Reviews by MathBrush

This is part of the Single Choice Jam, and is inspired by a short Japanese film called Boze.

In it, you are a weakened and forgetful god who is disturbed by the approach of a visitor. Fearful, the visitor has to select between ritual items, each of which reveals more about him and about you.

It's a short game, but handles the 'forgetful god' concept well, and made me interested in looking up its inspirations.

This is a short game that depicts a scenario that is all too human but phrased in fantastical terms: deciding whether to remain home with uncomfortable comforts or to strike out into the unknown and frightening outer world.

More specifically, you a young woman who has run into the woods in the hopes of finding a witch and leaving home behind. But that may be harder than you thought.

The writing is, to my taste, overwrought. This is subjective and not objective, but I think that the elaborate analogies and similes can get confusing. For instance your heartbeat is described as:

Your heart thuds in your chest, the reverberation of an ancient drum that has beat and beat and beat since the beginning of time. It echoes with the cries of a hundred anguished souls, tied by the same thread that follows you from home, stretching across acres of flat, empty land before it becomes a tangled mess in the trees that shield you from view.

I wasn't aware until after I had played and until I was writing this that (Spoiler - click to show)the thread mentioned here is 'real'-ish and story-important, while the ancient drum is not.

Similarly, we meet someone described thus:
(Spoiler - click to show)She smiles and the rows of her sharp teeth—thousands upon thousands of them, lining her palette and receding into her throat—shine and gleam in the total darkness.

Thousands is a lot! I looked up (Spoiler - click to show)how many teeth sharks have, since that's an animal with a lot of teeth, and they only have around 100 or 200, but the whale shark has thousands, and to fit them all in they're really, really tiny.

So I think that for my personal feelings the writing could be toned down a bit, but I did enjoy the setup and the choice, it was one of the better choices I've seen in this jam (the Single Choice Jam).

This is a brief story entered into the Single Choice jam.

It is the climax of a story with no buildup: a queen is in full rage and despair, throwing things and overall suffering because her husband, the king, has caused the death of her brother. She then has a choice on how to react.

As part of a longer work, this would work really well, but for me, in its snippet form, it had less of an effect. It's like seeing a car crash on the side of the road with ambulances; it can be sobering and make you think, but you won't remember it much a day or two later. But for the family of the person involved, it can be traumatic and life changing.

So here, I felt like an event of massive importance was happening, but it wasn't one I had established a connection to yet. The author did use a variety of emotions and offered several paths, and the writing is overall solid.

This visual novel is part of the Single Choice Jam. In it, you play as a researcher on an underwater base where everyone has been slaughtered after a humanoid creature was dragged up out of the abyss.

The highlight here is seeing the beautiful artwork, of which there is quite a lot for the brevity of the game. It has a style that is distinct and fits well with underwater horror.

The storyline is gripping and intense. I did find a couple of typos, and some analogies didn't land for me (specifically a part about 'not an oz' when referring to information). Overall, though, I was glad I played and found it interesting.

This is a brief visual novel entered into the Single Choice Jam.

It has some moody background music and background images that set the tone appropriately for a conversation that has undercurrents of tension. You play as someone eating a meal with a person they haven't seen in a long time. There's a flood going on in town, too, which becomes a metaphor for the emotional story.

In the end, you come down to a single choice. Both options had realistic-feeling effects. The writing on the whole thing is solid, and it generally feels polished.

This game paints you as a character who wants to ask out someone in a market who you've seen before, but you have to settle on the right approach.

Unfortunately, our protagonist does not know that they are in a game entered into the Anti-Romance Jam. How unfortunate!

This is also part of the Single Choice Jam, so we only get one shot. But quite a few of them end pretty bad.


One that made me chuckle was (Spoiler - click to show)"Look, I'm just going to lay it out: I've noticed you here before, and I would really like to kiss you. So... what do you say?" and the reaction that followed.

Overall, the game definitely hit home, and having little choices right at the front made the interactivity work well.

This short Twine game is set in a fictional universe where you are a kind of seer having difficulty with your visions.

I feel like this part of a larger work, with some pre-established characters. It was a bit difficult to keep track of at times, especially since it used terms the 'the monster' and 'tyrant' where I thought it might mean a real monster, given that this is a fantasy setting.

The game itself is very polished, and includes some audio and some appropriately-timed text on one passage. It's part of the single choice jam, so there is, of course, only one choice.

Overall, the coding is impressive and I didn't see any typos or bugs, and I thought the choice had some emotional impact to it.

I could have sworn I had played a game just like this before, with similar color scheme and theme (high school reunion to see someone you were once close to), but I couldn't find it anywhere online. Then I remember, I actually read through this once before for the author!

Anyway, this game is about going back to a high school reunion hoping to see a girl you had a huge crush on before.

This is part of the single choice jam, so there's no deep interactivity, just a single moment that can alter your future irrevocably.

The writing is poignant, and feels 'real'. I went to my 20th high school reunion when I happened to be in town and while I didn't have a former crush there it was great to see and connect with friends I had once known.

Very strong story. The background does make it a little hard to see the grey links sometimes, but that's the only real drawback I can see.

This game was part of the single choice jam.

It's generally polished; I found no bugs or typos.

The writing is descriptive. It was a primarily linear narrative, due to the nature of the jam, but it works well as such, with a strong story about a half-Asian kid and their mother's attempts to bridge a generational gap.

It had good emotional impact; I know it's based on real life, but even depictions of real life can become one-dimensional. Both characters seemed complex and thoughtful here.

While the interactivity is severely limited, the game made good use of 'blocked out' options to highlight futility.

This game is part of a group of similar stories. Other such games by this author have consisted of a classic short story with modern additions by the author where people comment on the story, including a text box where the reader can type something which the game then interprets using sentiment analysis to change some subsequent text.

This game is no exception, although it is smaller than the others. It is also different from the others, in that its 'meta-commentary' is no longer a separate, modern story; instead, it's an addition in-universe, still with the sentiment-analysis text box. However, due to this being a speed-IF, only one text box is included.

The short story chosen this time is obscure; I only found one 'hit' when searching, on an internet archive of an old magazine.

My view on these games has certainly changed over time. I went from believing they had no interaction to believing that they are excellent at hiding all the interactivity.

A game that makes you think its responding to your actions, even if it doesn't, is a game that is very fun to play, if only for one time. (For instance, see Attack of the Yeti Robot Zombies). But the converse is true; a game that does extensive work, but leads the player to think it does none, is not fun to play. Simply putting a message next to the box that is, as the author once said, metaleptic (or maybe extra-diegetic?) saying 'positive sentiment detected' in green and then highlighting the subsequent changed text in green or using red for negative sentiment would instantly improve reaction; this is just one idea, there are many ways to make it look like the game is really thinking.

Like a character says the movie The Prestige:

"The trick was too good, it was too simple. The audience hardly had time to see it[...]he's a wonderful magician; he's a dreadful showman. He doesn't know how to dress it up, how to sell this," and I think that applies to this whole series of games.