Reviews by MathBrush
less than 15 minutes
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A short, branching visual novel adaptation of Jabberwocky, January 27, 2024This game seems, from its itch page, to have been made as part of a doctoral program.
It's a bipsi/binksi visual novel and includes the original poem with some of the original drawings that Lewis Carroll included in his book. It also includes a branching portion where you explore the world described in the poem, with multiple endings.
I got two bad endings; I think I know how to get the good ending, but I was hitting the arrows fast to get through the text quickly and ended up treading dark paths.
Overall, its competently done and reworks a poem I loved as a youth (I liked it when I was older too when I saw how translators translated it). I think I might have liked more long-term effects of choices to allow strategizing, but overall this is pretty good.
Cute micro idea, January 26, 2024This game was entered in the short game jam.
At first I thought it was that weird Ink game that turns on your camera and notices when you blink. But it's not that at all.
It's just (Spoiler - click to show)a game that ends instantly.
A cute idea, but not much there.
Graphical game about closing doors and chucking them out, January 26, 2024I'll grade this on my (usually internal) 5 point scale:
-Polish: The game is very dark on my screen and hard to see.
-Descriptiveness: The poem in game is very short and minimal, but also not very clear
-Interactivity: It was hard to know what to do and, do to lots of looping, to know if there was more game or just the same.
-Emotional impact: I didn't really feel anything.
-Would I play again? Probably not.
Old story, new pictures, January 26, 2024This is a fun short story by Ambrose Bierce which has been converted to Twine (without choices) and had multimedia added. The original story is about an abandoned, 'haunted' house and the new multimedia is about an abandoned, overgrown house that bears a remarkable resemblance to the one in the story.
So it's mostly choiceless, and all the text comes from previously existing material.
But it's good material, and the matchup between the two looks good. So there's not a lot of 'interactive', but a lot of good 'fiction'.
A dungeon of sorts explored through...powerpoint?, January 25, 2024This game is made in a powerpoint format, which is pretty neat. It has two formats, one in portuguese and one in english. I played the english version.
The text is minimalistic, with 3-10 words per page, and usually 1-3 choices. It was hard for me to piece the story together; it seems like you are a knight that awakes in a dungeon, in captivity. With some effort, you begin to explore.
I found someone (or something) to accompany me, found an area of horror, and made a choice...but I'm not sure of what.
There were several noticeable typos, which I think a pass through some online spellchaecker could help (I also get lots of typos in my own games). I did find the game confusing, including the title screen...what does 'soom' mean?
A short branching game about trying to get into a sci fi movie, January 25, 2024This is a short humorous twine game about trying to crash a screening for a new movie.
It uses 'copyright safe' versions of famous movies (for instance, your character is holding a 'light saver').
There are a lot of branches, and while there is some continuity between choices, each one is pretty random.
Overall, the game is pretty brief. Most of what's here is funny, but overall this felt more like a light snack than a substantial work.
Collect ingredients and bake magical foods, January 25, 2024This game is interesting; I went back and forth a lot on what to score it.
It's a cozy type of game, and more of an unfinished prototype (at least, several plot threads are left hanging). It's visually lovely though, with a rich background texture, pleasant fonts and colors, and icons of food.
The gameplay is simple, even (to my feeling) overly simplistic; while there is a little bit of planning required, just clicking every link one at a time generally solves things.
But it looks good, and feels good, so I'm still giving 4 stars. Feels kind of like an ascended tech demo that turned out better than expected, or a planned large game that had to be cut short.
Short joke game, recounting a famous story, January 25, 2024This game is a little bite-sized Inform game. Such games can often be underimplemented or full of bugs, or hard to follow, but I found this one was pretty reasonable and made effective use of its small size.
You play as a gentleman waiting for a train, with no one around but one other passenger. Things progress from there.
There was a review I read once for the game 'Fine Tuned' that praised it for how the humor was participatory, not just descriptive (I can't find it now, unfortunately). That's what makes this game work for me; everything that's funny about it is something that you personally take part of.
The author encourages not knowing the plot ahead of time, so I've omitted that.
Pain, both of body and mind, mixed with magic, January 25, 2024This game has you play as a kind of spellcaster desperate to reconnect with lost memories and lost people. I think. It's kind of hard to know what's going on; it reminded me at first a bit of Dreamhold, where you're an amnesiac in a magic place. But here, the character seems to know what's going on, even if we don't.
The game includes gore, the type that would be horrifying in real life but in text has looped around to be something cold, distant, and removed from emotion.
It's a short game. The main choices I saw were that you can pick from several different potions to toss in a bowl, each of which provokes a different memory. The ending itself did not seem to vary for me, other than one very brief early alternate ending.
A restricted life in twine game form, January 24, 2024I played this game as part of the short games jam.
It's designed to show what life is like when you're part of conservative Christianity. You are given many options, but your options aren't always things you can actually do.
This reminds me a lot of families I knew growing up. I remember one family that banned The Little Mermaid because her outfit was inappropriate. Another family I know banned soda pop and trick-or-treating.
That level of restriction was generally ineffective; the people I knew that were most straight-laced as kids grew up to be the most wild when older.
So the game is very relatable in that sense. It's also pretty brief, which can often be effective in this type of message, but for me, I just didn't feel a big impact. It's completely subjective, someone else might feel very differently.
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