believe they represent games that you could give help for.

One is a Geisha simulator, where you don't have the regular verbs, and you can only schedule clients and reserve rooms while training for your Geisha exam. This is randomized and hard.

Another is a Lovecraftian western. This one was confusing, but fun.

The last game was really very creative and fun. You are playing Dungeons and Dragons one-on-one with a Dungeon Master, and he becomes the parser. You have a character sheet, and quests, and so on. It was really fun, especially because the Dungeon Master is purposely bad.

Overall, a mixed bag. I feel like others would be less confused than me, but I found this game very confusing. The minigames were fun, though.

Augustine was nominated for an XYZZY for best story and best setting. It shows; the story is really intriguing, about two figures who battle each other in different guises throughout the ages.

You and a warlock from the 1300s are doomed to live until one defeats the other. You pass back and forth between modern times and ancient times through flashbacks, learning much about St. Augustine's history (I don't know how much was real, and how much made up for this game).

The writing is iffy and the implementation is definitely buggy, playing cutscenes in the wrong rooms or order. I didn't really like this game at first, but two things made me end up liking it: the story really is compelling, going in unexpected directions; and the combat system is really fun (although I had to UNDO a lot the first time). The final fight in particular was very exciting.

Recommended for those who can excuse spotty implementation/writing for the sake of a good tale.

This was a short-to-mid-length enjoyable parser game. You awake from your slumber, buried in the egyptian way, and must progress into the afterlife.

The games takes the form of an escape game. You are given a spellbook of sorts, which you must use, but then you must solve a sequence of puzzles. Many of the puzzles seemed unintuitive to me, but because the game is short, it may be possible to just keep plugging away until you get it.

The atmosphere is very good. This game was recommended to me based on its characterization of Egyptian mythology, and this was the most entertaining aspect of the game.

Recommended for fans of mythology or escape games.

Voices is a strong, story-driven parser game told from the perspective of a mysterious invisible figure, whom we learn more about throughout the game. The narrator is the figure, while the PC is a young girl they speak to.

This is a strong story, and most of the game is designed to funnel you through the story. This would easily make a good Twine game; this is in fact the kind of game Twine was designed for. However, the author has done a great job of changing default messages and adding extra surprises, making it worthwhile to have it in a parser.

Much of the game progresses by repeatedly using "TALK TO", and by making a few decisions.

A great choice for fans of story telling. No puzzles to speak of. I had a lot of fun with this.

Vicious Cycles is a complex game. It contains two interwoven narratives; it deals with complex issues in real life; it has puzzles requiring many replays to solve.

The game has a few early surprise which I won't mention here, but I can say that the atmosphere is a sort of dogged determination to overcome despite discouraging odds. The gritty feel reminded me of Cape by Bruno Dias, although the stories themselves are very different.

Overall, I highly recommend this game. It is fairly short, about 100-400 moves for a typical playthrough, although a perfect playthrough is probably 50 or less.

This game was nominated for an xyzzy award for Best Story when it came out, and I agree that the story is excellent.

You are an independent young woman trying to run a business but running into trouble due to the male-dominated society. You encounter a few suitors while trying to save your business.

The puzzles are fairly light, until the ending. Then it branches into a lot of endings. I found 6 endings and it was hard to tell what made me get them.

Also, the game is pretty short, about 20 to 30 minutes.

Overall, a pleasant game, especially for those interested in romance games.

Like the more recent experimental work Laid Off from the Synesthesia Factory, My Angel strives to make a transcript of the game read like a book. Error messages are turned off, diddling around too long makes the story progress by itself, room descriptions are varied so they don't repeat enough, and it is written in first person present tense.

When I first played this game a year or more ago, I lost interest and stopped because I couldn't tell how well I was doing or know what to do next. This time, I just went with instinct and tried obvious commands and I beat the game without hints. The author's notes are very interesting, as much or more than the game itself.

The story is about a couple with unusual abilities running away from a group, and then later exploring ruins.

Jon Ingold is really a master of innovation. Looking over his career, it seems he was really trying over and over to find something that could draw in people outside of traditional IF, and he finally succeeded with the wildly popular 80 Days. This game is interesting in light of that history as well.

Krypteia is a richly textured hyperlink game, making extensive use of graphics, text styling, and music.

It's something of an rpg, with two stats (wolf and stealth) and a variety of items and battles that affect the stats. However, the system is very simple, so you don't have to grind and battles are finished in one click.

The two stats represent two ways of dealing with your feelings, most likely about transgenderism. Wolf stats make you fierce, and you wear stilettos. Shadow let's you hide from the world.

Overall, a well done game, if a bit heavy-handed at times. It has a very annoying habit of putting stealth related text as black on black text.

Mercy is an interesting game from a couple of decades past. Not entered in IFComp, it nevertheless managed to earn recognition, including a nomination for Best Story Xyzzy.

You play a euthanized at a hospital. The game is a linear thriller type game and has a branch and bottleneck structure which became the characteristic of Twine games many years later.

You wander around a relatively small map with a gloomy, moody atmosphere strongly reminiscent of Vespers, but less disgusting. Your goals begin to change around the halfway point, which is also where the game becomes more ambiguous and confusing.

I recommend this game for fans of a great story and/or atmosphere.

Seastalker was Oneida my least favorite Infocom games, but part of that is my own fault. The game is fairly simple, and I didn't need a walkthrough, until about halfway through the game I started some kind of timer and would die after 40 or 50 turns. It turned out that (Spoiler - click to show)there was some sort of black box I didn't fix that lead a monster to the base. So that made me lose interest, until I went through with a walkthrough.

The game comes with some hint cards that are missing some information. When the time comes in the game, the game itself will fill in the blanks in the hint cards.

There are some tricky parts to the game like using sonar to pilot a sub, and the endgame, but over all it was pretty fun.

Note: The GO TO command makes this game MUCH more enjoyable.