Ratings and Reviews by MathBrush
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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 city-building and storytelling game with a deep mystery, March 14, 2024This is a long and complex Twine game with some interesting mechanics.
You come upon an abandoned place with a single resident. Together, you rebuild a mighty city, primarily by telling stories to attract new residents. This lets you build new buildings.
At night, you visit another city, one that is grand. But there is trouble...
The storytelling mechanics have you pick a genre, a format, and some sliders of emotions. You then get what seems like a randomized mini-review from one listener and then an overall critique based on your choices, as well as 15 money.
It was hard to find new genres at first, and money seems to never have any use, despite me building a bank and a marketplace (it said I needed to make an account, but never had a chance). So those parts seemed underdeveloped to me.
Overall, this is a rich story. It uses written French dialect, dropping several vowels, and has some circumlocutory tendencies. So I'm sure I missed a great deal of nuance. As far as I can tell:
(Spoiler - click to show)There was a large town dedicated to immortality through knowledge. They had a library that was a temple to a God, and one day that God and its sibling decided to destroy the city while its leader was out on a trip. They sent a dragon whose flame condemned the city to the dream world. Some of that flame lived on in the house of Luv, who tended it in their fireplace. Due to the flame's continued existence, the dream city was still falling apart, in due measure as the city grows. Luv represents something--maybe a reincarnation of the dream-city's leader, or maybe the dragon, or maybe a god, or something. Eventually you get the choice to extinguish the flame and return the city of old, or keep it).
It's one of the better games of the year I have played so far.
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 richly described series of love letters set in the 1800s, with a mystery, March 12, 2024Whew! This game strained my poor Anglophone brain, as it is written in a fancy style of French and a cursive font. There is a very large amount of text as well, so I had to use all my forces to persevere!
But the story itself was interesting enough to carry on. It consists of letters written between two women, although I believe every letter is from the point of view of Isabella, a woman who became a doctor in Paris before being ejected and forced to return to the village of her home. Her lover, Olympia, is left behind. Isabella must face the disapproval and suspicions of the villagers, as well as Olympia's jealousies when the pale, anemic, and beautiful Alice moves in next door.
Gameplay is a bit curious; as at least one other person noted on the forums, it bears some resemblance to The First Draft of the Revolution, where you select different cycling variations before confirming and moving on.
However, there are very large chunks of text between choices (large for me, maybe not for native speaker). These large gaps, and my suspicion that the choices didn't change much of the game, led me to assign a mental score of 4.
However, I had early on, in a separate window, clicked through quickly to see how long the game would be, and received an ending with a clear choice (to (Spoiler - click to show)destroy your letters or not). I was surprised when, in my real playthrough, I never encountered that passage. I used saves and found 2 endings in my own playthrough, and they were quite interesting. So when it became clear that this was actually fairly complex, I upgraded to five stars.
Beta version of a very large potential fantasy gamebook-style game, March 10, 2024This story is based on classic gamebooks and fantasy tropes. You play as a dwarf in a village of dwarves, and can choose which class to play, which affects your stats. I chose to be a miner with high perception.
This game is already quite large, requiring a couple hours of play, and it's largely unfinished, with only two of three cities available (and, beyond that, there would likely be even more in a full game). There are a lot of randomized checks and things.
The art is, I believe, AI art, as zooming in on some scenes revealed oddities like three legs. However, it is unobtrusive and aesthetically worked overall (not discussing here the ethics of AI). Edit: Nightcafe is listed in credits for artwork.
The one currently finished city has a ton of different districts. There is a map, but instead of being used for navigation, it just serves as a visual cue while you actually select from a list of districts adjacent to your current one.
As you walk around, mini-stories fire off, providing you with new encounters like whether to chase down a missing guardsman or not.
Two things I would have preferred to be different: the map takes a while to load, making movement slow. I would have preferred the map to be optimized to load more quickly. Second, every time I entered the front gate a thief stole my purse and fighting it would just kill me, even if I loaded and tried again. It was really frustrating not having any chance to keep my money on me. And I found it difficult to find ways to heal; I thought maybe resting at my quarters could work, but couldn't find any. I eventually healed as the story progressed.
Overall, I thought the mushroom-brain thing was an interesting storyline, and the political aspects gave the game some complexity.
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.
Classic Cherrywell with a strong dose of spirits, March 7, 2024This game is the kind of thing Steph Cherrywell is known for: smooth humor, a large, easily navigable map, genre tropes pursued to their logical end, plenty of polish, and vivid characters.
I found this game's puzzles more logical than some other Cherrywell games, though I had trouble with one particular artist. Looking back, I ignored many, many, hints.
You play as a flapper (with all the 20's lingo) who's desperate for a drink. But it's all been soaked up by ghosts, so you have to hunt them down one by one!
I really enjoyed this game, and I think that it has a great chance of wining this year's comp.
An unfinished but ambitious visual novel, March 7, 2024This visual novel in French has you play as a character named Erika Wolfenstein. From what I gather (my French is imperfect), you have been sent by a spacefaring organization to visit a planet abandoned by the gods to retrieve a divine artifact. Along the way, you encounter vampires, etc.
I had about 2 or 3 choices in this excerpt from the unfinished game, and a lot of story. There were a few different backgrounds, and one main character sprite.
Overall, the unfinishedness made it difficult to know how to feel. A lot of plot options are set up but never finished (some even say "I will tell you later" but can't because the story ends). It's possible it could be finished into a great game, but what we have now is only the possibility without the proof. I would have liked more choices early on, even if they didn't matter, but I know that visual novel conventions differ from those of Twine or Choicescript. Alternatively, if it became a kinetic novel, it might be nice to explore some of the plot points more deeply instead of hopping from thing to thing quickly. In any case, the character seems interesting and the worldbuilding could turn out good.
A micro game containing six micro-micro games about loss, February 29, 2024This game was designed to fit into 90 kb, a tiny amount of space even for an interactive fiction game.
It has 6 small games with similar themes in it, each from different time periods or genres of interactive fiction.
I'll put the description of the games in spoilers, as I describe some things you might prefer to find on your own. I'll put the description of the final game in separate spoilers, as it's slightly different and more of a spoiler.
This is a complex game, and while I felt and experienced many things, I had the sense that I hadn't grasped everything, so this review may neglect some core themes or content.
(Spoiler - click to show)First: A choose your own adventure book, which goes a bit beyond pure branching by letting you perform actions through addition of numbers. You are exploring a mostly empty desert, and you must overcome your fears and think cleverly to find your true goal.
Second: An adventure in the style of Scott Adams, set in the same desert (or is it the same?). You have found an oasis city, but you can't get in. Themes include unachievable goals and building your own happiness.
Third: A classic-style text adventure. This one is quite complex, as you are able to enter and explore a large city. The tone is darker here, as you are either constrained to slog for the machine or to be punished for your individuality. The items of key and shovel, which appeared in earlier iterations, take on new meanings in this world, emblems of money/greed and (fruitless) labor.
Fourth: A hyperlink game (but without hyperlinks, requiring you to type instead). You have become powerful and have many people to help you, but none of you can withstand a storm that is withering and destroying your city. Here and in the last game or so, you begin to get glimpses of the real world person behind the games. This story and the last also mention a beautiful male lover.
Fifth: A Quality Based Narrative game, like Dendry or Storynexus. You have stats, and your available stats determine what scenes you view next and what actions you have available. The story is one of a wanderer, as if the ancient emperor in the Ozymandias poem was stuck in the landscape of his ruin. The real world bleeds in explicitly in the end.
Sixth (stronger spoilers):(Spoiler - click to show)This isn't a world, it's just deleting a bunch of files, but you can't since some have unresolved issues. You choose the writing block by block, using text from earlier in the game, almost like Aaron's earlier game 18 Cadence. In the end, you get the option to delete or save the poem you have created.
There is a strong sense of loss in the game, of futility and helplessness, but also of the desire to create something beautiful that doesn't remove the loss but provides comfort. It's almost a Quixotic point of view, which also ties in with the use of mirrors and illusions.
I found it a beautiful game. Like I said, I don't think I grasped it all. I may need to replay. But I also admired its technical work.
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