Reviews by MathBrush

I beta tested this game.

This is a unity/Ink game which takes place over several weeks in an apartment as the main character deals with life and with dreams.

Most of the choices are about how you interact with others and your view on life. The story is very malleable; your choices have strong effects on the outcome.

It turns out that the story is based on (and is an implementation of)(Spoiler - click to show)a personality test. Finding this out tied the whole game together for me. But I felt disconnected during the game, and I wish I had more idea of where my choices would take me.

I beta tested this game, and I found it very funny.

Mike Sousa has written many past IF games, and the polish of this game is testament to his experience.

This game is tied together by various real-life newspaper headlines. You are having a pretty crazy day, and you hop from sequence to sequence trying to deal with mistaken identities and rogue celebrities.

There isn't a lot of direct interactivity in the traditional sense, but there's a lot of room to play around in each scene, with plenty of coded actions.

I helped to beta test this game, which is one of the three Qiaobook translation entries.

In this game, you play as a young man who wakes up in bed with a dead body.

You have to play through a few times to identify the killer.

The game is developed with background images and sound.

I like the general 'find the killer' concept, but I found it difficult to wait for the typewritten text.

I enjoyed the story in this game quite a bit, more than just about any other game in the competition.

You play as a magical crow who is fleeing a destructive sentient firestorm. You have to hop from town to town, trying to warn everyone while fighting a bad reputation.

I enjoyed the characters and setting; it was generic fantasy, but not swords and sorcery generic fantasy, more of Diana Wynn Jones or fairy tales.

There were some noticeable typos, though, which detracted from the experience.

I beta tested this game.

This is an ambitious concept debuted here in a demo game. It is an rpg game with procedurally generated text and spinning wheels indicating combat.

I liked the system quite a bit; the styling was good, and the graphics nice. I felt a bit dissociated from the story; like real RPGs, the story was in service to the puzzles.

There is hidden material here; despite beta testing and playing again later, I didn't find the sword or defeat the giant monster. Worth checking it out to see the system.

This game is a mid-length Twine game (30,000 words in 214 passages).

It's about a rough, one-eyed monster hunter named Jacobi. He's carrying out various tasks for the king in return for help for his loved one.

The game has you face three challenges, each with a map and combat. They become darker as you progress, with the title referring to thematic darkness.

I actually liked this game's interactivity (moving, fighting, buying and selling), but there were several typos, and I was turned off by the 'grizzled unhappy war hero make dark choices' theme. I like those themes in general, but only lightened by a great deal of heart. This game has some (with Elias and Cassandra), but for my personal tastes, I would have liked more balance. This is definitely a personal thing, and others may wish it even darker.

This is a short Twine game where there are many branches (around 60 endings), but each play through is very short.

There is no distinctive CSS styling, but the game is written in a consistent voice.

I downloaded the file and opened it up in Twinery to see the code, and I think I know what happened with the development of this game. It seems to be a classic case of "What's fun for the author isn't what's fun for the player."

The Twine code is lovingly organized and garnished, with little extras here and there, either private jokes or Easter eggs for code-readers. The code branches all over, and has little Easter egg chunks like a map of the author's house, a little section on self-harm, asides, the chance to fight the narrator, etc.

The problem with this structure is that the player never sees it. As is common in this author-centered style, the cool content is hidden in branches the player is unlikely to take. The most normal branches are the shortest and the most straightforward. An author tends to think, 'Ah-ha! The player will try the first few branches, realize that something is off, and try the elaborate branches!'

But what tends to happen is, the player thinks, 'I've seen a lot of short, under implemented fantasy twine games. I've played through twice, and that's what this seems like, so I'm out of here', never seeing what lies beneath.

Another issue is that, because each play through is so short, most of the work is on content the player will never see. Cat Manning had the same issue with Crossroads in the 2015 IFComp, and later worked to retool her style with Invasion, which had longer playthroughs.

So, this is a lovingly-crafted, well-written game, but if you want to see all of it, you need to put in a lot of work.

I helped beta test this game.

This game meets my niche interests well. It is a combat random combat RPG in a fantasy setting, where it's mostly puzzle-based; most monsters are extremely difficult to defeat until you solve another puzzle, than become generally easy. It allows for some variability, though, as you can sequence break or die in an easy fight due to randomness.

I thought this was fun. A couple of times I felt thwarted by not knowing what to do, though.

I beta tested this game.

This is a short parser game in the Lovecraftian tradition. It takes place mostly on an airplane.

The game is interesting both story-wise and mechanically. Story-wise, it features a protagonist that isn't just a standard anglo-saxon. Mechanically, it features 3-dimensional movement in multiple environments. 3d movement is something I worked on in my game Ether, and I think this game handled it well.

However, the interactivity was iffy, as it was difficult to know what commands would work.

This game was one of three translations of Qiaobooks games entered into IFComp 2017. I helped organize people to test this game.

It has a really interesting technical concept: text is typed out on timed intervals with changing backgrounds and timed sound effects/music.

However, some of the execution falls down; the translation, even after a few revisions, is off, as is the typesetting (apostrophes especially have problems). The graphics render the text difficult to read.

More troubling for me is the storyline of this game, which features a fairly sexist protagonist.

I enjoyed the other two Qiaobook games entered in the competition more, although this one was the longest.