Reviews by MathBrush

This game was withdrawn from IFComp 1997 due to bugginess. It is big and enjoyable, but there is a hunger timer that I believe cannot be stopped.

It was large and ambitious but not beta-tested at all, which explains the problems. Marnie Parker later went on to write the graphics-intensive Carma, about punctuation coming to life.

The ghost house here is impressive, and looking at the decompiled text, it had a deep backstory going back hundreds of years.

Plotwise, it seems to deliberately be copying Hollywood Hijinks plus maybe something else (Casper?).

This game uses the relatively unknown JACL engine, but it plays pretty well.

This game is a sleeper hit; I hadn't heard of it, but it's well-put-together. You are on a floating scientific base on a small island that has experienced a recent die-off of fish, and a loss of all juvenile population. You are brought in from the outside to what is essentially a military situation.

The game has espionage, science, etc. Some of the puzzles are unfair a bit, but the game responds well to things you attempt to do, and contains a number of action scenes.

This is a mid-length game that has you trying to find, then deliver, a letter to Dr. Aardvarkbarf.

The game has a fairly large campus. Puzzles mostly focus on examining items, and physical things such as PUSH and PULL.

The game is clever, but the map is large and many things aren't clued to well. Nothing about it really stuck out.

This game has a long prologue as a young woman who dumped her boyfriend. After the prologue, you play the boyfriend.

The boyfriend's game is nonlinear and interesting, as you explore a mad scientist's house. It suffers too much from 'flail about until something interesting happens' syndrome, though. Its hard to know exactly what they want you to do.

But the writing is good and there are several interesting and well-written NPCs.

This is a standard epic fantasy quest exploring a temple, just like a DnD module.

You find a variety of keys and hidden passages, and different pieces of things that look like they go together, and magical clothing.

It's just not clued well, and its tedious. Keys are used multiple times, without much sense to it, so you end up trying every key on every door.

It's pretty long, and could be fun for fantasy fans.

This was the only IFComp game to never be rated at all. It's a german language game in an unusual file format.

It's quite large, and involves exploring ruins to find relics of ancient gods.

The engine could be better, and the game has some tedious puzzles (like opening 30 similar-colored baskets to find which basket an item randomly appears in).

This game reminds me in length and quality of a hosted Choice of Games commercial game. It has similar amounts of text per choice, and has 9 different relationships you can work on.

The main difference between this and choice of games is that there are frequently just 2 choices, while CoG tends to have 3 or more choices.

However, the author did a good job at making the game interesting by not making it clear which, if any, option is the 'right' option. I think this game provided a very clear picture of what a psych ward might be like. I chose to ally with a friend with borderline personality disorder.

This is one of Pacian's best games, which is saying a lot. It is intricate but casual, and lasts 1-2 hours for the main storyline.

You play as a ship captain whose twin brother has been taken and frozen due to your unpaid loans. You must travel to a variety of worlds and systems to get enough cash to free your brother.

The world model is purposely simple. Each world and its orbit constitute a single location. Each location has 1-5 npcs and 0-2 other nouns. The only interaction available with most NPCs is TALK TO, although some can BUY and SELL, and a few other interactions pop up later.

You can't examine anything, and there's no searching or any such thing. You just travel from world to world, building up money until you're done. There's no climactic finale, but it's still rewarding.

This game is one of the best science fiction games I have played.

This is one of my favorite Choice of Games games. You play as Eratosthenes (male or female), a real historical figure who estimated the radius of the earth and advised Ptolemy IV.

In this game, you have to deal with snarky advisors and scholars, reign in ambitious kings, work on engineering, romance a variety of people, or study mathematics. I felt a good deal of flexibility.

The writing is good, as is to be expected of the author of Choice of Robots, one the best Choice of Games of all time.

I enjoyed this game, because I'm a mathematician, and the game allowed me to hang out with with a female Euclid and with Archiemedes.

This game will appeal to fans of the Civilization series of games, and fans of math, classics, history, or engineering. The human emotions investigated are universal.

This game was nominated for an XYZZY for best game, and for best NPCs.

This is one of the larger Choice of Games, with quite an epic storyline. You conceive of a movie using a large amount of customization (how many leads? what genre? what subgenre? What other subgenera? Highbrow or lowbrow? Who directs? Who writes? Who stars?). The number of possibilities here really unlocks the game's potential as a wish-fulfillment device.

But making your movie comes with its own challenges. Getting a studio running, winning financial support, dealing with deadlines and spotty talent. I spent a large amount of money to get Frank Capra to direct my ensemble western.

Overarching everything is the shadow of repressive anti-communism hunters. You have to choose how you interact with Hollywood black listers, and what to say in communism hearings.

All of this makes the games general goal (making a great movie) very difficult; I found it more rewarding to focus on personal goals.

Finally, this game includes some parts quite unlike the standard choice of games format; for instance, there is a large puzzly section that has a well-developed location and object model as you search for a dog. This part feels a lot more like a parser game or like a twine game with strong world model (like Hallowmoor).

Overall, I believe this game deserves the XYZZY nomination, and stands among the best games of 2015.