Reviews by MathBrush
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Reconstruct the memories of a shattered mind in a short Twine game, February 27, 2024This game is a short Twine game with glitch-like animations and moody background music. It is designed to be replayed.
In it, you play as a computer program whose job is to interface with damaged humans and sort through their memories, deciding what should be saved. As the title says, Whatever isn't saved will be lost.
So the game is reaching for a poignant picture of humanity, and in a way it can be a projection for you, the reader. If you could only keep a few memories, would you pick the most painful ones, to learn from? The best ones, to treasure? How would you decide?
The words in the text (mostly the pronouns) glitch and shuffle themselves as you try to understand what's going on.
In one playthrough, there were only five or so memories to work through the whole time. In other playthroughs, I unlocked more somehow. Maybe I also did the first time and just didn't notice?
Overall, this is strongly written. The size of it felt a little weird, almost that it would make more sense to be slighter or more substantial but that it was caught in an awkward spot between the two. But the feelings of melancholy and nostalgia are powerful.
A sci-fi world hopping puzzle game, February 24, 2024This is a compact sci-fi game where you hop between dimensions in order to keep all universes from being destroyed.
The gameplay is classic Inform 7 style: wander a mostly empty building and pick up different objects on the way, unlock a safe, operate a machine, meet an NPC or two, etc.
The story is that you have been newly hired at a tech company when an explosion goes off. Going in to investigate, you soon learn that the company has quite a bit of unusual history...
The game makes references to the (Spoiler - click to show)Mandela effect, with famous examples like the (Spoiler - click to show)Berenstein vs Berenstain bears.
It's fairly polished, even including images and sound. There are occasional punctuation errors, like quotes being left off at the end of dialogue.
The overall gameplay is pretty satisfying. A few puzzles I thought were underclued, especially (Spoiler - click to show)opening the research door. That one I had to string dump the game for, discovering I needed to (Spoiler - click to show)use the magnet to open it.
The game has multiple levels of ending success. There are several ways you can lock yourself out of victory, but those are well-clued. Getting a perfect ending is a little underclued, though, and may require a few attempts.
Overall, I'd recommend this game to fans of classic-style parser puzzlers or to fans of time travel games.
A linear tale of memory wiping , January 27, 2024This is a visual novel with no choices that deals with a race of beings called Harvesters that take away people's memories.
You play as one such harvester, and you meet a young redheaded single mother who has given up her child for adoption and wants you to wipe her memories.
You end up meeting another person who is entangled in her story, and you learn his past.
That art and music worked well. The writing was interesting, but seemed off, not following the conventions of plot and morality that I'm used to. I think I started thinking how very odd it was when someone said "You didn't just banish me to the friend zone or I wouldn't have sued you". There isn't any suing in the game; it might be a translation issue but I'm not sure it makes sense in any language.
Similarly, the endgame is that (Spoiler - click to show)You wipe the memories of her and her lover and then tell her you'll become her lover, which is kind of weird ethically.
I don't think this particular game is AI generated but these issues are similar to ones I've had with AI stories like Character AI (which my son plays), where the overall thing looks good but if you poke at it a lot of stuff just doesn't make sense. My guess is that it just needs some more time and attention, as it was written for Ludum Dare which doesn't give the author much time, I think.
A brief murder mystery with computer-generated voice acting, January 27, 2024I 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.
A short sci fi game, January 27, 2024This 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.
A short, branching visual novel adaptation of Jabberwocky, January 27, 2024This 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.
A riddle whose exposition is given by world exploration, January 27, 2024I played this as part of the short games showcase.
This is a fun little game, reminding me of the Northnorth Passage or Out or Ad Verbum, all in good ways, but it is it's own thing and not a copy of anything else. It's a direction-based puzzler where each stride can take you to different kingdoms or even different corners of the earth.
I enjoyed the puzzle, although I kept thinking the solution would be (Spoiler - click to show)tang even though it didn't work and it didn't fit any of the clues. So I don't know what was going on in my brain. At one point I also thought the solution would be (Spoiler - click to show)literally typing out 'the opposite of east' since it starts with a T. Pretty fun!
A game about passing a bill in Congress, January 26, 2024This is a pretty straightforward interpretation of 'a game simulating a bill getting passed'. There's not a lot of characterization or strategy. It was useful to see exactly what all goes into it.
The US House Representative for my district visited my school I teach at recently and mentioned that around 10,000 bills were proposed last year of which some small number (like 27, googling says) actually got passed.
This game simulates that; I failed the house vote, got amendments, passed, passed senate, had president support, but got vetoed and lacked a supermajority.
Oh well. Lol
The game seems like it was made for a government event and it seems well suited for an educational venue.
Cute micro idea, January 26, 2024This 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.
Graphical game about closing doors and chucking them out, January 26, 2024I'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.
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