Ratings and Reviews by MathBrush

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.

This is a great, character driven mixed-media game that simulates discord while also using additional text and pdf files to tell an overall story.

Bez and Josh Grams teamed up on this one, with Bez writing and Josh programming (according to credits), and I think the division of labor worked great, because the writing is on-point and the coding is very smooth and looks fancy.

The main thrust of the game is a Discord conversation between a group of friends that gathered together over the years to discuss an obscure (and fictional) poet. However, the main leader of the group is in a car crash. While this is being announced, dark secrets bubble up.

You take turns as the various members of the discord group, selecting between different variations of how to respond. It definitely seemed like my choices could influence the story heavily, but I chose a particular path of every time to get more juicy gossip.

In between the choices, there are interludes with additional information over the years.

I think this is some of the strongest writing I've seen in a while: a diverse cast of characters, realistic scenarios, people reacting the way they do in real life. It was especially jarring because I've lived through or seen a few different variations of the events depicted in this game.

There were a few quibbles I had; I was torn about the timed text, because it does make it harder to fit a game in during a busy schedule, but it definitely contributes to the overall feel of the game. Also, I feel like the game could have been just a little longer or have a firmer resolution. Otherwise, this is a game that I felt joy to play.

Edit: Apparently the poet Dorn is real. Who knew?

This is a world-building heavy game about an enormous library the size of an entire planet. In it, there are all sorts of bizarre things: living book-creatures, ink serpents, portals and non-Euclidean spaces, etc.

You are exploring it with many other archivists, including your own apprentice.

The structure is essentially a Gauntlet, where you get two choices at a time, one that keeps you alive and one that kills you. I found this a bit frustrating, and most other interaction was either 'next page' or an option to be nice or mean with words. The game ended fairly abruptly after one major event.

All this is balanced by the very cool storybuilding and fun descriptions. So there was a lot to like here as well.

This game is hard to review for multiple reasons, since it's a multiplayer game I played on my own (I've done multiplayer IF before but since this one is in French I didn't feel comfortable asking someone to wait while I slowly read it), and also describing the plot spoils it, as a big part of the game is figuring out the other person's story. So this I could basically rate it really high or really low depending on how I'm feeling today.

Overall, the setting is mostly muted and indistinct. You are at a society dinner (or maybe political dinner?) and everything is centered around that. Unlike most multiplayer games I've seen recently, which tend to have tons of text interspersed with a very small number of possible actions, this game has 30 turns each of which has ten or more actions you can choose.

However, these actions are almost all inconsequential or are only interesting once. I do have to give kudos for allowing players to pass any message at all to the other person. I did feel it straggled on too long by about ten turns.

Of course if I had played with someone else I wouldn't have spoiled the fun of finding out about the other person, which is a bummer. Overall, I'm giving this 3 stars, but it really could be anywhere from a 2 to a 4.

This is a choice-based entry where you play as the recently deceased ghost Victor who visits his friend Guillaume.

It's the day of Victor's funeral, and all his friends come over. You, as Victor, can only be seen by Guillaume, but can influence others. Your goal: to help your Guillaume win the heart of long-time friend Marie.

In the meantime, you discover a lot about your friends: one has come out recently, one has a new boyfriend from Senegal, some siblings are squabbling, one person gets a little too drunk, etc.

It's a little bit like Delightful Wallpaper (the second half), where you influence others subtly, and a bit like Blue Chairs, with its substance-using, young-people-talking parties.

It's a very long game, maybe too long, but the story it paints is beautiful. It does require (like another reviewer said) a lot of clicking, so I got in the habit of just clicking really fast until it stopped and going back to read over the text.

I really liked this world. It reminded me of the work of Katherine Morayati, of being in 'the scene'. This had more 'youth slang' than any of the other games; I learned a lot. It also has tons of cultural references; my search history has a lot of stuff like Science Po, Francoise Hollande, Knife Party, etc. now.

I like this culture because I was never a part of it. I've never drank, never tried marijuana. I had a lot of siblings and cousins and never hung out with other kids after school, so the idea of a big friend group you spend all your time with is something I saw my siblings do but never tried as a kid. As an adult, now I have a lot of nice friends, but there's not that same element of risk and danger that impressionable young people have when it comes to things like drugs or alcohol or unsafe sex.

Anyway, the story I found was well-crafted and overall it resonated with me. Interactivity felt great; out of all games in this comp, I felt like both choices were okay each time, that both would produce a meaningful story and that I could choose what I really wanted.