Project RyME

one of the most engaging and enjoyable console based game experiences ive had :D theres a reason i keep coming back to it after playing the beta on itch years ago :3 i cant lie some of the typos got me ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up doe

I've still barely made it past the tutorial, but it's making me dust off my old command line and scripting skills so definitely promising.

It’s laser-targeted towards an audience that I’m not quite a part of, but we’re close enough that I can feel the heat coming off of it. Project RyMe is another entry in what I’ve decided to call “desktop detective games”. I get the feeling that I must have gotten that phrase from somewhere else, though I can’t remember where. I’ve seen enough games like this now — Uplink, Hypnospace Outlaw, The Roottrees Are Dead — that I can comfortably call it a subgenre, and a popular one at that. If “Souls-like” only needed about two games to catch on, it feels fair to get this one cemented now. Desktop detective games require you to interface with a simulated PC to solve mysteries, often involving some form of hacking or digital forensics that require you to dig beneath the surface sites and chatrooms to get to the real nitty-gritty information. It feels as though there weren’t many games in this vein before, but they’ve exploded in popularity in recent years. I would guess that it’s due to the relatively low bar for entry; since the developers are lifting most of their design elements for these games from extant programs in Windows, the way in which the player must interface with all of it …

I've always been a sucker for any kind of puzzle game based around an old-timey desktop computer or command-line hacking interface, and this one definitely stands out from the pack. There's admittedly a fair number of bugs (particularly one on day 2 where I somehow broke the chat program scripting in a way that prevented any new messages from coming through and forced me to restart the day), and a few of the puzzle mechanics could be better explained (it took me way longer than it really should have to figure out how to work the [spoiler]auth_timer[/spoiler] command on day 4), but the writing, atmosphere, and overall enjoyable and engaging gameplay all kept me hooked through the few minor issues that cropped up during my playthrough. Definitely going on my list of small super-obscure indie games I'm going to be constantly recommending to friends.

its fun i can use the terminal without fearing of completely bricking my system :D

I'm a sucker for a good in-game terminal. Also loved the Trails references <3