Release Date: 22/02/2017
Played On: Win
Available On: Android / iOS / Linux / Mac / Win
Time Played: 1h 4m
Progress: Completed
Developer: Abigail Corfman
Publisher: Open Sorcery Games
One of the coolest aspects of modern gaming, has to be how accessible it is for everyone involved. As gamers we have the choice of so many games coming from so many different sources. Whatever your budget, there's something out there of quality to play, even if you don't want to spend anything at all.
The flip side to this low barrier to entry, is how easy it can be to make a game these days. There are so many free engines and software tools out there to help you create something worthwhile, regardless of your previous experience or training. Even I managed to do a short tutorial once in a basic free game engine, and made something functional and playable.
However, what really excites me is when these incredible tools are used to make something truly creative and special. We've all seen the asset-flips and buggy messes that flood storefronts and give indie games a bad name. Whenever someone tells me that indie games are just terrible looking games that never work and are a pain to play, I can't say I blame them. The bad often seem to outweigh the good, but thankfully the good are numerous and worth finding.
There are some games where you can immediately tell that their creator had something specific in mind. Often all you need is a plan and a passion to create something worthwhile. I think this has a lot to do with just how common it is to see indie games presenting their own take on classic genres and styles. I mean, if I see another 2D platformer done with a "retro 8-bit graphics style", I think I might be a little sick.
What's cool though, is that whenever a modern developer makes an earnest effort to update a classic genre, there's so much possibility for success. It's why I really enjoyed Super Night Riders, as it took a familiar game genre, but utilised modern smooth graphics and sound to enhance the original. In fact, some of my favourite games are simply echoing an old genre with modern technology.
At the same time, revisiting a classic genre can actually turn you on to something you might have never given the chance. Open Sorcery managed to do this for me, as I never really thought that text-only adventure games would be something I'd be playing in the 21st century. Thankfully, I was wrong to dismiss them, as this game really shows how excellent the genre can be.
Plus, it's not like I've never played a text-only adventure game before, as I encountered a good number of them when I was a kid. Even early adventure games like Space Quest and Leisure Suit Larry, functioned in the same way as a text adventure, just with a graphical interface. You still had to type everything and read text, they just happened to have pictures to go along with all the reading.
Even with this past experience, I wasn't really keen on checking out any modern text adventures, because they seemed to be a step in the wrong direction. I already read a lot, and I liked the idea of combining stories with gaming, but that's all I'm looking for in any game anyway. I suppose my point is that when I fired up Open Sorcery, I wasn't expecting anything spectacular, but I was quickly hooked on the game's premise and keen to see it through.
The basic deal is that we get to play as a fire spirit who has been bound by computer code as a firewall. It is our job to defend a network against intruders like malware and poltergeists. The world is quickly revealed to be one where magic and technology are often intertwined. Through text logs and dialogue cues, we're given enough details to figure out that this is a cyberpunk future where artificial intelligence is basically a combination of spirits and tech.
The game is presented as a simple text console, where we're given commands and inputs that can be sued to explore and discover things about our network. There are only about four places to go at any given time, but it's our job to identify malicious spirits that may have entered the network.
This is done by focusing on a room and learning about its environment. Each spirit will leave a measurable trail from their presence, so we're tasked with investigating and figuring out how to get rid of each intruder. For example, if a room on the network shows signs of abnormally cold temperatures, perhaps something like an ice spirit has infected the area. Once uncovering any intruders, we then have to choose how to deal with them, which has further repercussions to the overall story.
While all of this is going on, there are brief instances of dialogue between ourselves and the people that inhabit the physical world. For me this was where the real meat of the story was exposed, as we follow these people's lives and witness how time and exposure manage to influence our own intelligence and ultimate sentience.
What I really love about games that revisit these classic genres, is when the game makes sense within the technical limitations of the format. Sure, in the past there was no other option than make a game that was simply nothing more than an interactive choose-your-own-adventure novel. It made sense that there would be a number of different genres within the format, but these days there's no reason for it. If you're going to make a text-only adventure in 2017, there really needs to be a reason for it.
Thankfully, this is precisely why I ended up loving my time with Open Sorcery, as everything about the game feels purposeful and useful. Using a console-like text interface while playing as a firewall AI makes a lot of sense. It doesn't take many leaps of reason to think that a computer AI created by humans would operate on such an interface, especially when communicating with the outside world. In fact, anything fancier would seem inefficient and like a waste of resources.
It reminds me of the first time I played the hacking game Uplink, which also features a largely console-based interface throughout the game. When I was hacking IPs and servers in Uplink, it made sense that I was logged into a remote console and working with the interface I was presented with. The same can be said for Open Sorcery, which is why I think it's an excellent reason to return to what would otherwise be an obsolete genre.
Besides, once you get used to the text interface and how to navigate the world and commands, it's easy to slip into the role of the player-character. As an interactive piece of fiction, the genre and execution has been crafted wonderfully, and it soon becomes a game not only about exploring network systems, but exploring the self.
I often think that the best science fiction is the stuff that makes us examine and evaluate our own humanity. Sure it's nothing new, but it's important to remember, as we've all seen terrible sci-fi that's obsessed with big robots, but not a lot else. With this in mind, Open Sorcery is a fine addition to the breadth of science fiction, as it comes with just enough philosophy to make things interesting.
As technology continues to improve and progress over time, I hope that classic genres manage to find their purpose beyond simply being the only one available. Seeing something like text-adventures being used for more than simple choose-your-own-adventure fiction is truly inspiring and leaves me wondering what other formats can be utilised for niche stories and settings. The real genius of a game like this isn't that it uses technology to tell a story, but that it uses technology that makes sense within the story itself.
It might be short, but it's well worth the time.