Reviews by MathBrush

This game is one of the smaller Hosted Games. It contains a full story and a systematic scoring system, and if someone I knew personally told me they had made it, I'd be proud of them for finishing an interesting story.

As I've been reviewing all hosted games, it inevitably falls into some comparisons, and I'd have to say it is on the weaker end of the scale for my personal tastes.

It riffs on the Wizard of Oz books, and includes characters like Ozma. You are a young person (a wannabe witch or wizard) and its your quest to ask Glinda to make you a real witch or wizard.

You travel through Oz, running into familiar faces and deciding to either do good (for which you get goodness points) or wickedness (for which you get wicked points).

It looks at first like there's a lot of branching, but in most scenarios that aren't good vs wicked, only one option will be 'real' while the others send you back to the choice until you pick the right one.

The author does seem to have a big love for different parts of the Oz series, including a lot of scenes with the powder that makes things come alive.

There were some noticeable typos every few pages. Overall, while this feels like a labor of love, I didn't have quite as much fun as I could have due to the lack of substantial choices or character arcs (except for gaining wizard merch, that part was fun).

This is a visual novel with many different images.

This game is a gross game (intentionally so, and advertised as so). It features a Mad Prophet character who has beef with the feudal leader and wants him to die.

Simultaneously, the game is a kind of dark phantasmagoria where all of the elements of humanity are broken down and characters are all boundary-breaking in some way while finding place in hierarchical power structures. Algae are living computers, people are slime or poop, bodies can be modified, orifices used, things can be alive, creatures can be things.

It's kind of Alice in Wonderland meats Ruby Gloom meets Hellraiser meets Conker's Bad Fur Day meets Porpentine.

It's the kind of writing that defies expectations and veers into the absurd but fortunately avoids the common pitfall of 'oh I'm so random'. The intense focus on the inevitable class uprising (which is my interpretation of ambiguous themes) gives it focus.

I played to one death and one freedom.

This is a fun replayable game written by a team of authors. Its fairly short and simple, but hard enough for me that I only go 1/3 my first try.

You are a cryptid hunter. Each playthrough you are given 3 cryptids to look for each with 3 distinct characteristics.

You're then given a large set of locations with backstory and the opportunity to visit all of them. Each one has its own cryptid encounters where you can examine them to see if they fit the traits in question.

What keeps it from getting boring or tedious is that you can't just lawnmower through the options. Several of them have unique interactions that you have to decide split-second that may have unintended consequences. And if you dally with too many options, the creature can go after you. Pretty neat!

This is a short branching hyperlink game that is cyclical in nature and uses a new system called 'spiki'.

It's based on information theory and linguistics (not the exact terms the author uses but the general gist of things). Three characters with initials A, B, and C are in a constructed virtual world that simulates a version of England where they meander about and go in shops. New information is intruded in the form of a latin phrase that pops up.

Each option in the game is symbolic in the author's version of conversation theory, fulfilling an archetype like 'withdrawal' or 'elaboration'. One link instead corresponds to an external essay hosted on a different website.

The writing reminded me of GK Chesterton. Overall, I found it interesting as an intellectual exercise and as a text.

I don't know why, but as I review this I am struck by a strong memory of the game Gallery Gal, where you can, at any point in the narrative, turn into an art gallery, thus permanently ending the game (and destroying any structures in the area).

This game has you play as a summoner who cannot talk and, instead, summons one of four people: a fairy general, a giant, a huge beast (who, much like gallery gal, destroys the area), and a 3.5th-wall breaking magical character.

Essentially all gameplay is choosing between these 4, which is a fun mechanism. There's not really anything wrong with the game, but somehow it felt like something was missing, almost like it was an early access game or a trailer for a game.

I didn't play the games during Spring Thing (wanting to preserve some neutrality) and didn't read most reviews, so I thought the whole time this was a thoughtful slice of life game about someone who had passed on and it was a funeral or something with a message beyond the grave to shame the living. I liked this, though!

This was one of the more enjoyable modern commodore 64 games I've played. Short, good parser, to the point, amusing.

You play as a schoolchild trying to break into a school in the 80s to copy the latin exam so that you can cheat on the real test day.

The school is pretty big, with some areas gating off others. Gameplay is classic parser style with picking up objects, examining them, and using them to open up obstacles.

I do recommend typing COMMANDS to get a list of commands.

There are some red herrings and an inventory limit but the red herrings added to the charm and the inventory limit was very generous (I picked up almost everything and only had to drop a couple of things).

A nice way to spend 15-30 minutes.

This is a mystery game, one of my favorite IF genres.

It's a cozy mystery. No murder here--instead, a cake competition is sabotaged when one person's overnight dough goes missing.

You are called in as a professional to investigate what happened.

First, you go through and ask everyone questions, which can be done lawnmower style (i.e. just picking every option). Occasionally something you do in one branch will unlock something in another.

The characters include two long-term competitors, one of whom favors style over substance and always wins, vs a more traditional baker. There are also the competition organizer and the security guard to question, with another person coming in later.

The 'deduction' phase consists of filling in drop-down menus with the crime, the motive, and pieces of evidence.

This is where my experience with the game hit the brakes and sent me running for hints. The possibility space is huge; there are like 20 options in the dropdown menu, which is the same for most options, so there are like (20^5)/6 possibilities to guess from for the right answer (the /6 is because the order of the last 3 don't matter).

So the game would have to have strong clues to make this doable. And I think it could be for the right person or persons; this would be a great game to do as a group. But for me, the clues were often very far back in the game hidden as incidental details. And there are multiple solutions that aren't accepted. For instance, the first thing you can deduce (mid-game spoilers) is (Spoiler - click to show)that the security guard ate some of the cake. You find goop in a paper cup. There is also frosting on their uniform. So you'd think that the crime is he 'ate the frosting' and the evidence is 'paper baking cup'. But actually the crime is 'ate the cake' and the evidence is 'rainbow frosting.' For similar reasons, I had difficulty and basically ran to the solution for the rest of the game.

Does this mean I'm dumb? Yes. Most people play games not that require you to be smart, but make you think you are smart or good or that you learn over the timeframe of the game.

I think someone that takes careful notes and/or plays with others may get a more satisfying end out of this.

I liked the characters and the setting (circus is always fun) and the baking description made me hungry.

This is a visual novel that is a bit more complex than appears on one playthrough.

You play as a young person in a relatively small town or suburb whose friend is leaving. You're part of a friend group with girls (I believe, from the art) named Clover and Iris. You have a thing for Clover, and Iris is beginning to notice. But Clover is moving away.

The game mixes weather and feelings into a metaphor with the snow kind of being like the relationship.

There are several dreams as well.

Overall there is a melancholic goodbye feel. It reminded me of several similar situations I had when I was young and didn't have control over my location, or when I did have control but it meant saying goodbye to people.

There are multiple endings that depend on your choices throughout the whole game, I think 5 or 6 total.

I started playing through all Spring Thing 2026 games in reverse order by IFDB rating. I saw this one had a 2.5 rating, and so I had low expectations going in. The first screen really surprised me: fun, inspired text, nice layout, a comprehensive help system. How could this be rated low?

Then I tried the game itself, and now I can see. There's little to no connection between individual events, and almost no wrap-up at the end. You are placed in a variety of class villain situations and act against the protagonists, but they retain no memory of events, there is no plot arc, the characters are different every time, etc.

Love the writing in this but not the mechanics so much. I'm glad that what is there is polished. I've liked work by this author before, who's done some fun forum games.

This is a Twine game where you pick from 8 or so characters to form a team of 4, then investigate rooms in a house one at a time to get a key and experience an attack plus some backstory, followed by a final finish.

Each character has different thoughts and reactions to the events. On my first playthrough, I was a time travelling powerful wizard lord. On the second, I was a cyborg assassin.

One character is just a regular woman, which was a surprise. She related a lot of things she saw to romance films (which reminded me of my mom, who watches Hallmark all the time and who I've started to consult about romance tropes when I write to see what's popular these days).

A lot of the writing was funny. Much of it was also a non-sequitur. The rewards at the end made me chuckle a bit.

Overall the story didn't have much cohesion, but the concept is a fun one. Extending it further could possibly result in combinatorial explosion.