Ratings and Reviews by MathBrush

This Infocom game nails the pacing. The game always felt exciting. You play a young woman searching for her father who is abducted by pirates. You carry out increasingly bold tasks throughout the game, and, as a player, I felt excited at my ability to be part of the action instead of being helpless on the side.

The game has two main areas: a ship, and a house. Events are tightly scripted and well-thought-out to keep the action flowing. The tight pacing may require frequent saving.

I found the game slightly easier than usual for Infocom; however, I was stumped twice in the middle (around points 16-19). It took about a week or a bit less of playing on and off to finish it (total time around 4-5 hours).

Be warned that this game uses Infocom's piracy protection, so you need access to the 'feelies' to solve key puzzles in the game. I used the Lost Treasures of Infocom app, which has the feelies included as images.

The romance novel aspects were infrequent, mostly resorting to ardent glasses, although right around the 16-19 point range where I got stuck, things got a bit heated as I was losing, but the game avoids anything explicit.

Overall, one of my favorite Infocom games, probably due to the great writing and simpler (but rewarding) puzzles.

Hollywood Hijinx is long and complex, more so than Zork. You play the nephew of a famous movie producing couple who have died and left you their fortune, on the condition that you are smart enough to find all ten of their movie treasures.

The premise didn't really excite me, but as I read the feelies, I began to be more interested. Also, I had heard many people mention this as a favorite Infocom game. Later, during the game, I began to really get into it, especially with the (Spoiler - click to show)remote controlled model of the Atomic Chihuahua set in Tokyo.

The game is hard. I literally couldn't solve the first problem: getting into the house. I had to look up the invisiclues. The game in general was complex, and I honestly just explored the house once, then relied on the walkthrough to see the rest of the game.

Only a few puzzles seemed really unfair, especially the 'last' big puzzle. But the creativity of this game is outstanding. If I had been looking for a long game to play over a month, this would have been it.

This game is like a Verdi opera stuck in Act III. Verdi once wrote that he wanted to show the impossibility of human happiness, and this game is similar.

You generally only have two options at any time, and more often, just one: beg. You beg, and beg, and beg, and then leave or beg more. You try to get enough money for food and shelter, but you don't always succeed.

The game uses the same scenes over and over again; I think there are only two or three real screens, and each is like a mad-lib filled with different information every time.

Some people found this powerful, and I've really enjoyed the effect of depressing repetition with other Twine games, but I didn't really enjoy this game. With Those We Love Alive was much better, one of my favorite games of all time, and it was released in the same competition.

I love Snyder's games. TotTS is an excellent linear mid-length game with not-too-hard puzzles that has a fantasy feel not found in many places, kind of like the story The Fool of The World or the beginning of Princess Mononoke.

You play a swordsman who travels the land searching for a village under oppression, righting wrongs along the way. You use several items in rather creative ways, and puzzles have multiple solutions.

I found the ending unusual, and extremely satisfying. It made a few points in the game much more understandable, and tied everything together very well. I wanted to go through and play again with my new understanding.

Strongly recommended.

Monk-fish is a mid-length puzzle-y game in which you must deal with the after-effects of a failed scientific experiment. You explore an underwater base, encounter monk-fish, and generally have to puzzle out a very enjoyable story with vague similarities to Ingold's All Roads game.

The game is vaguely futuristic, somewhat like Walker and Silhouette. It gave me several laugh-out-loud moments.

This game was nominated for Best Game, Best Writing, Best Story, and Best Individual Puzzle. The puzzle it was nominated for was discovering a password, and is one of those 'to get A, you need B. So you get B, but first you have to do C, which you must have D to make sense of'. It is very, very fun, although I couldn't do step 'D' (whichever step that was).

The plot reminded me of a lot of TV shows going on right now where the protagonists is partly dead or partly alive.

I was a big fan of My Father's Long Long Legs, so when I saw this game by the same author, I was intrigued. However, I found the name off-putting, thinking it would be a video game fan work or something similar.

It' s not; it's much more like Shade with conversations and in Twine (which would be an effective format for Shade, in my opinion). You are at a sleepover with a friend, who has a mysterious uncle that works for Nintendo. As the night progresses, strange incongruities arise.

Michael Lutz is an excellent storyteller. The author's notes at the end of the game are fascinating, and include a discussion of how the game accidentally relates to GamerGate, the controversy surrounding a group of mostly male gamers who attacked female journalists over trumped-up charges.

This game is among the very best Twine games, and in the end, is uplifting.

I rushed through Ballyhoo, but even so the story was marvelous and stunning. This is a mystery game set in a dreary circus. The feel is a lot like Not Just and Ordinary Ballerina. You investigate the disappearance of the owner's daughter after hours.

This game could have been played without hints for a month. The puzzle solutions are intricate and the world is detailed.

I relied on hints out of fear that there was way too much I could do wrong. In fact, almost everything is reversible, once you reach an area, you get unlimited chances to return. If not, you don't need to return. The game was shockingly forgiving.

Unfortunately, the walkthrough may have been necessary simply because of guess-the-verb problems, especially with conversations.

The much-feared dream sequence is very easy to map and overcome (the lines situation was harder for me).

This is a fantastic game, the name and blurb really turned me off, but this game was more fun than the Lurking Horror or Sorceror.

**Edit:** I've been asked to clarify what I mean by better than Sorceror (or Lurking Horror). As I considered why I used that comparison, I realized that there are many parallels between Ballyhoo and Sorceror: both contain a dark carnival, both are centered on searching for a missing person, both have a pair of gatekeeper puzzles, many wild animals etc. In both, you slowly develop into an expert in the skills that surround you (magic or circus abilities), and the humor and writing are similar.

Why do I prefer Ballyhoo? It condenses the map of Sorceror, and has far more NPCs and interesting, scripted events, as well as far less red herrings. It has more feeling, too. In Ballyhoo, when you are in (Spoiler - click to show)Eddie's trailer and he realises you aren't a clown, I felt real anxiety for my character, and when (Spoiler - click to show)you break through Tina's shell and she solemnly shakes your hand, I felt a tug on my heartstrings. Contrast this to Sorceror's over the top 'scary moments' like (Spoiler - click to show)burning in flame forever or its few moments of pathos (Spoiler - click to show)which I can't even think of; perhaps giving up your spellbook?.

As for lurking horror, I'm just still mad about the Chinese food puzzle. It's actually a great game.

This game has no puzzles whatsoever, which is not necessarily a drawback. Games like Galatea and Aisle have shown that such things can be done effectively.

The game consists of an art gallery where four different characters can view 12 different paintings. Each person has a different take on the painting, and often you can discover the 'true meaning' of a painting from one character and not the other.

The game shows how art is partly the author and partly the viewer, and how the viewer creates art as it observes it. In this respect, it reminds me a lot of "Creatures such as we" by Lynnea Glasser.

I didn't enjoy the genre of the tale, though. It has the breathy, shocking, Schadenfreude feeling that's so popular. Books like the Kite Runner or Mudbound or other books where the characters have horrible or depressing secrets and it all comes together to a kind of gritty 'determination to live despite all' don't entice me. The story did not move me, which I found disappointing, considering that I'm a big fan of Ian Finley's work.

In Earth and Sky, you play as a woman who discovers superpowers, together with her brother.

There are two times where you use your powers: a training session, and a battle. Before each of these events is a short exposition/exploration segment.

The exposition sections use a menu conversation system with the chance to be normal or to use crazy B-movie dialog.

The plot is silly, but the writing is vivid and you can really imagine what is going on. I think the author was very successful here.

I recommend this game, especially because it is so short that you have nothing to lose by playing it.

As soon as I read the premise of Fate, I found it exciting. As you immediately learn, you are a pregnant queen about to give birth; you also have the capacity to see your child's future. Your goal is to change that future.

Gijsbers' game has excellent writing, reminding me of the best parts of Ian Finley's Kaged and Adam Cadre's Varicella. But what I appreciated most was something else; no matter how many IF games I play, I still seem to need walkthroughs for everything. But I didn't have this issue for this game, because:

1. You can always reach some sort of ending in the game, and your endings improve as you go on. So if you can't get more than halfway in the game, you get a halfway-decent ending.

2. Almost all of the puzzles seem to have multiple solutions.

The game has a dark theme, and includes violence. But your character is clearly motivated by a positive goal, and the game rewards you whether you choose violence or not. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that you can reach what I consider the best ending without (Spoiler - click to show)injuring the pixie. However, I didn't find a way to avoid (Spoiler - click to show)killing the gardener; but as I said, the game doesn't force you to do anything you don't want to.

The moral choices seemed a bit easier to me as well, since your character is (Spoiler - click to show)a prisoner, and (Spoiler - click to show)her family is at war with her husband, who stole her away and won't promise to stop her child from being killed.