Reviews by MathBrush

Twiny Jam is a competition requiring entries to have 300 words or less in the code. Many of these games are pretty spare. This game is one of the richest and complex I've seen within this word limit. It is a one-room escape game with numerous puzzles.

As a non-Twiny Jam game, it is only a short bit of fun. But as an example of what you can do in a constrained format, it is excellent.

Fail-Safe is my absolute favorite Jon Ingold game. The game has an unusual plot device which you discover quickly. I won't talk about it in this review, because the game is strong enough without it.

The game is set in a damaged spacecraft that must be explored. The difficulty and fun lies in trying to figure out how the spacecraft actually worked.

The game has some timed events (which are fun but hard) and some hard-to-find exits (which is annoying but fun if you can find them).

This game can be played enjoyably multiple times and has a several, interesting endings.

This game has really grown on me. When I first played it, I found the atmosphere a bit depressing and the puzzles underclued. However, after revisiting it, I've realized that this game is a true classic. Especially when compared to other mystery games; this one really stands out.

The writing has a very strong style; for instance, we have the following:

"This room is long and thin, like a jailhouse corridor, from the doorway in the northeast corner to the large bay window opposite which stretches the length of the room, overlooking the street outside. The colours are your eyes on a Sunday; red like blood, red like the leather of the over-stuffed chair, which sits a cheap trophy by the main desk. A bookshelf fills the east wall."

The whole game is filled with a feeling of inevitable loss or failure; not of the game itself, but for life in general.

The puzzles are difficult to figure out. For more casual players like me, I recommend exploring until you feel you've seen everything; trying to solve every puzzle at least once; revisiting it after a day; then using a walkthrough. The ending surprised me twice, and even now, I don't really understand all of its implications. For me, this game only improves more and more with time.

Adventure was the very first text adventure of all time. It inspired the genre and its name.

The point of the game is to gather a variety of treasures and bring them back to a small building. The game is pretty accurately based on the Mammoth Caves, which explains the mazes and the fact that exits and entrances sometimes don't match up exactly (i.e. going west and then east may not leave you where you started).

For me, the most enjoyable way to play this game was to keep it at a slow pace, going back to it time and again while playing other games. I kept a numbered list of every room with all of its exits to other rooms. This made the game much easier. After several weeks, I got to a point where I couldn't get any further for several days. I finally looked up a walkthrough for the last three or four puzzles.

Once you get all the treasures, there is an endgame that is surprisingly good; it seems more like a modern deconstruction of the game than the very first game of all.

I played the 350 point version, and I found the game incredibly enjoyable. I admit that I used the wicker cage bug (as mentioned in another review), where you can carry everything in the wicker cage. To get full points, you must remove the items from the cage outside of the building before placing them in there.

Every Interactive Fiction player should play this game because so many other games reference it heavily.

This game was one of the two winners of the very first IF Comp. It is well known for being one of Plotkin's most difficult games, and one of the most difficult well-known games in general.

You play a loner who leaves a picnic/party to look around a secluded woodland area. Puzzles are hard due to:

1. Not knowing what your goal is;

2. Being able to put the game in an unwinnable state without knowing it;

3. Fast-paced timing.

Despite, or possibly because of the difficulty, this has remained a very popular game. Perhaps this is because the game has an inspirational feel. It is easy to identify with the protagonist, and the games understated writing gives you a sense of wonder.

The game was intended to be completed in 2 hours. You will certainly reach an ending within two hours.

This is my favorite Short game. This game is set in the future, when a colony from earth has developed gene-altering technology. The setting is not really important, however. What is important is the negotiation and the recording features.

Negotiation: The main purpose of the game is to work out what will happen between earth and the planet. Your job is to communicate this, but you have to understand the symbolism of the settlers. The bulk of the game is focused on figuring out what to say and how to say it.

Recording: This is actually not even necessary to the completion of the game, so some players have missed it. There are several recordings in the game which can be 'processed' to one of several different modes, such as a cartoon mode, a scientific mode, etc. It was hilariously fun, and unique among games I have played.

One of the great sci-fi games.

In the TADS game To Hell in a Hamper, you play a man in a hot-air balloon headed for immediate danger. Your only hope is to lighten your load, but you are hindered by your companion, Mr. Booby, who is a skillful hoarder.

The puzzles in this game are creative and enjoyable. I laughed out loud several times and showed it to my family. The humor works because it plays off the urgency and the tension between you and Booby.

I do believe it's impossible to get to an unwinning state without dying, but it can make the puzzles much much harder. It can be worth it to restart if you realize you need something, as the game is relatively short.

Chlorophyll felt like a commercial game to me. If Infocom had lived longer, I could see this as being one of their "Beginner" games (which were never very easy, as far as I can tell). It's well-polished, with a strong background story and lots of extra details.

It's a mid-length game set on a distant world. You play a young plant-woman with her plant-woman mother. You must explore a base while also coming to grips with your own coming adulthood and independence.

At times, I stopped playing Chlorophyll for a few weeks because the game seemed too open without much direction, and I felt overwhelmed. As I pressed through, though, I found that you were guided pretty well, and I found the last three areas enjoyable.

The only other sticking point was the long intro where you can't do very much. It made it annoying to restart. Other than that, this is one of the best 'recent' games.

In the Moonlit Tower, you explore a small 3-story tower to help remember who you are and your past. Like Dreamhold, the key to your memory seems to be masks, but much of the game, you don't know what to do with the mask.

The setting is dreamlike and very poetic. It is the game most likely to find its way into a book of poems or an art gallery. The author borrowed its imagery and story from several cultures, including Mongolia and China.

The puzzles are mostly the examine/pick-up-object type until you progress very far, and then they get a bit more difficult. There are multiple endings, some of which are hard to find.

Unlike most games I review, I have never finished Blue Lacuna. The reason I am writing this review anyways is that I don't think I ever will.

I've tried finishing it a few times, and I haven't been stumped by puzzles (especially since I chose story mode). Instead, I just feel overwhelmed by the game every time I play. It just seems that there are so many options; by making the game more open and free, it has moved in the opposite direction of traditional IF, where the parser was restrictive.

I've always thought a more realistic game would be better, but I think in a way I prefer the restrictiveness of traditional IF; I prefer a straighter path or paths, where you have to try and figure out the right step forward.

Blue Lacuna operates as a traditional parser, but also has a keyword system allowing objects, people, and conversational topics to be pursued in depth. It is one of the most non-linear games I have seen, and is large and well-written.

If I finish the game, I will return to add more comments.

*******

I have now finished the game, and boy, was it huge!! I used a walkthrough and it still took me 3-4 days to play through.

The most tedious part was obtaining all of seven certain cutscenes.

The game gives you hints if you get lost or seem bored.

The game lasts forever, and includes four total worlds

I enjoyed the last half much more than the first half.

This is the biggest game I have every played, except possibly for worlds apart.