CRYPTIC

I want to first off thank the developer for the free Steam key to this game to evaluate this game. After seeing that I've trashed their two previous hiking simulator games in years past, I'm kind of surprised about them offering a free key, lol. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9e3iBF7YCrs&t=132s So how is it? Surprisingly good from my first 40 minutes or so playing it. It's well written so far and definitely creepy. I haven't yet played long enough to get to one of the five endings, but I have played enough to say it looks like it's worth the $3 price tag for sure. It really depends on how the full game ans story plays out though so playing it might should give me better clarity on it. However, it's easy to see that this looks like their best game to date, and to that I congratulate the developer(s) on realizing they might be better at writing a text adventure than they are at making 3D hiking games lol. I like it so far and am giving this one a RECOMMEND! Absolutely deserved and I love that this developer made a big change to try and make a better game!

CRYPTIC is an old school text adventure (think Zork, Hitchhikers Guide to the Galazy, Adventure etc) only this was published in 2020, so someone didn't get the rather important message... computers have graphics now. Needless to say releasing a game that compares poorly to 1980's BBC Micro text games in 2020 leads to complete and utter failure, which the player counts below clearly show. So this is a text adventure, you type commands to the interface and the game cleverly tells you it doesn't understand what you were trying to do... yeah, this is no LLM chatbot, it really is a tight selection of acceptable syntax that it will handle. And unlike games like Zork, this is really badly written, almost as cringey as Steam visual novel/ebooks are. The game engine itself isn't the product of the developer, this is using Gluxle from Andrew Plotkin, so this is just the result of filling out some markup with some cringey writing and then burning $100 on Steam Direct. Imagine if all the money amateur developers waste on Steam Direct with garbage nobody wants was put to charity or something. Anyway... this is barely a game by 21st century standards. It's worse than the games of the era…

Great game I've been enjoying and replaying ! After playing "Stories Untold" and "Open Sorcery", I was looking for another game that would allow me to "type in" my way through the story ! It uses all your imagination to find your way, find the clues and avoid the "Game Over" traps. Original and excellent kind of game !

Very intriguing, solid, old-shool IF. This is only my first impression after 1h of gaming but my opinion is at moment very good. If you are a enthusiast of the text adventure genre like me this is a mandatory purchase. Thanks to Shoho Games to keep alive this type of games, I'll buy all your next games!