Reviews by MathBrush

In this Ink game, you are a spirit or something similar in the physically manifested version of a witch's mind. Or rather, the witch is in the 'mind cave' and you give her directions while she describes them.

There are several puzzly elements. I never died or got locked out, so its possible that you can't lost, but I'm not sure. I found things like a maze, a giant that attacks you, and then a wide, branching area with different doors, where one 'ultimate door' was unlocked by all the others, as well as alchemy puzzles, a whole city street, etc.

Sometimes things seemed like they had to be done exactly 1 way, but I got by anyway (for instance, I used one ingredient wrong in a potion). A lot of the game seems more about roleplaying than about getting things right, and I'm okay with that).

Overall:
-Polish: The game could be more polished. There were a few occasional but noticeable grammar problems, and the storyline feels a bit incoherent.
-Descriptiveness: Things are often assigned interesting names, but few details are given about them. We know nothing about a 'window with a yellow frame' except it's a window with a yellow frame. We know nothing about a giant except that he's giant; a cat is just a cat. Minimalism can work, but for me here it didn't.
-Interactivity: I just forged forward because I've seen this type of game before and figured almost any choices could work, but I wished there was more feedback.
+Emotional impact: I found the game actually fun; surreal stuff like this is one of my favorite types of writing.
+Would I play again? Yes, it would be fun to explore.

This is the latest in Schultz's series of chess puzzles, some of which have a series of increasingly difficult simple puzzles, some of which focus on one or two challenging problems.

This focuses on a single endgame position. I struggled with it a bit; not being a chess person myself, some of the rules involved were a bit arcane to me (like the stalemate rules). And perhaps my biggest problem with the game is that the author assumes familiarity with how endgames run, making seemingly useful moves end instantly without much explanation (most were generally well explained, I'm just salty because I don't see how pc7 kc5 where the rook goes to d1 is a stalemate; I wish that particular one was either better explained or if it let the player make the move and try for a turn or two more before shutting it down). So I just had to rely on random guessing for the first few moves.

I thought about searching for help, and I did look on the forums, which reminded me to read the documentation, which helped me grasp things. In the end, it was satisfying. And I think that this was the most emotionally poignant of the chess games; while my main attraction to this game was the puzzle, the emotional aspects were a nice touch and well-integrated.

I do think there is a mistake in the verbs section (correct me if I'm wrong):
It says (Spoiler - click to show)"You can also say N to set (or re-set) the default piece to promote to, say, the knight. In this case, although K is usually the king in algebraic notation, K is referred to as the knight, since you can't have two kings on the board," but typing N just moves the king up a square. To actually change the promotion you have to type the letter of the piece you want to promote to after the move, like c8b for bishop. As written, the text implies that typing N lets you select what you promote into.

This game was entered in Parsercomp, and I'll admit I didn't finish it (though I got pretty far!)

You play as someone in a fairly secluded area that sees lightning hit a radiotower, and then strange things happening. I ended up exploring a very large house filled with bizarre tech.

The game is written in Godot, which I think is an open-source alternative to Unity (maybe I'm wrong?). The game loaded quickly and looked nice, with several animations and a map that updated frequently, and also some visual puzzles.

I struggled mightily at first to even see the game, as it was taller and wider than my laptop screen and didn't seem to have dynamic resizing. I tried fullscreening the browser, then I tried shrinking and fullsizing, and only then did I realize there was a 'fullscreen' button at the bottom. One itch option actually lets you make the game fullscreen from the beginning, I think.

Instead of having the player guess the commands or remember a commonly used set, like most traditional parsers, this game has a specific list of commands which can be used, about 6 on average. These commands don't admit any abbreviations, and while there are clickable links for each command, the links don't enter the commands for you; instead they tell you how to use them.

Text is split in three areas: the room description, the outcome of non-important action below that, and your input even further below, similar to Scott Adams games.

The game branches into several endings, some early, some later, and includes a lot of weapons of various efficacy and different monsters that randomly pop out to get you.

I encountered a game crashing bug early on (don't inspect the truck seat!) but I got around it. I got much further, until I found (Spoiler - click to show)a still figure watching the wall in a basement that took 3 weapons.. After I defeated it, with just a sliver of health left, the game said I needed to type NEXT to continue, but NEXT didn't work. Having encountered at least two game-locking bugs, and having heard that it ends on a cliffhanger, and having seem much of the game, I decided not to continue.

I get the impression that the author isn't heavily involved in a lot of current interactive fiction, and so just went with their own direction and imagination on what a parser game should look like, based on old memories (this is all wild assumptions). I find it nice to see what directions people would go in if not constrained by a wider society or community, and this seems pretty neat, kind of reminiscent of Adventuron, which seems to have had a similar development pipeline.

I give the game 2 stars for descriptiveness and emotional impact but bugs make it harder to give more. If fixed (along with typos and quality of life improvements), this would be a 4 or 5 star game.

This game was entered in Parsercomp, then taken out, then put back in.

I had a hard time engaging with this game. It's written for an online format that forces the focus onto text boxes. You are supposed to type words into the box that the game recognizes.

At first, I tried to put whatever words I thought fit good, but then I tried the boundaries. It recognized 'felicitation' but not 'felications', for instance. I later learned that it doesn't sentiment analysis, which is pretty neat!

The main part of the story is a sci-fi story, which I felt was oddly watered down and non-descriptive. I tried to copy a paragraph of the text to pick at it and analyze it, but that's when I realized the game forced the focus so you couldn't highlight anything. I was surprised to find later that this story wasn't new to the author, but borrowed from a 1950's publication, which I seemed to have not noticed when it was mentioned. I liked the author's original text better.

Between snippets of this text, there are two characters having a conversation about the text, with blank boxes for you to fill in like mad-libs. These conversations are mostly analyzing the text.

Overall, the game was polished and very complex, but I bounced off of the main story and the side story. I think it has an appeal, definitely to other people, but for me the whole thing felt a little bloodless.

From a technical standpoint it seems very impressive, overall!

This game was written in four days, which is very impressive given how complex it is.

This is a time travel game with 3 different periods you can hop back and forth between. You can also send items to different time periods as well.

Your goal is to go back and say goodbye to a girl you love who died, but in a different timeline.

There are about 6 or 7 different puzzles, and it's engaging, but there are a lot of rough edges. Especially in the graveyard, where I tried tons and tons of words, none of which were implemented. There are typos as well

I think this would be an amazing game if it was tested and polished. As it is, though, it is merely a promise of a future good game.

This game was originally written in Godot and ported to Unity.

You play as a researcher in an Antarctic base. You need to get up, shower, eat, and check out some samples.

Unlike most parser games, there's not much freedom in what you can type. It lists the commands you can use (usually 2-4), and when you type one in, it lists the possible objects/directions. It's highly constrained, so there are usually < 5 possible options at any point.

This kind of takes away the best part of a parser game (freedom) and the best part of a choice game (speed), leaving a bit of frustration.

This game has several typos and is unfinished. I think the core idea is great and fun (I like Antarctic base games) but it just needs more work and more time.

This is the final German IF Grand Prix 2022 game I played. It's a static pdf that's a gamebook.

You keep track of an inventory, health, money, and time. The main gameplay revolves around rolling dice for combat with slimes and kobolds, as well as, later on, some human combatants.

There are several 'grind zones' where you can fight with enemies and gain wealth as long as you like.

I found the game fairly tough to play as intended the first time through, with only 5 health and a lot of enemies that have a 33% chance to beat them per roll, and losing 1 health per loss. But it was fun.

I felt like the setting was often a bit generic, kind of like a random JRPG (you have villages with inns for recovery, slimes are the main enemy, etc.)

Overall, not life-changing but fun for a short time.

In this game, you crash-land near an abandoned arctic station and have to find your way to civilization.

I was worried at first, as playing a commodore 64 game in a foreign language seemed daunting. But the game actually has a great layout emphasizing important items and directions, and had many simple shortcuts to make the game easier.

There could be some improvements overall; the game is fairly short, not a lot is explained, and there's at least one typo I noticed. But I definitely appreciate the simplicity and it had a cute animal NPC.

This game takes place in a small apartment after you have moved in with your wife Laura. Most of the house is filled with packed boxes.

This game is remarkable for what it doesn't tell you, kind of like 9:05 in several ways. I've played several games by this author before that I felt like were rich and vivid. In contrast, this game is stark and minimalistic.

Essentially, you're trying to fall asleep but you feel a bit agitated. You need to find ways to calm yourself. There's a timer before you have to wake up at 7.

In the middle of the night, things change. You're awoken by a disturbance and need to investigate it.

I imagined that this would open up new areas to explore, but it didn't, really. Instead, careful exploration is required and you need to think about what kind of things would work logically for you in this situation.

In the end, the game was very polished, purposely non-descriptive, had interesting interactivity but didn't really connect with me emotionally. I could see myself playing again.

Note: I had to decompile to figure out some actions.

This German game has an English version, Wry, which was entered into Spring Thing and which was well-received.

I actually enjoyed this version a bit more, which I guess, for me, lends credence to the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis. I really appreciated how the game led you on on what to do, and how responsive it was, in general. In addition, I saw less of the ribald fantasies in this version, as I knew less commands to try out lol.

There were a couple of minor issues; looking at the wall gave a response in English ("On the wall above the sofa hang several pictures"), and X BILDER still lists a young lady being among the pictures even when the canvas has slipped out. But overall, I found this enjoyable and fresh.