Reviews by MathBrush

Adaptations in IF are generally very tricky. The list of failed or mediocre adaptations is long (including my own Sherlock Holmes game) while the list of good ones is very brief (such as Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy). The biggest problem is that novels and stories are 'on rails' and are centered on one pre-determined path, while Interactive Fiction invites exploration.

This one does well, I think. Part of that is due to the author's talent at adaptation. The other may be because the original tale includes parts that describe what 'would have happened', which can be incorporated into the text.

You play as Gawain, and the story follows the original tale pretty faithfully. A strange knight comes to Arthur's court and you are soon entangled in a quest. You find a strange castle where the host is kind and generous while the lady of the castle pursues you.

Variables are tracked in this game, but not that many stats seem to be. There is generally one ordained 'right path' but many scenes have multiple interpretations and solutions regardless of your desire (for instance, is it better to admit fear or not to have it at all?)

The game has strong themes of violence and sexuality, but treats both of them more as abstractions or threats or desires with moderate ​detail.

In both the online version and the downloaded version, the chapter headings were broken and I couldn't see what they were. That, and a stray typo, were the only bugs I saw.

I took several days to finish this because I kept getting distracted by work. The actual writing isn't that long, but I wasn't grabbed in by the text; or, perhaps, it was difficult to process my emotions about the strange tale (which applies to the original).

In any case, this exceeded my expectations and is one of the better adaptations I've ever played. I don't see myself revisiting it, as it resonated negatively with some personal experiences I had (by no fault of the author), but it is otherwise polished, descriptive, with good interactivity and emotional impact.

(Edit: I'm listting this as 2 hours, because I lingered over it, while others have said it took them only 1 hour going fast).

Given the popularity of Flexible Survival together with the excellent production values of this game, I predict that this game will find a lot of success with certain communities after the comp, perhaps ending up as the most-played game form this comp. I also think, though, that it has some features that will end up hurting it in this comp’s voting.

This is a hardnosed combat and storytelling game with furry characters (well, animal/human hybrids, including reptiles). It has very nice-looking screens, including an action video later on when an SUV pulls up that’s certainly the best-produced thing I’ve ever seen in IFComp.

You play as a series of characters in a run-down and dark world where mob bosses rule. Characters can pick up a variety of very specific weapons and ammo.

Gameplay is stat-based, with an initial point buy system and later gains. Every part of the game is turned into a puzzle that either depends on stats or correct choices. Even ‘click-reveals’ (when you click on a link and it expands) are gamified: you have to click them in the right order to get bonus points.

This game is difficult. Without God mode, you have to make very specific point buys to get past even the second challenge (when the truck comes by, if you don’t have quick feet or health, then you get hit for 0 damage, but your 0 health gets checked and results in death.

With God mode, I made it very far until I made a bad choice and got an instant death. I think I could have restored but I had the following bug:

"I can’t find a save slot named ‘AnimaliaBookI4’!►
I tried to save or load the game, but I couldn’t do it."

Overall, I actually like the writing quite a bit. The intense difficulty of the game will likely be a plus for the target audience, as I think this is meant to be a game you replay a lot and have strategy guides about, something like Sunless Skies or 80 Days.

For the comp, though, it makes it hard to play through in a short time, even with God Mode.

-Polish: Great production values, but bugs need fixing.
+Descriptiveness: Nice writing
+Interactivity: For the comp, it's no good, but I like the extra challenge for more replay value.
+Emotional impact: Yeah, I was invested.
+Would I play again? Yes, especially the finished version.

Felicity Banks has entered IFComp many times before with clever Choicescript games that contain themes like magic, alchemy, cats, and Australia (many of which show up in this game as well). Those games often get a post-comp release that is expanded and then put on Hosted Games.

This game is about a world where magic can be awakened in anyone through unknown means. It's treated like an infection, and society is built around blocking any access to magic-causing things, like using plastic plants instead of natural ones.

When magic awakens in you, the government enforcers come to get you and throw you into a magical prison/school where rival gangs attempt to fight or kill each other and people are sorted into magical categories (like elves, trolls, etc.) based on their abilities (I recommend reading the notes in the stats section).

Speaking of stats, I didn't check them during the game. Some games have really hard stat checks that constantly get in your way, but this game I just roleplayed and I generally did pretty good and only messed up once or twice.

The story and characters were fun, although some things really stretched my suspension of disbelief: (Spoiler - click to show)Are literally all of our friends non-magical people pretending to be magic? To be thrown into a prison? Where it's said that people die?? But they don't really die. Except people are fighting with bladed weapons and pretty much do get close to dying. Also magic has no visible drawbacks whatsoever but is locked down. It's the kind of story where hand-waving makes sense, but sometimes there was so much handwaving I almost thought *I'd* start flying!

I only used magic a couple of times. Besides my awakening, I only had one chance to learn more magic. I thought there'd be more, so I just focused on fiery magic, my strength. But no other chances to learn came up, and I'm not sure I ever actually used my charm. So if this gets a post-comp release, adding more magic-learning and magic-using opportunities and more time spent with friends/relationships would be great. What we have here fits well into the time constraints for the comp well.

I waited to play this until I had more time because I generally enjoy Felicity Banks's games and find them substantia, and I'm glad I did.

Dust is about a man in the Wild West who comes to town looking for his wife when he comes across trouble. It involves a lot of conversation and the use of a lot of tools.

This game was entered in the German IF Gran Prix earlier this year, where I personally found it the best game of the competition. I enjoyed the characters and the western setting.

I love foreign translations and foreign things in general (maybe I’m a xenophile?) so it’s always hard to know when playing a game in another language if it is the language that attracts me or the game itself.

In this case it’s a little bit of both. One reason I liked it in German was its simplicity, with descriptive but mostly non-figurative language and the use of menus in conversation and some actions. While in German it was brilliant for someone with a weak vocabulary in another language, in English I could have enjoyed some more complexity in writing, and perhaps a slightly expanded map.

But there’s a lot here that I loved in the original and now in the translation. I like how you collect various tools and apply them, giving the game a physical feel. I like the social dynamics, with the non-violent but still substantial threat of the sheriff holding onto your papers while you investigate, and the tavernkeeper urging you to grab a cookie. I also enjoyed the townsfolk popping in and out, from mean grandmas to ball-playing kids.

I helped test this game a little by reading through the English transcript looking for any errors (of which I found very few).

This is a longish parser game set in a time with horses, wagons, and captains but not electricity. In it, you play as a soldier who is ordered on a special mission involving the Triskelion, a powerful weapon.

The game is divided into two parts. First, there is a long linear opening sequence which the author has designated as 'training', and that's a good description, as it gets you used to basic verbs and actions. Then there is a longer exploration part in a graveyard.

The puzzles can be tricky at times but not too bad. I used the walkthrough a couple of times, but only one puzzle would, I think have been really hard without it (finding a certain key).

There are a lot of red herrings. I found numerous items that presaged more puzzles and adventures but which were ultimately useless. It did add to the worldbuilding, so that's a tradeoff.

Some of those items could be implemented a bit more. I had this exchange in one late part of the game:

What do you do? x cannister
The green cannister is three feet tall, six inches in diameter, and made of heavy metal. On the side of the cannister is a red warning label. The cannister has a turn-valve on its top but the handle is missing. The valve cannot be opened without the handle.

>
> What do you do? read label
> That is not something to read. Try examining it instead.
>
>
> What do you do? x it
> A bright red square with a picture of a yellow flame on it. Beneath that is the wording "Hazard: Extremely Flammable"
>
>
> What do you do? take it
> That's hardly portable.

Somethings can only be EXAMINEd while some can only be READ.

The '>' prompt has been changed to 'What do you do?', presumably to help new players, and I thought that was neat. Many error responses have been changed, most of which I liked. The one I didn't so much was the error for when you type something that's not there; the game says things like Seriously?? and You must be joking! which is mildly funny the first time, but wears thin over time.

The game did a good job with pacing the puzzles, as I didn't usually feel overwhelmed or not having anything to do. The exits bar at the top is key; many puzzles can be solved by exploring all exits.

I thought the ending was a little anticlimactic, but maybe there will be more Triskelion in the future; I'd like to see it.

I'm going to review all 3 acts here.

This a Baldur's Gate game. It is possible to play and generally understand it without having played the game (I'm in that scenario) but it generally builds off the associations, motivations, and understood characteristics of that game, which I've only partially absorbed through meme osmosis.

The story is that Astarion (here's where the pre-existing knowledge deficit kicks in) and you have been sucked into a nightmare world by a creature that feeds off of suffering. Astarion who, in the 'real world', has made great progress in escaping from an abusive vampire overlord, has now regressed and in his mind is back where he was at the start, hopeless and alone.

Gameplay in all three acts revolves around a combination of exploration and conversation. All significant actions cost energy, which you only have ten units of at a time. In the first two acts, energy is replenished every night, and you also level 3 skills of manifesting as a dream ghost: Speech, Sight, and Touch. In the third act, energy is replenished by finding secret 'gleams', and you can no longer level your attributes.

In all three days, Astarion has a health bar which, if it goes low enough, will cause him to die. Each day has other important meters as well, such as Astarion's mood, or the attention that can be drawn to you. Basically, this game is an Astarion Tamagachi.

For the first two days, the main goal it to keep him from dying. I discovered after some experimentation that the amount of health he loses or gains each day is based on his mood. I kept dying over and over early on from trying to max my stats first, but in fact there is plenty of time to boost stats with leftover actions. The main goal here is to please this man.

The main difference between the first and second days is that the second day adds more 'special' events with objects and intruders, while the first day just sets up the rhythm of the game as a whole.

The third day is very different, as you are pulled from encounter to encounter, where Astarion talks to people while you explore or interact.

This game is brutally hard (for me!). I died many times trying to complete Act I. There's just almost never enough actions to go around. I found it useful to save every day and reload if I don't achieve my goals. I made over 50 save files through all three acts.

The third act seemed impossibly hard and frustrating until another reviewer pointed out that you can get new actions by finding 'gleams'. I'd spoiler that but I think it's a fundamental part of gameplay and shouldn't be difficult to find in the first place. Finding that, and realizing the 'conversations' often stalled, giving you enough time to explore, helped this section work out better.

Visually and auditorially, the game is beautiful, with nice styling, transitions, fonts, colors, and sound choice.

Conceptually, while this game is symbiotic or even parasitic object, only able to exist in tandem with the resources provided by Baldur's gate, it still (to me) had a generally satisfying plot arc and some nice power progression.

Many ifcomp games are made for ifcomp. This seems like a passion project that just happened to be good enough to enter into Spring Thing and IFComp. I like it.

Well, this was a pleasure. It’s rare (to me) to find a long, well-paced, polished Twine game with nice presentation, few bugs, good characters and a satisfying story arc. Usually games have both significant strengths and significant flaws, but I really didn’t find any major flaws in this game, which was very pleasant. (Of course this might just be to my tastes, of course; other people may have a different reaction)

You play as a chef who has been hired on to cook every 5 days at a community canteen in a magical village. There are several characters you can interact with, each of which is going through their own issues and having their own successes. Your goal is to be able to stay as a chef permanently, with side goals of improving relations with others.

The majority of the game is part of a 4-action daily cycle, where you can choose to cook things to sell at the market and then to buy things at the market (probably the most common option), interact with your friends, make special meals for the community, buy seeds and books (useful early on), go foraging (useful later on, etc.).

Every 5 days you make a special meal which gets judged. Despite my best efforts, my first meal got 1 star, so I worked hard to get better. I ended up getting exactly the amount of stars I needed to ‘stay’ (having only played once, I don’t know if it’s designed always to play out that way or if it was due to my eggs-and-cheese heavy strategies of making deluxe meals).

Overall, the tone is pleasant. There are some stresses, especially with friends, but the tone is one of peace and warmth. It’s not overly cloying to me, when it could easily have been so, and the game doesn’t force you into specific actions of reproach or forgiveness, instead allowing you to chart your own path.

Overall, a great game for someone looking to relax and cook.

**The Den** by Ben Jackson.

It's been interesting tracking Ben Jackson's IF career. *The Kuolema* used Google Forms, a highly unusual format, and was choice-based but required text entry. It had lots of open exploration.

Then we had *Lunium*, a tightly constrained Twine escape room that also featured both choice and text entry, and included several visual puzzles. It kept most puzzles at all time.

Now we have *The Den*. While it keeps the choice and text entry hybrid of previous games, it has (in my mind) a stronger plot arc and better pacing than the other two, and features two protagonists, Aiden and Vee.

Our two heroes live in The Den, an underground area controlled tightly by Father. My first impression of the game was that it was similar to 10 Cloverfield Lane, where a tyrannical man imprisons others, and in this case was abducting children for experiments. I later decided that (Spoiler - click to show)this was some kind of lab with artificial beings and near the end it was clear that this was (Spoiler - click to show) a retelling of the story of Adam and Eve.

This game gave me big Subnautica vibes, with regards to storyline.

Puzzles in this game are the classic type you see in two-person games like Fire Boy and Water Girl, where one player opens passages for another or one player finds passwords for another.

There is also a Wordle mini-game, which I thought was amusing. I also found it a bit contrived, but that is later resolved.

The game is long, a bit more than 2 hours for me. I found the writing good; the two main characters manage to be neither cloying nor obnoxious, and the character of Father grew on me throughout the game.

The only things that I didn't much like during the game was how many options were 'Continue the story' or 'stop right now'. I usually didn't try the 'stop right now' choices, but once when I did the game ended (near the end) and another time it just ignored my choice, essentially (near the beginning). I understand the need to both move forward the plot and also maintain agency, but we usually reached those points by player commands in the first place, so I don't think we need additional confirmation so often. On the other hand, I'm not sure what the fix would be, as it's nice to have a little more interactivity like that. This is just a minor quibble; I think this game is great, and has the same high quality that proved popular in the author's earlier games.

Finally, I liked the use of all sense in the descriptions. There are a lot of smells and temperatures, along with the feel of wind, the hum of fans, the taste of food, and these sense come into play with the puzzles. I like that quite a bit and would like to incorporate that more into my own games.

What a fun little game!

This is a single-stroke parser game, a genre which I've seen a few of in the last year or two and not many more before then. So a single keypress becomes an entire command. It was disconcerting at times (especially trying to repeat past commands by hitting the up arrow, which maps to NORTH) but I eventually got the hold of it.

The idea is that you're kidnapped by aliens who submit you to nonsensical tests, until disaster strikes. Now they rely on you for help!

Gameplay is limited to only two action: eXamine and Touch. A few other commands like LOOK and WAIT also work. This may not seem like a lot to work with, but it's like the Library of Babel. That library is a conceptual idea where every possible 410-page book is in a library, containing essentially any novel that is ever written. Someone once pointed out that it's not as weird as you might think, as you could make your own 'library of babel' with two books that only have one page each (one with a 0 in it and one with a 1 in it); by reading them in the right order, you could reproduce any possible text.

So it's the same idea here. The simple two commands are made more complex by having cycling environmental elements, like buttons that do different things every time you touch them, or timers you can set off, or additional attributes you can acquire and then remove (which behave like extra verbs). So the limited command set is just a blind.

This is really hard to come up with puzzles for; I wrote a giant game last year with different areas, and one I specifically wanted to mimic Arthur DiBianca's style. It was by far the hardest to code, the most buggy, and the hardest to figure out, trying to wrassle tons of moving scenes and machine parts.

The puzzles in this game are similar to math research, where you just try to find patterns or loopholes and bang your head against a wall until you solve it. I got stuck in the middle, and was typing up a question to ask for help, but as I typed I figured it out. The final puzzle stymied me too; I had the right idea, but my timing was off.

The story is sparse but has funny parts. Everything familiar has a goofy name and everything goofy has a familiar name. Objects are clearly chosen so that they start with distinct letters of the alphabet (like 'yo-yo'). Overall the aliens reminded me of those in the movie Home.

I had fun with this. Several of the puzzles were very frustrating before I solved them and fun after.

This game is a long choice-based game where you build a character who is a hobbit and live through a year or so of local hobbit life.

It seems built on the same general model as Choicescript games, where your choices influence your stats and relationships with delayed effects in later chapters.

However, the effects of your choices are pretty opaque. Unlike Choicescript games, there is no stats page that I could find, and many of the options you can pick from are very similar. On top of that, several chapters are built up as a 'win/loss' scenario where you either make the right choices and get a good result or just fail. When I played every commercial Choicescript game a few years ago, those were all common things that made games more frustrating.

On the other hand, the characters and setting here are fun. A lot is taken directly from Lord of the Rings, but the individual characters are all new. There is also a lot of branching, especially with romances. I did two playthroughs, one pursuing Patty the 'witch' and one pursuing Lily the mayor's daughter. The last 3 of the 7 chapters in these playthroughs were very different from each other.

Everything is pretty low-stakes. Someone steals a sword and runs away with it, but not you. The most stress you have to deal with is social judgment and a pie contest.

So, I'd recommend this to fans of 'coffee shop AU' or Stardew Valley. I liked it enough to play it twice, and the price I paid (I think $3.99?) was definitely appropriate for the size (a lot of such games are $10 to $20 now).