Reviews by MathBrush

This is a game intended for kids about a magic cup that comes to life, written with the Strand system, which is the system used for the Magnetic Scrolls memorial and several IFComp and ParserComp games since then.

A lot of stories intended for kids end up being too inspid for either kids or parents to enjoy. This game was 'corny', but it was a kind of corny I liked and an imaginative one as well, with its own internal logic and, to me, compelling arcs, even in its short playtime. I found the writing detailed and vivid.

You play as a tin mug that has the ability to affect the world around it, especially on today, its birthday.

Choices were usually binary, often with one clearly better choice, which would make sense when teaching a young child about how choice-based games work. I guess my only thought about possible drawbacks would be that the breaks between choices are fairly large and it would be difficult to hold a child's attention that long if they're excited about choices.

This game lets you explore Octavia, a city described in the book Invisible Cities (by Italo Calvino) as a spider-web city hung on a great web of ropes, pipes, etc.

You are offered three different items to take with you. When you arrive, you have time to explore and look around, seeing the wonders of the city.

But not very much time. After 20 turns, the game ends with a vague message. I unfortunately got that message on my first playthrough right when I was trying to click a moving link, so I thought that this was a 'failure message'. With no undo, I was out of luck.

But I think the intent here is that you explore for a short time but are unable to see it all in one playthrough. That's a beautiful idea, but I find the execution a bit wanting. There's no indication that that's what the ending signifies, and the other review on IFDB I read also seemed to consider it as a bug or problem of some sorts.

I'm giving 3 stars mostly because I like the conceit both of the spiderweb city but also because of the idea of the limited time, even if it came off a bit weird.

From the picture, blurb, and length on the IFComp page (which I swear used to say 2 hours, but I think I must have misread it because now it says 15), I expected this game to a big, polished Twine game with cool visuals, like Porpentine's Crystal Warrior Ke$ha.

Unfortunately, this is a very short Twine game with 1 major area, with simple links to rooms and back (each room being one passage). State doesn't seem be to be tracked at all. Almost all the endings are just vague statements that you slept with someone.

I think the author can do better. This kind of game can be written up in 30 minutes or an hour. That doesn't mean you can't make a great game in that time, but it's hard and needs good luck. I'd like to see more length and/or effort and/or cool new idea.

This is a Texture game, involving dragging commands onto nouns, one of several written in a writing group and entered into IFComp.

This one deals with grief; a loved one is gone, and a letter from her appears and follows you.

I played through twice, one being peaceful and accepting, one being hateful and destructive. I felt like it made a lot more sense the second way. This game has poetic and abstract style, and I didn't connect with it. By that, I mean I would often read a page and feel like I couldn't remember anything I read or anything I felt. The words felt slippery in brain.

Overall I liked the branching paths, but I didn't like how the text often lacked paragraph breaks and sometimes changed font size dramatically from one page to the next; I know that can be a stylistic effect but I couldn't the connection between the text and the font size.

Overall, I like surreal games and enjoyed the 'dark' ending of this. But the formatting and phrasing threw me for a loop.

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.