Reviews by MathBrush

This is a short, atmospheric Twine game with two endings.

It's hard to describe, so I'll go with what my first impressions were, then what I built up afterwards.

It starts talking about returning to another choice, with three voices whispering to you. Having recently done some surface-level study of Hinduism, I wondered if it was related to the cycle of rebirth and the Trimurti, although I didn't find much evidence of that later.

Then the game starts going through a week at an office one day at a time. No one really pays attention to you, and you mentally rate things from 1-3 stars when you see them (maybe you can do 4 or 5 if you wait long enough for timed text but I never saw a choice to pick those, only having one chosen for me). You have a crush on a guy you see outside the window whom you hope you can see, too.

Things change near the end; there's an interlude on Wednesday night involving a trip (to Italy, I think?) where your persona seems to change, but it's gone the next day.

After finishing the game and replaying, here's what I think's going on:

(Spoiler - click to show)
You are a spirit. No one can see you, except animals. The deaths of animals gives you more physical presence on a limited basis proportional to the complexity or size of the animal.

You are here because the three people in the office with you left a woman to die in a ravine after a team-building exercise. Your job as a ghost is to bring that fact to their attention.

The three at the beginning have given you similar tasks before, and ask you to do this one with positivity. Whether you are positive or not throughout the game leads to the two endings. I believe the 1-3 star ratings control that positivity.

I'm still not sure who the three are (Christian trinity? Greek fates?) or who you are (Jess's spirit? an angel?) or what the Italian interlude is (is that you in a past life?).


Overall, the color and atmosphere were good. Timed text was used occasionally and was just infrequent enough not to be annoying. It felt like the plot was resolved, although I had trouble feeling out consistent themes or patterns in the different threads.

There were several minor typos, usually a letter or two wrong. If the author were to do a post-comp release, I'd suggest going to Twinery and using the Proof button in the Build tab to get a dump of all text in the game and to run it through a spellchecker; I've done that before because I've made numerous typos in my own games and books.

I liked this game, and would play more from this author.

I'm surprised this one has no review yet, I think this is the most fun jkj yuio game I've played so far.

It's a direct use of Dr Who characters and lore. You play as the doctor, with companion Bex, who only appeared in an audio drama (unless the name is a coincidence). You've accidentally teleported into a Dalek base and need to get out.

The game is a light snack, a thirty minute adventure with few puzzles and mostly exploration. The Daleks here are powerful but not the strongest they've ever been, lacking some core skills they've had in other adaptations.

The 3d models jkj yuio makes look a lot better in this than before, you can tell his skill is increasing. I think the mechanical nature of much of the scenery in the game helps with that, but also the faces are less uncanny-valley.

Overall, I enjoyed this. Is it because it relies heavily on a media franchise I like or because of the author's own merits? Maybe both; I feel like the author's enthusiasm for Dr Who led to a strong effort. In any case, this doesn't take very long to play, so it's worth checking out.

This game was interesting; I'm not sure if it's actually complete or not, as the story ended a little abruptly for me. It did give me an ending screen, and I downloaded it and checked and found a few side stories I missed, but overall, it felt like a plot arc was building up to something but just kind of stopped right before the apex.

This game is about a tense Thanksgiving with family that doesn't really get you and a variety of unusual occurrences. Plot threads include a bigoted uncle, hiding your sexuality, learning family secrets, and (Spoiler - click to show)experiencing weird visions.

Also, everyone treats you like you're vegan but it seems like you're not really heavily vegan? That part wasn't clarified, but most of the plot points aren't. This seems more like a character-focused mood piece. You can talk to your uncle a bit, and you can decide how much to interact with your boyfriend on the phone, but (Spoiler - click to show)the visions you see don't really seem to have a resolution that I could find.

So I'm not sure how I feel about this story. The writing was good; I was invested in the characters and the overall feel. I just felt something missing in the end. But at least it's good that I wanted more of the game and not less!

This is a mystery game written in Quest for the Single Choice jam.

I often run into bugs or 'guess the noun' problems with Quest games, but there were none here. Instead, there is only a single link per room (or, occasionally, a single link in the inventory menu on the side), up until the very end, where you can choose a suspect.

The story is that you are a stepmom that likes to cook, but your cookies have gone missing. You find traces all over, but you have to piece together what actually happened using out-of-game logic, rather than in-game.

Overall, it's a nice way to put interactivity into a 'single choice' game.

There were a few noticeable typos, especially near the end.

The game uses at least one character from a sexually explicit series, according to the author, but there was nothing explicit in this game.

This game is a pure mathematical riddle. You are shown six dice, and are asked 'how many petals are there are around the rose?'

After typing in a number, it tells you if you're right or wrong, and tells you how many petals are around the rose.

Pattern and function guessing can always be kind of suspect. Given enough rolls, you can construct a perfect mapping between dice and 'petals' without understanding the reasoning of the author.

But I eventually got it, after a lot of attempts and theorizing. A fun idea, but for my personal taste riddle-type puzzles aren't quite as fun as 'learning a system' or 'exploration' puzzles (although there was some exploration of the dice rolls).

This game has you play the friend of the eponymous Beth, whose date has arrived. It’s your job to size this guy up. The game has music and graphics, starting with a black and white picture of the date that is slowly colored in, which was a really neat mechanic.

I was emotionally invested in the conversation. The date guy seemed kind of lame at first but I grew to respect him more. The ending I got when I chose to let him up surprised me quite a bit, but I ended up accepting it in the end.

There is some profanity in the game. Overall I was impressed by the presentation and the writing.

This was a fascinating game. It’s a tour of a city with building pictures and a variety of destinations to pick from, which can all be selected eventually.

I thought it was completely fictional at first, then saw real elements, but Google and Google maps simply don’t recognize Blossom, NY at all. Looking up the Ebenezer society, which features prominently in the game, led me to West Seneca. Eventually, looking at Google maps, I found Blossom.

The story is similar to many in my own life. The Ebenezer Society paralleled the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, which started in upstate New York before migrating to the Midwest, and which had a history of leaving behind buildings that were eventually appropriated for other uses (including a temple, where we believe Christ visited, being used as a barn!). The pictures look like Westlake Ohio, where my ex’s grandmother lived and which had experience some decline while remaining beautiful in its own way.

It gives the feel of a real community. I can almost smell and feel the wind in such a town.

The narrative was a bit dry, but the format was an enjoyable one for the digestion of such material. Which is why I didn’t download the grad report, as the same information in static form would not thrill me as much.

I’ve had this game on my wishlist for 9 years, and it doesn’t seem to have any reviews.

I think that may be because it is unfinished or buggy. At least, the version I played on philome.la was; I’m on mobile right now and can’t access the zip so it may be improved. I found a game-killing bug opening a medicine cabinet and a page with no links to click on in the basement, as well as some “image goes here” text.

Outside of that, this game is pretty interesting as an exploratory comedy Twine Lovecraftian game. It has some fancy looking graphics and a “self esteem” and inventory system.

Your high school has weird noises and things coming out of it on a weekend and you decide to investigate. As you do you encounter some math puzzles and a lot of Lovecraftian stereotypes played for laughs.

A charming game. I hope the zip version has less bugs because this game has a lot of potential, but the low number of reviews suggest other would be reviewers may have gotten stuck.

This is one IFComp game I was never able to play due to its use of an outdated Java platform that you have to pay to download.

I was able to decompile its files and port it to Inform (which I've added as a link here).

It's a small game, with only a few puzzles. You're exploring an abandoned building after trying to grab some loose change. The biggest puzzle is finding a mouse running around a maze. The logic of the maze is pretty frustrating: (Spoiler - click to show)You have to predict where the mouse will go and get a number to light up beneath it. Randomly, the mouse will go check the key. If it was happy before and had the right number lit up, it will push it out, otherwise it won't.

So, pretty small and kind of frustrating, but the java code was really neat to work with.

I was looking back at my 'wishlist' and this game had been on there the longest, for most of a decade if I recall. I thought I'd finally get around to it.

This is a short ADRIFT game with music and some real time effects. The idea is that you are at home watching a nature documentary alone at night when you see something out your window that unnerves you.

I'm giving this game a 5-star rating because I thought through my five criteria and how they applied.

+Polished: I didn't encounter any major difficulties with the parser; WATCH TV didn't work, but that was it. The music definitely added to the overall feel.
+Descriptive: gruesomely so.
+Interactivity: There are 4 endings, and reaching most of them felt pretty natural. The game felt pretty realistic.
+Emotional impact: I was creeped out. I kept turning down the music.
+Would I play again? Yeah, probably.

If you download the adrift 5 runner, and get virus warnings, try one of the other versions of it (e.g. runner+development, just runner, etc.), usually one works.