The Aching

I personally find this game very fascinating, it's an adventure game, but it seems specifically inspired by the first wave of graphic adventures - after the genre made a leap from the text to the graphics around 1984, but also before it made a full transition to the modern interface, so it feels specifically like a mid-80s adventure. This game does not have a point&click interface, it controls with arrows and text commands, anytime you want to look or interact, you have to type, using correct spelling and with a very small margin of error for the terminology. I find that it's very difficult for developers to make a convincing imitation of an old game, you can copy the coloring and the gameplay to a point, but you just not working with the same technological limitations, so more often than not, they don't actually feel 100% retro, but this game somehow does, the only thing that gave it away was the name, I just never heard of it so I assumed it was new. There are a lot of re-releases ...

I had fun after I read the manual. READ THE MANUAL. There are two endings that I know of, and no I do not know how to reach the full 130 points. Game is about 2 hours long if you don't get stuck. Once you know what you're doing each additional playthrough takes very little time. I do not know whether your deaths affect your score, but at least one of the deaths is avoidable. Things I liked: The art and atmosphere are great and really nail down the 80s aesthetic. Character art is detailed and nice to look at. Some of the flavor text like the books are nice. The gameplay being a mix of text adventure and arrow keys was pretty interesting. Things I did not like: The story barely exists. There are some brief allusions made to a wider world but nothing major. The soundtrack is very limited, with only some screens having sounds. I'm not sure if this is a bug or not because they seemed inconsistent. The text parser is poorly implemented. I'm going to explain the text parser issues in grea...

What a wonderful blast back to the past of classic DOS parser adventure games! Brings memories of Sierra On-lines games or Zork, Kings Quest, and The Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy back in '84.. The retro styling, sound design, and play style are wonderful and smooth and are exactly how you would have experienced it on a Tandy computer. Let the nostalgia begin!

Style: Interactive Fiction Theme: Gruesome verbiage/grimdark Buttoning: keypad and typing commands So, in an effort of transparency, I bought this because I know a creator of this game. (Friend code is not to ask for free art.) I bought this game and get to feed my friend's cheezit addiction. Win-win. Am an old, so I grew up with Commodore 64 and would spend annoying amounts of time trying to figure through games like Ocean's The Never Ending Story and Infocom's Suspect and truthfully our runs never successful. But The Aching brought back some of those memories of me and my brother trying new things until we youthful impatience got the better of us and we moved on to Progressive Peripherals & Software's Wizard. For those who were not there, great era of gaming. Equipped with adult patience, I realized my brain spiders are now the problem. I will see a bookshelf, walk my sperm-hat avatar up to it and try, "access." Nope. "scan" wrong again. "Browse. Peruse? Cruise? Thum...

Dos Game Club represent!

This is a solid effort at recreating the feel of the old Sierra-era adventures! Including the insufferable difficulty I still haven't worked past! To be fair, I'm at a solid 85 of 130 at the moment but horrendously stuck at the logic I'm supposed to follow to solve the next bit... in short, 100% accurate for Sierra-era adventures! (except that you don't actually die, game over, hope you saved else you lost all your progress to date... that's a major improvement from those games) The one significant gripe I have is the number of rooms to usefully interactive areas seems a bit high, and there aren't many words in the parser (but I understand that's hard). Definite recommend if you love the challenge, "maybe" recommend if you want some nostalgia, pass if you can't beat anything without like fifty guides on hand (though I'm sure someone will write one soon enough). Didn't want to wait to finish the game before writing the review as per usual, to show support for the developers! Edit: No...

I highly recommend this EGA, horror adventure gem! The chunky graphics are right up my alley and I was quite impressed with this bleak, strange world. On this journey, you will encounter several grotesque, yet hauntingly beautiful, creatures while searching each region of the island. Additionally, this world has a lot of really intriguing lore/world building details to discover, many are hidden until the player utilizes the parser to ask important "key words" to other characters. Two welcome improvements that The Aching has over other EGA adventure games from the 80s are --- 1. The main character can't die (and there is a clever, in universe reason why that is) during the adventure. --- 2. Every inventory item can be examined "up close" and is draw in glorious pixels to reveal hidden details (some which are quite important) of that item. In conclusion, if you are fan of this specific type of EGA, Sierra style adventure game -- definitely pick up The Aching! The team did an excellent...

[h3]Gameplay Experience[/h3] Finished the game around [i]two hours[/i] on a [i]Steam Deck[/i] with a keyboard. [h3]Notes and Thoughts[/h3] Let me state I have not played any games of this kind, so I have no nostalgia for this style of game although I am interested in exploring and playing older styles. Since I have no prior experience, I will not be judging references but mainly the content as an adventure game. Sadly, I am not recommending this game primarily because it is lacking content given its price as a standalone product. It feels the game is incomplete where the intriguing setup is not really developed or expanded as if it is a hook in a series of games. In terms of puzzles or challenge, not much beyond the genre's inherent difficulty like which verbs and nouns to use and guessing which fantasy items works. It just did not feel satisfying as an experience after finishing the game. As an adventure game, I have some minor feedback and issues: [list] [*] [b]Unnecessary rep...

I like what game there is, the world is interesting and it's characters are very imaginative, but for me there just isn't enough of it. For the price being charged I would expect a complete beginning, middle and end with some questions being answered. It all feels like a demo or a teaser to a larger work. If that larger work ever gets made I would be very interested in playing it! Right now, the text parser is a bit overly specific. There aren't any additional descriptions or conservation topics other than the bare minimum needed to progress the game. This leads to a lot of "I don't understand" when you're inputting seemingly reasonable words. The wizard is in a laboratory, but I can't "ask wizard about laboratory" for example. Still giving a thumbs up though, because I liked it.

Playing this game was like stepping back into my childhood. When I played games like Space Quest and Loom. Games that you needed to think about what you can and can't do. There are a lot of prompts when you first start that are "I don't understand" because that is how those games were created back then. Limited options due to limited space and tech. It has been a wonderful journey so far and I can't wait to play more!