Reviews by MathBrush

The Little Match Girl series consists of games where a time-travelling assassin girl adopted by Ebenezer Scrooge enters various worlds through the means of looking at flames.

This game is creepier than most the others, in good ways. I enjoyed the thematic unity of this one.

I originally forgot about the flame thing and so I wandered the opening area for a while before finding anything. Then once I examined a flame, things took off.

I enjoyed the diversity of the worlds this time. The main story here is that an evil werewolf is travelling through time, attacking others, and each time period and place you visit has also been visited by the werewolf. Despite the variety of worlds, the after effects of fear and strange sickness are common. I found it especially creepy that in one world the characters slowly became stricken as I left and visited again later.

Overall, the game is very polished. I ran into the same couple of issues others did (hints assumed I had grabbed something from a room when I hadn't, since the thing I needed to examine in that room didn't stick out to me; and 'percipient' was spelled as 'perpicient', unless that was intentional) but I didn't have the vorple-breaking bugs some reported.

I think I liked the atmosphere and single-mindedness of this game over some of the more elaborate other Match Girl games. It reminds me of Marvel's Werewolf By Night, as both are smaller, darker, werewolf-themed entries in a series filled with grand spectacles, and both are uniquely charming in their overall series.

As a math teacher, I had to try this game first.

'Mathphobia?' I said, my nostrils flaring in mingled rage and excitement. 'Is this an ANTI-MATH game????'

Fortunately, it's not. Well, kind of...

You play as a kid who is forced to do 500 math problems on Halloween since you didn't go trick or treating to get candy for your teacher.

But you soon are transported to a magical land like phantom tollbooth where monsters such as the Specter of Subtraction try to attack you.

All challenges are defeated by use of math, starting with extremely easy problems (like 8 plus 4) and moving to harder problems like sequence finding, number factoring, fraction simplification and trick problems.

I proudly conquered each problem by hand except one where I suspected a trick, plugged it into calculator to check, then confirmed the trick (so I failed at doing it all myself!).

This game is much longer than it first appeared, with 5 main antagonists and sections between antagonists with 4 or more puzzles.

Outside of the math puzzles, the game seems completely linear. Going back and entering some answers incorrectly, it looks like it gives you another chance.

This was fun. I sent it to another math teacher to try out.

I thought I had played and reviewed this game long ago, but it turns out that I was thinking of Universal Hologram from 2021 by the same author, with some overlap in concepts (I swear I remember the pyramids).

This game is centered around the concept of living in a simulation. Several people have theorized that a sufficiently advanced civilization would simulate other civilizations, which could simulate more, etc. so that the chance that we are living in a simulation is very high, close to 100%.

There are many variants of this, including Rothko's basilisk, the idea that future AI will simulate post opponents of AI and torment them in hell forever. This game takes the stance that it's likely that future civilizations will simulate those in the past.

You play as someone (or a simulation of someone) living in Mars in a world where all needs can be eliminated. The game deals with themes of whether happiness can exist when decoupled from suffering and whether suffering is necessary for happiness, and the idea of the existence of a thing vs the experience of the existence of a thing.

It uses lampshading and occasional crude language to contrast with the elaborate language of the more philosophical parts, a combination common in a certain subset of early Twine games (especially Spy Intrigue and its immediate predecessors and successors).

Overall, I think it communicates a desperate search for meaning in life and a desire for human connection.

This game isn’t really complete. It’s described as setting up a larger game, and that makes sense. Looking at the code, there are several blank spots and dead ends.

This is a fighting simulator where you train, spar and fight to win money and advance your career. Eventually you can retire and start over.

This game definitely suffers from maximalism. Every choice has a dozen options, and there are tons of stats and a lot of info flying around. Most things seemed conceived on a grand scale but not fully implemented. I had negative stats for several portions of the game.

There’s also several side things that are a bit odd (like an oracle that costs ‘only a little money’ costing $100,000). As it is, the game is like a store in an old Western, with a huge front designed to look like a two-story building but just a little general store behind.

It’s probably combinatorial explosion that prevented the author from finishing everything. I’d recommend starting a game with a simple model that has the entire process from beginning to end (so, one fighter, one school of fighting, one possible fight, etc) and then once that’s working perfectly move on to adding more options at each level. Then you can replay it over and over as you program to make sure the core experience works.

This game was quite different from most IF games I've played.

It's a slice of life game about a man and his girlfriend/wife who live in a cheap flat. He works nights, she works days, and today, on the eve of a new millenium, he is sick.

I was surprised when at the end of the day, (Spoiler - click to show)I found my wife dead at work. I was even more surprised when (Spoiler - click to show)there was a bright flash and I woke up at what I thought was the next day, only to see my wife still alive. That's when I realized this game was (Spoiler - click to show)a time loop. (all these spoilers are for things that happen in the first day only).

Gameplay consists primarily of interacting with others through menu-based conversation, collecting items (all of which (Spoiler - click to show)persist through the time loop) and trying to think of ways to help your wife.

There are a couple of small bugs and typos, which I've notified the author about and which should be easy to fix, although I had an issue where after I restarted the game I couldn't load any saves, which might have been an HTML TADS issue. Fortunately, the game is the kind where if you know what you're doing you can get from the beginning to end in very few moves.

I loved some of the characters in this, like Vincent, and enjoyed the multiple endings. A few times I really couldn't figure out what to do; I used hints once, I think. But overall this game was a good time and really a clever idea that was executed well.

This was a cute game, written in Twine with lots of exploration and some puzzles.

You are given an invitation to a beautiful and magical house filled with enchanted objects and creatures. Almost everything has positive and wholesome undertones, although there are some disruptive or angry behaviors.

The house is full of animated things, like skulls or piles of clothes. Everything you meet has requests, from helping deal with a friend to basic needs like food. The puzzles have variety; even though the map is compact (with only 4 big locations and 2 smaller connecting rooms) the number of different tasks you can do and secrets you can find is surprising. New links pop up in one area based on actions in others, and there is some searching (like a big library bookshelf).

I think I liked the bedroom the best, because it had a combination of creepy and fun, or negative and positive emotions.

At times I wished for a little higher stakes, but the ending resonated with me emotionally. Similarly a few too many of the puzzles involved mechanical searching through a list of things, but at least the writing was interesting in each item and the other puzzles had more variety.

Overall, definitely a fun game to play. The reason I like playing IFComp games more than a lot of other IF is that you can tell the IFComp games have a lot of work put into them and were carefully nurtured and worked on until they’re a real gem. The love put into this game is reflected in its quality.

I beta tested this game.

This is a murder mystery set on an Antarctic ice station. A murder has been discovered, and you are highly motivated to solve it. Unfortunately, without any real authority, all you can do is gather evidence and hope people find it.

The game is set out on a time-based system. You have a certain number of days until the real authorities are available. Each day is split up into 4 time periods (I think). During each time period you can interview someone, bond with someone, or do a couple special activities. Sometimes timed events come your way.

Conversation can be down just by clicking each link, but sometimes a new piece of evidence can add new topics, which adds complexity to the game.

Some actions require a closer relationship with someone or extended time, which means you may have to replay if you make poor choices early on.

I found the mystery intriguing and the clues logical. It's in the format where the player amasses enough evidence to satisfy themselves, and then you select a murderer to accuse (like Toby's Nose, for instance), but the game can prompt you when you have enough evidence.

Overall, I liked this mystery. The time and stress meters add some extra complexity, and the Notes system helped me stay organized and not have to worry I was going to forget something important. I think this will do pretty well in the competition, although there are many good games this year to compete against!

(Warning: This review might contain spoilers. Click to show the full review.)This Twine game was much more substantial than I expected and much less.

You play as a spirit summoned by a woman called Baba, a fortuneteller, as you are ripped from nonexistence into existence.

You have the power to hop from vessel to vessel, both non-living and living, and it gives you the opportunity to learn gossip.

And such gossip you learn! A cold princess loves a dashing, straightforward man who may hold a dark secret. A monk does not believe all she says she believes. And so on. You gather secrets like scores in games.

Eventually, you also gain the ability to make dialogue choices, allowing you to wreak havoc in others' lives.

In the end, before plot threads resolve, [spoiler]you become one with everything, and then nothing[/spoiler].

I would like to see the rest of the threads. I did recently teach a class on Hinduism for a few weeks as part of a World Religions course; I didn't know too much about Hinduism before (besides reading the Bhagavad Gita), but why don't I try to apply a superficial understanding of Hinduism to this game that may not actually be influenced by it at all?

We can see this game as a representation of the karmic cycle. Existence is suffering, and the endless cycle of new vessels and their attachments, both the good and the evil, and the happy and the bad, are not good. Only true detachment from everything allows us to exit the karmic cycle and escape the cycle of rebirth.

(My apologies for the limited understanding of Hinduism and the game).

Overall, I'm reminded of the game Riverside, which similarly starts out as a normal, promising game and then is abruptly derailed in a shocking, out of world fashion. You can peek at the walkthrough or reviews to see.

This Twine game feels very independent from other Twine traditions, with a gameplay style, styling and structure that seems derived from TTRPGS and gamebooks more than other past IFComp twine games, for instance.

It's a class police procedural murder mystery. Three bodies have been found, and you have to find the suspects! As an FBI agent, it is your job to investigate, interrogate, and accuse.

The game makes use of skills, which are set for you based on archetypes like 'Negotiator' or 'athlete'. This skills boost d20 rolls, which determine whether yo you fail or succeed.

This gives a random element to the game, and, according to the walkthrough I read after my playthrough, there are other, hidden random elements as well. This makes the game amenable to replay, but makes it difficult to win on the first try, especially without outside knowledge about the game.

The characters were generally interesting. I liked the family members most, then the suspects. The cops seemed fairly generic. The town and college had a vibrancy to them.

Overall, the game seemed very polished. I didn't agree with every gameplay decision, but I felt like I was playing a quality product while I was in the midst of the game.

This is a Twine game with inventory and world model that has a pretty compact map set in a mine. The idea is that you are a mage who teleports into a collapsed mine with the goal of evacuating everyone inside.

It's a classic low-level dungeon crawl, with spells, treasure, obstacles, commerce, and even the eponymous 'dragon'. All of these ingredients are added in small amounts; most of the game only uses one spell, for instance.

The game doesn't last too long. Much of the plot is about 'just in time' happenings; no matter what thing you need, you just happen to counter exactly that thing.

The game has charming and funny moments, and the text is descriptive. I think I would have liked to have an extra space between paragraphs to more easily distinguish them.

The inventory system was simple to use. I made some mistakes early on, but once I understood how it worked it was great.

It's odd; when I started this review I had in my mind that the game was lacking in some significant way, but I can't really point out anything. It has custom CSS, it had good pacing and interface, it had dangerous and safe moments, it has some Chekhov's guns that go off in satisfying ways. So I'd say it's a pretty good game!