Reviews by ChanceOfFire

To the City of the Clouds is quite interesting and well written. The archeology genre is not very common, and you'll probably need to be a grad student or professor to get some of the writing and the jokes, but this was generally an easy and enjoyable read.

However, the game's main problem is the rocket-boosted pacing. The game darts from scene to scene, spending little time on each before jumping onto the next. When you finally reach the fabled City of the Clouds, you'll only be spending a few scenes there before you're out.

The game does branch quite a bit, especially given the low wordcount, which might give you an idea of how quickly everything needs to run.

There were also some questions on gender and romantic preferences in the starting chapters, but I don't think I saw much of romance in this game.

If you're the grad student type, or if archeology is your thing, you might enjoy this.

Before this review, the lowest rating I gave to any game on this website was three stars.

You play as a ‘Headcrusher’ for a powerful crime lord, tasked with sending messages through some particularly unspeakable means. My guess is that it takes place in 1950s New Orleans, going by the initial setting description and the fact that this game calls itself a noir thriller. However, some references to Disney’s imagineers and Donkey Kong broke the immersion. Unfortunately, the problems were just getting started.

The plot makes no sense and seemingly jumps from one point to another without coherence. At one point, your character can encounter robot animals and become some kind of sci-fi cyborg. Nothing in this game indicates that it’s supposed to be a parody of some sort, so all I can do is go “whaaaattt????”

There is also plenty of blood and gore in this game, but much of it felt like the game trying too hard to be dark and gritty. Minus everything I’ve said above, the prose is okay, but nothing which can salvage the many issues I see.

I managed to get a pretty good ending in the game, where I defeated the bad guy and saved the love interest. Yet, it was hard to feel satisfied.

With genuinely snarky and humorous writing, this game is a pretty entertaining read.

Without spoiling too much, you’re working as a real estate agent for your unreasonable and tyrannical boss. One day, she sets a challenge to deal with ‘overstaffing’ issues. You are given an awkward property to add to your portfolio, and you’ll have to try to make as much as you can from it. Fail to meet the cut, and you get the sack.

Most of the game is centered around making money off your property. It starts off pretty innocently as you struggle helplessly to rent the house to all manner of problematic tenants, before finding out some… supernatural… means to bring in the bacon with your haunted house.

Unfortunately, at its core, this is largely a simplified business sim, where you make decisions to maximize the money the house makes for you. There is little in the way of exploring relationships with other characters, save a rival whom you try to screw with on a few occasions. You do make a few slice of life type decisions here and there, but otherwise, the game is largely centered around the main goal of driving up that dollar number. It’s not strictly a bad thing, but I felt there was more that the game could’ve explored.

It’s a solid short story, and probably recommended for an easy and funny read.

The game felt promising initially. The prose, writing and setting carried a lot of charm and cuteness. I liked the premise and felt that this could be a pretty good kids game.

However, much of your search for the elusive mermaids takes place over a series of scenes which do not feel very well connected. I got a pretty negative ending in this game which also felt sudden and confusing. I think this game has multiple endings, but I didn’t feel like returning for another round.

You can romance your patron in this game. I managed to accomplish my romance, but it felt really forgettable.

I liked the genuinely sweet and charming vibes in the game. However, the story and plot didn’t quite do it for me.

Joining a crew of space pirates and working together on missions to steal treasure. The premise works, but the execution has no shortage of problems.

Starting with the minor issues, there are unexplained pronoun changes in the game, sometimes on the same page. There is an inventory system, but it’s heavily underused. I bought almost everything in the shop on the first time I had access to it, but found limited opportunities to use those items. Character relationships are measured with opposing stats. (why??)

Most of the missions are ‘room puzzles’ where the game allows you to walk between different rooms, solving puzzles to move on to the next stage. Sometimes, you’ll need to unlock something in one room to unlock the other. This can be tough to pull off in the choicescript engine, and it’s actually quite well done here. Unfortunately, that’s the biggest praise I can offer.

At the ending battle, I chose to openly betray a certain group of people. Yet, in the ending mission, they were treating me as a hero, without much explanation as to why they had decided to forgive and forget. Another character was working to rescue someone who had been imprisoned, yet does not follow up on this after successfully defeating the imprisoned character’s jailor. The ending just didn’t make sense and felt rushed.

It’s not a bad game. Maybe it’s worth your time for a small bit of entertainment. But it could use some work.

My first playthrough didn’t exactly go smoothly. I failed to romance the character I liked (I did carelessly mess up a few choices there) and my special project with my kids didn’t go all too well. Nevertheless, I still enjoyed the playthrough and left with a good impression.

You are a single mother, caring for six children with werewolf powers while trying to manage your day job. You’ll also meet a few interesting characters, go on dates with them and perhaps win the game of romance. This is largely a slice of life game, although there are plenty of interesting events to keep the story going.

The prose can feel kind of rambling at times, although it’s mostly well written. The ROs also have fairly interesting personalities, and I ultimately went with the schoolteacher.

It’s a short but solid title, with a good dose of romance and parenting.

The Fleet is probably somewhere between Interactive Fiction and a choicescript battle simulator, but not a game which fits either category completely.

Most decisions in the game are centered around battle decisions or management decisions in preparation for said battles. The story and plot is very barebones, most characters do not receive much development and there is little done in exploring the setting and the different races/factions you're allied with or fighting against.

There are a few interesting choices around dealing with rebellions, betrayal and politics, but these are a small minority. Most of your choices will be around combat strategies or combat resource allocation. As far as I can tell, the stat system appears fairly deep and the combat system gives you plenty of options. Still, I was (seemingly) able to beat these battle checks most of the time, so I'm not sure how the game's difficulty really works.

If you want a choicescript game which is heavy on battles and battle management, this is it. However, I do think it could have benefitted from more exploration of the setting and the different factions in the game.

The story starts out with you trapped in a videogame universe, trying to figure out what just happened. For the first part, you travel through several videogame worlds, meeting some other characters seemingly in the same predicament while being treated to various videogame references and jokes. It's an interesting start, although there is one very annoying spaceship puzzle which gave me a lot of frustration on my first run (it took me three attempts to beat it, on a blind playthrough) and alone really deterred me from multiple playthroughs.

There are two romance interests in the game. Be warned, there is no happily ever after here. Trying to keep things spoiler free, the game splits into two separate paths depending on your selection, with one RO path having much more content than the other. Here, the game explores some really thought provoking themes of AI, reality, existence and so on. I felt it was really well done, although folks after a happy ending would likely disagree.

There is plenty of branching at the second half of the game, and the writer released a full flowchart. However, if you want to see most of it, this necessitates playing through the earlier chapters all over again and doing that annoying spaceship puzzle all over again. Having checkpoints or a save system (seriously) would have made exploring more endings a less daunting proposition. For me, I played the game twice (one with each RO) and was too lazy to go back for more.

It's definitely a unique game in terms of genre and structure, and one that really gets you thinking. I liked it a lot, but it's definitely not for everyone.

And please give me the option to skip that spaceship puzzle on second playthroughs! (I know the game gives you an option to skip it, but I only got it after failing the puzzle twice.)

It's a pretty quick but enjoyable romantic short story, where you enjoy a few romantic activities with your partner before concluding it with a moment of passion.

Character creation is pretty detailed, especially for a game of this length. The writing is sweet and evocative, although a little more on the descriptive side. Overall, I enjoyed reading about the romantic activities, and would say this is good for a quick read.

Science nerd puns and jokes galore! You’re a brain in a jar, working for a dubious corporation as a brain for hire. Clients need your help, and as a brain, you’ll have to do some of the thinking for them. Of course, spending the rest of your existence being a brain-slave is not on your plans. In the meantime, you’re plotting to escape and save the other brains.

The story and plot isn’t too difficult to follow, although it won’t win much interest among the fans of fantasy and superheroes which make up a large portion of the choicescript fanbase. The pacing gets a little quick at times, but otherwise, I enjoyed it.

The stat system is a headache, however. Like Choice of the Dragon, it uses an opposed stat system. However, it was hard to guess what choice affected what stat (if any) most of the time, and I wound up with a pretty balanced (read: useless) character in the stat department. Some of the stat checks at the end are also pretty tough.

There’s some branching and multiple endings. If you like science humor, you’ll probably enjoy the writing here. It was a fun read for me, largely of the science variety.