Reviews by MathBrush

This is an interesting game from the 2022 French IFComp. You wake up in the back of a limo having lost all of your memories and have to discover who you are and where you are going.

It's written in Twine using a retro-looking font (appropriate for the name Retrospection, but not otherwise pertinent to the story).

Perspective and identity are a major component of the game. Both first and second person are used, as are gender-neutral french language (the pronouns iel/lea, as well as ending adjectives with .e like 'fiancé.e'). Your opinion of yourself evolves as memories trickle.

This game is a good example of how 'bad' design principles can work well if used judiciously. This game contains examples of 'gauntlet' design (where you have to pass certain trials and need to restart if you 'fail'), as well as having large chunks of non-interactive text that fills the whole page. Despite this, the large chunks are well-written, and the game is structured in a way that replay is quick and not tedious.

The game even includes a very fun visually interactive element a (spoilers for mechanics but not content (Spoiler - click to show)jigsaw puzzle), and possibly more; there are many endings, of which I saw two 'losing' endings and one ending I consider a 'winning' ending (mega spoilers for content)(Spoiler - click to show)deciding I wasn't worthy to return to life.

This is an entry in the 2022 French IFComp written in Ink. It starts off in an intense situation in a haunted house before flashing back to 'how it all started'.

It includes several possible relationships, the possibility of death for you and others, and a lot of state tracking. A typical portion of gameplay is reaching a room or series of rooms with the option of looking at several different sub areas. In each sub area, you can grab an object to use or attempt some kind of action. Keys are common.

The storyline and puzzles are satisfyingly good; I think both could stand to be improved and rely too heavily on tropes. However, I found the characters interesting and the puzzles much more fun than most Ink games.

There are few bugs (I think I found one about a drawer being stuck but it tells you what's in it anyway?). Overall, I found it mostly polished, pretty descriptive, interesting interactivity, emotional impact from exciting scenes, but probably won't play again.

This is a French IFComp game.

I think a lot of the interesting parts of this game come from the first few moments, so I'll put most of the review in spoilers in case you want to try it out real quick. I can say that it should be apparent fast what is going on, and that the first few seconds are interesting, and that the comma in the game title is not a typo.

(Spoiler - click to show)This is a game where you have to type out journal entries over several 'days'. The twist is that the entries are pre-determined: you have to guess what someone would type in a journal and hope that you're typing what they want you to. Every character you get wrong (including punctuation!) deducts a point. Every correct word adds a point up to 50. When you lost all 50 points, you have to restart that day.

The game doesn't last too long, so it can be completed in one sitting. This was intimidating, though, as a non-native speaker, but there are mechanics that help with that over time. The game did pull a couple of tricks on m though.

+Polish: The game is very polished.
+Interactivity: It was weird and I don't think it would work for other games, but I liked it in this one.
-Descriptiveness: The actual text was quite vague.
+Emotional impact: I was impressed by the cleverness.
-Would I play again? Not much replay value.

This French IF Comp game has you sent as a spy to an alchemists lair to search for evidence of misdeeds.

You are equipped with a camera of sorts to take images of suspicious things. There are several secrets to find and a few hints of world-building.

This is written in the Donjon language, a native French language alternative to Inform 7 but also done in natural language. The file can be read in plain text, which I had to resort to to solve it.

My experience with the implementation was mixed. Playing IF in a language I'm not completely fluent in is always a challenge. It was hard to tell if something was implemented weird or if I was the one who was being weird.

But here are a few things that I think are definitely the game's issue:
-Several nouns are mentioned but not implemented. For instance, a desk has notes on it, but the game doesn't recognize 'notes'. In the end game, there are (Spoiler - click to show)chains but trying to 'regarder' them or 'prendre' them makes the game confused.
-There's a big issue with the 'taking' code: (Spoiler - click to show)the source code has special results if you 'deplacer' the rug or the alembic, but the game also lets you just 'prendre' those things without triggering the special event.
-Many objects have an adjective+noun name, but you have to type both. I became deeply frustrated with a 'livre verte' because I couldn't P Livre or P Verte.

So, overall, I thought the worldbuilding was cool and the camera device. But the frustration prevented a totally enjoyable experience.

Edit: as a side note, I had a little trouble due to my silly american keyboard not having any accent symbols. I got around it by copying and pasting words from the text, though.

This game takes the classic, depressing/sacrifical tale of the little matchgirl and uses it as a setting for a larger story.

In the original story, each match a girl lit gave her another vision of brighter things. In this game, each match is used to teleport to the user to...whatever location Ryan was interested in talking about that day?

The overall puzzle structure is fairly lenient; it is generally a fetch quest, and each task can almost always be solved by brute force, but has internal logic.

+Polish: The game is smooth. I had a couple of issues with synonyms here and there (literally can't remember what, but it was me typing dumb stuff), but the vast majority of possible actions I tried worked great.
+Descriptiveness: Very clear and easily envisioned settings and characters.
+Interactivity: The quest structure is simple, but I felt allowed to go off the rails at times.
+Emotional impact: It didn't have quite the gut punch of the original, but was more fun.
+Would I play again? Sure!

This iterative game series (each building on the one before it) has gotten to some pretty clever puzzles. I especially enjoy the puzzle that leads to (mild spoilers (Spoiler - click to show)the axe).

Implementation issues are rife, though. To complete it, I had to use the follow non-standard verbs (moderate spoilers): (Spoiler - click to show)SNIP, use BLANK with BLANK, and POUR.

While the increasing puzzle size has made the game quite a bit more enjoyable, I almost with we were seeing multiple levels of polish and implementation instead, with less and less bugs and more fanciness. But the problem with that is that minimalist content is easy to add; its complexity is linear, with a small change in size requiring a small change in coding. But smooth programming is quadratic; making a very polished game requires coding in tons of interactions between different items and things, adding responses to everything players try, getting a lot of testers, etc. So I'm not sure it would work in practice to show that through a series of games.

This edition of the iterative series (each adding new material to the previous game) adds quite a few new rooms and makes previous interactions require more direct input.

However, most of the new rooms are quite sparse, and the new syntax for things isn't always clear (for instance, it took me a while to figure out how to use the (Spoiler - click to show)grabber). Also, it includes exits that are indicated in the status bar but not the text, which I find annoying in most games. Overall, though, I'm still interested in seeing what's next.

This edition of the iterative game series (each one building on the code of the last) improves on the premise by including a new reactive NPC (Rex, a dog who follows you) and incorporating light and a dark subterranean area.

There are still unfixed bugs or quality of life issues from the past that likely won't get fixed in future updates (like 'bathroom' being lower case or disambiguation issues with keys), but it's pretty fun seeing all the things you can do.

As an individual game, 2 stars. As part of the series, 3 stars.

This is a fairly abstract Ink game (and one that I helped beta test).

In it, you play as a college student roped into a demonstration about Smart Theory. The speaker goes off for quite a while about smart theory, and you can choose between making snarky comments, playing along or being passive.

The Smart Theory is a parody of political theories. As presented, it could apply to both American political parties. Some digs seem aimed at one specific side (for instance, the huckster is selling a book called Dumb Fragility, which from the in-game explanation seems like a riff on liberals talking about white fragility), but it could apply to just about any political theory.

Overall, it has several humorous moments and works smoothly. However, I thought the random nonsense words didnt' work as well (like Bathcunk) and would have preferred more chances to act.

This game has you try to encounter 13 different phobias as you explore a small area with some woods and a bar.

The range of possible phobias is pretty big and I learned some new ones (like halophobia and ailuriphobia).

This game is written with PunyInform, a version of Inform shrunk down so that compiled files can run on smaller/retro devices.

However, it doesn't take full advantage of the platform, and is weak in many areas. For instance, there are shelves that have several items on them, as seen from decompiling the code. However, X SHELVES, SEARCH SHELVES, and LOOK ON SHELVES all show them as empty. As another example, the barman tells you to 'try buying <a certain item in the game>'. But BUY <the item> doesn't work. There were many such frustrations with the code. There is one person listed in credits who might have been a tester, but this could have used more testing.

-Polish: There is some rough implementation and some bugs.
+Descriptiveness: The setting is mundane, but the phobias were interesting.
-Interactivity: I felt frustrated by the responsiveness.
-Emotional impact: The storyline and fears didn't really draw me in.
+Would I play again? It's an interesting concept, and I never found 4 of the fears.