Check out 9:05, but make sure not to read anything about it before you play it. It's very short (but free), and quite cool. http://adamcadre.ac/if.html

I hear the rest of Adam Cadre's stuff is good as well. The only other one I've played is Shrapnel. I don't really remember it, but it's good and pretty weird.

A Mind Forever Voyaging is a good one because you can't die in that and it's wonderfully written. It takes some effort to get into, however, because you should also read all the documentation and such.

Yeah, one of the best introductory pieces.

Hunter in Darkness is also a good short action-packed adventure.
Erudition Chamber is a nice attempt at explicitly multi-solution short puzzles.

For horror there is Anchorhead. For being puzzled there's Curses! For weird story there's Spider and Web. A touch of combat awaits in Kerkerkruip and Leadlight.

It's like the game is literally from the early 80s, when graphics were still new and parsers were simplistic.

This is the best parser game:
Spider and Web

This is the parcerless revolution that never was:
Perils of Akumos
Escape from St. Mary's

Speaking of parsers, one last little thing: I find it utterly bizarre that in the trailer someone types, "Turn on thingy" (I don't remember what it is) and then deletes it and retypes it to "Turn thingy on". I, uh, wouldn't consider it a good thing to advertise that your parser is ridiculously inflexible to the degree it'll recognize "Turn ___ On" but not "Turn On ____".

*Sigh* I hated to read that. I was actually very close to pulling the trigger on buying the Standard Edition later, but to see these errors is distressing and disappointing, especially from the developers, given their development experience and pedigree. Mistakes and typos like those I can (somewhat) forgive, but if the parser really is that bad, then there's no way I'm touching this game before it gets fixed.

For a primarily text-based game, the parser is instrumental for its success, because I want to spend my time and effort playing the game, not fighting it to get it to do what I want it to do. That other person on the RPS thread really had it right - from reading that picture, the blatant errors and misspellings really killed the immersion for me.

It's a shame, because I've actually found myself hungering for an adventurish SF/F cyberpunk-style game now. Ah well. Maybe I'll just get Resonance instead.

You can always play one of the greats for free: http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/beneath_a_steel_sky

The reviewer must be a certified dumbass. He found it troublesome to use the website? It's clean and informative and loads in a single page which prevents lagging annoyances.
And he doesn't even review or barely tried the game. But I guess you can't expect much from sites like RPS or kotaku.
But in the end it will still help the game devs with PR.



Agreed. Without a demo you're kind of shooting in the dark.
Although since this is a niche market, it probably won't help lowering the price a lot. But I would say cutting the price by $5 wouldn't be a bad idea.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legend_Entertainment#Interactive_fiction
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_XYZZY_Awards_by_category
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zork

@rampancy:
Get BASS (which is free).
Resonance is not cyberpunk but I can recommend it. Really nice game.


@the devs
You should get a patch out fixing all the typos and engrish ASAP! If you have to pay a couple of bucks, I recommend you to.
Having it like it is now could kill the game before it lifts off.
As for the parser... well, let us hope it's manageable.

So the developers posted this to the RPS thread: It looks like they'll at least be addressing the English translations issues (and seriously, shame on them for not using a native English speaker for the translation), but who knows if they'll fix or improve the parser.

That game is possibly the best game of all time. Seriously. Just WOW. The introductory story alone gave me goosebumbs.

It is actually in the political climate of the US more relevant than ever.

And thanks for the heads up on Cypher. It seemed to good to be true.

I hope they do. They seem to be genuinely passionate about making the best game that they can.

Hello!

WE ARE RELEASING THE PATCH SOON!!! ;-) WOOOT! it had some misspellings errors, which in our case are bugs because it's a text adventure. Some people got really angry at the point they forgot we are indie developers doing this with our own budget (that means, zero).

The game will also get translations soon! woooot!

If you released the game on GOG, what price would you be looking for?

Hello! CabreraBrothers here,

We are getting a lot of attention and the game is doing good so far (Carlos has already purchased a new BMW and I ordered a Ferrari) for a text adventure.

The game has bugs. In this case, being a text adventure (yeah, you guessed right) they are grammatical errors. We are getting those fixed right now thanks to the help of some good friends.

I just can't believe the reaction on some people. They must think we are a 50 guy company working in Arizona or something. We're down here in Argentina, doing our best from a crappy office (it is actually in the trailer, the first couple of seconds) with zero budget while dealing with our own clients (the ones that actually pay for the food we put on the table).

We're not trying to appeal to petty here. The game is great, with the patch will be even cooler. We are adding new stuff in the future too, and also translations to another languages, so we are taking responsibility.

What I mean is someone has to go out there and take the heat for trying to bring back text adventures (in a commercial form, that is). It's not a KickStarter buy-now-get-it-in-six-years kind of thing. The game is out now. If we have to take the heat for trying then let us take the heat.

Give us everything you have. We are Argentineans, we're used to rough treatment.

But that's NOTHING compared with the response we got from other players. THEY LOVE IT. And it's going world wide! we're getting reviews from countries we can't even find in the map! that's terrific! and also the support from the GOG community, which we never doubt, not for a second they would react differently.

We have nothing to say but thanks!!!! Dude... we're working on the patch for the grammar errors. Take it easy....? going around saying "do not buy this game" will not revive Infocom or bring text adventures back to the main scene, I can tell you that right now.

Will you be happy if we just shut down the site and put our heads in the oven after patching the game up?

The game looks interesting and you CabreraBrothers seem to be very passionate about what you have made. It is a good achievement to make a game. But defending it like that is a bit strange.

If the game has sold well/is selling well, what's the problem? Some people have said bad things about the game? If you like it, and others like it, why carry on defending as if it's been critically panned by critics?