Ratings and Reviews by MathBrush

I liked this Shufflecomp game that was a short vignette about a band.

You are awakened in the middle of the night by an associate concerned about one of the other band members.

You and the other band member, Holly, talk about her fears and concerns.

I like how, even in this short space of time, the author was able to make the conversation realistic and with real choices that affected Holly's responses in a way that I could really sit and think about what I wanted to achieve.

The game also muses on whether ongoing success is achieved by sticking to your ideals, making what people want, or the luck of the draw, something I've thought about a lot before.

It's possible that I'm getting older or have a carbon monoxide leak in my house, but I frequently play games recently where I have absolutely no idea what's going on. Everything is in evocative prose but I don't know what it's evoking.

So I appreciate Bez's clear and straightforward stories with interesting characters where it's easy to follow along and see the story progress. This is a story about going to an event to meet people while a little guy in your pocket gives you dating advice through an airpod. You reveal some facts about yourself and become aware of others.

Like many of Bez's recent games, this is voice acted with a few different actors participating, and was styled nicely. Out of Bez's three games in this competition, this is the one that I most liked.

This is a game with at least three different endings and which has a pretty neat mechanic.

Everybody is dead at your party (well, it's not exactly your party, but since you're the only one alive, you might as well be). You can examine many of the dead as well as a lot of the scenery around you.

There is a hidden thread running through things which I found fascinating. At the moment of your hostess's death, (Spoiler - click to show)your pink pearl necklace is snapped and the pearls go flying. You can find these pearls as pink 'o's in the words of the different areas</spoiler.

I thought this was a neat mechanic and its symbolic meaning became more apparent in the different endings. Really neat idea here.

This game is themed around the story of a Polish revolutionary anthem from the 1800s that was repurposed by Russia.

Its a short poem with a few branches, talking about the importance of revolution and how it supersedes love.

One of the branches I played had some raw code in it that wasn't working (like UI.restart, I think), and overall this was pretty minimal. I definitely enjoyed hearing about the story behind this though!

This game was entered into Shufflecomp.

The author projects finishing it or adding more at a future date.

Basically, there is some beautiful poetry filled with nature imagery and her falling or transforming. I'd be more specific but the story itself is pretty vague, I got more 'vibes' from it than plot, and the vibes were nice. There is a branch early on and the two paths are wildly different. In one, the words become more sparse naturally.

In the other, you pare down the text by removing words. These removed words are placed into a kind of gallery where eventually they form a larger poem, but the game can end under certain criteria before you get to see the finished one some times. You also have the option to go forward and back, but there are also word links that move you forward, and I'm not sure what the difference between those two options is.

Fun concept.

This is story-focused twine game that uses dithered graphics (I recently learned this word) and is set in a diner at the end of all worlds.

You survived an apocalypse that destroyed everyone in your world. You were able to leave, and your travels eventually brought you here. Now other versions of you from other abandoned worlds have built a community.

The story focuses on your perceptions of and interactions with the other copies of yourself. Some you embrace, some you despise, some you have hopes for. Of course it can be read as a metaphor for our perception of self and our self-worth. And it works well as both allegory and story, as most good sci-fi does.

The story progresses in one direction, but you can pick what order to encounter some things and in some cases you can choose which branch you'll interact with. I didn't feel a need to replay (as it felt complete) so I didn't see all branches.

Overall, good for someone wanting a polished, self-reflective sci-fi fix.

This short game toys with the notion of the holographic principle, which is that it's possible that the universe is encoded on a two-dimensional surface and that the 3d effects we see are just a weird side effect of string theory.

In this future, companies have taken advantage of this by having quantum computer read and write directly to that surface as if it were magnetic tape, deleting people and moving them elsewhere.

The game follows either two groups of people or one (it's hard to tell). In one story, a man is sent in a long real-life journey through space to deliver a package for a company. In another, a couple is reunited after one is 'rewritten' (I think). The man might be the same in both iterations.

The atmosphere was nice. I had to play twice to understand a little better; one ending is very abrupt, while the other has an animation and some more explanation. Reading the wiki article on Holographic Principle helped as well.

There were a lot of typos. I understand, because I make a lot as well; in a future release, the author could use the 'proofing file' option in Twine to get something that can be run through a spellchecker.

I almost completely misunderstood this game.

It's navigated via a clock-like interface where you click on squares to advance the story.

It's about two people who tell each other stories each night. One makes up stories with CYOA-style "A or B" choices (like, 'was the villain the WITCH or the PARASITE?'). The other tells the story of a girl who turns into a sparrow when troubled.

There's a question mark button in the middle that I didn't notice. So after the first pair of stories and 'The End' I figured that was the whole game. I reset a couple of times to try out different stories. I couldn't figure out why the sparrow one seemed so incomplete.

That's when I realized that there are actually like 12 (or maybe 8?) sparrow stories all spread out, and you make your own stories in between. That made the game way more satisfying than I had originally supposed.

The individual small stories are interesting. They feel kind of allegorical in many ways, and the choices you make, while they matter, weren't always obvious in the effect they'd have. Especially when you choose who the villain is, the narrative often made them out to be sympathetic or not really more villainous than the other path, so I feel like there's some overall message I'm missing.

The sparrow story was also symbolic, but as it took place over a longer time I had time to see more repeated themes and feelings, and I liked what it was expressing. It includes a lot of scenes that I've seen frequently in LGBTQ story games (like a desire for transformation, parents who disown you, friends that captivate you and help you change), and it executed them very well.

Neat visually and well-done with the overall storyline.

This game was part of Shufflecomp and was based on three different songs.

In it, you go through a sequence of surreal worlds with strange and evocative imagery, like diamonds in places diamonds shouldn't be and hallucinations in an antique film viewer.

The three scenes feel mostly unrelated, except each ends with a 'hook' for the next one, linking into a loop at the end.

The game uses a variety of colors to distinguish the different scenes.

I liked the surreal feel and the variety. I felt like I wished for a little more elaboration in both the story and the code, as sometimes things felt a little rushed or underimplemented. I'm glad I played it though.

I loved the worldbuilding in this Vorple game. (side note: I'm not sure why it's Vorple; I didn't notice any graphics, sound or text effects in the version I played).

You play as a kind of shepherd for lost souls in an afterlife filled with ritual and restriction. This view of the afterworld reminds of things like Spirited Away or the Royal Guards in Bleach, with a variety of ritualized systems with specialized individuals running them in order to process the deceased.

Parts of this setting are reminiscent of the author's room in Cragne Manor (one of the earliest reachable parts of the game), which is nice because I liked that as well.

This game felt overwhelming at first, but the map doesn't branch much and most objects have one well-hinted use. I had the most trouble with the cake, but was happy when I figured it out.

A couple of things felt a bit underimplemented (like some text that fires every time you approach the statue) but I didn't have any bugs or typos that negatively impacted gameplay.