Reviews by MathBrush
15-30 minutes
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An easy-to-play and intriguing IF mystery set in a small town, March 27, 2024This Ink game was fun. You play as someone who received a note to come and investigate a town on behalf of a countess who has had to make herself scarce.
Most links involve either moving to a new location or performing an action in a location, most commonly talking to someone.
There are a diverse cast of characters. To me, the most evocative parts were the location descriptions; it's really nice to think of the bar with a back patio that is set on stilts overlooking a river. Sounds really beautiful!
The investigation was slightly tricky for me, being in French, but the game keeps things simple and it's not too hard to solve just by clicking around, although you may get stuck if you don't stop and think things through just a little.
Definitely enjoyed this one, and easy enough for a foreigner like me. I wondered about the motivations of the characters, though; I feel like they were as detailed as the settings were. Except for the priest, who I felt was very well characterized. Overall I like this, though; this is just some little nitpicks.
Play a low-key roleplaying game while hanging out in a youth hostel, March 21, 2024This is a fun game with a little bit of recursiveness in it.
You are a youth and are trying to get into a youth hostel. Unfortunately, the person in charge is on break, so you're stuck hanging out with a bulletin board, three wild young men, and an intriguing girl reading a book.
The main part of the game is discussion with the girl, who wants to play a role-playing game with you where you challenge concepts about the real world, creating a fantasy world that is different.
The contrast between the wild fantasies of the game and the grungy, mundane but exciting (for a travelling youth) details of the youth hostel was fun. I imagined an antiseptic-smelling cold room with tile floors and a green color scheme.
The character you play as seems a bit hesitant, someone not used to the world (at one point they speculate on the ethnicities of someone's parents, and you can choose whether you find it odd or not that they might have parents of different races). Overall, I felt like I was exploring an urban world that was new to me.
This has good writing overall, more like what I'd expect from a published short story author.
I had some trouble figuring out how to progress, and at one point was worried I'd have to lawnmower everything, but thankfully I didn't, and I managed to have some fun. I still don't know exactly what triggers the ending, but it came at a good time.
Fight zombies in a game set in the real-life Vigamus video games museum, March 19, 2024In Rome there's a video game museum called Vigamus that's been around for a while. This game, which is an illustrated and translated version of the English game I originally played in the 2016 IFComp, is set in that museum and includes photographs of the actual museum.
The gameplay is intentionally simplistic. You start off in a room of the museum where zombies have poured out of an arcade machine. The game offers you items one at a time, each one solving a problem at hand. There is some non-linearity in that you find things before you need them and you have some choices in what order to use them. You use many items from video games, like the hammer from Donkey Kong, to win the day.
I had a little trouble figuring out what to do at times in French, so I had to play the English version to figure out how to get through some parts before coming back to French.
The game has a few small errors here and there (like not capitalizing 'salle' in one of the room names). Some of the parts that felt objectionable in the English version felt a little less so in the French, as the language barrier gave me some distance from the material. There is a lot of silly things here, but it makes sense as a game intended for visitors to Vigamus to play.
A sci fi (?) metaphor game for relationships, March 19, 2024This was difficult to understand as a non-native speaker. It's a story about a fictional spacefaring society that is written in a way that's meant to be obtuse and indeterminate at first before resolving later on.
Everyone has an 'ors' or 'orsimonous' that is visible that lets you understand certain things about the other person; what that is is up to interpretation, but can include parts of their past, their current feelings, etc.
Your father's ors has disappeared.
It happened after a big natural disaster.
The intent of this piece is to discuss how that happened.
At least, that's what I think. The writing is very indirect, saying the same thing multiple times but never outright. It's possible there are many allusions I missed here (is the 'shock' a metaphor for something like Covid? Is the 'orsimonous' a term used in other works of French fiction). But I liked the way the choices were presented and the work made me feel contemplative.
A symbolic adventuron game, March 17, 2024In this Adventuron game (which reminded me in some ways of Andrew Plotkin's Shade, but is sufficiently different), you play as a figure in a medieval castle who is tasked with staving off a great army. Unfortunately, you fail, but you 'respawn' the next day.
You must explore a castle in a vast wasteland of sand, watching as mysterious figures appear and disappear.
I got stuck a few times, but exploring everything helped (a tip I saw on the itch page by manonamora). One thing that really threw me off early on was that the room description is at the top but events occur on the bottom, and often an event occurs before moving to a new room, but you are intended to read the bottom first and then the top, which I found confusing.
Overall, I liked the story and the multimedia was honestly neat! I like surreal horror-ish games so this was fun.
An incomplete game based on Machiavelli's The Prince, March 16, 2024This game has you play as a prince-in-training at a prince factory where everyone must read and study Machiavelli.
It's not finished yet, but it has a money system (where you earn money by correctly identifying quotes from The Prince). You can spend that to hear tales from past princes or to buy witty retorts.
The combat system needs some fleshing out; it's very difficult not to instantly die and thus be locked out of combat forever. There is a non-combat ending which I didn't find but received copious in-game hints for (Spoiler - click to show)something about the flower you can buy giving voice to something and also 'ailleurs' being the magic word?
Some really cool ideas here, just needs some fleshing out. But honestly very innovative.
An unfinished gardening game with a twist, March 15, 2024This Moiki game puts you in the role of a young gardener (who I imagined as a woman, although I don't know if it's stated), living in a cottage in a clearing in the winds.
You have an old, mossy well and a loyal dog companion, as well as a neatly organized life, with a shed, a book on herbs, tools, etc.
I thought it might be a kind of strategy sim, but I found that I had time and energy to just about everything.
Later on, the game changes dramatically. I was intrigued with it.
There's still a lot left. I wonder if having some more significant choices in the first day might be fun (but if not, it's totally fine leaving it as just a story lead-in if more exciting stuff happens later). In any case, I found this well-written and easy to follow even for a non-native speaker.
A reincarnation story that is hard to follow, March 13, 2024This French game has some problems. There is only one available choice on each page; some pages have other links but they are red/unclickable.
The text flows from thought to thought and it isn't always coherent. There are 'episodes' but it jumps from 1 to 6 and then back to 2. The point of view and names change frequently. After a few smaller passages there is one very large passage with no options.
The overall theme seems to be a person who has been or will be reincarnated many times over and over again, and who struggles with or against Gods.
Overall, it's possible this is an abstract, intentional art piece. If the author has some additional intent that I am missing, or a reader sees some hidden beauty in this gem, I'd be happy to rate it higher, but for now I'm giving it 1 star.
A powerful story of coming back for a funeral, and of post-Franco Spain, March 9, 2024This game is set in Spain but written in French. It's a powerful story; it made me glad that I still play interactive fiction, because I wouldn't have experienced this excellent story otherwise.
You play as a young man (I believe) who arrives at the funeral of his grandfather. However, you have decidedly unkind memories of your grandfather, who was part of Franco's army and committed numerous atrocities.
The story unfolds as you run into your family, deal with their awkward situations, talk to your partner, attend the funeral, or maybe not do a lot of these things; after all, there are several paths.
The only thing missing, I felt, could have been a little more personalization in the graphical presentation, or perhaps some more involved interactions. But the story is very well done, one of my favorite of the year so far.
Reconstruct the memories of a shattered mind in a short Twine game, February 27, 2024This game is a short Twine game with glitch-like animations and moody background music. It is designed to be replayed.
In it, you play as a computer program whose job is to interface with damaged humans and sort through their memories, deciding what should be saved. As the title says, Whatever isn't saved will be lost.
So the game is reaching for a poignant picture of humanity, and in a way it can be a projection for you, the reader. If you could only keep a few memories, would you pick the most painful ones, to learn from? The best ones, to treasure? How would you decide?
The words in the text (mostly the pronouns) glitch and shuffle themselves as you try to understand what's going on.
In one playthrough, there were only five or so memories to work through the whole time. In other playthroughs, I unlocked more somehow. Maybe I also did the first time and just didn't notice?
Overall, this is strongly written. The size of it felt a little weird, almost that it would make more sense to be slighter or more substantial but that it was caught in an awkward spot between the two. But the feelings of melancholy and nostalgia are powerful.
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