Mathbrush reviews IFComp 2025 (Latest: Monkeys and Car Keys, done for now)

Competitions IFComp
81

WATT

Okay, let’s get one thing out of the way. Getting a math PhD has rarely proven to be a useful choice in my life, so I wanted to try it here. But the integral is wrong! The two curves intersect at whole numbers (-1 and 3). Integrating 7-2x gives 7x-2x^2, so plugging in the bounds gives whole numbers. Integratings (x-2)^2 gives 1/3(x-2)^3, and neither bound gives a multiple of 3 when plugged in, so the answer should have 3 in the denominator. I thought there were supposed to be some impossible questions, like Baldi’s Basics, but all the others were possible.

Anyway, this game made me think of 5 other pieces of media as I played: Deltarune, for the character creation screen; Ezekiel 16, for being a baby cast out into the wide world; an evil version of Phantom Tollbooth, with all of its unusual and allegorical characters; No End House, the creepypasta, for its succession of rooms that take an increasing toll on our protagonist; and Duke Bluebeard’s Castle, my favorite opera and one where Bluebeard unlocks seven doors to show his wife that become increasingly disturbing.

In this game, you have to obtain seven keys from various challenges in order to restore a lighthouse. This world is weird; at one point you’re a baby that walks around and grows bigger in seconds, and at another you have a mom you grew up with who raised you. So a lot of things are allegorical.

Each key that you get requires something different. One has a quiz; another requires you to get closer to someone. Many involve self-reflection of some kind. The pattern breaks down a bit at the end when things get more hectic.

Overall, I loved the visuals and the feel of the story. Much of the story was impactful; slowing down the text at the end kind of lessened the impact for me, as if the author wasn’t sure that the text alone would be weighty enough. I think it was! It was also a lesson for me because I’m working on a short twine game and had imagined slowing down the most dramatic moments.

The game uses multimedia in an effective way, and overall gives off a highly polished feel. The writing is the kind I would think of if someone said ‘What’s an example of good writing in a recent IFComp?’

7 Likes
82

Mooncrash

This looks like it was made for a school project, as it mentions a Portland State University interactive fiction course. It seems more polished than most games I’ve seen made as part of a course, so I feel like the author put some real heart into it.

The structure is innovative, if somewhat clunky at times. You take a personality test at first by giving a list of options and then have to type CHOOSE [option name], rather than hyperlinks or typing a number. The game then lets you view one of four different characters with quests. They are all pretty different; one is about assembling a machine by fetching a list of parts, one is combat where the more you practice a skill the more you improve, one is about fate and destiny and is a word maze, and the fourth involves breaking into a vault. Dying in interesting ways unlocks achievements. Each quest can be completed relatively quickly (maybe 10-15 minutes). Once all are completed, you can view a final scenario with many branching endings.

The setting is sketched out in a diverse pieces, each piece interesting but somewhat hard to connect together. There’s advanced technology, strong magic, classic fantasy races like goblins and demons, a magical tower with a fractured timeline visible to the naked eye (or something similar). To me, the setting was a well-done but unexciting play on familiar tropes, with the Fateweaver being the coolest character to me. The mechanics, though, seemed novel and fun. I enjoyed how varied the game was, and the unusual opening and the branching endings. I think that’s very creative.

5 Likes
83

High on Grief

I want to preface this by saying ahead of time that I have a very specific framing of this game in mind:

I don’t think the author thinks this game is realistic, or something that should happen. I read once a theory that our dreams are a place for our brain to try out ideas that are forbidden in real life, things that couldn’t happen (like flying or all teeth falling out in class) or shouldn’t happen (like kissing someone we really shouldn’t). It’s not that we subconsciously want those things, it’s just a way to see ‘what if’.

This feels like a ‘what if’ scenario to me, a chance to explore an alternate reality where we (or characters we control) do something we could never do in reality. The game itself even explicitly states that at one point, that the characters are expressing feelings the author has in reality to see how it would feel.

So, with that in mind, this is a game about taking your dead abusive mother, cremating her, baking her ashes into marijuana brownies, and eating her one piece at a time while calling friends.

It’s clear this is a fantasy or wish-fulfillment scenario–real cremations are around 5 lbs, which is a ton of food (there is a recipe for pound cake which is 1 lb eggs, 1 lb flour, 1 lb butter, and 1 lb sugar, and it makes two 9x5 loaves. So 5 lbs of ashes mixed into enough ingredients to dilute it would be some really big brownies). Similarly, having 9 close friends you can call about and share your biggest traumas with is something also unrealistic for most people.

So what is the point of this scenario? To see what it would be like if you really let loose. What if the person who’s hurt you the most passed away, and you literally destroyed their entire earthly existence while deconstructing every painful memory of them?

It’s fruitless to say ‘you shouldn’t do that’ or to explain why this philosophy is wrong or how it goes against my personal beliefs. It’s clear the author thinks it’s wrong! Very clear that one should not eat their mother. Mother-cannibalism goes against his beliefs as well. But that’s not what this game is really about.

I wonder if writing this out was therapeutic. There are a few scenarios in my life that I know both can’t and should never happen, but I have to wonder what it would be like, to explore those possibilities in the written word.

I found that mobile (in landscape mode) worked best for audio, with most lines in the game being voice acted.

I thought the hub and spoke style of this game was cool, particularly how you reached the end credits and had to rewind each time but the game still kept track and commented on how many paths you had taken and crossed out used ones.

2 Likes
84

Thank you for reviewing my game! This game definitely started as a school project, but I spent a lot more time on it after the fact. I don’t think it meaningfully is anymore, but I can see how it still comes off that way.

A consistent point of feedback in the reviews is that people wanted more setting details/optional lore, which in hindsight I skipped over a lot of to finish the core paths of the story. I’ll definitely be looking into ways to include more of that the next time I work on a game like this (although I don’t know if I’ll be returning to Inform7 in the near future).

Also, yeah, I could have done a lot better tying the different branches of the game together. Something to also work on the next time I try something with branching paths.

2 Likes
85

The Litchfield Mystery

Just as a heads up to readers, I have a personal bias in favor of mystery games.

This is the third thesleuthacademy I’ve played. I’ve come to expect a long exploration section where everything needs to be checked out more or less in order, followed by a quiz on whether you solved the mystery correctly or not.

This game mixes it up a bit from the last two, with some non-linearity in both exploration and interviews (so you can follow up on hints from one person to another). I did peek at the hints where I thought of multiple solutions to one puzzle and didn’t want to waste valuable ifcomp time on the wrong one.

The characters here are also more developed than in the past two games. They were mostly distinct and interesting, outside of a couple of background characters. It’s fun to see the author improve in both writing and programming in such a short time.

This is a classic murder mystery set in a 1937 manor house where a body is found with a dagger in its back. You have to investigate the cast of characters, including servants and family, to discover the murderer.

I got the mystery mostly right but completely botched the motive. I thought The L in the letter was the brother, and that the zoologist was in love with him and wanted to off the victim to get the brother some money, not knowing what the will contained.

Overall, I enjoyed this, and if I had any advice for the future, it’d be to continue the development in characters and interactions. I loved the unusual bits in this, like the pufferfish and snake meat. While the interaction was more engaging this time, there is still a lot of buildup with examining a ton of things in a row that could be a little more fun, I’m just not sure how. Good game overall.

2 Likes
86

Backpackward

This game had extensive strong profanity, so I ran it on a backup browser I have with a filter rather than skip it altogether.

This game is choice-based and has a recurring inventory mechanic where you can put different objects into your backpack. Your backpack has a grid with a fixed number of spaces and you can try to fit different objects into those spaces. Some are huge, others are tiny.

In the story, you are a rage-filled fast food worker who gets fired. Everyone hates you and makes you feel like a loser, which you might be, depending on your choices. You get taken through a portal to a new world, though, with a new chance to start over. You have a couple of chances to bring things back and forth.

The characterizations in the game are clear and strong, and the writing does a good job of conveying a constant sense of your life being on the verge of collapse. There is a married character that hits on you (as a proxy) which was appropriately disturbing and weird, fitting the setting.

Then, it kind of ends mid-story beat, promising possible future sequels right when we are about to get answers.

So, it would be fun to see what happens next. I liked the backpack system.

1 Like
87

The Witch Girls

I heard a lot of people praise this game before I played it, and I can see why. It’s a nice-looking Twine game with multiple graphics that set a creepy mood, different-colored links to distinguish between ‘informative’ options, cycling options that affect the branching of the game, and ‘next page’ type links.

The story is unsettling and branches a lot. You play as a girl who, together with her friend, visits some local ‘witch girls’ to try to get boyfriends. When you’re rejected, you have to cook up a boyfriend on your own.

The different branches play out very dissimilarly, so it’s worth replaying at least a few endings. There is a flowchart after playing through once (around 20-30 minutes for me) that lets you see exactly where branch points happen and let you hop to them, which is a nice feature. In all, this is probably one of the most player-friendly games I’ve seen, and makes me feel like the author put a lot of care into this.

I liked the ending line of all the endings, and the way it tied it all together.

5 Likes
88

Under the Sea Winds

This game is an Adventuron game, which was fun to see (haven’t been very many this year).

It’s in three major parts after a brief introduction. You play as someone investing eels and their migration habits. In the opening scene, you pick your name and answer a question which I didn’t quite understand: “How do you reason two locations?”. It doesn’t matter how you answer that, though, as the game continues to the main parts.

In the first part, you are locked out of a colleague’s house due to a scheduling mishap. There are only two locations you can visit, and at first I thought I was stuck. But investigating more closely brings you to more areas and an NPC. This part was fun, and even when I didn’t know what to do it was so constrained in scope that I could just try everything. The ending of this section was strange and fantastical but doesn’t seem connected to later sections.

The middle section has you getting a nautical map and setting sail. It was fun interacting with the boat and sea. I didn’t quite understand the directions on where to navigate the ship, so I used the guide.

The last section has you combing a beach looking for sand and water samples while dealing with some tourists. This part has some good nature descriptions.

The game mentions AI assets being used, but they aren’t in-game, they’re only visible on the itch page for the game as additional feelies.

It says it was based on one of the earliest nature books, of the same name as the game, written by Rachel Carson in the 40s. Wikipedia said it was very poetic, and I pulled up a copy online of it and it was actually great. I got some of that love for nature in this game. But this game has a lot of random pieces that are hard for me to piece together into a story, so it’s a mixed success in my book.

1 Like
89

Moon Logic

Someone in my life dislikes cheese, pickles, and mustard.

If I spent a long time making a beautiful cheese-filled pickle dipped in mustard and presented it to him, what would be the desired reaction?

This game is a kind of Mystery Science Theatre 3000 version of a Zork knock-off. On the left side, it has text resembling a parser game. On the right side, it has running commentary by two people playing the game. The only way to control it is through a bar of commands at the bottom.

The game also seems to have taken a wide slew of complaints about interactive fiction games and put them into a game to make it as irritating as possible. And I do mean intentionally; the author is quite aware of the frustration involved, from the name ‘moon logic’ to in-game comments.

The game uses timed text, a famously hated IF concept, and uses it in a way that doesn’t contribute to the game meaningfully. It has a ‘fast’ text setting which is still fairly slow. The pseudo-parser text is not scrollable and doesn’t have a back button. It later on adds shaky text effects, zooming in and out effects and rotating effects. These can be turned off.

The menu is intentionally obfuscated and basically turns the whole game into a giant tower of hanoi problem, reiterating smaller solutions in the same order over and over to recreate even basic tasks. Only 4 or so commands appear at once but disappear as you use them, so to get to important commands you have to repeat a ritual of examining, looking, and inventory. There is no choice on where to go, only a ‘go’ option, so you have to limit yourself by closing exits and such to move around. You can only take and drop items in a very specific order.

I felt my left eyelid twitching by the time I was done (I was also playing Violent Delights at the same time, a game that asks you to wait for a long time while playing).

So, this is a game where I recognize the craftmanship and creativity but did not experience joy through play, much like Targhairm. It is clear that great talent and work went into it, and the puzzle logic is quite complex and parts of figuring out what to do next was enjoyable, but the apparent goal of frustrating and bedeviling the player was also achieved.

There is no other game like it and, I pray, there may never be another in the future.

Edit: I should mention that it looks like I missed some features in Moon Logic like screen reader support which helps ameliorate some of the more frustrating aspects and lets you pick between the ‘frustration’ version and a version that lets you focus more on the clever puzzles. I did eventually figure out the UI features at one point but I recommend trying the screen reader support both on and off to see what you prefer. I’m going to include this message at the end of my review as well.

4 Likes
90

I played twice, the first time doing the same route you did and the second time doing the other. The second one was significantly longer than the first (it took me 15 minutes longer to play through, and that was with skipping all the text before the choice). It shed some more light on some of the worldbuilding, but I still can’t say I fully understand everything.

This was very much my experience haha. I’m not sure if it’s the kind of VN where getting all the endings will unlock a “true” ending that might provide more insight? But I don’t have the motivation right now to try to find out. :sweat_smile: (And I think doing so would take me over the two-hour judging limit.)

1 Like
91

I’m glad to hear it wasn’t me, and it’s great you finished it!

1 Like
92

Thank you for your honest review Brian! I very much appreciate it!

And do not fear: I won’t make such a game ever again!

PS @manonamora you can PM me the post comp BAD IF JAM trophy anytime now. See the evidence above, I consider this a Mission Accomplished!

2 Likes
93

Violent Delights

A long tangent here (this whole review is a tangent).

I was in a relationship for a long time that was abusive, but I didn’t really realise it at the time. Outside of normal things in such relationships (like cutting me off from family and friends) one of the major methods of control was controlling my time. I couldn’t make plans because at any point I could be called back to deal with some emergency or the other. As a professor, I had a lot of time I could work with, but by responding to each call I ended up going to work less than 3 or 4 hours a day. But that wasn’t too bad, as my main job was research, and I could do that in my head. But that wasn’t good either; I couldn’t work on the computer, because we frequently had to get out and drive around to different stores, never really buying anything. So I did research in my head, but that was bad, because I was supposed to be focused on buying and talking. There were (and still are, as I still interact with this person daily) unspoken rules, elaborate charades that must be performed. If we go out shopping for a night, we will inevitably end up saying, ‘oh no, we’re far from home, we have to go to wendy’s or taco bell’ and end up eating out. But I can’t say that will happen or make some food to bring, because of course we won’t be out long. We then go out and lo and behold different things delay us and we eat out. But we have to pretend that it won’t happen again.

Playing this game vividly brought those memories to the forefront for me. The artist has created what I experienced as “Abuse: The Game” (not that the author or game was actually abusive, just that it accurately recreated the sensations I remember from that time in my life). In it, you put a bid in for a game cartridge. Then you wait an hour in real life for the game to arrive as a counter counts down. Symbolically, it’s like someone inviting you to their home for a night of game playing, then going to the bathroom for an hour as the food gets cold.

Then, you play the game, but it breaks after use. Once it breaks, you can modify it to increase the level of ‘weirdness’, 3 steps at a time, then wait for a timer to play. Each weirdness level increases the depths you can go into the game. The play timer is so short that you can’t read everything. Just like an abusive person, they demand you to wait for their time, put other things aside and get rid of plans so that you can focus on them; then, when they’re ready to play, everything is rushed so that you can’t savor or enjoy it. Then it’s time to wait again. And, as abusers generally do, there’s no indication at how long this will last. You’re expected to sit and wait and participate over and over again until they get bored of the charade and let you go.

As I was having vivid flashbacks throughout playing this game, it was hard to focus on the text, especially since I had to frantically click through it during each mini-level to print out, then hurriedly scan it and try to set up something interesting to do between ‘charge-up’ sessions, which then made me forget what was going on. The text that there is is surreal, the kind of text that invites close contemplation, which I was unable to give due to the setting. As usual, it is my fault for not giving enough attention and thought here. (I am reminded of how this person would also get mad if I fell asleep first, despite having to wake up early for a job, so they would talk to me until they fell asleep long after midnight. I was constantly groggy and would often forget items on the grocery list, for which I was severely chastised). The text becomes increasingly strange as we descend different levels, moving from a playground to hospital to hell to basement and more. In the end, just like in my real life, all communication ceases and we’re presented with a blank wall. Is it over? Did we do something wrong? Was I supposed to do something different? Was I supposed to be a different person?

In the end, though, I don’t regret playing the game. No one made me do it. I have a personal ethic where I want to sacrifice myself for others, and feel like a good person if I give up something so that others can be happy. So while the relationship was uncomfortable enough that I haven’t done any dating and avoided all relationships in the 6 years since it ended, I remember being happy during much of it. Similarly, even though this game was jerking me around, I made my own decision to play it out of the sense that someone, somewhere would appreciate the time I spent on it. And what greater happiness is there than the giving of self to another?

(I apologize for this review containing very little content relevant to the game!)

22 Likes
94

If this was made for the BAD IF Jam, as I understand the parameters of it, then it’s by the far the best entry to that jam that I’ve played. There were some other good ones that I tried, but they were just superficially painful. This was a carefully crafted and unique experience.

2 Likes
95

By All Reasonable Knowledge

This game has a lot of interesting ideas (the phone dialing was especially interesting) but has deeply broken implementation.

It’s a one room game but only the first time you look is everything described; after that, if you want to know what’s in the room, you have to scroll back up to the first look you gave, at all other times it just gives a terse, unhelpful description. Parts of the room are implemented that aren’t mentioned in descriptions. The floor is covered in 5 or 6 groups of things called ‘objects’ but if you ‘x objects’ the first thing that it defaults to are objects that aren’t supposed to exist until later in the game and are described as missing and not visible even then. The help system asks you to type in keywords, but 90% of the time if you do it asks you to be more specific but doesn’t give you a hint on how to do so. At one point you gain an object that let you unlock something, but UNLOCK doesn’t work, you just have to OPEN the thing while holding the object. There is dirty underwear whose printed name is dirty socks but in messages its called dirty unmentionables, and if you TAKE it it describes you taking it but it spawns back into the hamper it came from.

So the clear issue here is practice with Inform. These kind of issues can be ironed out over time. I like to spend about equal amounts coding and testing/beta testing, because it takes a long time to figure this stuff out.

A lot of the actual material in the game is pretty good. The setting is creative and the numbers you can dial on the phone have some fun and unexpected responses. So all this needs is some more ‘time in the oven’.

7 Likes
96

I should mention that it looks like I missed some features in Moon Logic like screen reader support which helps ameliorate some of the more frustrating aspects and lets you pick between the ‘frustration’ version and a version that lets you focus more on the clever puzzles. I did eventually figure out the UI features at one point but I recommend trying the screen reader support both on and off to see what you prefer. I’m going to include this message at the end of my review as well.

3 Likes
97

Horse Whisperer

This is an unfinished Twine game about you, a horse whisperer that now works for the mob. You have to talk to three horses and get them to finish a race in the order that the mob has told you to do.

You have about a week to do that, and can talk to one (or sometimes more) horses a day, then you race.

Each horse has its own dialogue tree. These aren’t, in general, finished, and the end of the race screen I played had a broken else statement in Twine (which I reported as the game asked).

What text there is is mostly jokes about the wild lives the horses live and silly dialog options you are allowed to say. Some of the content might be described as crude but mostly harmless. I enjoyed some of the banter with the snobby horse.

Like a couple other games this competition, this game would have benefitted from more prep time, and especially if it had been finished before the competition began.

5 Likes
98

Thank you for playing, reviewing my work, and for always being so encouraging in your feedback - it takes skill to provide effective feedback that motivates others to improve. Will keep your comments in mind and continue to improve future works. Glad you enjoyed the game.

2 Likes
99

Fable

I like Penthesileia by the same author, so I was looking forward to this.

This is an intense love triangle (actually more like a incomplete love tetrahedron) in a fantasy story. You, a man, have heard about the return of your childhood crush who was called to be ‘the hero’. But he and your sister also had a relationship, and it’s hard to have your crush so close and see what’s going on and not be part of it.

Later on, someone else is thrown into the mix, a fourth option that provides intense love but comes with immense, pretty awful baggage.

The fantasy story provides the framing and is essential to the nature of the fourth character, but all other aspects of this story could work in almost any setting. It’s about essential aspects of human nature: love, obsession, hope, despair, jealousy.

There are some options that felt significant, but I only played once so I don’t know if they have an effect on the overall story (it’s okay if not, they were good for roleplaying).

The game had some strong profanity, which I muted with a filter. It is a queer love story and has drama but does not (I think?) contain homophobia. Someone else who has played can feel free to correct me, but I had the impression that the relationships were dangerous and felt illicit but not because of homophobia, but because someone else had loved them first. Still, all gay relationships are treated as secret so it’s hard to say (I’m only including this part because I know some people have a preference in how the world setting treats gay relationships).

I like this author’s writing style in general and look forward to future games.

3 Likes
100

Horse whisper is one I really wish had’ve been postponed to Spring thing and given more development time. I have some vague recollections of a comedy movie I saw when a kid about someone who can talk to a particular horse and they kind of manage to rig the race so they win. It kind of reminds me of a more adult version of that crossed with Mr Ed, and could have been a lot of fun if working. I liked the snobby horse as well.

3 Likes