Reviews by MathBrush

This is a creative horror game, focused on ghoulish/crypt horror and exploring some tombs/labs.

The game is creative, with various NPCs that are active. But the implementation is no good, with even the walkthrough's commands being unrecognized at times.

Still, it is interesting for fans of non-Lovecraftian horror.

This game was really talked about a lot in the 2016 IFComp. It is unusual; it consists of many (< 500) short stories about apocalypses, many of them grim or with body horror, but with good writing. The player was invited to add to the total number of apocalypses.

I found a lot of the apocalypses very enjoyable. The format was hard for me to navigate, though; I couldn't find new stories at the pace that I wanted to. They are linked by keywords, sometimes, and sometimes not (i.e. there are dead-end links).

I enjoyed it.

You are a blind woman kidnapped by a sort of serial killer. The writing is pulp-y.

The big idea here is that you FEEL, SMELL, and LISTEN instead of LOOKING.

This concept is actually implemented pretty well, but the puzzles themselves are mostly of the search-everything and perform-uncued-action variety, which makes the game less exciting.

It took me 209 choices to complete this game on my third playthrough.

This game took third in IfComp 2016, but as of this writing, it has the highest rating and number of ratings on IFDB.

In this game, you arrive at and explore a mysterious old motel with a supernatural flair. The game uses two main types of links: mostly-static location-based links for movement, and then conversation/emotion links for small scenes that play out as you move.

The two kinds of links are very consistent, making for some great gameplay. The styling is also good, with some nice animations and fonts and colors.

This was my favorite game of the comp, on the strength of its writing and its use of kinetic links.

In this game, you play a fake psychic who discovers their true powers after being roped into a murder investigation.

The gameplay resolves around big chunks of text with little choices that change some flavor text. I usually don't like this style, but the concept of a psychic\detective trying to prove himself is great for this style; it makes you hunt the text for clues, trying to figure out what angle to approach a person, to guess what item to use next. It reminds me of Arthur Conan Doyle's stories, with a strong attention to gathering clues from clothing, appearance, and clues.

The styling is gorgeous, the machinery runs smooth, the graphics are good. Does this mean Parser is dead? No, it just means that there's twice as many games to enjoy.

In this game, you face a series of combat challenges, one after another.

Each challenge is in one location, and you use a variety of methods to attack your opponents.

Before Superluminal Vagrant Twin, this was probably Pacian's best known game. It has some violent and suggestive elements. It features a romance and several friendships, often with the people you are battling. The setting is rich and evocative.

This game has over 280,000 words, and is written in the 'time cave' style, where different choices lead to wildly different stories (80 different endings, in fact). Most time caves end up having each branch be fairly weak and underdeveloped, but this game does a great job on each branch.

The action is fast paced, and takes you through spy thrillers and possibly hell.

The feel is that of an old-time CYOA book, with sudden changes in genre and situation.

Recommended for fans of fast paced twine.

In this game by Porpentine, an author known for creating bio-mechanical worlds that are almost hallucinatory. This game is a great example of her world building power.

You play in a dust-covered world of raiders and scavengers. You can create yourself, but also destroy yourself, and both are necessary.

This game is unusual for Twine in that you have to enter city names in text when traveling. This gives more of a riddle aspect to the game. However, you have a map storing names you've met. There are less than 10 total cities.

The game ends in a sort of transformation that is best experience rather than described. Overall, it has a feeling of exploration and of 'just living'. One of the least disgusting porpentine games, and one of my favorites of hers.

This game was created by Emily Short as a prize for IFComp, resulting in a game set in Steph Cherrywell's world of Canyonville from Brain Guzzlers From Beyond.

You are Mary Jane, creating a robot for your friend Jenny. You have to train your robot to become just like Jenny. You train it by having it read books in your lab on different topics. However, some books have negative side effects, so it becomes quite the puzzle to figure out what books to read and when.

The major innovation in this game is the use of procedural generation for your conversations with the robot. The robots conversation is affected by numerous variables affecting its emotion, tone, and knowledge. A large corpus is included in the source code, allowing for huge variety. This represents an immense accomplishment, and provides proc gen that is actually fun to read.

This game took me about 45 minutes to finish without hints. I restarted several times, but I don't think you ever need to.

This my second Muckenhoupt game after Gostak, and I found it compelling. You have an evil twin who is always out to get you, and you him. You go out to try and stop him from hurting others.

There is another world out there, his world, a mirror world of evil. The main mechanic of the game is travelling between the worlds and using their transformative properties.

The plot has a few surprises to pull out, and their are some tricky (but no too tricky) puzzles.

I love this game, but I'm a big fan of dual-world games.