Mathbrush ectocomp 2024 reviews

Fireboat

This is fos1’s third game, I think, and it’s been nice seeing them progress over time. This is his most complex game yet, I think. It still is rough in some areas but I enjoyed playing.

The idea is that you are in charge of a fireboat on the Hudson river in NYC, and you are visited by a strange ghost who begins to leave you messages.

The game is both hard and easy. It’s a little hard because some things aren’t coded in, like some synonyms, and you have to use nautical navigation (although that wasn’t too bad). It’s easy, though, because the game tells you exactly what to do.

I enjoyed zooming about the river and having memories of my family. Places that I think could use improvement in the future are improving conversation and replacing Inform’s default ‘you can see a ____ here’. The best way to do that (for an author who wants to) is to type the name of the object in the room description with brackets around it, like: ‘Lined up in a row are some [map charts], a [dial], and [a compass]’ (if you had those three things).

Anyway, I look forward to future games!

3 Likes

your life and nothing else

This is a haunting twine game set in an apartment building. Every day, you can wake up and wander around the building, surprisingly being allowed in all your neighbor’s rooms. There, you can try to help them out with their problems. But, for all of you, life is kind of ‘meh’.

This is the kind of game that transforms the more you play it, which I found effective. I liked the game’s use of color and its gradually increasing use of mythological references.

I’m still not sure if I figured out the theme of the game in terms of the artwork we see at the beginning. The number 3 comes up a lot in the game, but given the prominence of that number in mythology, I’m not sure which 3 it was referencing, and would be interested in hearing others’ theories on it.

A brief but time-worthy game.

3 Likes

The Depths of Madness

This petite morte game surprised me with how polished and nice it looked, with a dark color scheme combined with eery accents and cephalopod-based art.

It’s a choicescript game about forbidden knowledge that comes from unholy texts. Again, I was surprised at how much text the game has.

But, it ends abruptly, which makes sense, as this is a Petite Morte speed-IF game. And it relies very heavily on a famous work of horror fiction, so some of its best parts were parts I had seen many times before. So the things that stick with me the most are its own innovations, like the abrupt change in setting.

Overall, a neat concept, and fun to play.

3 Likes

Your Little Haunting

I was interested upon seeing that Christina Nordlander wrote this; when I started IF in 2015, I felt like I saw her name everywhere, so it’s fun seeing someone who I consider ‘famous’ come back.

This is a Playfic game that has a large scope for a Petite Mort entry (completed in 4 hours or less). You are walking in the middle of the night and approach a house, looking for a light source.

The game is fairly complex, with multiple objects that can be turned on and off and a bit of branching in the middle. I found one way to do something very dangerous, which produced a shocking result, but looking at the code later, I realized I had missed another, more liquid event.

Of course with a Petite Mort game there are some coding issues here and there. I didn’t encounter bugs but I had huge trouble finding a way type the name of a certain glowing thing because it had a two-name word in the code and I kept trying either the first name by itself or the second, but never both together.

Overall, I liked the vibes of this game; it reminded me of a couple of old Twilight Zone Episodes, somehow.

3 Likes

At the Stroke of Twelve

I believe this is an extended game that is part of the same group of students that produced the game Hotel Halloween, but this story is much longer than those (although still completable in under 15 minutes).

In this story, a visit to a graveyard takes your mind to a different time and a different place, where you are tasked with finding out exactly what is going on.

The game has several surprises, and the writing has touches of emotion and descriptiveness. There are a variety of endings. I felt like its plot arc had a good resolution by the end. One thing that could be improved is better spacing of the paragraphs in the text (just adding another blank line between them would work, I think).

4 Likes

Thanks so much for the review! Yeah it kind of ends a bit abruptly. I was trying to stick to the petite mort time frame, but would have loved to do more. Might have to revisit it at a later time and add to it :smiley:

I’m also glad you liked the colour scheme and pictures thank you :smile: . I had way too much fun poking about in the source code changing colours in an attempt to make the forward button text seem to kind of glow when selected.

3 Likes

Thanks, Brian, for your expertise and number of well measured points. I am sure Raiden will react shortly. It may sound like a cliche but every review helps us grow. It does. Two years ago we were starting from scratch and now growing authors find their way back to the writing table and opt for a solo project - just like Raiden did. Hope we have some brave ones to move on from Back Garden to the Main Festival at the following Spring Thing. All this is so motivating! :smiley:

3 Likes

Jumpscare Manor

I saw the name of this and thought, ‘sounds like a Damon Wakes game’. Then I saw it was a Damon Wakes game.

What can I say? This game was longer than just one room. It seems based on Clue, with a bunch of different secret passages connecting different parts of a map.

The only real question is…when will the jumpscare come?

The actual jumpscare noise sounds like the FNAF ones but slightly different; was it homemade? Overall it reminded me of playing Ultimate Custom Night a bit. It seems like it acheived all of its goals (if its goals were to make players sigh, open up the game anyway, and then click through until jumpscared).

6 Likes

Narthex

This is a game that I suspect rests entirely on understanding the lyrics of a song. Unfortunately, I’m playing without headphones while my son’s on a call, and so I had to keep it down, and the genre is metal with a screaming/distorted voice, so I have no idea what’s going on. The artist is credited, but not the song name, so I have no idea what the lyrics are.

The idea of the game is that you see a cute little worm which wants you to follow him. You then peek through a hole to see a party, and the song plays while the worm grows horns. I can only assume that the worm is a devil, the party is your funeral, and the lyrics refer to being dragged down to hell.

It looks like this game is another game advertising Moiki’s new sound capabilities, which seemed to work very smoothly. The graphics and color transitions were also great. Judging as a game itself, its low interactivity and brief length, coupled with its reliance and careful listening, made it rank a bit lower in my mind, but I don’t think the author was trying to make a complex game, just show off some great multimedia. The band does sound nice, and I’m surprised their youtube channel only has 192 followers.

Edit: found the lyrics; the song is ‘Dead Eyes’:

Lyrics

Crash and burning never one for learning. Falling for the same old line. Sitting all alone and wasting all your time you’ll always be the lonely one. You got all the scares and you know all the lies and you don’t know what’s right for you. spending all your times with an idle mind and everyone’s to blame but you.
Look at your with your dead eyes crying alone on a Friday night. Waiting for Mr. Right look at you with your dead eyes. Crying alone on a Friday night look at you with your dead eyes. Waiting for Mr. right look at you with your dead eyes.
Once again you missed your turn she got their first you’ll never learn. One of these days you’ll get it right. Wondering where you’ll sleep tonight. Left alone another wasted night and how much did you compromise missed your turn you’ll never learn and now here comes the day light.
Look at you with your dead eyes crying alone on a Friday night. Waiting for Mr. Right look at you with your dead eyes. Crying alone on a Friday night look at you with your dead eyes. Waiting for Mr. right look at you with your dead eyes.
Look at you.
Look at your dead eyes.
Wasted fake it. Look at your dead eyes. Wasted fake it
Look at your dead eyes.

3 Likes

Huh, I totally missed this. I had the sound off because I usually have the sound off when I play games (I played one tonight that was the happy beneficiary of my having left the sound on from an earlier round of watching funny parrot videos). I didn’t notice that the main page said not to have the sound muted. I think an in-game notice of stuff like this is necessary if the sound is critical, but of course this is a PM, so it could simply be that the author didn’t have time for that.

5 Likes

Oh wow, this brings a whole new layer to that game! I also am guilty of having played with the sound off, so I had no idea of the tone of the song. I imagined a nice, soothing funereal piece! But this makes the ending make way more sense.

4 Likes

How To Fly A Kite

Ruber Eaglenest has made several games before with serious themes written in sensitive and poetic ways.

I found this game beautiful as I started it. The emphasis on colors and nature felt soothing, mixed with melancholy at being a ghost.

Interaction was confusing at times, perhaps to show what being a ghost would be like. You have three options most of the time, but they change as you select things, possibly in a pattern, possibly just based on how long you’ve waited. I never had too long to feel frustrated.

The ending was moving, and a reminder of the horrors of war, and our responsibility to seek peace throughout the world. A very effective piece.

6 Likes

The Abandoned House Down the Lane

This is an Adventuron game that is a nice small nugget of a game, with classic adventure gameplay (TAKE and DROP feature prominently).

You play as someone who often walks by an abandoned house at night but who finally decides to break in and see what’s going on inside.

The game was written in 4 hours, so many things aren’t perfectly polished. The author does foresee this issue and says ‘You won’t have to ____ in this game’ a lot, which helped reduce frustration by reducing verbs. It would take substantially more work to implement every reasonable action, but this approach isn’t bad even in a polished game.

The font and color combo was hard to read for me; I’ve seen some Adventuron games that have a font selection option, and that would have been nice here.

Fun overall!

2 Likes

Contaminated Space

This was a mournful, reflective, and gross game by KADW. And not gross in a bad way, gross in a cleansing way, like popping a zit or rinsing a filter until it’s clean.

You play as a wanderer in space who feels listless, uncaring of the outside world and desiring to be completely alone and shut the rest of the world out.

The prose is beautiful. One part made me think ‘I bet the author researched this and thought it was cool’; at least I thought it was cool (talking about approaching the sun):

No. No one would see anything. At the distance where objects start to burn from approaching a star, they are already close enough to be indistinguishable to faraway observers.

The gross parts happen later, but it’s not so much a bad thing as a transformation, and it ties into the overall themes. There are two endings.

This game reminded me a bit of a fiction story about cordiceps fungi infecting humans, which I heard on the Creepy podcast as the story “madness, mutilation, death”. Very intriguing stuff!

3 Likes

Roar

This game was a wild ride. I don’t recognize the engine used at all; you can cycle through choices by clicking, but then scrolling down counts as a choice. It is visually dramatic and fun, although occasionally I scrolled too far and missed a choice.

The setting is dramatic and the narrator voice fits it. You play in a world where the long peace between animals and man has fallen, and every living creature is out to destroy humanity. You have to escape dangerous krakens, rampaging birds, and murderous apes.

The game is zany and wild, but somehow still coherent, and it ends just before the concept could become tedious. Overall, very well done, and stunning that this was achieved in 4 hours.

4 Likes

I’m so glad you spotted this! The rooms are indeed nabbed from the Cluedo board (though spreading the layout across two floors meant shifting them around a bit).

The jumpscare noise is BOO from Pixabay. It does sound distinctly FNAF-inspired. I liked that it had a nice long trail-off without being too loud for too long.

4 Likes

Forevermore

This was a fun little game that involved writing a text that varies depending on your inputs. Given that the game was written in 4 hours or less, I doubt it uses full procedural generation, but there is at least some visible variation in text and it gives the feel of procedural generation in a good way.

You play as Edgar Allan Poe (or equivalent) and you’re trying to compose what is essentially The Raven. You get distracted, so you you have to battle to be either gloomy or happy. Whatever you pick, it affects your writing.

I love the idea, although there’s not enough time to really expand on it, so we only get a couple of stanzas. I had difficulty making and executing plans, as I couldn’t figure out how to maximize gloominess or cheerfulness. I did get 2 endings, and had a good time.

3 Likes

I wonder how many IF pieces there are by now that use the Cluedo rooms for their map?

4 Likes

As the Eye Can See

This was a short pleasant story presented in Twine. It portrays, in reverse order, several Halloween celebrations of a teenage girl.

There’s no overt message, but a lot of feeling and overall cohesion in atmosphere. A kind of mix of melancholy and unexpressible feelings, both good and bad, with an overall positive feeling (the way that I experienced it). Kind of game me the same feelings as Little Women or Disney’s Pinocchio, like a coming of age story that is worthwhile but traumatic (I know those two evoke very different feelings but in me they both made me feel ‘growing up is scary but solemnly good’).

There aren’t any choices in this. Choices often enhance my experience, which is why I lean to interactive fiction more than static fiction. As a story, though, this works, and the link-clicking does help with pacing.

3 Likes

Yarry

This is a short Choicescript game. I wondered if there were two endings, but I could only find one.

It’s a family drama/mystery/surreal/slice of life game (?). You play as a dad whose child starts calling you the wrong name. They say it a lot, and the mom starts agreeing. Things begin to get a bit strange…

I liked this game. There is some ambiguity to it that let it apply to many things. It reminded me of relationships where people are hiding a dramatic secret, and of changing identities, and of the strange alienation that can come when you first become a parent and your entire life changes. Very fun.

5 Likes