Reviews by MathBrush
15-30 minutes
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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.
A linear tale of memory wiping , January 27, 2024This is a visual novel with no choices that deals with a race of beings called Harvesters that take away people's memories.
You play as one such harvester, and you meet a young redheaded single mother who has given up her child for adoption and wants you to wipe her memories.
You end up meeting another person who is entangled in her story, and you learn his past.
That art and music worked well. The writing was interesting, but seemed off, not following the conventions of plot and morality that I'm used to. I think I started thinking how very odd it was when someone said "You didn't just banish me to the friend zone or I wouldn't have sued you". There isn't any suing in the game; it might be a translation issue but I'm not sure it makes sense in any language.
Similarly, the endgame is that (Spoiler - click to show)You wipe the memories of her and her lover and then tell her you'll become her lover, which is kind of weird ethically.
I don't think this particular game is AI generated but these issues are similar to ones I've had with AI stories like Character AI (which my son plays), where the overall thing looks good but if you poke at it a lot of stuff just doesn't make sense. My guess is that it just needs some more time and attention, as it was written for Ludum Dare which doesn't give the author much time, I think.
A riddle whose exposition is given by world exploration, January 27, 2024I played this as part of the short games showcase.
This is a fun little game, reminding me of the Northnorth Passage or Out or Ad Verbum, all in good ways, but it is it's own thing and not a copy of anything else. It's a direction-based puzzler where each stride can take you to different kingdoms or even different corners of the earth.
I enjoyed the puzzle, although I kept thinking the solution would be (Spoiler - click to show)tang even though it didn't work and it didn't fit any of the clues. So I don't know what was going on in my brain. At one point I also thought the solution would be (Spoiler - click to show)literally typing out 'the opposite of east' since it starts with a T. Pretty fun!
A game about passing a bill in Congress, January 26, 2024This is a pretty straightforward interpretation of 'a game simulating a bill getting passed'. There's not a lot of characterization or strategy. It was useful to see exactly what all goes into it.
The US House Representative for my district visited my school I teach at recently and mentioned that around 10,000 bills were proposed last year of which some small number (like 27, googling says) actually got passed.
This game simulates that; I failed the house vote, got amendments, passed, passed senate, had president support, but got vetoed and lacked a supermajority.
Oh well. Lol
The game seems like it was made for a government event and it seems well suited for an educational venue.
The world of humans as seen through a single word, January 24, 2024This game has a bit of a different setup between the reader and the protagonist.
The narrative voice of the game is a sentient word. It addresses 'you', but 'you' doesn't mean the reader, it means a person in college that the word traded bodies with for a month.
The word is intrigued and obsessed with the human world, especially with things like color and visual stimuli.
The concept is clever, and there is a lot of enthusiasm that comes across as appropriate for a visitor from another world.
The longer it went on, the more I saw it as the story of someone who truly despises what they are; someone who does not like themself whatsoever. Because the word likes text least of all; it doesn't enjoy visual things more, it actively despises text.
There were two things that were a little weird about my interaction with the game. The first is that I felt like it was apologizing for itself a lot, which is weird because do you as a reader agree with it that it's non-ideal or feel sympathy for it? The second is that there was a wide range of interactivity which never fell into a rhythm for me; it went from wild combinatorial explosion to mostly linear.
Overall, I think it's a solid concept and that the game is just the right length for what it's exploring. I didn't click with all of it, but I did like parts and others might like all.
A powerful game told through poem translation, January 23, 2024This game is framed as homework for translation in a Russian lit class (or similar).
You are given the poem ( a famous one: Он любил три вещи на свете by Анна Ахматова unless I copied it down wrong), and asked to translate it.
The issue is that, like most poems and most translation, it makes use of idioms that don't naturally have a unique counterpart in the other language (in this case, English).
Choosing the meaning to stick with can drastically change the meaning of the poem.
I though this was well made, and powerful.
A strong story about a coin-operated confessional, January 22, 2024In this Shufflecomp game, you play in an alternate reality where the Catholic church has eliminated both priests and Pope and has gone to use coin operated confessional booths that are resolved by computer.
Except you are 'computer' in this case. It is your job to absolve others.
The aesthetics of the game, both video and audio, are very well done, restrained but effective.
The writing is evocative and clear.
I only wish the scenarios had been a bit more daring. Few if any of the characters had done truly wrong, almost as if the game is about moral greyness, the lack of a need for confession.
But everyone knows someone who has done another wrong. Truly wrong. What about confession and absolution in those cases? There can be no forgiveness if there was no wrong. No reconciliation if there was no separation. The elimination of true regret and punishment is also an elimination of true happiness and redemption. So to see such a case would have been interesting...
A collection of stories, on shuffle, January 22, 2024This game was made for Shufflecomp.
In it, you play as someone on a train who is approached by another passenger. He wants to tell you stories of the six other travellers who had spent time on the train before getting off.
The game uses Decker, and has a fixed width retro font.
The stories are very diverse, and build towards the ending stories, those of you and the storyteller. Each story seems to focus on personal relationships, either in pairs or threes.
The writing was solid, and the stories made sense, but something felt missing for me that I can't put my finger on. Almost like buying a box of legos and finding that most of them are already one big molded piece, like bionicles or something. After reading each story, it was hard to say what each one was about. Maybe it was because people were acting in them not as real, flesh and blood people, but as archetypes, like reading a story about tarot cards or astrological signs.
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