Ratings and Reviews by MathBrush

This is one of the best murder mystery games; you interview a variety of very vocal NPC's with different personalities, you pick up clues, look through a house, then deduce a murderer and then arrest them.

The NPC's are vibrant and active, moving about the house, talking about each other and their actions. It must have been an enormous amount of effort to implement these NPC's.

The story itself is necessarily somewhat weak. As the murderer can change every time, everyone's backstory and alibi have to be flexible enough to account for the changes, and there is no sense of urgency in the game.

A must-play for murder mystery fans.

'Balances' is a short game based on Infocom's celebrated Enchanter series. In fact, the opening area is directly based on the sample walkthrough in the manual of the original Enchanter game.

This game demonstrates some of Inform's best abilities: indistinguishable objects, games involving large numbers, magical spells that interact with each other, a balance that weighs different objects, etc.

The game is relatively fun, but short and without a coherent plot. It can be a good introduction to the Enchanter series for those who aren't sure about Infocom games.

Graham Nelson wrote a longer game with similar elements: The meteor, the stone, and a long glass of sherbet. Those who like this game should definitely try the longer Meteor game.

Kerkerkruip is a randomized dungeon RPG game. You fight through a crowd of enemies using different tactics and absorbing the powers of the defeated. You pick up treasure and magic spells along the way.

The randomization allows for immense replay value. Also, the game has an adaptive difficulty setting, so the better you do, the harder each replay is.

You have many options, like attacking, 'focusing', dodging, etc. This is the only IF game with such a well-developed system as of now (2015), as far as I can tell.

The game is relatively squick-less (no gross blood or other similar things). You face a variety of human and monster enemies. Each session can be completed relatively quickly (less than an hour).

Lydia's Heart is a game in the class of Anchorhead, Mulldoon Legacy, Curses!, and Worlds Apart in terms of size and story. To see the size of the game, check out the provided map, and realize that 90% of the rooms have their own detailed puzzle.

First, the story. You play a young girl at a southern motel who is entrapped in the mysterious plottings of a cult. You must find a way to escape their clutches. There are twelve or more NPC's, each of which can be asked numerous questions. The twelve NPCS's are mostly static, but later they move about a bit. The workings of the cult are explored in great detail, both at the motel and other locations.

As for puzzles, they are very, very difficult. This is the same author as Not Just an Ordinary Ballerina, which had very difficult puzzles as well. As an example, there are several locks in the game, which are opened in three or four different ways, two of which are almost never done in IF games. Items must be gathered from far away and assembled into one whole. Characters must be encouraged to move. And some just completely improbable actions must be taken.

However, I took a simple approach; I would just go as far as I could without getting frustrated, then start consulting the hints. The hint system is AMAZING. Just get as many hints as you need. Don't feel bad about it! The author intended this game as more of a story than just a puzzle fest; by consulting the first few hints for each puzzle, you're just making the level of difficulty low enough that the puzzles are still fun, but the story can still progress.

Several reviewers complained about mazes, but they don't realize that sometimes mazes are fun. The author allows you to bypass them with magic words, but then people feel mad about missing 100% completion. I subscribe to a different view; I love stories and settings, and I would rather skip all puzzles in a game to get a good story. Puzzles are fun, but they aren't the reason I play IF (except for Ad Verbum and Praser 5).

This Infocom game is directed towards younger players but is appropriate for adults; in fact, the game is still very challenging. The fantasy elements are charming and fun (and sometimes pretty creepy): an army of boots, a witch who steals cats, ghosts who murder you...

All the puzzles can be solved with sufficient exploration and minor logic; I missed a few areas and items in my exploring, though, because the world is rich and beautiful.

As far as I can tell, the game is for beginners because there are only the n,e,s,w directions (no ne, se, nw, or sw); most puzzles have multiple solutions; most items are easily visible (except for the most important one); and death won't come unless you have been repeatedly warned.

The game is split into two sections; one where the player explores a quaint village with minor annoyances (such as locked gates and a poodle); and a second section where the village has turned dark and evil (with murderous ghosts and a hellhound).

As many have stated, this is a memorable game, more so than most of the Infocom games I have played, or interactive fiction in general. As usual, I played this game on the Lost Treasures of Infocom app on the iPad.

In this Infocom game, you play PRISM, a sentient computer who has been designed to simulate the future for planning purposes.

This game has no real puzzles until the end. You simply explore. First, you explore your interface, which is very large (having 30+ distinct files you can open). Then you explore the actual simulation, which is a large downtown city, with what felt like 30-50 locations. Once you explore it long enough, the simulation accumulates enough data to simulate another decade into the future.

You must record interesting events and places in the future to bring back for planning purposes. I somehow missed out on a simple mechanic, and got very stalled in the game. (This is not a spoiler, because it is not a puzzle or a surprise, more of a guess-the-verb): To present your recordings, you must tell people "look at recording".

The developer has stated that the game was intended as a criticism of Reagan's policy.

The game is fun. You need to explore; don't just rush through, trying to do what they say. You need to record a lot of each decade to win, so try and get a mental map of the game.

I played this game on the iPad's Lost Treasures of Infocom app, which provides most of Infocom's games (except Nord and Bert, and the already-free Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy).

Dual Transform, by Andrew Plotkin, is one game that I think would be great for beginners without being condescending or annoying; it is also great for experienced players.

In this game, you control a console that alters the environment. You stay in the same room with the same item, but the room and item change appearance.

Once you figure out the logic of the game, it is mostly one straightforward move after another, with a couple of little sticking points that provide more satisfaction.

The writing and setting are top-notch, making this a memorable game. Having recently played "So Far", it seems that the author took some ideas from that game and concentrated/refined them into this game.

This is one of my two favorite Emily Short games (the other being Floatpoint). In this game, a re-telling of Cinderella, you play an observer in the trying-on-of-shoes portion of the story. You can take no actions, but you can introduce topics in the conversation to steer you to one of six possible endings.

This game has some memorable moments and strong dialogue. It is fun to replay over and over again, and does not feel tedious in doing so.

Short has provided the source code for this game, which is entertaining in and of itself. If you haven't seen Inform code before, it consists of mostly whole sentences, and is much more understandable than C++, Python, Perl, etc. So even if you are not a programmer, you can understand a lot of it.

Dead Like Ants is indeed about ants. You play an ant in red overalls sent by the queen to appease 5 creatures located on your tree.

The game uses non-standard directions (such as "widdershins") and it provides other surprises that toy with your expectations of interactive fiction.

The numerous NPC's were surprisingly charming. The writer derived inspiration from Hans Christen Andersen, Lewis Carroll, and the musical "Into the woods". The game has an overall fairy-tale feel.

Once you pass the initial surprises, the games puzzles are not very difficult. This is a game to be finished in less than half an hour. I recommend it to everybody, because it has a great effect and doesn't take long to play.

I played "So far" years ago, made it to the bird-animal farm, and never got any further. It was just overwhelming. I don't like games that are so extremely open-ended that you have no idea if what you are doing is helpful or game ending. That's not to say that I dislike non-linear games; a lot of non-linear games have items that suggest what you need to do, and then you find a way to do it.

In "So Far", you are utterly clueless most of the time. So I just gave in after a few years, grabbed a walkthrough, and checked out the game. The worlds I found were fascinating and alien, like many of Porpentine's games.

I was surprised that many of the worlds were connected with abstraction and metaphor; the first two worlds put me off by making me think they would all be well-established alien worlds without any explanation.

Having gone through with a walkthrough once, I plan on playing again, relying on my memory of the last attempt but not referring to the walkthrough. Hopefully, this will let me explore more, and have fun with some puzzles whose solution I didn't understand or can't remember.

For those who want a taste of the abstract worlds, there is a world where (Spoiler - click to show)everything is dark and everything is sound.