Reviews by MathBrush

This is a fun medium game. The author has a long-running series of games that feature a limited parser, where only a select few commands are recognized. In fact, you could say he's a pioneer of the field.

I've come to learn how to play these games, although they're still pretty hard for me. So I was looking forward to playing this game.

You play as a robot that has to go around zapping bugs who have infiltrated a robot factory. It kind of reminds me of the MO factory in adventure time, if it was working well (the only similarities are single minded robots, but still...).

It's kind of a metroidvania situation, as you gain new abilities and items as the game progresses. There are also codes, waiting games, patterns, etc. However, there's no sequence skipping possible like in a lot of Metroidvanias.

I did better than I usually do, completing all the optional tasks and getting all but 1 of the bugs. But man, that last bug was nasty; I looked at every hint and then had trouble. It was the (Spoiler - click to show)sculpture bug. It was fairly clued, I just forgot some capabilities, which shows how complex can get.

I liked the characters in this game a lot; they were simple and often dumb but it makes sense for a collection of bots.

This is quite a large and complex Twine game that has a lot of humor. It's about a mysterious male protagonist who wakes up and seeks the help of two magical detectives named Cannelé and Nomnom. They are a duo who act like siblings (maybe are?) and express intense dislike for each other while also acting pretty dumb.

The game has excellent styling with colors used for text, animations, and some minigames that are quite well done. One is a card game; another is a complex 'detective board' with red string and post-it notes that unfortunately doesn't always work well with saving and loading, but is fun while it lasts.

The game is very long already, lasting over two hours for me, and is actually incomplete. The player is invited to post their hypotheses and guesses for the finale online, with the author taking these hypotheses into account for their later writing of the big finale.

I loved the images, the interaction between the protagonist and the two detectives, the minigames, all of it. Except...

I don't like the dynamic between the two main NPCs. It's just pure negative all the time, completely unrelenting. It can be a funny bit, but I wished for just an occasional gleam of fondness, or loyalty, etc. There may have been some, but it was few and far between. This is 100% just personal taste; I think there could be many people that like this so it doesn't have to be changed. But I like 'jerk with a heart of gold' more than 'jerk with a heart of jerk'.

I also found more than a few small typos and had some trouble with saving and loading and keeping the 'memory board' the same.

Overall, this is one of my favorite games of this comp, and the criticism above is just a small detail in a great work. I'm looking forward to the finish, and can recommend this.

As someone who's never tried alcohol, mixed drinks always seem intriguing; I always imagine they'd be like milkshakes or punch or other sweet things. From what people say, it's not really like that. But I like the way the bottles look and the idea of trying to combine ingredients in a neat way.

This game heavily features a minigame where you have a stock of drinks (represented visually with nice graphics) and have to mix specific cocktails from it. All real-world drinks have been re-named, and some are pretty funny (especially ones that are just nicknames for a single drink).

The main storyline is about you, a young individual, trying to save up enough money to buy out the tavern owner. Simultaneously, you are contacted by a 'watcher', an extradimensional being, who discusses the nature of agency with you.

The dialogue in the game is written with an accent, which is always a risky choice, as it can come off pretty goofy or hard to read. This one was fairly simple, though, so that's good.

There is some strong profanity in the game (I have a filter that turns it off, because why not?), and some mild references to sexual situations.

Overall:
-Polish: I had a couple of times where a major event repeated itself (making a buffet, passing out, etc.) and there was some fiddliness with things like the tip box, where you made a choice whether to put it out or not, then when doing the 'getting ready for the day' menu, you had the choice again, repeated word-for-word. Just things like that I feel could be fixed up a bit.
+Descriptiveness: The game is very descriptive, especially with the imaginative cocktail names.
-Interactivity: Like several other reviewers have pointed out, the main minigame can get monotonous. I got to flinching when I'd get another round of 9 orders. But I think the core idea is good, maybe it just needs a few tweaks. I wish there was a sense of progression in skill, or something to learn, but after the first few it's mainly repeating identical actions.
+Emotional impact: I found it heartwarming the way the group could hassle each other but also bond in positive ways.
+Would I play again? With a few changes, like those mentioned above, I think it would be fun.

This is a Twine game with a significant world model. In it, you explore a ship you've crashlanded on which is empty except for an AI named SOLIS.

There are a lot of areas to explore, and you have both an inventory and notes of all important information.

It has puzzles that are honestly complex and can be fairly difficult. The inventory allows for quadratic complexity: you have to be in the right room, and use the right item.

I enjoyed the AI, and felt an attachment to them. The nice thing about IF containing AIs is that the AIs exist in reality, in a sense; the organic characters are just described in words, nothing like their 'true' selves, but the AIs are supposed to be code masquerading as a person and that's what they actually are: code in Twine or Ink or Inform that takes your inputs and reacts to you. It's weird to think about.

Anyway, the game is fairly non-linear and has multiple endings and paths to victory. I think a large chunk of content is the same in each walkthrough, especially conversation, but you can replay those parts with different attitudes.

Navigating back and forth got a bit tedious by the end, but fortunately a new mechanic gets introduced that lets you 'warp' around ((Spoiler - click to show)following the robot).

Overall, I really enjoyed this polished game.

There's a long tradition of games about completing a magical education, including early games like Enchanter and more recent games like Winter at Hogwarts and Junior Arithmancer.

This game is a pretty standard example of the genre, where you have 5 tasks to perform and must search for spell books and ingredients to complete the 5 tasks.

This game uses a custom web parser. It's actually not too bad, being able to handle things like hitting the up arrow to repeat earlier commands and getting a lot of commands I typed right. It does have weaknesses, though, like not understanding pronouns like 'it'.

The nice things about this game include multiple paths to solutions for many puzzles. It has a built-in hint system, but I often found the hints were only available for things I already knew about. I had to check the walkthrough for about 30-40% of the game, and finished at 2 hrs 7 minutes (according to the game's handy timer).

I found several typos in the game, and it wasn't very descriptive. But I had fun with this game, and appreciate how the engine seems to be coming along nicely.

This game is a fairly hefty parser game where a spaceship is sent spiraling off into space with only one person, you, in it.

You have a to-do list that expands and contracts as the game demands. There are a lot of little devices: cabinets, panels, fuses, etc. and a very intricate-seeming fuel injection system.

The puzzles are generally clever. Some of them are moon-logic type puzzles.
As a case in point, very near the end of the game (heavy endgame spoilers) (Spoiler - click to show)you find the captain's journal and need to unlock it. The captain has two pictures: one of a dog named Pluto and one of the moon. The idea is that the password is Pluto's moon, Charon. But why would someone, in their own room, make their only personal objects just happen to be an obscure hint for their own password?. But most of the puzzles are fair.

Implementation is sometimes missing but when it's not it's very solid. So a lot of cool objects are implemented (including a large rope) but a lot of scenery objects are just not there or are missing reasonable actions. (For instance, (mild lategame spoilers) (Spoiler - click to show)if you unlock the starboard chest, it has wires, but you can't refer to them or interact with them in any way. Similarly, there is an operations console on the bridge which isn't implemented.

I think this is already a good game, but I think with a few tweaks it could become a great game. Maybe there could be a post-comp release with a bit more things written in? Either way, I enjoyed playing this. It was a little unpolished, but had nice puzzles, pretty descriptive, and was enjoyable, and I would replay it if it was tweaked.

This is the third game by Eric Zinda with the Perplexity engine. The first two games were intended to be played with voice, I believe, while this game didn't seem to have the voice option.

The Perplexity engine is still really rough, but each game has been better than the last one. I imagine there's a ton of backend work going on between games, but I think the front-facing part could use a tune-up.

In this game, you explore a bunch of surreal areas, usually involving nature, a deer, and traffic-related imagery.

While the game is a significant improvement over previous entries, it's still pretty rough.

Polish-wise, the game tends to form uncapitalized sentences when using automated descriptions. It is smart enough to answer the question WHERE IS THE _____? but not smart enough to make the output easily understandable. This version seems to understand most traditional IF commands and abbreviations (like X for LOOK AT and I for INVENTORY, which is a big relief.

Descriptiveness-wise, the game has many rooms with a cursory description followed by a list of visual objects, sometimes kind of confusing (like 'A bush, a bush, and a tree').

When it comes to interactivity, the game is mostly fair, but at least one point in the walkthrough asks you to interact with an object that is not visible and doesn't show up in the description of other objects (specifically the (Spoiler - click to show)branch in the mossy log area).

Emotionally, I liked the surreal theme and thought it was cool. The little clues were nice. The other issues made it harder to stay invested but I like the concept.

There's not a ton of replayability, but overall I wasn't sad I played.

This seems exactly like the kind of game that would be made by a talented and energetic individual who had never played a text adventure made in the last three decades if they woke up one day and said "I'm going to make the coolest text adventure on earth" but didn't have many people test it.

It's a python game with a bunch of actually really good ascii art. It has a maze, randomized combat, some tricky puzzles, art that sometimes changes according to your actions. Seems like everything a text adventure would need.

Except it has very few of the quality-of-life expectations most parser games have, and many of the solutions are poorly hinted.

For instance, on the very first screen, you are around some trees. Commands like N, NORTH, I, INVENTORY, X ME, LOOK ME don't work at all, but that's okay, this is a custom parser so it has no need to follow conventions from other games. Rereading the help text shows that STATUS gives inventory (although I didn't notice this till later). X TREE and EXAMINE TREE don't work, but LOOK TREE does. It turns out you're supposed to (Spoiler - click to show)CLIMB TREE. Once you make it to the next screen, it's not a big jump to (Spoiler - click to show)LOOK PLANE, but now what? After several fruitless minutes, I turn to the guide to discover I should (Spoiler - click to show)LOOK IN POCKET. But why? If the author had had several people try this game out, they would have found quickly that few people would guess this. You can access a HINT that generally helps you, but most people seem to like games to be solvable without HINTS, using them only when stuck.

The randomized maze combat was hard. I was determined to finish this game, although I kept randomly dying (and there is no UNDO and typing the wrong command after dying exits out of the game entirely, and the command for loading a game during the game is different than the command for loading the game after dying and typing the wrong one will also exit the game as will hitting enter just one too many time). Combat is just pressing enter over and over after picking your weapon, and looking at the code the strongest-looking weapons are incredibly weak while the weakest-sounding weapon is the strongest. There are several insta-deaths in the labyrinth as well.

Overall, it looks like it was magnificently fun to code and make the art, but it doesn't seem like a game that was created with a lot of player-side input, and I ended up frustrated. My 1-star rating is not indicative of the effort put into the game or the total amount of fun that can be derived from it, but merely results from the fact that my usual grading rubric (polish, descriptiveness, interactivity, emotional impact, and replayability) evolved from a different style of text adventure than this one.

(Note: for a much more positive review by a different reviewer, see this link: https://intfiction.org/t/b-j-bests-ifcomp-2022-reviews/57995/3?u=mathbrush)

I helped beta test this game.

The idea of this game is that you are part of an alchemical society that possesses the ability to travel back in time. It is your job to go to the very beginning and discover the truth about Cain and his Mark.

The alchemical system in this game is rich. It consists of the four humours (blood, phlegm, etc.), their 'poisons' (substances that counteract them), and a host of other substances. It is accompanied by a gargantuan book with many pages, dozens of them. It's too big to just read straight through, so I strongly recommend NOT taking the book as soon as you get it and looking up every topic you see; the game will guide you in using the book later on.

The main gameplay is unlocking memories of Adam, Eve, Cain and Abel through alchemical means, gathering more ingredients, and learning the mystery of this early world. Often you will told a formula you need, but for which you lack an ingredient or two and must find them.

There are some tricky puzzles I struggled with as a tester, including mechanical puzzles and flashes of intuition.

The game has a darker tone to it; this is an unhappy and grim retelling of Cain and Abel's already grim story. It doesn't conform to my personal beliefs, but it's clear this is a work of fiction and a well-written one at that.

I beta-tested this game, so I won't post a score until after IF Comp.

This is one of the longest games in the competition. It's a Twine game with 7 chapters, and it has quite a few choices that have a major effect on the game.

I beta tested it a year ago, when it was unfinished, and it has been substantially improved and extended since then.

You play as the young princess of the kingdom of Vestria. Your brother has taken ill. You have to go on a quest to find how to save him while also dealing with the political fallout of a failed marriage and disastrous rebellion many years prior.

The pacing, writing, and interactivity are all imperfect, but come together in the way that really good games do (for my taste; everyone has different styles they like). The genre might theoretically be described as young adult (a young protagonist, no profanity and little sexuality or gore), but the game does allow you to be frequently ruthless in ways typically reserved for adult games. There is a family-friendly version for people who want to play with kids.

This game is noticeable for having several choices that affect big chunks of the game. When I beta tested, I killed someone early on; in this run through, that person ended up as my companion for much of the game.

There is a timed section in this game which can be rough; it gives you 10 minutes, though, for a single puzzle, and you can save and reload if needed.