Reviews by MathBrush

In this game, you play as an explorer searching in the ruins of a dystopian civilization. In this world, a cruel Caretaker manipulated both humans and animals, inserting cybernetic implants and controlling society.

The online play version has sound and AI-generated images. I originally played just the downloadable gblorb without the image features. While I typically don't find AI images enlightening, playing the version with graphics was useful as it gave me a quick reference point to know where I was and what the author thought was most important in a given room. It did break down at times, producing images that didn't really make sense in context.

Gameplay mostly revolves around exploration and conversation, with a few puzzles here and there. There are a ton of random deaths. I ragequit at one point because there is a timer on the surface that kills you if it's night and some kind of timer underground that kills you if you stay too long, even while wearing a disguise, so I ended up in an unwinnable state after a couple hours of play. I came here to review and saw other people mention graphics, so I tried the online version and completed it. I don't feel like the random deaths add much storywise. I also found a bug: (Spoiler - click to show)covering the solar panel doesn't give you the beetle until night has fallen I also felt that puzzle in particular was not enjoyable, as it relies purely on random coincidence; I prefer puzzles where you can see a goal and make a plan to achieve it yourself.

Storywise, it's clear a lot here was written by AI with some parts seemingly handwritten and then restructured by AI as well. Fortunately, the author seems to have a strong vision in some parts and managed to write genuinely interesting stuff, but overall this has the same problems a lot of AI-written things do:
*overly-complex descriptions of boring and mundane things (if you are so bored by an object you have AI write the description completely, why have a description at all? The player won't want to read it either)
*misunderstanding of plot arcs and appropriate emotional responses (we find the main villain just chilling in the middle of the lair with no build-up. You can just wave hi as you walk by. Wild events are described mildly: "As the cyborg drags you away, you are filled with fear and defeat." and mild events are described wildly: "Your heart pounds as the projector accepts the sleek metal device, and the display fills with text."
*the story follows mostly generic plot beats. Is there any surprise that (Spoiler - click to show)the robot overlord is evil? Or that society (Spoiler - click to show)collapsed due to a rebellion?
*The logic is often off; at the end, we discover the (Spoiler - click to show)a spaceship is seemingly prepared for us to an uncomfortable extent: air, gravity, etc. It's clear we're being welcomed here and it's uncanny. But there's randomly a door that won't let us through unless we put on a tarp to block it? It completely spoils the whole 'walk into my lair' bit.
*The walkthrough contains a lot of weird self-analysis too, explaining in a list the various forms of irony the game presents. What is the purpose of this? To tell people how to feel about the game? Would my reviews be more enjoyable if I told people "This review is well thought-out. It uses critical analysis to highlight several failures of AI writing in a thoughtful and cheerful manner, inviting the reader to ponder on the benefits of original thought and action."?

It's clear a lot of work went into the coding, which is enjoyably smooth in most parts.

I genuinely don't like most RPG maker games, as I enjoy reading text more than seeing game cutscenes or walking around mostly non-interactive worlds. Fortunately, this game keeps most of the annoying parts of RPG-Maker to a minimum, with well-controlled text, relatively fast walking speed, and plenty of options.

You play as a scammer coming to an island to steal sea eggs. You can pick what to explore on the island. As you do so, you can change your character's sprite, and you find out more about what is happening on the island.

The game has multiple paths, with at least 3 endings and a few buildings I never had a chance to explore.

The story is short and a bit quick, but I prefer that in RPG maker over something drawn out agonizingly long.

This game features the same story in three languages (Italian, English, and Slovak).

The story has a strong environmental message. It seems to branch at several spots, so I may have only seen part of the story, but in my version, I received a message warning me about devastating environmental impacts of current human activity, and was able to visit Atlantis to see what happened to them in the past.

The game is primarily focused on a sense of wonder and on hammering in the importance of keeping the environment safe.

The game uses a variety of colors and background images as decorations. I found these to be a little distracting, as sometimes they were so detailed or bright that it was a little hard to read.

I think this might be the author's first effort, in which case it is impressively polished.

This game is written in Toki Pona, a minimalistic conlang (artificial language) designed to have only around 100 words. The whole dictionary can fit on one page, so it's possible to (slowly) play this game without any prior knowledge.

I first got an idea of how to play by reading a Let's Play on the intfiction forums. After I tried playing a bit, I found that you can TRANSLATE any bolded word you see, which translates the object, its description, and context. With that as a base, I found myself slowly able to translate lines one at a time.

However, there are some big text dumps where TRANSLATE doesn't work. For those, I searched online for a Toki Pona translator and only found LLMs that do it. I decided to use Copilot to translate big chunks. I vary in my feelings on AI usage, focusing mainly on whether the AI produces good work, is depriving others of work, and on resource usage. AI is pretty good at translation, there were no other ways to translate Toki Pona except by hand, so I was only concerned about resource usage, so tried to limit my use to very large pages where I was stuck. I also assumed the author would oppose AI usage and want people to pick up the language, so I did my best. It was fun to realize that some words were just english or romance languages adapted to the alphabet (like 'group' becoming 'kulupu').

Once I was done, I realized that while the translation was done in a cool way and the game by itself is fun (and has cool CSS), they don't mesh well. I play a ton of foreign language IF, and I've found that such games are easiest for foreigners when:
-Vocab is kept simple and most commands are given on the postcard or given in the text (I found it hard to figure out how to TAKE things in the game, as it's missing from the IF command postcard and only found in text. You have to KAMA JO something or JO something. Furthermore, you MUST put an E before the object of any verb. So you have to both somehow figure out you need to type JO and to put E before something. Also, the vocab is quite complex given the simple language, as we have mechanical devices and bizarre creatures).
-All connections and points of interest in the world model are clearly labelled (In this game, there is an important action and an important exit not mentioned in the text. The exit is hinted at in a very long text dump, but the action of (Spoiler - click to show)looking under the bed is one I only tried because it was a verb on the postcard).
-Talking is handled by menu, choices, or simple TALK TO (in this game, you can ask about different topics).
-Actions like unlocking and taking and dropping are handled implicitly.) (In this game, you have a two (!) item inventory limit!)

The points above are not 'good game vs bad game', just 'games that are personally easier for me to play as a non-native speaker' vs 'harder for me'.

The story is pretty neat. To help any future players, here's a long explanation of what I encountered as I played (essentially complete spoilers):

(Spoiler - click to show)I woke up in a house and found a letter describing my affection for a dark-haired person named Penelopi. Penelopi went to the underworld. I wanted to follow. I looked under the bed and found a coin. I went outside and went to a forest. I saw plants and a bug that I remember Penelope liking. On a later playthrough, I saw a tree and had a memory of her being kind to a lizard while I flirted with her, and she suggested climbing the tree. Up in the tree I found a mechanical egg.

Later, I went (Spoiler - click to show)to a town where I went to a shop. On my first playthrough, I had no money, so I went out and talked to a guard at the mouth of a cave to the underworld. The guard wouldn't let me in and also had a copy of Counterfeit Monkey in a bag. They wanted to learn english to play it. I went and found the coin under the bed and spent it to buy an english dictionary. I gave it to the guard. He then let me into the underworld after warning that it was dangerous.

Once inside, (Spoiler - click to show)I fell down a broken floor and saw some cool CSS. I took a yellow flower. I then fell more and found Penelopi turned into a lizard monster. She saw the flower and like it so she ate me. I then replayed, looking at the game textdump uses glulx-strings and saw that there was a mechanical egg (that apparently has a neat distraction tool inside). I sold the egg and bought the ring and took the letter. This time I showed Penelope the letter and the ring, and she decided she liked me and that I could stay.

Overall, the frustrations with the difficult content in a conlang game made me want to rate 3/5, but making a game in a conlang feels like a 5/5 thing, so I'm giving 4/5.

Compared to the Gostak, this game has hard basic structure (remembering stuff like li and la and e was hard) but easy vocab ('jan wawa' isn't too hard to understand after a while), while the Gostak has easy basic structure (just English) with almost impossible vocab. Since the basic grammar structure is most of reading, I found the Gostak easier to read in a 'flow state' but this game easier to understand the overall narrative.

This is a compact puzzle game. You are a young keeper of time, and the time crystals have been stolen, opening up portals to famous disasters.

Disasters include a lot of conflagarations, like Krakatoa, Hindenburg, and the London Fire, balanced by the icy Titanic sinking and mediated by the San Francisco earthquake.

Some subareas are small, with most being 3-4 rooms and a couple being significantly larger.

Puzzle solution generally revolves around finding an item in one area that allows progress another, so basically like a key-door structure (with three of the items being actual keys, although none get used for doors).

The game is decidedly puzzle-oriented. Time travel is ripe for philosophical quandaries, questions of ethics, unrequited hopes, resignation, ontological paradoxes, butterfly effect, etc. Here, the author has neatly sidestepped all of this, avoiding any deep contemplation about time travel. Time resets every time you leave and enter an area, but only the watch time; all things you did remain in effect and all NPCs remember what you told them. Trying to warn individuals about disasters has no effect or reaction.

The lack of implicit actions in PunyInform is frustrating. A lot of gameplay was like:
>GO [location in water]

You can't do that while holding things.

(oh right, I'm holding a key).

>PUT KEY IN [container]

I splash around a bit and get somewhere. Now I need the key.

>UNLOCK DOOR WITH KEY.

You're not holding the Key.

>GET KEY. UNLOCK DOOR.

The door is unlocked.

> ENTER DOOR.

The door is not open.

>OPEN DOOR. ENTER DOOR.

I do what I need to. Time to leave into the water.

'You can't do that while holding items'.

That's a vague excerpt, but some implicit actions for going through closed doors and using items that are in a carried container would be nice. Similarly, X SIGN and READ SIGN are different, which could be interesting, but almost all the descriptions for X-ing things with writing just say 'This is a readable thing. It would be neat to read it', so I wonder if it would be easier to just assume the player wants to READ it whenever they X it. It would be very difficult to examine a sign in real life without reading it, since most of a sign is words.

I did softlock myself once by getting really far into an area and not being able to return to the portal in time, so I recommend saving.

Charles Moore, Jr. is an author who I associate with very large, complex games with difficult puzzles.

This game is pretty big an puzzly, but not quite as hard as his others. The tutorial is very friendly and the cheat sheet is a great help together with the 'help' system, which I used a lot.

You are a bear in the woods, and you are very hungry. There are 12 different meals you can get, almost all from humans that you find. You lack most of the powers of a usual adventure protagonist like speech or fine motor control but you make up for it with fearsome presence, growls and brute strength.

The map is quite large and complex. I used a mental map and got through, but got lost many times partway through. Mapping would both help solve a ton of puzzles and make the game a lot easier.

The only drawbacks I found were that sometimes I had difficulty knowing what to type for a puzzle solution I already knew (for instance, I didn't know I had to (Spoiler - click to show)push the atv UNDER the beehive instead of just pushing it to the room.), and that sometimes the puzzles solutions involved a seemingly random combination of items from far across the map (especially the puzzles involving the (Spoiler - click to show)rubber duck and the flare gun). Other than that, I found this a well-written and enjoyable nature journey.

This game was entered in 2025 the Text Adventure Literacy Jam.

In it, you wander around a makerspace with tools for sewing, cutting, soldering, etc. Along the way, you discover a broken time machine.

Repairing the machine takes you all over the makerspace and through time, helping you learn what everything does and interacting with the people there.

I got lost pretty early on as there are a ton of red herring items. As time went on there were less and less things I hadn't used yet and so it was simple to deduce what was next.

I really enjoyed learning about the makerspace!

I didn't enjoy the text, which seemed mostly AI generated. I found this odd, as I have enjoyed Richard Pettigrew's terse but witty style in his earlier games. Now, it may not be AI generated, but if it was hand-written, the author was remarkably repetitive and unhelpful. Almost everything is 'a testament to the hours/years/minutes of love/labor/etc. of its users'. Every item 'radiates usefulness' or 'hints at a special meaning' etc. Every room has several nouns mentioned in its description which aren't there at all, which defeats the purpose of a text adventure where the text is the game (it would be like a 3d game that randomly placed guns, powerup icons, medkits and quest icons but all of them were fake and did nothing). I eventually realized I could completely ignore all text except item names, as the AI text never provided any use or interest for me. I feel like I would have had more fun just reading the prompts that were used and imagining it myself.

Also, for some reason my character would randomly burp and fart for some reason throughout the game.

I liked the story progression and the ending. My favorite part, though, was the satisfying crafting process.

Zeno Pillan has made several games in the past that were short, surreal parser games with cool ASCII art.

This game is much larger, with code at around 60K words. It's a party game; you're at a house with a ton of people in it and you can do things like watch youtube (where you physically enter into the videos), play a fighting game (with real attacks like special moves and stuff), talk to all the different friends, enter a world of books, etc.

The game also has four endings (and more if you read the code). Some endings are really easy to find, while the dance ending can take ton of work.

Overall, the atmosphere is wholesome and nostalgic, the ascii art is cool, and the different endings are a fun idea. The annotated code is fun to read in and of itself, with cool little doodles and such.

The only drawback I found was that the game seemed like it could use more time to get feedback from others and implement it, and to do some grammar and typo fixing. This isn't a 'the writing is bad' issue, the writing is fine, it's more stuff like capitalization errors and punctuation. One thing I like to do is run my text through a spellchecker like grammarly (although I usually ignore grammarly's more complicated suggestions). I know the author wrote this 60K (!) word game on his phone, so it might be harder there. Similarly, it can be hard to find beta testers. But if this had typos fixed and player feedback for bugs, I think this would be an amazing game. As it is, it's only a good, really fun game.

This game was fun to play in the Text Adventure Literacy Jam.

It's a wordplay game based on shifting rhymes, and written with Adventuron. I really appreciated the extensive explanations and help early on, the colored text and the little hints really helped me navigate the game.

The images went perfectly with the game as well, having the same whimsical vibe as the rest.

Gameplay was simple in a pleasing way, good for the context the Literacy Jam, but there are a ton of accomplishments that I didn't achieve which diligent players could search for.

I liked the game overall, but I don't see myself revisiting it; it felt like a one-time satisfying play.

This game has you star as the dashing captain of a time-travelling ship piloted by a helpful Mother AI. An enemy faction is travelling to the past to sabotage your present, and you have to stop them.

There are 4 or so main time periods you travel to, each with its own set of puzzles as well as some recurring characters. Names of things in the game are often references; one whole area is a giant reference to steins;gate.

In between those areas, you can explore the large ship you pilot, with several crew members who can help you can give you advice.

The game has few bugs, although I did lock myself out of victory once by returning to my quarters before I finished a section, triggering a cutscene too early.

The story has good story beats but felt a little less descriptive in the middle, possibly because the author could vividly picture things due to the references but I couldn't due to not knowing the games.

Overall, this is a substantial game and I played it here and there over several nights.