Reviews by MathBrush

This game, one of the later entrants to the tiny utopia jam, has several unusual features. Fist, it uses neutral pronouns (ze, zir,..). I found that this helped with establishing the tone of the game and the allowing the player to identify with the protagonist.

The second unusual feature is in its branching structure. The game has an unusual structure in its branching that had me playing again and again. This is a strongly branching games but is short enough that replay is easy, similar to Porpentine's Myriad.

Unlike most strongly branching games this game's branches build on each other and create a unified story. Also, the author left little surprises and added variety in the branches.

This game is a Tiny Utopia jam game, and Groover has picked an unusual vision for his utopia. You play a skull-scraper in a house of skulls, and you interact with the world in unusual ways.

This game has great production values, with combinations of advanced visuals, sound effects, etc. The setting is macabre but not gory, dark but not depressing.

The writing is well-paced, with a truly beautiful and almost-hidden turning point. Perhaps my favorite Tiny Utopias game.

In this game, you are in a room that seems incredibly detailed, with many NPCs. As you progress, there are interesting locations, exciting events, and complicated scenarios.

However, it is all for naught. The family curse has activated in you, so that any action besides GO NORTH will cause your death. Time and again, it seems like some other action is needed, but only GO NORTH is allowed.

This is amusing, and would not work nearly as well in a short story. This exact feeling of helplessness is unique to an interactive format, and it's a welcome effect.

Strongly recommended.

This game is almost like westernized Haiku, with short, clipped, uncapitalized sentences, usually of two or three words.

It is minimalistic, with perhaps less than 50 words in the entire game, two rooms, etc.

It is essentially puzzleless, but I was stuck a bit at the very end. But with so many objects, it's easy to try.

The game attempts to be one of deep/shocking/horrifying at random, and somewhat succeeds.

This beautiful web-based game (made with Vorple) tells the story of an omnipotent being who is alone and comes into contact with ordinary beings, before a more significant encounter.

The text shifts and changes on a white and black screen, with background decorations and smooth panning of screens.

The game, as others have said, seems to save the responses of previous players, and integrates them into the current game.

It's so short that you could play it 2 or 3 times in 15 minutes. Recommended.

I first saw this enjoyable shortish Twine game when another reviewer brought it to my attention. You visit your childhood village, where you explore the home of your own family and that of a childhood friend.

There is some kind of unspoken disaster about to occur, giving you a sense of urgency mixed with hopelessness. You discover that you and your friend had a highly unusual relationship.

The writing is evocative and breathless. The story is unfolded as you examine objects in burned-out shells of houses. I never really listen to music, but I had left the volume on as I played, and the music that came contributed significantly to the mood.

This game was written as part of a competition to extend the universe of Andromeda Awakening and Andromeda Apocalypse, two of the best sci fi games out there.

This game plays with constraints in a very effective way. As the game opens, you are strapped into a bunk, unable to move. The setting will make much more sense for those who have played the first Andromeda game.

The game is mostly conversation based. It has a Gostak or For a Change feel, where you have to try and decipher what other people are saying. This part was a lot of fun, developing a new slang.

The game is quite short; I finished without a walkthrough in less than twenty minutes. However, it is very well crafted. There are supposedly many endings, but I have only reached one, and it was a good one,

This possibly has the highest fun-to-time ratio of any game I have played, so I recommend it to everyone..

I've heard many people talk about Lime Ergot, but I had no idea what it was about. It was an EctoComp 2014 game, so it had to be written in 3 hours, although it has since been updated.

The main thrust of the game is that you are standing with a general near a city, trying to make a Green Skull drink. Everything is vague and surreal. You 'move' by examining things, then examining more and examining more.

I had trouble getting started, but once I got started, it got easier and easier.

Strongly recommended for its fun-to-time ratio.

Twiny Jam is a competition requiring entries to have 300 words or less in the code. Many of these games are pretty spare. This game is one of the richest and complex I've seen within this word limit. It is a one-room escape game with numerous puzzles.

As a non-Twiny Jam game, it is only a short bit of fun. But as an example of what you can do in a constrained format, it is excellent.

This is one of my two favorite Emily Short games (the other being Floatpoint). In this game, a re-telling of Cinderella, you play an observer in the trying-on-of-shoes portion of the story. You can take no actions, but you can introduce topics in the conversation to steer you to one of six possible endings.

This game has some memorable moments and strong dialogue. It is fun to replay over and over again, and does not feel tedious in doing so.

Short has provided the source code for this game, which is entertaining in and of itself. If you haven't seen Inform code before, it consists of mostly whole sentences, and is much more understandable than C++, Python, Perl, etc. So even if you are not a programmer, you can understand a lot of it.