Reviews by MathBrush

I saw this game that had recently been released on IFDB outside of any competitions and wanted to try it.

It uses different colors for text, which is neat. It starts with you injured and in the dark outside a creepy building. It builds up to some creepy shenanigans with a computer in an office.

I couldn't finish it, though, due to implementation errors. Most scenery is not implemented, like debris or our wounds. So if you try to examine them or search them, they're not there. Most objects are just listed at the end of the paragraph rather than being incorporated into the text. I needed to get an important item from a cup, but trying to take the item from the cup said that I had to take it out of the cup first, and trying to take the cup said that I had to take the object first.

The design decisions seem punishing for no reason. There is a strict 7 item inventory limit. The game starts you on a timer before you die that barely gives you enough time to reach something to bandage your wounds, but trying to reach that part of the house encourages you to visit other areas (which can't heal you at all) first, so you have to dip in and out in one second. And the game ends the game and closes the whole interpreter if you UNDO because you're not a 'real adventurer'.

So, I was unable to finish it. I think the author has a lot of potential (so one of my 2 stars in the rating is for that potential), but I don't find the game enjoyable in its current incarnation.

This game is a longish twine game with lush but sometimes confusing writing.

In it, you play as a woman who is to be married off to settle her father's debts, but is late to the wedding. You stumble, chased by wolves, into a cathedral that is abandoned and stripped of religious symbology. You then dive deeper into the earth, discovering a series of trees that give sin-related dreams.

This felt pretty long. The writing has me going back and forth. On the one hand, it shows skill in word use and sentence formation. On the other hand, I had great difficulty keeping track of what's going on. Sudden shifts in perspective and topic aren't just common, they're essentially the majority of the game. Here are a few excerpts I had trouble parsing:

(Spoiler - click to show)There’s something happening at the police headquarters. It is an invitation, something thrilling but also dangerous. You had invited him over, for beer, for weed, the usual dissolutions, to assay your desire. This change of scenery could represent an escape procedure; the police headquarters, the inkcloud from a squid’s mouth. Yeah? Shall we drive over?

Clogged up, I imagine. I came by bike. He did not even intend to down his vodka club. You invent an obstacle. Bum tire on mine. Haven’t had a chance. An embarrassing fabrication: your life is nothing but chances. Hop on mine. He finishes the drink in the end, two thrilling gulps, pulls you from the bear trap of a lounge chair, positions you at the rear, to the private torments of discretion. Keep hold."

Another one:

"You keep turning over the question of death as if it were a weekend trip to the zoo. You’d heard about the albino crocodile, of course, the caged mandrills, the rhino whose tusk is slowly curling back into his skull. I’d like to go into town this evening, for an hour or two. Do you feel up to being alone? It’s a matter of practicalities, really, that’s what everything comes down to. Do we have a gun? She is sniffing at an orchid even though it’s plastic. Of course we don’t have a gun. The coffee is undrinkable. She must give you back the machine at least. Not even in your purse? It’s a rough-and-tumble neighborhood.

The storyline is interesting, and every part involving the marriage story was great. I just got bogged down in the middle and very intro and am not sure what was going on or what the themes were.

This game kind of threw me out of whack for a while and is one reason I was late playing Shufflecomp games.

I started this Gruescript game (which is parser-like but with buttons for actions and inventory items). In it, you play as someone in a post-apocalyptic world that has been flooded and where most people seem to be dead or gone. You invite a neighbor over for coffee, and they offer you drugs that enhance your memory.

I had fun in my initial experience with the game, running through it and getting into my first memory. But I got really stuck after that. The game says (early, light spoilers) that the pills give you memories when (Spoiler - click to show)you smell two things. But it didn't say you had to do that simultaneously, so I just thought the pills were good for 2 memories. I got super stuck.

I eventually tried the hints, and saw the file was big, so I got overwhelmed and put off both this game and the whole shufflecomp. I ended up playing this one last, expecting it to be huge, but it wasn't overwhelming. Each memory is just a couple of rooms. Even with the walkthrough, I tried to just guess what needed to happen, but even my best guesses were often wrong, so difficulty-wise this game kicked my butt. (Also, wouldn't (Spoiler - click to show)potato chips and (Spoiler - click to show)mashed potatoes have almost the same smell? The texture is the biggest difference to me).

Writing-wise this game is exactly the kind of game I like. Very cool Inception-style plot (a bit more literally than the term is usually used but not quite). Lots of revealed mysteries and a great ending that ties it all together.

Someone else may not have the weird intro I did, especially if you realize you need to have (Spoiler - click to show)simultaneous combinations of two smells.

This game is about you, a vampire, being offered a cure for vampirism. But it's more than that.

It uses a variety of multimedia to enhance the experience: unusual colors and fonts, scrolling tickertape that changes depending on what you mouse over, music, and stock photos in the background.

To me (and possibly the author, although I don't want to attribute intent when I don't know it), the game is mostly about the relationship you have with the vampire who created you. It turns out then when a vampire makes another vampire, they override the personality, emotions, and memories of their victim, making essentially a new person. That new person is completely changed to be the image of the one who made them. And you have a chance to undo them.

It made me think about relationships, like one I witnessed where one person did everything they could to make the other person be like them, including having them stop talking to their family, move away from friends, be rude to people at work, play the same games, watch the same shows, have the same religious beliefs. And, just like the vampire creators in the story, they moved on afterwards (although our personal vampire 'sire' is different in this story).

Overall, I thought it was effective. The game has some variation; I played it 3-4 times to try to understand it and I saw some significantly different content each time.

This game, like many in Shufflecomp, makes extensive use of public domain art.

In it, you play as two characters who died in a dangerous mission at sea and are now stuck in purgatory.

The game is fully voice acted. The two main plots that I found were the resolution of their feelings about life and death, and one of the characters coming to grips with their gender identity.

I liked the writing and voice acting, and the images contributed a lot. However, out of the three games entered by Bez in this competition, I think I preferred "A Little Guidance for A Big Heart" for its quirky ensemble. This one was meditative and thoughtful, though.

This game is run on a retro mac emulator running Hypercard. I played a downloadable version, but I believe I read on the itch page after that you can play online.

It is graphics and music heavy. Like I usually do, I loaded up the game on my computer to have ready to play later while I finished chores, but I was surprised to come back to find it had been playing an opening sequence on its own, so I restarted to see what I had missed (quite a lot, it seems).

In it, you play an injured mech pilot who now (in embarrassment, I think) resupplies the other mech pilots. They come in, talk to you about small talk and also needs they have, and you need to deduce from that how many parts to order for them.

Throughout the story, you encounter a woman who always has and inspires tense emotions; this seems to provide the main thrust of feeling and plot in the game. However, the game is unfinished, so we'll find out more later on, and I'll likely revise my review then.

I liked this Shufflecomp game that was a short vignette about a band.

You are awakened in the middle of the night by an associate concerned about one of the other band members.

You and the other band member, Holly, talk about her fears and concerns.

I like how, even in this short space of time, the author was able to make the conversation realistic and with real choices that affected Holly's responses in a way that I could really sit and think about what I wanted to achieve.

The game also muses on whether ongoing success is achieved by sticking to your ideals, making what people want, or the luck of the draw, something I've thought about a lot before.

It's possible that I'm getting older or have a carbon monoxide leak in my house, but I frequently play games recently where I have absolutely no idea what's going on. Everything is in evocative prose but I don't know what it's evoking.

So I appreciate Bez's clear and straightforward stories with interesting characters where it's easy to follow along and see the story progress. This is a story about going to an event to meet people while a little guy in your pocket gives you dating advice through an airpod. You reveal some facts about yourself and become aware of others.

Like many of Bez's recent games, this is voice acted with a few different actors participating, and was styled nicely. Out of Bez's three games in this competition, this is the one that I most liked.

This is a game with at least three different endings and which has a pretty neat mechanic.

Everybody is dead at your party (well, it's not exactly your party, but since you're the only one alive, you might as well be). You can examine many of the dead as well as a lot of the scenery around you.

There is a hidden thread running through things which I found fascinating. At the moment of your hostess's death, (Spoiler - click to show)your pink pearl necklace is snapped and the pearls go flying. You can find these pearls as pink 'o's in the words of the different areas</spoiler.

I thought this was a neat mechanic and its symbolic meaning became more apparent in the different endings. Really neat idea here.

This game is themed around the story of a Polish revolutionary anthem from the 1800s that was repurposed by Russia.

Its a short poem with a few branches, talking about the importance of revolution and how it supersedes love.

One of the branches I played had some raw code in it that wasn't working (like UI.restart, I think), and overall this was pretty minimal. I definitely enjoyed hearing about the story behind this though!