Ratings and Reviews by MathBrush

This was part of the Single Choice Jam.

It's a well-written surreal-ish game from the perspective of...

soda pop.

Apparently, it can talk! And it can read the mind of people that are drinking it...and it know all about you and your past.

This absurd setup is used to tell a touching and sad story about family and, possibly, something larger in the world.

There is only one choice, but this game rests almost entirely on the strength of its writing, which is strong in this case.

This game features you as a crew member on a ship that has undergone a catastrophe. You have to race against time to survive and to save others!

Gameplay revolves around physics and physicality: pushing, pulling, using forces, temperature, gas, etc. There is a great deal of attention to physical details of things, such as inventory limit and 'recipes' requiring specific objects in specific orders. Everything about the game demands doing things precisely and in the proper way, like following shipboard directions only; even the proper way to name a spanner is provided!

The game starts under a timer, and I had to restart many times before finding the solution. After that, it opens up more.

It contains a cryptography puzzle, using standard codebreaking techniques and even with a provided password. I found that I preferred doing that with online software rather than working through it directly.

Overall, I didn't really find any bugs. The game's atmosphere reminds me of 70's to 80's action novels that my dad had lying around the house by some guy that was kind of like Tom Clancy but not (less military stories, more stuff like boat crashes).

This game was very funny, and pretty short and simple. It's Hawaiian shirt day at work, but you've forgotten to wear one! And, in fact, anything else but underwear!

You have to grab anything and everything you can to make clothes, starting from the most primitive to the less.

I only encountered a couple of minor bugs (no paragraph breaks sometimes where it seems like there might be some, and Mo is improper named so is referred to as 'the Mo' sometimes).

This is honestly a very funny game to me. I enjoyed every action I took.

This is a relatively brief PunyInform game inspired by the start of the TV series Otherworld, and 8-episode miniseries that takes a family to another world.

Only the intro and a few puzzles are implemented. Most of it is implemented fairly well; I saw few typos. The game is a bit sparse; I imagine that having watched the series allows you to mentally fill in a lot of the missing details.

I had some implementation issues, as shown in the two following segments:

(Spoiler - click to show)
> x tools
Mostly made of wood, are now useless.

> search tools
No need to concern yourself with that.

> take tools
No need to concern yourself with that.

> take all
There are no things available that match “take all”.

> x corner
It’s very messy. It might be worth searching through the mess.

> search mess
Sorry, I don’t understand what “mess” means.

> search corner
You search through the mess in the corner and find a crowbar.


(Spoiler - click to show)
> pry sarcophagus
Using the crowbar you manage to push the lid aside so you can search
the inside.

> search sarcophagus
The big sarcophagus contains a box.

> open box
You can’t open that.

> take box
Taken.

> look at box
It consists of a wooden box. It feels like there’s something inside.

>



Besides this sort of thing, this was well-scoped and not too hard to handle. It would kind of be fun to see a one-room game from this author; they have the sort of writing and puzzle style that I think would work well with a single room with a lot of little puzzles.

This game, as its name suggests, is part of the same universe as A1RL0CK.

It's set in an underwater wreck that is enormous and filled with strange biological material. You have a special suit designed both to let you interface with the technology around you and to keep you under control.

The gameplay is partly exploration and partly puzzly. I enjoyed searching out parts of the ship, interfacing with technology and so on. I had some trouble with the parser when trying to deal with wheel valves, but I realized I had been using the wrong verb (SET is right, TURN works sometimes but not as often).

There is frequent strong profanity in the game. It makes sense in context. The story is very violent, kind of like 80s sci fi action like Alien, Predator, or Terminator.

Overall, I found the story strong. At times I got stuck, like I said; this is not an easy game, and careful attention to detail is basically required to pass through. I had a good time with it overall.

This large and multi-faceted game has you start off trapped in a closet in a motel room--not an auspicious beginning for a game of great mystical power.

The idea here is that you are someone possessed of magical powers. This power can be exercised through the use of amulets representing different animals; however, the amulets are not enough. You also need gemstones to power them.

And that's where the game really opens up. There are a lot of amulets; there are a lot of gemstones. Each combination gives you different powers, and each power can be used in different places. This gives essentially cubic complexity to the game!

Which means you may want to experiment a lot and take notes. The game is kind, giving you a lot of leeway and plenty of optional paths.

I first played this as part of Castle Balderstone, and then played the newer version. While it was probably in the original, I didn't realize the first time that you can (spoilers for very end) (Spoiler - click to show)open portals to tons of different dimensions. I thought it was pretty cool, to be honest. Really loved this game.

This game has a clever meta concept: you have to switch between different versions of the game, installing and uninstalling upgrades to progress.

In early versions of the game, you can see things like objects with can't be interacted with or placeholder text. In later versions, you get more advanced things like NPC conversation.

This idea of being able to switch back and forth between the two modes and explore outside the bounds of the game is brilliant!

It just doesn't last very long, and it can be hard to figure out when you can use these abilities or why. So the concept has great promise, and this version is okay, but I didn't feel that it filled out the measure of its promise.

I had a great time with this game, then a bad time, then a pretty good time.

This is a PunyJam game, written using PunyInform, a variant of Inform designed to fit onto small devices.

It has one of my favorite game tropes, multiple worlds that all play off of each other. You start in one, but the game shifts you every few minutes into another, and you have to solve pieces of each one to figure out what's going on overall.

It uses nice color changes.

Where I had less enjoyment was a puzzle I got very stuck on in the CPU world. I turned out that there was one object I had overlooked in a paragraph, and so I spent over an hour trying over and over again to figure out what was wrong. I decompiled the game, used all in-game hints, got help online but had to ask for multiple hints. I don't know why I got so stuck! Most of it is my fault, but I think having some gentle nudges on what to focus on could help. And there were a few items that didn't have any descriptions.

So, overall started out loving it, got frustrated, but I still like the concept and most of the gameplay. Very fun.

This Twine game is a retrospective from an alternate ending of the original Cinderella story.

In this version, the stepsister won out. By cutting off her heel to fit in the shoe, she married the prince.

But...

She knows she isn't the one he fell in love with.

This is part of the Single Choice Jam and, as such, has one big choice in the middle, which is a nice complex option letting you choose an adjective and a noun. Each one gives a different branch.

The game is not too lengthy, but has several poignant points. At times, it felt a bit repetitive, before the choice, while after the choice each branch seemed unique.

There are text effects adding to the overall appeal of the game, although one passage was all shaking, which was a little distracting.

I enjoyed playing this overall.

This was a fun treat of a game to experience. You are a violent death machine, used as a pawn in an interplanetary war.

And you love slime prince, one of many duplicates of a true prince. The duplicates are made of slime, mere imitations designed as fodder for assassins like yourself.

The game is a limited parser game, and consists of slowly gaining capabilities over a map of around 20 (?) locations. Most capabilities are motion based.

The worldbuilding is both extensive and light; it's clear that a great deal of thought has gone into developing this world, but we mostly get hints and light touches of it, through the window of the slime prince's thoughts.

I did get stuck at one point, but the HINT command is gentle and helpful. I didn't use it at first, and ended up 'lawnmowering' for a long time. I wish I had turned to help sooner!

Overall, the writing is strong, the game is enjoyable. This is something that can be picked up and played relatively quickly, but is long enough to be substantial.