Reviews by MathBrush

This is the last of the Slovakian student games, I believe, and a good one to end on, with a larger structure than many of the others.

You are a player in a cruel game run by a wizard, and you have to pass through three mini-games. You have a couple of options each time, some of which lead to death, but you can always retry each world.

There are some typos and I feel like the narrative plot arc could be structured better (with more rising action and a little bit longer denouement) but otherwise this seems pretty good.

This is a tiny game, written by a Slovakian student. It describes itself well, as it's one room in a Twine game where all exits lead either to the same room or an identical place. The only choice is when to stop.

It's a funny idea, but the title kind of gives away the big twist, and the game itself is small, so I would have hoped for something a bit more. That doesn't mean it's bad, though; it feels similar to games like Uninteractive Fiction 1 and 2, made by a skilled author who wanted to convey a specific message/feeling etc. through a tiny or unfulfilling work. Experimentation like this is a great sign (to me) in a young author.

This is the shortest of Andrew Schultz’s trilogy of Petite Mort games based on pairs of two-word pairs that sound alike.

This one has characters that follow you around and bonus points, which are nice, and the art remains frun and fresh, but there are less puzzles overall (which isn’t always bad, since I like these smaller games, but I think the 12-13 point games hit the sweet spot more), and I found a couple of minor typos.

I still, after playing all three games, think the pixel art really contributes a lot. They help ground the abstract gameplay really well, and show the effect the player has on changing the environment. For me, they provide nostalgia for 80’s and 90’s edutainment games, some of which had similar pixel art.

This is a short atmospheric game with great styling choices. You are in a house and you have some difficulty remembering how you got to where you are. You can turn around or keep going but everything you do has some problem.

The ending was, for me, unexpected, and I actually got two different endings when I replayed, which was also unexpected. I liked the creepy feeling that the beginning of the game had the most.

I don't know of any other games by this author but I would play them if they released more.

This is a brief parser game that appears mundane before throwing a twist at the player.

You are in an apartment and can hear trick or treaters outside. But you're not dressed! A pile of clothes lie on the floor, which you must assemble in the correct order.

The game felt well-implemented and the twist was quickly resolved. This was a delight to play, especially in a large competition with tons of long games: just a short burst of concentrated playtime with a big punch.

This was an interesting short game that could be open to several interpretations. It's a short Chapbook game.

In it, you play as a young person in the heat of summer who is kind of bumming around. You live with a few friends but you spend a lot of time on your own. In particular, out in the woods, you come across an empty well. You have a habit of tossing things in, but for some reason, you never seem to hear it hit the bottom...

The game felt introspective and meaningful. I don't want to say too much more, not because of any big twists, but because I think it would just make the experience stronger overall to play through without prior interpretation given by others.

This is another ectocomp speed-IF game by a Slovakian student. This one feels like a take on the Saw franchise, waking up in a room with puzzles and traps.

This is a highly branching game, with almost every choice giving you a completely new branch instead of continuing along the same pathway. Many of these paths are deaths. Some of them were quite amusing, some were surprising.

It's nice to see younger people learning IF tools and experimenting!

I said in my review of Dusk, Airy, Does Carry, I said that I would welcome more games in the same vein. Glad I asked! This game has similar puzzles and structure, and similar pixel art, including animals.

It's an Adventuron game with a central hub from which several other rooms branch, each room with 1-2 puzzles involving pairs word pairs that sound similar when spoken aloud.

This one shook things up a bit by focusing more on room connections that don't appear until later. But like I said with Chez Dark, I just like the fundamental design so was glad to play more.

This is another game by tzbits using a custom javascript framework. This one uses choice-based links rather than parser verbs.

You stand on rocky terrain near an angel and a woman named Rebecca. They are trying to tell you something, but it's difficult for your character to get the message at first. There are some twists as the game goes on, but it's fairly short, as makes sense for a speed-IF.

The choice-based links all resemble parser commands, like X ANGEL or just NORTH or SOUTH, which I thought was interesting given the other verb-based framework. Maybe they're similar under the skin, like Robin Johnson's versificator.

Like the protagonist, I had a little difficulty grasping what was going on; I could think of 2 or 3 scenarios that would fit what was going on, but I couldn't tell which. But maybe the ambiguity is the point!

This is the only Grand Guignol game that I tested.

This is a large and complex choice-based game with a strong emphasis on place and inventory. It has stylized text and background images, and uses a variety of fonts to indicate different character voices or special events. It has an inventory sidebar and uses graphics and animations to track your 'panic'.

You play as someone visiting an old abandoned asylum in an attempt to recover treasure from within. Once you get there, you discover that things are much worse than you could have ever guessed: this aslyum is haunted!

The author mentions in a note that this story, which was started 25 years ago, evolved to be one where the patients are victims of mistreatment by a cruel facility.

The panic meter is the key factor in this story. Getting a scare can raise it by 1 or 2. But confronting a ghost can fill up almost half the meter, which can lead to instant death in some cases. Fortunately, you get one 'free life' to keep going if you do, but it can be useful to keep a lot of saves and only push past warnings when you're sure your panic can handle it.

I found the panic meter engaging, keeping me more on my toes and more engaged in the gameplay, rather than just trying every option one by one. At times I found myself lost in the maze of links, but I eventually constructed a mental image of what the asylum looks like.

This is a big, polished game and was a pleasure to test and play. There are a few bugs here in there in the current version but the author has already described plans on fixing them after the competition.