Reviews by MathBrush

This games has a parser written from scratch in Twine.

Making your own parser is a fraught thing, and many people have tried and failed over the years. The last-place entries of IFcomp are sprinkled with poor parser of years past. The biggest issue is that there is a bewildering amount of tradition in parser games that varies from group to group, all of whom may get upset if your style doesn't match theirs (like GET vs TAKE, X vs EXAMINE vs LOOK [object], G for again, Z for wait, abbreviations for cardinal directions, hitting 'up' for copying an earlier command). A few people have managed to make very robust custom parser: Robin Johnson, Nils Fagerburg, and Linus Åkesson.

This one is better than many I've seen, especially since it doesn't require downloading a Windows Executable and it has fairly quick response times. However, there are a few oddities that got in my way a bit: compass directions are part of play, but the text does not indicate possible compass directions to go in. Some basic actions are not repeatable, although no reason is given for it (generally things that give you one-time info). On the positive side, keyword highlighting is in use, similar to many Aaron Reed games, where you can interact with objects by typing their names. On the neutral side, much of the game occurs by typing Continue.

On the story side, this is reminiscent of books like The Giver or Divergent, where you are in a futuristic society and your role in life is chosen in a big ceremony.

I liked the overall story, and found it fun. I ended with a pretty big surprise in my playthrough, which was good. Some of the individual word choices stuck out as strange to me; one guy was referred to as 'the being' and 'the male' a lot, which made him sound kind of alien, and there were a few other choices that were a bit odd.

For me, I tend to choose interactive fiction that has features of escapism, and feel like I'm taking a break from reality when I play the game. That's one reason games like Violet threw me off at first, since, despite their quality, they reminded me of my real-life PhD pressures.

This game is quite the opposite of escapist. It poses (from my perspective) a single question: if you knew you were going to die, what would you do to be remembered?

Bez talks in honest and self-reflective detail about his experiences with pseudo-dementia, which led to concern that they would soon perish. Now, though, e's in a better place, so now we can look back and see how things were going, and how the game A Single Oroubouros Scale was developed.

Like a few of Bez's other pieces, this is structured not as a game but as a narrative essay, which different chapters broken up by hyperlinks. For me, the hyperlinks brought a definite sense of interactivity to the piece, because it was like finding clues in a mystery game, except instead of solving a crime you're trying to understand a human being.

I thought I had finished the whole project, and felt it was missing just a bit more that could help communicate the author's intent, but when I came to review the game, I found a poem (by the poet that his recent game Hidden Gems, Hidden Secrets centered on) which beautifully complemented the overall experience.

I enjoyed this dark game. You play as a young child bartered away to be the spouse of a pale and fitful girl, scion of a rich family.

The text is dark, but themes of light and the color white prevail through the game, with the light presented as being more evil and twisted than soothing darkness.

There are numerous endings to the game, and a variety of conversations where you can choose between topics.

I enjoyed the game's depiction of helplessness in the face of unspeakable horror, as well as its blending of dream and waking.

Surreal gothic horror is on of my favorite genres (such as the game Heart of the House or the book The Haunting of Hill House), so I think I enjoyed this more than most people would. So while I'm giving it a five star rating, I could see other people having different opinions.

This game definitely brought back a lot of memories. I had a long relationship where I had a lot of work-life balance issues, and it eventually ended up falling apart, and this reminded me of that.

There are several endings, so there are likely different versions of this game depending on how you play, but in my playthrough, there were two main characters: a wealthy government official, and a young, poorer-class individual.

They love each other, but there are tensions. The poor one is concerned with fairness and trying to find beauty in day to day moments, while the richer one is trying to 'bring home the bacon' and do well at work.

An argument about one partner staying home late and missing an appointment because their boss corralled them at work reminded me of times that my boss in my first job wanted me to stay home late while my partner was caring for our newborn.

It's a tough situation. So I think there's a lot of emotion in this game. Your choices have a lot of freedom, too.

The only thing missing for me is length; I felt like the pacing in the first half was more drawn out and set up expectations for a longer game but that was rapidly concluded in the ending, leaving me wanting or expecting more.

This review is for the Twine version. The original review is down below.

The Twine version of Kuolema was perhaps the biggest rewrite out of any New Game Plus game of Spring Thing, as it was completely ported to a new system and had a complex system of passwords, etc.

Surprisingly, it plays very similar to the original. In fact, I'd be hard pressed to find what was different about it gameplay-wise. Visually, there are added animations and timers which are used sparingly to great effect (although occasionally I switched to another tab to read something while waiting for it to finish).

The main gameplay things that I didn't remember from the first time around were the hints when getting text entry wrong, and also maybe there were more options for the ending? But I enjoyed playing all the way through. There also is a new story version which reduces the puzzles that I didn't try, which was also likely a major part of the rewrite.


Original version:

This was a nice, mostly-grounded thriller on a ship. A lot of games like this with a dark, abandoned ship at night devolve into Lovcraftian horror (which I love), but it was nice to have a change of pace this time.

This game is written in google forms and relies entirely on passwords and, occasionally, branching for state tracking. This means that if you right everything down, you can come back to the game much later and speed through everything. It reminded me a bit of playing NES/SNES games like Mike Tyson's Punchout and Willow; we had a wooden beam near our living room we'd write down passwords on.

Overall, the speed and responsiveness was pretty good; the system doesn't work all that bad, except when I tried to open the walkthrough in another tab and everything got reset. Fortunately I had my notes, so it was very easy to catch back up. I ended up opening the walkthrough in another tab.

I'd say that writing and storytelling is very strong for my likes, with crisp and clear imagery and a slow-burn thriller plotline. Some parts didn't make too much sense, mostly serving as excuses to find more passwords, but there were a lot of dramatic moments.

The final parts really felt like an action movie. I lost momentum at one point trying to figure out how to activate the next portion of the narrative, but overall it worked well.

Love to see experimentation work out.

This is a fine Gruescript game, similar to Robin Johnson's own. Gruescript is a parser/choice hybrid, where all actions are done by clicking links, but there are items, rooms, etc, and your actions can change depending on what items you have.

In this game, you are a Lovecraftian god who has been summoned. You go to find a party going on at a mansion, but a strange one at that. People have been locked in the basement all day, but you can't check on them until you fix things elsewhere.

There are a lot of classic puzzles: NPCs that want things, avoiding unwanted attention, codes, secrets.

Even though my German is poor, I found it easy to read (except one time I didn't pay attention and missed an important clue!) and the puzzles had good momentum, not so hard I felt frustrated but not too easy. I used the hints a couple of times, and they were very helpful.

Overall, a fun game that is just the right length for a relaxing afternoon.

Apparently this game is a kind of in-joke parody of a German game from years ago about going south.

This game is about going north in the desert. It requires a great deal of repetitive commands (I found it useful to enter commands like n.n.n.n.n.n.n.n to get through faster).

The idea is you're marching through a very, very large desert to get to the north. The narrator occasionally throws in funny quips.

I got to a point I could go no further, and I decompiled the game to get a hint, but I couldn't figure out how to move on. Eventually, I tried (Spoiler - click to show)take all, noticed (Spoiler - click to show)a shovel in my inventory, and the rest was easy from there.

No bugs I could see, and an amusing concept, but not much else.

For a more serious but still funny take on the idea, you could check out The Northnorth Passage. But I didn't mind this game, it was amusing and very simple for me, a poor German speaker, to play.

This was a pretty entertaining German game. Due to my weak German skills, I relied heavily on the accompanying map for help, so someone who solves the puzzles on their own may have a different experience. I also appreciate the fact that HILFE lists every verb needed to complete the game.

You play as the captain of a fishing vessel where things aren't going so well. You haven't found any fish at all! And so your crew has nothing to do. Maybe that's why almost all the food is gone. And why your dishes are covered in weird slime. And why your first mate seems to be chanting praises to unspeakable gods...or just talking to himself. One or the other.

This game has horror elements but also is self-conscious and amusing about it. I enjoyed the scripted events, active NPCs and adapting environments, and I appreciate that it was more story-focused and not too long or complex, although there were definitely a couple of puzzles that took me a while to figure out. Fortunately, there's a nice mechanism when dying that takes you to a recent 'checkpoint'. Had a good time with this one!

This was an entertaining story with some good puzzles.

You play as a young German person who has received notice that your uncle, who had lived in England since WWII, had died, leaving you his estate. You must travel to his town and collect your inheritance.

With its small town and early puzzles about breaking into a real estate office, I wondered if this would be an Anchorhead clone, but it goes a completely different, more historical direction.

This is a gruescript game, using Robin Johnson's engine, and it's probably the best-coded gruescript game I've seen outside of Robin Johnson's own.

One thing though is that some of the puzzles didn't make much sense to me. Now, I don't speak German very well and some of the puzzles relied on deciphering handwriting and such, but that wasn't too bad because it had some alt text. No, the hard part was with the (major spoiler) (Spoiler - click to show)statues, since the hints say they can be differentiated one from another because one is Big and one is Small, but they all have the exact same description!

So, I liked this game, overall fun, just had some hangups with a couple of puzzles. I like Michael Baltes's game Mariel, too, so it was fun to play more of his work.

This game is set in the Little Match Girl universe, which is very different than what it sounds like (to me it sounds like a drab and depressing slice of life series based on Victorian London, whereas in actuality its about a time-travelling assassin).

In this one, you have to take down the Snow Queen and her army of henchmen spread out over many worlds. In the meantime, you can add members to your party (up to 5), gain powerful abilities and engage in turn based combat (none of which were features of the previous Little Match girl games).

I had two experiences with this game, one 'okay' and one great.

In my first experience, I just plopped in and started exploring. I got confused by the large number of exits, especially diagonal ones, and I had forgotten the key feature of Little Match girl games (remember below for anyone in a similar position). Once I figured out how to go to other worlds, I met people but no one would join me. I kept gaining more abilities on my own and I was worried I'd get through most of the game without ever finding someone to help me.

So I asked for help from the author, and restarted. My second experience was much better. The three things that helped me were:
1. Keeping an actual map (I could have gotten a fairly early companion if I hadn't missed a room)
2. Remembering the key feature of Little Match Girl games (very light spoiler) (Spoiler - click to show)examining fire takes you to new places
3. Realizing the key to getting companions (moderate spoiler, got from author): (Spoiler - click to show)each companion requires one object from another world, and there's no companion in the first world.

With these in mind, I had a great time. There were some fun puzzles, and a variety of combat.

I'm actually interested in this a lot, because as an author I like to learn from these games, and they cover so many topics that at least something is always relevant to my current interests. The last little match girl game had an escape room that I liked, and I read it right when I was working on an escape room.

I play this game as I'm working on a combat mini-game. I had learned from someone else that having multiple antagonists made combat more interesting, and I was working on a system where you had a couple of robots with you you could program to fight.

So seeing how Ryan Veeder approached his combat was really interesting. Most randomized combat doesn't work well in IF, with Kerkerkruip being a major exception, but I think this one works well, especially with using HP to fuel attacks, even using HP to heal other's HP (but only one person being capable of it), as it can become a kind of resource management puzzle.

Overall, Vorple is working well here, with some surprises with sounds and colors. A couple of times when restarting or right after saving (maybe a coincidence?) the game automatically skipped through some cutscenes (like the very ending one), maybe because I had hit a lot of keys and there was a delay? Not sure, but I had to UNDO multiple times to see the ending correctly as it was just zooming past me. I'm almost sure it's something on my end but I'm putting it in the review in case it's useful for the author or happened to someone else.

I liked the plot threads about Ebenezabeth's overall growth and the ambiguity of her relationship with her father (is he possibly malicious?). I didn't really understand the overall storyline but I felt like it was supposed to have a lot of implied secrets (or maybe I accidentally skipped the opening?).

One of the areas (spoilered discussion about non-game stuff related to one area) (Spoiler - click to show)is a pink hotel in Hawaii, which is fun because I drove by that hotel a lot when I lived in Laie. It really stands out and for me was a big landmark in Hawaii, so I enjoyed seeing that).