Reviews by MathBrush

This is a parser game set in an eccentric older man's joke-filled house using traditional parser game play (i.e. taking items and using them in places, unlocking doors with keys, etc.) and riddles.

The map itself is fairly small, but hides a lot of details. I had to use the hints at one point because I completely missed an important piece of furniture. I used it again a couple of times when I couldn't guess the solution to a puzzle involving a tree and a different one with books.

The main gameplay cycle is to go to a clue room, push a button to get a clue describing an item, find the item, put it in a box, and pull a lever. This gives you a new item like a key or a useful tool that allows you to progress to the next clue.

Most of the items seem kind of random, but the main themes that I saw were household items, puns, and the memories of Willy's life. I liked the way the very end pulled everything together.

There could be some improvements in the game. A lot of the items are listed in the room description and at the end as well; this can be avoided by either putting brackets around the item name in the room description (like 'you see a [cabinet] here') or by making the items 'scenery', or by adjusting their default description like:

A box is in the side room. "You see a strange box on the floor."

I didn't notice any bugs. It was a bit strange to have to (Spoiler - click to show)physically grab the ants and termites out of their jars and shoot them in a slingshot or put them in a box. I think in such a pun-filled house it could have been fun to have a little more description for some things. Overall, though, this is a solid game and I found it pleasant to play with little frustration (outside of running to the hints).

This game does a lot of unusual things that I'm not even sure how to react to. I can't tell yet if I love this game or hate it, only time will see. But I'll describe my experience.

This is the second Anastasia the Power Pony game. I liked the earlier one; I went into it expecting a My Little Pony story (which I would have loved) but instead found an original pony-based setting. This time around there are even more differences that show how the two series aren't really connected (for one thing, in the naming of the characters). I did forget some aspects of the setting which made it very funny when the game completely condoned all manner of violence against llamas but urged you to not injure ponies at all, giving the impression of pony ultra-racism (I think the first game had a reason, I just can't remember it, so it's not actually pony racism I believe).

The game itself has several acts, and here's where the new style of stuff comes up.

In the first act, we are in a restaurant with some snobby coworkers. There's menu-based conversation but we can also examine the area around us. Suddenly, we are recognized, and we must escape subterfuge and/or fighting, all while our dreary coworkers drone on in the background, commenting on our actions. To my surprise, the space is huge; I strongly strongly strongly recommend reading all feelies before playing the game. I imagined this huge space was to have a complex combinatorial puzzle of evasion, but I just used brute force (this map will return later).

Afterwards, there was a fight scene in an alley. You can't save or undo during it, but you can retry or continue. Having not read the feelie that specifically describes combat, I floundered at first, trying stuff like 'jump back' (which worked I think, or maybe step back), and HIT PONY (frowned on due to probably-not-pony-ultra-racism). I took the trash can lid at one point and it let me defend.

Rather than give up, I wanted to keep trying. It's clear the author was hoping that they could implement enough actions that someone could intuitively type whatever they want and have it work, usually a laughable idea in a parser game (there are just so many things to account for) but I wanted to make the author's vision work. As you fight, you get more commands suggested, and COMMANDS gave some more. There are several ways the fight can end. I ended up thinking that I needed to use the same three moves over and over (Spoiler - click to show)(sidestep, duck, and jump) but once they started double-teaming me that didn't work anymore, so I tried using (Spoiler - click to show)THROW and TRIP but it kept saying it did or didn't work for what seemed to me arbitrary reasons. I finally followed the signs more carefully and was able to win. It felt rewarding, but part of that rewarding feeling was wrangling an unruly combat system. So, again, I couldn't decide if I loved it for getting it to work or hated it for being hard to figure out.

A couple acts later we return to the restaurant and have a big all-out brawl, just like the pirate ship in the last game. And the purpose of the 20-something room buffet is revealed: we have to attack making puns!

Now, this just seemed to me like a really bad idea from the other. You have to do stuff like 'RAMMING NOODLES' or something with the ramen noodles. I was deeply skeptical because so many things don't have obvious puns (like lutefisk). And some early things I tried didn't work at all (SAVAGE someone with a SAUSAGE, MASH them with MASH, etc.). How could the author possibly include all possible puns? It seemed like a lost cause and I died a lot.

Then I saw everyone chucking stuff at me, so I chucked stuff back, and it seemed to do something. Regular attacks worked a bit as well.

Spoilers for next bit.

Again, I can't tell if it's genius or horrible. What to do wasn't clearly communicated, but that made figuring it out more rewarding. It reminds me a bit of the draw of older games like the one Garry Francis loves on CASA, where the parser is terrible and getting around that is half the fun. This parser is not terrible, but the many activities with wide-open state spaces makes trying to understand the game as much of a puzzle as the game itself.

Story-wise, the game is a classic street-level superhero story, done well in the classic style. Rather than innovating with big plot twists, the author has instead added lots of jokes and characterization.

Overall, I had fun. I think experimentation like this is what drives the community forward in the long run; someone has to take the gamble on something new. So, bravo. The music worked well for me, too.

I thought this game was both innovative and challenging. It definitely seemed original and I like a lot of the ideas, but I struggled with some of the execution.

This is a choice-based game focused on interrogation. You are a suspect being questioned by the police after being caught in Versailles (I think) and you have to explain what happened.

There are three parts of the story that you can pick up: in the library at the beginning of the game, at the King's bedroom, and in the basement under (I think, again) Versailles.

You try to construct a plausible explanation for what happened, but if you pick the 'wrong' thing, the interrogator calls you out and you start over (kind of like Spider and Web). But, information carries over, so doing something in one thread lets you perform new actions in another.

This was a fun concept and I think the core of the game is very solid. I ran into two issues:

1. I think the 'timeout' for doing things wrong is too harsh. It felt like almost any action I tried would reset me back to the beginning, making you have to click back in and redo it all. This goes away during the very last puzzle (where, ironically, I might have preferred easier resets).
2. The very last puzzle broke things into a few too many steps. I would have preferred it if we could (Spoiler - click to show)color things immediately after washing them instead of putting them back in the box and selecting them from a list again.

I think the puzzles and concept here are neat, and most of the execution works for me. I also liked how the inconsistencies in the statements resolved themselves in the end.

This was great. I like sci fi, languages, trying to understand aliens, etc. It reminded me of works like the movie Arrival or the book The Mote in God's Eye, both of which I like.

You play as an exolinguist, an expert in alien languages, assigned to a new military mission where you discover you have been assigned an impossible task: decode an alien language that has remained untranslated for over a hundred years in order to help the military use a new weapon.

You're assigned a team of individuals with differing talents and have to interface with multiple commanding officers and a robot companion.

One major feature of the game that I didn't pay attention to (I'll have to replay) is that the musical soundtrack changes dynamically as you play, which I thought was really neat. There are some 3d animations as well, but I found myself enjoying my imagination more more often.

I thought the writing was solid, especially dialogue and interactions with other characters. My only real grip is that I felt that the ending came at a time where there was still narrative momentum; it didn't feel like the right time (to me) for the game to end, which might be due to having multiple endings in the game (making it harder to pace it).

But yeah, this is one of the games that reminds me why I like interactive fiction in general, it's just fun to read, interaction felt meaningful, and it intersects with a lot of my niche interests.

This game draws on Agatha Christie’s books, with the main NPC being the Belgian detective Hercule Poirot and the PC being his good friend Captain Hastings. This is set later than most of the books, and Captain Hastings is now a widower with four children.

Unlike Christie’s usual fare of murder and intrigue, this is a light and pleasant game, more like a walking simulator or coffee shop AU. At all times your next task listed at the top of the screen, only one of which requires any sort of big difficulty. The rest of the game is just ‘chill vibes’, checking out the world, etc.

It’s effective at that. Bolded words draw attention to items of interest. You can talk to each character. I only wished that either the TALK response was more drawn out, or that we could ASK people about each other (of course that would take a lot of writing, so it might not be feasible. A menu conversation could have been fun, too).

The final part of the game involves a mystery, which I found to be a little unfair, but the MC had the exact same issues with it that I did and expressed them, which I found funny.

I’ve read most of the Poirot books (maybe all?) and this was a pleasant place to reminisce about it. I don’t know how someone knew to the characters would react, but I expect they’d find it pleasant as well.

This is a Twine game where you wake up in hell and things only go worse from there. But that's because you work there. You wander around trying to torment souls efficiently. Depending on how you do, your boss rewards you.

There are different torment areas. Here's the one for gluttons, for instance:

Whoa, that sweet tooth ward, man, it's a real food paradise! Walls covered in big, dripping chocolate cakes and sticky caramel fountains. Wobbly carts full of treats everywhere, with little sweet-tooth devils running around, stealing cream puffs and licking their sticky fingers.

Nurses in ice cream-stained aprons trying to keep things straight, but they just end up slipping on banana peels or diving headfirst into whipped cream pools. Every corner's full of laughs and sugary chaos, a place where even the devil can't say no to another cookie.

Torture Level: [😈😈]

Your trusty... assistant is here!

If you ask about the diet, it tells you:

Man, this week's diet? It's like, welcome to the sweet tooth ward of hell, where every meal's a feast for those gluttony sinners! Day starts with pancakes stacked sky-high, buttery croissants, and hot chocolate thick as lava. Lunch? We're talking towering cakes and chocolate fountains with marshmallows. Snack time? Cream puffs that explode in your mouth and cookies that just call your name. Dinner's the grand finale, with mousse, tiramisu—Italy's legendary coffee-infused dessert—and soufflés that look like magic on a plate. Every meal here's a temptation you can't resist! .

Call me crazy, but these descriptions don't really scream 'hell' to me, especially for gluttons. In this case, we can add some medicine to mess up the food and increase the torture level.

The game was originally written in Italian it seems from the Twine code (which has all passages titled in Italian), which explains the very rare word in Italian that can be seen from time to time.

To me, the game felt like an exploration game, like Alice in Wonderland, just looking at things. That puzzles that are there aren't too tricky; one was labelling things according to a table, most others just depended on the order you clicked links, so it wasn't too bad.

I found that the writing of each sentence was pretty good, although it was kind of choppy with lots of m-dashes and emojis and asking itself questions (like 'Lunch? We're talking towering cakes!'). Different paragraphs didn't seem closely connected, though, and different areas seemed altogether dissonant from each other. It was hard to see the unifying themes; what makes this place hell-like? Why are orcs here? How do the unusual accents of me and my coworker contribute to the game?

The use of colors for text was nice.

This parser takes a bold and innovative direction, and while I think it struggles with the execution, it's nice to see people experimenting and having fun.

In this parser game, you rule a country, but instead of moving from room to room or working with menus, you just give orders. The game itself doesn't give you any real instructions besides 'type what an emperor might do'.

I tried talking to my advisor, who suggested reviewing military deployments. I typed 'REVIEW MILITARY DEPLOYMENTS' and got a list of troops and number of places. I decided to recruit more by typing RECRUIT TROOPS IN , but I ran out of money. So I tried RAISE TAXES, and that worked. Some barbarians attacked, so I tried ATTACK and that worked.

I kind of ran out of steam then. There are some random events that you can respond to, but by that point I couldn't think of anything else to do. I peeked at the walkthrough and saw a list of actions I could try like 'condemn' (although it didn't let me condemn most things I tried).

I then restarted and tried the actual walkthrough. It had a lot of actions I hadn't considered (especially since some were in response to random events I hadn't seen yet), and due to randomization the walkthrough didn't 'work' and I'm not sure there's any ending to the game. Although, as I type this, I decided to try and type z.z.z.z.z.z and copy it over and over again, and was able to get a bad ending as my capital was sacked.

I think the concept (you can type anything!) is exciting, and a lot is implemented, but without stated restrictions or guidance it felt like I was stumbling blindfolded around a large, mostly empty room, trying to find scattered objects placed here and there (here the large room is the state space of all possible parser commands and the objects are the implemented actions).

Every writer writes for different audiences, so I may or may not be the target, but I think I would have had more fun if I had an idea of my long-term goal and about the relative amounts and specificity of things (does raising taxes give lots of money or little? Do I tax everyone, only some people, or only some things?).

Outside of that, the game is smooth, well-polished, and the writing clearly communicated what had occurred.

This was a fun game. You play as a rock on a wilderness path. You are a talking rock.

At first, all you can do is have random encounters with people, at least one of whom definitely does not like talking rocks. Eventually, you learn more about the people and their inter-connectedness, and you gain the ability to call them to make them come.

The game has 20 endings, and you can accept any of them. There is an 'ultimate' ending you unlock by getting the others and a 'true' ending that happens if you've played long enough.

I played twice, because I ran out of time in the first one and accepted an ending. The second time, I skipped a few things, and I think that made it impossible to collect all endings, because several endings seem to only be offered once (specifically one of the florist's endings).

I also had big trouble finding out what the Freak's need was and how to solve it. I ended up looking into the code to figure it out, where I also read the final ending.

Any ending is fine. If someone plays this and finds five or more endings, as well as an ending that reveals more about your nature, that's the bulk of the game and you could probably comfortably stop there.

The writing is whimsical and goofy. There is a lot of absurdism, but the setting is consistent enough to make the absurd parts stick out and be funny instead of being a jumbled mish-mash.

It didn't stir my soul or change my life, but I was entertained while playing and enjoyed looking for endings.

This is the second Lamp Post Projects game that I've played this IFComp. Like the earlier one (The Secrets of Sylvan Gardens), it takes place in a fantasy world with orcs, half-orcs, humans, elves, half-elves, and others, and with scientists like botanists and astronomers.

In this game, a solar eclipse is scheduled to happen soon, and the path of totality will go over a set of standing stones that are holy to an ancient God. Anyone who is there when the eclipse happens will be granted a wish. You can play as a true believer, an adventurer, or an astronomer, with different bonuses and endgames. I played as a true believer.

Along your pilgrimage, you have the opportunity to meet with two sets of two other pilgrims, for a total of four. The first pair are sibling half-orcs, while the second are a halfling man and (eventually) an elf woman.

You can choose to go with the group or not. I ignored the half-orcs at first because I wasn't as interested in them, but I joined up with them later once I saw the halfling.

This is a 'cozy' setting, a particular type I've seen a few times where there's not very high stakes, everyone is nice to each other (introducing with pronouns, asking consent before personal questions), there is no threat of death or severe injury. Just five chill people headed to the stones and some magical creatures out for mischief.

Most of the game is conversation, and most conversation is having a few topics you can explore in any order, and within topics being able to react to NPC questions by generally being kind, neutral, or mean. There are also puzzle segments in the game (some very easy, others more tricky). You can romance any of the four NPCs, although it can feel very fast paced due to the time constraints of the game (true love in two weeks, for instance).

It was a pleasant story, I felt I had agency (I skipped several conversations that didn't seem as interesting and focused more on a couple key characters) and it has replay value.

Retrograding

This is a downloadable visual novel written in Unity. It has an early branch point that essentially gives you two different games. I picked the second dossier, and got the second path.

This is a visually lush VN, with dozens of image credits listed at the end. Most (maybe all?) are realistic, with underground caves, steel factories, etc.

Grasping everything that was going on was a little tricky. I had the feeling that I had been invited to a long-running TTRPG session with a stellar DM and a close-knit group of friends, but without any explanation of what had gone on before or how we got here. So I'll say what I think is going on, which might be wrong (I'll put the opening without spoilers and the rest in spoilers):

We are a member of an intergalactic corporation/military organization/group that deals with trash on planets either by burning them up or by taking things off of them. I suspect it might be a very inefficient process, as we just take a single object every time, and I'm not sure how we choose where to land. We have a commanding officer type person (who was fun to interact with) and there is a digital friend/symbiote of ours that can talk to us, but whom no one else hears.

We aren't super high up in the system but we're working on it. We're given the option of working with two different people: a reckless racer with a death wish and a former top star at the company who's been rebellious and is being reeducated (I think).

I chose the latter.

While I didn't always know what is going on, the vibes were immaculate, in the sense that the game felt polished, scenes had tension, characters were interesting, etc. I didn't feel compelled to try the other path, but would be interested in hearing from others who did.

Edit: As a side note, when screens are black you have to hit enter again, so keep an eye out for that!