Reviews by MathBrush

This was a really clever game. It's currently implemented in Google Calendar, which means it may be ephemeral media; but the author is able to export a google calendar for download (player's can't as they don't have permissions to edit), so I hope they do so to keep this for future generations!

Playing the game means adding the google calendar to a google account (I used a burner account). You then look at appointments and the information in them. They link to real google earth locations and to youtube videos and, at the end, to pdfs.

Gameplay for me consisted of a lot of searching of names and keywords. The game is clever and makes some posts only consist of symbols to keep you from seeing everything at once by searching for 'le' or something like that (although basic words like that don't work anyway).

The story is science fiction and is non-linear in nature, and I experienced some ending things before some middle things. Themes include relationships, loss, liminal spaces, the Backrooms (?), and more. A lot of fun to experiment with. I don't think it holds much replay value but that's not intended anyway, I think.

Google translate works great for this game, very easy to copy and paste into another window and many of the links and some words are in English.

This French game in Concours de Fiction Interactive Francophone 2025 was a delight to play. It's a puzzle-focused Vorple game with extensive parser illustrations. Puzzles are fairly simple (although my lack of knowledge of a few words caused me some problems).

While the game doesn't feel small, each part of the game is pretty constrained so there aren't too many options and you are free to experiment till you figure out what to do next. There was one poem that was a bit hard to figure out, and I had the biggest trouble figuring out how to put something on something because I was bad at French (fortunately there are a lot of synonyms!).

The plot is that you are accompanying your master, a detective, to visit a monastery. You have to help him get in, then, the next day, solve a series of mysterious occurrences.

The game does take a pretty dramatic shift in what's possible in the very last act that surprised me, but the art for that part was also very nice. Overall, one of the more fun games I've played in a while.

This game was apparently the tutorial game in Aaron Reed's book on writing games in Inform 7, which is pretty neat.

It features a disaffected native American youth who is having school, family, and girl problems and ends up blacking out and driving fifteen miles off the road and into the desert. When you crash, you find that bad weather is coming, and you have to figure out how to either keep safe or get back.

The game has a lot of symbolic/bizarre scenes as well as a spooky abandoned place to explore.

It's completely believable that this is a tutorial game, as it shows off a wide variety of Inform tools (such as things that can be opened or closed or pushed or pulled, smelling, darkness, listening, hidden objects, conversation, etc.). Speaking of conversation, it uses 'suggested topics' which it seems was controversial when the first reviews came out but is now pretty common and generally accepted (such as in Counterfeit Monkey).

Others have pointed out that the polish is a little thing when it comes to custom responses or synonyms. I do generally dislike this in games but as a tutorial game it makes sense; you don't want to overwhelm a new author with the immense amount of custom declarations you need to make to make a game 100% polished.

I liked the storyline overall. I don't see too many Native American IF stories, and while the author doesn't seem to be (?? maybe I'm making assumptions here) firmly rooted in that culture, neither does our protagonist, who specifically struggles with being placed in between three or four different kinds of culture and tradition. I liked this, and I'm glad it was recommended for the Player's choice tournament.

This game kind of threw me out of whack for a while and is one reason I was late playing Shufflecomp games.

I started this Gruescript game (which is parser-like but with buttons for actions and inventory items). In it, you play as someone in a post-apocalyptic world that has been flooded and where most people seem to be dead or gone. You invite a neighbor over for coffee, and they offer you drugs that enhance your memory.

I had fun in my initial experience with the game, running through it and getting into my first memory. But I got really stuck after that. The game says (early, light spoilers) that the pills give you memories when (Spoiler - click to show)you smell two things. But it didn't say you had to do that simultaneously, so I just thought the pills were good for 2 memories. I got super stuck.

I eventually tried the hints, and saw the file was big, so I got overwhelmed and put off both this game and the whole shufflecomp. I ended up playing this one last, expecting it to be huge, but it wasn't overwhelming. Each memory is just a couple of rooms. Even with the walkthrough, I tried to just guess what needed to happen, but even my best guesses were often wrong, so difficulty-wise this game kicked my butt. (Also, wouldn't (Spoiler - click to show)potato chips and (Spoiler - click to show)mashed potatoes have almost the same smell? The texture is the biggest difference to me).

Writing-wise this game is exactly the kind of game I like. Very cool Inception-style plot (a bit more literally than the term is usually used but not quite). Lots of revealed mysteries and a great ending that ties it all together.

Someone else may not have the weird intro I did, especially if you realize you need to have (Spoiler - click to show)simultaneous combinations of two smells.

My view on this game seesawed wildly over time.

I played it while going through the short game showcase in fairly rapid order. I felt dismay at seeing the large chunk of text in the first passage. Then I clicked through as fast as I could without reading to estimate the size of the game (since most choice-based games lack such indications, although this one turned out to be in acts). I found out that it was essentially 'click to move forward', and I sighed; the sigh deepened when I realized each page had many 'aside' links that went to several-page long linear texts.

So this, in the end, is just a long story, with mild nonlinearity. That means that, rather than judging it against all interactive fiction, where bad writing can be made up for by clever mechanics, I would instead be comparing it to all written stories.

And in that vein, it is good, getting better as it goes on, due to its slow buildup. But I feel like the narrators could have been more strongly differentiated in voice (all felt pretty refined, educated, resigned and frank, despite describing very different events) and that more of a plot arc could have been built up; the climax seemed sudden with no denouement.

I do believe this is just a matter of taste; I prefer more pulpy/genre fiction than literary fiction, and I can think of several people I could recommend this to who would deeply enjoy it. For me, I don't think my time was wasted and I'm glad the author has made it, but I missed the things mentioned above and, as a work of IF, I would have loved more involvement.

On a side note, the 'restart' button is in the lower right corner, and the 'move on' button was right next to it, and sometimes the way to move on was clicking a word, so I ended up clicking 'restart' on accident several times, often when the passages were most exciting. I feel like this is more my fault than the author's fault, so I'm only mentioning this so that others can avoid being dumb like me.

This game was entered in the Short Games Showcase. It's a choicescript game and begins with a lengthy opportunity to pick your gender, outfit, romantic interests, strengths, etc. before beginning with the main story.

The setup is that you're in a kind of trashy forest town where the woods are haunted with what the elders call angels. Your town has a lot of rules set up to help you avoid them, but you all are braving them during the school dance.

Your town has its share of bullies, and one of them is on the hunt for you due to events out of your control. All of this comes together at the dance.

I enjoyed the setup/premise and liked the characters and writing. I was a tiny bit disappointed with the ending, as I was hoping more for a survival story while I felt it was leaning more for an urban (or, in this case, rural) fantasy. Overall though this works as a complete whole.

This game was entered as part of the short games showcase for games under a half hour, but it is quite a bit longer than that. It's part of a larger, projected Choicescript game.

The setting for this game is a magical fantasy world where women can be born as powerful sorceresses associated to different elements and men can become Guardians who have anti-magic powers and can defend sorceress or fight them.

You play as a fire sorceress, but can choose your specialty within fire. There is an extensive amount of early customization, not just for your character, but also for the game itself. I found this a bit overwhelming as I was expecting a small chunk of game for the competition, but it makes sense as part of a larger work.

The game has an extended intro section where you meet characters and explore. There doesn't seem to be much long-term effect of your choices here, besides setting a couple of romantic options. It's more flavor, but it's well-written flavor.

Later on the game hops into an investigation mode which I think has close to twenty subsections (which again shows how large this game is, as to fit under thirty minutes each subsection would have to take less than a minute to read). In this section, you can investigate three suspects' rooms with a time limit, and also different areas of the castle. In between investigation segments, you must attend a party, with choices of who to dance or flirt with.

Some investigation options let you use magic to solve them. This consumes the magic.

I was able to solve the puzzle the first try, although I wasn't sure until later on, and I thought the game did a good job of steadily building clues.

In this game, you are a teenager who was so focused on playing arcade games in the mall that you ended up locked in after hours.

It seems set in the 80s, with the arcade having Galaga and the character not having any cell phone (looking back, the game description actually says this explicitly). It includes other 80s signs like a poster of Madonna.

Gameplay is mostly classic adventure gameplay, moving objects, searching, codes, etc. The game is coded well, and the abandoned mall vibe has some great moments, especially with encountering things that frighten you.

It kind of felt like the protagonist was getting more and more into trouble, starting with just being in an area they shouldn't be and ending up being a kind of teenage vandal, in a funny way. It would make for a pretty good TV episode.

I did feel a bit frustrated with the lock, as it's intended that you brute force it (once you get some more info), but other than that the puzzles were fair.

This game was written by one of the co-developers of PunyInform, and it shows off a lot of programming complexity.

You wake up in the aftermath of a party, and need to make sure that the evidence is taken care of. I found this the most difficult part of the game, requiring multiple attempts and close inspection.

The rest of the game is a timed series of events. You are required to act in certain roles throughout the day, and you have to be in the right place at roughly the right time. You have a variety of choices in how to act using menu-based conversation.

I was deeply impressed by the tricky programming. The NPCs all have their own agenda, their conversation topics change throughout the day, you can give orders to NPCs, and so on.

This complexity was also a bit overwhelming. Even though the solution turned out to be simple, I felt intimidated by the timer and had trouble engaging emotionally with the game because of that.

Overall, though, the game was impressive and I've added it to my TV and Film list.

This PunyComp game had a nice concept and was pretty fun, with a few caveats. It looks to be the first game by this author, which is pretty impressive if true and I would definitely play more games if they choose to write more.

You play as a paranormal investigator who comes up on the scene of a crime. Your goal is to figure out who died, how, and what to do about it.

You're equipped with two helpful sidekicks (who are later contactable by radio) and a protective amulet and an EMF reader. You explore a big mansion, solving a variety of puzzles and interacting with a few 'unusual' characters.

I was impressed by the implementation of things like the characters and a lot of the default messages. There were two big sticking points for me, though:

1-The game has an extremely small inventory limit. I was trying to carry around the 'default' gear the game gave me (radio, EMF reader, and amulet), and I could only pick up 3 items. I know some people go for realism, but these items are things like a lighter, sage, cigarettes, a pocketknife--I could easily carry all these things in real life, especially with pockets! I'd give a full point higher score if the inventory limit were removed or doubled or if a backpack were provided, or even if the amulet and/or meter were 'wearable'.

2-The game is missing a lot of scenery objects and synonyms. One really noticeable example is that the beginning of the game (so not really a spoiler) tells you that you see a lot of blood. But "X BLOOD" has no response. This is a frequent issue throughout the game, where the text prominently mentions an object but doesn't implement it.

Outside of these two factors, I enjoyed the game a lot, as I like supernatural things and mysteries. I especially liked the ambient messages about the radio and the overall thematic unity of the house.