Reviews by MathBrush

This is a truly lovely game. It’s written in Twine, and is basically a heartwarming short story told with interactivity, animation and sound.

You play as someone raised in Hong Kong now living in the UK. You are sick and wish more than anything you could have some congee.

The choices are more about roleplaying than about strategy, and that works well for me. Visually, the game is gorgeous, with animated line drawings, animated color scenes, and beautiful faux text messages.

I identified with the message of the game as well, even though I’ve never experienced it to that degree. I lived in Manhattan’s Chinatown and the Bronx in New York for 2 years after growing up in suburban Utah, and it was a real culture shock. Even now, I live in Texas without anyone nearby, as a single dad. And probably the thing I miss the most was our Sunday Roasts lol. I even cooked one for myself last week in the crockpot and ate the leftovers the whole week.

So, very lovely. It might not place in top 10 due to its short length,but I’d be happy to nominate it for an XYZZY or two next year.

+Polish: Incredibly well-polished.
+Descriptiveness: I could almost smell the food.
+Interactivity: It gives either choice or the illusion of choice, and both are good.
+Emotional impact: A lot, for me
+Would I play again: Definitely, if I ever get down.

My only real experience with the Tarot deck is from the Deck of Many Things in AD&D and also Stardust Crusaders, so games featuring Tarot symbology significantly always mystify me somewhat.

In this game, you play as a deck of Tarot cards brought to life. You help design your own life story, then make several predictions for others.

There’s a lot of metafiction here about how we construct our own narratives. It reminds me of the 2015 game A Figure Met in a Shaded Wood as well as SCP-3939, both of which make the shape of the story an integral part of the narrative.

The graphics here look good. The writing is interesting. I felt it hard to either strategize with choices or roleplay as a character, which are my usual two ways of interacting with a game. This game definitely shows a lot of craft, though, and I respect the one who wrote it!

+Polish: It looks and plays great.
+Descriptiveness: The writing is vivid.
-Emotional impact: I wasn't invested in the character, perhaps due to my unfamiliarity with the tarot
+Interactivity: Despite my struggles, the self-referential nature of the game validated my actions.
-Would I play again? Not at this time.

I taught a summer camp in Twine a few months ago. We spent about a week going over adding multimedia, setting variables, beta testing, etc. They liked it and kept working on games even after the camp, some which were pretty cool and impressive.

This game reminds me of that, the game of someone who has recently learned twine and puts in 10-20 hours of work making a fairly complex game. It has a soundtrack, custom styling, and non-linear puzzles.

It reaches for a few things without quite making it. I vividly remember when I entered my first IFComp game, one of the most famous people in IF made a comment about my game:

"I found *Ether* least effective when it explicitly went for pathos in the writing, because it was asking me to empathize[...]and it hadn’t put in the time to build up that empathy."

I was hurt by that at the time, but it's true, and it's true about this game, too. The violence and the blood in the snow aren't as frightening because there wasn't enough buildup. The game is asking us to be afraid or to be disturbed by the death of others, but we know nothing about them.

It wouldn't take a lot to fix that. The difference between an okay story and an awesome story is usually just a few tweaks. In my experience, the best thing to do is just try something, see how people react, and change it if it doesn't work, then repeat. That's why I usually have 10+ beta testers, it lets me work out all the questionable parts of a story before I release it. In this case, if I had to suggest anything specific, I'd give our character some more personality: maybe this is their first cross-country road trip as an adult and they're a little lost and terrified of how dark it is. Maybe they run out of the room at the first sight of blood. If you say something is scary, the reader isn't usually scared. If you say the character is scared, though, then a lot of times the reader will empathize with them.

The puzzle parts of this game weren't too bad. There are a lot of unfair deaths you can't undo, but the game is short enough that you can try over and over again. I still would have liked a few more hints at what works and what doesn't, and maybe expand the story and game a little longer. Overall, I definitely think the author should keep writing; I'll keep an eye out for any future games.

+Polish: I didn't notice any bugs, and the multimedia aspects worked well.
-Descriptiveness: Like I mentioned above, I think the story could use some work.
-Emotional impact: Same as above.
+Interactivity: The puzzle structure wasn't too bad.
-Would I play again? Not at this time, but I would play another game by this author!

I was surprised to see this game has no relation to the classic Captain Verdeterre's Plunder, but it's a good name style so it makes sense it would come up more than once.

This is a short Twine game with one big idea and it does it well. You are a pirate captain who has been forced to retire to his library. You have only one plan left: (Spoiler - click to show)to reconstruct a pirate crew and ship from the texts of classic books.

It's a nice concept and the books involved are fun to learn about or to remember. The game is over very quickly, so it's worth playing through while the comp is running just to enjoy some of the fun. This review is brief because there's not much to say that doesn't spoil it.

+Polish: The game looks great and plays well.
+Descriptiveness: Yes; some from the source texts and some from the author.
+Interactivity: It's short but has several interesting options.
-Emotional impact: It was interesting but I didn't really feel invested.
-Would I play again? It's a good game, but I think I've seen enough of it.

I tested this game.

Pseudavid has really turned out to be a Twine master in the last few comps, placing in the top 10 each time and making technically proficient games.

This game is more understated than the other games, but still complex and thoughtful. You, a night guard at a soon-to-be-abandoned housing complex, gets into a fast and stormy relationship with a remarkable woman.

The story takes place over three days simultaneously, with your choices in each day affecting the others (so a choice in the future can be a flashback with affects the choice in the past).

The effects in this game aren't as obvious as in Pseudavid's other games, but the ending I got was very nice. If this game has faults, they lie in it being somewhat opaque or dense, leaving the player to sort through several narrative threads at the same time. But taking that away would fundamentally change the nature of the game, so I'm not sure it's a bad thing.

+Polish: This is what Pseudavid is known for. At least to me.
+Descriptiveness: The characters were so vivid it hurt a little.
-Interactivity: It was hard to figure out what's going on at times. I was a tester, so I had a leg up, but still it was a bit rough for me. Like I said, I wouldn't recommend changing that.
+Emotional impact: I felt very invested in the character I was playing as.
+Would I play again? I'd like to explore other paths.

This game had a ton of buzz on Twitter and received a lot of early reviews, so I was interested in playing it.

It turns out to be really good. Raban seems to have a firm grasp of storywriting and interactivity. This is a perfectly well-crafted game, limited only by its relatively small size. I imagine, though, that many judges will be happy to find a quick and enjoyable game with excellent handicraft.

In this game, you are texting with your mother. You come from a family of immigrants, and your mother decides to try and teach you Tagalog over the phone. She quizzes you on your life and choices while trying to introduce you to various grammatical rules which, of course, you could never absorb in a single sitting, but which she seems determined to impart.

This game uses slow text to good effect, which is really rare. I think the keys are having a very short game with well-defined parameters. Here, we know we're in a text message conversation which can't last too long, and the game is advertised as short. The delays are realistic and not too long.

I think the best part of the game is showing the tension between a mother (especially a southeast asian mother), her desires for her American-raised children and the children's own personality and feelings. I think this is great.

+Polish: Very polished.
+Descriptive: The characters really came alive.
+Interactivity: I felt like my choices really mattered.
+Emotional impact: Felt some tension. Worried I'd say the wrong things.
+Would I play again? Sure!

This is a fairly short game, and the author’s first game. Because they mentioned trying to learn things, I’ll keep that in mind.

This is a multimedia-heavy game, and it encourages you to use headphones while you play and uses timed text, sometimes fast and sometimes slow.

The game is translated from Spanish, but I didn’t notice for a while because it’s a fairly good translation. But it needs some more work; when running around the room, for instance, one of the links was ‘pedizquierda’.

The story is about being creeped out and attacked by a demon at night. Interaction-wise, you have a sort of maze (that’s not really a maze), a couple of ‘guess the right option’ things and some battles.

Knowing your audience is important. A couple of things to keep in mind about IFComp are:

1.The winning games are often very polished, having been worked on for dozens or hundreds of hours. Not every game does this, but
2. Having your games tested is a plus. Having it tested by people who’ve done IFComp before is an even bigger plus. Having it tested by a lot of experience people, responding to their feedback, and improving your game over months is best.

3.Making fun of the player isn’t as popular as it once was. For instance, if you choose the wrong thing, the game has the demon say:
I think you’re too stupid for me to feel like playing with you.It was the worst decision you have ever made, but thanks for being so stupid.

As a player, that’s not super fun to read. It’s not horribly bad, and I know it’s about the person in the game, but it was my decision, and saying I’m stupid is kind of frustrating.

4. Multimedia and timed text can make a game look a lot cooler, but if you think about, why are people even interested in a text competition? Some people like it because the games are easy to make. Others are blind and use text to speech readers. Some (like me) like having games you can play as fast or as slow as you want, take breaks, play without sound while taking a break at work or at home. So having a lot of your game dependent on keeping up with the text or having to listen intently to the sounds can be hard. That’s why games like Limerick Quest that have timed text have options to turn it off.

Overall, I think this game shows cool programming and a fun writing voice. It’s okay that it has some faults, because it’s your first game. Nothing would be more depressing than having your first game be your best game, because it’s all downhill from there. I think of Victor Ojuel and Ruber Eaglenest who both entered IFComp for the first time with games that were heavily criticized. They listened to the feedback, tried again and both placed in the top 10 with excellent games (and Victor has a job as a narrative designer now).

+Polish: There are bugs and typos, but the sound effects and art are fancy.
+Descriptiveness: The game makes its world come alive.
-Interactivity: I was frustrated by having to choose exactly the right option.
-Emotional impact: This game didn't really impact me.
-Would I play again? As it currently is no.

Nick Montfort wrote Ad Verbum, a great wordplay game that predates both Andrew Schultz and Emily Short’s wordplay games (but not Nord nor Bert), and has since then done a lot with the intersection between text and software.

I had heard a lot about this game, mostly consternation and mystery.

I’m happy to take this game at face-value. Without digging deeper, this reminds me of ASCII and the Argonauts, but slightly less complex.

In this game, you are presented with yes/no options on what kind of interactions to have with a scrambled group of towns. It seems that there is a pattern on what to do (and I was able to be right more than half of the time, so either there is a pattern or the game is good at making you feel there is a pattern, which there’s not really much of a difference there).

I’ve always had a fondness for little games done well. I came up with my current star-rating system on IFDB just so I could feel consistent giving the tiny micro-game ‘Creak, Creak’ and ‘Counterfeit Monkey’ both 5/5.

So, yeah, this is cool. Not what I expected from Nick Montfort, but then again I didn’t know what to expect, and this definitely fits his recent work. If more about the game is uncovered, that’s fine, but I kind of like its meditative simplicity.

+Polish: It does exactly what it sets out to do.
+Descriptiveness: I found that it packed in meaning in small chunks.
+Interactivity: I liked discovering the pattern.
+Emotional impact: I'm still pondering on sacrificing to Gods of a dusty planet.
+Would I play again? Yeah, I think I'll take another look at it.

This unity game is more of a reimagining of a tarot deck than anything else, like the text describes.

It’s a 3d game with responsive physics. You can pick up a card, place it in the correct spot (or just slop it around), flip it over, flip it over part way.

Cards can be placed in four different positions, and then the game will register the full reading for you.

It’s an impressive use of the 3d engine and the art is great. As a purely narrative game, I didn’t feel a strong emotional connection to the cards or the readings. But this will almost certainly be the most technically impressive game I play in this comp

+Polish: Immensely polished.
-Descriptive: I found the card meanings and descriptions fairly vague.
+Interactivity: Smooth and nice 3d interactions.
-Emotional Impact: I felt distanced from the messages of the cards.
-Would I play again? I'm not sure what I could find in it more than I have. Although to be fair I was always leery of Tarot, which this resembles.

When I clicked on Neil Aitken’s website, I saw that he is an accomplished poet, with testimonials by other poets including some state Poet Laureates.

So I was interested to see how the game panned out. Games by static fiction authors are often different from games by programmers-turned authors. (Edit: apparently he was also a programmer before too, which explains the smoothness of the game!)

So this game is a cyclical kind of twine game where you wander around a maze of rooms (different on both of my playthroughs, with about half the rooms the same and the other half different). It’s a cave and it’s influenced by standard fatnasy tropes (treasure, magic runes, lizard people, magic pools, etc.) and you can gather various items and use them as well as gathering things like ‘incomprehensible wisdom’ which I thought was a nice touch.

Visually, the game uses neon-style text for important nouns, kind of like the neon in Cactus Blue Motel. I found it visually appealing.

This game was polished: no bugs, no typos that I found. Usually first-time game creators tend to have a few unfinished ends here and there (blank passages, macros typed incorrectly), so that was pleasing.

Overall, I would say that the line by line writing was excellent. I’ve found over time in the comp that a lot of people who try to create poetry in IF fail to inspire me, but I was genuinely into the writing here. As an overall story and as a series of interactions, it didn’t excel to me; it was competent, but I feel it could have been more ambitious. The same could absolutely be said about my own game in this competition. I would definitely consider this a game for the author to be proud of.

+Polish: The color highlighting around important words is nice, and this game had no bugs or typos that I found.
+Descriptiveness: Lovely writing, very nice.
+Interactivity: The overall structure didn't stand out to me, but the variation and the many ways the inventory can be used was fun.
+Would I play again? Definitely.
+Emotional impact: Yes, a kind of meditative, chill emotion.