Ratings and Reviews by MathBrush
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Explore a forest of magical creatures, May 7, 2024This is an Adventuron game entered in the Text Adventure Literacy Jam.
It uses some pixel art which looks very detailed. I found out later that it was AI-generated, which would explain the lack of recurring characters.
The story is interesting and fun; a dragon has helped you, a princess, throughout your life, so when a prince asks you to marry him, the dragon helps you flee away. Now, you need to help your dragon while making friends with local fairies.
The map is not tiny but is easy to navigate, and it's easy to picture the room descriptions. The main NPCs have strong personalities, so that was fun.
There were definitely several bugs, as the author stated (due to lack of time). The weirdest to me was that there are supposed to be large crystals in the mine but instead they're listed at the pool, but you can't reference them with 'large' or 'crystals', instead you call them 'pool' and the game offers a disambiguation prompt between them and the real pool.
Similarly, there are several puzzles where you have to type things just right, like using 'jump on' instead of 'enter' or 'climb' or 'get on' or 'stand on'. This definitely could have used a longer testing period!
Mythological game set in a complex labyrinth , May 5, 2024This game was part of the Text Adventure Literacy Jam, which requires a tutorial and asks authors to make games appropriate for newcomers.
The tutorial in this game was, I thought, as long as the whole game, as it was very complex, involving following a complex recipe. I was surprised to find out there was more after, and quite a bit!
This is one of the longer Adventuron games I've seen in a while, not as big as Faeries of Haelstowne, for instance, but it took me around an hour or more.
You play as an Athenian maiden trapped in the labyrinth with the minotaur. But...he's actually a very nice minotaur. And he needs your help!
The gameplay and story reminded me of Bronze by Emily Short in a way, with an injured beast man that you have to care for. But this is a more positive game, and contains many references to Greek Mythology.
One thing I liked about this game was that it has a lot of optional side quests, meaning that if you are having trouble you can just leave, but if you're enjoying yourself and want more of a challenge you can attempt the other quests.
There are a lot of hints and things.
I had several parser frustrations, many of which were just due to having a complex project in Adventuron, in my opinion (I had a big Adventuron project that had similar issues). I passed on everything I found to the author, though, and I didn't have much trouble completing the game in the end.
I liked the storyline overall, and felt it was a good spin on mythology and I loved the synergy between me and the minotaur. Glad I played.
Several mini-stories accessible from a hub, May 4, 2024This is an Adventuron game designed for the Text Adventure Literacy Jam. It has simple puzzles and structure, designed as an introduction to IF.
The author often had trouble when playing Adventuron on mobile because it wouldn't save, so this game is based on a password system. An early choice in the game leads to 4 branches, each accessible by a password.
Most of the gameplay revolves around driving to work, getting an assignment, then carrying out a task involving riddles or metaphoric actions of various sorts, including solving number patterns and changing the emotions of animals. There's one big final chapter at the end.
Overall, the game has some heartwarming moments and some big ideas. The execution doesn't really pull through though. There are a lot of typos and grammatical errors; the author is a non-native speaker, likely using a mobile device based on the author notes, but it may be worth running the text through a spellchecker like grammarly (you can even put code into spell checkers, just ignoring the errors the code part causes). A lot of items are underimplemented; one important item is stuck in a gate, but X item acts as if it's not there; similarly, there is a billboard that you can't EXAMINE or LOOK AT but can READ. You have to GO OFFICE to go to the office, but if you try to GO ______ for an address, it says 'not yet'; instead, you must just type ______ (i.e. the address itself). Due to these issues, I found myself struggling to enjoy parts of the game. With more polish, I could see this being very fun!
There is some pixel art, which ranges from abstract and confusing to fun and silly. There is an odd part about buying underwear off models, leaving them nude, but otherwise it's pretty solid.
Overall, lots of fun stuff here, just needs some more care and attention to spelling and implementation.
A funny take on fairy tales, with simple parser, May 3, 2024This game is part of the Text Adventure Literacy Jam. The competition requires games to have a tutorial and to be gentle for beginners, but to have substantial puzzles.
The game casts you as the Big Bad Wolf, in prison, and you have to account for your actions from your own perspective. It reminds me of classic takes on this subject like the movie Hoodwinked or the children's book The Stinky Cheese Man. The writing is humorous and fun to read.
The map is small and simple to follow, mostly shaped like a cross with a branch on one of the sides. The game draws on Little Red Riding Hood, the Three Little Pigs, Peter and the Wolf, and others.
I found many of the puzzles enjoyable and engaging. The game is relatively brief, just right for beginners. I would give 4 stars, but I had some parser wrangling issues. I frequently found that the limited parser felt like it made the game more complicated rather than less; for instance, TAKE is blocked, but many puzzles revolve around using items that are present. So a puzzle that would be very simple with TAKE becomes a complex guessing game of what the correct verb is. Similarly, some of the puzzle logic felt out of whack; actions that I thought would be reasonable are handwaved away, but later turn out to be the right solution, it just wasn't the right time (I'm specifically thinking of the (Spoiler - click to show)sheep disguise).
These issues were not severe and were overcome in the end, but gave me enough friction that it was irritating. The writing, however, was very funny to me, and provided me strong motivation to go on. I also didn't find any bugs or typos at all, and the game overall felt highly polished. I was planning on giving it 3 stars and saying I'd give 4 if the issues above were resolved, but I can't really think of any way to fix them myself, so why not just give the higher score for this fun and well-written game?
A compact fantasy game written in a custom engine, April 27, 2024This game was entered in the IF Grand Prix 2024, in German. In it, you play as someone determined to stop a sorceror from hatching a dragon egg and dooming the nearby community.
Gameplay revolves around looking around, exploring, and then using different items you find to open up new areas.
It's written in a custom engine which looks visually appealing but which I struggled with. A lot of objects weren't implemented that were mentioned in the text, and many synonyms I've become accustomed to from other German games didn't work here, so I had about 25 commands at the beginning that weren't understood. I finally got one to work by accident. Exploring around, some commands were hinted in the text and just didn't work; an example (not from the game) would be like 'it looks like you can pull it!' but 'pull' doesn't work.
Not being a native speaker compounded this problem, but I've seen on the German forums that others had the same problems. I ended up using the walkthrough helpfully provided, pausing here and there to explore some.
Other than that, the game is a good fantasy game. Some of the puzzle solutions were a bit confusing but the game is small enough that just trying everything should be fine.
A new IF engine takes a ton of work. This one is very promising but could use some more synonyms. For instance, in Inform I can type 'Oben' and 'Hoch' and both make me go up, or just 'schau' for looking around (maybe these are unusual commands and I've trained myself wrong by misplaying other German titles, a native speaker would have to correct me). I see now when writing that there was a Help page on the front page of the game, but I didn't see that when I first played, and typing Hilfe didn't bring anything up in game. The help page would have helped some, though, but it doesn't mention the up and down directions, which I struggled with.
A classic Western with a traveller helping solve a mystery, April 23, 2024This was a well-made Inform game in German with custom CSS. It uses the Hybrid Choices extension for Dialog.
You play as a traveller who comes to a small town looking for your love. In the meantime, though, you find a mystery, as a young man goes missing.
Gameplay revolves mostly around dialogue and exploration, with one puzzle involving several metal implements that I found confusing enough for me (a non-native speaker) to need to look at the walkthrough, but once I saw the commands it made sense.
Between conversations, there is often a lot of fetch-quests, where one person asks you to go find something and bring it back. I felt like it was a lot of fun most of the time, but one specific part felt a little repetitive, as there are three things in a row where you get an item, use it, realize you need another, get it, use it, etc.
Overall, I liked the writing and thought the flashbacks were neat. A very strong game. Near the end there were two weird things; the use of the word (Spoiler - click to show)drugs to refer to illegal things, when it was more (Spoiler - click to show)a reference to pharmaceuticals at the time</spoil>, and a somewhat derogatory term for Asians spoken by an uncultured man.
'Western' is definitely an underutilized IF category so it was nice playing a very polished game in this genre.
An experience like brainstorming, written in Inklewriter, April 21, 2024I used an Internet Archive backup to play this game.
In it, you start with a one-sentence story, and then expand on it. After three or four rounds of expansion, you get a full-fledged story.
There is quite a variety; I found a cheating king who broke his wife's heart, an evil witch who sucked the life force from her husband, and a mysterious assassin who married the king and left her old life behind only to be forced to return to her old habits.
The structure seems to be completely branching, which makes sense as Inklewriter isn't an exceptionally powerful engine. There may be some state tracking, though I'm not sure.
Overall, the stories were each high quality, but this overall feels slight in terms of its interactive structure.
A game out of time--short, with little time but several options, April 21, 2024This is a choice-based game written using a parser. At the time it came out, 2008, choice-based games had a long history already but they had never been popular in the IFComp or r*if usenet communities. The reviews from that time indicate that people found its choice-based nature unappealing.
The game is based on a writing prompt, and that prompt is essential to understanding the game. You begin in a cafe with three people around you called B, C, and D, and an American couple, one with a lisp and one with a stutter.
The speech impediments are part of the prompt; it can be difficult to write impediments in a way that doesn't come of as either condescending or mocking, but I think this pulls it off well.
For a choice-based game, this is actually quite complex. Time progresses no matter what you do, but you can focus on talking to each of the three people with you, or Wait. Each person you're talking to has a variety of options on what you can ask them about. I found that the game could recognize even small parts of the prompt, so if a question started with 'ask whether...', then typing ASK WHETHER was enough to solve it.
I remember trying this in the past and thinking it didn't go much beyond the prompt, so I was surprised this time that there was a major twist in the story. I had to reread to make sure I was understanding right. I'm surprised the other reviews don't mention that.
I genuinely liked this game; I liked the twist, the parser added a little 'crunchiness' to the choice interactivity, and it was well-written. The only thing that seemed 'off' was that choosing to just 'WAIT' ends up with an interaction that doesn't seem to fit the story as written.
A complex Twine game about exploring an enormous library, April 20, 2024This game was in a poll for games that need more reviews.
In this game, you play as a lowly librarian who has been tasked by a mysterious stranger with finding the Babylon Book, which contains all stories that can ever be written.
This is meant to be the first in a three-part series. The bulk of the game takes place in a bizarre student cafeteria where history, magic, and collegiate life mingle.
The game uses a lot of styling, and has cycling links, background images, music, and a lot of text boxes where you can type what you want. I'm not sure how often the game checks what's in the type boxes; I had one puzzle where for sure it mattered, but others didn't.
The story is madcap and surreal, so it can be fun but also hard to follow at times. I wasn't quite sure how I ended up in the cafeteria, or why I couldn't leave it; and I encountered many things before I knew how to make use of them.
But, this is fairly compact, and it's not too hard to explore everything even though there's a lot. So I was able to figure out things in the end.
I definitely think I'd play the next few games. The one thing that I wish were a little different was the many times where I saw a cool feature (especially text boxes) and didn't know if it was 'cool feature just to have fun with that is only used for characterization' or 'essential puzzle component'.
A short linear Twine game about wormholes popping up, April 15, 2024This is an example of dynamic fiction, where you have no interactivity (although there is one instance of cycling text) and the entire purpose of the links is to pace the reading.
I’m not really against dynamic fiction. It’s useful in shorter stories to hide the total length of the story and keep you guessing where the end will come. It’s less useful in longer stories, as players get frustrated. Thankfully this is pretty short.
This game is about wormholes opening up and taking away things and people, with the reasons for it slowly revealed. I liked it, and I appreciated the sentiment it was trying to impart.
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