Reviews by MathBrush

In this game you explore a small cave with different fantasy creatures and gems and such in it.

This game is part of a small genre of games best described as 'quirky twine game based in a cave/dungeon that riffs on the silly parts of fantasy games but also has feels and is generally a simple branching structure with little state tracking'.

Other entries in the genre include Just Get the Treasure v0.9.1, Girth Loinhammer and the Quest for the Unsee Elixir (a more complex example), TOMBs of Reschette, The Cave (a less humorous example), The Thing About Dungeons, etc.

This game is definitely on the zanier end. My son first got into Twine with games like this when he was 5, like Escape from the Crazy Place, because it's fun to do silly things like (in this cave) refusing to enter the cave from the get go. For me, as an adult, I still think it can be fun at times.

For some reason one of the passages didn't work at all for me on PC chrome, but it did when I loaded it up in the Twinery app (the one all in cyan that's on time delays).

Overall, I think that this game has some entertainment value, but I think it didn't offer very much new.

There is a long history of using surreal, abstract worlds to describe relationships in interactive fiction, with Plotkin's game So Far coming to mind as an early example.

This game pushes that trend to its logical extreme. You are with a woman, walking through an abstract maze that is navigated by identifying three-dimensional solids (except (Spoiler - click to show)they're aren't really any of the options, making it guess and check) or picking out numbers in a pattern. The maze has a negative effect on those who guess wrong, (Spoiler - click to show)turning them into geometric solids.

Pseudavid is an accomplished Twine writer with an extensive back catalogue (I particularly recommend Master of the Land and The Good People). This game contains hints of those earlier games, but has reached such a level of abstraction that I honestly had trouble piecing out what was going on or making connections or 'aha' moments. In other words, this game was over my head.

+Polish: The game was very smooth
-Descriptiveness: It was quite vague. The writing is good when zoomed in but when zoomed out seems to lack content:
(Spoiler - click to show)Oh, still salty about it, aren't we? Of course you wouldn't forget it. So, what's the final tally? Very, very good! But not perfect. How should I take it?'
-Interactivity. The game is meant to be played once, but has pass/fail mechanics and inscrutable choices. I suppose winning may not be the point, but as its set up it seems to be a frustration simulator.
-Emotional impact: I bounced off hard
+Would I play again? The game suggests not to, so I won't, but naturally I'd be interested in seeing other paths.

I recently played through a game that used pedophilia for its shock factor, to show you just how bad the villains were. I mentioned in a review there how I dislike playing games that heavily feature pedophilia, regardless of the overlying message.

This game is similar, in that it uses something morally wrong (in this case, flagrant racism) to tell a a story. There are effective stories you can tell about racism, but this game uses unchallenged racist terms and ideas, leaving the player to make their own conclusions at the end.

I do believe the author intends this piece to have an overall anti-racist message. (spoiler for ending) (Spoiler - click to show)Your character turns out to be the true monster, and what seemed hideous monsters attacking him, saying things he couldn't understand, were soldiers of the race he hated. But that's only after we spent the rest of the game with characters saying things like (Spoiler - click to show)'all Asian women are ugly', 'mongoloids', 'sub-human'. It's like when an acquaintance repeatedly insults you but says 'just joking!', or back-handed compliments like 'I completely disagree with all your friends who say that you look like a hideous pile of cow pies'. It felt over the line, for me.

Overall, the game was polished. The only interactivity is choosing which memories to remember, and you don't have time to remember them all. I did experience an emotional reaction to the game.

When I play games, I immerse myself in the protagonist. And this is a protagonist I do not wish to identify with.

My 3 stars represents my overall rubric: polish, descriptiveness, and emotional impact.

This game is intended to run in a DOS emulator such as DOSBOX. It has a nice aesthetic; there was a guy a few years ago who would constantly crank out BASIC games that ran in DOS and their best feature was the cool ascii art and overall look and style, and this game has that.

The parser may be a heavily modified Inform, but is more likely some kind of custom parser, since it doesn't understand standard Inform verbs like VERBOSE or PULL ME.

Gameplay is procedurally generated. You are in a maze of a house with NESW directions and one item or less per room. One of the items is a 'goal' (in my 11 playthroughs, I saw a wet elf, hungry goblin, pedestal with inscription, chest, etc.) and one of the other items is meant to be picked up and put in the goal.

I had always wanted to write a game like this as a meta-commentary on generic adventures, a game that would have random aesthetics and map but always be about gathering 'something' to put in a trophy-case analogue. But I never got around to it, and this game is a better implementation of my vision, so I'm glad to play this and see a better version of my own dreams.

In the end, of course, the game is very slight. It itches my 'play an adventure' desire, just like Nick Montfort's Amazing Quest last year, but that's it.

Mild spoiler if you haven't looked through other comp games: (Spoiler - click to show)This game seems to be part of a pair, since BJ Best has a game called "And Then You Come to a House Not Unlike the Previous One" that appears to have you play a pair of kids who are playing this very game, with the same text and same credits.

(Spoiler - click to show)There may be something hidden in the game, perhaps a secret that must be communicated between BJ Bests games, of which there are three (I saw on adventuron discord that he entered an adventuron game as well). I'll change my rating if I see anything new from those games.

This game uses only the letter A in all of its descriptions. It retains inform's original error messages though.

Like SCP-5251, the puzzle here is figuring out what words would fit into the given spaces. Fortunately, it's based on (Spoiler - click to show)a classic type of adventure puzzle. I only figured that out by looking at the comments of other reviews.

-Polish: The game could certainly have commited harder by implementing more error messages and nouns.
+Descriptiveness: The whole puzzle depends on the way the descriptions are written.
-Interactivity: There could have been a lot more meat here.
+Emotional impact: I found the idea fun.
-Would I play again? No.

This is a lovely little game by Caleb Wilson, one of many games of his involving magical plants.

In this one, you are at the bottom of a well with a piece of nearby sunlight. You want to grow but you just aren't strong enough.

This game is brief but with excellent characterization and strong writing, reminding me a bit of Out by Sobol, although less metaphorical. There are nice bits of world-building as well.

This game was co-written by an 8-year-old girl and her father. Having a kid around that age that I've made IF games with, I completely enjoyed this game and thought it was cute.

I never had any problems with the parser, and I think the young author's fresh perspective allowed some surprising responses that weren't in the norm.

The 'puzzles' were simple to follow and interactivity flowed well.

Overall, a very pleasant little game. Very small, and very fun; what a nice experience for a family team.

The author has said elsewhere that this is just a small game that will be more polished later on.

It uses the AdvSys language, which is capable of making very powerful games but requires a lot of work to get going. Unfortunately, this game doesn't have all that work.

It is very small, with only one real puzzle, all of whose steps are clear, but it's hard to type them in. Here are my attempts at one of the most important steps:

(Spoiler - click to show)
>pour water
I don't understand.
>water flower
I don't understand.
>empty bottle
I don't know the word 'empty'.
>put water on flower
I don't know the word 'put'.
>pour bottle
Nothing happens.
>give water
I don't understand.
>give bottle
Nothing happens.
>open bottle
I don't know the word 'open'.
>put water
I don't know the word 'put'.


The real answer was (Spoiler - click to show)'pour flower'.

My score of a 1 reflects the games lack of polish and verbs and general unfinished state. I 100% believe that with more time the author could make something marvelous.

This game is perhaps the shortest in the PunyInform jam, and it isn't perfect, but it has a lot of distinct advantage over its competitors:

-it has an overarching narrative
-it fits several twists into a 3-move game
-most objects are implemented more than the other games implement their objects

As surprise is the main feature of the game, I suppose I won't say much more. You start in a pub broom closet with a knife holding a note onto the wall.

This is a raw, uncompiled Quest file with a few locations and items. Many actions are built in to the descriptions and the only properties that seem to be used here are descriptions, locations, items being portable or not, and containers. For instance, the front door is a location you can enter and it contains a lock.

There is no ending, but there is a suggestion of an ending given in the description printed when trying to take some items.

This is essentially an outline for a game.