Reviews by MathBrush

This game is a short, linear story in a windows executable file where you mostly just click 'next' over and over again, with one or two choices you can make.

It's about a young boy who is being sent to juvenile detention after killing someone. It is very short.

It is in an RPG engine with hit points and so on. The author has the hit points represent ages.

This is a very touching game, whose ending gave me shivers.

You play a variety of characters, many of whom are (I believe) Canadians sent to fight in WWI.

The game jumps from character to character and situation to situation in an interesting way, likely influenced by the previous year's Photopia.

However, the interaction is given by choosing an action from a drop down menu of 3 to 4, and then guessing the exact words the game wants you to type. This is essentially impossible without the walkthrough.

This is a big grid of a city which you stalk as a vampire.

The game is winnable but the author ran out of time, making many of the locations underimplemented. I was able to complete the game, but only by asking the doorman about various things in the magazine.

It has some violence and sensuality, but both written so blandly as to have little effect.

This is a fairly entertaining parody of Indiana Jones that has some implementation problems. You are at the end of a long adventurer, and already have thousands of points, but you just need to get the jewel and go.

This game borrows some text from and parodies Francesco Bova's The Jewel of Knowledge, and credits that author.

I liked it, but it was annoying trying to figure out the correct syntax and logic of the three main puzzles.

You're King Arthur, and can't leave because Guinevere won't let you.

This is a short game, yet still frustrating. The many actions you have to do are hard to conceive of before doing them.

The author said on rec.arts.int-fiction that they wrote this game in 3 days, and it shows. It's not horrible, because the scope was small enough to allow for some polish, but it doesn't sparkle.

This is how homebrew parsers should be; and it makes sense, coming just 3 years after Inform was created and making new parsers was less intimidating.

This is a compact fantasy world, with only 7 or so locations. It has a gnome, a toadstool garden, and a mad scientist. It has good cluing, and fun, open mechanics including potions/chemicals you can try on things (nothing complicated).

The only thing I found difficult was that one important room exit was only mentioned once, in one event, with no way to read that text again once it scrolled back. So its important to read everything carefully.

This game uses a home-written parser for a story about travelling to work.

Hardly anything is implemented, like X or compass directions or inventory or disambiguation. You travel to work, passing several obstacles in the way.

The writing is really unusual, and I kind of like it and kind of don't. It's really, really overblown, something like "You stand here with your beautiful, gentle wife, basking in the happy glow of home life in your kitchen.."

The game's biggest merit is that must have been hard to program.

This game is a straightforward implementation of Planetfall's sample transcript. A few things are different, since the Inform and Infocom parsers have different responses.

The original transcript ends in a premature death. This game does not; however, the new ending sequence is barely there, a matter of a few moves.

It's well-done, but very small. The smallness is even smaller when the game informs you that portions are blocked off because its not finished by the author.

This is a shortish, underclued but interesting surreal game where you explore the inner workings of your own mind. It reminds me of Blue Chairs, but shorter and less humorous.

This game is has elements similar to Mikko's last game. Both games were written in a couple of weeks. It contains some juvenile bot non-explicit references to nudity.

I found it difficult to know what to do next, but the walkthrough was helpful. It has a very clever puzzle involving mutating words that accounts for many false attempts.

This game is about a typical introverted boy with a long ponytail and an interest in computers and fantasy-type things who matches in an online dating program with a vivacious and popular girl.

This just kills (metaphorically) the boy, who can't handle the intense polar opposites of excitement and nervousness.

The game was well-written and pretty well-programmed, and it produces some real emotion with its intense, up-close-and-ugly examination of the young adult brain.