Reviews by MathBrush

In this game, you play as a military person whose submarine is under attack by poisonous gas. Trapped in the airlock, there's nothing you can do but wait until it subsides and hope your friends and crewmates are okay.

This game is compact and has neat and tidy implementation and puzzles. There are mechanisms and locks and keys and some clever puzzle solutions.

This has a lot more twists and turns and is darker than usual for a Garry Francis game, and I liked it. It was polished, descriptive, and the interactivity worked well.

The only drawback to me was that I kept getting this message after I left the command area and returned:

[PunyInform error: 3]
[PunyInform error: 3]
[PunyInform error: 3]

I did have to use hints once, but the solution was reasonable.

I liked this game, and felt it was a solid improvement over the author's previous game.

Here, you play as a member of the coast guard who is trying to track down a tramp steamer leaving a trail of destruction around the Florida coast.

The game is well-suited for children, with needed commands bracketed to be clear, light puzzles, and a generally positive and happy attitude.

Movement is unusual; a single N command might move you one room forward in a ship or send you dozens of miles through Florida. It reminds me of Victor Ojuel's game Pilgramage in that way.

The conversation system is well-presented, with an extra window popping up, although most conversations for me involved just going down the line one at a time.

I appreciate the game running smoothly and well. There were a couple of minor issues like 'an unsecured items', but overall it worked well. I feel like there could have been a bit more polish like replacing 'you can see Bart here' with something more specific.

So to me, it was descriptive, interactive, and fun, but not completely polished and I don't feel like I would revisit it. If the last game was a 5 or 6 out of 10, this one is a 6 or 7 out of ten.

This is a short Punyinform game made for Puny Jam #3.

In it, you play an astronaut who has to flee because an airlock is leaking. Bizarrely, the door to the space station is a heavy metal door with a key. More strange things appear as you explore the station.

This has some problems (especially uncapitalized room names and generally empty rooms). However, the author clearly was really into their descriptions and the flow of the game worked well with few hiccups (the only part I got stuck was a puzzle that was actually very fair).

So I think this is pretty unpolished and buggy, but I like the idea (I always like surreal/hallucination games). Having the character be (Spoiler - click to show)The Joker is interesting. Is this what the world looks like from his point of view?

This is, I think, the third Johann Berntsson game I have played, and I tend to enjoy his level of implementation. The other games I played (from 20+ years ago) were longer and more complex, but this one shares a lot of the good elements from those games.

You find yourself in a strange airlock, and have to go to another dimension of your choice. And you choose: fantasy!

What follows is a simple and complete fantasy story. Rooms have 2-3 exits, and each room has at most one object of importance in it. The next task to do is usually clearly indicated, making this more of a fun, breezy exercise than a puzzly challenge.

I didn't feel super engaged by the game, but it is quite polished and very descriptive, and the interactivity was smooth.

This game has you go undercover with two different characters in an exciting underwater adventure. First, you have to open an airlock door while floating underwater, and then you have to infiltrate a base using stealth!

There were some problems with implementation. Several actions had no response; I didn't see the control panel in the first room, so I tried stuff like 'turn handle with multitool' (which has a completely blank response) and 'turn handle with me' (which gives a really bizarre error with text from later in the game).

The game does have a couple of cool puzzles and fun descriptions, but overall it really herds you one way and doesn't encourage you to stray off the beaten path. There are a ton of useless rooms, a lot like Planetfall and other Meretzky games.

Overall, I feel like it lacked polish and the interactivity was frustrating, but it was descriptive with fun puzzles. I know this was made for a jam, so the author didn't have much time, but this could be an amazing 4 or 5 star game with enough expansion by the author.

This game was entered in a jam using PunyInform, where the theme was using an airlock.

The author came up with an inventive way to do this, having an underwater experimental brewery that is accessed by an airlock deep under water.

Unfortunately, a lot of the rest of this game was rough. Undo is not supported [Note: the author confirmed that this is because I played the z3 version. The z5 version allows undo, so I've updated my review and increased the star score], and its very easy to lock yourself out of victory during the first puzzle. A lot of interactions just don't make much sense (for instance, why can't we see the (Spoiler - click to show)scuba gear before examining (Spoiler - click to show)the hook? Isn't the first thing far larger than the second?)

I ended up going in and out of the airlock over and over to try things back and forth between the two main locations. That, coupled with the sparseness of the game, ended up with less enjoyment than I'd usually have.

Clearly the author has some good talent for programming things like context-sensitive hints and a complex airlock. But my guess is that because this was a jam they ran out of time to fully test and flesh out the game descriptions. I would be more than happy to raise my score if the game was developed a bit further; it's not a horrible concept, it just needs more care.

This is an interesting short game written in PunyInform.

It follows a rhythmic pattern of sleeping, dreaming, breathing, and waking.

It feels like a purposely simple, stripped down game with simple aesthetics and a positive overall message. Puzzles are intentionally light and the focus is on atmosphere.

I found it to be polished and smooth, and the interactivity worked well for me. While intentionally crisp and precise, I did find it descriptive overall.

However, I didn’t feel an emotional connection to the overall story, even though I feel like I should have given it’s nice theme. I also didn’t feel like I’d revisit it in the future.

So, a good game, but for me doesn’t crack the top five of games written by this excellent and prolific author.

This game has some problems, but most of them aren't serious or too hard to learn from, so I expect the author's next game would probably be great.

In this game, you are a genius scientist who is working late after hours, when suddenly things stop working. You have to figure out how to get past airlocks and get cameras to work.

This game seems to show a lack of knowledge of Inform, with lots of whitespace, items not listed in room descriptions, missing synonyms and commands, etc. These are common things for people who are starting out, and I feel like the next game the author makes will likely be much better.

The standout here is the occasional vivid description. But I found the interactivity frustrating, didn't make an emotional connection with the game, found it unpolished, and left without a strong desire to replay.

I do think the author's next game could be amazing, but for now this one leaves much to be desired.

This game was entered in Seedcomp, and is primarily based around the 'seed' of the same name, a text file by Rovarsson containing a vivid description of a game centered around getting stuck in a tomb with a donkey and a bowl of blood and a cat mummy.

This finished game dropped the altar/blood angle but added the rest nicely. You play as a spellcaster struck back in time during a duel. Your spells have scattered to the wind, and after trying to steal some raw materials from a palace you are forced to flee, eventually finding yourself at a tomb.

The pattern of this game is gentle gameplay, generally finding a spell and using it either immediately or in the next room. Some puzzles add in extra twists for more engagement. I got stuck once or twice and I did need a hint in the room with the platforms (I had tried (Spoiler - click to show)LEVITATE ME and received no strong feedback, so I assumed that levitate wasn't the solution.)

Overall, this was enjoyable. I didn't connect on an emotional level, but I found it soothing and sweet.

I always like Marco Innocenti games, they usually guarantee some fun exploration, tricky puzzles and lots of complex backstory.

I also like random games where you wake up on a broken ship with amnesia (like Babel, Trisgaea, etc.).

So overall I was primed to like this. You wake up on a ship as a child and find out that there has been major damage to your underwater base. Huge rocks have broken in parts of the walls and the whole thing is flooded.

Overall, the backstory is slowly revealed in gruesome and disturbing detail. It pulls on a lot of old sci-fi tropes but does so in a relatively smooth way.

The puzzles were fun, but some more coding I think could be useful. Especially I think there should be a more clear response to (major spoiler) (Spoiler - click to show)shoot can and put splinter in rock to show that those two are reasonable actions, and just need a little change to make them better.