Reviews by MathBrush

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.

This game was entered into the 2017 IFComp. It is plagued by bugs and translation errors, and it uses a home-brew parser that is missing some of the capability of a standard parser.

The story has you searching the house to make sure your friends and family are all right after a ghost haunts the house. It has several graphic depictions of sexual violence in a crude sort of way.

This game has you open up the source in the infirm compiler, so that you can see the source and the compiled game simultaneously. The source becomes a short story, with comments, and is a companion piece to the game.

It’s a clever idea, and I enjoyed the melodramatic story the game had. But the constraints needed to make th source code readable made the game overly simplistic and under implemented.

This is a lengthy essay in 4 or 5 parts about what it means to be Christian and LGBTQ.

The author describes their coming to grips with being a non binary person.

I found it interesting, and it was polished and descriptive. But I felt like it didn't benefit from its interactivity.

I beta tested this game.

In this game, you play as an orc monk who has sworn off violence. However, your monastery has been attacked, and you are the sole survivor.

The game tracks several stats, including rage and health, and you have the chance to visit three different locations on your way to the grand finale. There are several endings.

I enjoyed this game, but I wished it were longer. I felt like there wasn't enough material to grab into a story with as much background information as this one. What was there, was good though.

It's hard to conceive of a game that is more Ryan Veeder-y than this one. This is most likely due to the support from his Patreon, which was started (according to its home page) because he wanted more reasons to include complex irrelevant subsystems in this game.

And this game has them. There's not that much you have to do in this game, but a lot you can do. Random mini quests and red herrings abound. I spent around 2 hours on this game, but the main pathway can be finished in 20 minutes or less.

There are two characters to pick from, but the choice is inconsequential...sort of. And sort of not. I felt rewarded for playing through with both.

I read a paper on humor theory once that talked about the 'incongruity-resolution' theory, which is that we laugh when we experience something out of the ordinary, that doesn't make sense, and then have it resolved suddenly. This game is built on nothing but incongruity-resolution. Everything in the game is a mix of useless and semi-useful.

I liked this a lot more than the Roscovian Palladium, or any other of the short random games that he makes every few months. A nice game to play if you just want to burn time and fiddle around with stuff.