Reviews by MathBrush

This game reminded me of Baby Tree, in a way. Both games are minimalistic with imagery that is means to be anywhere from mildly upsetting to deeply disturbing (depending on your particular phobias).

In this game, a 12-legged box is relentlessly pursuing you. There aren't that many options for directions. As you explore, you find some objects made with ASHII art (which is what I assume the game calls ASCII art, maybe with some modifications).

I got lost a couple of times (in one case not recognizing that something was a room exit), but there's a guidebook. This was written for Neo-Twiny Jam, so it has less than 500 words total.

I think that when going for an unsettling feel, a minimalist, mostly unimplemented game like this can work better than a more polished game. I could see this being the kind of game described in a creepypasta.

I opened and played this brief twine game for the Short Game Showcase for 2024.

It was written in less than 500 words. It is laid out as a web of nodes, making it highly non-linear. The wording is intentionally rich and requires careful reading.

It has a nice background image and overall impressive styling. I didn't like how small the words were, and was going to complain in this review, but then I found the settings option and it changes that, so I thought that was really thoughtful and shows how much work went into this game.

The words in the game made me think of nature a lot. While there are many themes in the poem, the highlighted words tend to revolve around weather, plants, and time, so I thought a lot about the progression of time and of life. It was nice.

This is a fairly brief game made for the Short Games showcase. In it, you play as a traveller at an airport who is going through a crisis of sorts.

Throughout the game, it shows your mental state as distracted and unsettled. It reveals different details about your life that show it to be unhappy.

In the end, there is a single choice, centered on the main relationship you've had in the last while.

It's not a bad concept, and I liked the individual scenes. My mind didn't tie it all together, though, and the stakes at the end didn't feel as fresh as maybe they could have. I thought the writing was high quality overall.

This is a short story written in Twine that was entered into the Bluebeard Jam.

I was first struck upon playing it by its nice presentation and how well-written it was. I loved the voice of the narrator and the interesting details.

Later on, at the time the protagonist approached (Spoiler - click to show)the basement door, I began to lost the thread of the story, and I quickly became confused. The writing was still effective, I just couldn't picture the plot in my mind.

I thought there might be a choice at the end, like the Single Choice Jam, but it was just a story in the end, with links used only for pacing.

This is a relatively brief game where you simulate life as a Brain Worm.

It was entered into the Neo Twiny Jam, with 500 words or less, so each part of the game is pretty sparse.

You wander around different areas, with options to do things like change aggression of your host, switch hosts, or eat brains.

No matter what you do, you'll likely die soon, with a screen showing what you could have achieved.

There were some funny bits, and I liked the variety on replay. I did find it difficult to tell if my actions were having any real difference or not, though.

This is a relatively brief game about tea with a lot of branches. While some branches converge, many of them lead to wildly differing results, often with different implications for your identity and how the world works.

All of them have to do with tea, which you are carrying in your inventory. I played to a few endings, and don't remember the inventory coming into play much.

The playful and silly endings are the highlight of the game, which pokes fun at overly serious people.

I like surreal creepy games set in modern times (like creepypastas or the game Cannery Vale). This game is in the same kind of vein, and it was fun.

It's a fairly brief choice-based game. In it, you're headed home for the day when you hear a ringing coming from a phone booth.

There're a lot of customization options at the beginning and several branches later on. I first did the 'go along with everything' ending and then tried various non-compliance endings.

Due to the surreal nature I couldn't tell if the 'ignore everything and go straight home ending' had a bug in it or was doing a creepy memory thing. I like the second interpretation more.

A fun game overall.

Jacic is a well-known (to me) choicescript author that has done some cool mythological games in the past.

This pair of games has a similar high concept and some complex, interesting writing, but fails to due either of those justice in its short time frame. Each half-game is just a few choices; the second one is actually just a single choice.

The concept is fun, though. You are an unnatural being, and you don't know if you'll live to see the next day. Walking the streets of a city, you have a dangerous encounter that makes your powers known.

Fun idea, nice writing, but it felt like it could be more.

This PunyJam game shows a lot of skill at different programming tasks but feels like it was incomplete. I'd be happy to bump up the score if it were expanded.

You wake up in your room on a day that feels like it will be long. There are no instructions besides telling you that you should wake up.

So I wandered through the building, picking things up as I went. On my way out I grabbed some coffee, and then I went to a new building, solved a simple puzzle, and the game ended.

The game does enough that I can tell the author has some pretty good programming and the writing was interesting (like with the three objects in the box at the beginning of the game). It just felt like a lot was missing, like overall guidance or more material.

It's possible I missed some secret that hides the 'true' gameplay so feel free to let me know if that's true!

This was a Spring Thing game in the year I started participating in IF (2015), but I never played it originally.

It's a poem that seems to have a lot of autobiographical parts (although of course it could just be written that way). Lines of the poem can change if hovered over or clicked, and icons can appear, or words change into icons or images.

The poem (and some prose elements) is about Doggerland, a place in Northern Europe that is now submerged under water. The game also mentions things like IVF, body dysphoria (briefly), global warming, etc.

I thought it was really well done. There is one choice, as far as I saw, but a lot of interactivity.