Theseus: Journey to Athens

This is the kind of game that teaches you the valuable lesson that old people on the road are much more dangerous than entire legions of assorted wild beasts, bandits and rebel soldiers. It can be finished in like 90 minutes though and is rather rough around the edges (go figure, it was made by like one guy working with a 486 in a garage), so it's better to pick it up on a sale if you're curious.

Nice small game that draws inspiration from Ancient Greek mythology and literature. You play as the hero Theseus, who after just having reached manhood sets on a road to Athens to reunite with his alleged father, and face trials that surface along the way. Gameplay is a combination of text adventure and RPG, where you are given options how to solve certain situations (heavily influenced by your character’s stats); RPG part is rather symbolic, there is not much in the ways how to improve your party or equipment, and only very few abilities so combat is pretty much reduced to a turn-based game of attrition. On the technical side the game is a solid craft, with nicely renditioned screens in top-down view, and quite good and thematic music. Controls feel a bit crude and the game is relatively short, but with multiple story branchings there is good amount of replayability. Overall the game feels like an edutainment piece and is available at a good price, so if you like myths and stories from ancient Greece, definitely give it a go.

This game is a nice little romp along the journey of the greek hero Theseus to the city of Athens. Although seemingly a labor of love, it’s a bit rough around the edges. [b]The Good:[/b] [list] [*]Graphics are surprisingly charming and above average for a game of this scale. None of the “closed” buildings can be entered, sadly. [*]Music also seems to be on point, all of the tracks adding to the general feel of the game. [*]Choices & consequences are the game’s meat, shaping the plot by the options you pick in story events, and determining the routes you take towards the ending (I believe there’s three different ones aside from the game overs). [*]Based on a criminally underused setting for RPGs, it’s historically accurate, even in its portraits. [/list] [b]The Bad:[/b] [list] [*]There’s only 2 savegames to use, which normally wouldn’t be such a fuss if the game progress was straightforward. However, as most options branch or exclude other options in the future, it makes it cumbersome and makes me doubt if such an implementation was due to technical limitations or to artificially “encourage” multiple replays. This is mostly a pet peeve during the initial moments, because since th…

A very short, very simple choose your own adventure style RPG for those who are interested in those kind of games and/or Greek mythology and history. The baseline RPG elements and combat are dead simple but where the game shines is in the freedom it gives the player to make choices that effect how the game will play out. That being said, all of the results are rather brief like the game itself. At least in the path I chose I enjoyed the road-trip style vignettes, very comfy. I just wish it wasn't so rushed. Overall it's definitely worth the cost of entry.

good

A cheap short game with a lot of heart and a surprising amount of choices, it's clearly an amateur production but I had a lot of fun with it. It seems there is a decent amount of replayability too, as I pledged myself to my father Poseidon and took over Athens, deposing Athena as patroness of the city. This path skips the last road to Athens you can take, which meant I missed a bunch of sidequests there. I appreciate the courage to allow content to be skipped like that, and the shortness of the game means I can easliy replay it. I like the music as it fits the setting, but it sometimes doesn't repeat, which meant I fought in battles that would start with some music, but quickly became silent. I assume this was an error but it kinda sucks as you lose everything music would add to the mostly sound effectless game. Some of the early writing is stilted and workmanlike, but it improves as you play. There are story sections like in Pillars of Eternity where the writing is longer and more descriptive and you look at some nice art and make choices. I liked those a lot. The combat is very simple and generally functional once you figure it out, but it is definitely the weakest aspect of …