Reviews by MathBrush

This game is more the hint of a story than a full story. It's written in Gruescript, a relatively recent language that is a parser/choice hybrid, created by Robin Johnson.

This game blends physical objects with conversational topics. What you're holding, you can talk about. If you can talk about something (like a name), you can take it and drop it.

The setting is some kind of alternate mythology, a fantasy world that has echoes of Greek mythology (some kind of box that wasn't meant to be opening, blends of snakes and people).

There's just not much here; I reached an ending early on that I thought was a time limit. I restarted and found out it only comes from asking a certain topic. I avoided that topic but couldn't find much more; downloading the (helpfully provided source), I see that that was the full ending.

So this game is pretty short. The concepts are good, though I had some trouble with figuring out how to do what I wanted. In a fuller game, it could be very fun, but for now, I'll be content with this hint of a game.

I briefly beta tested this game.

This Adventuron game has you searching for seashells on a beach. Pretty soon, though, things take a drastic turn, and you end up (Spoiler - click to show)being able to cast spells!

The game also utilizes two protagonist perspectives which is nice, reminding me of the old Atlantis Indiana Jones game.

Overall, the mechanics worked well for me. I think the design of the game could have supported an even larger game, but it's pretty substantial already and is part of a competition for beginners, so it makes sense.

I briefly beta-tested this game.

This is a feel-good game (mostly!) about a fun children's competition in a quaint village on a summer's evening.

A carnival is in town and the Mayor is throwing a competition where you have to gather clues. You race around with a bunch of other kids who move from place to place, all of you looking for clues.

The kids running around really helps make the game feel more alive. And the puzzles in the game have a wide variety, a lot of them making use of your ability to customize requests for various items like food and flowers.

There's a vaguely sinister subplot running through as well. Even with this, though, it feels like there's not a strong narrative thread, more just an excuse to have fun, which isn't necessarily bad. Fun for a nice diversion.

I briefly beta tested this game.

This is an adventuron game about making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. You start in a kitchen and have to combine the three ingredients.

The game manages to add at least 3 major twists to this setup, which is pretty amusing. They aren't all necessarily coherent, but it makes enough sense to by funny.

The main character has a definite idiosyncratic personality that shines through more and more as you play.

Overall, it's pretty solid, but could use a couple more synonyms for things (like JAR for JAM), although it's been improved since I and others tested it.

This is a brief Adventuron game that has a short tutorial at the beginning.

In it, you play as a young child at a hotel who wakes up to find an old woman in your room. She beckons for you to follow.

And that's most of the game; the gameplay is pretty simple. There are a few small puzzles, but this is otherwise mostly linear. The concept has a lot of implicit horror in it, but I feel like that theme wasn't developed as much as it could have been.

Overall nothing is bad in this game, there's just not much: not much story, not much interaction, not much game. I feel like it could be expanded a bit, but as it is, it was fun while it lasted.

I played the English version of this game as part of the TALJ.

This is a fairly complex Adventuron game. Your girlfriend, a self-conscious milkmaid, is devastated that she forget eggs for her special salad, but you promise to bring some from your farm, in addition to another surprise.

The game is fairly large, with many rooms and also many items hidden within items within each room.

The writing is rustic and fun, with different animals you can interact with.

It's actually pretty hard; I found at least two different ways to completely fail without any warning given that I had failed, making it 'cruel' on Zarf's cruelty scale. But it's short enough that I was able to replay a couple of times to fix it.

This is one of the author's first full parser games. It's far more polished than most 'first' entries, but one kind of bug that slipped through is that many locations describe objects after you take them, like the alum.

Overall, it was one of the most rich and well-written TALJ games I played.

This game is entered in the Text Adventure Literacy Jam, designed to introduce people to text adventures through tutorials.

It's kind of a weird game. EXAMINE and TAKE are disabled for most things. The writing is minimalistic, based on an old French story. And things just kind of happen in ways that are pretty disturbing, like the poor lamb that wanders too close to the hermit.

UNDO is disabled, which is baffling in a game meant as a tutorial that has actions that are non-reversible and can prevent you from winning the game.

Overall, I found the writing style charming and the interaction slightly frustrating. I'm glad I played but like others have said I'm not sure I'll replay the final fight.

This is an interesting game. It seems to be the author's own custom system, and uses a multi-pane format kind of like Scott Adams, with a room description constantly displayed and then parser responses in another window, with important items listed in a third.

The first part is very hand-holdy, as it is designed as a tutorial. Each room is a page or more full of text describing how interactive fiction works. It takes you through navigation and basic use of items.

I found this part to be relatively well-polished but also pretty verbose. That may be more useful to newcomers but also may not. I've seen a lot of IF tutorial games (like Bronze, Dreamhold, 'So, You've Never Played a Text Adventure Before, Huh?') and I've written my own, but most people I ask about who got into IF found a big hard game without a tutorial and tried it on their own.

This tutorial includes things like mazes and darkness which aren't quite as ubiquitous as once they are.

It then segues into a main game which is exploring a creepy abandoned house. This part has very well written descriptions. The story and puzzles form a coherent atmosphere but not a logical plot. Overall, though, I thought this part was pretty fun and well put-together.

This game has a lot of the hallmarks of Garry Francis' work: puzzle-focused gameplay, polished responses, gentle hints on what to do next, short and easily digestible room descriptions, etc.

The idea is that you're a troublemaker at a school that's going under, and you need to find some treasure reported to be hidden in your school.

Gameplay is generally satisfying, the kind of thing like finding a can and later finding a can opener and using it (not the example in the game). There were a few times I had trouble with the interactivity: trying to leave the room early on (without the tutorial, I would never have thought to do the action, and even with the tutorial it took me a while to find it); and finding the right word for what to do with the (Spoiler - click to show)pencil was hard (I kept trying words like (Spoiler - click to show)rub and (Spoiler - click to show)shade). A couple of the phrases stuck out as odd (I was told many time I thought my teacher was ugly; I think the random chance might need to be lowered a bit).

Overall, I expected a polish parser game and I got one, so it was worth playing. I used in-game hints several times.

This game was written using ADL, which was the engine Ken and Roberta Williams used for some early Hi-Res Adventures (from what I can gather, though I may be wrong).

The game itself is a downloadable windows executable. It consists of a moderate number of rooms (around 10-15), each with either one interesting item or one interesting NPC. Nothing can be interacted with outside of these singular items (no scenery, etc.). All play consists of fetching one item in one room to get a new item in another room (like a trading-up quest). There are occasional typos, and the storyline isn't really there.

The author has admitted to having run out of time. Having more time would certainly improve the game; the author has mentioned implementing the scenery, more puzzles, etc.

For now, though, the game is lacking in polish and descriptiveness, and due to its unfinished nature lacks emotional depth. I'm giving it one star for its current state, but if the author ever updates it I'll definitely increase the rating, as the ideas in it are good, it just looks like it needs more time.