Ratings and Reviews by MathBrush

A Bear's Night Out was nominated for an XYZZY award for Best Game in its second year. You play as a teddy bear exploring the house of your owner.

This is a classic 90's game. Tight puzzles, jokey references to other games, a real sense of atmosphere, many unexaminable objects. If you enjoyed Plotkin's or Nelson's early games, you will enjoy this game.

By the game's own count, it has 32 references to previous games, including letting you (Spoiler - click to show)play Curses!, Dungeon, and Adventureland.

This game is about two women, one staying in another' s home. The story of how they got there and who they are is slowly unraveled throughout the game.

As I played the first 3/4 of the game, I thought it was one of the best horror games I had ever played, with good implementation. The little hints to the real nature of the situation came out so well.

But I didn't care for the endings. I felt it didn't mesh well with the earlier setup. But this is common to most horror games.

There are a few annoying search-everywhere puzzles, so don't feel bad getting help.

This is one of my favorite Cadre games, best known for Photopia and 9:05 (and my other favorite, Endless, Nameless).

In this fantasy game, you play a dungeon maker charged with building an inescapable dungeon. Unfortunately, your first test subject is extremely resourceful, producing items out of nowhere and charming all opponents.

You have to place traps on a path through a 4x4 grid. You have to get the right traps and in the right order. It is tedious, but each playthrough (besides a few cutscenes) is different, as the adventurer reacts to your challenges with new resources.

Buying each trap is also funny.

It got a little tedious after 3-4 times; I had the basic idea, but I knew it would take a lot more to get it down right, so I used the walkthroughs.

Wonderful game.

In this game, you play as Sherlock Holmes' dog as you investigate a murder. The game features an innovative movement system based on Pacian's Castle of the Red Prince.

You explore a huge variety of locales with what seems like a hundred or more objects, but due to the system, it can be done quickly.

The one aspect of the game that initially turned me off is that it requires exhaustive search of all such objects. You have a single command to search them, but you have to repeat it over, and over, and over. It becomes like Where's Waldo.

However, as the story unfolded (using hints occasionally because I hurried through it in an hour), I became enthralled. This is a good mystery. As the author states, it is intended to be solved in your head, and not through gameplay mechanics (contrast this with the wonderful Infocom mystery Ballyhoo, where the focus is on solving puzzles to obtain more evidence, but a psychological element is still present).

I found the solution to be very logical and satisfying. I had two false accusations I was convinced of in the middle of the game before I realized I had missed crucial evidence.

Strongly recommended.

P.S. I was stuck at the very beginning because I did not understand the mechanic. You need to (Spoiler - click to show)smell nouns that appear in the descriptions of people, even if they are not present. So if someone smells like they went to a party, type SMELL PARTY, etc..

Bell Park is one of the four games put out by the author in 2013, and is one of the best.

You play a youth detective like Nancy Drew or the Hardy boys, but get in way over your head. Most of the game is a parody of these books, showing what would happen if someone really tried to solve crimes as a youth.

I enjoyed the game. The ending was strange, but fits the story. I recommend this game.

Beautiful Dreamer is one of the best Twine games to come out so far this year. In this fantasy game, you try to sleep at night during a windstorm.

You slowly realize that the game's world is not the same as your own. The world has a strong internal consistency, and you begin to learn more of its rules and nature.

The game is quite large. I was quite thrilled to discover (Spoiler - click to show)a classic CYOA gamebook near the beginning of the game. I thought the game was quite big already, but when I finished it and read the credits, I discovered that I had missed thousands of words' worth of text, which I went back and read.

The tone is a lot like Howl's Moving Castle (both the book and the movie), with archetypal characters, much talk of dreams, surreal magic, etc.

I also felt there were many similarities with Eidolon: (Spoiler - click to show)exploring a dark and shadowy bedroom, dream-type worlds, and a moth motif.

I strongly recommend this game.

This short choice game has lavish and beautiful drawings for each room/scenario, but the navigation system is classic CYOA style, plus a compass rose.

The story is a version of Cinderella as a secret spy. Cinderella is an action-hungry operative who clashes with the advice of the more level-headed Godmother, providing for some of the best moments in the game.

Overall, I enjoyed it. It felt like an interactive webcomic. Because classic comic strips were some of my favorite reading material as a kid, I enjoy the idea of interactive web-comic as a form of IF, and would like to see more of this in the future.

Rat Chaos's opening is purposely bad. You are in a position of authority over an area, with the option to summon rats or not.

The game is goofy and fun at first. But the 'real' content takes some searching to find. In the end, Rat Chaos has a powerful, visceral message.

It's hard to say too much more about it without spoiling it.

As of Septembet 2015, the link no longer functions, but I found someone on an IF forum willing to share a copy.

Hennessy has some very good twine games, but I didn't feel like this is one. It still has metaphorical meaning, an interesting 'cover story', good narrative voice, etc. like his other games. The story is about a dungeon, and about rpgs and dungeons in general.

However, one of the games features is that every link provides a huge wall of often repetitive text. Also, the narrative voice is jokey/juvenile, whichI personally don't enjoy very much in a game.

Overall, this is an above average twine game, but I don't recommend it. I strongly recommend the other games by the author.

King of Bees is short, with a braided storyline (where choices temporarily affect the storyline before converging again.

This game reminds me a bit of Endless, Nameless in its visual design,with a combination of types.

You play a space knight, who is sent to kill the king of bees. The game has several layers of meaning, and it is hard to know what the ultimate message is ((Spoiler - click to show)for instance, is the heavy-handed environmental subtext meant as part of the ultimate message, or is it presented ironically?).

I recommend it.