Reviews

Review by Yubi all reviews by Yubi

Fable Match-Up is Memory, but with turtle-themed cards.

To be honest, I tried to get through this game quickly because it was a little bland. This game really needs a variety of different animal cards to work with. I could hardly read the little white numbers, and my strategy very quickly became "brute force every match because there's hardly any memorable visual information to work with." Nothing happens when you match all the cards. A simple "you win" would have been nice, but I just got stuck on the empty table until I closed the window to quit out of the game.

The one thing I can praise is the way the cards burn in and out of their unrevealed state. I'd love to inspect the source code and see how exactly it was done.

Scores: Overall 3 Artistical None Technical None Genre None

Review by Yubi all reviews by Yubi

The Magical Flower is as beautiful as it is frustrating. It is beautifully frustrating!

It frustrates by design in the endearingly clumsy character of the elephant, whose greater size and power easily displaces the skunk into the abyss at the slightest lapse of attention, and whose adorably naive faith in the skunk's leadership often sends him plummeting after.

It unfortunately also frustrates for a less charming reason: the game's controls handle like an elephant has taken the wheel.

The game's keyboard controls are mostly to blame. Although the options to remap the keys don't actually work, this makes little difference when the push/pull and jump commands are tied to the same key. When the skunk is moving, the action key causes it to jump. When it skunk is not moving, the action key causes it to push or pull. Simple enough, until you discover that the skunk can never take standing jumps in place to help gauge the the width of gaps. Conversely, precise arrangements of plank bridges are constantly being disordered by accidental jumping at the worst moments, consigning them (and the hapless skunk) to sky-blue oblivion.

Speaking of the bridges, I've run into a bug on two separate maps where the fallen planks despawn and will not return even if I force-restart the level or the entire application. Mercifully, I was able to counter this with a combination of other bugs, including:
-abusing skunk's uncanny ability to carry the elephant on its own back and access staircase boardwalks that the elephant is not meant to be able to reach
-the skunk's ability to pull boulders that are supposedly too heavy to be pushed
-apparent default exits that the game sets the characters' position to upon a forced level reset, which allow me to skip past the map's puzzles if I approached from the wrong side

Although I managed to win without cheating on a second run, my greatest obstacle turned out to be the skunk's inability to move while lifting the planks, making the function essentially useless. Being able to properly position the planks would have been an enormous quality-of-life improvement, given that both the skunk and elephant will kick planks into the pit if they are even slightly too high or low. If two planks fall on top of each other in an particularly unfortunate configuration (e.g. their ends overlap), the level can become unwinnable as easily as that.

With those control complaints out of the way, it's onto the handling of this competition's rules. But first, I want to praise the background tracks: their varied moods complement the game's atmosphere well. Where did you find such enchanting pieces?

Fable:
You've made excellent use of the animal fables rule not only by building an entire game around an original AI-written story, but one where the physical differences between the elephant and skunk are juxtaposed to hilarious effect. I found the elephant's constant complaining about being bumped into and stepped over funny, then wearisome, then funny once more. They skunk simply can't help but bump into the elephant, and the elephant can't help but bump into the skunk, to disastrous effect given the world's narrow configurations. There are probably several morals that can be taken from that interaction alone, but they'll have to speak for themselves.

Dialogue:
The dialogue bubbles fit the game's aesthetic well, and much is expressed with literally few words. The over-large, terse, all-lower case font was a great design choice that contrasted the elephant's innocent nature with its inadvertently destructive potential. I could never stay angry at the elephant no matter how many of my painstakingly constructed bridges he wrecks.

I initially wished that the skunk were similarly well characterized, being the "I" of the game. Perhaps the player is meant to project themselves onto his speechless character? In which case, it is well that the skunk has nothing to say, for the dialogue bubbles I would emit would be unpublishable here.

Iridescence:
The iridescent bubbles felt a bit flat and un-bubblelike, but I don't have anything against them since they were not central to the gameplay or story. Their flatness though, did sometimes bring to attention just how confused my sense of space and perspective could be in some of the isometric maps - the map on second column on the bottom grid row is a prime example. I guess it is difficult to design a perfect map that is neither truly two or three dimensional.

Graphs:
This game had three separate graphs! The world grid would have been a sufficient chart already, especially as the story refers to it as a chart directly. I'm not sure why the measurement of completion percentage had to be in bars when it could have just been a progress bar. I'm also not sure how I feel about the deaths-per-minute graph, even though it's good for a laugh if I make time to pay attention to it. I think a graph that displayed how many times I died in each particular map would have been far more interesting.

Speaking of the world grid, was there supposed to be a hint somewhere leading to the final story piece after encountering the gnomes on the main path? It felt like I discovered it accidentally only after much aimless wandering.

Co-op(tional):
A game about cooperation with yourself. Ah, the humility... I did have a partner assist me with the aforementioned elephant-carrying bug, but it really is a single-player game.

Well, in parting... the Magical Flower was by far the longest TINS 2023 entry I've played. I felt good when I finished it, but I can't say I felt good throughout. I struggled with the controls more than I struggled with the game's offered challenges. I think the maps I enjoyed most in retrospect were not the bridge-building and gap-jumping zones, but the straightforward paths and crossroads that gave me time to breathe and take in the journey of the elephant and skunk through the frustratingly beautiful maze.

Scores: Overall 5 Artistical None Technical None Genre None

Review by Yubi all reviews by Yubi

A day in the life of a feline eco-tourist! Delivering capybaras from the snares of inconsiderable fellows who throw improbable volumes of trash and run you over with racecars.

Capylandia Eco Rescue was the most original entry in this competition, and yet the easiest to just pick up, learn the ropes of, and play. I'm not used to adventure games where you get things done without having to collect things, read between their lines, and plug item-Xs into item-Ys. This game is simple fun that drops you right into the action without unnecessary preamble.

What I most appreciated about Capylandia was its random generation, which kept exploration fresh over several playthroughs. The game's most challenging aspect is an unforgiving time limit that keeps the player laser-focused on charting the lay of the land, with each level adding to the size and complexity of the levels. A generous helping of locked doors, hidden keys and teleport pads strains your short-term memory to its limits; there is no time to indulge in super-soaking the tourists for petty spending coin when every wasted second, every distraction leading to a wrong turn brings you that much closer to an instant failure by time-out.

It's a surprisingly high pressure experience for a game that takes place in a nature preserve.

Given that your rapidly dwindling lifespan is so critical in this game, it seems strange for the time limit to be communicated in a hard-to-read white text in the bottom left corner of the screen, when there is so much free space in the blue overhead HUD. The first few times I played the game, I did not even realize there was a time limit.

Then again, I was thoroughly trounced by trash-throwers and racecar-drivers the first few runs, not realizing there was an water gun button I could use to defend myself. Thanks to Amarillion for informing me of this.

Defeating tourists with the water gun drops a pittance of money, which isn't really enough to benefit your run much in the later levels where time grows tight and tourist enemies take increasing hits to defeat. You can buy time limit extensions, hitpoints, soaker upgrades from rabbit merchants, but it's better to run past enemies and focus on not getting lost than to risk losing time and health to collecting coins. In either case, I found that all my items get purchased unconsciously when I accidentally run into the rabbit. A button to confirm purchases would be welcome.

My eventual strategy was to treat the water gun like the emergency pistol from Metroid, using it only to stun and push enemies out of the way. I'm always especially vigilant around teleport pads - it seems a bit off that tourists and their projectiles are able to hit you partway through the teleportation delay while you are stuck in place. I'm not sure if this is a legitimate flaw or my bad for expecting to be invincible for some reason, but I'll whine about it here.

So - Concerning the competition's artistic and technical rules.

Animals: I had criticized the animal in other entries for lacking character, complaining that they did not exhibit the physical qualities associated with each animal. But I feel this doesn't apply in the case of Eco Rescue because the characters are sufficiently and convincingly anthropomorphic that I see them as animal-people rather than animals-that-talk. This game has an excellent selection of enemy types, and I would love to soak them all.

Speech bubbles: Sometimes, the rabbit merchant's "you don't have enough money" bubble will obscure the text that advertises what is being sold. Other times, the bubble advertises the wrong item. There was one playthrough where I desperately tried to collect the last few remaining coins to afford a time extension, but the time merchant sold me the soaker upgrade instead and watched as the timeout erased me from existence. Maybe the merchant's offered item changes depending on some condition and I happened to be very unlucky?

Iridescence: Of all the entries, I feel this is the only game where the iridescent effect made the experience worse. I get that the amorphous rainbow rings were meant represent be oil slicks in the ocean, but they are painful and garish to look at. I managed to tune them out though, and enjoy the game despite them.

Charts: "Nautical charts?" Sure, I'd give that a pass, though I don't see much sea around these islands.

Finding the chart early is an enormous boon on the later levels. Not finding the chart is, on the other hand, cause for anxiety. I kind of wish there were sub-charts or some alternative way to get useful map data to even out probabilities, but winning or losing by a stroke of fortune has its charm, too.

Co-op: I didn't have anyone to play with this time around, but will update soon on this.

Parting thoughts:
This is a excellent game - fun, challenging, funny, original, and easy to understand. I regret having done Capylandia a disservice by playing and reviewing it last, when I had the least attention and energy to get into its nuances. It's possible that it would have been my favourite game of TINS 2023 in a parallel universe where I downloaded the games in a slightly different order.

Scores: Overall 5 Artistical None Technical None Genre None

Review by Yubi all reviews by Yubi

"Ba... ba baAA bAAAAA
ba-baa baaaaaaa....."

A game deserving of the adjective beautiful. A slow-paced turret shooter where the objective is to destroy your opponent's balloons.

Though I use the word "opponent," partner may have been more apt in describing our approach to Les Beaux Ballons. It took some time for the two of us to puzzle out together just how the game worked, from its controls, its objectives and its mechanics to exactly what benefits of the "powerups" were meant to confer. By the time we figured out how to play the game, the competitive spirit was all underwater. Some instructions would have saved us a lot of time.

I think what this game lacks, above all else, are both audio and visual effects. There's not much impact from the inflation of the balloon, its trajectory through the water, and its collision with the clownfish, the powerups, or the opponent's apparatus. A trail of bubbles or some hydraulic noises would have made a world of difference in every interaction.

I will also complain that the trajectory of the balloons is too fast and straight to make intuitive sense in an underwater game, and that the opponent's balloons take too long to destroy. In the end, the other player and I chose to cooperate to clear the water so that my balloons could be targetted more easily, all so that we could see what happens when one side wins. Fewer "lives" in favour of a faster turnaround on battles would have been more engaging.

There is a lot that this game could have done with just the simple physics hinted by the accumulation of wasted balloons drifting on the seafloor. More of an arcing projectile motion, heavier missiles and some kind of threshold velocity to meaningfully collide balloons with obstacles seems like a necessary baseline for this game to feel aesthetically convincing.

So what did I find most beautiful about this game?

It's the fully engorged sushi balloon for sure. Never had nigiri looked so intimidating! That, and the choice of background music, which continues to play on repeat in my head as I write this review.

Parting thoughts:
It's a good-looking game that I would love to play again if further developed, but feels incomplete at this time.

Scores: Overall 3 Artistical None Technical None Genre None

Review by Yubi all reviews by Yubi

"I like this art!"

Art Gallery of Cats was the first game from a speedhacking competition that I have ever played, and I am glad that it was. I was thoroughly charmed by your galleries and its upbeat sense of humour. I smiled and laughed the entire time.

I only wish that the curator Mittens had a more to say about some of the pieces, and that there were a little more variety in some galleries. It is already an excellent selection that leaves me hungry for more.

The third gallery was especially good, and I could certainly imagine such a place in a parallel universe where cats run the world.

Genre:
How fortunate that the theme of this competition was very much in your favour! I had thought the art was entirely AI generated until I recognized the print from the second gallery on your website.

Technical (comic speech bubbles, chart):
Ah, the cat to human lifespan. Now that I think about it, the text of the third riddle was not strongly related to its answer, but it's whatever since it is not meant to be difficult anyway.

Artistic:
I chuckled at the iridescent sculpture. I've never done 3D programming, but I was told that mapping textures and lights to shapes is difficult to do right. I don't know if this was your intent, but I appreciated that the amorphous rainbow effect was so "easy to get right" that it was almost cheeky. And I found that cheekiness funny, if only in the context of the competition and it's time limits: "look what I put in here just to fulfill the artistic requirement! Now let's get back to looking at nice pictures!"

Perhaps I'm reading too much into it, but that's the modern art experience.

Now for the whining:
I guess it's not a big deal, but the game closes after the final stage so you can't return to the title menu to view your achievements.

Also, if you enter the riddle solving screen prematurely (which you absolutely will, because the solve key is on 's' and muscle memory dictates using WASD for movement), there's no way to escape the riddle screen except by typing in a wrong answer. The inconvenience is only minor, though.

Parting thoughts as a first-time not-Speedhack game player:
When I first heard of TINS, I had expected that technical skill would be its basis - i.e. how impressive a game can you churn out in 72 hours? - but you've singlehandedly demonstrated that fun, creative expression will be the contest's true essence. I was glad I played your game first, for it set my expectations aright for the other entries.

Scores: Overall 5 Artistical None Technical None Genre None

Review by Yubi all reviews by Yubi

The Heron and the Fish is short, it's to the point, and it makes me a little hungry. Am always a fan of games about eating. This game is art made with old hardware nostalgia at heart, which makes it a bit before my time. Still, I can see and feel the appeal of it.

I like that it is a game of patience - a rarity. You have to wait for the high-value fish to appear and keep yourself from gorging on small-fry. The problem is that I can't guess the value of different fish just by looking at them, and even thought that I was meant to avoid the pointed fish with dangerous-looking triangle shaped mouths. A list of fish and their point values would have been a great reference in game.

I also wish that I could have eaten 40 fish instead of 4, even if that would have defeated the point of the game. This would have given the graph at the end a bit more statistical significance.

In the end, there wasn't much challenge except for that which the player imposes on themselves. Personally, I'm the kind of heron who would get its fill of the small fish and call it a night. Still, a stylistically attractive piece worth playing.

"So full!"

Scores: Overall 3 Artistical None Technical None Genre None

Review by Yubi all reviews by Yubi

"What is reality even?"

Odd One Out is a simple idea done well, and my overall favourite out of TINS 2023. It had genuinely good gameplay that did not feel like a gimmick born of the contest's rule requirements. The energetic music, the stylish use of colours and its sense of humour all contributed to a presentation that was fast paced without ever feeling overwhelming. On that last note, I felt that whenever I proceeded to the game's next level, it was because I *wanted* more and not because I was being pushed off a precipice in the name of artificially keeping up the pressure.

Fantastic.

The option to choose how you wanted to increase the difficulty was consistently rewarding. I did not feel cheated, curveballed, or otherwise screwed by bad RNG as is common in the "pick your poison" mechanics of other games. It feels rare that rule changes behave exactly as advertised on their tins, with no calculation needed as to their nuances. I had previously wondered if there was an ending to the game, or if the player was guaranteed to be laid low eventually by the time limit decrease option. Bananalazer has informed me that there is indeed an ending past the 2 seconds stage, but I'll be needing more practice to even reach that level.

I feel that I've been praising the game for the traps it avoids than its innovations, so to focus on the latter:

This game definitely made the best use of the contest's "fable" rule. The physical differences between animal characters, their traits and abilities are what make fables work, and these differences are front and center in Odd One Out. Discerning true from false between these traits and the animals they belong to feels semi-heroic, riffing an age-old trope out of the fairy-tale playbook.

If there are rules that this game played less smoothly with, it would be the inclusion of a chart and the bonus co-op rule. Regarding the scatterplot that appears every couple stages, I wasn't sure how useful or interesting its information was at a glance. My data points were always all over the place and I did not feel too inclined to tear myself away from the action to interpret them. It didn't necessarily feel meaningless or distracting; merely present, and honestly I didn't give it too much thought.

As for the co-op, I simply couldn't get it to work. The instructions detailing co-op controls for the right side of the keyboard seemed to be inaccurate, and the default layout would have been a terrible mess of crossed appendages anyway. Still, my wife and I ended up cooperating on this game on the single-player mode, and we had a blast as a team. She loves this game, by the way (she absolutely dominates at it).

Parting thoughts:
I feel resolved to beat this game some day, and likely continue playing after. This a feeling I've gotten from only one other entry, and if I had to give a single reason why this game was my favourite, there it is.

Scores: Overall 5 Artistical None Technical None Genre None

Review by Yubi all reviews by Yubi

Ah, spoiler alert here.

Short and sweet, Birdies comes down to an unexpected pun about the "mouse" saving the birds from the snare, just as an eagle or an lion was saved depending on the fable's original telling. It's a decent piece of art, but given the arrangement of the birds, I had expected some intricate puzzle rather than a simple test of how quickly the player could click on all the birds before they fell back to the ground. I could see the concept being the basis of a more fleshed out puzzle, perhaps involving knots, line tensions, or weight differences between the birds.

Was the net your take on on the "graph" rule, with birds as vertices? If so, I liked it.

Scores: Overall 4 Artistical None Technical None Genre None

Review by Yubi all reviews by Yubi

Jungle Tale is a platformer with a goal of collecting all twenty stars. The challenge of the game seems to be that some stars cannot be reached if you fail the jump to reach their platform in a single attempt, or you progress too far, too quickly. Either can make backtracking impossible. Therefore, jumps must be perfectly precise, and you must memorize the map's layout in order to get the highest score. It reminds me of the bonus stages in games like Castellan, where you try to collect as many gems as possible on the roads between proper game levels, under similar conditions.

Unfortunately, it seems that there are some stars on platforms simply too high and distant to be reached no matter desperately you mash the jump button, making a perfect score unachievable.

I must whine about the control of the lion, which feels floaty and inconsistent. It slides a bit overmuch for the precise movement this game demands, and I find getting through single-tile gaps in platforms overhead unnecessarily difficult. The lack of a walk-cycle animation on the lion greatly exacerbates this feeling that my lion is trying to walk on wet ice.

The collision detection at the corners of blocks also feels a bit off. I don't have slow motion video evidence or anything, but half the time I swear I made the jump with some pixels to spare, only to fall straight down as though crashing into a wall.

Lastly, I'm not sure how stars and lions are related, so the concept of the game wasn't too compelling.

Scores: Overall 3 Artistical None Technical None Genre None

Review by Yubi all reviews by Yubi

The cats! The murderous cats perched on bar graphs! I see their expressionless faces in my nightmares.

I can't help but compare Flappy Bird Racing to the original Flappy Bird. They're both difficult games, but Racing is more forgiving with its checkpoints, more spontaneous in its randomness, and an overall satisfying game to play. FBR combines many unexpected elements to create something new and delightful, making the original seem rather dull and repetitive by comparison.

The one thing that the original does better however, is movement: its purposefully clumsy hops and skips nonetheless feel crisp and engaging over time. FBR's movement feels a bit floaty - which is to say I don't feel an intuitive sense of upward momentum or gravity when the bird rises or falls. Victorwss was kind enough to inform me that gravity acting on the bird scales with the current level, but I still prefer the original's ungraceful, but consistent motions.

With those comparisons out of the way, I will try to review my favourite features of FBR on their own merits from here on.

Genre (animals):
I love the various screams the birds emit when they crash. They remain somewhat startling to me even though I have heard them hundreds of times, and I've nearly started to think of them as a consolation prize for dying.

I'm not sure what the tortoises represent, but tortoises are always welcome.

Then there are, of course, the cats, which make an already challenging game even more so. I found that they were more fun in the game's intended multiplayer mode where having to deal with them seemed to even out the playing field through as much luck as skill, than in single-player where I could only blame myself or blame the game. My only real complaint about the cats is that they sometimes appear to attack you from behind when the left edge of the screen is about to scroll past them, making their angle of approach unpredictable.

Artistic (comic bubble dialogue):
The multilingual birds were a great touch, and I was overjoyed to be given a Canadian bird on the first playthrough. I thought for a moment that the game had some location-tracking feature. It is strange that I feel compelled to play better simply because the bird is from my country, but it works and I must give you a thumbs up for this.

I feel like I see the same dialogues quite often though, and it would have been a treat to see more variety here even if just as additional variations on "I'm back!"

Artistic (iridescence):
Linkin Park's Iridescence? Sure, why not. Nice thinking outside the box here; if I were the rules-judge I'd give this a pass. The music playback was a little fuzzy though.

Technical (graph):
Bar graphs as deadly obstacles and perches for cats was this game's crowning idea. Well done.

Co-op:
I only had one other person to play with, but I enjoy the flying over the cross-eyed corpses of my rivals. I wish there were bird-themed ways to interact with them, but what you've presented already feels sufficient.

On single player mode however, it would have been nice for the respawn timer to be reduced from ten seconds. It feels like a long wait that excerabates some of the game's "unfair" or unlucky moments.

Parting thoughts:
I admit that I ended up enjoying Flappy Bird Racing only after playing for some time. I held some bias against the original FB that did translate to my first impression of your game, but soon conceded that what you've added new ideas to create something incomparably engaging.

Scores: Overall 4 Artistical None Technical None Genre None

Review by Yubi all reviews by Yubi

Rainbow Castle is a game that took this competition's iridescence rule to heart and treated it not as a mere obstacle to get around, but its centerpiece. In the iridescence category, it is far and away the best in show. The painting and re-painting the walls and floor felt satisfying, in what must be the same way that some people find power-washing to be satisfying. The music is also good; more than anything else, it motivated me to keep my castle in good condition, so that I would deserve to hear more of it.

It's all a doomed endeavor, unfortunately. There is simply too much area to cover, and too many foxes within that area for a single slow-moving snake to deal with. Sooner rather than later, your castle's defenses will be overwhelmed, leaving your snake entirely impotent. I wish there were a proper "game over" or failure condition rather than simply being left hanging with no way to regenerate your colour meter. Or that the foxes whose colour you've restored could aid your castle's defenses somehow.

What this game needs is some indicator of progress apart from the score, and some measurable objectives apart from just defense until death. That is to say, I'd enjoy playing a game that is winnable, or at least one where losing is not so inevitable.

Scores: Overall 4 Artistical None Technical None Genre None

Review by Yubi all reviews by Yubi

A surprisingly intricate game of discovery that accomplishes much with few words.

At first, I thought that Crystal Commune was in dire need of an instruction manual, even if only in README form. I had no idea what to do, but to assume that trial and error was the intended experience and run with it. I feel like the initial confusion was worth it; by the time I've built a couple of each building and determined their purposes, the game had its hooks in deep.

Crystal Commune is fun to watch. It is a colourful game that plays itself, and in ways that are more satisfying than not. But as much as I would love to just sit back and watch my citizens do their thing, something about your mysterious unlabelled UI manages to convince me that executive meddling will benefit the commune... even though my bank account sits perpetually at zero dollars.

Although I'm quite partial to your minimalistic design, I'm less convinced of its effectiveness as I try to really learn the game. My chief complaint is that the return on investment on each structure is impossible to discern from the start. There seems to be a large periodic upkeep on buildings that end up easily exceeding incomes, and I'm not sure exactly what benefits I am paying for in-world or mechanically. How can the mine cost $150 in maintenance when it only generates $100? What does the cafe even do, and why do I want my citizens to eat when food costs half a shift's wages at the mine?

The game is certainly challenging, and I'd hate to be the sort who says "I did not like this game because it was hard and I was bad at it," but I feel like I haven't gotten much better after two hours, and I do blame the sparseness of actionable data.

Thoughts on genre (animals):
There's a duck, an elephant, and two cats, but they all seem to behave the same way or their differences are not too apparent. They feel a bit like automata with different skins stretched over the machinery rather than the individual citizens of a growing city. I understand that the city-building genre is not known for diversity, but still. They're different species, so even just noticeably different movement speeds or some occasional animal sounds would have been sufficient.

Thoughts on comic-book bubble dialogue:
I understood more from the debug shell that hunger and tiredness was a thing than from any communication by the speech/thought bubbles. They appear only sporadically, and it is difficult to grasp their consequence when they do. Does the pizza symbol mean "I'm hungry" or "I'm eating?" What happens anyway, to citizens are hungry or tired? I suppose they leave the commune, but it is nearly impossible to track their needs or their satisfaction of those needs just by watching their bubbles.

A wider variety of bubbles would have been great, but they can't out-do the classic hearts and happy-faces at the end of little coloured bars.

Thoughts on iridescence:
The crystal outcropping is a great iridescent object, but I spend most of my time watching the citizens and buildings. I feel as though my eyes are taking for granted what really ought to be the most coveted and eye-catching features of the cave because they aren't the things that spew dollar signs out of them.

The crystals on the airship however, were a fantastic touch that gave some clue as to the ends of the commune's industry in a wider world. Your sprite-work is quite good.

Thoughts on technical requirement (charts):
This is surely the genre of game most sorely in need of charts! Exhaustively detailed ones! There are graphs that track my funds and population over time, but they are low resolution and only list the minimum and maximum values. I eventually came to an understanding that the graphs were not meant to be taken too seriously and that I ought to play by feeling rather than calculation, but this philosophy has my commune sorely hurting for funds. I do want more information, so that I can "win" :(

And now for the smaller complaints:
The order in which citizens prioritize construction projects feels a bit haphazard. It seems to be neither the nearest foundation or the oldest placed ones. I haven't entirely discerned how the citizen's algorithm works, but I get this feeling that they can get torn between a number of competing priorities (including sleeping, eating) and become distracted from doing my bidding at the most desperate moments - which seems to be always. Maybe that is all by design, I don't know.

While the art is great, the window in which I can view that art is limiting. The ratio of window size to that of the tiles and actors felt quite oppressive when I was starting out, with only a 10x10 grid to work with. I wish I could zoom out or see more of the area at once.

Trying to navigate that area also adds to the oppressive sensation. The scrolling camera feels tight, as the boundary rectangles that move the camera are quite narrow and easy to overshoot, which halts scrolling immediately.

Parting thoughts:
Despite all this petty grousing, the concept alone made Crystal Commune one of my favourite TINS 2023 entries. The art and music were pleasant. The sound effects were the best in the competition. And this was actually the game I replayed most the most times at the end - for I still hold on to the eventual hope of managing a sizable colony.

Scores: Overall 5 Artistical None Technical None Genre None

Review by Yubi all reviews by Yubi

Frog and the Scorpion is a entirely uninteractive slideshow-movie rather than a game, presenting minor twists on the classic fable "Scorpion and Frog." The plot is almost identical, but the dialogue and imagery presented is a bit more contemporary, a bit more human, and a bit of a crude, yet wholehearted chuckle. I don't recall finding the original fable fun or interesting when I encountered it long ago, so I thank you for putting it in a new light.

The retelling starts slow, but but the pacing and expression in each slide really picks up toward the end. It's decently well expressed through the colours you've chosen. I especially liked the scorpion's sinister aura and eyes in the scenes leading up to the sting. That scorpion looks like he had a good time (if you know what I mean, eh?) and I admit that I did as well.

Some music or sound effects would have added to the experience, though.

Concerning the competition's rules, that iridescent hat couldn't have been more shoehorned in if it were an iridescent pair of boots or something. I guess it is funny because it's so unabashedly out of place. I must have missed the chart, and the dialogue wasn't in speech bubbles. Ah well. I'm not the rules police.

Scores: Overall 3 Artistical None Technical None Genre None

Review by Yubi all reviews by Yubi

Hmmm, a music game.

It is generally interesting to me because it is a music game, but I can't think of many outstanding qualities to praise.

I know a bit of violin and was barely able to complete the puzzle without having to brute-force the solution. The temptation is very strong, however, especially the tiles are highlighted in blue when placed in the correct positions. I would often discover the correct position for a tile accidentally while merely trying to rearrange tiles in placeholder positions, cheating me somewhat of the joy of a legitimate solution.

It would have been a nice reward to have the entire passage play with all four quartet members once the score is fully assembled. Perhaps that was the intent? Unfortunately, my game locks up and does not progress after I had all the tiles in their places. That means I can't progress to the second level if there is one, and my playthrough of Quartet must end.

I'm curious about the title of the piece featured in level 1. I would be pleased to listen to a proper recording of it.

Scores: Overall 3 Artistical None Technical None Genre None