Reviews by MathBrush

This is a relatively brief choice-based game with an interface written in Ink that mimics text messages.

You are texting your mom and your friend ash, just having a regular day, when things get strange and weird. The game's appeal is mostly based on its twist, so I won't spoil it here.

The plot is pretty good, but the dialogue and characterization are a bit generic; it's hard to get a feel for who the characters are, and their individuality. The texts are slow to come, which was a bit frustrating.

The UI looked neat, which seems like a good accomplishment. This game makes me think its author is really talented at web programming.

This is a relatively brief twine game with three endings, two bad and one good.

The idea is that global warming exposed a layer of mycelium all over Antarctica that is sentient. Scientists made super-soldiers out of it by using genetics to create human-shaped versions of the very strong mushroom material. But these mushrooms tend to cannibalize each other, so to stave off their desires, humans volunteer to be companions that the mushrooms can drink the blood of every now and then.

You volunteer to be this companion, and have to fill out some intake forms and get acquainted with the area before meeting your future companion.

The game does a good job of expressing the alienness and horror of the creatures, but I'm not sure it presents as strong of a picture of the protagonist, whose motives and actions didn't always seem connected to each other or to my desires. Overall, the styling was nice and I enjoyed the ending I reached.

This game has you play as a well-prepared Louisiana resident hunkering down during a category 5 hurricane. Fortunately, you have an attic stocked with tons of equipment. Unfortunately, all sorts of supernatural creatures are messing around with you.

This game has nice presentation with Chapbook and music/sound effects. The color and font choices worked well for me. It's pretty brief, but has some nice non-linearity and several endings.

The thing I liked best about the game was the specific local flavor. Several of the monsters are referred to with French names or have characteristics unique to the area.

The only drawbacks to me were that each path was fairly short and a lot of the items didn't really do much that I could see.

This was a fun game to finish on while playing through Ectocomp games.

You are at a party that is winding down when your friend Mery suggests using Tarot cards to predict your future.

In the game, she deals 5 different piles, each of which contains 2 cards. When she gives you a brief interpretation, you are also allowed to pick one of the two, or to quit playing and walk away.

There are a lot of endings, including gruesome deaths, but there's at least one cute and positive ending about being creatively inspired.

There's some content warnings for sex, drugs, etc. but I only really saw deaths and the Tarot cards have some nudity. This game has a lot of endings for a game made in 4 hours, which is nice!

This game was complex and difficult to understand at first. It's a binksi game, similar to bitsy (the game system with minimal sprites, color schemes and animations), but mixed with Ink, the scripting language.

In this Spanish Ectocomp game, you wind up driving to a small village that still has people using donkeys and children play strange games with silhouettes and with a fountain in the town.

The game has several shifts in perspective that I didn't fully understand, which I can mostly attribute to my own poor understanding but also seems to be a mechanic designed to mirror the protagonist's own troubled mental state.

I definitely found the imagery in the game disturbing and frightening, but only from a psychological viewpoint; there is little to no gore and no jumpscares or anything. I think it is effective at being frightening. Like the author says in the description, it can be easy to miss things; I missed a lot of things on the first try and had to replay. Fun, short, and easy to play.

I was very excited by the beginning of this game but soon found that it was fairly unfinished.

The opening is very mysterious: you and your wife arrive at a house. Your wife has a bruise--is it from you, or someone else? You enter a house with 5 rooms, greeted by an old woman with dark secrets. That night, you have a terrible dream...

All of this is great. But much is left to be done. Conversation doesn't work (TALK TO, ASK ABOUT, direct speech, etc. in Spanish), and many items are not implemented. One of the few things that is implemented is an inventory limit of just two items.

The game has so many cool ideas, I would like to see it more developed. It stopped right at a very cool part! But for now I think it just needs more work to flesh it out more.

As a non-native speaker, I appreciated this game, since it was well-implemented, suggested verbs in the text that can be used (like "Montando el kit se construye un..."), and is a tightly-contained one-room scenario which limits possibilities to a reasonable amount.

The idea is that you are in a building watching a newly-born political party (the Party of the Future) holding a rally. Something odd is going on, as people and buildings around you demonstrate if you watch them closely. On the bed is a suitcase containing a disassembled rifle.

This game is short, but it had a couple of twists I didn't expect. It has one main puzzle, which I think is pretty fair. I decompiled it to figure it out, but even then it didn't give it away, I still had to think about it. I really liked the writing in this game, too, it was terse vivid and descriptive with its few details.

I'd first like to say that the art, animation, and audio for this game are very well done. I loved the style, and would be happy to see it again; it's unique, I haven't seen other games with the scribbly dark figures.

You play as a dangerous and large being that is hunting for food by a bridge. Humans pass by, and you can decide how to act towards them.

I played through to one positive ending (villager ending 1), but the way the game reacted to my choices made me feel like there were many very different endings. That's pretty cool!

There were some typos here and there (like "One of the small humans'", with an extra apostrophe). Overall, it was fairly brief. But what is here is excellent.

As of writing, this is tied with Esther for the most-reviewed game of IFComp 2022.

It's a fun short Ink game where you have the ability once per night per person to inject corporate slogans into people's brains.

The fun of the game is that you can use your powers to mind read 4 different 'tracks' all night (i.e. following each of the four main NPCs), jumping tracks at will, as well as watching the TV as a 5th track.

Your actions have a variety of drastic side-effects, and strategizing is fun, so I replayed several times. I do think it could have been fun to be a little longer, or have one more person, but overall I found it very impressive.

Katie Benson has made many games of varying length that are always well-polished, descriptive, and generally have simple, story-focused gameplay with a positive message (such as the Crumbs series), although sometimes things can get wild (like Off the Rails).

This game is a bit short but has a nice message. Each screen generally has two choices, one that expands the text and one that moves on.

The idea is that your life is spiraling out of control. Things are getting darker and sadder and you find yourself more and more isolated. But there is a glimmer, like the game name says.

I definitely appreciate seeing games from this author in competitions and hope to see more, always a positive spot.