Ratings and Reviews by MathBrush

This is an interesting pirate world, where magic is prevalent and women have a much stronger place in the world.

This is a choice-of-games style game, which means that it's a CYOA, with choices affecting different 'stats' you have (like magic ability, gun ability, drunkenness, sneakiness, etc.) You have to build up different stats for different challenges.

Overall, a very fun game. I really enjoyed it, first as a beta tester, then playing it in the comp. The story is fast-paced and exciting.

This game focuses on a career involving mood-altering or mood-activated equipment; however, the real story here is a slice-of-stressed-out-life story of a woman, her career, and her love interests.

This game responds with story text no matter what you do, and it's purposely written in a style that can jump back and forth between different topics. This allows the transcript of the game to read as a short story.

It also presents a novel challenge: decipher if your text comes from real commands or the 'floater text' (the name for the text from wrong commands). It helped me a lot to just type important keywords. You'd think UNDO would help you figure out what's real and what's not, but it's cleverly been disabled.

Worth checking out.

(note: I beta tested this game.)

I enjoyed Sub Rosa, and rank it in the top 5 of IFComp. It's world-building is marvellous; you explore a strange house in a strange world consisting of different 'planes' (in the Dungeons and Dragon's sense, and in the mathematical sense, and in the geographical sense).

The house and the backstory are weird and interesting, like a 1001 Arabian Nights written by Steven Moffat and David Eddings.

As your find out very early on, your goal is to find 7 secrets to destroy someone. Your secondary goal is not to get caught or noticed.

The game is enjoyable, and the puzzles are great, but it suffers from a bit of hunt-for-clues, like Where's Waldo. There is a library with 101 books, some of which are obviously important, and others which are necessary for winning but not clearly marked out.

As another example of the hunt-for-clues issue, there is one puzzle you solve by examining a background item not usually implemented, interacting with it in an unusual way, using that to interact with another important thing in an unusual way, and then examining two things in succession.

Thus, this game is best-suited for the meticulous. Fortunately, its rich backstory makes such meticulousness very rewarding.

Spy Intrigue is not my type of game. But it is an incredible game, which I have played through twice, and is excellently crafted.

It is a game of layers. It literally has two layers of text, interwoven within each other.

It also has two levels of meaning. The top level is just crazy and silly (you very quickly learn that most spies have died of "spy-mumps"). But there is a much deeper subtext in the game, much like another 2015 IFComp entry TOMBS of Reschette. Both games encourage you to look under the standard shoot-kill-loot structure of normal games and see what existence would really be like for protagonist and enemy.

That's probably the deepest contribution of this game: to show the protagonists humanity. The author has succeeded in a very well-crafted game, which I feel should be nominated for several XYZZY awards. She has done an excellent work here.

As I said, this isn't really my type of game; I'm not into profanity or sex, of which the game has it's fair share. But it's certainly never exploitative, and it all makes sense in the context of the game. I will also always fondly remember (early spoiler)(Spoiler - click to show)"OATMEAL TIME."

Second Story features a web-based parser that is, in my opinion, a quite nice visual improvement over several other parsers.

The story is about a catburglar who has changed their life, but has to go back to work to save their brother.

Gameplay is straightforward, taking, opening, and dropping things, but the story drives the game forward. It's fast and fun. I especially liked the twist at the end.

I recommend this game to those interested in developments in parser technology, and for those into crime-based stories (it reminded me a bit of the story of PataNoir, stripped from its mechanic).

This IFComp 2015 game centers on understanding and experiencing OCD. It has a nice visual feel, with a fixed-letter-spacing font and some purposely grainy photos/images.

You are diagnosed with OCD, and you learn that it's not what people think it is. You experience OCD as you struggle with how to spend your day and struggle with intrusive thoughts presented in an interesting way.

Overall, a mid-length game. You get a summary at the end describing how you're doing and what your future might be like.

If you are interested in OCD, definitely check this game out.

This game resembles to me a Dungeons and Dragons type quest without leveling or classes. You play Questor, on a quest to help everyone. You have to save a man from poisoning by finding an antidote, defeat a witch, gather things in the forest, engage in combat, answer riddles, and do a few more intense Kerkerkruip-like combat segments where you choose whether to attack or defend and what to attack.

I would not classify this as an 'old-school game', but more as a 'faux-ld school game', a game that recreates what people think early parser games were like.

If you enjoy DnD type games (like Eye of the Beholder), this could be a fun mid-length game for you.

This game is almost ritualistic in nature, and I enjoyed it. The gameplay consists almost entirely of reading messages placed in each of about 12 rooms. Doing this unlocks the final step.

Everything is dreamlike in nature, a bit like Plotkin's Dreamhold, but on a smaller scale. You wake up with no voice in front of a locked door In a dark structure with symbolic rooms, some made of glass, others of iron, etc.

I'm always into this kind of game, so I had fun. However, this game is really only for fans of the genre. Intentionally few puzzles, and the story is mostly about cool atmosphere.

Pilgrimage is a deeply symbolic game. The author has based the game around several symbolic progressions, including a progression of colors, the stages of grief, and more.

It is set in a pastiche of the medieval world, and it includes almost the entire world. Typing E will not take you one room east, it sets you off on a journey of months or years, to Russia or China.

You travel around trying to gain alchemical knowledge, and acheive a kind of transcendence. You seem to worship a dark Babylonian God, because Blessings of Babylon of disputable benefit are given to several people.

The IFComp release was a bit buggy, but I hope the author will do a postcomp release fixing the bugs discovered in the comp. This would result in a great game that people could discuss for a long time to come.

This IFComp 2015 game places you in a preset underground map that is vaguely maze-like, and sets a monster chasing after you.

Although the map is preset, there are many doors that are locked, and the keys randomly distributed. Also randomly distributed are items to set traps with to kill a monster that is chasing you.

It is a fun game, with good atmosphere, but over pretty quickly. It would be fun to see the author add a version with multiple monsters, where you have to work harder to evade them and need to set multiple traps.