Reviews by MathBrush

I sought out this game specifically by trying to find the worst-selling recent games published by Choice of Games. I'm working on making one right now, and I've had a really bad-selling one in the past, so I wanted to see what I could learn from playing it.

I used number of ratings as a metric for 'worst-selling'. On the Choice of Games app, it has the third-least ratings out of the 170 or so games listed.


Having played the whole thing, I can say that the storyline and setting are pretty solid, and the characters are great. But I have some theories as to why it may have struggled.

First of all, the game is called 'Escape From Death'. The cover art for the game is a cool-looking grim reaper. The first paragraph of the description is "Steal Death's power and break free of his corrupt realm! Hide your heartbeat from the dead as you harness soul magic, navigate political intrigue, determine the fate of the Afterlife—and perhaps even claim its throne yourself.".

I didn't read the full description before playing. So I imagined some kind of gritty urban fantasy game, maybe like Wayhaven, where you play cat and mouse with the grim reaper.

The truth is very different. This game actually has very little to do with death and the afterlife. With just minor changes to the text, this is a (good) standard 'strange lands' fantasy/western Isekai, with more in common with Alice in Wonderland, The Phantom Toolbooth, or Narnia than with any horror or thriller stories.


The grim reaper is actually a chill guy named Aaron that is part of a government and is appointed by a council. The position of Death is basically being President of the Afterlife. Souls that die come down and are transformed into Elite (who look human and treat memories from life as drugs) and Penitent (who are transformed into animals. There is unrest between the lower classes and the higher classes. The majority of the game is exploring the political factions and wheeling and dealing between them, exposing their corruption or helping their cause. There is very little mention of the living or the human world. Occasionally you get flashbacks to your life above, but they feel very disconnected from the game itself, and having been alive once in the above world doesn't come up. People even die down here, turning into vaguely sentient water or sand (something like that).

The author had been constructing this setting for a long time, and it shows in the game. The four side characters seem like old friends to the author, with very well-mapped-out personalities and interactions. At times, though, it would have been hard for me to know who counts as a main character without the stats screen.

Speaking of which, I think that's where the main difficulty with the game lies. I once wrote an essay after playing over a hundred Choice of Games games about patterns in good and bad ones, and I saw that something I call 'stat disease' is very common in lower-placing games. When I started playing this game and looked at the stat screen after 1 chapter, I instantly recognized 'stat disease'. Tons of sliders, almost all of which had barely budged since we started. All of my stats were in the mid-50s. Choices didn't clearly label which stat was involved and if it was being increased or tested. Some choices had overlap, etc.

So, for me, this game had strong characters and a cool setting, but it wasn't what I had imagined going in, and had trouble with the stats. I still had a good time, and the game had no bugs I could see, so I'm still giving it a high score. I wonder if the game I worked on will end up in a similar spot to this one, so I look at this not to criticize it, but to hopefully learn from its fate. This has the bones of a high-selling game. I just need to figure out what kept it from that destiny.

This is a short game that relies on parsing out text briefly in two ways: timed text (which is relatively quick) and 'click to add more text to the paragraph', which is helpfully indicated by a symbol in the corner.

As part of the Neo-Twiny Jam, the game is short. As part of the Bluebeard jam, it is full of mystery and violence. And as part of the Anti-Romance Jam, it is heartwrenching.

I felt like this game was trying out something really unusual. The way that text spread and proliferated as I clicked on different things and the way the text automatically appeared felt like it was glitchy and strange, but intentionally so as part of your experience as a (Spoiler - click to show)robot.

I couldn't find anything much to do beyond looking and doing what I was asked not to do. In a way, that strengthens the story and explains why (Spoiler - click to show)all the earlier experiments failed; it is part of their existence to rebel, there is no other way to progress. At least, that was my interpretation.

Recently I've been realizing that reviews mean different things to different people, and that everyone has different criteria for what they value in games. So I've been reading this author's reviews of other games to see what they consider important for success in a game and what scores should mean for a game, and this review and rating is calculated relative to that standard.

This is a classic puzzlebox. You are on a ship (I believe a submarine) and have gotten stuck in the control room due to an emergency. The door is locked, the alarm is blaring, and you have to find your way out.

This progresses in escape-room like fashion. Many of the puzzles present you with challenges that hint at a solution which you have not yet found, which is nice and lets you strategize. Finding numbers and codes is essential, as is carefully exploring and reading the text closely.

I only found one error ((Spoiler - click to show)typing ENTER (the correct code) ON THE KEYPAD gives an error implying that that didn't work, but typing CODE (the correct code) does work. The game does tell you to use the second one, but it's odd the first one gives a message implying the number is incorrect.). The relative lack of errors is remarkable for a first-time author, especially given the complexity of the game. The coding is very impressive.

As for the story and writing, the situation is presented as an important and dangerous one. The background for the ship, mission and crew is less present, however, mostly told through logs that describe events in methodical language. The ending is quite abrupt as well. As a first game designed to make a polished, puzzle-dense experience, I think it succeeds, but I think that it lacks a certain narrative element that I'm confident can be provided in the next game by this talented author.

This is a very brief game with lovely art.

You are a noise conductor on a mouse train. On each screen, you progress by clicking the train button at the bottom, which gives a satisfying animation with acceleration.

The story is simple and linear, but I was intrigued by the station list and the restart button. The restart button let me play again and I realized that everything was different. I played for a while and tried to imagine explanations for what was going on, especially given the list of stations, and that was fun.

This game was fun, combining cute graphics with mechanics that made me feel kind of like a mouse scurrying around worrying about life.

It has gorgeous custom art and color choices. At first, it looks like your only options are “get off at a station” or “stay in” but as the game progresses it’s clear there more to it than that. A shadowy and frightening conductor hunts you, some stations are wrong in some ways and you may not even have a ticket.

I eventually got to a good ending but had fun along the way. This is a game that would be fun to show people at my school.

In this game, you have to move words around with a special SWAP command. The opening move, in fact, can be deduced from the name of the game.

Part of the game is figuring out what to do, so I'll put the rest of the discussion of the game and story in spoilers.

(Spoiler - click to show)
This is a series of increasingly complex sentences where some words have been swapped with each other.

So, you're trying to get words in the right order. This is made a bit easier by the fact that only words of the same size can be swapped, and by capitalization rules.

It honestly must have been hard to ensure that words weren't duplicated (which could have caused some issues with commands being well-defined).

I was spoiled by an online review about the plot, but it's okay, because that's what made me want to play.

The plot is slowly revealed that transposition technology can swap the minds of living things around. This can, however, cause cognitive decline. The messed-up order of words can be seen as both representative of the wand and of the cognitive decline.

Near the end, sentences come faster and less-well-formed.

The final choice was interesting. I found two endings.

I liked the understated creeping dread of this game, great work.

This game is all about discovering commands, similar to the author's previous game The Wand.

The very start of the game is itself a puzzle, so I'll spoiler the rest of the review (although I won't spoil anything past the early game):

(Spoiler - click to show)
Most commands you enter at the beginning are rejected. You soon find that only 3-letter commands with 1 word can be accepted. You'd think that'd help narrow it down, but there are still over 17,000 such combinations, and some only work in certain rooms or in certain combinations.

Once you try a few simple, normal English words, you discover hints that words are often more complex combinations. The game then becomes about trying all combinations and following up on all hints you see.

There are multiple endings to the game. The first can be achieved by just following up on every lead you see. The others require you to think about patterns in what you've seen before. If you like this kind of thing, you'll definitely like The Wand by the same author. Hadean Lands has a little bit of this as well.


Overall, I like this kind of game and had fun here.

This game is a tie-in with the author's two published books, Quantum Time and The Quantum Contingent. All three deal with a spy agency and a quirky cast of characters.

In this game, you are a new agent arriving at headquarters, and you have to get your assignment from the chief of the spy agency you work for. Once you get it, you end up setting off on a jet to locations across the world where you can gather items, face danger, and help a quantum-entangled experiment.

Genre-wise it's similar to Zork set in the modern day, with a combination of science fiction and fantasy without much regard to how well they fit together; instead it follows the 'rule of cool'. So there are things like light sabers, magic, virtual reality, etc. It also contains detailed, enthusiastic descriptions of locations, especially in Oxford, which were fun to read and which gave me some googling to do.

The book tie-in setting here was both a blessing and a curse. The great part about it is that the world feels vibrant and alive, with characters connected to each other and backstory everywhere you look. The curse is that the game assumes you know this info. I started the game with no idea what to do; it said I needed to get my mission, but I was by a farmhouse. It was only by exploration and looking at a spoiler-free map that I discovered I was supposed to be trying to find the base. Early on the game mentioned Martin but I didn't know who that was. Near the end it was hard to know what my last tasks were (after fixing Cassandra's computer). It felt like the author had spent so much time in this world that some facts felt obvious or natural, but weren't to me as a casual reader. Nevertheless, the further I got and the more I learned about the world, the more all of the references and discussions made sense.

I think people will mostly enjoy this game if they like Zork-style humor and exploration. The game is both hard and easy; when there is a task you need to do, the game generally gives you a lot of hints and nudging on how to do it. Much of the points are optional (like finding treasures). The difficulties I did have were in figuring out how to type commands or what to do next. The most difficult thing for me was figuring out how to operate the jet (I tried TURN ON JET, ENTER COCKPIT, FLY JET, etc. It turned out I needed information found on another item).

The game is both superbly polished and unpolished. It is very polished because it has important nouns bolded and unimportant nouns in italics; has a list of Places and Things you've seen; has tons of things to talk to agents about, etc. It's unpolished because it is missing some background scenery (like the digital display in Cassandra's lab, which is not implemented despite being mentioned prominently); sometimes it just doesn't make sense (like the escape tunnel that says 'Martin has to show you the way first'); and sometimes it knows what you want to do but chooses to ignore it (like if you try to put something ON something and it says, 'No, you have to HOOK it'). All of these things are very normal in first games, and I have all confidence that the author's next games will be polished in every sense.

Here are my five criteria I use for judging when I'm not sure what score I want to give. Among all IF games I've ever played, I'd give this game 3 stars for great idea and mixed execution; for effort and as a first game, I could give it 4. So for the appearance of subjectivity I'll do the criteria:

-Polish: As described above, the game is very smooth in most respects but lacking in others. One area is quotation marks, which are absent in some text and at least once appeared gratuitously.
+Descriptiveness: The world felt very much alive and vibrant, with rich text.
-Interactivity: As described above, I often didn't know what to do and sometimes struggled to find the right command for the thing I wanted to do. Much of the interactivity was engaging.
+Emotional impact: I found the game amusing and entertaining. I plan on reading the books it belongs to when I find time.
+Would I play again? I would play a revised version of this game, and I look forward to future games by this author.

However, on reflection, I've decided to bump up to 4 stars.

This game has you play as a travelling warrior equipped with a legendary sword.

Everywhere you go, you can talk to people, look at things, wait around, and, most importantly, CUT things.

Most of the puzzles revolve around a combination of talking and cutting the right thing at the right time.

Gameplay-wise, this game reminded me (positively) of the games Gun Mute (a linear sequence of fights with a powerful weapon and limited verbs), Tales of the Travelling Swordsman (a powerful sword-bearing hero defeats one challenge after another with their trusty sword), and a little bit of Forsaken Denizen and Attack of the Killer Yeti Robot Zombies (strategically defeat enemies with a lot of action). This isn't to say the game isn't innovative; its combination of melancholy, conversation, world-building and mechanics is good and new.

I especially like the conversation. Gun Mute and Tale of the Travelling Swordsman both went out of their way to have non-speaking characters as a major plot-point, leaving combat as the focus. In this game, conversation and cutting take up roughly equal roles.

I love the storybuilding here, which manages to give a good sense of progression in scale and understanding despite the (relatively) brief length of the game. It feels weighty, like the story of a much longer commercial game.

The puzzles were fun. I got stuck two or three times. Once, it was a fun fakeout. Another time, I thing the game funneled me into an alternative puzzle, which worked well. The last time I used the in-game THINK command for a hint.

Fun game, fun story.

This game was entered into Spring Thing 2025. In it, you play as someone near a fire in a cave. You are going to sleep, and going to dream. In the dream, you explore a fantastical dreamscape.

A recurring feature is that you continually have a timer and you die if you don't periodically wake up. I don't know what intended play is but I just woke up and stoked the fire after every choice, and used the 'back' button if I ever selected a choice with no new options.

I'm going to look at this with 5 different criteria:

+Polish: I didn't encounter any bugs and the writing was smooth and typo-free.
+Descriptiveness: The world seemed vibrant and interesting (in dreams).
-Interactivity: I didn't really enjoy the frequent waking up mechanic. It did pay off at one point, which was cool, but most of the rest of the game felt like I was just repeatedly scouring the options till something changed.
+Emotional impact: The game was amusing and the dreamscapes made me feel whimsical.
-Would I play again? I did feel kind of frustrated with the waking up thing, and the ending felt like it lacked a little weight.