A Study in Steampunk: Choice by Gaslight

Reviewing (mostly) every game (or DLC) in my library, part 560: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️☆ (9/10) There's no reason for [i]A Study in Steampunk: Choice by Gaslight[/i] to be this good. No reason at all. It's a Victorian steampunk setting—with magic. And not your usual "waving wand" magic, but an actual unique magic system that involves "the sun-touched" and "life-eaters" (more on that later). These two aspects should contradict each other, but it somehow is married so beautifully. Additionally, the plot literally grabbed me by my hair and shook me back and forth. I thought this was a simple mystery game. Oh, no. My poor main character went through an amazing story arc: war veteran with PTSD to secret agent to community doctor to secret agent to priest then to depressed. I can't say more, but I have [i]never[/i] been so emotionally affected by a CoG title before. I mean, I had fun, I guess? But I was distraught and horrified and almost brought to tears—by my own choices. I honestly felt depressed after finishing the game. There are no happy endings. I will NOT be replaying this game, so props to Heather Albano because my heart just hurts. I only have a couple quibbles regarding the roman…

Fantastic novel! One of the best Choice Of Games with immersive and evocative world building, interesting characters and meaningful, heartfelt consequences. Worth checking out and a replay to explore the other paths.

The greatest game I've ever played!

Oh. My. God. If anyone here is even remotely considering buying this game. Do it. I've only played through it once, but this game has made me do the following with only text on a screen; -cry -scream -rant about it for 3 hours straight -want to throw my computer at my wall 10000/10 recommend.

If you enjoy Sherlock Holmes, interactive choice games, and good writing, this may be the game for you. It is set in a quasi-Victorian era not-England, where magic is real (and possibly very dangerous), and it tasks you as Doctor not-Watson to serve the crown in resolving some very peculiar cases. That's right, you are not the Sherlock Holmes stand-in here, you're actually playing the confidant. Although how you go about it, and how the roles eventually turn out, is really up to you. This game is up there on my favorites list along with A Choice of Robots and the Infinity series, highly recommended.

Haven't finished it yet but overall its a very well-written game, though I do think the author tells far more than they show. Having more dialogue from the various characters would really do a lot here and its a shame there's not more character building that way. Edit: Gotta say this one actually surprised me, at first I didn't really care for it, it felt very episodic and a bit uninteresting since the first 2 or 3 chapters were very unrelated. However, after that the story really picks up and by the 3rd act you really do feel like you've made some pretty important choices. I personally loved the cast of characters and I appreciated how different things could go. That said there are some big issues with the game, number 1 is that the player has very little understanding as to what choices will increase or decrease stats and I feel like the inclusion of choices that improve stats also leads to a weird pigeon holing where the player has to act or do certain things just to improve a skill. Also my original thoughts about the game having too much telling instead of showing was accurate, there's a lot of handwaving in the text which I think really undermines stuff that could've been…