Reviews by MathBrush

This is a relatively brief visual novel written for Ectocomp in the Grand Guignol competition.

It's a tale about a creature from Hell (a tiefling maybe?) and a paladin who dispute over an apprentice called Strider who apparently was captured by a shapeshifter (or replaced?), although this is never mentioned again.

I've struggled to review it, so I'll use my arbitrary 5-star criteria:

+Polish: The game has no bugs that I can see and looks visually well-put-together.

+Descriptiveness: There is some vivid imagery around things like snakes and eyes.

-Interactivity: You have choices, but it's not clear what effects they have, and the narrative lurches from scene to scene with little connection. I'm all for disjointed or dream like narrative, but I feel like there was no connecting thread binding this together.

-Emotional impact: Because of the 'jumpiness' of the story, it was hard to get invested. They are at a bar...then there is a fight...once the fight is done an abbess enters the same room to condemn a character...but maybe this room is in hell?

-Would I play again? Not at this time. I've played at least one other game by this author in Gruescript, which was interesting, and I would play more in the future, but this one kind of went over my head.

This game has me at a bit of a loss. I'm a big fan of Andrew Schultz and probably have had more total fun playing all his games than almost all authors over the last decade.

But this one just doesn't do it for me. It has an amusing start (reminding me of Five Nights at Freddies), but then it got bogged down.

It uses rhyming pairs; each room name has two words in it, and you must find things that rhyme with those two words and which also are alliterative.

There were two problems for me. The first is that progress seemed to require hitting all of the rhyming pairs the author thought of (at least, some enemies weren't counted as 'defeated' until you had done so), and second, the game didn't recognize a very large number of rhyming pairs that would logically work. This is almost certainly due to the short timeframe of the game (4 hours), so as a speed IF this game is actually quite remarkable, but as a game in general I found it less successful.

The second thing is bugs; the downloaded and online versions acted differently, with the downloaded version not accepting the command that gives access to the east and west areas. The online version didn't accept one command in the walkthrough, and the final area could be accessed directly from the beginning of the game if guessed correctly.

Outside of those issues, the game is pretty great; I love the idea of having a showdown with multiple mech monstrosities. Literally the one thing that could take this from a (for me) two star game to a 4 or 5 star game is more polish, but, alas, that is exactly what this specific competition proscribes.

This glulx game was entered in Ectocomp.

In it, you play a classic noir-style detective (who has, I believe, appeared in other games by the same author, as Castronegro was mentioned) who has been commissioned to investigate a haunted house.

The bulk of the game consists of investigating, first at places like libraries and courthouses and then at the house itself, which has more action pieces.

The writing is elaborate, fully leaning in to both noir style and early cosmic horror style. For instance:
'The house, wrapped in an aura of faded elegance, evokes a
bygone era through its windows and timeworn architecture. As the
wind stirs the leaves, a sense of mystery lingers, hinting at the secrets
hidden within its walls.'

At times it becomes a little too descriptive, where it can be difficult to piece together what's important and what's not.

The implementation is solid along a critical path but sketchy off that path. A lot of unimportant scenery is left unimplemented, but conversation is indicated fairly well through the use of a topics menu and bolding.

I struggled a bit in some of the actions scenes of the game, although the final results made sense. I believe the very end of the game has some randomization.

Overall, this was fun to play, although it could implement some more things.

Edit: This game is also an adaptation of a Call of Cthulhu module, I believe.

I played this game on BlueStacks, an Android emulator.

This is a short game with a few options, each of which seems fairly strong. It uses a variety of Japanese words, often with explanations. There are several points where it seems like the game gives you freedom to make big choices; I didn't replay to verify.

It's hard to explain the story or to check the interactivity, because the game was really hard to understand. Usually a game is hard to understand because the author struggles with grammar or the story was written by AI and is bland, but this story seemed like it was written by someone with perfect English and unassisted by tools. It just is...weird. There's a lot of elaborate high language interspersed with random curse words. The language used is full of metaphors that didn't quite make sense to me. I think there was an experiment involving reviving someone in a relationship, but beyond that...I'm not sure.

An impressive amount accomplished in 4 hours, but it remains a mystery to me.

This game is a sprawling and varied horror comedy twine game about trying to use the toilet at night.

The style is kind of like a gauntlet but with more branching. You can select between multiple paths, but along each path, there is often only 1 choice that lets you live, while others let you die. The deaths give you many, many different endings, with comedic names and which are listed on the main page of the game after you unlock them.

The story draws on a wide variety of horror tropes, from witches and imps to shadow-creatures and eldritch horrors. It's low on continuity and high on amusing moments and subverting expectations.

The writing is descriptive and funny.

Overall, this game has a lot to like; however, I think for my personal preferences (that do not reflect all players!) I would have preferred some more coherence in the storyline, or more unity in the themes.

This game was entered into Ectocomp 2023, in the Grand Guignol division.

It is a wordplay game, centered on the idea of rhyming pairs where you swap the first consonants.

I always enjoy this author's wordplay gameplay, but I often find the words used too abstract or obscure to fully enjoy, or have difficulty knowing what to do.

This game is much more concrete than usual, with vivid imagery: animals, mountains, machinery, buildings, ravines, etc. This made me more invested in the game.

I also liked the symmetrical structure, with a neat trick where paths diverge and converge and you have to approach each problem from both sides.

I got stuck on a few of the parts where you had to use an item elsewhere, and I think I ran into a bug where someone will pursue you once but seemingly (?) won't pursue you after that. But it was only a slight thing in an overall nice game.

The difficulty level was just right for me, with many easy things to do, some pretty easy things, and only a few really challenging problems (I used the treat chunk a couple of times and peeked at the walkthrough for one ending thing).

This is a long Twine game entered into Ectocomp, Grand Guignol.

You play as what I interpreted as a trans man, someone born as a daughter, raised as a son, who killed his father and took his name and identity. I may have misread it, though.

You have quite a few options in the game. In your life, you come across the devil, who makes a deal with you, which you get to pick.

Near the end, you get to choose between four different endings, some shorter, some longer.

The world setting is a dark and unhappy version of the wild west. Towns are dead or dying; men are jealous and violent; women are suffering. The Devil stalks across the land, doing as he pleases with no mercy.

While the opening didn't grab me, being a bit too rich for me (like thick, bittersweet fudge), the endings grabbed me, being strongly written. I had a love ending, and I liked it.

The timed text was obnoxious; when the game trusted to the text to provide the pacing instead of some html code, it worked better, IMO. I eventually discovered that you can speed it up a bit by clicking, but that meant that for both my endings I missed the finale, which is timed text where a single click skips it all with no way to get back. But the fact I wanted to read those endings was a tribute to the strong writing of the finales. A good game for those in a lonesome mood.

This is an Ink game entered into several competitions; I saw it in the Grand Guignol ectocomp competition.

This game is fairly long and has some nice, rich structure. There are parts where you can walk around a house, examining different things.

The plot is mysterious and frightening. You follow a friend to a town, hearing vague rumors about his past, until you enter his family home and discover his awful secrets.

The setting and concept were, I thought good, and much of the writing is good. However, I felt for the first third of the game like I was constantly grasping for threads of plot or action. So much was vague, it was difficult to see what direction things were going in.

That's a recurring theme with the writing, that it becomes so descriptive it almost becomes undescriptive. For instance, in a library, it says 'You wonder if the hallway's actual walls are the most-likely peeling drywall or columns of thick tomes covering them.' I get what it's going for here, with rich figurative language, but I think that hedging the metaphor with 'I wonder' and 'most likely' lessens its impact.

However, there are also very strong moments; I especially liked the arrival of the Brother, which was a tense scene and written very dramatically and descriptively. So this isn’t badly written, it just has highs and lows.

Overall, I like this story and would like to see what happens next.

Edit: I didn't realize this was intentionally dreamlike, so I'm increasing my score from 3 to 4.

This game was entered in the 2023 Spanish ectocomp.

This game has you sitting at a computer, typing away, when your computer program ruptures reality!

As a strange figure announces to you, you must try to restore this timeline.

This game managed to hit all of the things I like. I enjoyed the fantasy style setting, I didn't encounter any bugs or typos, I liked the polish of the different presentations of text (computer, tile, etc), and I enjoyed the small puzzles.

It's a small game overall, but I enjoyed it while it lasted. I may have enjoyed it more because it's in Spanish, with translation adding to the fun.

This is one of the more serious Ectocomp games I've played. It can be hard to write interactive fiction that has gravitas and purpose to it, as giving players agency can take away from overall arcs.

This game handles it well. You are in a hotel room, a haze filtering in through the curtains. War is going on, bombings and violence. And you are confronted with the memory of someone who is no longer there...

The game is short, so there isn't much to say, except that this is written well and was poignant.