Reviews by MathBrush

So I have to shout out this author for being the first person to release a Gruescript game in a competition outside of Robin Johnson (that I know of). It's a cool language and looks neat.

This is a surreal game where you explore various dreamscapes after having failed at a musical career.

In a contrast to Robin Johnson's puzzle-filled games, this is more of a thoughtful introspection game where you wander around and follow directions given in-text.

I love surreal games in general, and Gruescript is cool, so I have a lot of good feelings in general. The execution needs a lot of work, though. The author says they want to learn, so here are my thoughts on things that could be improved:
-I feel like there could be a little space between the output window and the room description window; it felt a little crowded (I don't know if this is adjustable?)
-Some buttons had underscores (Who_Am_I) and some had spaces; I think it would look better if they were standardized.
-Some options seem like they unintentionally lock the player out of an action; like going south in the very last area and finding the envelope. Even if you don't open it, you can't go back north.
-The writing is descriptive, but it often feels like something's off with punctuation. I had similar problems and always check my games with Grammarly (I promise this isn't an ad lol), may be useful here. by playing through and copying and pasting the output

Overall, I think the game could be substantially improved, so I'm giving a lower score for now, but I definitely think this is promising and would like to see more from this engine and from this author.

In this Twine game, you play as someone born as a Beast, someone who is marked with a strange symbol. You have to run away to a place where everyone else is like you or respects you.

The game seems like it will be huge, with two input fields and 4 status bars or conditions. But I played to two different endings in less than 10 minutes, both of which seem like full stories.

There are a lot of great ideas here; the overall storyline, the lush background graphics and sounds, the compelling choices and the way even the writing responded to my actions. But it all feels very unfinished and unpolished, with some typos and grammatical errors (like 'corspes' for 'corpses'). This just needed more time, I think.

This game was listed as a 2-hour game, so I was expecting the largest Texture game ever, but it turned out to be less than 15 minutes long.

In this game, your roommates are going on a trip while you are left behind. Alone in the night, you face a few frightening encounters, and have a disturbing morning.

This is a Texture game, where you drag actions onto nouns, and here all the actions are represented by emojis.

I had trouble forming a coherent story out of this; it's mostly vibes, but it seems to contain elements of anxiety, self-harm, and something weird involving your friends?

An interesting experiment, but not one the grabbed me. It's polished and descriptive, but I didn't form an emotional connection and struggled with the interactivity.

I've been playing Parsercomp games in the reverse order of their placement. This one is pretty low on the list, but I actually had fun with it.

It's a custom parser engine, and it could use a lot of work when compared with engines that have decades behind them, but I liked the look, the browser-readiness, and the quick response time, so I definitely think it has promise, better than many custom parsers I've seen.

The game is silly fun and somewhat reminiscent of Zork. You are asked to visit an old professor friend (I think?) and end up at a lodge with several mysterious objects and items around.

A lot of text is non-interactive in this story, with lots of items described followed by 'PRESS ENTER TO CONTINUE', which could lead to some disambiguation problems, but if you LOOK at the prompt it lists items in a big list, making it easier to know what you can interact with.

The structure branches a lot, which is a bit of a bummer as there is no save feature and replaying the beginning quickly gets repetitive. Replaying is more enjoyable if you can shake things up a little every time right from the get go.

I saw one typo, which is not that bad. I had some struggles at the end (this was my attempt at a happy ending after my bad ending revealed a surprising truth):
(Spoiler - click to show)
What will you do?


> hug beast


Undefined response.


> drop gun


Undefined response.


> say hello


What would you like to say?


> hi


What would you like to hi?


> x beast


A terrifying beast standing 12 feet tall. Its teeth and claws look razor sharp.


> give gun to beast


Undefined response.


> drop gun


Undefined response.


> l


I didn't understand that.


> look


There's a terrifying beast, and a bat swarmed exit.


> wait


I didn't understand that.


> stay


I didn't understand that.


> scream


I didn't understand that.


> x gun


It looks like an old service revolver. The wooden handle has been polished with sweat from decades of use.


> give gun


Undefined response.


> talk to yeti


What would you like to talk?


> x yeti


What would you like to examine?


> x beast


A terrifying beast standing 12 feet tall. Its teeth and claws look razor sharp.


> beast hello


The beast pauses.


PRESS ENTER TO CONTINUE




Despite some typos, I'm impressed with the polish for a game made by hand. I found it amusing, and played a couple of times.

This game seems a lot like Her Story (a popular game where you search tons of short video clips interviewing a woman about a crime, and you have to find and use keywords to search; I think, I haven't played it) but it uses static images instead of videos.

There are only about 8 images and it's difficult to know what to type. I got most of the images from this intfiction thread:
https://intfiction.org/t/anyone-having-any-luck-with-kondiac/56651/3

Overall, this is just the beginning of the game, so it's really hard to evaluate how enjoyable it would be if finished. Right now, I'm assigning it a low score on my scale (which measure polish, interactivity, descriptiveness, emotional impact, and the desire to play again), but I could see an improved version being really fun.

This game was entered into the recent 2022 Parsercomp.

This is a python game. When it begins, it has a neat little loading animation, then gives you a list of commands.

Gameplay consists of fighting, where you can attack or run away, plus eating to regain health and trading.

There are only a few simple encounters and locations, so it seems like most of the work went into the system. These kind of things are pretty hard to program, so I imagine that the author found it enjoyable to wrestle out how to program all the different activities.

Unfortunately, most of the work recreated things which were done before in other languages, and so from a player standpoint there's not a lot here that's new or exciting.
-Polish: The game is a bit buggy and could use more disambiguation and error messages.
-Descriptiveness: The game is fairly sparse
-Interactivity: It was a bit hard to figure out what to do
-Emotional impact: It doesn't seem designed for that.
-Would I play again? Probably not.

This feels kind of like a game for the author to experiment with and/or learn ADL.

It's a .exe file that leads to a simple game with < 10 rooms. Most rooms have 1 item. There are several characters you interact with using TALK CHARACTER. Instead of GIVING items, you PUT items in different places. The game ends right when you get the final point, closing down instantly without waiting to display the end text.

The writing is minimal, there isn't a strong connecting narrative. The puzzles are logical, though. If this was a trial run for the author to check out the language, it succeeded. I'm very glad there was a tutorial, as most games written in .exe parser are hard to navigate, so that's a definite plus here!

This is a short anthology of 7 poems.

Each poem consists of a few lines, each of which has cycling text.

You can either read the poem straight through and then cycle each line, or cycle through one line at a time. Or anything else you like! So it essentially is a collection of two-dimensional poems, which I like.

The poems are all about aliens, and saucers, and changes, and doubt. With its combination of obscure meanings and occasional goofy lines it reminded me a bit of Subterranean Homesick Alien or Decks Dark by Radiohead.

I appreciated this anthology intellectually, especially its polish and design, but didn't feel emotionally engaged for some reason or another.

This is a short parser game set in space. It has neat little pixelart graphics at the top.

Like another reviewer, I had a bit of trouble realizing I had to hit enter to start the game (might be worth adding a 'hit enter to continue' text on the title screen).

The game has you floating in space. There's not much to do besides cry, it seems at first, but fortunately the game has implemented a lot of little actions to add character. But then the real puzzles start (for me, I started by (Spoiler - click to show)examining my suit, if anyone's stuck).

Besides being longer, the best thing the game could do is get more transcripts from players and responding to even more actions than are in the game (for instance, I think TURN ME should give a different response).

It also might be worth splitting up some of the complex actions into more parts; I typed in one command and the game had a big, complex scenario where I tried things over and over again until I figured it out. It might have been more fun to do that myself instead of having it described to me.

This game has plenty of potential but is still in the early stages.

Right now, it's a completely linear intro with some nice music and some placeholder images with a charming feel. You are a young witch ready to profess your love, but when you arrive at your sweetheart's door, she's gone, and only a fragment of a spell is left to give evidence.

And that's it. Would play the full thing, when it comes out.