Reviews by MathBrush
about 1 hour
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Candy-based murder mystery, part II, November 22, 2023Last year’s game ‘Who Shot Gum E Bear?’ by the same author had a deeply amusing concept (hardboiled noir detective where everyone is candy) coupled with some solid writing but sketchy implementation.
This year’s game ups the notch a bit on the implementation but uses a more secluded setting.
You are called to an abandoned factory which is scheduled for demolition and tasked with finding out what happened to a missing husband. You get locked in, and have to use your wits to solve the case and to get out.
I’m going to quote my classification of (many but not all) interactive fiction mystery games:
1-Have a standard puzzle game that happens to be about murder mystery, with solving the puzzles leading to solving the mystery. This is like Ballyhoo.
2-Modelling evidence and clues in-game, which have to be combined to form a solution. This is how Erstwhile works, and most of my mysteries.
3-Collecting evidence through puzzles and conversation and then having a quiz at the end (where you have to accuse the right person). This is how Toby’s Nose works.
4-Collecting physical evidence and showing it to someone, being able to make an arrest when you have enough evidence.
This is the first type. Solving puzzles involves collecting evidence as well as escaping and once all puzzles are solved the game is over. Accusations, motive, etc. are all handled by the PC rather than the player, and I think that works well here.
The game has some suggestive/racy elements, enough that I wouldn’t want my middle-school age son to play it but mild enough that if he did I wouldn’t be especially upset, just have to explain the use of certain items.
The implementation is both really neat and kind of bad. The neat stuff is how the puzzles go beyond ‘one item one use’ in clever ways. The bad is that most of the standard responses aren’t changed. It might help for next time to use RESPONSES ALL while programming to get a list of responses and then changing a lot of them. But it’s not necessary; if the goal is just to have a snack-size fun game, that’s already being achieved here. The responses would only be if the author specifically wanted a more polished game. I think I mostly would want that because the writings so good everywhere else that seeing it in the standard responses would make the game even more fun.
Puzzly choice-based game about being someone weak helping those you love, November 22, 2023This is a game translated from Russian that has quite a bit of twists and turns in it. Most are discovered early on.
I’ll say that a game with a sleeping woman and ‘16+’ and referring to ‘your mistress’ turned out to be something very different than I was expecting. It turns out to be a grim tale about the effects of war but with a sweet perspective.
More on the setting:
(Spoiler - click to show)The gameplay style is Twine with inventory management and location state tracking. So you can move objects from room to room, and your constant inventory of things like hands and feet change in their function over time.
The puzzles are fairly tricky but logical. One thing I might have appreciated was automatically ‘looking’ after travelling to each new location, since what’s in each location often changes due to your actions. I also had a bit of trouble some times mentally picturing how all the different locations related to each other.
I think this is around a 1-2 hour game, although I used the walkthrough for part of it. I like the concept, and appreciated the dedication at the end. I think there are a lot of strong story elements here and puzzles. There are also some neat images, although playing online on the ifcomp website I didn’t see some of the images, and they were broken. You can still click on them to advance though.
Part of the game is designed to show the horrors of war and for me it was very effective, the way the protagonist just didn’t understand really helped drive home for me how scary it must all be.
Thoughtful interactive museum/psychological piece about artist Francis Bacon, November 22, 2023I have to preface this review by saying that I have always that that Francis Bacon, the renaissance guy, was the same as Francis Bacon, the scary pope painting guy. I thought it was just some kind of über-Protestant thing. This game really cleared that up!
I was excited while playing this game, although perhaps not for a reason the author would have foreseen. I’ve been making an area in my own game which is a puzzleless museum placed adjacent to conversation heavy areas, and I was wondering how many conversation topics would be appropriate, and how large of a museum would make sense, and whether players should be able to lawnmower all topics or have to pick and choose.
So when I saw this puzzleless museum conversation game, I was very intrigued to poke around at the mechanics and see my overall impression. So while the game seems far more focused on story than mechanics, this review will focus a bit more on the latter.
The setup is that you are in a museum with three main rooms, each with a triptych of paintings. The paintings are real paintings by Francis Bacon; I was able to look them all up and see what they looked like in real life.
Examining the paintings and walking around the museum gives you the opportunity to converse with various figures, each of which has their own opinion on Francis Bacon. The NPCs are also adaptable, and you can change their opinion of you and willingness to talk by various actions, in a way I haven’t seen much of since games like Galatea and Blue Lacuna (although on a smaller scale here).
Topics are listed, and as you talk they change, although the change isn’t notified. You can ask about some things not on the list (for instance, I asked an early character about Christ, since the topic of the painting was Golgotha).
There are also several achievements, allowing for some puzzle elements. Some of them are straightforward, while others might be difficult to think about. Several achievements involved exhausting conversation trees, which I honestly did not want to do; not because I didn’t want to see more text, but by picking only the topics I wanted, I felt I had agency, but exhausting the tree didn’t feel ‘agent-y’. ‘Agentic’?
This game has some very heavy themes: sexual abuse and rape, violent assaults, traumatic death, obsession, religion, broken relationships, and so on. But all of it is examined in a thoughtful way, from a distance. None of these things are glorified; instead, different observers comment on it, some finding it deeply repugnant, others finding beauty in pain.
There is a great deal of strong profanity, and some of the language around Christ made me feel uncomfortable (as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints), but I understand the author’s choices here and the effect they were going for. So while those parts weren’t for me, much of the game was, and I plan on rating this very highly. Beyond just appreciating the game’s messages, I also learned and grew as an author by reading this work, which is the highest compliment I am capable of giving.
A wild adventure trying to use the toilet at night, November 17, 2023This game is a sprawling and varied horror comedy twine game about trying to use the toilet at night.
The style is kind of like a gauntlet but with more branching. You can select between multiple paths, but along each path, there is often only 1 choice that lets you live, while others let you die. The deaths give you many, many different endings, with comedic names and which are listed on the main page of the game after you unlock them.
The story draws on a wide variety of horror tropes, from witches and imps to shadow-creatures and eldritch horrors. It's low on continuity and high on amusing moments and subverting expectations.
The writing is descriptive and funny.
Overall, this game has a lot to like; however, I think for my personal preferences (that do not reflect all players!) I would have preferred some more coherence in the storyline, or more unity in the themes.
Wordplay game with a branching structure, November 16, 2023This game was entered into Ectocomp 2023, in the Grand Guignol division.
It is a wordplay game, centered on the idea of rhyming pairs where you swap the first consonants.
I always enjoy this author's wordplay gameplay, but I often find the words used too abstract or obscure to fully enjoy, or have difficulty knowing what to do.
This game is much more concrete than usual, with vivid imagery: animals, mountains, machinery, buildings, ravines, etc. This made me more invested in the game.
I also liked the symmetrical structure, with a neat trick where paths diverge and converge and you have to approach each problem from both sides.
I got stuck on a few of the parts where you had to use an item elsewhere, and I think I ran into a bug where someone will pursue you once but seemingly (?) won't pursue you after that. But it was only a slight thing in an overall nice game.
The difficulty level was just right for me, with many easy things to do, some pretty easy things, and only a few really challenging problems (I used the treat chunk a couple of times and peeked at the walkthrough for one ending thing).
A clever sci-fi Twine game about shapeshifting creatures, September 18, 2023This is a nicely styled Twine game that is digestible in an hour or so. You play as a robot rover helping a damaged ai-driven (fictional AI, not chatgpt ai) spaceship to get repaired.
You discover a world with little slime creatures in it that can shapechange. You also have an inventory of items that can be used to alter the shapes of the creatures and things around you.
It's a fun concept, and the game is designed to be relatively mild and enjoyable. While some puzzles are tricky (I had to use the walkthrough because I got stuck), there's a lot of leeway to help you finish without having to solve everything. I stopped at 150 points.
I like the worldbuilding and inventory here. I didn't feel a need to revisit this game in the future, but I'm glad I played it. I came to try it because it showed up on the Interactive Fiction top 50 for 2023.
A chill search for the Lost Ark in a forest, July 15, 2023This game is an Inform/PunyInform game that centers around you, a young priest, receiving a charge to search for the Ark of the Covenant that had been entrusted to your local church for generations and hidden in times of war.
+Polish: Like most Garry Francis games, this is smooth and polished. Many interactions have been anticipated and coded for.
+Descriptiveness: The text is straightforward but detailed. Locations are described both by form and function, with nice little details thrown in about the history you have with things.
+Interactivity: Puzzles were set up in a way that I could form hypotheses and strategize and carry out my plans with just enough difficulty.
-Emotional impact: This game combines two very weighty topics ((Spoiler - click to show)the ark of the covenant and vampires) and treats them in a pretty matter-of-fact way. Dramatic actions like (Spoiler - click to show)unearthing the corpse of a beloved friend and (Spoiler - click to show)burning a vampire to ash are given the same treatment as unlocking doors and climbing ladders.
+Would I play again or recommend? Yes, I think people will like this.
A 'one letter' parser game with some tricky puzzles, July 14, 2023This game was kind of a rollercoaster experience for me.
I started it up, and it looked like a simple tutorial adventure, like a TALJ game intended to be succinct.
But I soon found that I couldn't type, as it looked like it was auto-completing everything I typed, and into weird things.
So I tried experimenting a while but just didn't get it. I saw that ? gave instructions, so I tried typing that.
It turns out that different keyboard keys are mapped to whole actions, and typing that key will give that action. It's not quadratic in complexity, it's linear (1 key 1 action, no nouns as they are context-dependent).
So overall it's an interesting effect, similar to Gruescript or other parser-choice hybrids. Some of the choices for commands were a bit odd, and some (like arrow keys) seem like they wouldn't translate to mobile well (which I didn't try).
Overall, the puzzles were clever and the game was polished. The interactivity definitely threw me for a loop and I'm pretty sure I'm not a fan, although it's hard to say if that's just because I'm not used to it or because it would be perennially awkward. I guess I could compare it to the text adventure equivalent of QWOP.
Overall the charming and complex puzzles are why I'm giving a higher score.
Short and sweet ADRIFT game about hunting bugs, July 10, 2023This is a fairly short ADRIFT game in which you command six different soldiers, switching between their viewpoints to find aliens to kill.
Each soldier has their own mini puzzle. Some of these are pretty short, requiring little effort, while others are fairly complex and may need some repeat tries.
I found the writing enjoyable and many of the interactions were clever and well thought-out.
I found a few small bugs. Ducking if nothing is around acts as if something is there; most interactions were bug free, though, and two things I was going to bring up as second examples were actually caused by own error (I kept typing 'pulse rifle' instead of 'laser rifle', for instance), so I guess there really weren't a lot of bugs (except the six you kill haha). I do wish that saving and UNDOing worked even if you had switched your player character though.
The interactions were generally pretty simple, but there is an (optional) hour long timer and a (non optional) 80 turn timer that significantly complicates things. I had to restart several times to figure out a good strategy. But I was invested to do so several times, ask for hints online and switch the version of Adrift I was using because I did want to finish the game.
Complex chess puzzle teaching classic endgame, July 3, 2023Unlike Andrew Schultz's other chess puzzles, this one has a ton of flexibility. You have two bishops and a king, and have to force the other king into check.
This is a famous setup, and there are several paths to victory. I admit that although I could get it penned up in the corner, I couldn't win, so I had to look up a tutorial. But I learned some real-life skills in the process, which was nice.
Compared to the other chess games it let me do a bit more thinking; before the game would prevent me from doing something and I had no idea why. This game let me get myself into a mess. It was harder because of that, but I enjoyed the exploration more.
There were a few minor typos; the opening text could be more easily readable, with indented paragraphs or paragraph breaks instead of line breaks between chunks, and one line of text said "The two bishos drum", so overall very minor issues for a fun game.
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