Reviews by MathBrush

This game employs two common tropes but combines them in a fun way.

The first is communication using emojis. Like B.P. Hennessy's Known Unkown's and litrouke's 10 pm, you have an array of emojis you can pick from and combine into different emoji sentences.

The second trope is 'aliens communicate and we must decode it', like Contact, 2001, or Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind.

This particular game takes a humorous approach. I was faked out twice at the end, which I enjoyed. I used google translate, as there were many French words I was unfamiliar with.

It's a fairly short game, with 4 chapters and an epilogue, but each chapter being only a couple of choices.

I felt like the game respected my choices and made an effort to be interactive.

This is a French IFComp entry, and it worked pretty well for me.

You are a cybernetic soldier who has been massively damaged on the field of battle. You have a screen/HUD sort of thing that you can control (the theme of this year's comp is 'screens'). Clicking on different armor pieces gives you different options.

The storyline, dealing with the aftermath of war, goes in fairly standard directions for sci-fi, but I found the presentation charming and my mangled non-Francophone reading ability found the writing interesting. Slick game, and not too long, for any English speakers trying to get some mileage out of Google translate.

This game presented a conundrum to me. As a non-native French reader, I couldn't tell if the lack of punctuation and capitalization was avant-garde or the result of less-than-perfect design processes. However, I reached a point where 2 out of 3 choices lead to death and the third said 'click anywhere to edit this node', so I believe that this is simply an incomplete game.

But the idea of it is fun. It hearkens back to more riddle-based gameplay than most narrative-focused Twine games. You're trapped, and there's a madman with a knife coming to get you. You must find six digits to unlock a door, each digit being given as a reward for a puzzle. Puzzles include logic puzzles, wordplay puzzles, etc.

I would have liked to see this finished and polished. But, in its incomplete state, I can't recommend it.

Norbez has written quite a few games over the years now, including several IFComp games, and it’s clear that their style is progressing, adapting, and improving. This is the best Norbez game I’ve seen, and definitely one of the best “PSA” games I’ve seen. Just like Depression Quest for depression or Hana Feels for self-harm, Bi Lines is meant to help you consider what it’s like to be a bisexual man in an unacceptably society.

What made this piece work for me was the presentation. Nice chalk/like effects when you click on choices, smooth writing, and a supernatural setting with a reporter talking to ghosts make an excellent frame over the deeper charcterization choices and the central narrative.

This game takes place over three days, but is still fairly short. It contains some strong profanity in a scene or two. I recommend this game.

Zarf/Andrew Plotkin has said before that he thinks about a certain interaction he wants players to experience in a game, and then builds the game around that.

This game was built around one interaction at the end. It’s a cool interaction, but the rest of the game doesn’t do enough to build up to and support this special interaction at the level it deserves. It’s like having a small 1-tier cake with a huge crystal wedding topper that it can’t quite support.

The cards were a nice visual feature: this is set in a futuristic Vegas casino, and you can see the cards being dealt.

Overall, this shows a high level of craftsmanship, and I anticipate that a longer game by this author would be great.

This game isn't bad in it's own category, it just happens not to be what satisfies my criteria for stars, which is why it got a low score from me.

This game uses randomization of elements taken from some sort of database (so that figurines might be of monkeys one playthrough or of dogs on another).

The player has some text input, and there are images, but overall it seems like you just get a story to read that you don't have much effect over or investment in.

The game shows a great level of skill, though.

In this game, you wake up in the world described in Talking Head's 'Once in a Lifetime' song. You have a beautiful house, a beautiful wife, and none of it makes sense.

This is a texture game, and has great promise. Unfortunately, it is not complete at all.

If you experiment with it, note that it has some sensuous scenes.

This was a game meant to show off a particularly interesting engine, but which may not have been the best choice to show it off.

Glyffe lets you navigate (using arrow keys) around a text on screen, with interactions happening when you run over something. There are interesting Glyffe 'worlds' with red FIRE and grey WALLS and DOORS that you can physically interact with.

But this game is just a long text, where running over a paragraph makes the next pop up. The text is interesting, but the interactivity of this example wasn't sold to me.

This is a short, incomplete science fiction story.

This game has excellent worldbuilding, you can really get a feeling for the kind of place that you're in. It's a high-tech sci-fi scenario.

However, it feels more like a good first effort than anything else. Formatting is kind of off, with no spaces between paragraphs. The clinical tone isn't quite nailed, with first names being used for researchers (like Dr. Sarah and so on).

I believe a further game by this author, with practice and polish, will turn out great.

This game is in the Intudia system, which was also used for Addicott Manor in IFComp.

This game is quite short, as is appropriate for the Ectocomp competition. It's also a widely branching game. You are a counselor on a bus trip to a camp. You have about 2-5 choices on any branch.

The story is about murder, supernatural violence, etc. and relies on several stereotypes and tropes of teenage slasher films.