Ratings and Reviews by MathBrush

Future Boy! was a commercial game from 2004. A large game (it took me about 4 and a half hours, using hints 27 times), it has illustrations with gif-like animations for every room and character, as well as voice-acting for all dialogue.

The game is split into two parts, one with the parser, and one with little windows with graphics, usually one for the room itself, one for each character present, one for the compass rose, and one for effects like rain.

The game starts out fairly linearly, with a succession of challenges that set up the story. I found some of the early puzzles fairly difficult, which is unusual for commercial IF. I resorted to the hints as early as the second scenario.

After the first few scenes, the game opens up considerably. It ends up being reminiscent of Infocom's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, with a cast of crazy characters and a variety of random locations that you can visit.

One of the highlights of the game is an unusually well developed (Spoiler - click to show)computer system. It's like a miniature game within a game, and gave me fond memories of the 90's.

My winning game was ~1500 turns long.

The plot is fairly intricate. Overall, I enjoyed this game. If it were an iPad app, I would price it at around $5-$10.

I came into possession of the game by contacting the creators using the email on the Future Boy! website.

Full disclosure: I'm a big fan of Banks' games, and I received an advance copy of this game when I told her I wanted to review it.

Clockwork Army is a Choicescript game set in historic Australia, with bits in Britain. The game uses a magic system that the author has developed for some time, including in her gamebook 'It Started When the Flag Fell'. This system is a metal system, a bit reminiscent of the Mistborn system. Different metals have different properties; lead enhances emotions, while the ultra-rare aluminum enhances agility.

The setting is in colonial Australia, with the Australians building up to a revolt against the redcoats. However, this Australia is heavily mechanized in a steampunk fashion. Metal corsets that grant abilities, hybrid animal-machines, and even cloud harvesters abound.

The story revolves around a family that has been scattered across the earth, who are trying to get back together. Like most Choicescript games, you have a choice of gender, name/ethnicity, and romantic interests.

The only other review I've seen of the game so far is on an app store and says it's the worst choice of games game they've ever seen. I suspect that they've only tried the first two (free) chapters, because these mostly consist of setting up the backstory and the magic system. The convolutedness of the magic system ends up requiring a lot of 'As you know...' exposition at the beginning.

But the later chapters are where things really take off. Having just finished The Shadow in The Cathedral by Jon Ingold and Ian Finley, I was hungry for more steampunk/clockwork creatures, and I wasn't disappointed. (Actually, thinking about it now, this game has the same kind of story that I was hoping for in the never-finished sequel to that game).

Anyways, things get heated, and the clockwork creations grow more and more complicated. I think it's impossible to really lose (in the sense of not getting a complete ending), but I did not achieve my character's original goals.

That was one area that I had trouble with: roleplaying the character. I had a sort of pacifist in mind that would always prefer thinking and spying over direct combat, but I found that the game penalized this behavior a few times. Also, my preferred love interest turned out to be taken, but I quickly mended my broken heart and moved on.

The last thing I should mention is that this game and Banks' gamebook contain a great deal of detail about historic Australia. Some people are turned off by this, but I enjoyed it.

Anyways, if you want to get a feel for the game before buying, try the first two chapters, but also see her gamebook I mentioned above to get more of a taste of this setting and magic system.

Here is some of the pop culture referenced in this game:
(Spoiler - click to show)Lord of the Rings, Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy, Song of the South, Peter Pan, Waiting For Godot, the play Rhinoceros, a knot theory joke, the ten-inch pianist joke, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Star Trek: Voyager, Zen koans (is that pop culture)?, famous mathematicians like Archimedes and Fibonacci, Duck Tales, etc.

And that's just the ones I could remember off the top of my head!

This game joins the list of ultra-long games such as Blue Lacuna, King of Shreds and Patches, Mulldoon Legacy, and Time: All Things Come to an End.

In gameplay, it resembles Mulldoon Legacy a lot; both are supersized versions of Curses!. You explore a huge structure, manipulating a variety of magical or technological systems, with a variety of hint systems.

Finding Martin has smooth implementation, including several very long time travel sequences interacting with multiple copies of yourself. This forms the last third of the game, and is the most technically competent time travel I have seen. Imagine All Things Devours as a subgame, 4 times.

Finding Martin has a tendency for very long text dumps. As I enjoy reading, this wasn't an issue, but there are probably 20+ cutscenes of 2-4 pages of text each.

As others have noted, Finding Martin is spottiest when it comes to hints. Some things are hinted well; in particular, there are several systems of providing hints, and if you get further in some puzzles, you'll unlock long cutscenes containing hints for other puzzles.

However, so many puzzles require leaps of intuition that you are bound to fail multiple times. For this, a walkthrough is essential. I've tried to upload a walkthrough to IFWiki that I found on web.archive.org, but it didn't seem to go through. The link is https://web.archive.org/web/20080516223332/http://www.qrivy.net/~gayla/fm_walk.txt

This game, as with Mulldoon Legacy, should be more played and more discussed. However, both games suffer from information overload. I get stressed playing Blue Lacuna, which can be played puzzlelessly, and even Counterfeit Monkey, where puzzles are well-clued. These games (Mulldoon and Martin) are just too darn hard to be solved by anyone without clues.

However, my strategy for such games is to play through with a walkthrough, then come back months or years later and try to play without a walkthrough. I've done Curses! 3 times now this way, and I hope to do it without a walkthrough. I hope to replay Finding Martin one day.

D.B.T has written 42 games since August of 2014; only one of these has a real review on IFDB, and most have one or fewer ratings. They are written in QBasic, I believe, although some are available as downloadable executable files.

I decided to try one of these games. When I started up the game, I was entertained to see two skulls made with ascii art. The game has a countdown timer of 8 or 9 minutes, and I finished it in 5 or 6.

The game is a maze with two items you can pick up. HELP lists all verbs that you need.

The one real review of a DBT game is pretty harsh; and I have to admit, by the standards of the type of parser games most popular right now, it is not well put together.

However, the game isn't TRYING to be a current, modern parser game or even a throwback to classic games. It is trying to be it's own thing. The game cites Maniac Mansion, Darkseed (which I haven't played), and Scott Adams. In a way that I really can't explain, it reminded me of early versions of Oregon Trail.

Most of the game consists of just wandering around an easily navigable maze absorbing atmospheric room descriptions in green text on black background. The material is over the top, but it's meant to be that way. You are exploring a dreamscape, and trying to find the source of the evil in the dreamscape. Note that you have to refer to items by their full name to use them or pick them up.

All in all, it reminded me of my creepypasta reading phase. Stuff like Jeff the Killer or anything involving Herobrine. Or like Sci-Fi channel movies. I can see how someone could get into D.B.T.'s games and look forward to each release.

So, for standard IF games, this is not that great. But in it's own category, it is enjoyable.

This is a Sub-Q magazine game, and the high production values show. Excellent use of images and imagery abound.

The setting is unique among IF that I have played: a west african city, where legends still exist.

Your character (written in the first person) is a person of unknown abilities whose job is to 'fix' cheating husbands.

It was an interesting story. I'm not a big fan of explicit content, and there were some fairly explicit sexual references, but violence and profanity were low.

The culture was very interesting.

This game needs to be downloaded from dropbox before being played, and won't let you save. However, saving is not necessary for this game, because it's a relatively short demo of a Twine game, with many endings, all reachable in 2-5 choices.

The story is set in an alternate world, where the biggest change from our world is a kind of fire-knife thing carried by the protagonist. The main story is only a bit sketched in, but it's a kind of dystopian world like the beginning of Cape.

The author has done extensive styling of the game. There is a textured grayish-black background, as well as light gray text. When you run the cursor over a letter, it gets bright white, then slowly dims.

For me, the gray-on-gray was a bit difficult to read. It might work better to brighten up the text while preserving the hover-over-makes-a-halo effect.

I'm sure this review will drive some people to see if the game is as bad as I say it is; these people will then post, too and say "He was right! Don't play this game, it's awful!"

This game just tries to describe rape, murder, body horror, butchery, etc in as explicit terms as possible, with no capitalization and rushed spelling. It ends up not being frightening because it is so over the top, but it is gross. Perhaps I am feeding into the author's wishes too much by doing a review, but I think it's useful to record what the game is about.

1893 is a game set entirely in the real world. The map is based on the actual layout of the 1893 world's fair, and has hundreds of locations. The game includes 500 historical photographs used to illustrate these locations. Your enemies are counterfeiters, thieves and murderers. There is no magic or advanced technology (except in a hidden easter egg).

But at it's heart, this is a fantasy game. If the game said at the beginning 'You are at a bustling magical metropolis on the world called blah blah blah' and assigned random names to the buildings, this game would make an excellent fantasy game.

Explore bizarre cultures and exotic locations. Walk on an enormous cheese, witness arcane rituals, use devilishly complicated machines, and, most importantly, deal with a madman leaving a trail of dead bodies and missing diamonds.

The game asks you to find 2 persons of interest and 8 diamonds. These quests are almost entirely independent of each other, which is good, because this game is so huge and non-linear that it would be a great challenge to complete a linear sequence of events. After finding the 2 people of interest, you have the opportunity to complete a final quest.

I could not complete the final quest, because the event that triggers to find one of the people (Greenback Bob) never happened for me, even though I was following the walkthrough. However, I completed the rest of the game, and found it enjoyable.

There are many, many NPC's, some implemented well and others just sketched in.

The game includes in-game hints; the person who stole the diamonds WANTS to be found, and will give you hints if you call him.

Overall, an under-appreciated game. Few will be able to complete it on their own, but it is worthwhile to try. Try exploring the fair, picking up everything you can, and investigating everything. The 7 days that you have are very, very long, so you can afford to look around a while first.

This is a mid-length creepy Twine game about someone returning to the scene of a childhood tragedy. The mild horror which slowly builds up is one of my favorite genres, and the writing was well-paced.

I reached two bad endings by reversing all significant choices. I wonder if the good ending (if any) is hidden in some way. Also, there were some changes between versions that I didn't quite understand, specifically in the occupation of the main NPC.

Fun for fans of creepy stories.

This is a Twiny Jam game, requiring that the game be 300 words or less.

It uses the limited space effectively to comment on social injustice and the blindness of public media.

It' shard to discuss the game more without spoilers:

(Spoiler - click to show)You watch a show about water struggles in faraway places, but you have troubles of your own. With a child at home, you have no water, but you can get a small trickle whenever your neighbor uses their shower. I ended up collecting it in a bucket and dumping it over me, fully clothed.

It made me think about the problems that still exist in developed countries due to income inequality.