Reviews by MathBrush

This game is a lovely metaphor for many things in life. In this game, you die every single day, and it's very inconvenient. You have to find ways of arranging your life around this fact. No one else really seems to notice, or if they do notice, it gets downplayed. Giving into it completely can ruin your income and friendships, but overdoing it can kill you faster or make you feel hopeless.

This metaphor seems a lot like the 'spoons' metaphor, where someone who has low energy (such as from chronic illness or depression) uses spoons to measure how many activities they can partake in during a day.

So you could see this game as being about chemotherapy, depression, anxiety, fibromyalgia, endometriosis, losing your faith, etc.

I played through to two bad endings first. I wondered if the game would show that there really is no good solution, or if it offered the hope of their being a solution of some kind. If you want to know which type of ending it has, I guess you'll have to play it.

I definitely think there's a lot of value in its overall messages. I have mild to moderate depression and am a single dad, so there are some things I struggled with for years that now I take shortcuts on, like using paper plates to cut down on dishes. Overall, I think this game will resonate with many people and I expect it to place highly in the Petite Mort competition.

(I also liked the self-referential part of the game about making a game. Is this the long version or the short version, or is it mostly ficitional and not self-referential at all?)

This was a clever game. I was nervous at first at how much text per page there was, so I clicked random links without reading to see how long the game was. I was surprised to see it end after one choice and two linear links.

But I was wrong.

This is a gauntlet-style game, where you have to make the right choice to proceed, or the wrong choice and fail. There are three choices.

The overall concept is one from old folklore (the kind recently popularized by SCP-4000) [actually, that was 6 years ago. So not that recent]: faery creatures must be spoken to very carefully to avoid shenanigans.

In this case, you have made a deal with a supernatural being for money. And to receive it, you have to be exceptionally careful in what you say; the exact kind of care you need to take is revealed as you play.

Overall, this was lots of fun, with a cool ending transition.

Making a conversation-based parser game in 4 hours is dicey, but can be rewarding. I made Halloween Dance in 4 hours, an ectocomp conversation game. It wasn't really very good, but I adapted its system into later games.

This game is even harder than Halloween Dance was, because I was doing an topics inventory-based conversation system. This game is more like a chatbot, where it picks up on words you type.

So it makes sense that, despite its remarkable achievements, the game still has some rough boundaries. It also doesn't have an ending; that, combined with unimplemented topics, makes it hard to tell if you've hit a roadblock because you can't guess what to type or if there's nothing left at all.

The story as far as I can find it is that something has been watching you and wants you to die and has mingled love and hate for you. I wasn't able to find any further distinguishing characteristics, besides it not being a ghost. The line-by-line writing was good; characterization-wise, it was rather one-noted.

So for me, as a game, this seems average. As a tech accomplishment, it seems above average. It's like how lifting a 20 lb weight isn't too impressive, but doing a one-handed backspring with a 20 lb weight is impressive. Writing a keyword-based conversation game in 4 hours is impressive.

This was a pleasant, compact Adventuron game. It had a feature I'm not used to seeing, where right-clicking on yellow words brought up possible actions. I don't think it was all possible actions, because in both cases I tried it it only brought up 'Examine', but I thought it was cool!

The idea is that you've accidentally released the ghosts of your ancestors and you have to capture them back into the box you got them from.

There are two main ghosts to catch, each with a couple of puzzles. These puzzles were well-thought out; it looks like this Petite Mort game went for polishing a smaller-scope game rather than pushing out a bigger untested game. I think that was a smart choice! This setup would easily allow expansion if the author ever desired to do so, and I would look forward to that. Still, it's pretty good as-is.

I liked the way this game was structured a lot. It has two major branch points, and at the end it lets you revisit them right away.

The game is about 9 archetypal people who land on an island in search of an archaeological treasure. Each is referred to by their profession, with you being The Linguist (like the game Clue, I guess).

In classic creepy story fashion, a curse appears that kills one and lures in others unless they can truly trust each other.

So the rest of the game is about talking with your crewmates and deciding who to trust.

I got one choice wrong the first time but replay was easy. I found the storytelling easy to read and clear in plot structure, and the countdown-days format sidesteps one of the biggest problems in choice-based IF: setting expectations for play-time. Quite of a few of the most popular Twine games are split into days with recurring patterns.

Overall, I did struggle a bit with understanding what clues were important in the choices, but this is honestly quite good for a 4-hour game and bug-free as far as I saw.

This is a short Choicescript game. I wondered if there were two endings, but I could only find one.

It's a family drama/mystery/surreal/slice of life game (?). You play as a dad whose child starts calling you the wrong name. They say it a lot, and the mom starts agreeing. Things begin to get a bit strange...

I liked this game. There is some ambiguity to it that let it apply to many things. It reminded me of relationships where people are hiding a dramatic secret, and of changing identities, and of the strange alienation that can come when you first become a parent and your entire life changes. Very fun.

This was a short pleasant story presented in Twine. It portrays, in reverse order, several Halloween celebrations of a teenage girl.

There's no overt message, but a lot of feeling and overall cohesion in atmosphere. A kind of mix of melancholy and unexpressible feelings, both good and bad, with an overall positive feeling (the way that I experienced it). Kind of game me the same feelings as *Little Women* or Disney's *Pinocchio*, like a coming of age story that is worthwhile but traumatic (I know those two evoke very different feelings but in me they both made me feel 'growing up is scary but solemnly good').

There aren't any choices in this. Choices often enhance my experience, which is why I lean to interactive fiction more than static fiction. As a story, though, this works, and the link-clicking does help with pacing.

This game was a wild ride. I don't recognize the engine used at all; you can cycle through choices by clicking, but then scrolling down counts as a choice. It is visually dramatic and fun, although occasionally I scrolled too far and missed a choice.

The setting is dramatic and the narrator voice fits it. You play in a world where the long peace between animals and man has fallen, and every living creature is out to destroy humanity. You have to escape dangerous krakens, rampaging birds, and murderous apes.

The game is zany and wild, but somehow still coherent, and it ends just before the concept could become tedious. Overall, very well done, and stunning that this was achieved in 4 hours.

This was a mournful, reflective, and gross game by KADW. And not gross in a bad way, gross in a cleansing way, like popping a zit or rinsing a filter until it’s clean.

You play as a wanderer in space who feels listless, uncaring of the outside world and desiring to be completely alone and shut the rest of the world out.

The prose is beautiful. One part made me think ‘I bet the author researched this and thought it was cool’; at least I thought it was cool (talking about approaching the sun):

"No. No one would see anything. At the distance where objects start to burn from approaching a star, they are already close enough to be indistinguishable to faraway observers."

The gross parts happen later, but it’s not so much a bad thing as a transformation, and it ties into the overall themes. There are two endings.

This game reminded me a bit of a fiction story about cordiceps fungi infecting humans, which I heard on the Creepy podcast as the story “madness, mutilation, death”. Very intriguing stuff!

This is a haunting twine game set in an apartment building. Every day, you can wake up and wander around the building, surprisingly being allowed in all your neighbor’s rooms. There, you can try to help them out with their problems. But, for all of you, life is kind of ‘meh’.

This is the kind of game that transforms the more you play it, which I found effective. I liked the game’s use of color and its gradually increasing use of mythological references.

I’m still not sure if I figured out the theme of the game in terms of the artwork we see at the beginning. The number 3 comes up a lot in the game, but given the prominence of that number in mythology, I’m not sure which 3 it was referencing, and would be interested in hearing others’ theories on it.

A brief but time-worthy game.

Ruber Eaglenest has made several games before with serious themes written in sensitive and poetic ways.

I found this game beautiful as I started it. The emphasis on colors and nature felt soothing, mixed with melancholy at being a ghost.

Interaction was confusing at times, perhaps to show what being a ghost would be like. You have three options most of the time, but they change as you select things, possibly in a pattern, possibly just based on how long you've waited. I never had too long to feel frustrated.

The ending was moving, and a reminder of (Spoiler - click to show)the horrors of war, and our responsibility to seek peace throughout the world. A very effective piece.

I saw the name of this and thought, ‘sounds like a Damon Wakes game’. Then I saw it was a Damon Wakes game.

What can I say? This game was longer than just one room. It seems based on Clue, with a bunch of different secret passages connecting different parts of a map.

The only real question is…when will the jumpscare come?

The actual jumpscare noise sounds like the FNAF ones but slightly different; was it homemade? Overall it reminded me of playing Ultimate Custom Night a bit. It seems like it acheived all of its goals (if its goals were to make players sigh, open up the game anyway, and then click through until jumpscared).

This is a Spanish Grand Guignol game about waking up in a seedship on its long journey through the stars.

It uses what is either AI or modified stock images for its scenes.

It hits on the most exciting time for a colony ship, the kind of time where you have to wake people up and make big decisions.

The system is choice-based, with an inventory (which, for me, wasn’t used) and a little space below the room description to describe the results of various actions.

It was neat, but ended very abruptly for me. I’ve asked others for confirmation, but it looks like right now the game just ends after a surprising reveal. If that was the whole game, I would have wanted more; if it’s a bug, I hope it’s fixed!

This is a game that I suspect rests entirely on understanding the lyrics of a song. Unfortunately, I’m playing without headphones while my son’s on a call, and so I had to keep it down, and the genre is metal with a screaming/distorted voice, so I have no idea what’s going on. The artist is credited, but not the song name, so I have no idea what the lyrics are.

The idea of the game is that you see a cute little worm which wants you to follow him. You then peek through a hole to see a party, and the song plays while the worm grows horns. I can only assume that .

It looks like this game is another game advertising Moiki’s new sound capabilities, which seemed to work very smoothly. The graphics and color transitions were also great. Judging as a game itself, its low interactivity and brief length, coupled with its reliance and careful listening, made it rank a bit lower in my mind, but I don’t think the author was trying to make a complex game, just show off some great multimedia. The band does sound nice, and I’m surprised their youtube channel only has 192 followers.

I believe this is an extended game that is part of the same group of students that produced the game Hotel Halloween, but this story is much longer than those (although still completable in under 15 minutes).

In this story, a visit to a graveyard takes your mind to a different time and a different place, where you are tasked with finding out exactly what is going on.

The game has several surprises, and the writing has touches of emotion and descriptiveness. There are a variety of endings. I felt like its plot arc had a good resolution by the end. One thing that could be improved is better spacing of the paragraphs in the text (just adding another blank line between them would work, I think).

I was interested upon seeing that Christina Nordlander wrote this; when I started IF in 2015, I felt like I saw her name everywhere, so it's fun seeing someone who I consider 'famous' come back.

This is a Playfic game that has a large scope for a Petite Mort entry (completed in 4 hours or less). You are walking in the middle of the night and approach a house, looking for a light source.

The game is fairly complex, with multiple objects that can be turned on and off and a bit of branching in the middle. I found one way to do something very dangerous, which produced a shocking result, but looking at the code later, I realized I had missed another, more liquid event.

Of course with a Petite Mort game there are some coding issues here and there. I didn't encounter bugs but I had huge trouble finding a way type the name of a certain glowing thing because it had a two-name word in the code and I kept trying either the first name by itself or the second, but never both together.

Overall, I liked the vibes of this game; it reminded me of a couple of old Twilight Zone Episodes, somehow.

This petite morte game surprised me with how polished and nice it looked, with a dark color scheme combined with eery accents and cephalopod-based art.

It's a choicescript game about forbidden knowledge that comes from unholy texts. Again, I was surprised at how much text the game has.

But, it ends abruptly, which makes sense, as this is a Petite Morte speed-IF game. And it relies very heavily on a famous work of horror fiction, so some of its best parts were parts I had seen many times before. So the things that stick with me the most are its own innovations, like the abrupt change in setting.

Overall, a neat concept, and fun to play.

This is a visual novel with excellent background images and ambient music, and which has no interactions other than clicking 'next'.

The story pays careful attention to first and second person, with 'me' being a young child named Pierce and 'you' being a figure that grows more throughout the story.

This is a family drama, and deals with Pierce's loss of a family member in the past and with haunting visions.

Reviews can serve a few purposes, two of which are telling the author if they did a good job and giving others an idea of whether they'd enjoy the game or not. My general review system incorporates writing, emotional impact, and interactivity, among others. I believe the author intended this story to have its impact almost entirely through writing; many kinetic fiction authors use the size of paragraphs and new pages to give the 'next' button a more active feel, but this game felt to me to lack even that kind of interactivity, with fairly uniform page sizes.

So, I think the author succeeded in writing an excellent narrative, and I think they should be commended for succeeding in their desired text. I also think that many users are interested in interactive aspects of stories on IFDB, and so my overall rating of a 3 takes that into account.

I do wish I understood the game a bit better. I played Doki Doki Literature Club for the first time recently while researching visual novels; in it, the 'literary' character writes a poem about a ghost under a streetlamp that is flickering. Once you read it, she says something like, 'and of course you know it wasn't about a ghost, it was about a woman trapped in a situation'. And the protagonist is apologetic at not realizing that or understanding the metaphor, but it makes them feel more appreciative of the author and her poem. I feel the same way with this story; it's clear the story isn't really about what it contains, but I don't think I got the real message. What comes across strongest to me is the alienating feeling of being a young child with no family support and everyone you love feeling like they're drifting away, but that doesn't fit with the role of the housekeeper in the game, so I feel like I can't grasp at the 'center' of the story.

This is a well-made Bitsy game about a creepy hotel.

Bitsy is a minimalist text and pixel art animation game engine. Here, the author has modelled a hotel with quite a number of items scattered around, and multiple rooms.

The ambient messages you find around are effectively chilling. At one point, I was checking something out the second time and the game changed drastically. I made a choice, and got a very interesting ending.

I don't know if there are multiple endings. If the one I found is the only one, that's neat; if not, I appreciate the branching. Overall, a very strong bitsy game.

This game was made in just half an hour. It’s a bitsy game (or similar), with arrow key movement and animations, and text triggered when you reach certain squares.

It’s a brief telling of a legend of a creature that comes for kids that don’t sleep well. It features some spooky urban-legend type horror. The students at my school just finished a unit on legends, monsters, and superstitions in spanish-speaking countries, so I sent this to our Spanish teacher.

The animation is very good, although it took me a while to realise that the upper-left picture is like a ‘zoomed in’ version of things (maybe our POV?) and I don’t know what the lower rectangle. Creepier than I thought it would be.

This is a moiki game, designed to introduce English speakers to the format. I’ve seen it used in a lot of French games before; this particular game shows off some of the text effects and of course the new audio effects very well, but undersells the other powers of the engine a little bit, which can do very complex state tracking and branching.

I think ‘deliciously frightful’ could well describe this story; it has constant sounds, the majority of which are frightful whispers. It reminds me of an audio version of the children’s hidden picture book where there’s a creepy creepy gate with a creepy creepy house with creepy creepy stairs and a creepy creepy box…the anticipation builds as the whispers become more intense. I kept wondering, ‘will there be a jumpscare now? How about now? How about now???’

So the emotion was there, and the polish. The overall story was fairly small and simple, but any longer would likely have made the audio element too big or too annoying to record.

I enjoyed this, so thanks!

This is a Spanish Grand Guignol game.

It looks really neat, with a Vorple interpreter that adds a smoky background, and it has a unique mechanic: it's a parser game, in Inform, but if you hold down shift, it highlights keywords, some in white and some in red.

The imagery was vivid: bronze doors framing the hall to a dragon, engravings speaking to you.

Then I passed to a new scene, and it seemed deeply familiar...that's when I realized that this was a translation of @VictorGijsbers De Baron!

I loaded up the beginning of that game to check. Some parts are distinctly different (like the ending of the first scene) but it's definitely the same game.

Afterwards I read the notes (this is just a preview so only has a scene or two), and it does say it is a re-writing of De Baron with different words. The 'author's note' is just Victor's ABOUT message translated, while the other note goes into the details mentioned above.

I definitely like the parser-hybrid system, especially since I can still type. The story of De Baron is one that I find uncomfortable (intentionally so!) so I'm not really looking forward to this being finished but I do like this system and think it'd see good use in many games (kind of reminiscent of Texture mixed with Inform).

This brief Twine game effectively uses every word to show just how every action of the player leads to unmistakable consequences. Without the need for flowery language, complex mechanisms, it sparks debate and discussion.

They say the mark of a good game is that it gets better over time, and I can say with all honesty that the first page was by the worst.

This is a short, heartfelt Twine game about a remote student who feels isolation while also being forced to eat slabs of meat every day due to being a wolf.

It's a nice blend of anxious mundanity and stressful metaphor that reminds me a lot of Early Twine.

The story itself is pretty simple, a daily routine of boredom and suffering mixed with longing and hope for something better one day.

The writing is where it shines; I loved the explanation of encapsulation and abstraction (which I constantly have to remind students about for IB exams, since they often forget what it means) and how it ties neatly into the other themes of the story. So I think that's by far the best part of the game, how expressively and neatly it's written.

I think this is the only Adventuron game in the competition. I always like Dee Cooke's games, but seeing how short it was made me wonder if it would be able to tell a complete or engaging story.

It ended up being funny, relatable, exasperating, and had quite a good chunk of writing in it.

It's pretty simple. You are trying to pull out of a supermarket by turning right (which for me in the US would be the equivalent of turning left). I saw a complicated map and thought I'd have to navigate complex commands, but it didn't turn out that way...

I won't say how the game ends but I was amused and honestly impressed by how many different scenarios the author could think of to cause problems with turning right. It reminds me of living in Philadelphia, where I felt like I had this kind of experience a lot. I'm glad I'm in Dallas now, where things are thankfully a lot better.

Very amusing, and I found no errors.

'She has been a solid and your friend for a long time.'

This is a solid opening for a game about your friend turning liquid in a fatal way.

This game has an utterly unique (to me) presentation, with a kind of game-boy looking feel and collapsible menus made with plus signs.

It's very short, and that shortness adds both urgency and futility to the game. What are you going to do in the precious time that you have?

This kind of game to me feels 'right', like someone's using interactive fiction in a way that it's always been meant to be used. This makes so much more sense as a text game than as a text (where the sense of unfinishedness would be absent) or as an illustrated game (I think the mind's eye is so evocative here).

This brief work was entered in the 2024 Neo-Twiny Jam.

It's a well-written and polished game about a spacecraft where survival is no longer really an option.

I found the writing dark and atmospheric, and the three possible endings all presented a real difference due to our agency.

However, I didn't feel like I had enough time for the impact of the weight of the story to take full effect in the brief time I encountered it.

In this game, made for Neo Twiny Jam and the Intentionally Bad IF jam, you play as what seems to be a woman obsessed with a man, with stream of consciousness thoughts flying around the screen as events progress to the breaking point.

The main innovation here (and I believe this was meant to be intentionally bad, given where the game was entered) is having the text and links be haphazard: some words tilted, others flickering, posting sentences out of order, links slowly fading in, etc.

The words are disjointed and hard to follow at times, which gives the effect of showing obsession.

My usual scoring system doesn't work too well here. On the one hand, the author has achieved his goals of being obtuse and intentionally bad, and has put a lot of work into it in a polished way. On the other hand, I believe others may not enjoy playing for the exact same reasons.

So, I will put a 2 here on the 'official' score, but a 4.5/5 for the author for the work put into this game.

A while ago I wrote on intfiction talking about a trend of games that followed a similar pattern:

"The text is usually a variant of ‘Oh yes, I am the bonecrusher, and I love crushing bones! The sound my victims make when they squeal is delightful’

and then choices are like:
-BREAK MORE BONES
-DELIGHT IN BONEBREAKING
-LICK THE MARROW"

People were questioning whether such games even exist, but this is another one in that category, almost exactly what's described above (down to being excited about removing body parts) even if (Spoiler - click to show)we find out some of it was an act later on.

The majority of the game is a person who livestreams vivisecting and torturing a criminal while describing how much they enjoy inflicting pain and hurting them. It has some illustrations, but they are very 'clean' and more like an anatomy book and not very realistic (thank heavens!)

This genre continues to be popular among those making games, so I assume it has an audience somewhere who loves it, and I hope they find this game. For me, I don't think I'll ever see the appeal.

The ending twist doesn't make much sense because (Spoiler - click to show)removing someone's liver is already a death sentence measured in hours, there's no reason someone capable of removing a liver and a stomach during a vivisection wouldn't know that. So why react so differently to murder when you've already murdered?

This story is the first in a series about a world where soldiers craft living weapons that take the appearance of humans.

In this story, a man and his male-looking weapon are travelling in a deep snowy region. They love each other, and are searching for something that even they don't know everything about.

The writing and worldbuilding were solid. This is part of the single choice jam, so it wasn't amazingly interactive, but my only choice felt real and led to some pretty different results.

I would definitely play more games in the series.

This is part of the Single Choice Jam, and is inspired by a short Japanese film called Boze.

In it, you are a weakened and forgetful god who is disturbed by the approach of a visitor. Fearful, the visitor has to select between ritual items, each of which reveals more about him and about you.

It's a short game, but handles the 'forgetful god' concept well, and made me interested in looking up its inspirations.

This is a short game that depicts a scenario that is all too human but phrased in fantastical terms: deciding whether to remain home with uncomfortable comforts or to strike out into the unknown and frightening outer world.

More specifically, you a young woman who has run into the woods in the hopes of finding a witch and leaving home behind. But that may be harder than you thought.

The writing is, to my taste, overwrought. This is subjective and not objective, but I think that the elaborate analogies and similes can get confusing. For instance your heartbeat is described as:

Your heart thuds in your chest, the reverberation of an ancient drum that has beat and beat and beat since the beginning of time. It echoes with the cries of a hundred anguished souls, tied by the same thread that follows you from home, stretching across acres of flat, empty land before it becomes a tangled mess in the trees that shield you from view.

I wasn't aware until after I had played and until I was writing this that (Spoiler - click to show)the thread mentioned here is 'real'-ish and story-important, while the ancient drum is not.

Similarly, we meet someone described thus:
(Spoiler - click to show)She smiles and the rows of her sharp teeth—thousands upon thousands of them, lining her palette and receding into her throat—shine and gleam in the total darkness.

Thousands is a lot! I looked up (Spoiler - click to show)how many teeth sharks have, since that's an animal with a lot of teeth, and they only have around 100 or 200, but the whale shark has thousands, and to fit them all in they're really, really tiny.

So I think that for my personal feelings the writing could be toned down a bit, but I did enjoy the setup and the choice, it was one of the better choices I've seen in this jam (the Single Choice Jam).

This is a brief story entered into the Single Choice jam.

It is the climax of a story with no buildup: a queen is in full rage and despair, throwing things and overall suffering because her husband, the king, has caused the death of her brother. She then has a choice on how to react.

As part of a longer work, this would work really well, but for me, in its snippet form, it had less of an effect. It's like seeing a car crash on the side of the road with ambulances; it can be sobering and make you think, but you won't remember it much a day or two later. But for the family of the person involved, it can be traumatic and life changing.

So here, I felt like an event of massive importance was happening, but it wasn't one I had established a connection to yet. The author did use a variety of emotions and offered several paths, and the writing is overall solid.

This visual novel is part of the Single Choice Jam. In it, you play as a researcher on an underwater base where everyone has been slaughtered after a humanoid creature was dragged up out of the abyss.

The highlight here is seeing the beautiful artwork, of which there is quite a lot for the brevity of the game. It has a style that is distinct and fits well with underwater horror.

The storyline is gripping and intense. I did find a couple of typos, and some analogies didn't land for me (specifically a part about 'not an oz' when referring to information). Overall, though, I was glad I played and found it interesting.

This is a brief visual novel entered into the Single Choice Jam.

It has some moody background music and background images that set the tone appropriately for a conversation that has undercurrents of tension. You play as someone eating a meal with a person they haven't seen in a long time. There's a flood going on in town, too, which becomes a metaphor for the emotional story.

In the end, you come down to a single choice. Both options had realistic-feeling effects. The writing on the whole thing is solid, and it generally feels polished.

This game paints you as a character who wants to ask out someone in a market who you've seen before, but you have to settle on the right approach.

Unfortunately, our protagonist does not know that they are in a game entered into the Anti-Romance Jam. How unfortunate!

This is also part of the Single Choice Jam, so we only get one shot. But quite a few of them end pretty bad.


One that made me chuckle was (Spoiler - click to show)"Look, I'm just going to lay it out: I've noticed you here before, and I would really like to kiss you. So... what do you say?" and the reaction that followed.

Overall, the game definitely hit home, and having little choices right at the front made the interactivity work well.

This short Twine game is set in a fictional universe where you are a kind of seer having difficulty with your visions.

I feel like this part of a larger work, with some pre-established characters. It was a bit difficult to keep track of at times, especially since it used terms the 'the monster' and 'tyrant' where I thought it might mean a real monster, given that this is a fantasy setting.

The game itself is very polished, and includes some audio and some appropriately-timed text on one passage. It's part of the single choice jam, so there is, of course, only one choice.

Overall, the coding is impressive and I didn't see any typos or bugs, and I thought the choice had some emotional impact to it.

I could have sworn I had played a game just like this before, with similar color scheme and theme (high school reunion to see someone you were once close to), but I couldn't find it anywhere online. Then I remember, I actually read through this once before for the author!

Anyway, this game is about going back to a high school reunion hoping to see a girl you had a huge crush on before.

This is part of the single choice jam, so there's no deep interactivity, just a single moment that can alter your future irrevocably.

The writing is poignant, and feels 'real'. I went to my 20th high school reunion when I happened to be in town and while I didn't have a former crush there it was great to see and connect with friends I had once known.

Very strong story. The background does make it a little hard to see the grey links sometimes, but that's the only real drawback I can see.

This game was part of the single choice jam.

It's generally polished; I found no bugs or typos.

The writing is descriptive. It was a primarily linear narrative, due to the nature of the jam, but it works well as such, with a strong story about a half-Asian kid and their mother's attempts to bridge a generational gap.

It had good emotional impact; I know it's based on real life, but even depictions of real life can become one-dimensional. Both characters seemed complex and thoughtful here.

While the interactivity is severely limited, the game made good use of 'blocked out' options to highlight futility.

This game is part of a group of similar stories. Other such games by this author have consisted of a classic short story with modern additions by the author where people comment on the story, including a text box where the reader can type something which the game then interprets using sentiment analysis to change some subsequent text.

This game is no exception, although it is smaller than the others. It is also different from the others, in that its 'meta-commentary' is no longer a separate, modern story; instead, it's an addition in-universe, still with the sentiment-analysis text box. However, due to this being a speed-IF, only one text box is included.

The short story chosen this time is obscure; I only found one 'hit' when searching, on an internet archive of an old magazine.

My view on these games has certainly changed over time. I went from believing they had no interaction to believing that they are excellent at hiding all the interactivity.

A game that makes you think its responding to your actions, even if it doesn't, is a game that is very fun to play, if only for one time. (For instance, see Attack of the Yeti Robot Zombies). But the converse is true; a game that does extensive work, but leads the player to think it does none, is not fun to play. Simply putting a message next to the box that is, as the author once said, metaleptic (or maybe extra-diegetic?) saying 'positive sentiment detected' in green and then highlighting the subsequent changed text in green or using red for negative sentiment would instantly improve reaction; this is just one idea, there are many ways to make it look like the game is really thinking.

Like a character says the movie The Prestige:

"The trick was too good, it was too simple. The audience hardly had time to see it[...]he's a wonderful magician; he's a dreadful showman. He doesn't know how to dress it up, how to sell this," and I think that applies to this whole series of games.

This game has a classic setup: you awake, disoriented, from a cryopod, alone on a starship. It’s been used dozens or hundreds of times before, but I always enjoy it.

You meet your ship and have the chance to walk around and exam things. The game isn’t too long, but I liked the writing and the two characters.

There are at least two endings. I liked one of the ones I got. I think one thing the game does well is its focus on sensations, including touch and sight. The descriptions are vivid.

All that said, the game is brief and doesn’t have a lot of time to develop emotional momentum, although it does well with what it has.

This game has you come to your partner’s door only to find that you have been cast out! The relationship has unilaterally been declared to be over.

What can you do? There really aren’t many options, due to the coldheartedness of your partner. Even talking only works once. This ends up being similar to one move games, but you get several chances to figure out what you can do.

This game is polished. I found no bugs and many custom responses, even with obscure commands like “push me” being blocked off to ensure consistent responses. It was fairly descriptive with regards to the people. Interactivity was natural, with many responses being implemented and subtle suggestions pushing you towards new actions.

Emotional impact was dampened a bit. We’re not told why everything happened. Did we cheat? Did our partner get a job in Beirut? Are we 14? I like to suspend disbelief and immerse myself in characters, but I didn’t have much to grab onto here.

The game is short, so I likely wouldn’t play it again. So I’m giving 3 stars. The workmanship is great, and the game seems to accomplish the author’s goals, but every audience member interacts with a work differently, and for me I’m more of a sucker for story and plot than character and personality, and longer or unique interactions over small bites of classic interactions.

In this short game you have to get through a party, passing 4 obstacles. You are rated on your performance by your boss and by your partner (one caring about the impression you made and one caring about the time you come back).

The obstacles are all different people. This is set in a larger world laid out in many games, so you can learn more about those characters there, but knowledge of those other games isn’t necessary.

The concept of replaying this game to get a perfect other is pretty good since it’s short with several paths per character. But there are two things about it that are frustrating: the e sing doesn’t give much feedback on what you did wrong, with just a pass or fail for each of your evaluators, and no gradations in the way they respond. Second, the two goals aren’t independent; you have to pass the first to reach the second. So it feels like there’s some underutilized potential.

This is a great game to code though; I feel like figuring this kind of thing out makes making future puzzles easier.

One of my favorite operas, if not my very favorite, is the Hungarian opera Duke Bluebeard’s Castle, a short two-singer psychological opera that turns the tale of Bluebeard and his wives into a story of almost pure metaphor.

So it’s always nice to see some allegorical Bluebeard content.

Alas, this wondrous tale is both a bit short and not interactive outside of actions. But hey, my favorite opera is short too.

On this you don’t feel a connection to traditional womanhood, but your parents arrange your marriage to Bluebeard anyway. But Bluebeard is certainly not what he seems.

This story has some layers to it; there was one implication I only just now realized besides the more clear ones. Overall, very interesting.

This is a short romantic story about going on a road trip with someone you love.

There’s a cast of supporting characters along with our main love interests, and a long road journey over which there are several hotel stays that cause tension due to sharing a room together.

I was really torn on how to rate this.

On one hand, the characters have their own quirks and idiosyncrasies. The story is grounded in reality and a lot of distinct events occur (like car trouble). Conversation feels realistic, and the couple fit as a pair.

On the other hand, we are told we are in love but I don’t really get to see what makes either person lovable. I think being told you’re in love is really important in these stories, but I think seeing why could improve it.

On the other other hand, maybe it was there all along and I just didn’t see it. For instance, in one part we help defuse a tense situation, and in another we offer reassurance. Being a comfort and a help is more than enough reason to fall in love.

So, I’ll give this the higher of the two scores I was debating, with 4 stars.

This shirt game has strong writing , good descriptions, and a variety of paths to take.

I generally like vampire games because they give a chance to explore the human condition from an extreme viewpoint. This game is no exception. It tells two stories simultaneously: one of a vampire looking for anonymous, quick blood, and another of an ace loner who skirts around the edges of societies and relationships without committing.

The simultaneous stories play off each other well. And I liked the fact that I could open up or keep it all close to my chest, or let my little fish go.

Overall the only nitpicks I have are minor. A few too many choices felt like “stop playing now or continue on to more interesting material”, although on replaying a lot of the “stop playing” choices actually lead to the same place as the “keep going” (specifically (Spoiler - click to show)trying to leave Lyle early on). But overall has a lot of good stuff for its brief content.

I liked this game quite a bit until I ran into some snags.

You play as an older kid/young adult who is making some food at home. You have to balance the demands of your family while still cooking. It even comes with a neat meter to show how much patience you have left.

I found it hard to strategize or figure out what’s going on. I thought there were only two endings after 5 or 6 playthrough sans still haven’t found one, but there are four in total. It’s not clear what options decrease Provence or whether that changes an ending, and it’s hard to say why one oath ends in catharsis while another in unhappiness. So I felt like there was a mismatch between my attempts at communication and the game’s response.

I did like the lively setting and the character and world details. Very descriptive and fun outside of my struggles.

My kingdom for a crumb of context!

I liked the setup of this a lot. The art, intro and the fact it was in the Dialogue jam got me in the mindset “I will enjoy this”.

And I did. This is a brief dinner conversation between two individuals, the text spooling out in a format like SMS messages in different colors, but representing a spoken conversation.

I felt like I had a lot of control over how I reacted. I could be the overly fussy partner, the silent one, the gently encouraging. Despite only one ending, my oath there had agency.

However, almost all context is absent from the piece. I have started drawing a lot recently, and I usually spend 90% of the time getting the outlines right and 10% shading. I’ve noticed that the shading tends to add a lot more than most of the rest of the work, even though it’s small.

I feel like context is like the shading here. The format of the story is perfect, everything in place is right. But who are we? What kind of situation is this? What are we? Who is “him?” I don’t think everything needs to be spooked out, but it would be nice to add little grounding touches. Are we cooking on a wood stove? Was our train late? Do I hang up a wet overcoat? Was “he” smoking again? Little details like this could add so much flavor to this.

However, it’s not completely necessary. This works in its own sense, formless and abstract, but it may be nice to state that as a goal to prepare readers for a state of mind ready to accept an abstract situation.

This game was fun. I immediately felt invested in my little rat character. I learned more about the little world I was part of, my fellow rats, my simple life.

Alas, it ended quickly, and before I could interact with this ratty world. The description given is fun to read, but this felt like the beginning of a narrative arc, rather than a complete one.

This game features a portrait of a single person, currently resting.

It’s a fairly compact game, arranged in a network of interconnected nodes rather than a linear or branching narrative. Each lingers on a distinct feature of the man in question (I believe it’s a man due to pronoun use).

The writing is evocative and clear, making it easy to imagine this person. The narrative voice seems to care about him quite a bit. And the game is thoroughly polished.

However, despite the clear vision, I didn’t connect emotionally with this guy. Maybe because a purely physical description of a man isn’t something that interests me in real life, unless it were a relative or a friend. Maybe some extra background revealed through hints could carry this even further, or a mystery that can only be pieced together in pieces.

But it doesn’t have to be expanded. What’s here accomplishes several things, like providing a vivid picture of one person. It is labeled as following the rules of the former IF art show, and would be an appropriate entry for that former comp.

This fairly short game uses old German lettering and a conlang, or constructed language, (with some translations given) to show you as a soul who desires to achieve their true body.

You have to interact with a doctor’s office, every choice you make (including your use of the conlang)showing what you are like. When you reach the doctor, you ask for your true body, but the doctor will only grant this if you have modeled the right behavior.

It’s easy to read this as a trans metaphor, whether it is or not, with some doctors requiring you to exhibit “correct” dysphoria before receiving hormones, but it has enough of common experience in it to apply to many situations.

This game seems to be one giant loop. It's a pretty amusing representation of the frustration of starting a new board game and trying to get everything set up.

It's just a small bit of game, so there's not too much to say. If there were some explanation that was missing, that could make it more interesting, or if there were some hidden code, but the twine file doesn't show any interesting hidden material.

I saw spoilers already on this games secret, but I've only played this game for now so I'll judge it on its own.

It's a fun parser game that reappropriates directions N/E/S/W to be the initials of your friends. Directional movement corresponds to visiting your friends and talking to them.

Your goal is to convince your 4 19-yr old friends to come together, to be reunited again. Each friend you talk to can bring up different topics. Mentioning those topics to others can provoke new topics.

I had fun with this, and convinced 2/4 friends and had a third ready to go. But I couldn't logic out how to help the 4th one, so I just threw everything I had at them repeatedly until I solved it.

Neat idea!

This is a brief Adventuron game with some fun graphics that seem custom-made and a few rooms.

I was able to complete it very quickly. There were only a few rooms, and each room only had one way to go forward. There was one puzzle which I solved by using the pictures, as the text didn’t seem to provide many clues.

There were several errors. The game started by saying that some settings were not configured, and the first page has a big typo in capital letters. The puzzle solution also acted a bit weird, like it was reacting to keywords rather than commands. The very ending didn’t make sense to me the way it was written.

Overall, it feels more like a programming exercise than a full game, but this is exactly what a good game can look like early on in the process before it’s fully developed, so I would tell this author this isn’t really bad, just needs more work.

This game is about Pride (and given the rainbow flag, I assume with LGBT pride and pride month). However, it doesn't really talk about that in the game at all.

Instead, there are six paths, each corresponding to one letter in 'pride' (and an exclamation mark). Each of the letter paths has part of a hidden message that unlocks a final message.

On the letter paths, there are copies of the letter that you are currently learning about, each corresponding to a positive word, like Respect or determination.

However, all of the connections are really tenuous. The words don't have anything to do with Pride specifically; they're just describing positive traits in generic terms. It could equally as well be Pride in your local grocery store, patriotic pride, religious pride, pride in rehab, etc.

I think it might have been neat to tailor the message more to the theme.

This game is centered around three essentially immortal space marines (or equivalent) who love to make out and who are the last resort for armies to employ.

The game looks cool visually, and the writing is descriptive.

The plot was a bit hard for me to follow. A lot of it is just the main characters really enjoying laying on top of or close to each other. There is a fight, and at first I thought there'd be a big twist as they see something amazing, but it's just (Spoiler - click to show)the other side surrendering, which is what was implied would happen anyway.

Some of the links move the story forward and some are 'asides', but there's no back button and no way to distinguish the two links. I'd appreciate some way to know if a link is side info or 'go forward irrevocably'.

Overall, I found it polished and descriptive, but had difficulties with the interactivity and felt a reduced emotional impact due to confusion with the story.

If there were more games in the series, it would really cool to learn about the characters backgrounds, or major differences between them, or how they 'work'.

I need to preface this review by saying that I'm giving this game 5 stars only because it specifically fits some very niche interests of mine. I think if I was just giving recommendations for general audience it would likely be 3 stars due to being short.

This game starts with you inside a school looking out on a courtyard, seeing some people arguing. You approach them, wanting to learn more, but you realize you have nothing to offer them.

The plot then swerves in several ways. The rest of the review is in spoilers:
(Spoiler - click to show)
It becomes clear this is a post-apocalyptic world. There are few enough humans that the group you've found just calls themselves One, Two, and Three.

The big twist is that you forget everything every 30 minutes or so. You've established a routine for yourself to stay alive, but you weren't aware of the forgetting fact. You discover that someone stayed with you previously and took care of you, but also manipulated you.


The game is definitely short, which is why I hedge my recommendation, but I love the concept and the combination and it inspires me to think of the possibilities. I'd love to write a game with similar mechanics (it used to be very popular in parser games twenty years ago but I think it died out).

This game was entered into the back garden of Spring Thing.

It is game written using bitsy, which uses minimalist graphics and is typically used to make interactive fiction through text boxes which can pop up with different interactions.

This game only has a single word of text in it, though. You simply progress through the same screen multiple times, that screen becoming somewhat of a maze. Eventually you discover a bit more, and have a musical ending. Throughout, music plays.

Overall, I found the piece was very successful at setting a mood and communicating an expression. I found the maze repetitive and would have enjoyed more written words.

I found this game by searching for the games with the highest standard deviation.

This game is just a Warhammer quote fed into Inform 7 (with one extra line, I think). It's amusing because it compiles, thus creating the crux of the Warhammer setting but...that's it.

Pretty funny as an April Fool's joke.

I used an Internet Archive backup to play this game.

In it, you start with a one-sentence story, and then expand on it. After three or four rounds of expansion, you get a full-fledged story.

There is quite a variety; I found a cheating king who broke his wife's heart, an evil witch who sucked the life force from her husband, and a mysterious assassin who married the king and left her old life behind only to be forced to return to her old habits.

The structure seems to be completely branching, which makes sense as Inklewriter isn't an exceptionally powerful engine. There may be some state tracking, though I'm not sure.

Overall, the stories were each high quality, but this overall feels slight in terms of its interactive structure.

This is a choice-based game written using a parser. At the time it came out, 2008, choice-based games had a long history already but they had never been popular in the IFComp or r*if usenet communities. The reviews from that time indicate that people found its choice-based nature unappealing.

The game is based on a writing prompt, and that prompt is essential to understanding the game. You begin in a cafe with three people around you called B, C, and D, and an American couple, one with a lisp and one with a stutter.

The speech impediments are part of the prompt; it can be difficult to write impediments in a way that doesn't come of as either condescending or mocking, but I think this pulls it off well.

For a choice-based game, this is actually quite complex. Time progresses no matter what you do, but you can focus on talking to each of the three people with you, or Wait. Each person you're talking to has a variety of options on what you can ask them about. I found that the game could recognize even small parts of the prompt, so if a question started with 'ask whether...', then typing ASK WHETHER was enough to solve it.

I remember trying this in the past and thinking it didn't go much beyond the prompt, so I was surprised this time that there was a major twist in the story. I had to reread to make sure I was understanding right. I'm surprised the other reviews don't mention that.

I genuinely liked this game; I liked the twist, the parser added a little 'crunchiness' to the choice interactivity, and it was well-written. The only thing that seemed 'off' was that choosing to just 'WAIT' ends up with an interaction that doesn't seem to fit the story as written.

This is an example of dynamic fiction, where you have no interactivity (although there is one instance of cycling text) and the entire purpose of the links is to pace the reading.

I’m not really against dynamic fiction. It’s useful in shorter stories to hide the total length of the story and keep you guessing where the end will come. It’s less useful in longer stories, as players get frustrated. Thankfully this is pretty short.

This game is about wormholes opening up and taking away things and people, with the reasons for it slowly revealed. I liked it, and I appreciated the sentiment it was trying to impart.

I generally like Bez’s work, as my view on creative writing is that it’s a way to share parts of our experiences and feelings with others, and Bez’s work is generally very effective at communicating how they feel.

This is a shorter game, drawing on some of the cozier seeds. It uses a warm color palette and a background sound of (I think) a fire crackling.

It has you sitting and thinking about all the bad things in your life, picking over the negative thoughts with a fine tooth comb. I remember playing it for the first time, feeling like it was going to be a downer game, but then I was pleasantly surprised to see things turned on their heads.

Overall, a good game and one that had a positive impact on me. I do think I slightly prefer Bez’s longer games, but that’s about it.

This was a nice game to end the comp on. It’s a relatively brief and poetic Twine game that uses sound (which I believe comes from the seed being used) as well as line drawings to convey a story.

The idea is that you’ve found a journal that talks about someone missing someone else, and the journey it’s taken them on. I can’t tell if it’s metaphorical or literal, but either way it’s interesting.

The game is very short, but it serves its purpose well.

This choice-based game is inspired by Shakespeare’s Sonnet 128, as well as the Reverse a Poem prompt (and the surprisingly popular Color Palettes prompt, which has been used in at least 3 of the games I’ve seen.)

I enjoy Shakespeare (although his sonnets and other poems are the works of his I’ve studied least), so I was interested to see where this goes.

It’s split into 4 pieces, each reflecting part of the sonnet, and inviting you to compare the storyline with the sonnet itself as you go.

You show up at a Valentine’s party for older singles, some of whom your friendly with and others less so. Interaction comes from choosing who to talk to and how to interact with them.

I tend to immerse myself in characters as I play and to suspend disbelief, imagining me to be the character myself. Obviously characters sometimes do things that I wouldn’t do, like theft and murder. But I had to pull myself out of immersion in this game, as I was presented with a woman, told that she is married but separated, and given a chance to put my hand on her thigh. An extramarital affair is something I’ve seen happen multiple times in real time and they have cause the majority of pain I’ve experience in my life, so I had to eject my immersion and puppet the character like an astral projection the rest of the game. I don’t think that was the author’s intent at all, and they certainly can’t anticipate every person’s reaction to different themes!

Fortunately, I could simply just not click on certain options and the game came to a satisfying conclusion. I found myself intrigued by the drama and drawn into the action.

The best parts of the game to me were the characters who are painted in vivid detail. I felt like I already knew Jack and Henry and Aline, like I had met them before and could picture them in my eye (I saw Henry as a younger Robert Redford).

A few times I felt like the pacing could have slowed down a bit to explore some of the more interesting moments, like a certain violent moment with a bottle. This is an author who I think would do equally well with long form fiction as with short form fiction.

The styling was well done and the overall presentation looked great.

This game is about someone experiencing the worst the world has to offer: isolation, hunger, infection, homophobia, perpetuating cycles of abuse, and, worst of all: cryptocurrency.

It’s a short game, well-designed with animated background transitions and varying fonts and colors.

You play as a recluse without stable unemployment who has recently fled a discord server where they were picked on and called various slurs. They find hope in a new discord for a cryptocurrency.

While all of this is happening, their house becomes increasingly moldy.

I didn’t put it together until now, because while playing I thought these two storylines were disjoint, but the spread of mold and the cycle of crypto’s crash and boom have a lot in common and those parallels must be what the other was on about.

There are several kinds of creepy moments here, from strange questions to plenty of physical horror. The slurs made me most uncomfortable; it was clear, though, that their use was not positive and was reflective of the ill mental state of the character.

Overall, a thoughtful game. Reminded me a lot of when crypto first got really big; I looked up how it worked and couldn’t figure out how it would be sustainable due to the need to keep long lists of past transactions in each interaction, so I tried to code up my own and got it to work, and my dean decided to use it as fake currency for his econ class (we made proof of work really easy so that it wouldn’t destroy the environment). I thought it would make it clear to the students how silly crypto was, but they got really into it. But the mining was annoying so they eventually abandoned the crypto part and made it fiat by putting it on the dean’s spreadsheet, which pretty much sums up the usefulness of crypto in real life (it’s not).

Anyway, a good horror game but definitely check the trigger warnings.

This visual novel in French has you play as a character named Erika Wolfenstein. From what I gather (my French is imperfect), you have been sent by a spacefaring organization to visit a planet abandoned by the gods to retrieve a divine artifact. Along the way, you encounter vampires, etc.

I had about 2 or 3 choices in this excerpt from the unfinished game, and a lot of story. There were a few different backgrounds, and one main character sprite.

Overall, the unfinishedness made it difficult to know how to feel. A lot of plot options are set up but never finished (some even say "I will tell you later" but can't because the story ends). It's possible it could be finished into a great game, but what we have now is only the possibility without the proof. I would have liked more choices early on, even if they didn't matter, but I know that visual novel conventions differ from those of Twine or Choicescript. Alternatively, if it became a kinetic novel, it might be nice to explore some of the plot points more deeply instead of hopping from thing to thing quickly. In any case, the character seems interesting and the worldbuilding could turn out good.

I played this game as part of the short games showcase.

This game is a murder mystery, but a condensed one. It has 4 locations, each with their own person of interest (although one is mobile).

Each one lets you ask a long list of questions. You can then gather from them what information you need. Upon leaving the manor, you can guess who the murderer is.

There isn't too much replay value, as the true murderer is pointed out to you upon the first guess. There is voice acting in a way I haven't seen much in IF; I think it uses various text-to-speech voices, including a stentorian butler voice.

Overall, the system feels smooth. I do think that a more drawn out game, with some choices you must carefully consider (like things you can say that cut off other options) might increase the overall value if a longer mystery were to be made.

This game reminded me of the first Star Trek movie in many ways.

It's a Strand game, a system that's been in development for some time. This game uses 3d-art custom made by the author, much of it quite good, especially the character art.

The game itself is short, with a nice core concept but somewhat rushed-feeling prose, kind of like a tech demo. I almost felt like this was a way to show off the Strand engine more than a stand alone story, as there's not a lot of time to get to know the characters before the big ending.

Overall, there are a lot of strong parts here, but it could have benefitted from more people, more places, more things, and more time for the plot to develop.

This game seems, from its itch page, to have been made as part of a doctoral program.

It's a bipsi/binksi visual novel and includes the original poem with some of the original drawings that Lewis Carroll included in his book. It also includes a branching portion where you explore the world described in the poem, with multiple endings.

I got two bad endings; I think I know how to get the good ending, but I was hitting the arrows fast to get through the text quickly and ended up treading dark paths.

Overall, its competently done and reworks a poem I loved as a youth (I liked it when I was older too when I saw how translators translated it). I think I might have liked more long-term effects of choices to allow strategizing, but overall this is pretty good.

This game was entered in the short game jam.

At first I thought it was that weird Ink game that turns on your camera and notices when you blink. But it's not that at all.

It's just (Spoiler - click to show)a game that ends instantly.

A cute idea, but not much there.

I'll grade this on my (usually internal) 5 point scale:

-Polish: The game is very dark on my screen and hard to see.
-Descriptiveness: The poem in game is very short and minimal, but also not very clear
-Interactivity: It was hard to know what to do and, do to lots of looping, to know if there was more game or just the same.
-Emotional impact: I didn't really feel anything.
-Would I play again? Probably not.

This is a fun short story by Ambrose Bierce which has been converted to Twine (without choices) and had multimedia added. The original story is about an abandoned, 'haunted' house and the new multimedia is about an abandoned, overgrown house that bears a remarkable resemblance to the one in the story.

So it's mostly choiceless, and all the text comes from previously existing material.

But it's good material, and the matchup between the two looks good. So there's not a lot of 'interactive', but a lot of good 'fiction'.

This game is made in a powerpoint format, which is pretty neat. It has two formats, one in portuguese and one in english. I played the english version.

The text is minimalistic, with 3-10 words per page, and usually 1-3 choices. It was hard for me to piece the story together; it seems like you are a knight that awakes in a dungeon, in captivity. With some effort, you begin to explore.

I found someone (or something) to accompany me, found an area of horror, and made a choice...but I'm not sure of what.

There were several noticeable typos, which I think a pass through some online spellchaecker could help (I also get lots of typos in my own games). I did find the game confusing, including the title screen...what does 'soom' mean?

This is a short humorous twine game about trying to crash a screening for a new movie.

It uses 'copyright safe' versions of famous movies (for instance, your character is holding a 'light saver').

There are a lot of branches, and while there is some continuity between choices, each one is pretty random.

Overall, the game is pretty brief. Most of what's here is funny, but overall this felt more like a light snack than a substantial work.

This game is interesting; I went back and forth a lot on what to score it.

It's a cozy type of game, and more of an unfinished prototype (at least, several plot threads are left hanging). It's visually lovely though, with a rich background texture, pleasant fonts and colors, and icons of food.

The gameplay is simple, even (to my feeling) overly simplistic; while there is a little bit of planning required, just clicking every link one at a time generally solves things.

But it looks good, and feels good, so I'm still giving 4 stars. Feels kind of like an ascended tech demo that turned out better than expected, or a planned large game that had to be cut short.

This game is a little bite-sized Inform game. Such games can often be underimplemented or full of bugs, or hard to follow, but I found this one was pretty reasonable and made effective use of its small size.

You play as a gentleman waiting for a train, with no one around but one other passenger. Things progress from there.

There was a review I read once for the game 'Fine Tuned' that praised it for how the humor was participatory, not just descriptive (I can't find it now, unfortunately). That's what makes this game work for me; everything that's funny about it is something that you personally take part of.

The author encourages not knowing the plot ahead of time, so I've omitted that.

This game has you play as a kind of spellcaster desperate to reconnect with lost memories and lost people. I think. It's kind of hard to know what's going on; it reminded me at first a bit of Dreamhold, where you're an amnesiac in a magic place. But here, the character seems to know what's going on, even if we don't.

The game includes gore, the type that would be horrifying in real life but in text has looped around to be something cold, distant, and removed from emotion.

It's a short game. The main choices I saw were that you can pick from several different potions to toss in a bowl, each of which provokes a different memory. The ending itself did not seem to vary for me, other than one very brief early alternate ending.

I played this game as part of the short games jam.

It's designed to show what life is like when you're part of conservative Christianity. You are given many options, but your options aren't always things you can actually do.

This reminds me a lot of families I knew growing up. I remember one family that banned The Little Mermaid because her outfit was inappropriate. Another family I know banned soda pop and trick-or-treating.

That level of restriction was generally ineffective; the people I knew that were most straight-laced as kids grew up to be the most wild when older.

So the game is very relatable in that sense. It's also pretty brief, which can often be effective in this type of message, but for me, I just didn't feel a big impact. It's completely subjective, someone else might feel very differently.

This game has some good potential in it, but is unfinished. It's the beginnings of a choicescript game mingling characters from Megaman X and Creme de la Creme, the choicescript game.

I hadn't played Megaman X but played the earlier megaman games, so that part wasn't too hard to follow. But it's been years since I played Creme de la Creme so I don't recognize the names off-hand; seeing what their characters look like or act like would have worked better for me.

I liked all the things built up around the game. If finished, I would probably give it around 4 ratings, but not all projects need to be finished. Great work needs a small series of 'aha' moments, which you can kind of force if you need to but are better left around. If nothing 'clicks' for the author with this concept, it would make sense to leave it alone. But it's definitely neat!

This is a short game entered into the Bare Bones jam.

It has no real interactivity and a stripped down interface, but that's kind of not true as it uses text alignment which gives both some variety in link clicking and is visually appealing.

But overall there's really nothing here except the writing. As a lifetime woman stan there's really nothing in mlm stories for me, but the characters were well-written. There is a big focus on concrete details like clothing, appearance, etc. The dialog feels natural, with a back and forth more like what you'd expect in real life or in a back-and-forth part of a play.

This is a kind of medium-length Twine game with some nice styling.

It starts out with a 'my parents don't understand me' kind of vibe and has the kid running out to have an argument with their current partner, which gave me lots of flashbacks to my most recent creative writing class I taught in high school, as that's the kind of story the better writers would write (the bad ones involved Ninja from fortnite and lots of helicopters). Still, I didn't have high hopes.

But then it pivoted into a thoughtful and interesting story involving (Spoiler - click to show)time travel that made for an excellent game. You have the chance to try a lot of different ways to stay with your partner. Your character has real flaws and strengths and felt like one of the most real people in a game I've read recently.

I thought the ending didn't make sense in-universe, but makes perfect sense as a metaphor, so I'm leaning more towards the second point of view in my personal interpretation.

There's some fairly frequent strong profanity.

I don't say this often, but I really just didn't like this game. It shows talent in making, and is almost certainly the game that the author had envisioned when they set out to make it, but that design is not something I enjoy.

It is primarily visual and graphical in nature, with text added as flavoring. The beginning is set up in a way that the controls are unresponsive, playing a harsh dissonant sound with blinking lights while nothing you do does anything, followed by a blank screen for such a long time I thought the game had crashed. Then there are some graphical mazes with some light text.

The writing is scattered and surreal, which can be an amazing effect, but I couldn't find any thread to connect it all. It reminded me of nothing more than hearing Captain Beefheart Trout Mask Replica for the first (and only) time.

In no way does this take away from the author's skill; they seem perfectly competent. But their intentions and my reception were at cross purposes in this instance.

This game was entered in Shufflecomp.

It has beautiful styling, with an easily readable font and nice color choices.

The game plays naturally, and tells you upfront what stats are being tracked, which made it easy to plan out overall paths through the game while still maintaining agency. I liked that.

The story writing is very strong, talking about a young person and the strange boy they fall in love with at a young age. Only during summers can they meet, and as the player ages, they soon must part.

The two paths contrast each other well, and overall the story is scoped just right, with a nice narrative plot arc that rises, has a climax, then falls to a denouement. I had chills for one ending. Very well done.

This game was entered in ShuffleComp and inspired by Charlemagne by the Blossoms.

It's a fun game with both strong character building and strong world building. There is a magic system sketched out, even coming with a separate 'spellbook', and multiple modes to play in.

The game itself is small, easily consumable and not enough to show off a greater system or world, but it works as a whole, paced especially well through the use of chunks of the song lyrics. This allows you to get a feel for how far you are in the game, something that is missing from so many IF games.

The worldbuilding is a mix of spacecraft and sorcery, with heartbroken people running a heist together to stop some tears of gold. Pretty fun!

This game had a few surprises for me, and I liked it. It was entered in Shufflecomp.

You play as a child come to visit your father. There are a few customization options for yourself, which I thought were nice.

What makes the game work for me is the reflective and meaningful (to me) choices you can make. They aren't really black or white, but instead give you a chance to roleplay yourself and your own relationships.

Nice writing, very thoughtful, not too long, and with nice visuals that I was trying to figure out how to emulate for my own future games.

This game is surreal. It was written for ShuffleComp.

In it, you find yourself compelled, no matter what you do, to approach (Spoiler - click to show)the unholy city.

The best part of the game is the feeling of dread and the awful feeling of (Spoiler - click to show)waking up from a bad dream to another bad dream.

Overall, I don't know if the ending had enough of a buildup to support it, but I liked this overall.

This is a Texture game entered into Shufflecomp.

In it, you see a variety of characters in a fantasy setting, talking about witches, wards, dragons, and rangers.

I had a great deal of difficulty understanding what was going on. That's not necessarily bad; a lot of games use metaphor or surreal settings to convey a specific emotion.

But I was at a loss for most of this story. I'll show an example from the first page. I'll put it in spoilers because it's long and my analysis may not be interesting to most people:

(Spoiler - click to show)"The sorceress picked a stone from the fire and put it in the pitcher. She poured the hot water over Strider's cup of leaves, who wrinkled their nose in rote protest.

Over the course of tea, a design uncoiled across her red skin, all imbrication and tedium. The flick of a wrist described this creature's forked tongue.

Strider watched Rahel work until the cone went dry. Was she afraid her right hand would spoil the work of her left?"

The first paragraph mostly makes sense; picking up a stone from a fire would burn someone, but presumably this is her magical power, which is cool, and it seems she has a friend with a goofy relationship.

But in the second paragraph, what does 'over the course of tea' mean? Does it mean the meal 'tea' that British people have? Over the course of brewing the tea? Over the course of Strider drinking?

This is a magical setting. Is the design literally uncoiling over her skin? Is her skin red from picking up the stone, or bright red as a fantasy setting, or is it a callback to older racist notions about native Americans?

'Imbrication' is a scale like pattern. So the design is scalelike and tedious. So is she bored making this? It's a weird contrast with the luxurious metaphor of a dragon uncoiling itself. 'The flick of a wrist'--does this mean she's drawing this? Someone else? What is the cone that goes dry? And 'worried the right hand would spoil the work of her left'--what does that mean? If she's using one hand to draw on the other, then it sounds like she's drawing on the right with her left. So how would her right hand spoil anything if that's what she's drawing on?

The whole story was like this to me. I never knew what was going on, wasn't certain how many people were present or what their roles are or if they're aware of each other.

I think there's interesting worldbuilding here, I just hit a brick wall with my personal interaction. It might just be my own personal reaction, it'd be interesting to see how other people felt after reading.

This is a brief Twine game with a single branch, giving a tale of grief and loss.

Each of the two branches gives a slightly different story, although the beginning and end are the same.

The story is about a pair of couples, Emmett/Harry and Juno/Bell, who were friends in high school. Juno and Emmett meet up years later to discuss what they have lost.

The writing is emotional and descriptive. There's not much going on in the way of significant choice; the two different branches are meaningful, though.

This was written for the single choice jam.

In 2023 (or maybe starting 2022?) Tumblr started pretending that there was a movie called 'Goncharov' based on a misprint on some merchandise for another movie. Together they collaboratively invented the main characters and plotline.

This game spends a few paragraphs summarizing that plot, and then gives you a single choice. That choice only gives a couple paragraphs more of text, but leads to very different endings.

Getting more detail on Goncharov was definitely interesting, but it felt like this was just setting up a lot of background info for a story that itself was quite insubstantial. What was here was good, just not a lot of it.

This game was entered in the Single Choice Jam.

In it, you play as a robber who has picked the absolutely wrong house to rob--or maybe the absolutely right house.

You've found a witch's home, and there's a lot to grab. But you only have time to pick one item.

What this turns out to be in the end is a series of witty short stories, essentially, with each option giving a page or two of some dramatic development.

Fun overall, but fairly brief.

This entry in the Single Choice jam works as either a short story or a part of a broader setting.

In it, you play as a human witnessing the end of the universe as an inevitable, encroaching force approaches and begins to slowly devastate earth.

There's some nice storyline and characterization here. Given the brevity of the game I think the surprising revelations didn't have time to build up quite enough, to provoke investment in the characters. To me, while the story was good, I felt more like 'I would read this book!' rather than 'this feels like the whole story'.

This game has disjointed and poetic imagery of you as a person that exists across multiple worlds and dimensions.

It was written for the Single Choice Jam, so it only has one choice at the end, deliberately in(?)consequential.

The imagery evokes kaleidoscopic existence and hints at a deeper backstory for the 'main' protagonist (if there can be said to be one).

This game was part of the Single Choice Jam. It features a low stakes card game that suddenly becomes much more dangerous when a stranger walks in.

This is a classic story, and I've seen at least two other takes on the general concept this year. What I like about this one is its nice character development, showcasing well-thought-out people with interesting traits.

It's short and kind of cuts out, a straightforward but well-done implementation of the 'single choice' prompt. Would read more by this author.

My feelings went up and down as I played this Single Choice Jam game.

It looks really nice, with good pictures, transition, etc. I felt like it was setting up a pretty cool scenario.

Then it turns into kind of a tech demo sort of thing; the game has you click at exactly the right time. There's also timed text; I found myself doing other stuff in real life while waiting for the game to finish, until I found I could click through...most of the time. Other times there's more requirements.

To me, the story never really broached established tropes, or really defined what was going on. I don't think it was AI generated, but it had a similar vibe, a cobbling together of pre-existing ideas without specialization into something unique. As a tech demo for the engine it's advertising, though, I think it's successful; it looks easily as powerful as Twine, and works well on mobile. I wonder if it works good for screenreaders, as I've heard complaints about Twine related to that.