Reviews by MathBrush

This choicescript game is mostly about self-reflection and thinking about who you are. It has questions which are brief and whose answers could apply to many people. Things like 'who are you?' (pick between three metaphors). 'Why?' (pick an explanation). It has peaceful moments and more emotional ones.

This kind of thing can definitely be helpful. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy has some exercises like this, and the early Eliza program would ask questions like this and people found it soothing.

I liked the overall positive vibe of this. I felt like a lot of the choices didn't apply to me very much right now, but some of them did. Good for someone who wants to introspect with the guidance of an author.

This game is very brief, with just a small handful of choices with a small handful of text.

The graphics are lush, though, with active elements and of lot of decorations like bar codes and other elements, giving a sci-fi feel. There is also music in the background that responds to the current situation in the game.

You are some kind of intermediary or servant for a space fleet leader, and you can choose to be rebellious or not, with at least two different endings.

Fun concept, characters are well-differentiated and the small bits of dialogue establish a setting effectively. The brevity of the game means that I was left wishing for more interaction, but the plot arc did feel fulfilled. As always, this author's writing and design were excellent.

This game is interesting from a coding point of view but a lot of it happens behind the scenes on the first playthrough.

You are trying to get home along the train tracks. The game tries to predict what you're going to do next and then does the opposite. If it can't predict it's sometimes random.

So on a first playthrough it just feels like completely random success and failure.

On subsequent playthroughs the mechanics are revealed through a guardian angel. It then can be a bit of a game to see what it responds to.

The text, while meaningful, is minimalistic and will eventually become repetitive on repeated play. So while the text isn't bad, I value the conceptual parts of this game more.

This game reminds me in a weird way of an older parser game called Byzantine Perspective. Both revolve around a strange issue with perspective that takes a while to resolve.

My first thought when playing this game was bewilderment. All of the game text was about a kind of mystical garden, frightening and old. You stumble around in it, looking for escape.

But, the choices are all about a conversation that you have on a train with a stranger who looks oddly familiar.

The game ended really quickly at first, but I realized it was called a maze. I eventually figured a way out: (Spoiler - click to show)picking choices related to connecting to the stranger next to you. Near the end, I picked wrong, but replayed and got it right.

The ending resolves the discrepancy in perspective.

Edit: This review has been changed after getting some new perspective from others.

I have liked the other games by this author, and so I feel bad giving two stars (and I would raise it if asked). However, I will try to explain why I'm doing so.

This is a two-screen game with no choices. It does have fade-in text on each of those screens. It's for Neo Twiny Jam, so has less than 500 words.

It does have a nice background image and some ambient music, so I do feel it is polished. Without interactivity, all that remains for a game to be good or bad (for my tastes) is its emotional impact and its descriptiveness.

But it's hard to know what's going on. Is there a war? Is there a posse coming? What's our relationship to the woman in question? Is the ending metaphorical or literal?

Obviously a story can be ambiguous and still be fantastic, so I don't think all these things have to be spelled out. But I felt more confused than intrigued. The overall theme is one I had difficulty picking out; the ending suggests a theme of (Spoiler - click to show)alienation or lost nostalgia, but it's hard to see how the beginning fits in that case.

I guess this review is more of a plea for understanding. If someone can give me a helpful lens by which to view the game, I'll increase its rating.

I've been playing all past Spring Thing games. Many of them are long parser games, longer than would be entered into IFComp, and this one is no exception.

It's a Lovecraftian game where you run a bookstore and need to stop someone from collecting an evil music libretto that would end the world.

The map is really large. Much of the game consists in walking across town, like from your house to your friend's house and back. It gives the city a bit more of a real feel. There are a lot of NPCs, too.

In the game you can read a book to learn spells, and randomized combat features in a couple of segments.

The storyline adheres closely to Lovecraftian ideas, incorporating things like ancient evil gods, cults, and mysteries from Africa, adhering to Lovecraft's idea of foreigners being creepy.

The game is quite long, with the walkthrough split into 9 chapters.

If there's one big deficiency, it's in providing more synonyms and descriptions. With a game this big it makes sense that things would fall through the cracks, and they do. In the last area I found people with descriptions like 'you don't see anything interesting about _____' and various items were the same. Some verbs don't have synonyms, so for a bottle of liquid SQUEEZE BOTTLE ONTO _____ works but PUT BOTTLE ON ______ doesn't.

This short Twine game managed to surprise me quite a bit (although me saying it is surprising will likely make it less surprising to others). It just didn't go where I thought it would and sat and made me think for a while.

You are working in your office when your clock stops. All of your clocks stop, in fact, even digital ones. You try to figure out what's going on, but things seem slow for everyone.

This game is less than 500 words long, and is part of Twiny Jam. It only has one choice, I think, with the rest being linear. Overall, it was refreshing to play.

This game uses a few cards from a tarot deck that you can flip over and click on in order to reveal story text. It uses less than 500 words as part of the Twiny Jam.

The writing is descriptive and well-done. It's not easy to parse, though, and I'm still not sure exactly what it's about. It seems to be written from the perspective of a shapeshifting pond monster, but I'm not sure.

Visually very lovely and the writing is good. Very short.

This is a brief choice-based game where you're vibing inside your spaceship.

It has atmospheric background music and custom font and some illustration.

In it, you make a variety of low-stakes decisions about how to spend your time. Snack, or eat a meal? Look out the window of your spaceship at the stars, or watch a movie?

There are two possible endings, and the very end was the strongest part in my opinion.

The writing is fairly non-specific in a way that it can apply in a lot of situations. This makes it more of a self-reflective exercise in some ways than a story to be told, so if you're looking for a game to help you relax and mirror yourself this is a good option.

This is part of a long series of Adrift games which generally consist of big maps, lots of NPCs, magical abilities, knights, wizards, etc. with traditional adventure puzzles. There have been some exceptions in the series (like a timed game and a small casual game) but this game is in the main vein of the series.

In it, you are on a quest to a magical labyrinth. To get there, you must first explore a forest, a strange and unusual world with things like (big spoilers) (Spoiler - click to show)cars and asphalt, and finally the labyrinth itself.

There are usually 4-6 puzzles available at each moment, with not a lot of red herrings, so it's not too hard to solve most puzzles by experimentation, especially as there are a lot of hints given. On the other hand, each area has a puzzle or two which would be pretty hard to figure out without help. Sometimes implementation is lacking, like a (Spoiler - click to show)puzzle piece where (Spoiler - click to show)PUT PIECE ON PUZZLE or PUT PIECE IN PUZZLE don't work but (Spoiler - click to show)FINISH PUZZLE does.

Since each area has a puzzle that's hard due to either being a tricky puzzle or rough implementation, this game can take a long time to finish. I used a walkthrough for most of it. If you do do so, I'd recommend stopping once you get some spells and enter the labyrinth, as there's a fun segment that isn't as hard as the earlier parts and which would have been more fun without the walkthrough.