Reviews by ChanceOfFire

I played The Race a long time ago, finishing the game in third place. (Somewhere between a good and bad ending.) Recently, I decided to try picking it up again for another round, and ended up in third place again. Interestingly, I was still able to remember the solutions to some of those puzzles all those years ago.

The writing (minus some annoying fourth wall breaking) is fairly solid, and goes for a more minimalistic style, rather than the wordy approach which is more common for choicescript games today. You pick a partner, and have to complete a set of stages with sufficient speed to avoid getting eliminated at each round. The puzzles here can get challenging, and randomly tapping and picking options isn’t going to get you to a win state. You will need to think about how you will complete the puzzles, and the threat of failure is real in some areas. Not to mention, the game can be pretty cruel to players who try to explore at times. (Spoiler - click to show)Getting robbed :(

It’s good for a playthrough or two, to try to see how well you can do. Folks who like puzzles in choicegames could try this out. You could probably beat the game in less than an hour, but it’s still a pretty solid experience if you want the challenge.

There is apparently a hidden subplot in the game, but I’m not sure how to reach it.

Note: This review is based on the choicescript release.

The Ascot gives you two choices, yes and no. Well… there’s always a third choice, but I’ll leave it to you to find out what it does.

The story is largely linear if it doesn’t lead you to a game over or retry. There isn’t much of a plot, although the final boss and the method to defeat it was somewhat amusing. To get to the best end, you will need to select the correct yes and no options to bring you there. Still, even with failed attempts and all, this shouldn’t take more than fifteen minutes or so to complete.

I’m not sure how this felt as a parser game, but as a choice game, it feels limiting. You’d probably want to take out the final boss for some laughs and try to resist the Call To Adventure for more laughs, but otherwise, that’s all I can say.

Note: I am writing this review from memory. It has been a while since I played this game. As of this writing, I do not know if there is anywhere online to play this game, as dashingdon no longer exists.

Working in a cafe in Paris, you discover the Urge, which seems to make people romantically drawn to you. Much of the plot is around getting to know the different ROs who are drawn to you, and finding out more about them. While it is mostly a lighthearted romance game, some parts can be dark and violent, so be warned. Rather interestingly, the story later reveals that the urge is connected to a very controversial romantic practice. (Spoiler - click to show) Love Locks.

If I recall correctly, I romanced the assistant working at the cafe. There was plenty of romance, including a romantic trip to another country, and a fairly explicit romance scene at one part. The game also goes through various famous locations in Paris, another touch I liked.

As a romance game, there aren't really any stats here, but you will need to keep track of your relationships with various ROs. In addition, there are also plenty of customization options for your character, basically name, gender and physical attributes. Hey, it's a romance game.

This game was originally submitted to Hosted Games. I am unsure what happened, but HG ultimately did not publish the game. The author released it on dashingdon for free, but did not migrate the title with the recent closure of dashingdon, so it no longer appears to be playable unless someone had saved a copy.

A powerful space empire threatens your existence. You can choose to resist them, building your defenses and deciding how you wish to direct wartime efforts.

After the introductory chapters, most of the game is spent deciding how you will allocate resources in preparation for battle, and whether you’d like to focus on something at the expense of something else. The actual war has much less choice, and the game instead largely narrates to you how the battles go based on decisions made. Still, I managed to obtain a victorious ending on my first attempt, although it certainly wasn’t without cost. That said, I did make a few decisions which I felt would increase my chances of winning, at the cost of something else to my empire, but I’m not sure if the ending acknowledges the latter in some way.

There were a few star maps, which were nice to look at, but it was hard to make out the little details on my iPhone screen.

The game is short, but the writing is largely solid, with a heavy focus on prep and management.

Usually, I would recommend a long and linear approach to writing a choicescript game. Caves and Dinosaurs flat out goes against this recommendation, opting for a game with over 70 endings on a roughly 100k word count. Of course, this means that each playthrough will be short, and maximum value will come from plenty of additional playthroughs.

The writing is pretty entertaining, even if not exceptional, as you roll your character class (there’s some really nice art here) and head out for your mission. You have the option to chance things by rolling the dice and deciding your choice, or use a certain stat to choose something for you. It’s possible to meet a bad end in this game, depending on how the dice and choices work for you, but the game simply allows you to try again.

It’s absolutely not your traditional choice game. Still, it was somewhat fun to play just by rolling the dice and seeing what a short new playthrough will bring. If you’ve a short bit of time you need to pass, you could do worse than trying out a playthrough a few times for more bite-sized entertainment.

I was deciding between three and four stars. That said, I have a weakness for the character art, so this gets four.

A group of factions are experiencing raids, and perhaps one faction is responsible for this. Your task here is to investigate. The premise is fairly interesting, although the execution doesn’t quite match it. The writing, while technically acceptable for the most part, also has plenty of roughness to it.

Investigating each faction simply means completing a puzzle which does not appear strongly related to investigative work. These puzzles aren’t difficult and I got everything right on my first try. Still, difficulty isn’t the problem, just that these puzzles feel like a crude stand in for an actual investigation which ties to the plot.

Once you are done, you get to join a debate on who was behind the raids. The game, as a whole, doesn’t take too long, and I had no interest in another round. That said, I’m still awarding three stars as I think this free title still isn’t egregiously bad to warrant less.

Paranoia is an improvement over What Happened Last Night, I guess.

The story is decent, I suppose. You start off with a day to day management system, where you need to collect a certain number of items to advance to the final mission. You have some medication which you can either choose to take or not. (There's actually an interesting gameplay mechanic behind that.) Some parts of it were funny, even if it was probably my childish side laughing.

Once you reach the final mission, you'll get the first checkpoint seen in HG history, where if you fail, you are allowed to retry the final mission rather than the entire game. I suppose I could give bonus points for that. Still, once you finish, you'll probably not want to play this again.

Wanna know what happened last night? To save you the trouble: (Spoiler - click to show) Some guy was unhappy about being made fun of for being short by some attractive woman at his club, so he killed her and made you the fall guy.

The game is full of dead ends which lead to an instant game over. There is a good bit of branching and multiple endings, although a lot of it feels silly. (I admit some of it was funny to my childish side.) Gameplay wise, there is a good bit of additional content for folks who want to do multiple replays, with multiple endings, although I'm not sure that it's worth your time to try finding them.

This was one of the first choicescript games released under the HG label. At that time, it was 'good' when folks were starved for choicescript games. Now, perhaps not.

You're dead, and have a new job to haunt stuff. Work hard, and you'll make it to the top.

The premise is pretty interesting, and the writing is definitely solid. Still, this game sets aside the usual choicescript format, opting for a statless system with plenty of branching paths, instead of the usual long and linear approach with stat checks. Without any stats, most choices matter, as these choices will determine where down the many branching paths you'll head.

The game's length is pretty variable. If you mess up (I mean, don't quite follow orders for) the earlier missions, it could end quickly, although you might still feel satisfied with the outcome. Otherwise, if you try to do your job well, you'll get more and more options until you reach the top, now with another ending.

I think the author is a very good writer, even if not writing the popular stuff in HG town. This title is free to win, so I'd recommend having a look.

Imprisoned was probably one of the better HG titles in the early CoG days, although standards weren't high at that time.

You're thrown into a cell for... something. There is a substantial character creation process as you are put through the early scenes. While you are in your cell, the game is pretty much like a stat management RPG, where you will have to raise certain stats, manage others, and think about how you will escape.

I managed to escape by raising a stat (Spoiler - click to show)(push ups, then bending the bars). Still, navigating the dungeon is tricky and some of the descriptions aren't too well written, which just makes it more confusing at times. My escape attempt eventually met with an inglorious end... but eh, I tried.

The writing is acceptable at a technical level, although I saw some typos. The game's tone is a bit juvenile at times, but I suppose you could treat this as a not-so-serious fantasy story. It's a pretty flawed title today, but might perhaps still be worth a look.