Reviews by MathBrush

This game is firmly in the modernist tradition of the early 1900s, similar to works by Kafka or T.S. Eliot.

The tags on this game include 'existentialist' and 'absurd', and that's a good description.

The game is dream-like; you are in a lushly detailed house where nothing really matters, and the story drives you forward. It's like a Ryan Veeder game without the Ferris Bueller attitude.

Overall, I found it effective, especially because I forgot the french IF commands and had to look them up (on the french play-IF card http://ifiction.free.fr/fichiers/play-if-card_fr.pdf), so at first I was just typing room names. This gives you a description of the room, but doesn't take you there, and doesn't give you the same description as actually being there. This made the game very odd.

Overall, I liked it.

This Twine game is intentionally short and linear, but it's not quite as linear as it advertises; basically, you are unwinding after a long day, and you get to pick what order to unwind in.

You seem to be a volunteer for a hospital, as well as a student. Actions like taking off your boots or untying your hair trigger memories from earlier in the day.

I found it fascinating as a glimpse into another, medical world, as well as portraying a character who seems to be a minority in their current situation.

I swear this game was different the first time I played it. In any case, what it is now is a living dungeon Twine game; you are a living dungeon, and adventurers come in in a cycle. You choose from a menu of 3 randomly generated options until either the adventurer dies, or succeeds.

I thought it was clever, and the graphic was helpful. But I felt like it could be further developed.

I have to give a caveat about my score first; I think this game is really around a 5 out of 10 on the IFComp scale; it's short, silly, self-conscious. But, it satisfies all of my 5 star criteria:

1. Polished: I didn't encounter any errors, and the writing was consistent, and even the plain twine styling seemed to fit the story.
2. Descriptive: The game has a nice voice and inventive language (I chuckled at the word turdburglar, especially because I misread it at first).
3. Interactivity: The game presented me with exactly the kind of options I wanted at several points in the game. It was actually very effective at presenting options that made me go 'Yes! This is exactly what I want to do'.
4. Emotion. I smiled a lot.
5. Would I play it again? Yes, I'm interested in exploring the mechanics.

So this is technically a 5, but on the 'how much will the average IF player like it' scale, I'd give it a 2-3.

This game has you speak completely in symbols.

You are bird, a child living with a single male named Ty. Ty has problems, and so do you.

You communicate with Ty completely in symbols. What this means in-game is never explained.

This story didn't grab me, but the presentation was slick, and it's a game worth replaying. Sometimes technical stuff is enough to impress me on its own; however, the author has a great knack for characterization as well.

This is a cute little game. You play as two kids who are searching for their pet named Sicomore.

You pick the order to visit three locations, then finish off the last location. So there's not much interactivity.

What makes it charming is that it seems like it was designed around a series of characters drawn and named by children, which I liked. The illustrations are provided in the game.

You play a government censor in this game. You are given a series of incriminating documents which you have to censor; clicking on various sentences blacks them out.

You are graded on how you do. This doesn't matter quite as much as you'd think, but it does affect the final ending.

I loved the feel of this game, the feel of manipulating documents and being in control. I do wish it had been longer or the the censoring had been more closely integrated with the story.

This game is centered around a spy drama, like the Bond movies. It is translated, with several errors.

The main characters is a chauvinist, who 'negs' women and is over macho. That really turned me off.

It does have a clever plot, involving a conspiracy (led by you) to manipulate the world.

In 2006, Theo Koutz entered an IFComp game called Sisyphus, where you roll a stone up a hill and it rolls down again. It was a troll game that was smooth and polished.

This is essentially the same game, but with shiny new polish. You have to open some doors, but you can't. Replaying this, though, I found that I actually enjoyed the writing, perhaps more than any other game in the comp.

So this was pretty fun, despite the author's intentions.

This is a shortish Twine game entered into the 2017 IFComp.

It consists of free verse, sometimes with poetic styling, and sometimes in a more conversational tone.

There is some profanity, in a sort of navel-gazing self-aware way. In general, I liked the poetry, though, and found it enjoyable even on a second or third read.