The blurb didn’t lie — this work is capable of spewing a great many things, some of them potentially offensive. And it will do it for two hours. And it uses an unusual technology to do it. The game is...

This may not be the first IF with escape-the-room as a theme (I’m pretty sure of that), but I think it is the first one to be a simulation of an Escape Room. I thought this worked very well as...

This story is, as the blurb advertises, depressing. But more to the point, it’s not engaging. The premise is that you’ve somehow gotten a hold of a phone of a recently deceased young girl and receive a text from one...

Measureless is a medium-sized parser game in which the main character is cursed by unspeakable, ancient evil. In most cases, the protagonist has it coming — they know the risks of seeking books bound in human flesh and full of...

I am curious to hear the story behind this game. In the banner information, it is copyrighted 2004 and the serial numbers agree. Further, it appears to be written in Inform 6 and the story file is in z5 format....

Truth be told, I considered writing a dense, opaque review about how erudite and insightful this piece was, and how it leapfrogs over earlier works in ludic philology. My plan was then to hunker down for a few days and...

I’ve played the last few games out of randomized order because I wanted to provide some feedback for games that either had no review listed on the spreadsheet or no conversation thread on the forum. I approached this game with...

The first thing that caught my eye in the blurb was that the estimated time to complete this work is greater than two hours. I expect that will dissuade many potential players — we will see after IFcomp is tallied...

Most twine games are text first, visual later, but playing Charlie The Robot felt at times more like watching an interactive movie than reading a CYOA book. This author clearly knows how to bend the twine platform to his will....

This is a nicely presented, relatively short Twine game that shares some of its DNA with a Choice Of Games story. Pages are a few paragraphs long, followed by a series of choices, most often two or three, but sometimes...

My interpretation of the cover art and blurb weren’t too far off for this short to medium length parser-based game. There isn’t too much I can say without entering spoiler territory, but I will remark on the long list of...

This is an ambitious game with a fun style, but I consider it unplayable in its present state. There’s no hint of proofing or play testing, and the implementation is paper thin. There are confusing parser responses, logical inconsistencies, undescribed...

This short hypertext story punches above its weight. It’s not that much to look at for the most part: the typography is unremarkable, there are the usual hyperlinks, and the text is displayed is reasonable chunks of a paragraph or...

I had a favorable first impression when I started playing from the “play online” link. The initial screen is nicely laid out in a somewhat fancy font and displaying useful info like license, version, title, and the introduction itself. I...

I have now played through and posted reviews for thirty-nine games in this year’s IFcomp. I understand that NOIR was withdrawn due to an issue with pre-comp release, so I am roughly halfway through this year’s official offering. I think...

This is a short and sweet parser game built around a central puzzle. The goal of the puzzle is presented immediately and the player is guided through the first step towards that goal in a sort of tutorial. The first...

Joke entry, skipped review. If anyone is curious, see transcript: HP Preliminary Score: 1 The post Review – Haunted P appeared first on Dhakajack.

Harmonia blew me away. Those with aversions to gushing reviews should avert their eyes or risk injury. Story and presentation are exquisitely united in this work. I can only imagine that back in the mid-20th Century at some think tank...

Something is one in a series of short twine games drawn from the pages of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, whichever edition number they’re now up to. I can’t say that this subgenre really floats my boat,...

This review does not contain subliminal messages, nor does the game. This twine story starts from a wikipedia style disambiguation page, which collects items related to the term “322”, and the game consists simply of clicking around these links at...

This is more or less Dr. Horrible: the IF. It’s an intentionally very short piece set in a single room, with a limited number of objects. There are a couple things to do, and I think most people will do...

The blurb describes this as an about 15 minute game, and that’s about what I found. It is presented in a fairly vanilla format for a twine story. I think this might be the first story I’ve encountered that combined...

This is a medium-length swords and sorcery story written on the Twine platform. Unfortunately, I don’t think most players will stick with that game beyond the first screen or two. I say this for two reasons: first, at least in...

This is a medium-length parser game in three acts. As he often does, this author set the story in a world that would be at home in the HP Lovecraft Cthulhu mythos. I’m not sufficiently schooled in the mythos to...

The Wizard Sniffer, one of the longer parser-based games in this year’s competition, strikes a successful balance between silliness and game play. It checks an impressive number of boxes: Comedy, Fantasy Setting, Castle Venue, Medieval Combat, Monsters, Non-human Protagonist, Multiple...