Reviews by MathBrush

This game is surprisingly complex for a 4-hour game. There's conversation (although only ASK X ABOUT COMET works in general), many locations, a vehicle, rope.

There are a lot of grisly details. As a content warning, this game has frequent references to suicide. That part was a bit too dark for me.

I only found one ending, on a cliff. I'm sure there are other endings (I think other reviewers have found them).

This is a very short story about the game Among Us. I feel like I'm giving all the La Petite Mort games 3 stars (which, I figure is what you'd expect most speed-IF to be at most). This game is very short, but I love playing Among Us with my son, so it was fun.

And it surprised me twice. The first one I feel very dumb for not thinking of, given how obvious it is, but the second thing that surprised me is how customized the text is based on the order of your choices.

Short fun.

This game is directly modeled on Lime Ergot and Toby's Nose, where the main action is found by examining something over and over again, including things mentioned in the description.

It's more rough than those two, with some typos and less direction for the player, but the worldbuilding was intriguing to me and the descriptiveness well-done.

It's a brief game, but I played through it twice and feel there's still more for me to discover.

This is a short, styled twine game about having a party with monsters and you having to find some gourds.

It has a world-model, various characters that can interact with each other, and some items.

Everything's just small. There's very little of interest in the conversational options that don't advance the story, and only a few options do anything.

But this was made in 4 hours, and I'm honestly impressed at how much they packed in in that time. And some of the characters are described very well (especially Orlok and Lycan).

This is pretty good for a 4-hour-or-less game. You meet death in some sort of spiritual limbo, and you get the chance to redeem your soul through playing chess.

Instead of placing ships on a grid, your position is pre-selected and your guesses come from a menu. I won the first time I played, but I don't know if it was rigged to always win or if it was just random chance.

There are some interesting thoughts on the freedom of the soul, but I feel like the whole thing could use some more fresh takes. But that's hard to do in 4 hours, so I'm overall pretty happy with this game.

This is an interesting short game. You have to create a character to run through a short horror story.

But the narrator, Pallas, wants your creation to be incredibly detailed. While each choice has narrow options (as commented on by the narrator), there are many options to be had before the impending disaster.

I liked it. Near the middle, I started clicking fast through several similar/repetitive options, but I think that's part of the experience.

The game overall seems well polished for something made in less than 4 hours. The emotional moments didn't 100% land for me, but it was good overall.

This game is essentially a small snippet of a horror story told over 4-6 pages. Like the blurb suggests, it's 175 words.

It's completely linear, but I think the interactivity actually works for it here, as it paces the story well and allows for surprise more than would be feasible in a static format.

My rating system is designed to accomodate micro games, so I'm giving it stars for emotional impact, interactivity and descriptiveness but not for polish (there are typos which, in a 175 word game, should really be easy to fix using grammarly or something similar) or replayability. Even with the typos fixed, I would still give 3 stars, as the interactivity is only okay, not great. But fun little game.

This is a Choicescript game made for the Grand Guignol division of Ectocomp. It's a bloody and violent game about a confrontation in a forest.

I think that every game has different elements that contribute to the overall strength of it. Here's my take on five elements I usually look at in games:

-Polish. This is where the game struggles the most. There are numerous typos and misstatements scattered throughout the text. As an author, and especially as a Choicescript author, I am no stranger to making a ton of typos (I think I had to fix 'its' vs 'it's' 1000 times in my Choicescript game). But websites like grammarly can really help out here, which is what I use, or asking people to look over the text.

+Descriptiveness. This is the game's strongest point. The writing is detailed and vivid. For me, I found it violent and gory in an unpleasant way, but it was only unpleasant because it was so detailed.

-Interactivity: I personally like Choicescript best when it lets you customize who are you in detail or lets you plan out strategies. In this game, choices can be completely arbitrary (like 'go left, go right, go straight') or represent a forced choice where all options are essentially the same (that's not always bad, but in this case you get the same forced choice over and over again).

+Emotional impact: I felt disturbed by the game, which is not an emotion I like or seek out but which succeeds in its goal.

-Would I play again? Due to the content and the polish, I wouldn't do so right now.

Contains strong profanity and gore.

I went back and forth on this story. At first, I thought it was one of the best stories I've read in a long time, but I think the second half isn't quite as good as the first, and there were a few minor errors (like an uncapitalized 'la' at the beginning of a sentence).

This game is set in the 1936 Spanish Civil War, and you're ordered to bombard a city that is supposedly harboring refugees. Chaos ensues, as well as supernatural shenanigans.

The characterization was amazingly good, and the detail made me feel like I was there. For me, the realistic parts were the strongest, while the supernatural elements, while polished and well-done, were less compelling to me. Definitely felt happy to read this.

This game was entered in Ectocomp 2020.

This is a Texture game, and it presented a double language barrier to me, as it is in Spanish and contains numerous Japanese words as well. So I may have missed out on some of the nuances, but I found it charming and well-written.

The story is about a scholar who is seeking inspiration for a story and so engages in Japanese calligraphy. There are several objects around that can serve as inspiration, each inspiring a sort of reverie or dream that always ends up disturbed by a yokai or Japanese spirit.

I laughed at some parts of it, and was intrigued by others. Parts reminded me of Alice and Wonderland. The multimedia use was lovely. Definitely worth checking out for a chill, relaxing time.