Reviews by MathBrush

This is a small chapter book with a story about a cat.

It is well-written, with no typos that I saw. It incorporates animations that respond to screen touches and (I think) accelerometers. It also includes sound.

This type of augmented story is not something that has traditionally been entered into the IFComp, although I could see a day when things become more common. For me, though, I found it uncomplying emotionally, and the interactivity that was available was not exciting.

This game is strongly (by the author's admission) influenced by porpentine.

It mimics Porpentine's uses of multi-colored links and cycling back to one location, and background music, as well as visceral/gooey scenes and identity horror.

However, it lacks a great deal of porpentine's pacing. Frequently, new text is delayed for several seconds before appearing. There are no consistent 'rules' for how scenes proceed; many threads are introduced that are not resolved.

I found that the game was stronger the longer it went.

In this game, you use a remote control to interact with various tv shows. These include a game show, a survivor-like show, and one I'll leave unmentioned for surprises.

The concept is fun, but the execution combines under-implementation, heavy-handedness, and lampshaded 4th wall breaking that is never resolved as to why it should occur.

This game casts you as a werewolf agent for a large group of werewolves. You have to travel to a snow-covered Chinese village to investigate its destruction.

The story and setting are actually pretty good, and I liked this game. Where it falls down is in presenting information to the player; nowhere, even in the extensive menu system, are you told how to transform between human and wolf. Conversation topics have to be guessed to proceed with little in-game explanation.

Fun mid-length game to take for a spin. Nice use of different senses in descriptions.

This game feels just like all of the 60's scifi stories I read growing up, in a good way.

You play as a young child on a lonely outpost in the sea during a war between Earth and Mars. Alone for the day, you get to use your imagination around the island, until events take a sudden turn.

The multiple viewpoints reminded me favorably of Rover's Day Out and Delphina's House.

There were a few parts where the interactivity just didn't do it for me, which is why I deducted one star.

This game has numerous issues, and is best played with a walkthrough.

With a walkthrough, it can be pretty fun. It does include steps like waiting 19 times in a row, with each Z producing a text dump.

The reason it can be fun is that its story, which has early hints about employees not being all the way there and oddly intelligent robotic devices, is compelling in the large scale.

Worth trying if you like to skim read and don't mind walkthroughs.

This game has you sent on a quest to collect parts to make a magic item, escape from a jail cell, search a dungeon, and has both a classic logic puzzle and a collection of riddles.

I didn't really like it at first, and played through with the walkthrough the whole way. Along the way, though, I began to like it more. The descriptions can be fun and interesting, though unpolished. The story has some fairly large plotholes, but I feel like the game was close to being complete, fun, and bug free, if the author had had more time.

This game by a good author (see 'Delusions') reminds me a bit of Gris et Jaune by Jason Devlin, another talented author. Both games have very strong openings that hint at a great game full of polish.

However, both were not completely finished/polished in time for the competitions they were entered in. This game, in particular, falls flat in the most exciting part: the actual game simulation. You play as Mario, and you have to jump with timed Glulx effects, but it just doesn't work out, and later levels are, I believe, unfinished.

This game seems to almost certainly have been written by a talented but inexperienced teenager who had a great idea for a game but fell down in the execution.

This is a mobster story, with gunfights, methlabs, explosions, burning buildings, etc. But everything is disjointed; creative scenes are established, but not connected to each other. No one seemed to notice horrible deaths or accidents that had occurred minutes earlier, and massive plotholes come and go without comment.

It was an entertaining read, though, with the walkthrough.

This game was an IFComp game. It has you as a detective investigating murder at an airplane field.

You collect clues by searching scenery and by talking to people. It has a lot of elements of a good detective story, but it's really easy to get stuck and throw off the timing. There's also some goofy oddball elements that don't really fit in.