Shady Brook - A Dark Mystery Text Adventure

Shady Brook is a text adventure game where you take on the role of Jake Torrent, a fiction writer looking for a quite place to live and work with his elderly father. However, it becomes apparent that not everything is as it seems as Jake is soon caught in some kind of dark mystery. Pros: Very simple controls Puzzles to solve Puzzles range from easy to hard A mystery unfolds as you play Cons: Fairly linear The one and only ending was unsatisfactory Your choices don't really matter The story is fairly solid although I have to acknowledge, I did deduce what was about to happen. With that said, I wasn't too surprised when it came time for the big reveal. However, some of the details I did overlook, which led me to not trust someone when I should have trusted them. Nevertheless, your choices don't really matter. The story is going to unfold in a very narrow field. Since this is a text adventure game, there is no real graphics to talk about, all the same, there are some impressionist drawing to give the player an idea of what they are looking at which is nice. I did enjoy this game, but I have to say the ending was very disappointing. I sat in front of my computer, shaking …

Entertaining at first, but turned out that the game system mainly wants you to repeatedly walk around and just talk with everyone. Word to the devs. If you make an Adventure or a game, there has to be some interactivity and decision making. Not that the player just clicks through your story. Though this wasn't the worst case, this game needs more in order to be considered a game and in order to be sold on steam instead of being free. It is close enough, but not there. Story and music were otherwise nice, but the story was *lazy* - just a corridor

The plot of this is a little simple, although I suppose I liked the resolution. What is interesting about it, is that it attempts to create a classic text adventure without requiring the player to do any typing. It has kind of mixed results. Perhaps one of the tantalizing things about text adventures is the player input could be ANYTHING. This is unlike more modern adventure games where you are limited to INTERACT, USE ITEM, COMBINE ITEMS, and the like. The text parser, on the other hand, can involve creativity. One of my favorite moments in such game was in the final puzzle of Yahtzee Croshaw's Chzo mythos episode that had a text parser. You had to type something you really didn't expect and when it crosses your mind--well, I got a real kick out of it. Here, you end up with more of a Lucas Arts-style experience, where you never really feel like you can get stuck, because even if you don't understand why you should do something, you could always just combine objects until something lets you move forward. (The pleasant exception to this is the couple of times where you have to solve a maze using riddles) However--it does kind of work here. It's a bit nicer to read dialogu…

[h1]Shady Brook — 5.8h played | 33/33 achievements | Text Adventure / VN Mystery[/h1] [quote][b]TL;DR[/b] — A retro text-adventure VN with a “small town secrets” vibe (Twin Peaks-lite), branching paths and multiple endings. The mood works, but visuals are rough and the story stays pretty classic. Worth a big sale if you like old-school interactive fiction; otherwise, not a must.[/quote] Shady Brook is basically a throwback to those 90s text adventures where you feel like you’re reading a weird little paperback… except you can poke it with choices until it confesses. You play an author who arrives in a small town with his father, and very quickly the place starts giving you that “everyone is smiling… but it’s not for you” energy. You hear about past suicides, the town’s history feels off, and the deeper you dig, the more the friendly façade slips. The best part: atmosphere. It leans into that uncanny “Twin Peaks / old Sierra-era mystery” mood — not because it’s revolutionary, but because it respects the codes. It’s not trying to be flashy; it’s trying to be unsettling in that slow-burn, small-town way. And yes, there are branches and multiple endings, so at least your choices are…

This is very weird as with Lifestream - clearly I played this years ago but I remember very little of it - except the plot. I wonder if the UI changed; which I really liked on this replay. Definitely creepy and worthwhile playing if you like more-text-like adventures. Glad I replayed it. [edit: It crashed once on me taking out the save game - which skipped to the end. So backup a copy of user.ini so you can easily access your save game and then periodically save the save_<number>.ini file. Location: <steam-folder>/common/ShadyBrook]

I'm not too far into this, but it is a good game. You play a pre-made character and try to solve the mystery of what is going on in your new "home" town.