Edit: removing the section on links because I know how to do it now.
It’s been a while since I’ve been an IFComp judge so I thought I’d try it again since I’m in an IF sort of mood.
I don’t have any set strategy for awarding points, and my score might change from day to day so I just put down what I think at the time.
Good luck to all of the participants.
My reviews.
An easy way to get a link to a specific post within a thread is to click on the rightmost button in the series of buttons at the bottom of the post in question! It’s the one just to the right of the “Reply” button, and should automatically put the link in your clipboard.
To insert it into the first post, I typically use the “Create Link” menu in the post-editor options (the option between Headings and Blockquote, I think it can also be accessed with the key combo Ctrl K).
But there’s also a pretty straightforward way to do it manually, which is to enclose your desired “clickable” text in square brackets, and then immediately (without spaces in-between) follow it with the URL in parentheses.
I’m really looking forward to your reviews!
Onto my first review.
This game is by Lamp Post Projects who I don’t think I have come across before. If it’s their first one it seems very polished and there were no bugs, at least none I ran into anyway.
You play as a Victorian woman with amnesia, but rather than being in a space station or similar, you are in a rather nice house, a rather nice house in the country. Sorry, couldn’t resist.
One of the first things I jotted down in my notes was “Victorian Counterfeit Monkey”, because you find a couple of devices that turn objects into other objects. You could also say it’s a Victorian babel with the amnesia as well, and also things you find trigger memories.
I like the writing style which feels like a Victorian novel. I couldn’t tell you if it’s trying to mimic a certain author because I haven’t read many novels from then.
The author used clever tricks so that all the game’s text is in first person, a bit like LASH. I also love that hitting enter with no command entered gives random appropriate responses rather than the standard "I beg your pardon?!
The puzzles seem fair, although I needed a couple of hints from the included walk-through, but once I found out the answer I was like “Of course it’s that”.
Tableau Vivents has a handy “think” verb which I’ve seen in a few games where it lists your current goals. It’s great to check in case you feel like you don’t know what to focus on next. You can also “think about topic” to get a hint, and I think the game keeps track on what you have
already tried which is a nice touch.
You start off with a 2 item inventory limit but you eventually find a thing to solve that, and the game won’t let you leave the room you are in before you do. the game also manages your inventory, taking things out of your carry-all and putting them back in.
I like that you automatically examine new items you pick up, which saves you a turn. You also don’t need to look under or search things.
the map is small enough not to get lost in, although I found myself convinced for a while that there was more parts to the garden.
When you go back to a previously visited location, it tells you which places the exits lead too which adds to the feeling of the Pc rediscovering herself. the first time you go somewhere it it’ll just say the directions you can go.
I don’t want to spoil the story so I’ll just say that I enjoyed it, and you’ve got multiple endings to choose from.
I thoroughly enjoyed it and I hope it does well in the comp. This isn’t the first game in this year’s comp I have played but the first one I’ve finished, and it’s probably my number 1 favourite.
Edit I figured out the code thing. I originally put topic in-between less than and greater than signs for emphasis which it didn’t like.
Thanks a lot. 
Another question:
When I posted my review, the forum asked me if I was inserting code. I don’t know what triggered it to say that. As far as I can tell there was nothing strange about it. I’m blind so might have missed something.
I just saw your edit: that would explain it! That pop-up gives me a lot of false-positives, haha. The post looks great on my end 
(and I second the recommendation for Tableaux Vivants, I was one of the playtesters and found the concept very cool and nicely executed!)
I don’t think it’s you, I think the forum software is just a little oversensitive about that! The question pops up for me a lot too and it’s frequently not clear to me what about the post triggered it.
Edit Arthur DiBianca is actually in this year’s comp.
Game by Damon L. Wakes.
Note that I am friends with Andre Louis who Damon gave special thanks to in the credits, but I have not been encouraged to play it or write this review.
This game does what it says on the tin, nothing more, unless there’s something I haven’t uncovered. You are an intern at CorpoCorp and you are also a huge unicorn with a chainsaw for a horn. You are known for destroying the place.
Rather than entering regular commands, every letter on your keyboard plus the arrow keys carries out an action, and you’re left to figure out what they are with sometimes destructive results. Actions range from Kicking and Rearing, to Hurling clouds of glitter to Pooing grenades. Nearly spelt it Granades, which would be interesting… Anyway, There is no way to specify which object they apply to, and none of them is undo. That can be quite annoying when you accidentally end up slicing the receptionist to pieces when you meant to aim for the telephone, for example. So you’ll have to figure out how to lure people away.
Hints are provided by a leprechaun who warns you on no uncertain turns to try typing xyzzy or get lamp. If you do want to save your game or restore, you have to enter the special mode by typing the ke below escape (for me it’s ` grave accent).
You have several quests to complete, or you can just go around causing utter chaos and destruction. I chose the former but I’m going to do the latter and see how much “dollaridoos” of damage I can cause when I’ve posted this.
I didn’t need too many hints, but one puzzle annoyed me because I couldn’t figure out how to close something when I opened it. Hindsight’s always 20-20 because I’ve just realised how as I was typing this.
The package includes feelies such as a guide to CorpoCorp with a walkthrough (the health and safety link comes up with a 404), and you get all 3 previous games which I believe are twine, but you don’t need to have played them before.
I didn’t encounter any crashes so his beta team clearly did a good job with testing.
to finish then, it’s daft, silly fun which had me laughing a few times. The code for single letter commands was provided by Arthur DiBianca, and it just felt like one of his games taken to extremes. I loved playing about with this as much as i do Arthur’s games. I’m sad he didn’t enter this year. An end game + type thing would be nice, or a “have you tried…”.
DiBianca actually does have an entry! It’s “Out by Midnight”.
Thank you so much for playing, and for the review!
(I have released several games previously. Here’s my IFDB profile, if you’re ever looking for something new to play after the comp!)
Oh I completely missed that. well that’s my next game sorted then.
Fantastic. I’ll check out some of your games then.
Glad to see that I was wrong, and that DiBianca entered this year’s comp. However, this isn’t my favourite of his games but I think that is more down to me than the game itself.
You are in a haunted house and you have to leave with 10 items of certain kinds to win. E.G. your list might say Jewellery so a ring, a bracelet ETC would do.
Trouble is that you have to be (as the title says) out by midnight) otherwise it’s game over and time to try again.
I’m British, and this game made me think of watching a game show on CITV when I was little called Finders Keepers. Neil Buchanan would give the kids on the show a clue for an item he wanted, and they had to search all over the house for it. To me this game is like that but in IF. It just needed a ghostly Neil giving you encouragement every now and again.
I thought this game was ok, but like I said it’s mainly down to me. I can’t remember where all the items are, and the map is useless to me as a screen reader user. I think the most items I left with was 6, and that was good enough for me.
In the new game plus type mode, I would like a find object command because half the time it wasn’t the room’s contents I needed a hint for but where the object is. Hadean Lands does this and it’s really useful.
A text directions command would be nice also, so you could type where kitchen and it would say north, north, east if that’s where it is.
It’s not accessible when played with a screen reader. It just says blank.
I don’t know if this is common with Texture games.
I won’t be leaving a rating.
My screen reader (NVDA) also just says “blank”. Although from what I’ve read in another thread, this might be because I didn’t wait long enough. It does say “Uninteractive”. I dunno. Could’ve been a novel.
I will also not be leaving a rating.
No, it’s unfortunately using a graphical canvas to render so there’s no actual text being displayed in any accessible way.
Ah, I see.
A fun little game about piecing together historical goings on by getting high off something or other. pretty easy to solve puzzles, and only one of them had me reaching for the walkthrough. turns out I almost had the right idea anyway. It must’ve taken a clever bit of programming to juggle two inventories like that.
I tried both the web version (definitely recommended) and the zcode one (works but text that mentions commands is read weirdly with a screen reader).
Thank you so much for the review!
For the commands being read weirdly, is it reading brackets around them?
You’re welcome.
Here’s an example of what I mean as rendered by NVDA in Windows Frotz:
POINTERS ON THINK
Solvable puzzles are not currently highlighted on the map. Use to change this. Either way, you can to get a list of solvable puzzles at any time.
That text is displayed correctly visually and in the Scrollback, so I’m not sure why that happens.
From the scrollback:
Solvable puzzles are not currently highlighted on the map. Use POINTERS ON to change this. Either way, you can THINK to get a list of solvable puzzles at any time.
Hmm. That is…very weird and unexpected.
I’ll see if I can find the cause. Though I admit I have no idea where to start there!