Ratings and Reviews by MathBrush

This is a bizarre little game.

You are a fetus who is superintelligent and a detective. You have a very low opinion of your mother.

Unfortunately, you cannot move or talk. All you can do is kick your mom and crawl around inside her.

This game has a lot of endings; I found 3 and watched several more on a youtube video.

There is wild stuff in this game, lots of using body parts in inappropriate ways, and for some reason a ton of very advanced talk about ontological things and philosophy...I had to use google translate a lot.

Pretty funny; could use some more synonyms for actions.

This is a pretty complex game entered in Ectocomp Grand Guignol edition. The same game is also entered in Petite Mort, where it was polished less (since Petite Mort has a time limit).

In this game, you are going up to a space station with two others in the shuttle with you. You all are identified by your roles, yours being the Inspector.

You are quizzed on an old case study of law, where an astronaut died on the ISS when their module was released too early.

Interestingly, the game features real life astronauts like Shannon Lucid and Léopold Eyharts, who are still alive, and is essentially fan-fiction about real life people. It's an AU, as the events take place in a fictional 1998.

You read everyone's journal entries then decide on whether the accused is innocent or guilty, and, if guilty, how guilty they are.

Perhaps due to the language barrier, I was confused about one mechanic. Before reading the case studies, you have to decide where the case was tried at. This seems to retroactively make the case have been tried there and limits which journals you have access to. It also changes what the actual verdict was, so it's kind of hard to tell what really happened, although I swear (again, can't be sure because my French is mediocre) that two of the journals literally confess to the crime.

This version has a lot of nice looking links and effects the other version doesn't have.

This is a pretty complex game entered in Ectocomp Petite Mort edition. The same game is also entered in Grand Guignol, where it was polished more (since Petite Mort has a time limit).

In this game, you are going up to a space station with two others in the shuttle with you. You all are identified by your roles, yours being the Inspector.

You are quizzed on an old case study of law, where an astronaut died on the ISS when their module was released too early.

Interestingly, the game features real life astronauts like Shannon Lucid and Léopold Eyharts, who are still alive, and is essentially fan-fiction about real life people. It's an AU, as the events take place in a fictional 1998.

You read everyone's journal entries then decide on whether the accused is innocent or guilty, and, if guilty, how guilty they are.

Perhaps due to the language barrier, I was confused about one mechanic. Before reading the case studies, you have to decide where the case was tried at. This seems to retroactively make the case have been tried there and limits which journals you have access to. It also changes what the actual verdict was, so it's kind of hard to tell what really happened, although I swear (again, can't be sure because my French is mediocre) that two of the journals literally confess to the crime.

This version has a lot of weird issues with whitespace, all of which were fixed in the full version.

This game was made in conjunction with Inktober, which means the author made one part of it every day of the month of October. So there are 30 different 'mini games' put into one.

The game starts on a dark and spooky night. Alone in the house, you have to do chores. Once you do, you have such nightmares...

The bulk of the game consists of the 30 nightmares. In each one, you play as a Binksi character (a system allowing you to walk around a minimalistic pixel graphic world with limited 2-frame animations and selective color palettes).

The nightmares have a lot of variety in types, but some are more represented than the others. The most common are ones where there are several copies of the same object scattered on the screen, and you have to pick them all up, each one producing some text which is at first random then eventually repeated, before you can move on. This was good, but became a bit tedious over time. I preferred the large animals who had deep conversations, and I liked a graveyard with ghosts.

The writing is self-introspective, open and refreshing with self insecurities, kind of like the lyrics to Joni Mitchell songs.

The ending caught me by surprise, and I thought the game had broken. I'm still not sure if there's anything you can do on the final screen, but it was effective and different.

This game isn't the usual sort of thing I review. While it firmly falls into the category of what I think of as interactive fiction (due to being a story mostly told through words where you take part in it), it contains a lot of graphical and auditory elements as well.

It's in the genre of 'lost game', one I've enjoyed in the past; I liked the NES Godzilla Creepypasta before and stories like Lavender Town and Ben Died are all over the internet. More recently I've been introduced to Pets Cop.

This game primarily features Binksi, which is a combination of Ink, the scripting language, and Bitsi, which is used for making minimalistic pixel art games that trigger text when you walk into objects.

But, unlike most Binksi games, this is all set within a CRT screen inside the page, so it looks all warped and weird. Also, there is excellent French narration with captions. Usually, timed text is annoying because I read fast and it's too slow; here, I struggled to read it before it moved on, due to being a non-native speaker.

Like most found-lost-games, the game in the game is unfinished, and you have to experience it through a variety of different levels created at different times. The different levels provide insight into the creator's mindset as he deteriorates over time. Different game elements are specifically pointed out as symbolising certain aspects of the creator's life.

Levels vary; they include an interrogation in a Russian-themed prison; a confrontation in a castle; and a pretty annoying giant invisible maze (but which is solvable fairly quickly). At one point I thought the game had glitched and restarted, only to find that I just hadn't explored enough. The ending was a dramatic shift and seemed to be a suiting climax that brought the whole game together.

I would give this game a 4/5 as it is well made but has many elements that don't suit my interests. However, I am giving it 5/5 solely due to the chunk of English Inform 7 code that was found in the game, since it reminded me of a game I once had to write in a similar format. It was well done.

This was the first Ectocomp game I played. I played the French version, then later ran through it in English.

It's very extensive for a 4-hour game. It's an Ink game, and you have quite a few different choices throughout the game. The author has used several interesting techniques, like branching and bottlenecking choices, choices that allow users to lawnmower through items in any order, and choices where you have a limited number you can select.

The story is a bit haphazard, as would be expected in a speed game. It had so many elements...there was a jaded romance which I found quite interesting, and then more chance for romance later. But there are also competitive game aspects, and some mystery. To me it felt like three ideas for great games, all rolled into one small game, and so it didn't gel. But I like each of the ideas! Impressive for a work of 4 hours.

This game was entered in several minimal jams, including the Single Choice jam. It is the author's first game.

It's a visual novel with one main image of characters with slight variation. The writing is intense and earnest: you, a time traveller, have been stuck in a loop over and over again with one person at its focus: your love.

The image used is high-quality and is very stylized, more anime-style. The story reminds me of fanfic in its genre conventions.

Though this is in the single choice jam, there's not really any story choices, but it is rewritten in as a 'restart/quit' option, which I actually thought was pretty clever.

I think if there's anywhere this game could be improved, it's in specificity. Right now the writing could apply to almost any time travel seting and situation: it could be a WWII era drama set in France, a turn of the century New York tale, a futuristic sci-fi set in China. And the lover could be anyone; we meet with only tiny details that fit in every life, like grabbing a cup of coffee or going on the bus. Part of that is intentional and works, in that it could be read as a MC/reader fic that needs to be vague to allow you to insert yourself. On the other hand, those incidents could be expanded on; there could be conversations that were had; there could be specific incidents recalled that are unusual and remarkable. IDK, I felt like I went off on this a long time but only because I feel like this author actually has a lot of talent and so I'm kind of imagining a really good story that could be written by them, if there were some more concrete details in it.

This visual novel was entered in the Single Choice jam.

My overall impression of it varied over time, as at first I thought the story was a bit trope-heavy but later on I enjoyed the progression it made.

You play as the husband of a recently deceased witch. After her death, you discover a letter from her telling you how you can contact her spirit.

You adventure through dungeons, killing goblins, to get a spirit orb to contact her with. Eventually, things come down to a difficult choice.

Overall, a lot of the game could have had more specific descriptions instead of relying on implicit common knowledge (like the fact that dungeons exist with goblins who are enemies, who the Lord of Light is, how heaven/hell work, etc.). But I liked the main narrative thrust of the story.

This is a nicely styled Twine game that is digestible in an hour or so. You play as a robot rover helping a damaged ai-driven (fictional AI, not chatgpt ai) spaceship to get repaired.

You discover a world with little slime creatures in it that can shapechange. You also have an inventory of items that can be used to alter the shapes of the creatures and things around you.

It's a fun concept, and the game is designed to be relatively mild and enjoyable. While some puzzles are tricky (I had to use the walkthrough because I got stuck), there's a lot of leeway to help you finish without having to solve everything. I stopped at 150 points.

I like the worldbuilding and inventory here. I didn't feel a need to revisit this game in the future, but I'm glad I played it. I came to try it because it showed up on the Interactive Fiction top 50 for 2023.

I played this game because it was one of 2 on the Interactive Fiction Top 50 poll of 2023 and I had never played it before.

There are a lot of things that can be spoiled in the game, so I'm going to just describe the beginning here and some accessibility stuff, then put some mid-game stuff in spoilers, and leave out the endgame stuff.

The game starts like an idle game like Universal paperclips. You have a 'stoke the fire' button and, on another tab, a 'gather wood' button. A stranger wanders in, freezing in the cold.

Gameplay expands significantly as you go on, adding crafting mechanics and mild city-building. Eventually you do need movement keys and there are some parts I don't think would be accessible to screen readers.

For mid-game spoilers:

(Spoiler - click to show)Once you are able to craft a compass, you are able to explore a world map. This map contains a variety of outposts, and includes real-time combat that involves clicking, with some battles requiring intense clicking.

As you explore the map, you can make the world a safer place, eliminating threats as you go and establishing outposts. As you do so, you learn about the lore of the world.

Overall, the game is very polished, and while minimalistic it is descriptive. The interactivity worked well for me, although I found some endgame timed events very difficult. I found the game emotionally satisfying and could see myself revisiting it.