Reviews by MathBrush

This is an Adventuron Christmas game where the Reindeer are knocked out by your 'special potions' that Santa keeps in barrels. You have to recruit someone else to help!

The art is superb here, adding a lot to the game. The puzzles are a mixed bag, including a logic puzzle and a visually-based minigame where you have to guide pigeons across windy terrain.

Overall, I found the writing to be funny. The whole thing felt a little light, which makes sense since I suppose additional time went into crafting visuals. But it's worth a fun and silly 30 minutes, and I didn't run into any implementation issues.

In this brief Adventuron game, you have to set a trap for Santa to make him give you a present.

In writing, graphics, and gameplay, this resembled nothing more to me than a single puzzle (or maybe two) in a Scott Adams game. Everything is stripped down bare, and you have to get things exactly right for the game to recognize your answers.

It works overall as a puzzle, but here is my score:

-Polish: Everything is bare-bones.
-Descriptiveness: Same, the writing is minimalist and mostly just lists of present objects.
-Interactivity: I found the main puzzle frustrating, not in figuring out what to do, but in figuring out how to communicate it to the parser.
+Emotional impact: Despite the above, I found it fun to solve.
+Would I play again? It's brief enough that it could be fun to check out next year.

This is a great game. I went back and forth on a 4 or 5, but there are so many great little details that I'll definitely go with the higher score.

This is an adventuron game with a detailed life sim. You have to keep up your hunger, happiness and energy bars. In addition, you have to solve little puzzles that your wife (or partner?) Pel sets for you.

There are numerous illustrations, especially for the puzzles. The writing is solid.

The story isn't completely original (what is?) but is executed well. The life-sim is a bit easier than it could be but fits narratively. The puzzles are all in constrained environments and occur one at a time, but require ingenuity and creative thinking.

Definitely worth trying out. It does require the graphics as an essential component of the puzzles, though, making it difficult for visually impaired players.

This is an interesting setup for a game.

It's an adventuron game with pixelart illustrations of a dystopian future (presumably referencing Cyberpunk 2077, which I haven't played). You are a futuristic version of an elf in a timeline where Santa has sold out and delivers anything to anyone, no matter what side of the law they're on.

There are one or two puzzles at a time, and it requires careful exploration, but the limited verb set means that you should be able to figure out what you need to do, even if you have to think a bit to solve it.

The main puzzles involve codes you have to solve, which I found enjoyable.

I received a B ending, with a few ideas of what I might need to do next. It was fun, but I don't feel compelled to try again.

This is another entry in the Adventuron game jam.

It features some nice pixel art of a small village near a lake. You receive a dream message from a mysterious figure requesting your help.

It's a small game, with six or so locations and about a puzzle per location. The highlight for me was a cryptogram puzzle using symbols that you had partial information on, making it different than the regular cryptogram puzzle.

I felt like a few of the puzzle solutions were somewhat unfair, especially finding the book in the library, which dampened my enthusiasm a bit. But it was a fun short play overall.

This game was entered in the Adventuron Christmas game jam.

One of Adventuron's weaknesses is its parser, which, while strong, hasn't caught up to Inform, Dialog and TADS. This game neatly sidesteps that by making it a limited parser game, with the only commands being TAKE, DROP, EXAMINE, and LOOK.

There are only three rooms: a 'hub' room with a Christmas tree, a storage room containing almost all the gifts (including lords and ladies anxiously waiting around), and a kitchen with materials.

The entirety of the interactivity is picking up one item and dropping it in the right spot, hoping it interacts right. Technically, you could just take everything and dump it together (and I admit I took that course occasionally), but it's too tedious to do that without trying to analyze that ahead of time, especially since you have a carrying limit of 3 items (one of the few games where I think that limit enhances gameplay).

The rainbow colors and sound cues were nice.

+Polish: The game is polished;
+Descriptiveness: The descriptions of the gifts is fairly amusing
+Interactivity: This particular setup worked for me
+Emotional impact: It was heart-warming
-Would I play again? It was fun, but was a bit too long for the main gimmick for me.

This is a medium-length Ink game where everything breaks loose at a dinosaur park.

I saw this game with one of the authors guiding us through it at the Seattle IF Meetup. I appreciate the witty humor and the world model that lets you travel around.

I think there are a few things that need to be ironed out. There are instant deaths without undo, but it does have save points to help you restart. A bit more troubling is that there is often not any indication of what path is most likely to lead to success. This was typical of CYOA books, but those books allowed instant undo and instant traversal to any page at any time. I’ve often thought that successful ‘puzzly’ IF is based around making the player feel smart, so giving them hints to pick up on is really helpful.

The other thing that I think could be improved is the story pacing. I think the big moment in the middle needed a bit more buildup. It’s possible that there were more clues hidden in some of the options, but as Emily Short has recommended in the past, if you’re writing a branching game make sure that it’s impossible for the player to miss your story. If a beat is essential to understanding what’s going on, make sure that story beat is hit in every playthrough.

Otherwise, I found this game fun. I couldn’t get to an ending (in the Frogger version, the best I got was rescuing a guy out of water before dying, and in the lab, I got in a weird repeated cycle where I kept getting ‘sneak’ and ‘distract’ and one other option, and I couldn’t figure it out). Glad to see Ink being used!

-Polish: There were a few typos (like helicoptor) and the laboratory ending with the dinos seemed off somehow.
+Descriptiveness: The writing is full of interesting descriptions of things.
+Interactivity: Even though I was frustrated, I felt like I had real options near the end.
-Emotional impact: I felt like there needed to be one or two additional scenes for buildup before dramatic sections (that set up the feeling or more tension)
+Would I play again? I'd like to find a successful ending.

This game reminds me a little bit of the IF game Eurydice in tone and opening setup.

This is a longish Twine game that is almost entirely choiceless. It consists of several pages, each long, containing a detailed story, with some click-replace links and a few 'asides' (where you read them and come back). An early segment allows some options in the order you explore three scenes. It's styled with orange-on-black text, and is set at a 1999 Halloween party.

The structure of the game means that this game depends entirely on the quality of its story, and I think it excels there. There's real tension, especially if you read the content warnings ahead of time. There are surprises throughout, and I think overall this is some of the best writing of the comp. In a way, that made some of the links a little more frustrating; I didn't want to miss any of the good writing, so I just clicked on everything in order, going back and forth on the asides. I wonder if I 'notation' system like Harmonia's would have worked better.

If the author reads this, I loved the story. Very meaningful!
+Polish: I didn't see any errors.
+Descriptiveness: Great writing.
-Interactivity: I was a little frustrated by it.
+Emotional impact: I teared up a bit after.
-Would I play again? I liked it, but I think it will stick well enough from 1 playthrough.

This is a cute game, and I had fun with it.

You’re a subatomic particle in a universe that’s constantly getting destroyed and recreated by a great cosmic cat.

The structure is basically the Time Cave type, where branches can take you down divergent paths. There are 5 permanent endings and many restart endings. It’s short enough that replay is easy.

The graphics for this game are bright and bold. Your cursor can turn into different animals. Your background can get filled with different pictures of the universe.

Worth playing since, if nothing else, its fun-to-length ratio is so high.
+Polish: The game is very polished. Graphics are a nice addition, although they can be 'busy'.
+Descriptiveness: The universe has a lot of detail and variety.
+Interactivity: The short length makes playing through a couple of times worthwhile.
+Emotional impact: It felt charming.
-Would I play again? I think that a few times through was enough. I'm not completely interested in seeing all endings.
+Descriptiveness:

This is a series of short stories inspired by/based around Rudyard Kipling’s Just So stories. Each story is told over a small number of pages, and there is one or two choices per story. These choices lead to massive changes between replays, to the point where it’s basically a choice between two separate stories.

The writing is good, similar to the original. The poetry was amusingly intentionally bad.

I appreciate the thought that went into its game, especially its sly twist near the end. I wasn’t really a fan of Kipling’s Just So stories before playing this game, and I think that influenced me not really getting a big emotional impact from this. But this game shows the author knows how to plan, write and program an interesting Twine game.

+Polish: The game is immaculately polished.
+Descriptiveness: The writing has a distinctive voice.
+Interactivity: Having the choices make an impact was nice.
-Emotional impact: The game was interesting, but I wasn't invested in the characters.
-Would I play again? I think once was enough. It'll stick in my brain though.