Reviews by MathBrush

This game defied many of the categories I tried to put it in. It looked like a parser game, Adventuron specifically, but appears to be custom written.

You walk around with on-screen arrow keys and a menu of verbs you can apply to your inventory or things around you, kind of like old Lucasarts games.

There are a variety of items, and a variety of people you can help.

On one hand, the programming is very impressive and the game looks well-done. On the other hand, it often contradicts itself. It will say 'there is a flier here you can take' but if you click TAKE nothing happens. It will say 'the frog leaves' but then the frog is still there. I was able to complete the game, and found it humorous, but I think that this could have received even more testing. For me, I like to spend 50% or more of my development time for parser games in testing alone, and for choice maybe 10-20% at least.

This game had heart to me, and it was polished and I might play again, so I'm giving it 3 stars. If the bugs were fixed I'd make it 4.

This game is an educational game about kidneys made for kids using a custom engine that reads full sentences.

The game itself has multiple endings; I finished after only examining 3 rooms out of 5 in the main hub.

A magical fairy is helping you get a Halloween costume by transforming whatever you pick up into costume parts. Meanwhile, you get hungry, and eating requires you to take phosphate binders due to your kidney problems. This opens up a minigame where you have to hunt for phosphate crystals.

Throughout IF history there have been at least two different threads: one using text to provide a realistic simulation of the world (including Emily Short and her physics games), and those pushing for abstraction and ease of use (including Ryan Veeder who provides a lot of subtle affordances to make gameplay smoother). Most people authors use a mix of the two.

Abstraction and ease pushed to its extreme leads to dynamic fiction, where there are few choices besides 'next page'. And realistic simulation pushed too far leads to hunger timers, inventory limits, and an insistence on proper grammar, all of which this game has. It's a stylistic choice that some are fond of, but I don't really enjoy my character getting more and more hungry as I go back and forth between rooms because my character can only hold two objects. The engine is also slow between responses, so it can be a bit frustrating.

I found the educational part fascinating and didn't know the kidneys had anything to do with phosphate. Also, this game is specifically designed for kids unfamiliar with IF tropes, so I'm specifically not the target audience. And a lot of the things I found off putting could be fun for kids; discovering the game character actually responds like a real person with needs and limited capacity is something fun about text adventures when you're new (at least it was for me).

Overall:
+Polish: It worked smoothly.
-Descriptiveness: The game felt kind of bare at times.
-Interactivity: The game felt a bit too fiddly for me at time.
+Emotional impact: I love the idea of making a game for kids and the phosphate thing was cool.
+Would I play again? I don't really feel like it, but I only found one costume and there were many rooms I missed, and I'd like to support this idea of making games for health purpose (kind of like Gavin Inglis's game about self-abuse).

The author of this game has made several other very successful twine games, including Birdland and its related works and Known Unknowns. Many of them are smooth and enjoyable LGBTQ YA stories and this is in a similar category.

You play as a young woman whos prom date gets publicly ruined as embarrassingly as possible. Unfortunately, this prom is also on a boat.

There are many characters, and all choices are dialogue options. This author tends to have a ton of little options hidden in the code, but each path you can take in this game feels like the 'intended' one.

There's nothing to see here in the way of puzzles or major decisions; the real draw is the witty dialogue, teen-relatable situations and, for those interested, LGBTQ representation.

For me, what it keeps it from being 5 stars is its lack of the extraordinary. I enjoy this author's games the best when they become bizarre and absurd, like weird dream birds or raccoons speaking in emoji. For me, this was like very good cake without frosting: delicious, but leaving you wishing it had that extra ingredient.

Liminal spaces are popular right now; my young son enjoys playing liminal spaces games on Roblox and I've seen bots about them on twitter.

Whatever the original definition of liminal spaces was, they are now dominated by endlessly repetitive/abandoned/mass-produced areas. The Backrooms is a classic example (an endless system of hallways with boring carpeting and yellow walls). Another common kind of liminal space is something designed for entertainment but which is now empty, or uncanny valley areas.

This game involves you travelling between several such regions. Interestingly, just like liminal spaces in popular culture are often worn down, this game is underimplemented, missing several exit lists and lacking custom responses for many things.

Here's my rating:
-Polish: The game is missing exit listings and just feels kind of undercooked.
-Descriptiveness: The areas that are described are evocative, but some are given just a single line that is rather unclear.
-Interactivity: I had to decompile to finish it.
+Emotional impact: It has the kind of liminal feeling that I assume it was designed to create.
+Would I play again?: Sure, why not. It's short and good at creating the feeling of low-key chills.

This was a truly pleasant game to play. The art was very lovely, reminding me of a more advanced version of the art in Laura Knauth's Winter Wonderland.

This is written in Adventuron, and has a few 'modes', including a cozy one and a sad one. I played both of those.

The game has its own internal logic that doesn't correspond 100% to standard interactive fiction tropes. For instance, a few puzzles require that you type the desired result without detailing the physical actions that prompt that result (an example, not in the game, would be like saying 'go golfing' instead of 'hit ball').

Because of that, I got stuck a bit, but I noticed that the many other people who played seemed to get by without asking for hints online, so I persevered. Overall, I enjoyed the atmosphere of this game the most out of this comp, and think this is an outstanding use of Adventuron.

This game opens with a spooky pixel art world and story, then transitions to a generally pleasant, somewhat magical real life world with photographs.

It has 3-5 puzzles. All are simple, and most are well-clued. One involving a fish felt a little arbitrary to me, but overall it was nice.

The game felt smooth and polished. The writing gives hints of interesting worldbuilding. Overall, like others have noted, the game feels a bit disconnected between its two sides, but both sides are individually well put-together.

I generally enjoy games by Andrew Schultz, and this was no exception.

It's a small game on a 5x5 chess square with a few short chess puzzles. Using knight moves, you must move around the board to achieve your goals.

+Polish: The game was very smooth. I kept trying to type SUMMON instead of CALL but that's entirely on me.
+Descriptive: I actually like the writing in this more than almost all other Schultz games. It goes in a different direction and I like it.
+Interactivity: The puzzles appealed to me.
+Emotional impact: Genuine enjoyment counts as an emotion, right?
+Would I play it again? Yes, I found it satisfying.

I don't everyone would like this all the time, but I think some people would like this some of the time. If you'd like a brief logic-based brainteaser that wraps itself up nicely, try it out.

I remembered this game when I played it during the competition, but I couldn't remember where. Was I a beta tester? No, I wasn't in the credits.

Then I remembered that this was entered into Introcomp! The author has certainly improved the game since then. Back then, it only had the opening and then an empty crater.

This game has you play as a colonist arriving on a planet. The opening sequence is pretty brilliant, similar to the Ian Finley game Gris et Jaune. Unfortunately for both games, they get a little buggy later.

This game has few big bugs in it, like if you type REMOVE [something] it gives an error message with a space missing.

The game is ambitious, though; even though it's not super long, it has changing time, major modifications to locations, an autonomous NPC, and a (Spoiler - click to show)change in perspective.

If the bugs were fixed, I would give this game a 4 or 5, and I think the author didn't something great and should continue coding.

Danny Dipstick is a compact, polished puzzle game where you play as an uncharismatic man who is desperate to get a girl's phone number.

This game is based off on an older game by a different author. Much of my reaction to this game is based on my feelings about this variant of date culture in general, and may not reflect the author's own attitudes.

In my opinion, the central tenets of this game (that being able to easily persuade women to date you is desirable, that the barriers between you and 'random woman you just met' are all superficial things like appearance that can be easily corrected, etc.) do not hold up. In the past, almost all people met their partners through mutual friends, and now according to modern research the internet is even more common. For me, Danny's story didn't seem authentic and didn't resonate with me.

Like someone else mentioned, the depiction of the store clerk seemed inauthentic as well. He's described as scrawny, undernourished, with an almost unintelligible accent. According to statistics, the median Indian household is much wealthier than the median white household, and English is a first language for many in India. This corresponds with my own experience; in Texas, where I live, a huge chunk of my everyday coworkers and friends are Indian, and almost half of my wealthy tutoring clients are Indian. I'm sure scrawny, undernourished, unintelligible Indian people exist, but they're certainly outliers.

Mechanically, I was really pleased with the compact puzzles and their unity of purpose. The puzzles were simple but it contributed to the overall feel of the game.

This game is, I believe, a late entry to the recent parser competition that was for 2-word introductory games for kids. It's a simple Adrift game that is generally very polished, with a tutorial available, music, a few pictures, and some text effects.

Here's my rating:
+Polished: The game is very smooth and well-done.
+Descriptive: The game is sparse and, as part of the competition, can only put a couple of lines in each description, but the author manages to make each room interesting and to serve many purposes. It could have been easy to throw in a bunch of empty rooms to fill up space, but every is nice and compact.
+Interactivity: The puzzles were generally fair and interesting. I set the game down for about an hour in the middle, and forgot an important clue and had to look at the pdf, but if I hadn't wandered off I would have remembered.
-Emotional impact: While the game is generally charming, it never garnered a strong emotional response from me.
+Would I play again? Maybe I'd show it to my son.