Reviews by MathBrush

This game pokes fun at fantasy tropes with a lot of silly dialogue and 4th wall breaking.

You (Elftor the Elf) and your manservant (Manny) have to save a king and kingdom from a terrible plague that makes everyone shout at the top of their lungs.

Along the way, there are plenty of sidequests--sidequests you have specifically been instructed not to fulfill.

There are quite a few endings. Overall the game is pretty goofy but I laughed several times. I also had the issue other reviewers did with the 'stats' part at the top disappearing at inconvenient times, like when it was being referenced in-game.

Overall, I liked the 'good' ending the best. A slight game, but fun for people who like dumb humor.

This is a relatively brief Twine game with some silly/goofy humor in it. It seems like the main goal is just to get the reader to laugh, like when you can choose between wearing a suit or a cardboard box for your big debut.

'Aesthetics over plot' seems right, as there isn't much plot to talk about. You're out of work and are going to a networking event, and you just choose how to react to a few different things.

I'm not sure how to approach this review, so I'll use my five criteria scale:

-Polish: The game has some typos, and I think decapitalizes your name when you type it in.
+Descriptiveness: There are some clear textual images that are pretty funny, like your character shouting out their plans at the party.
+Emotional impact: There are definitely some funny parts.
+Interactivity: There are some significant differences on replay, even though it's a short game, and achievements are generously handed out.
-Would I play again? It was entertaining, but too slight to replay several times. I did replay once to see how much of a difference there was.

This is the third Lady Thalia game; the series in general focuses around a three-pronged conversation system where you take different attitudes, as well as physical preparation for thefts.

This game focuses on the introduction of a new nemesis detective, as well as a resolution of the overarching plotline of your former nemesis, and heavily involves your husband as well.

I had a rocky start with this one. The intro heavily emphasizes your open marriage/lavender marriage, and it brought into my mind a lot of real-world experiences that were quite a bit less glamorous than those implied in the game. In addition, I found myself constantly at odds with the conversation system, not picking up on the social cues that indicate which line of approach would be best; possibly I just have brain fog after just coming back from a trip.

But the quality of the writing and characters is always, to me, solid, and as the game went on I became invested in the string of characters and situations and actions. The involvement of the husband and his lover made the game more interesting, putting you in a teaching role, which is a natural extension of the overall character arc. And unlike some others who reviewed the game, I found Mel's change of heart (Spoiler - click to show)fairly understandable; if your enemy is consistently more encouraging and relatable than your employer, who wouldn't have second thoughts about their career?

I also preferred the later mechanical segments that focused more on varying your approach rather than having 'one true' approach, as well as the 'slow finesse vs brute force' options in the physical preparation.

Overall, this one isn't my favorite Lady Thalia game, but I'd consider it one of the headliners of Spring Thing, and am glad to have it.

This game revolves around a protagonist who wakes up in what feels like a wrong body, with wrong memories, and everything hurts.

The writing is very elaborate, dense, and elliptical. The game literally begins with an exposition on the universe, stars, Noether's theorem, conservation laws, and thermodynamics, before it really kicks in.

I kind of felt trapped under the weight of all the words. I was able to piece together something of a story; one of alarms and a space station where you have to escape. But the writing is so elliptical that I had difficulty knowing if anything was real or a metaphor. Is there (Spoiler - click to show)actually another person on the ship, or is it all just a form of self-reflection? Is the main computer room (Spoiler - click to show)really made of flesh and bones and eye sockets, or is it just a metaphor for your feelings about it?

I couldn't really tell. Overall, I found a couple of different possible endings, including one really early on and a few later ones. There is a lot of body horror in terms of dealing with progressively worse injuries.

Overall, the writing was carefully planned and chosen, and the interactivity and story structure were well-balanced, but the overall elaborateness was too much for me to handle.

This game is a hefty Inform 7 parser game set in a bunker city in the planet of Venus, with a horribly dystopian government where the greatest good is turning in others to the government.

The game involves numerous factions and parties (with different endings depending on which of two you support) and crossing and doublecrossing.

There's a lot of death, too. This PC's bodycount is one of the highest in games in recent years.

The game is very open in nature, with many actions being able to happen in any order. This leads to a lot of freedom, but makes the early part of the game fairly overwhelming. The hint system is also all available at once, due to the non-linear nature, and it can be difficult to find what you're looking for.

Overall, the game simply needs more polishing, but it is a good game at core, and is one worth having made.

One thing I struggled with quite a bit was the directions, which are INWARD, OUTWARD, LEFT, and RIGHT. It was hard to abbreviate these, as L means 'look' and IN and OUT map to inform's Inside and Outside directions. To be honest, I would have preferred the author just used the standard Inside and Outside directions and made Inward and Outward synonyms for them.

Giving 3 stars for now but would be happy to bump up if an update is made in the future.

This is a well-designed parser game, with some nice visuals and a compact design that lets it be played in an hour or two.

You play as Galaxy Jones, crime fighting hero on Mars. Your nemesis has personally invited you to try rescuing a celebrity from his clutches, and you have to fight up his giant tower while facing his taunts.

The game is subdivided into 5 or so areas with roughly similar maps, each one containing its own set of puzzles. Many of these puzzles revolve around combat.

The game has 10 points possible, and each time you get a point, an ascii art GALAXY JONES logo fills the scree. Someone else mentioned they hear a guitar riff every time GALAXY JONES pops up and I have to admit I imagined one too.

I liked the writing and the gameplay. The game is overall polished, although I had a couple of times I felt like I was fighting the parser, particularly with trying to do anything with the cable in the first half of the game (Spoiler - click to show)like I tried to put it on the claw, attaching it to the cables outside on the ledge which weren't implemented, throwing it at another ledge). But I ended up figuring things out. These are just minor issues, and I suspect that most parser fans will enjoy this game. If there were an update tidying up things, I'd probably boost this to a 5 star rating.

This is an Adventuron game with some good pixel art and intended for beginners.

Your mistress, a witch, has been hexed by a wizard, and you have to help her! To do so, though, you'll have to go through strange lands, frightening areas, and combat.

The setting is reminiscent of Howl's Moving Castle, an industrial area town where magic is common and regulated in a guild while a war drags on in the background.

There are multiple characters with distinct personalities and the puzzles and quests are varied and interesting. On those few occasions were I got stuck, the HELP command listed all possible verbs and talking with people gave gentle nudges.

It appears there is a secret ending, but I did not feel a need to go back and replay.

Great for a beginner or for an experienced player who just wants to play a chill game. Doesn't feel kid-oriented but is appropriate for kids.

This is a large, ponderous game with many attachments. The image I had when starting was of a gigantic hamburger, one that you'd get at an artisanal place that is far too large to fit in your mouth. You pick it up; it looks good. You eye it, go to bite, hesitate, turn it. A piece of lettuce drops out. You grab it, but an onion is slipping out the other side. So you just start eating, bits dropping here and there, no longer able or willing to manage it all, just enjoying the burger.

The concept of this game is that there was a (fictional) game released in 1996 that was like Photopia ahead of its time, less focus on puzzles and more on story. But it's intentionally made to be like other games of that period, so I guess less like Photopia and more like In The End, which is referenced several times.

Seven years later, someone releases a transcript of the game, which becomes well-known, so a new round of criticism is generated.

This game, in the fictional history, was buggy and received poor reviews. Then, in 2021, the author was approached by some critics/fans who want to do a critical version of it, which he agrees to while they update it (kind of like the Anchorhead update and the Cragne Manor tribute, I suppose).


This game consists of the 'revised version', with an accompanying booklet with the transcript and some art. The revised version has art as well. An in-game guide consisting of critical materials is available in-game, slowly increasing in scope as you proceed.

The art is one of the highlights; the style is unique and well-executed, and the game may be worth playing for the art alone.

The game concept is that you have the ability to remove entropy from some sources and imbue it into others, having been gifted that power by an orange-eyed demon woman in your youth.

It serves as a metaphor for involuntary inaction, similar to ADHD or depression, where you can only use some external impulse to compel yourself to complete some task.

Your mother is dying in the hospital, and you need to go see her. There are several obstacles in the way, though.

Besides the main goal of the ending, there are many mini-deaths along the way. The more you get before the end, the better ending you get!

Except...even if you only get a few, you can see what the ending would have been for the other options. I only got 6 points, but I wasn't super motivated to see the other 27.

And let's talk about why.

This game is very polished. It had numerous testers, and it feels like it. There were only a few times I felt like there were 'bugs', like trying to (Spoiler - click to show)OPEN DOOR while on the roof and having it say that that's not something you can open. Overall, though, I'd say it has a high level of polish for a game in general, especially one of its size.

Where I found some difficulty was in knowing what to do a lot of times. I felt like the game swung between no details and overfull details for clues sometimes. Like finding deaths; I really couldn't figure out the mechanics behind finding deaths at all. There were no exposed electrical lines or broken glass that could obviously hurt me. And things that were dangerous (like a heavy tree branch) didn't respond to what I thought were death-inducing things (like pushing them). The hint menu has dozens of hints, but none of them at all are for the deaths except for an explicit listing of the exact actions you need. In the main storyline, too, I often found that the things I got most stuck on weren't in the hints at all. I suppose I was just on a different brainwave.

It might have helped to highlight relevant features in some way. For instance, the (Spoiler - click to show)AC unit is mentioned early on in the first line of the paragraph, in the middle of a list of a bunch of non-useful material. Given its significance in the story, it might have merited more prominent place, nearer the end of the paragraph.

Fortunately, the game is implemented well enough that even while struggling there are generally good responses to obtain while looking for something to interact with.

The three layers of Drew Cook (the real one, the author one, the PC one) all blend in interesting ways, positive ones, I feel.

It's hard to evaluate the quality of the in-game writing. I think I would like it, had I found it in the wild; however, all of the in-universe reviews, mostly written by the (real-world) author, praise the quality of the writing. They'll say (paraphrase) 'the writing was excellent, but the bugs were terrible'; it came up more than 4 or 5 times. It's kind of like trying to judge the natural light of the moon when someone has set up a dozen spotlights aiming up at it in an attempt to brighten it. Does this artificial praise really affect my perception of the prose? It's hard to say, and it would have been interesting to see how I felt about the writing quality without simultaneously reading a great deal of manufactured praise for it. However, I do see the reasoning for it, for otherwise why would this game have been preserved?

Overall, I think of lot of people when looking for parser games to play are looking for something that's not super buggy, that responds to most inputs in a helpful manner, and that has a nice outer shell of story, setting and/or (in this case) art. So I think most people will be pleased with this. It made me think quite a bit, and I could see myself revisiting it.

I enjoyed this brief respite while playing Spring Thing games.

You play as a mutant pig farmer dealing with bikers. Life is kind of unfair, because if you don't feed your pigs, shovel their poop, and deal with bikers, you're gonna lose your pigs! And there's not enough time to do all of that...

Fortunately you have other options as well. And trying some of them out can give you different fun endings in a short amount of time.

I reached a point where I could pick between two different endings, and I picked a deathmatch, which was pretty amusing.

I liked the game, finding it polished and descriptive, but I didn't feel like replaying it in the end.

I was involved a bit with the creation of this game; it's part of Seed Comp, where people put game ideas out there and others make full games of it.

So I made the seed for this game, and I'm very glad things worked out the way they did. I had heard of the Red Door, Yellow Door game online before and even jokingly tried it with my son once but he got creeped out so we stopped right away.

My issue was I didn't know what kind of surreal dream imagery to put in; that's not my forte.

So I'm glad Charm Cochran picked this up, because it ended up as exactly the kind of game I had wanted to play when I came up with the idea: disturbing, creepy, and unpredictable.

The basic idea is that you're at a slumber party and your sister is put into a trance and instructed to visualize two doors, and then you and your friends tell her what actions to take in the dream world.

You soon find parallels between the dream world and your own, but also bizarre features like giant buildings or creatures. The part with Claire's different voices I found especially thrilling.

Literally the only drawback I see is that there are a couple of things that could be polished up. Most of the game is amazingly responsive, with a lot of dumb things I thought of trying having a custom response with an in-game voice, an effect difficult to achieve. But there were a few things like uncapitalized room names or objects that were difficult to pick out from surrounding scenery (like the (Spoiler - click to show)cabinets in the kitchen). I had a smooth experience because I relied on intfiction hint threads, though.

However, those few unpolished moments actually played up the dreamlike atmosphere to me, so I'm not even certain they need to be resolved. Dreams are often like that, enchanting, full of exploration, but with frustrations and occasional non-sequiturs.

My only regret is I don't have other game ideas I could see Charm Cochran's spin on, because this was great.