Reviews by MathBrush

This is a Gruescript game mixing Total Recall with The Hobbit. It uses ai-generated pixel art.

It's quite long. It's listed as 1.5 hours, but I spent about that long on just the prelude. Altogether I think I spent 3 or 4 hours, with the last hour entirely spent peeking at the code to speed me along.

You play as a gross jerk of a human who hates and is cruel to his wife, doesn't care about sabotaging her medical care and avoids talking to women he deems ugly. This isn't plot relevant and so I guess it's supposed to be either funny or realistic, but I neither laughed nor saw a reflection of truth in it.

The first part of the game has you going to work at the toothpaste factory and scrounging up some money to go to Rekall, a location that allows you to get memories you want implanted. Like the original story of Total Recall, doing so prompts some memories that you have that are true, but buried.

The rest of the game is a parody of The Hobbit where gold has been replaced by toothpaste, the misty mountains are now a ski resort, the dwarves have disappeared, and the main badguy is toothpaste entrepreneur Tom Fallows.

Most non-Robin Johnson gruescript games I've played have been pretty buggy or poorly implemented (with a couple notable great exceptions, and now that I'm searching I'm surprised to see only 10 have only ever been released. And Dialog only has 22; wow)

There are parts of this game that I like and parts I dislike. I'm going to talk about both, and try to frame the dislikes (like the being a jerk to your wife part) as my reaction to something and not as an innate quality of the thing itself.

I like some of the imaginative puzzles. There's a lot of tricks going on with things like moving turnips to strategic locations, figuring out how to use the lemonade, timing, and the troll bag puzzle.

I didn't like getting stuck because I forget to look and grab an item a hundred turns ago. Fortunately I saved a lot! Also the random timers felt off a bit. The maze randomness I saw in the code wasn't something that I experienced joy from, nor waiting for the trolls to go to bed or the cat to wander into the kitchen.

Story-wise, I experienced the most happiness at the innate difficulty in establishing what's reality and what's the effect of Rekall, something I also enjoyed in total recall.

I didn't like the Tolkien elements as much, it felt kind of like it just took the summary story of the hobbit and tried to make an encounter matching each one without really caring about parodying the deeper themes. To be fair, that's a totally fine way to parody things; I parodided Chandler Groover's games in Grooverland with entirely surface-level references, so I can't complain. Maybe what I really would have liked is a more unified parody theme. Sometimes things have been updated to modern times, while other times the scenes play out almost exactly like the original. It could have been fun to have something tying it all together more.

The AI art was hit or miss. A couple of times I thought, "Okay, this looks cool," but then I realized, for instance, that our bedroom that looks like a hobbit house with first-floor window overlooking a forest is actually not the hobbit part of the game but our 2nd floor bedroom in the middle of a city. Similarly, styles change from room to room and so do seasons and so on. Just like the parody, without a consistent theme, it's not much more helpful to the game than just imagining each scene ourselves.

If I were the author, I'd be proud of assembling a very long gruescript game, perhaps the longest I've played (Detectiveland might be longer). All told it has few errors, a rarity for such a long game, and there were multiple places I found enjoyable.

This was a very polished parser game, with no real bugs that I found, a full map that adjusted based on the room, music, and an interesting story.

You play as someone whose researcher father has disappeared, leading you to track him down to a small town in the mountainous forests of (I presume) Italy. Once there, you have to find where he went, following clues of an ancient monastic order.

I was worried the game would be overwhelming at first, with its large-seeming map and tons of scenery items, but the game is essentially organized with 3 or 4 areas that are pretty small (just a few rooms together) connected by linear paths that can either be walked on slowly or ridden on with the bicycle. There is a maze type area but it is easy to solve by stumbling around and there are multiple ways to solve it without exploration. So it's not as intimidating as it seems.

I did neglect to examine one important bolded scenery item and got stuck, so I had to check the walkthrough. After that, it was smooth sailing.

I liked the NPCs in the game. Two of them have not much of a role but all have very distinct personalities.

The game doesn't last too long, but it was pleasant to play while I tried it. It made me want to see these places in real life.

There was a big shift that I saw in Twine games from when I started (around 2015) to now. Those earlier Twine games were often influenced by Porpentine or furkle, and it was common to have long, surreal stories with intense, personal writing about loss, identity, or feelings with a big dash of absurd humor. There were other twine writing styles (like 16 Ways to Kill A Vampire at McDonalds), with more of a gaming/puzzle/points focus, but the number of intense personal games was higher.

Nowadays, the Twine field has too many genres to call any dominant, but a lot of popular Twine games are puzzle-based (still accompanied by strong stories), like The Den or A Long Way to the Nearest Star.

So this game gave me some nostalgia, as it seems like it could easily have been a popular 2015 game.

There's a good chance I missed something essential in this game, so take my summary with a grain of salt.

You play as someone who has experienced some kind of loss or betrayal of a friend or romantic partner. 'You' and 'me' are different people; I think they might both be facets of the same character, or 'me' might be a demon or grief itself or the person who they lost, I'm not sure.

In three different acts, you explore an abandoned house (that is 'slated for demolition' and is also the game itself), a grocery store and an apartment building. There's a checklist of items that you can find in those, but it's not necessary to get them all and the game has fully prepared for you not to do so. It allows you to play with or without the back button, and I chose to play without it, and I also chose to choose the most self-damaging or excessive options at any point.

And there are a lot. Spaghetti has trauma associations here (and so do red slurpees), with multiple memorable scenes where you can draw out your own innards as spaghetti with continual pulling until you're hollowed out.

There is a segment near the end involving (Spoiler - click to show)suicidal ideation by someone dear to us. I couldn't tell if this was a new person or the main person we think about.

The ending prompts us to (Spoiler - click to show)consider something we regret and might need to let go. I enjoyed picking a few things in my life to contemplate on and to write down in the game, like my alma mater not accepting me back as a professor when they had intimated for years that they would do so, and the slow decline of a once-close friendship.

For me, I didn't understand the story, but I understood the feeling and feelings, or at least I experienced the emotions I read about in the game like ' this game gets it, I've felt like that before'.

The game seems like it has many different paths, but I didn't feel compelled to replay, as I feel like it fits the game's message to not go back and correct mistakes.

I was excited to add this game to my list of surreal games on trains, an oddly specific genre that pops up in all years and among all platforms.

In this parser game, you enter some abandoned train tunnels and an abandoned train. You are tasked with taking photos of 'something that wasn't meant to be seen'; at the end of the game, you're scored on your photos.

Gameplay is a combination of escape-room style gameplay and bizarre NPCs. There's the creepy little girl Lily who's just chilling in an abandoned train that you just unsealed the door to, and the Crazy Rat Man (I'll let you guess what he's like). Puzzles include things like color-coded keycards and buttons, items like crowbars and rope, and the extensive use of your camera for both information gathering (the author came up with some creative ideas in this vein) and for scoring points.

The whole game is linear, not in puzzles, but in outline; all the rooms run east-to-west with occasional up or down moves.

Parser implementation is mostly good; it looks to me to be the level of someone who is intelligent and talented but doesn't have a ton of experience yet. The five testers listed surely contribute to the state of the game (which didn't have any major bugs that I found), but there could be more synonyms and more use of Inform's special tricks. For the synonyms, I'd recommend the author read the automatic transcripts IFComp makes and look for times people got error messages, and try implementing any reasonable commands that they tried (if they plan on a post-comp update). For the special tricks of Inform, I'd incorporate more special messages for objects that you find. Objects are often listed in the text and then again at the end in a 'you can see , __, and here'. This can be fixed by either making the object scenery, putting the object's name in brackets (like "There is a [shelf] on the wall") or by saying 'The initial description of the shelf is ""', or something like that.

This was fun. The twist at the end did explain a lot of things. I think the game overall is one I would consider a 'success' as an author and one I enjoyed playing.

This is a parser game set in an eccentric older man's joke-filled house using traditional parser game play (i.e. taking items and using them in places, unlocking doors with keys, etc.) and riddles.

The map itself is fairly small, but hides a lot of details. I had to use the hints at one point because I completely missed an important piece of furniture. I used it again a couple of times when I couldn't guess the solution to a puzzle involving a tree and a different one with books.

The main gameplay cycle is to go to a clue room, push a button to get a clue describing an item, find the item, put it in a box, and pull a lever. This gives you a new item like a key or a useful tool that allows you to progress to the next clue.

Most of the items seem kind of random, but the main themes that I saw were household items, puns, and the memories of Willy's life. I liked the way the very end pulled everything together.

There could be some improvements in the game. A lot of the items are listed in the room description and at the end as well; this can be avoided by either putting brackets around the item name in the room description (like 'you see a [cabinet] here') or by making the items 'scenery', or by adjusting their default description like:

A box is in the side room. "You see a strange box on the floor."

I didn't notice any bugs. It was a bit strange to have to (Spoiler - click to show)physically grab the ants and termites out of their jars and shoot them in a slingshot or put them in a box. I think in such a pun-filled house it could have been fun to have a little more description for some things. Overall, though, this is a solid game and I found it pleasant to play with little frustration (outside of running to the hints).

This game is well-written, engaging in its action, and has nice twists and a strong story format.

This is a choice-based game with some use of graphics (noticeably, a turtle) and animation and a lot of styling like darkening screens and so on.

You play as Lorenzo, who, with your brother Marco, have been sent by a video game company to kidnap Kenji Eno (a developer who lived in real life) and force him to let your company sell his unreleased magnum opus.

Your brother does most of the hard work, duct taping Kenji and interrogating him. Your main leverage over him is his pet turtle, which you have to watch over. Unfortunately it keeps escaping over and over again.

And that's the cycle that play settles into. You find the turtle in increasingly bizarre situations that require more and more elaborate responses, return to hear your brother narrate some exposition about Kenji's background and the games he developed, one at a time, with cover images.

All to lead up to one major joke, which I didn't see coming even though the game doled out numerous hints. My slow realization that the company in question is (Spoiler - click to show)Nintendo. My laugh at this funny text, thinking 'that's just like (Spoiler - click to show)Mario!': (Spoiler - click to show)Your supple, Italian middle-aged body fat is coated with years of grease from maintenance work, allowing you to slide down the toilet drain with ease. The final realization that (Spoiler - click to show)You are Italian brothers with M and L names that work for Nintendo and have to fight against a turtle while you also slip through sewer pipes. That was pretty great.

The Kenji Eno stuff is very earnest and lionizes him. I found myself feeling skeptical at this. He was a real man, just a person. My dad ran a video game company called Saffire in the 90's and 2000's and ended up meeting a lot of leading industry people and celebrities. He would tell stories about the wild and often terrible things they did and regrets they had; it was a very misogynistic and exploitative culture. Kenji Eno was an outsider and so maybe he wasn't like that, I thought, but this game is kind of like constructing a parasocial identity for Kenji, imagining his existence entirely based on what his games are like.

Then it hit me like a brick: PB Parjeter is to me what Kenji Eno is to Marco. Do I really know PB Parjeter? Does he know me? If I told my son a story about PB Parjeter, I would say 'one of my internet friends did this...'. I would call him that because I've played many of his games, reviewed them, and participated in several internet forum posts with him and communicated with him in my capacity as event organizer for a few events. If I search my email inbox (I never delete emails), the name Parjeter happens 32 times. But almost everything I know about him is through games. I remember the first game of his I played, Doctor Sourpuss, where I thought he might be furkle under a pseudonym. From his games I assume he likes vintage and/or surreal media, is introspective and philosophical, Francophone, and would be excited to hear about a Cannes film that was 8 hours of unedited trailcam footage (I mean this in a positive way). I would think him a good person overall. And what do I share of myself online? I deliberately avoid forming close friendships with people in the IF world (in the form of DMs, messages, etc.) because I like to use the IF world for escapism and not have it integrated into my reality. So I present a front of myself, and Parjeter presents a front of himself. So, that's what this game makes me think of. Is the Kenji Eno in the game anything at all like the real one was? Why does it matter, if the Brian Rushton you all imagine while reading this isn't really like the real one I am, and the small cluster of people I just pictured when I wrote that don't really exist or map to real individuals in real life?

A fun game, and a lot to think about.

This game does a lot of unusual things that I'm not even sure how to react to. I can't tell yet if I love this game or hate it, only time will see. But I'll describe my experience.

This is the second Anastasia the Power Pony game. I liked the earlier one; I went into it expecting a My Little Pony story (which I would have loved) but instead found an original pony-based setting. This time around there are even more differences that show how the two series aren't really connected (for one thing, in the naming of the characters). I did forget some aspects of the setting which made it very funny when the game completely condoned all manner of violence against llamas but urged you to not injure ponies at all, giving the impression of pony ultra-racism (I think the first game had a reason, I just can't remember it, so it's not actually pony racism I believe).

The game itself has several acts, and here's where the new style of stuff comes up.

In the first act, we are in a restaurant with some snobby coworkers. There's menu-based conversation but we can also examine the area around us. Suddenly, we are recognized, and we must escape subterfuge and/or fighting, all while our dreary coworkers drone on in the background, commenting on our actions. To my surprise, the space is huge; I strongly strongly strongly recommend reading all feelies before playing the game. I imagined this huge space was to have a complex combinatorial puzzle of evasion, but I just used brute force (this map will return later).

Afterwards, there was a fight scene in an alley. You can't save or undo during it, but you can retry or continue. Having not read the feelie that specifically describes combat, I floundered at first, trying stuff like 'jump back' (which worked I think, or maybe step back), and HIT PONY (frowned on due to probably-not-pony-ultra-racism). I took the trash can lid at one point and it let me defend.

Rather than give up, I wanted to keep trying. It's clear the author was hoping that they could implement enough actions that someone could intuitively type whatever they want and have it work, usually a laughable idea in a parser game (there are just so many things to account for) but I wanted to make the author's vision work. As you fight, you get more commands suggested, and COMMANDS gave some more. There are several ways the fight can end. I ended up thinking that I needed to use the same three moves over and over (Spoiler - click to show)(sidestep, duck, and jump) but once they started double-teaming me that didn't work anymore, so I tried using (Spoiler - click to show)THROW and TRIP but it kept saying it did or didn't work for what seemed to me arbitrary reasons. I finally followed the signs more carefully and was able to win. It felt rewarding, but part of that rewarding feeling was wrangling an unruly combat system. So, again, I couldn't decide if I loved it for getting it to work or hated it for being hard to figure out.

A couple acts later we return to the restaurant and have a big all-out brawl, just like the pirate ship in the last game. And the purpose of the 20-something room buffet is revealed: we have to attack making puns!

Now, this just seemed to me like a really bad idea from the other. You have to do stuff like 'RAMMING NOODLES' or something with the ramen noodles. I was deeply skeptical because so many things don't have obvious puns (like lutefisk). And some early things I tried didn't work at all (SAVAGE someone with a SAUSAGE, MASH them with MASH, etc.). How could the author possibly include all possible puns? It seemed like a lost cause and I died a lot.

Then I saw everyone chucking stuff at me, so I chucked stuff back, and it seemed to do something. Regular attacks worked a bit as well.

Spoilers for next bit.

Again, I can't tell if it's genius or horrible. What to do wasn't clearly communicated, but that made figuring it out more rewarding. It reminds me a bit of the draw of older games like the one Garry Francis loves on CASA, where the parser is terrible and getting around that is half the fun. This parser is not terrible, but the many activities with wide-open state spaces makes trying to understand the game as much of a puzzle as the game itself.

Story-wise, the game is a classic street-level superhero story, done well in the classic style. Rather than innovating with big plot twists, the author has instead added lots of jokes and characterization.

Overall, I had fun. I think experimentation like this is what drives the community forward in the long run; someone has to take the gamble on something new. So, bravo. The music worked well for me, too.

I thought this game was both innovative and challenging. It definitely seemed original and I like a lot of the ideas, but I struggled with some of the execution.

This is a choice-based game focused on interrogation. You are a suspect being questioned by the police after being caught in Versailles (I think) and you have to explain what happened.

There are three parts of the story that you can pick up: in the library at the beginning of the game, at the King's bedroom, and in the basement under (I think, again) Versailles.

You try to construct a plausible explanation for what happened, but if you pick the 'wrong' thing, the interrogator calls you out and you start over (kind of like Spider and Web). But, information carries over, so doing something in one thread lets you perform new actions in another.

This was a fun concept and I think the core of the game is very solid. I ran into two issues:

1. I think the 'timeout' for doing things wrong is too harsh. It felt like almost any action I tried would reset me back to the beginning, making you have to click back in and redo it all. This goes away during the very last puzzle (where, ironically, I might have preferred easier resets).
2. The very last puzzle broke things into a few too many steps. I would have preferred it if we could (Spoiler - click to show)color things immediately after washing them instead of putting them back in the box and selecting them from a list again.

I think the puzzles and concept here are neat, and most of the execution works for me. I also liked how the inconsistencies in the statements resolved themselves in the end.

While I was playing this game, I thought, “This almost feels like if someone went out of their way to antagonize as many people as possible by doing everything people on the forum hate.” Later on, I started to wonder if that might actually be true, since the game is ‘meta’.

First, this is a windows downloadable executable, which, outside of uncompiled python code, is typically the least-played out of all IF formats. Unlike Steam, where windows executables are king. many IF players and authors use Linux or Macs and can’t run windows exe’s easily. A big attraction of IF is the ability to have it running in the background during other tasks, able to start and stop it at will, but executables are full screen. Also, unlike Steam, there aren’t really any safety guarantees that exe’s won’t give you viruses.

Second, this game uses timed text in perhaps its most devious form: text in a typewriter font that is slightly slower than average reading speed, but very quickly moves on to the next passage once done, with no back button and no history option. There is a pause button. If you look away from the game for a conversation or to check the stove and forget to pause, you’ll have to start over.

Third, the game picks your choices for you. The controls for much of the game do nothing, with the cursor moving itself and picking what it wants. There is no agency in these portions.

But, the game does address these things! Kind of. You see, the game is a scene, like in a play or movie, and you are the ‘player’ in the audience. Eventually, you get the option to protest what is going on and to deride the lack of agency. I eventually consented to an option to ‘erase’ the game, and got one ending.

So, it’s a clear commentary on the nature of agency in games. While I dislike all of the choices listed above, I’m glad the game is self aware and that everything is done intentionally. Sometimes it’s okay to do unpopular things to make a personal statement you care about. Also I liked the art style, it reminded me of the witches in Madoka Magica.

This was a fun game that took a (to me) unexpected turn or two early on.

In the vein of the earlier Galaxy Jones game, I had expected a classic action/secret agent scenario. Instead, I was pleasantly surprised by a mathematical combinations and language translation game.

Cyborgs are going to blow up Mars using its moon, Phobos. You, Galaxy Jones, have infiltrated the base and need to stop them.

This entails two main puzzles and several smaller ones: First, you have to hack doors by discovering the patterns in their codes, and second: you have to find more of the language and translate it.

The language puzzle is, for the most part, not actual translation. Instead, we find text, scan it, and learn more of the language, which lets us automatically understand more and more words. Doing so encourages us to revisit earlier texts to see what new secrets we've unlocked.

The other puzzles are mostly math related. Hacking the doors is an exercise in number theory, a lot of the time. To me the puzzles seemed to be a much higher level of math than is usual in text adventures (outside of things like base 5 arithmetic in Not Just An Ordinary Ballerina).

The game is highly polished, with the signature Galaxy Jones logo every time you score a point and several intentional stylistic choices like no room headings.

The game has a lot of paths, unusual for a parser game, and I can think of at least three possible endings (there might be more). I thought that was pretty neat.

Overall, when I think of this game, I'm going to think of the advanced math in it, which is something I like.