Ratings and Reviews by MathBrush

This game was entered into the Single Choice jam.

It's a long choice-based game with an elaborate setup and worldbuilding. You are part of a detective agency, and a couple has reported that something was stolen from their house.

It was stolen by a thief with a clever gimmick: they take an item, and then replace it with a photorealistic painting.

But this time, what was stolen is unknown, and it was replaced by a poem. The couple that hired you was a pair of alchemists.

Overall, the game manages to be engaging despite the 'one choice' limitation by adding a lot of outside-game thinking: what does the riddle refer to? Which clues matter?

On the other hand, it's hard to know what the player's thought process is supposed to be. I made a guess at the end, and it was right, but I couldn't pin down why.

The worldbuilding is rich and detailed. The setting feels extravagant, more like a cartoon than a film, if that makes sense. Could be fleshed out in more games or a revision of this one.

This game was written for the Neo Twiny Jam in 500 words or less.

I saw this game from two points of view.

In the first, it's a truly awkward situation. You're running into your ex girlfriend with your now boyfriend. You're nervous it'll be awkward but...(Spoiler - click to show)she barely remembers you dating? That's super awkward. And pretty funny.

From the other point of view, it's kind of a mystery. Everyone has very specific and unusual names. Is it a reference to a show? An in-joke? Some OCs?

Either way, the styling is nice, some good choices for color and font to add to the awkward feeling.

This game was written for the Neo Twiny Jam in 500 words or less.

There are a lot of Orpheus and Eurydice adaptations out there, from the original stories to the first recorded opera to the platformer Don't Look Back, and I generally like them all; it's a good story.

This game manages to do something I haven't really seen with it before. It merges it with the author's personal history, and it manages to (Spoiler - click to show)gives an ending where Eurydice is reborn, and does so in a way that isn't cheap and unearned but also has its own mixture of emotions. Well done.

This game has some fabulous looking images and nice sounds, accompanying its text size of 500 words for the Neo Twiny Jam.

Storywise, there are several branches here. You are trapped in a dungeon, although your true nature may not be apparent at first.

Freedom is possible for you...possibly. But sacrifices must be made.

This was well-written, and enjoyable to play.

This game was written for the Neo Twiny Jam in 500 words or less.

It's a Texture game, which I haven't seen a lot of recently. This system has you drag verbs onto nouns (or, here, resume sections), both causing changes when you actually drop it and tooltips when you hover.

The humor (or pathos, depending on how you view it) comes from the self-criticism or uncertainty or Sisyphean task of dealing with all of this.

I found only one ending, but I found it multiple times.

This game was written for the Neo Twiny Jam in 500 words or less.

It is as far as I can see completely linear, but uses interactivity as you can click to make each line appear.

The gimmick here is that it's a single story but changes every few lines into the format of a different social media site like Twitter or Reddit, showing how some things stay the same the more they change.

Pretty neat. One crude joke that doesn't add much to the story, but overall some tight writing.

This game was written for the Neo Twiny Jam in 500 words or less.

It uses all of its words in one path, a torrent of thoughts that pile on. The narrator lies in bed with thought after anxious thought crowding the mind. Thoughts of death, of unimportance, come endlessly.

There is some comfort in the end, at the hand of a friend. Overall, the feeling is of a storm followed by sunlight, observing the wreckage.

This game was written in 500 words or less for the Neo Twiny Jam.

It features 2 assassins who have met at knife point. Will you fight, or romance?

It manages to pull a few surprises while playing with well-trodden tropes. The writing is to-the-point and effective. I enjoyed playing it right after I finished re-watching Hawkeye, which includes a similar assassin-on-assassin fight.

Short, but worth it.

This game was written in 500 words or less for the Neo Twiny Jam.

This one was fun to read up on. I was just talking to my son a few days ago about 'automatic writing', where mediums would just let the pencil move and see what writing the spirits produced.

This game is about one such work, a long epic by Sara Weiss detailing the history, biology, and language of the people of Mars. It is accompanied by beautiful illustrations from the original text.

While the game itself provides fascinating insights, reading up on the accompanying material and just searching the original book in general was very fun.

This game was written in 500 words or less for the Neo Twiny Jam.

It's pretty funny. A cat has appeared in your evil lair but you, a supervillain, are completely unable to do anything to stop it or damage it.

There is a lot of flexibility, and paths diverge but merge again, which I prefer to pure branching or no branching. Pretty fun!