![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() However, after that the episode’s focus shifts again to a text adventure format. It was a straightforward enough process of matching instruments to expected values and watching the results. The first saw me using a computer and numerous bits of lab equipment to perform an experiment on “something” in a sealed chamber. Considering the story in more detail once the dust settles may lead to a slightly unsatisfactory feeling overall, but on the whole the atmosphere was absolutely nailed. For a story so simple, it is done very well indeed. This is one of the reasons I fell in love with text adventures (and subsequently, writing) in the first place - if done right, there is something about the written word far more unsettling than visual horror, and this first episode not only excels at storytelling, but integrates the visual and audio presentation into the narrative spectacularly. My expectations about the genre were played on and I was manipulated brilliantly. While some of my criticisms of The House Abandon could be considered valid, in the context of what the game was actually doing they are rendered almost moot. Still, it feels a bit like the presentation has trumped the experience in many respects the atmosphere of the text at this early stage doesn’t feel anywhere near as sinister as the music is trying to portray it to be.Īn effective piece of meta-narrative almost made me soil myself, and I take back everything I just said about it not being scary. Hitting Escape gives you a list of suggested commands and you’re unlikely to stray far from those at any point. To be honest, this is all perfectly manageable. A note tells me I need to “fire up” the generator but doesn’t let me use that phrase. A similar situation happens when turning on power to the house. Yet, when I’m at the bottom of the stairs and type “up”, it isn’t recognised. There’s no place for “Go North” here, which is fine since it isn’t mentioned in the text. Other things missing: cardinal directions. ![]() There's enough difference between each chapter's gameplay to keep you interested. “Look at”? I’m going to have to write a strongly worded letter to No Code about this heresy. It’s like playing a Walking Dead game without a quick time event, or Call of Duty without experiencing a wave of cynicism. The best developers would anticipate the myriad commands a player would use and try to accommodate them all - some of them would even respond humorously to swearing (and if you have ever played an adventure as a kid and claim not to have typed “shit” into the parser… well, you’re a liar).Īll of this leads me onto the question: if this is supposed to be a homage to text adventures, why the hell can’t I use the verb “examine”? The two go hand in hand. Then there was the engine the adventure was built on - the Graphic Adventure Creator (GAC), for instance, was far more limited in its responses than the Professional Adventure Writer (PAW). Much of this was down to the memory available on the computer 64KB of RAM might seem tiny, but you could do a hell of a lot with it back then. While studios such as Infocom had a far more generous parser, you basically had to learn to be a walking thesaurus if you wanted to crack some of the tougher adventures on the market. The first episode of Stories Untold is named The House Abandon and as anyone who has ever played an 8-bit text adventure knows, the verb dictionary and its associated responses are absolutely pivotal to the success or failure of the game. This couldn’t have hit my nostalgia nerve harder if it had come bundled with a stuffed SuperTed and a Push Pop. The blinking cursor of a text adventure awaiting your command. The god awful screech of the tape deck booting up a game. A monitor painfully revealing a pixellated loading screen a layer at a time. With two copies now lined up, I guess I really don’t have an excuse not to play it.Ī dim room. Still, free is free, so I snapped it up and then immediately found that I’d bought it almost a year ago on Steam. I recognised its Child’s Play-style cover art immediately and vaguely recall it being raved about upon release, but couldn’t remember a single other detail about it. One such game is Stories Untold, which was recently in their fortnightly giveaway. The Epic Store might just be Steam with a different face and owner, but wooing gamers by throwing quality titles at them for free is undoubtedly a shrewd marketing move. Only the very best titles will stand up to scrutiny today. Brutal Backlog is a semi-regular feature where the JDR team play through some of the unplayed games on their shelves (both digital and physical), disregarding their age or the technical limitations of their era. ![]()
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