Reviews by MathBrush

This is a short game entered into the Bare Bones jam.

It has no real interactivity and a stripped down interface, but that's kind of not true as it uses text alignment which gives both some variety in link clicking and is visually appealing.

But overall there's really nothing here except the writing. As a lifetime woman stan there's really nothing in mlm stories for me, but the characters were well-written. There is a big focus on concrete details like clothing, appearance, etc. The dialog feels natural, with a back and forth more like what you'd expect in real life or in a back-and-forth part of a play.

This is a kind of medium-length Twine game with some nice styling.

It starts out with a 'my parents don't understand me' kind of vibe and has the kid running out to have an argument with their current partner, which gave me lots of flashbacks to my most recent creative writing class I taught in high school, as that's the kind of story the better writers would write (the bad ones involved Ninja from fortnite and lots of helicopters). Still, I didn't have high hopes.

But then it pivoted into a thoughtful and interesting story involving (Spoiler - click to show)time travel that made for an excellent game. You have the chance to try a lot of different ways to stay with your partner. Your character has real flaws and strengths and felt like one of the most real people in a game I've read recently.

I thought the ending didn't make sense in-universe, but makes perfect sense as a metaphor, so I'm leaning more towards the second point of view in my personal interpretation.

There's some fairly frequent strong profanity.

I don't say this often, but I really just didn't like this game. It shows talent in making, and is almost certainly the game that the author had envisioned when they set out to make it, but that design is not something I enjoy.

It is primarily visual and graphical in nature, with text added as flavoring. The beginning is set up in a way that the controls are unresponsive, playing a harsh dissonant sound with blinking lights while nothing you do does anything, followed by a blank screen for such a long time I thought the game had crashed. Then there are some graphical mazes with some light text.

The writing is scattered and surreal, which can be an amazing effect, but I couldn't find any thread to connect it all. It reminded me of nothing more than hearing Captain Beefheart Trout Mask Replica for the first (and only) time.

In no way does this take away from the author's skill; they seem perfectly competent. But their intentions and my reception were at cross purposes in this instance.

This game was entered in Shufflecomp.

It has beautiful styling, with an easily readable font and nice color choices.

The game plays naturally, and tells you upfront what stats are being tracked, which made it easy to plan out overall paths through the game while still maintaining agency. I liked that.

The story writing is very strong, talking about a young person and the strange boy they fall in love with at a young age. Only during summers can they meet, and as the player ages, they soon must part.

The two paths contrast each other well, and overall the story is scoped just right, with a nice narrative plot arc that rises, has a climax, then falls to a denouement. I had chills for one ending. Very well done.

This game was entered in ShuffleComp and inspired by Charlemagne by the Blossoms.

It's a fun game with both strong character building and strong world building. There is a magic system sketched out, even coming with a separate 'spellbook', and multiple modes to play in.

The game itself is small, easily consumable and not enough to show off a greater system or world, but it works as a whole, paced especially well through the use of chunks of the song lyrics. This allows you to get a feel for how far you are in the game, something that is missing from so many IF games.

The worldbuilding is a mix of spacecraft and sorcery, with heartbroken people running a heist together to stop some tears of gold. Pretty fun!

This game had a few surprises for me, and I liked it. It was entered in Shufflecomp.

You play as a child come to visit your father. There are a few customization options for yourself, which I thought were nice.

What makes the game work for me is the reflective and meaningful (to me) choices you can make. They aren't really black or white, but instead give you a chance to roleplay yourself and your own relationships.

Nice writing, very thoughtful, not too long, and with nice visuals that I was trying to figure out how to emulate for my own future games.

This game is surreal. It was written for ShuffleComp.

In it, you find yourself compelled, no matter what you do, to approach (Spoiler - click to show)the unholy city.

The best part of the game is the feeling of dread and the awful feeling of (Spoiler - click to show)waking up from a bad dream to another bad dream.

Overall, I don't know if the ending had enough of a buildup to support it, but I liked this overall.

This is a Texture game entered into Shufflecomp.

In it, you see a variety of characters in a fantasy setting, talking about witches, wards, dragons, and rangers.

I had a great deal of difficulty understanding what was going on. That's not necessarily bad; a lot of games use metaphor or surreal settings to convey a specific emotion.

But I was at a loss for most of this story. I'll show an example from the first page. I'll put it in spoilers because it's long and my analysis may not be interesting to most people:

(Spoiler - click to show)"The sorceress picked a stone from the fire and put it in the pitcher. She poured the hot water over Strider's cup of leaves, who wrinkled their nose in rote protest.

Over the course of tea, a design uncoiled across her red skin, all imbrication and tedium. The flick of a wrist described this creature's forked tongue.

Strider watched Rahel work until the cone went dry. Was she afraid her right hand would spoil the work of her left?"

The first paragraph mostly makes sense; picking up a stone from a fire would burn someone, but presumably this is her magical power, which is cool, and it seems she has a friend with a goofy relationship.

But in the second paragraph, what does 'over the course of tea' mean? Does it mean the meal 'tea' that British people have? Over the course of brewing the tea? Over the course of Strider drinking?

This is a magical setting. Is the design literally uncoiling over her skin? Is her skin red from picking up the stone, or bright red as a fantasy setting, or is it a callback to older racist notions about native Americans?

'Imbrication' is a scale like pattern. So the design is scalelike and tedious. So is she bored making this? It's a weird contrast with the luxurious metaphor of a dragon uncoiling itself. 'The flick of a wrist'--does this mean she's drawing this? Someone else? What is the cone that goes dry? And 'worried the right hand would spoil the work of her left'--what does that mean? If she's using one hand to draw on the other, then it sounds like she's drawing on the right with her left. So how would her right hand spoil anything if that's what she's drawing on?

The whole story was like this to me. I never knew what was going on, wasn't certain how many people were present or what their roles are or if they're aware of each other.

I think there's interesting worldbuilding here, I just hit a brick wall with my personal interaction. It might just be my own personal reaction, it'd be interesting to see how other people felt after reading.

This is a brief Twine game with a single branch, giving a tale of grief and loss.

Each of the two branches gives a slightly different story, although the beginning and end are the same.

The story is about a pair of couples, Emmett/Harry and Juno/Bell, who were friends in high school. Juno and Emmett meet up years later to discuss what they have lost.

The writing is emotional and descriptive. There's not much going on in the way of significant choice; the two different branches are meaningful, though.

This was written for the single choice jam.

In 2023 (or maybe starting 2022?) Tumblr started pretending that there was a movie called 'Goncharov' based on a misprint on some merchandise for another movie. Together they collaboratively invented the main characters and plotline.

This game spends a few paragraphs summarizing that plot, and then gives you a single choice. That choice only gives a couple paragraphs more of text, but leads to very different endings.

Getting more detail on Goncharov was definitely interesting, but it felt like this was just setting up a lot of background info for a story that itself was quite insubstantial. What was here was good, just not a lot of it.