Ratings and Reviews by MathBrush

Aisle is a well-known game with a strange mechanic; you are inside a grocery aisle shopping for food, and you only get one action before the game ends.

One-action games such as Rematch or Pick up the Phone Booth and Aisle started appearing soon after Aisle's publication. It became a mildly popular genre, and still is.

What makes Aisle successful? Part of its success is its specific details; you're not just in any aisle, you're by the gnocchi, and gnocchi remind you of your trip to Italy; the woman by you isn't just a stranger,or is she?

Another reason the game is fun is that the endings contradict each other; the story of who you are and what your past is actually changes based on your decision, so that your one action generates an entire past.

The third reason I think many people enjoy it is the wide variety of moods in the endings, from pathetic to hopeful to violent.

This is a game that everyone should play at least one time.

Patanoir is a wordplay game with a unique game mechanic: you can take and place similes. If someone is cold as ice, for example, you can take the ice, leaving a warmer, friendlier person. You can then drop the ice somewhere else, making the atmosphere in a room cold as ice.

The story itself is frankly unimportant. It is shoehorned in simply because the detective genre uses a lot of similes. Seemingly tense conversations can be left and returned to hundreds of turns later with no problems.

The game is mid-length, requiring a few hours to play. I found it very enjoyable to walk around with pockets full of similes, looking for a place to drop them.

The only game really like it is Counterfeit Monkey or possibly Ad Verbum, but each is different enough from this game to make it unique.

This is part 3 of Earth and Sky. I played the second one only a few weeks ago, but I already forgot an important power of the characters, and it made the first puzzle very hard for me. However, talking to to each other enough gives you all solutions.

You play two characters, one with sky powers (flying, zapping, fogging), and one with earth powers (punching, lifting, jumping). You are trying to rescue your parents.

The game is pretty short, with a linear sequence of puzzles that you have to solve one-by-one. The writing was good, the graphics were fun (mostly "BLAM!"-type comic words). I was disappointed that I had forgotten so much of the plot from the last playthrough.

This game is very good, but not the best. I think that a few of the other games from 2004 IFComp were better, but that the whole set of 3 Earth and Sky games make a very good package, like a Chopped chef that wins because of three solid courses, while the other chefs had one incredible course and a few poor courses.

Andromeda Apocalypse seemed unappealing to me for a long time (I imagined some kind of space battle simulator). And when I first started playing, the language seemed a bit weird.

But then it all pulled together. This is a great exploration/adventure sci-fi game. The focus is on understanding the mystery, with the occasional computer log and a fun electronic encyclopedia called the e-Pad.

A short-to-mid length game, right on the upper end of most IF comp entries. The game is very polished except for annoying 'guess the noun' issues (you must say 'windows' not 'window''; a 'large strange object' is 'object', etc.)

Overall, a great feel. Reminded me of Eric Eve's nightfall, and a bit like Scavenger. Definitely worth playing.

Divis Mortis is the best game of its genre (zombie survival) that I have played. Similar to Babel, you wake up in a medical building, not knowing who you are. Unlike Babel, there are many others in the building with you, and the building is a normal hospital. Or, it WAS a normal hospital.

This game does a good job of portraying the tense scenes associated with zombie survival movies; coming face to face with zombies, trying to find basic necessities, etc. The puzzles definitely feel like part of the game, and not just a bunch of silly exercises to run through.

The game isn't quite as well polished as the very best games on IFDB, but it is obviously well-tested and does a good job. It lasts for a few hours.I recommend it.

Hunter, in Darkness has some of the best pacing of any IF game out there. You are hunting, in the darkness, and you must follow your prey through a cave. Things quickly go from bad to worse, and your injuries and fears come to the front.

In this game, you usually know exactly what you need to do, but may not know how to do it. The final big puzzle in particular took me a long time to get, but the writing was good enough that the game didn't feel stagnant while I was experimenting to solve it.

If you enjoyed Gun Mute or even Attack of the Robot Yeti Zombies, but wanted a more serious experience, this game is for you.

Pick up the Phone Booth and Aisle is mildly better than Pick up the Phone Booth and Die and not quite as good as Aisle. It is a parody game. Every action you perform results in some sort of ending.

Most of the endings are pretty funny. Some, though, like 'waylay', have some wildly inappropriate touches. This varied feel comes from the fact that it is a huge collaboration.

Only recommended if you enjoy parody games, such as the Mystery Science Theater 3000 games.

Original review:
This game is just a short story with about 10 pages of screenshots from Street Fighter, where a couple of women comment on your (a man's) playing abilities, with some lewd references thrown in.

Not much to see here.

Edit:Christina Nordlander pointed out that this game actually reverses the the roles of male and female gamers, where female gamers experience criticism and harassment. The game works much better with this interpretation, but it's still short and childish (although the subject matter is childish people, so is this genius on the author's part? It's hard to know with Soda51.)

Whom the Telling Changed consists of numerous choices. The game frequently asks you to do something, but the order is ambiguous, with two or more meanings. The way you interpret it changes the game. You also listen to a storyteller to whom you can ask questions,

This game uses the same keyword system Aaron Reed later used in Blue Lacuna, his ultra-massive epic. Fans of one game will likely be fans of the other.

I didn't really enjoy this game. I felt that it resisted me trying to play myself. One might say that the author merely wanted to add surprises, however Glasser's Creatures Such as We used a similar moral choice system where playing as myself led to both big surprises and a feeling that the game understood me.

A fairly well-known game. I pushed through it to the end, and was glad I did. There are many endings.

I enjoyed Scavenger, and will probably revisit it. You play a scavenger in a post-apocalyptic society who has a lead on a big find. You have to find and search a base. There are no big surprises here, but plenty of fun puzzles.

Some of the puzzles, though fun, were a bit under clued. At least four puzzles depend on you searching or moving objects that are not obviously searchable, or that are similar to earlier immobile/unsearchable objects, or which you are explicitly told have nothing in them. This draws back from the fun.

The games NPCs have a lot of character, especially in their descriptions and responses.

It may seem as if I didn't like this game, but it has that elusive 'it'-ness that makes a game enjoyable and with it. Perhaps this is the reason it was nominated for a Best Game XYZZY.