Reviews by MathBrush

In this game, you play as Sherlock Holmes' dog as you investigate a murder. The game features an innovative movement system based on Pacian's Castle of the Red Prince.

You explore a huge variety of locales with what seems like a hundred or more objects, but due to the system, it can be done quickly.

The one aspect of the game that initially turned me off is that it requires exhaustive search of all such objects. You have a single command to search them, but you have to repeat it over, and over, and over. It becomes like Where's Waldo.

However, as the story unfolded (using hints occasionally because I hurried through it in an hour), I became enthralled. This is a good mystery. As the author states, it is intended to be solved in your head, and not through gameplay mechanics (contrast this with the wonderful Infocom mystery Ballyhoo, where the focus is on solving puzzles to obtain more evidence, but a psychological element is still present).

I found the solution to be very logical and satisfying. I had two false accusations I was convinced of in the middle of the game before I realized I had missed crucial evidence.

Strongly recommended.

P.S. I was stuck at the very beginning because I did not understand the mechanic. You need to (Spoiler - click to show)smell nouns that appear in the descriptions of people, even if they are not present. So if someone smells like they went to a party, type SMELL PARTY, etc..

I played this Hugo game on Gargoyle. This game was nominated for a Best Game XYZZY award in 2005. You play a woman who just crashed on a strange planet and must survive. It feels like a shipwreck story, in a good way.

The game is very constrained. WAIT is disabled as a command! There are only ten locations, and only 4 of them have anything interesting; out of those four, two have exactly one item and one action you need to do.

I didn't like this game at first, for those reasons, but after I played it, the story stuck in my mind. The writing is descriptive and evocative, the items are well-described and creative. It is a game much better than the sum of its parts.

Beautiful Dreamer is one of the best Twine games to come out so far this year. In this fantasy game, you try to sleep at night during a windstorm.

You slowly realize that the game's world is not the same as your own. The world has a strong internal consistency, and you begin to learn more of its rules and nature.

The game is quite large. I was quite thrilled to discover (Spoiler - click to show)a classic CYOA gamebook near the beginning of the game. I thought the game was quite big already, but when I finished it and read the credits, I discovered that I had missed thousands of words' worth of text, which I went back and read.

The tone is a lot like Howl's Moving Castle (both the book and the movie), with archetypal characters, much talk of dreams, surreal magic, etc.

I also felt there were many similarities with Eidolon: (Spoiler - click to show)exploring a dark and shadowy bedroom, dream-type worlds, and a moth motif.

I strongly recommend this game.

I have never seen Being John Malkovich, but this game is loosely based on it. In this game, you gain access to Andrew Plotkin (a.k.a. Zarf), author of games such as Shade, So Far, Spider and Web, and a million others. You play several characters, including Zarf and a couple of young lovebirds.

The game is relatively short, taking less than an hour. The humor is mostly absurd humor, with numerous references to Zarf's fiction. I had only played a few games at the time; it is probably worth it to work through a lot of Plotkin's games (like So Far and A Change in the Weather) before playing this game, or afterwards. Unfortunately, these games are extremely hard, so if you're not a puzzle fiend, consider a walkthrough.

Great writing, mostly good puzzles, and a fun setting. I recommend it for everyone.

Solarium gives Twine a good name. This well-crafted game is adult ficion, not as in sexuality, but as in dealing with thoughtful and meaningful concepts. It involves alchemy and an alternative ending to the cold war, decades ago.

The narrative has a branching structure, with each branch requiring a key in the form of an alchemical substance. By obtaining more substances, you unlock more areas.

The game includes several striking images, including scans of real government documents.

I strongly recommend this game.

Taco Fiction is fun. It is a bit shorter than I would like; I paused the game partway through, expecting that half of the game was left, and when I came back, there was only about 30 turns left in the game.

You play a petty criminal who needs cash. The game gives you explicit directions on what to do at first. I love ignoring directions in parser games; in some games, like Bronze, the game just doesn't move forward at all if you ignore the directions. In this game, ignoring the directions gives you a lot of different, fun results.

I admit, I enjoyed the first part of the game, before the reveal, because it wasn't like anything else I had seen before. In this sense, it was a lot like Afflicted, although the actual reveal was wildly different in the two games.

The conversation system seemed at first incredible, and then very annoying, especially with the main favorable NPC. You have a lot to say, but 95% of it is completely irrelevant.

A good, short game. Is it one of the best games of all time? It certainly has one of the best openings of all time. So play it for ten minutes, and then decide if you want to keep going or not.

This is a short, fun thriller-type detective game by the author of Gun Mute and Rogue of the Multiverse.

Like those games, this game has a delightful romance. The game is linear, with only a few different decisions at different times. You can play as multiple characters, but which character you play is dictated by the scene.

There are a few scenarios where it is easy to miss a clue on what to do. If you just want to move forward, type 'hint' to get a fairly easy hint on what to do.

If you liked this game, check out Pacian's other excellent games.

Galatea is set in an artificial intelligence exhibit. Galatea, a stone woman brought to life, has mistakenly (or purposefully) been placed here.

You are a journalist, interviewing her to determine how good her "artificial intelligence" is. The answers can lead to anger, romance, supernatural effects, and a host of other possibilities.

It is a fun game to play through a few times. The conversation system is just asking her about more and more things, but the variety is endless.

This game was groundbreaking when it was first released, although later innovations have improved on it (such as the major NPC in Blue Lacuna). This game remains an enjoyable classic, because it isn't just technically impressive, it's enjoyable.

Porpentine is currently the best writer of Twine fiction out there. Howling dogs is perhaps her best work. This branching, non-linear long game is a far cry from most twine games, and in fact better than most parser games.

In howling dogs, you are imprisoned in some sort of futuristic cell. You alternate between boring, daily life and brief trips in a VR machine. The trips become more and more complex, and have deep underriding themes about inevitability and restraint.

I only got the bad ending at first; I didn't realize there was a good ending until I read the reviews. To get the ending:(Spoiler - click to show)On the page with tons of links, one link will give you the good ending. It isn't random, but plot related.

I recommend this game for everyone.

This is a pair of hilarious games which claim to be translations of old Russian CYOA games. This leads to some of the funniest writing I have ever seen in an Interactive Fiction game. The game is enormous, with a large number of branches, some of which converge again later.

What really makes this game stand out to me is the option to undo any number of your choices and explore more branches. So many Twine games have interesting options that you cannot explore without redoing large portions of the game. This alone made You Will Select a Decision stand out.

There was strong profanity at one point, but as you are penalized for using it, it wasn't especially disruptive.