Reviews by MathBrush

This game is surreal. It was written for ShuffleComp.

In it, you find yourself compelled, no matter what you do, to approach (Spoiler - click to show)the unholy city.

The best part of the game is the feeling of dread and the awful feeling of (Spoiler - click to show)waking up from a bad dream to another bad dream.

Overall, I don't know if the ending had enough of a buildup to support it, but I liked this overall.

This game is a participatory game, an MMO masquerading as an MMO.

The conceit is that you are playing an old, defunct MMO which you discover is (Spoiler - click to show)connected to multiple universes. As you play, you find messages left by others. You have the option to leave a message, and doing so lets other people really see it.

I saw messages from real people I know, but they all soon disappeared. I wandered through an empty maze, seeing messages by people that could be real or fake. I left a message everywhere I went. Overkill, maybe? Shouting into the void? It's hard to know.

Very fun concept. Large game.

I liked this game. The presentation was neat, with real-time smoke in the background over at-your-own-pace text (I'd love to see more of this in games that use real time elements, letting me read as fast or slow as I like while other live stuff happens in the background).

You play as...well, you don't really know. It seems you're in a kind of group, at first, with text represented in different colors and alignments.

You have to escape a burning room in a temple. Everything is chaos.

You can play multiple times, and it can take quite a while to figure out what's going on. But everything built on each other, and I found it quite clever.

I was debating between 4 and 5 stars, as I usually use the 5th star for 'would I play again?' but technically I already played twice, so I'll give it 5 stars.

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).