Reviews by MathBrush

This is another game by DissoluteSolute, and is the one I connected with the most so far. You play as a pet bug of a woman who was murdered by flies, using her last breath to curse them and ask her pet silkworms and tarantula to take revenge on the flies.

It is grotesque, short and focused on the story, with little implemented outside the main loop (including words mentioned in the room descriptions). In those regards, it reminds me of Baby Tree, a game that I frequently recommend to people who’ve never played IF as a way to immediately capture their attention.

I felt like the writing was solid and the main couple of puzzles were well-clued and simple but utilizing the classic parser gameplay loops.

Very short, but good.

This was a downloadable game where you navigate by clicking on parts of an image, needing occasional searching.

It’s a translation of a Spanish game (I found a tiny fragment of untranslated spanish early on, for ‘leave to the corridor’). It regards a legend of a local kind of monster called the Vunche or Invunche, in connection with witches.

It has three main gameplay segments: an intro on a ship, a larger village exploration section, and a short finale.

I liked the mysteries and legends aspects, and the slow unveiling of the plot was intriguing. Gameplay was generally satisfying, just clicking to each area, going through the possibilities, then following up on any directions in the Notes tab.

There might be two endings; I picked up a special item in the ship early on but didn’t use it. Actually, while writing this I loaded up my save game and tried using it but to no avail. So I wonder if more options were planned at one point but not implemented; that would make sense, as there isn’t much freedom to stray off the game’s chosen path, and most of the characters feel like they could use another scene or two for a full story arc. But the game that is here is polished, well-written, and fun.

I was bewildered by this game when I started it. Most moves result in instant death. A lot of words in the description are bolded, but typing them does nothing. I downloaded HTML tads on my work computer in case there were supposed to be hyperlinks.

Eventually, I typed random verbs, and shout took me to a new room! Trying to figure out the connection and dying a few more times, I pondered more on the name of the game and realized what was going on.

This game has numerous strange and surreal vignettes. My favorite was a car ride with someone who has strapped knives onto all the surfaces, that was an interesting image.

The writing and the initial mystery are the two main components of the game for evaluation. Like I said, a couple vignettes really called out to me. I didn’t grasp a larger pattern or see a common thread (however, that’s pretty common for me with poetic IF, and I’ve had discussions with a few poetry authors on how poetic IF should be evaluated. But this is a rated competition, so I’m comparing to other games, including by the same author! So for me the vivid imagery and the frustrating beginning are the parts I think of the most).

This is a long videotome game with custom characters and a variety of backgrounds. It is mostly linear but has some important choices and uses of options near the end.

The beginning was ambiguous enough that I had a lot of different potential scenarios in my mind. It started with characters named Thirsty and Kill who host a TV show called Love it or List it (connected to the name of this game itself) who are talking with someone named “Cont.”, and I thought it could possibly be like SCP 2030 “Laugh is Fun” (game show where people are murdered) or a more philosophical game or a continuation of a long-running series of visual novels that I didn’t know. It really did feel like the game assumed I knew who these people were or who they were referencing. It wasn’t until I had played for ten or fifteen minutes that a more clear picture emerged (especially when I realized this was connected to the GUTS series of games, a great collection of short IF with interesting interactivity and bizarre stories). And I’m just now realizing that Cont. must have stood for Contestant.

What it comes down to is that we have a lesbian couple named Franzine and Eiric who have reached a doldrum in their relationship where each thinks the other hates them. Eiric gets to make the decision to stick with Franzine or date someone else.

In the meantime, each of them spends time with one host. Franzine gets remodeled, constantly worrying that she’s unchangeable and can’t be fixed in the process of trying to get fixed to bring back Eiric.

Eiric goes on to meet three other people. The first one I went on had nude images, which I would usually stop playing for, but the art style renders it less erotic and more as a sign of vulnerability. The story at this point is rough and sad, showing the awful reality of cheating (in this case, with an asexual person). The other dates aren’t much better.

In the end, it’s a dismal picture for the couple. The ending I chose in hopes of change and a better future did not result in what I hoped for but is completely realistic for the story being told. It also jibed completely with my experience of the 30’s-40’s dating scene.

Overall, I became engrossed in the story and in imagining the feelings of the two protagonists. Despite my initial confusion and my haunting feeling that I’m lacking the background of the setting, I felt like this game had something to say about the human condition that was valuable to experience.

This is a short, atmospheric game about a ferry at night with surreal overtones. It reminds me a bit of the game Cactus Blue Motel, with a magical world of horror mingled with wonder. This game tones down the wonder and cranks up the horror and wistfulness.

You are on a ferry, and it’s mostly abandoned. A series of unattended but distubring cars is near you. You can wander around, but the only people you meet are also alone, and are uniformly described as a ‘stranger’, which I found effective at setting the tone.

I felt like I had a lot of choices. There were many places to navigate to and people to talk to; there were cycling choices letting you create your own backstory with real differences (like, you could want to be a shaved-head punk or a braided-hair linen-sewing person). And there were things you could learn about or do in one spot and have it referenced later. Finally, there were multiple ending choices. So this game is actually fantastic in the variety of interactivity it offers, in addition to the creepy atmosphere.

Starting up this parser game, it didn't have the usual banner text, so I wondered if it was Inform or something else. Typing VERSION didn't bring anything up, but I figured that might have been overriden by a too-strict limited parser, so I opened up the Inspect Element feature and checked, and the javascript was different than anything I had seen. So I looked at the author's itch page, which went to their personal webpage, where it describes a new framework for javascript parser games.

This game uses a limited set of verbs which can be found by typing HELP. The verbs that are here work generally well; I saw a couple of typos here and there and some objects weren't implemented (you can't X TREE, for instance) but that's normal for parser speed-IF, and doing speed-IF in a custom language is especially impressive. So this looks like a tech demo for the new system. If I could put in any requests, I'd like to be able to change the VERBOSEness like Inform does. Currently, moving to a new location doesn't give the room description, you have to separately LOOK; it would be nice to be able to set that property. Another thing I missed was the ability to manually RESTART.

The story is about wandering through a pumpkin patch alone, finding a variety of items while also dealing with oppressive fog. I enjoyed the ambient room descriptions and the messages when trying to go 'off map'. There are also two endings, which is neat considering the game was written so swiftly.

This game is by a Slovakian student as part of the One Boat Crew team.

It's a branching Twine game, with very different paths depending on your choices. All of them deal with a kind of strange reality you find yourself in. I took what I thought was the 'weird' path first, but when I did the 'main' path later, it was a lot shorter.

There are semi-comforting/eery endings and horrifying endings, which is a nice mix, and I would be proud of my high school students if they created something like this.

I remember Ghost Hunt I, it was a fun, compact Adventuron game tracking down a ghost (unless I'm remembering it wrong).

This game is one single puzzle with a lot of options. You have a large amount of clothing divided into type of clothing (socks, shirts, scarves, etc.) and colors, and you find three gravestones that gives you hints on the type of clothing and the color of the clothing. Putting the three correct items into the washing machine wins the game!

I was able to guess the items pretty quickly, so I spent less time on the game than almost any other game in the competition. But I thought the grave messages were cute and everything worked smoothly, and I felt a sense of accomplishment at beating it.

This sounds like it was almost a La Petite Mort game, as it was finished in 5 hours, but I’m glad the author took time to finish it, because it feels like a complete product.

This is a cyclic series of poems presented on a yellow background with black text. Due to the weird way Itch frames work, I had to download the game to be able to see it properly (if the author sees this, I suggest using the ‘enable scrollbars’ and ‘click to open in a new window’ options).

This is a poetical work of horror, with the poems blending explicitly horrifying things (monsters, death, etc.) with relatable foibles of humanity like family squabbles or employment woes.

I liked the way each poem flows into the others, and I like the variation in interaction. Some poems play out with slow-displayed text (all of which were thankfully faster than my reading speed). My favorite poem in the cycle, Monstrous beauty of curses, uses a kind of accretive poetry where the lines and words expand as they’re clicked on.

Overall, the writing here is very descriptive and the game felt interactive and polished. I found some of the topics relatable, but I’m more intrigued by the mechanics and the inter-connections.

This game boldly takes timed text and makes it the focus of the piece, using a relatively brief poem as the text with the interaction being waiting for the timed lines and occasionally clicking to bring forth the next part of the poem. Parts are fast, parts are slow; at one point I was waiting for a line and glanced at my phone and got distracted for ten minutes then came back to the computer and realised I hadn't finished (this shows I have a < 10 second attention span).

The poem itself is about a dungeon and escape. There were multiple lines where I thought, "Wow, I like this writing." The twist at the end was amusing as well.

I think this is a great format for Ectocomp. Instead of going for broad scope, you narrowly focus on a piece of writing and work it to become as polished as possible. Nice.