Ratings and Reviews by MathBrush
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A surreal horror game about a friend group and their relationships, April 6, 2024This game starts off very strongly with a nice animation of tv static, good styling choices and a creepy intro. I was ready to be scared and felt a bit nervous/excited going in.
Four friends are going to watch a famously bad movie that has previously been edited, but now they find the original director’s cut.
Unfortunately, one of them is killed. Even worse, it’s the friend that was keeping the whole group together, the leader.
The game then takes a quick turn and opens up to the main gameplay, where each friend must confront the death of their friend and what that means for the future. This was a unique and fun part of the game.
There are a ton of different endings, and I played through to see 8 of them, but after the first two you have to re-see a lot of the game so it petered out eventually. But the endings I got were very strong.
The beginning was a bit hard to follow; I thought they were going to a theatre, then to pick up something, then a concert, then they were at a gas station. I eventually realized it was all one story, but the jumps were a bit confusing. That’s my little nitpick for an otherwise very solid game. I like surrealish horror with two worlds/realities, so this was fun.
Relationship drama at an older university party, April 6, 2024This choice-based game is inspired by Shakespeare’s Sonnet 128, as well as the Reverse a Poem prompt (and the surprisingly popular Color Palettes prompt, which has been used in at least 3 of the games I’ve seen.)
I enjoy Shakespeare (although his sonnets and other poems are the works of his I’ve studied least), so I was interested to see where this goes.
It’s split into 4 pieces, each reflecting part of the sonnet, and inviting you to compare the storyline with the sonnet itself as you go.
You show up at a Valentine’s party for older singles, some of whom your friendly with and others less so. Interaction comes from choosing who to talk to and how to interact with them.
I tend to immerse myself in characters as I play and to suspend disbelief, imagining me to be the character myself. Obviously characters sometimes do things that I wouldn’t do, like theft and murder. But I had to pull myself out of immersion in this game, as I was presented with a woman, told that she is married but separated, and given a chance to put my hand on her thigh. An extramarital affair is something I’ve seen happen multiple times in real time and they have cause the majority of pain I’ve experience in my life, so I had to eject my immersion and puppet the character like an astral projection the rest of the game. I don’t think that was the author’s intent at all, and they certainly can’t anticipate every person’s reaction to different themes!
Fortunately, I could simply just not click on certain options and the game came to a satisfying conclusion. I found myself intrigued by the drama and drawn into the action.
The best parts of the game to me were the characters who are painted in vivid detail. I felt like I already knew Jack and Henry and Aline, like I had met them before and could picture them in my eye (I saw Henry as a younger Robert Redford).
A few times I felt like the pacing could have slowed down a bit to explore some of the more interesting moments, like a certain violent moment with a bottle. This is an author who I think would do equally well with long form fiction as with short form fiction.
The styling was well done and the overall presentation looked great.
The horrors of mankind, now in two flavors, April 6, 2024This game is about someone experiencing the worst the world has to offer: isolation, hunger, infection, homophobia, perpetuating cycles of abuse, and, worst of all: cryptocurrency.
It’s a short game, well-designed with animated background transitions and varying fonts and colors.
You play as a recluse without stable unemployment who has recently fled a discord server where they were picked on and called various slurs. They find hope in a new discord for a cryptocurrency.
While all of this is happening, their house becomes increasingly moldy.
I didn’t put it together until now, because while playing I thought these two storylines were disjoint, but the spread of mold and the cycle of crypto’s crash and boom have a lot in common and those parallels must be what the other was on about.
There are several kinds of creepy moments here, from strange questions to plenty of physical horror. The slurs made me most uncomfortable; it was clear, though, that their use was not positive and was reflective of the ill mental state of the character.
Overall, a thoughtful game. Reminded me a lot of when crypto first got really big; I looked up how it worked and couldn’t figure out how it would be sustainable due to the need to keep long lists of past transactions in each interaction, so I tried to code up my own and got it to work, and my dean decided to use it as fake currency for his econ class (we made proof of work really easy so that it wouldn’t destroy the environment). I thought it would make it clear to the students how silly crypto was, but they got really into it. But the mining was annoying so they eventually abandoned the crypto part and made it fiat by putting it on the dean’s spreadsheet, which pretty much sums up the usefulness of crypto in real life (it’s not).
Anyway, a good horror game but definitely check the trigger warnings.
Long, complex and creepy story about a private cinema showing, March 31, 2024This is a pretty substantial Moiki game with a creepy atmosphere, in French.
There is a book you love that is finally getting a movie adaptation! And your friend has a friend who knows someone who has an early bootleg copy!
The book is about a woman who reincarnates throughout history, including as various animals, but who can take control of some of the reincarnations given the right ritual.
Going to the movie takes you to a dark and frightening theatre where everyone behaves strangely...
The game gives the impression that there are many branches, although I only played through once. There are numerous quick-time events, which were difficult for me as a non-native speaker.
The use of background images, music and occasional voice were very effective, and I was impressed both by the technical skill and the storytelling.
I was left unsure of how the final events of the game where I learn more about myself were connected to either the book or the movie; perhaps if I had played more, I could have seen the truth.
An alchemy parser game on a retro platform, March 30, 2024This French game is designed to run on an Amstrad CPC emulator. It comes with pixel art.
This was tough; I often struggle with old-school games, and playing in French wasn't helping! I did find 2 out of 5 endings, and feel satisfied with that.
You are asked by an oracle in your village to explore an old chapel and find a monk named Hermes. You must solve a series of puzzles to figure out how to save your land!
The biggest puzzles revolve around creating potions. I never found amanita mushrooms, one of the ingredients, so I likely missed the best ending. But I managed to brew two of the others.
I enjoy games that have two worlds, and this game does that. The pixel art is interesting. The only thing that was grating was the slow fake 'loading' the emulator does every screen. Yes, I remember playing games in the 90s where the PC would chug and slowly load each screen. It was nostalgic the first 50 times. But as the game goes on it certainly loses its charm!
Apparently there's a way to win the game in one move, which is interesting!
The intro to a longer game about revolutionary radio, March 29, 2024This is a prologue to a humor sci fi game written in Moiki.
In it, you play as a radio repairman in a futuristic world. A transgender celebrity comes to visit you, and more importantly, a strike is going on and the radio station that supports it is in trouble!
The text comes in very short bursts, just a sentence or two per page in many cases. There are several character portraits designed with, I assume, AI art (many games in this comp have used it and it has that kind of style, although I could be wrong!).
The game has a kind of animated feel/vibe, like the Jetsons mixed with characters from the Spiderman newspaper comic.
The story's not complete, which makes sense, as I felt like it kind of jumped around and was a bit confusing at times.
A surreal game set in a dream, March 29, 2024In this game, you fall asleep, and wake up trapped in a strange dream world.
The game is choice-based, using Moiki, but it has a strong world model, with most interactions based on finding and using items, movement, and working with NPCs.
It's pretty short, but took me a while to work through, as there are many options. The writing was a highlight, with humorous quips, strong metaphors, and some just straight-up weirdness (like licking the horizon and discovering it is yogurt).
Overall, it was nice to have a short, kind of goofy break. There are almost certainly parts that went over my head; I bet if I were a native French speaker I'd appreciate it even more.
I did find a portion that resembled a parser game pretty funny, especially since it was a 'prairie informe', where inform can either mean the language or, in this situation, 'shapeless'.
A databse search game with revolutionary poets, March 29, 2024This game took me a while to figure out. There's a text box to enter stuff, but hitting enter just goes to a new line.
Eventually I realized it was a search feature with a bit of a delay; you type in a word and it brings up all elements in its database that match that word. I think the game Her Story might be similar (?)
The stuff that comes up includes text message conversations, journal notes, images, schematics, interviews, etc.
It was written in four hours, but there's some impressive stuff here. The idea is that two women who live together have been arrested after police suspected them of dangerous revolutionary activity, and you have to determine on a scale of 0-2 how dangerous they are.
Pretty neat stuff! I wish I learned just a bit more about them and what was going on, since the worldbuilding was so fun.
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.
A fantasy mystery traversed through a map , March 25, 2024This is my first time playing an OpenAdventure game, and it was interesting. I didn't get it at first, so I tried a tutorial game, and then it made more sense.
This game at first appears highly non-linear, but it becomes apparent that everything is laid out for you step by step. The way the game works is that you have a map, a list of places on it, a list of people, and rumors on the bottom. You can click on many of these things. Each time you do, you get a paragraph or two of information. Very occasionally, you can click within that paragraph to unlock more areas, or type in a password of sorts to get to a new area or even an entirely new map (there are 2 maps in this game).
At the end of each map there is a self-graded quiz where you type in the answer to various questions. Then, instead of checking your answer, it tells you the truth. I've seen this way of doing mysteries before and it works fairly well here, although it limits your opportunity to correct yourself when wrong or to work on improving a partial answer.
The storyline is that a goddess has a magic cauldron in your village that has an awful curse put on it against any villager who steals it. Yet, it has been stolen. You, a bard, have to figure out who did it and why!
There was a lot of text in this game. I try to avoid using google translate but leaned on it at some points. It seems well-written in french. Due to the quirks of language translation, I had to laugh at google's attempt at translating this (to no fault of the author):
Original: "Il semble que vous allez devoir mouiller vos braies pour continuer la traque..."
Translation: "It looks like you're going to have to wet your pants to continue the hunt..."
Overall, this format seems like it has some clear advantages for mystery games. I'd be interested in seeing how it would work for other genres.
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