Reviews by MathBrush

This is a great Twine puzzle game that manages to have immense complexity.

You play as Rosalinda, an animated skeleton who can detach her body parts, and Piecrust, a powerful mage turned tiny mouse.

Rosalinda can detach her body parts, allowing you to control up to 5 independent characters/things, including the mouse.

Piecrust can cast numerous spells, gaining more as the game progresses, with some serving as a Chekhov's gun.

Both have their own inventory of items. Items can be dropped, picked up, and, adding to complexity, used on things in the room or combined with each other or, reaching tertiary complexity, combined with each other and then used on items.

There is a big cast of characters. Overall, I'd say this game is more story-driven than the first one, which felt more like a puzzle box exploring using Rosalinda's bones in creative ways. This game has a lot more variety, and has extensive character development. Honestly, I loved it.

It's a long game, taking me several hours. The plot is hard to summarize, but basically Rosalinda is exploring her (un)life and where she came from, but her and her friends get captured and put on trial. Later, everyone is separated, and must find each other again.

This game is centered around three essentially immortal space marines (or equivalent) who love to make out and who are the last resort for armies to employ.

The game looks cool visually, and the writing is descriptive.

The plot was a bit hard for me to follow. A lot of it is just the main characters really enjoying laying on top of or close to each other. There is a fight, and at first I thought there'd be a big twist as they see something amazing, but it's just (Spoiler - click to show)the other side surrendering, which is what was implied would happen anyway.

Some of the links move the story forward and some are 'asides', but there's no back button and no way to distinguish the two links. I'd appreciate some way to know if a link is side info or 'go forward irrevocably'.

Overall, I found it polished and descriptive, but had difficulties with the interactivity and felt a reduced emotional impact due to confusion with the story.

If there were more games in the series, it would really cool to learn about the characters backgrounds, or major differences between them, or how they 'work'.

I need to preface this review by saying that I'm giving this game 5 stars only because it specifically fits some very niche interests of mine. I think if I was just giving recommendations for general audience it would likely be 3 stars due to being short.

This game starts with you inside a school looking out on a courtyard, seeing some people arguing. You approach them, wanting to learn more, but you realize you have nothing to offer them.

The plot then swerves in several ways. The rest of the review is in spoilers:
(Spoiler - click to show)
It becomes clear this is a post-apocalyptic world. There are few enough humans that the group you've found just calls themselves One, Two, and Three.

The big twist is that you forget everything every 30 minutes or so. You've established a routine for yourself to stay alive, but you weren't aware of the forgetting fact. You discover that someone stayed with you previously and took care of you, but also manipulated you.


The game is definitely short, which is why I hedge my recommendation, but I love the concept and the combination and it inspires me to think of the possibilities. I'd love to write a game with similar mechanics (it used to be very popular in parser games twenty years ago but I think it died out).

This is a potato-based game.

In it, you play as a detective who is ostracized for failing to discover the person who stole the Potato Peace statue years ago. But soon the thief contacts you, telling you to get credit for it. But what are his motives?

This is a mostly linear twine game with, I believe, AI potato art which can be very (intentionally) amusing, especially the smug potato mayor.

The story seems very inconsistent--even your own character, who seems to be a human woman in pictures, but is called a guy at one point and has a potato father in another picture. The plot is random and whacky and motivations seem to change all over the place.

There are a few options in the middle of the game but most come at the end.

My local representative is Beth van Dyne. She came to my school and talked to the students about passing bills.

She mentioned how thousands of bills were put forth in the last year, but only some really small number (like 50 or 15 or something) actually made it to a vote. Everyone was too deadlocked and there were a lot of committees to go through. It was disheartening.

This game takes a look at passing a bill and it is similarly disheartening, although it goes in a more hyperbolic direction. In this game everyone is directly corrupt, adding wildly inappropriate measures to your bill or literally threatening your life.

Parts of it were funny, one puzzle was clever, and overall I see a lot of good parts in the game. But I feel like it ended a bit abruptly, and could have included some committees, and overall I just don't agree with the vision (although that doesn't directly affect my rating).

This is an Ink game that takes a couple of hours to play. It's set in the world of Vampire: The Masquerade, where a powerful vampire asks you to help cover up a murder.

Along the way, you meet a lot of different groups of interest, a talented artists, several unusual and uncanny vampires, and a whole lot of trouble.

I'm a fan of the choice of games line of Vampire: The Masquerade titles. This one is smaller in scope than those, but has its own satisfying storyline.

I played as a Malkavian (sp?) and enjoyed numerous opportunities to use my abilities. That's usually my favorite part of these games, having a chance to flex supernatural powers.

I did encounter one bug, which I'll pass on to the authors, and I got confused at one point when the game wanted me to go back to places I had already 'completed' because it had added new material but didn't tell me that (so I thought it was bugged, asking me to complete something I already had).

The two parts of this game that shined out the most to me were the descriptions and the multitude of options.
-The descriptions, especially of the art, the occult shop, and the Malkavian visions, was really vibrant, like the textual equivalent of a Van Gogh painting with adjectives and senses slathered thickly on the canvas.
-The game gave me huge freedom near the end, including selling something really important to several different groups and whether to fight or run. I backed the anarchists all the way and ran.

But I think the large amount of groups was also a weakness, because each one was thinly developed. To really flesh out each group would make this game enormous (which is one reason Vampire: the Masquerade--Night Road is so big). By fleshing out, I mean that most of my interactions with any given faction were limited to one area, asking a few questions, and offering them something. Perhaps I'm being too greedy in asking for the factions to have more character, more interactions or side stories, etc., or perhaps I missed some content.

Overall, though, I think this was a successful game. It might be slightly less accessible to those who aren't fans of VtM but it does a good job of explaining core concepts.

I played the Spring Thing version of this game.

In this choicescript game, you are appointed head of a 'landship' (basically a medieval steampunk tank) as well as of an abandoned city.

Gameplay consists of combat, city building, relationship management and negotiations with surrounding powers.

I had some trouble with the tutorial combat, with the vast majority of my troops dying. Because of that, I played the rest of the game as an ultra-pacifist, doing everything I could do avoid war and to negotiate. I was able to avoid all fighting entirely and even get an achievement for it!

The city management wasn't very in-depth but I still found it satisfying. The characters were interesting (I spent most of my time with Rosie, eventually running out of new material for her).

I think the only thing really holding this game back is that it is doing many things and each thing could use more content. But making that content is hard! However, I liked each individual part, which is why I wanted more of it.

Alltarach is a well-polished Twine game that tells the tale of a young woman whose only close family member, a brother, has left their island home to travel to the mainland of Ireland.

This young woman has to travel to chase after him and find out why he left. Along the way, she meets a variety of pagan and Christian Irish folk and a number of mythological figures.

The story feels like a modern translation of the Odyssey or Iliad, where gods can appear to mortals but some see them as just people while others get a hint of the truth. It also (for obvious reasons) reminded me in a good way of a book of Irish legends I read in college; I really enjoyed the myths about Cuchulain (sp?) and was excited to see him reappear here.

The game features numerous words from the Irish language and has a handy pronunciation/translation mouseover for each. I've learned many languages in my life, but the first I ever tried to learn was Irish; I bought books for it, but unfortunately I remember nothing (except little tidbits that I've butchered like 'Is mise Sean o Brian' or 'Ta me i mo chonai i uimhir tri sraid bhor, arasan a do'). So it was fun to see that here.

The story had a lot of humanity. It felt gritty/grimy, like it would have a grey filter if filmed for TV. The art contributed to the overall feel. A world of grim beauty undercut by humor.

I didn't like the prolifity of the F-word, featured frequently on many pages. It may very well be historically accurate and fits the personalities of the characters, yet I didn't like it personally. Everyone has their own taste; to me its like raw red onions are to Scott Conant.

Overall, great production, fun game, nice art.

This Spring Thing 2024 game features colorful background with sprites of different animals along with the main NPC, a long-eared elf who others mock for being fat.

The elf goes through the forest and meets different animals. Each one gives you the choice to do a good deed or a bad deed. At the end of the game, it tells you how good or bad you were.

There are several puzzles in the middle where you have to pick the right object to help someone, sometimes with a bit more complexity (like making a map).

There is background music that is pretty repetitive, there are some typos, and the text is pretty slow to be displayed.

All in all, it's clear the author put a lot of effort into making this; I think with the feedback from the other reviews and with some time their next game could be something truly special. This one had some fun moments (like seeing a normal hedgehog dressed like Sonic) but I think could have used some more pizzazz in either story or choices.

This is basically a 'deafeat Hitler government simulation', which is a pretty fun concept.

You have a deck of cards and can hold a hand of 3 at any time, each card use counting as a month of in-game time, as well as special 'advisor' hand of up to 3 people, which can be used more rarely (every 6 months, I think).

Gameplay is complex; you need to balance funding, the demographics of the people you appeal to, keeping your allies placated to maintain government strength, and opposing the rise of the Nazis.

The writing is good, and the commitment to historical accuracy (or at least the appearance of historical accuracy, as I am not educated enough to tell the difference) is really cool.

Overall, I think the game is telling both in what it says about the 1930s and what it says about today. A lot of the game felt very similar to modern political events I've lived through.

Overall, it was a bit too complex for me to want a second go around after I lost. I kept getting tripped up because I didn't know things like the difference between Leftist and Labour. If I learn more one day, I will return!