Reviews by MathBrush

This game seemed at first like many, many other Twine games I've played where someone reflects on their childhood and a person they had a major crush on, only to revisit their feelings as an adult.

But this game turns out to be different in several good ways. First, it's nice visually, with well-thought-out font use, colors and spacing. the writing is descriptive and interesting, with few typos. And the choice structure is actually meaningful, the game putting real stakes on its choices and remembering them (although I encountered a bug where (Spoiler - click to show)I decided not to cut the bike tires but Luke remembered me as doing so). And the relationship with your friend is kept completely real and easy to visualize while also being ambiguous and interesting.

If I had any complaint it's that I thought it ended in act 4 and then had 2 acts after. I think having either a progress bar or other indicator of time passage, or having more of an emotional rise, climax, and denouement might make that easier.

This game has timed text, which usually is a major problem in games, but this game's text was pretty much exactly in sync with my reading, so it didn't bother me.

This game takes on a social problem: America has millions of empty homes but the homeless aren't allowed to live in them.

In this game, you play a homeless couple who breaks into an ultra-mansion. There are tons of rooms, and you can explore them for a long time.

Almost all interactions are choosing which room to see next. There are some fun self-referential moments (like finding a CYOA book and talking about how much you disliked them when younger), but the vast bulk of the game is marveling at the excess and poor taste of the rich owners.

It's hard to sympathize with the PC as they seem more motivated by envy than by higher ideals.

There were a few minor typos here and there (I think there was a stray 'a', like the phrase 'the a'). Overall, though, the writing was vivid. While this game seems to be a complete idea, I wouldn't mind spending more time with these characters in this world.

This short game has you on a narrow roadway with obstacles on either side, and you have to find a way to get free.

You are carrying several metaphorical objects (a hope, a fear, etc.). There is a single NPC to talk to, and two (that I found) possible endings.

I like the idea of this game, but I didn't feel satisfied with specific elements of the implementation and the writing.

Implementation wise, it seems it just needs a little more polish, like the formatting of the ending text or the whitespace at the end of some of the paragraphs.

Writing-wise, for me personally it was a little too abstract. I have the same feeling with many games, including some of Andrew Schultz's work, which deals with similar concepts of overcoming personal challenges and regrets. For me, it's easier to grab onto more specific examples and wording than to universally applicable truths.

-Polish: The game could use a bit more polish.
-Descriptiveness: I felt that the game could use more specificity.
+Interactivity: I liked the gameplay.
-Emotional impact: For some reason, the situations in the game didn't resonate with me.
+Would I play again? I played through twice just to see a different ending.

I've had a lot of friends and students with autism, and they're all different, so it's nice to see a well-described point of view from a new author.

In this visual novel, you play as a sort of guiding friend/telepathic connection to a young adult with autism who is travelling alone to a concert in Hungary.

Interestingly, the visuals respond to the PC's feelings, turning more colorful if you navigate situations well.

There are some good explanations of Spoon Theory and features a lot of things that I've seen in other literature by and about autistic people (like using sensory inputs such as music or textured objects for soothing).

Storywise, I felt like I had some action, the varying amounts of detail in the pictures was fun. This game is incomplete, but I'd like to see it finished.

I found this game somewhat stressful, as it reminds me of writing my big novel.

In this Twine game, you sit down and have to focus and begin typing your grand novel, kind of like Violet, where you have to sit down and type out 1000 words of your dissertation. Also like Violet, the main goal is to overcome your distractions.

The similarities end there. This game is fairly short, and the main gameplay doesn't have the puzzle (although the hints in the download show (Spoiler - click to show)how to solve a hidden puzzle to get a true ending).

The struggle of writing is real, and a lot of this game is relatable. Although it focuses on how hard it is to get started, for me, it was hard every day to pick up where I had left off.

While I found the game well-done, with a nice opening animation, there were some things that could be improved. Some paragraphs were spaced apart, while some were not, for instance. And, overall, it felt like it needed just a little more 'something', a 'je ne sais quoi'; I know that's vague, but that's the only way I can put it in words.

This game has some great art, and played smoothly in the downloaded version.

This is a pure time cave, i.e. a game where every choice gives a different branch and none of them ever converge.

In fact, the first choice between 3 characters gives entirely different games with seemingly no connection to each other (I got 1 ending for the first 2 and 4 for the last one, and didn't see any connection).

They're mostly about heartfelt and kind coming-of-age stories in a fantasy world with a lot of fantasy races and animals.

+Polish: The game was polished. Occasionally the text would glitch then fix itself, but I think that was just a loading thing.
+Descriptiveness: The story, setting, and characters were distinct and vivid.
+Emotional impact: I thought the game was cute.
-Interactivity: The branching structure gets exhausting after a while, because more and more time is spent re-reading the same text.
-Would I play again? I didn't finish getting all the endings and don't feel like I need to.

This game is written in Twine, and features you, a programmer, working on a secret government project when things go wrong.

It uses colored text for emphasis. The structure for much of the game is a small section where you pick 3 options in any order, then moving on, sometimes with a branch when moving on. The branches are big, with no coming back together in the end (essentially a 'time cave').

The overall storyline isn't bad, involving a kind of robot apocalypse.

There are several errors. One of the largest is that in the Twine code, many of the sections check the 'history:' feature of twine to see if you've visited a passage, but types the names of the passages wrong, so you never get to proceed unless you load it into twinery and proceed by yourself.

This, connected with the semi-frequent typos, leads me to believe that the other never played through the finished game or had testers try it. Having someone play through your game from end to finish really helps when submitting to a competition!

I agree with the other reviewer that this game's protagonist has problematic views. They're part of an overall bigger issue, which is that he is more or less a jerk. I've noticed when looking at choice-based games that while many people like being a 'bad guy', very few people like being a jerk.

-Polish: The game has gamebreaking bugs.
-Descriptiveness: The game's text was most interesting when describing the robots, but was otherwise fairly vague.
-Interactivity: The bugs threw a wrench in things.
-Emotional impact: I felt disconnected from the protagonist.
-Would I play again? Not until it's polished a bit.

I would definitel bump up the rating if the major bugs were resolved!

This game has truly great multimedia. I had some troubles with it (mentioned later), but I've never seen a Twine game at this level when it comes to video usage.

This spy game has constantly changing background animations that preserve a high degree of readability. There's a great score, and the videos/animations are just so crisp and readable.

The puzzles are honestly very clever, but again a technical mishap got me.

These were the things that I had trouble with:
-When I first opened the game, I had no sound.
-I restarted the game, but that popped up several javascript/Twine errors
-Then I restarted again, and the audio worked, but then....
-The AR thing seems to require a very specific set of technology that I could only solve with weird finagling. I had to (description of partial solution of this puzzle) (Spoiler - click to show)scan a QR code, so, since I was playing on the computer, I used my phone. But that took me to a twine game with a constantly moving link to click. That just straight-up doesn't work in Twine on mobile safari. So I copied the url into my email and sent it to my computer. Once you solve that Twine, you get sent to an AR. But the AR requires motion tracking, so I again had to email the url to myself so my phone could do the AR. This could all be solved by removing the text movement portion of the twine minigame you get sent to when you scan the QR code and replacing it with a different cool thing.

The storyline broke the 4th wall a lot but was honestly genuinely funny. There are some great lines here, and the audiovisuals and writing put together are very impressive. The tech troubles I had are the only thing keeping me from 5 stars.

Features strong profanity, some gruesome violence.

I rarely review a game without playing it to completion. To explain my omission in this case, I'd like to describe my play experience.

This was the second python game I played in this competition, so I had a better idea of how to get it running than I did on that one.

There are two ways to compile it: command prompt or web version.

I first tried command prompt and found it very slow, so then I tried the web version.

The web version has a several seconds pause between each line of text. This is somewhat frustrating, but not too bad. But the web version also blanks the screen frequently, and on a timer, so important text gets overriden by incidental 'flavor' text, making the text sometimes too slow and sometimes too fast.

The slow text, while a drawback, would have been manageable if not for the fact that:
-the same text pause happens when you make an error
-the game doesn't recognize most standard parser commands

For instance, you can't LOOK AT, W means WAIT instead of WEST and N means NEXT instead of NORTH. TALK TO is also not recognized. There is a HELP command, which lists helpful things to do, but in the web version sometimes typing HELP just gave me the environmental text, and HINT never worked.

So, much of my gameplay consisted of trying commands, getting errors, trying other commands, getting errors, all at a fairly slow pace.

The main game concept seems like it could work, but I can't proceed right now.

This game does a lot of good things, and really drew me in.

You play as a nouveau-riche socialite who is also a catburglar/art thief.

Gameplay revolves around two mechanics: conversation and puzzles.

The conversation consists of choosing one of three attitudes: Friendly, Direct, and Leading On (?) (I can't quite remember what they stood for). Most conversations last 2-4 choices and you have to use the feedback you get from the NPC to determine if you are making the right choices or not, so there is some allowance for mistakes.

The puzzles consist of both strategizing (often the choice is between being fast and risky or quiet and slow) and text-entry. I liked the last puzzle quite a bit.

I found the Gwen character a little annoying, but enjoyed the MC a lot. If you're a fan of Alias the Magpie, I think you'll enjoy this too.

Note: The many save files available were great. I decided not to try and get a perfect game, but I did use one save once to recall what someone had said many turns earlier.