Reviews by MathBrush

This is a Texture game entered into Shufflecomp.

In it, you see a variety of characters in a fantasy setting, talking about witches, wards, dragons, and rangers.

I had a great deal of difficulty understanding what was going on. That's not necessarily bad; a lot of games use metaphor or surreal settings to convey a specific emotion.

But I was at a loss for most of this story. I'll show an example from the first page. I'll put it in spoilers because it's long and my analysis may not be interesting to most people:

(Spoiler - click to show)"The sorceress picked a stone from the fire and put it in the pitcher. She poured the hot water over Strider's cup of leaves, who wrinkled their nose in rote protest.

Over the course of tea, a design uncoiled across her red skin, all imbrication and tedium. The flick of a wrist described this creature's forked tongue.

Strider watched Rahel work until the cone went dry. Was she afraid her right hand would spoil the work of her left?"

The first paragraph mostly makes sense; picking up a stone from a fire would burn someone, but presumably this is her magical power, which is cool, and it seems she has a friend with a goofy relationship.

But in the second paragraph, what does 'over the course of tea' mean? Does it mean the meal 'tea' that British people have? Over the course of brewing the tea? Over the course of Strider drinking?

This is a magical setting. Is the design literally uncoiling over her skin? Is her skin red from picking up the stone, or bright red as a fantasy setting, or is it a callback to older racist notions about native Americans?

'Imbrication' is a scale like pattern. So the design is scalelike and tedious. So is she bored making this? It's a weird contrast with the luxurious metaphor of a dragon uncoiling itself. 'The flick of a wrist'--does this mean she's drawing this? Someone else? What is the cone that goes dry? And 'worried the right hand would spoil the work of her left'--what does that mean? If she's using one hand to draw on the other, then it sounds like she's drawing on the right with her left. So how would her right hand spoil anything if that's what she's drawing on?

The whole story was like this to me. I never knew what was going on, wasn't certain how many people were present or what their roles are or if they're aware of each other.

I think there's interesting worldbuilding here, I just hit a brick wall with my personal interaction. It might just be my own personal reaction, it'd be interesting to see how other people felt after reading.

This is a brief Twine game with a single branch, giving a tale of grief and loss.

Each of the two branches gives a slightly different story, although the beginning and end are the same.

The story is about a pair of couples, Emmett/Harry and Juno/Bell, who were friends in high school. Juno and Emmett meet up years later to discuss what they have lost.

The writing is emotional and descriptive. There's not much going on in the way of significant choice; the two different branches are meaningful, though.

This game was entered in Shufflecomp, and I played the French version.

In it, you play as a young adult/teen living in your parents house. This is primarily a graphical game, like Myst, with some interactive audio and visual elements and with your thoughts and feelings expressed through text.

It's a kind of opaque game, with two segments. In the first, I felt like it was a psychological exploration of the young, unsatisfied mind. Roaming the house, trying to find snacks, avoiding your parents' friends, doing chores, reminiscing about the girlfriend you broke up with.

The second half is more disturbing, as you (Spoiler - click to show)encounter a stone that lets you see a different side to this world, or perhaps another world altogether. You see different messages, and in the end...

Overall, this game has many exceptional elements; however, many of the best parts of the game are things that I personally am not very interested in (the graphics, some text on a timer, videos and music, etc.), as I am mostly drawn to text games due to their inconspicuousness, the ability to play them quietly and at your own speed without drawing a lot of attention.

I do love the two worlds vibe, and will try to remember this game when the next XYZZY awards for multimedia come out.

This was written for the single choice jam.

In 2023 (or maybe starting 2022?) Tumblr started pretending that there was a movie called 'Goncharov' based on a misprint on some merchandise for another movie. Together they collaboratively invented the main characters and plotline.

This game spends a few paragraphs summarizing that plot, and then gives you a single choice. That choice only gives a couple paragraphs more of text, but leads to very different endings.

Getting more detail on Goncharov was definitely interesting, but it felt like this was just setting up a lot of background info for a story that itself was quite insubstantial. What was here was good, just not a lot of it.

This game was entered in the Single Choice Jam.

In it, you play as a robber who has picked the absolutely wrong house to rob--or maybe the absolutely right house.

You've found a witch's home, and there's a lot to grab. But you only have time to pick one item.

What this turns out to be in the end is a series of witty short stories, essentially, with each option giving a page or two of some dramatic development.

Fun overall, but fairly brief.

This entry in the Single Choice jam works as either a short story or a part of a broader setting.

In it, you play as a human witnessing the end of the universe as an inevitable, encroaching force approaches and begins to slowly devastate earth.

There's some nice storyline and characterization here. Given the brevity of the game I think the surprising revelations didn't have time to build up quite enough, to provoke investment in the characters. To me, while the story was good, I felt more like 'I would read this book!' rather than 'this feels like the whole story'.

This game has disjointed and poetic imagery of you as a person that exists across multiple worlds and dimensions.

It was written for the Single Choice Jam, so it only has one choice at the end, deliberately in(?)consequential.

The imagery evokes kaleidoscopic existence and hints at a deeper backstory for the 'main' protagonist (if there can be said to be one).

This game was part of the Single Choice Jam. It features a low stakes card game that suddenly becomes much more dangerous when a stranger walks in.

This is a classic story, and I've seen at least two other takes on the general concept this year. What I like about this one is its nice character development, showcasing well-thought-out people with interesting traits.

It's short and kind of cuts out, a straightforward but well-done implementation of the 'single choice' prompt. Would read more by this author.

This game was entered in the Single Choice jam, but it has some surprising depth.

Visually, it's a stack of cards representing floors of a tower. Every time you go up a floor, a card gets added to the pile. You can hover over older cards to see where you came from, and there's an inventory you can hover over.

There are no actions you can pick except to, whenever you want, fall, an option listed at the top. At one point, you're explicitly forced to choose to fall or not.

You can turn on game hints for the game, which I did out of idle curiosity at one point, but I'm glad I did; the ending was fun, once I realized what had truly happened.

I wavered between 3 stars and 4 and even 5, and settled on the latter, as I liked the originality and the implementation.

My feelings went up and down as I played this Single Choice Jam game.

It looks really nice, with good pictures, transition, etc. I felt like it was setting up a pretty cool scenario.

Then it turns into kind of a tech demo sort of thing; the game has you click at exactly the right time. There's also timed text; I found myself doing other stuff in real life while waiting for the game to finish, until I found I could click through...most of the time. Other times there's more requirements.

To me, the story never really broached established tropes, or really defined what was going on. I don't think it was AI generated, but it had a similar vibe, a cobbling together of pre-existing ideas without specialization into something unique. As a tech demo for the engine it's advertising, though, I think it's successful; it looks easily as powerful as Twine, and works well on mobile. I wonder if it works good for screenreaders, as I've heard complaints about Twine related to that.