The Luminous Underground

So first lets get this thumbs up or down out of the way. Ill give this one a thumbs up, all in all its a very solid read with alot of interesting things going on and just an absolutely amazing amount of detail and action to loose one self in. That said, its not without its shortfalls, and for me they are important short falls (though for others perhaps it wont matter much at all.) The hardest / most annoying thing about this story is the way it constantly makes the MC second fiddle to everyone else around them. Your constantly dealing with and worrying about everyone elses problems (or choosing not to over and over again, that is an option),... not because they are really important to you in any way, but because they are part of your team. Your team captain, but honestly your more like team cheerleader. Maybe if there was some personal pay off for all the work you invest in your team members it would be worth it, but all you get out of it in the end is team cohesion and team memb...

I bought this cause it sounded like a fun ghostbusters-inspired text adventure. It's so dull, mind numbingly dull to the point where I was just skipping pages at a time to get to anything even remotely interesting.

The first few chapters were interesting but boy did it get boring quickly afterwards. Out of around 30 text-based games I've played, this is the only one where I've started skipping filler texts and there were so many of them.

Perhaps the meatiest CoG game I've played. Not my favorite - there were some things that threw me off, like the occasional change of perspective, and the romance felt tacked on - but decent, and long. Most of the games by this company take me three hours or less to finish - this took me something like eight hours for one play through. It's good enough to satisfy, and long enough to be worth the price.

This is a choose your own adventure book with some RPG bits added in. I really enjoyed the story It's well written and flows nicely (which is impressive with how many options you get). There's a nice bit of humour in there and a definite nod & a wink to Ghostbusters. I'm looking forward to going through it again and seeing if I can make a total mess of the situations.

With a first-play time for me just over 11 hours, The Luminous Underground provides more "gameplay" in read time than many of its graphical peers, while effortlessly blending decisions you could and couldn't control into the narrative of each page. I'll explore how much variance there can be in the story on my second playthrough, but shallow it is not, and I found my time spent satisfying. Of particular note is how well done the human interaction is. I suspect many situations were no-win, but people's reactions to different tacks in conversation felt real. Hit someone with an empty platitude when they're hurting and they get upset. Push someone past their limits, and you'll have to think hard about what motivates them to keep them together. There is no magic button for success, except, perhaps, whichever skill you trained the most. I put all my time into Luminosity, and when all you have is an esoteric light-based magic hammer, everything starts to look like a nail. But that's the poin...

There are a whole lot of stats in this game. They don't do anything as far as I can tell, and it is unclear if and how anything you do affects anything else. It would be better to just read a book.

love it

Good enough