Reviews by MathBrush
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Old story, new pictures, January 26, 2024This 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'.
A dungeon of sorts explored through...powerpoint?, January 25, 2024This 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?
A short branching game about trying to get into a sci fi movie, January 25, 2024This 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.
Collect ingredients and bake magical foods, January 25, 2024This 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.
Short joke game, recounting a famous story, January 25, 2024This 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.
Pain, both of body and mind, mixed with magic, January 25, 2024This 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.
The world of humans as seen through a single word, January 24, 2024This game has a bit of a different setup between the reader and the protagonist.
The narrative voice of the game is a sentient word. It addresses 'you', but 'you' doesn't mean the reader, it means a person in college that the word traded bodies with for a month.
The word is intrigued and obsessed with the human world, especially with things like color and visual stimuli.
The concept is clever, and there is a lot of enthusiasm that comes across as appropriate for a visitor from another world.
The longer it went on, the more I saw it as the story of someone who truly despises what they are; someone who does not like themself whatsoever. Because the word likes text least of all; it doesn't enjoy visual things more, it actively despises text.
There were two things that were a little weird about my interaction with the game. The first is that I felt like it was apologizing for itself a lot, which is weird because do you as a reader agree with it that it's non-ideal or feel sympathy for it? The second is that there was a wide range of interactivity which never fell into a rhythm for me; it went from wild combinatorial explosion to mostly linear.
Overall, I think it's a solid concept and that the game is just the right length for what it's exploring. I didn't click with all of it, but I did like parts and others might like all.
A restricted life in twine game form, January 24, 2024I 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.
Unfinished choicescript crossover game, January 23, 2024This 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!
Strong writing, minimal interactivity, mlm romance, January 23, 2024This 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.
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