Reviews by MathBrush

Edit: Upon talking to others I decided to replay and pay more attention to even the smallest details. I found some variations I hadn't noticed before and some funny patterns in the small text.

This is a darkly humorous game about amazon reviews for a portable battery-operated mini chainsaw.

Each review describes how the person used it, ranging from reasonable to typical-online-customer to dangerous to surreal. You can rate the ratings as helpful or report them.

The story progresses over time, advancing to a final culmination.

Someone on itch said they figured out how to get two different endings, and the creator confirmed that choices matter, but I don't know how. The first time, I rated all the nice ratings helpful and all the murder ratings 'report'; the second time, I reported everything; the third time, I rated everything 'helpful'. I got the same ending both times, but the last time the screen was dark with creepy music (but the text was the same). If anyone knows how to get multiple endings, I'd be interested!

This twine game starts with a phrase that can be clicked on, which makes one word unclickable while new clickable words appear, forming a sentence the longer you click.

I thought at first there was one link per page, and so I just clicked quickly, and I got the same result a couple of times, so I figured it was just random.

Then I realized that you're actually building sentences one word at a time, which I thought was really neat.

All the messages are related to the kinds of things people say to each in heated or repetitive forum threads. They are vague enough to be generally applicable in many situations. I think I might have liked even more specificity, more details to make it feel more grounded, or a variety of distinct 'voices', but this was pretty fun.

This is a brief story that is advanced by clicking. Every time you click, words fly up of the screen and new ones come in. After a few clicks, the lovely background changes, and this repeats until the story ends.

The story is about some kind of dying being who is travelling with you and plans to be part of the stars.

It's a short, pleasant experience with no kind of interactivity.

In this brief choice game with less than 500 words, you can choose to receive letters or send letters.

Both options cycle through a list of short letters that vary between poignant and witty. At the end, you get a brief extra letter.

The design was charming, and the letters were fun. Not a lot of content or choices, but what's here is well-done.

This is a pleasant game by the accomplished author Autumn Chen. In it, you are making dumplings with your girlfriend.

For both you, dumplings remind you of family, in both good and bad ways. Making them is a good excuse for both revisiting your past as well as figuring out how well you work together.

This also serves as a nice sequel to the earlier games in the same continuity, where we could only hope for moments like this.

Gameplay is card based, where you draw ingredients from the pantry or fridge and decide how to handle them.

Neat concept, well executed.

In this bird nun game, you are a bird, but not a nun. You work in an abbey as a servant, and you need to help prepare a meal for the abbess. The recipe book the cook needs is missing, so you have to go fetch it.

It's a graphical game, and contains things like illustrated manuscripts with humans replaced by birds, which is pretty funny.

Gameplay is pretty simple, a lot of it is 'find the book on the screen and click on it', so more like point and click adventures, while the rest is 'go to a room and talk to whoever is there, asking one of three questions'. I played twice, to check if I missed anything (and I might have) and I found more lore on the second time around.

I thought it was a fun idea. As an interactive fiction game, it relies fairly heavily on the graphics, but the lore details like the story of St Eider round it out for me.

Binksi is an engine combining the minimalistic graphics engine bitsy (which allows sprites with few pixels, 2-frame animations, 1 or 2 color palettes, and text interactions when you run into things) with Ink.

This is not a game with a set ending, as far as I can tell. Instead, you explore Manon's desktop while putting off making a game.

There are funny things and serious things. There are communities that are slow and become uninteresting and others that are outright cruel and hostile. There are fun times and fun friends and the ability to help others.

It was fun to explore. Some places have multiple interactions, but I only did 1 interaction for most objects.

In this snazzy-looking game, you play as a kid crocodile asking questions to an older crocodile.

The game is meant to be replayed over and over again until you get it right. It has a 'gauntlet' structure which means that only one answer is right and all others are wrong. The pool of answers stays the same, though, so every answer you get right makes the rest of the game easier.

The story is the same vein as Around the World in 80 Days or the story 21 Balloons. Our intrepid crocodile visits great cities and cold continents and becomes a businessman.

The structure of the game can be hard to figure out at first, so initial playthroughs are frustrating and repetitive. Originally, it had a 20 second timer, making it a challenge to read in time. But solving it is rewarding, and the stories are captivating.

I breathed a deep sigh of relief as I opened this game. I had been playing a lot of short games as part of a competition and there is, of course, a lot of variety, some amazing, some that feel like work to get through.

I opened this and saw nice styling, compelling writing, some interactivity I really had to think and strategize with, and well-written characters. It was great to see!

Here's an example of the kind of stuff that I liked in this game:

"You start slicing the eggplant, but you hear ominous noises from the living room. Clanking noises, like something metal is being batted around on a hardwood floor. It sounds like one of the cats (probably Natasha; it's usually Natasha) might be playing with something that is not a cat toy.

Maybe you should go intervene? Whatever she's doing is probably not good for your security deposit. But losing focus when cooking isn't always a good idea either."

A lot of short games introduce characters but don't really 'introduce' them. We just get snippets, like a page from the middle of a larger story. This shows Natasha's character through both a single incident (being noisy) and a general statement ("it's usually Natasha"). It uses concrete details ('clanking noises') as well as emotions connected to it ('ominous').

The second paragraph sets up the choices that follow (going to check on her or not) and lets us know both that it's possible to strategize and that our choices matter.

And, while short, the game still manages to have a real start, build up, climax, and denouement.

While I enjoyed the game and found only one ending, I felt satisfied with that and didn't have an urge to play again. But I appreciate the thought that went into this and think that I can learn from it when it comes to writing choice-based games.

This is a short feel-good choice game where you wander around a greenhouse.

There is some freedom in what to do, as you can explore different parts of the greenhouse and make real-feeling choices like confronting the boundaries of the world or not.

I'll admit, a chunk of my score is from the cute illustrations (aided by music). The little faces are a great touch, and the overall design works well.

Pretty brief, but a good example of how to make a satisfying short game.