Buried: An Interactive Story

[h1]TL:DR[/h1] [i]Lumberjacks know how to fell aliens pretty damn well.[/i] [h1]The Good Stuff[/h1] ++Telltale-esque story where choices matter ++Lots of choices throughout, some make a difference whereas some provide a different line in the dialogue +Text moves at your speed +See your choices after each chapter +Seeing as choices matter, multiple playthroughs are possible +Good sci-fi action and writing +Background paints a picture as to what the setting looks like +Can easily do one plathrough in one sitting [h1]The Ok Stuff[/h1] =Characters are for the most part good. Main guy is cool but some minor characters are a bit annoying =There are decisions where one option is clearly better than the other, only a couple though and they're mostly just dialogue based ones [h1]The Bad Stuff[/h1] -Nothing. [h1]The Truthful Hard Facts[/h1] [table] [tr][td]Acquirement Method[/td][th]Steam store[/th][/tr] [tr][td]Price Paid[/td][th]$2.99[/th][/tr] [tr][td]Length[/td][th]2-4 hours[/th][/tr] ...

After watching a playthrough of this game by Markiplier, I had to get it for myself and try out the different decisions. A wonderful game and well worth the price!

“Buried: An Interactive Story”, as an interactive story has a lot going for it. But as a story it still has a way to go, and some of the issues are so integral as to likely prohibit repair. Still, for the most part not a bad way to spend three hours. (Due to offline play, I can only estimate game time at over three hours. There is a LOT of text. I found this to be both a plus and a minus, as you will see.) The premise of “Buried: An Interactive Story” (BAIS) is that you are the boss of a logging crew who very suddenly finds that he and his crew are the victims of a mysterious and unknown disaster deep in the forest. You find your way into an underground government facility, where things really start to go bad. The story/game is broken into 5 chapters, each chapter is further broken into small segments, allowing for pauses. The story of BAIS is pretty basic Lovecraft-like, and not particularly original. Saying that, I would also say that the mood generated is adequately creepy...

So, I was fascinated by this imperfect story and found myself really wanting to keep moving forward to see what happened. Sure, it's not a Hugo Award winner, but I'm not so cynical that I didn't enjoy it. It was a lot of fun. However: The vast majority of choices don't seem to really have any serious consequences. I've gone back and replayed it twice, and, with a couple of exceptions, you end up in the same place no matter what you have chosen. However, there are a couple of life-and-death decisions and a decision or two that make other characters irritable for awhile. Overall, I would have liked the game a bit more if there had been more serious consequences to the decisions made and more endings than just the 2 to 4 (depending on how you look at it). Most decisions don't really do anything and some of the decisions that the game claims are important are only acknowledged with a sentence or two later. It's almost as though the writer had intended a larger work, but then condensed ev...

Simply put, this is a solid and reasonably intriguing horror-mystery story told in the form of an interactive novel. The visuals are minimal but effective, the sound is spooky and immersive, and the writing is simplistic and a tad underwhelming but gets the job done. No great shakes, and fairly short (a few hours, tops), but worth the three bucks if you're up for a moody and sometimes action-packed tale with a wee bit of interactivity. It won't be an earth-shattering experience for anyone who's read the odd horror/sci-fi short story - or played a certain famous video game franchise, which I won't mention the name of for spoiler reasons! - but it's an entertaining enough diversion for those of us with an unquenchable taste for the eerie and enigmatic. Oh, and for those greatly concerned with such things: it would also appear to have some small degree of replayability due to the variety of choices on offer, even if one suspects that most if not all of the story's main mysteries are ...

Great atmosphere, dark and oppressive thanks to good writting and good background sound, highly recommended for those who enjoy text based adventures (and there are quite a few choices to make, many minor, several major).

This contains everything i could ever ask for in a Choose your own adventure game. Simply: I love it. The story is original and it never lacks for excitement. I would recommend this game.

While I did enjoy the story, I was very unsatisfied with this game being presented as a 'Choose your own adventure' story while it is nothing of the sort. Literally none of the choices have any impact on the story (believe me, I went back and re-did choices to see the differences) and that bothered me a lot. (Particularly after playing something like Choice of Robots where it's a real choose your own adventure and your choices actually do radically shape the story.)

Straight off, let's do away with the "Choose Your Own Adventure" tag. It's [i]not[/i] a CYOA, as the plot doesn't appear to truly diverge except at the very end; it's just aesthetic choices which are quickly railroaded back onto the same author-set track. That's okay, though it harshly limits replayability. With this in mind, if Markiplier brought you here, [b]stop watching his playthrough until you've finished the game yourself.[/b] The speed of the text and button reveals feel appropriate to the atmosphere, but it's painfully slow when you're just trying to power through a replay. Although mashing the space key can speed this up a bit, I think this game would benefit from a variable speed/instant reveal option. An appropriate atmospheric soundtrack is a pivotal 'make or break' point in multimedia literature, and Buried makes it. The Wasteland/Fallout feel of it fits well. Markiplier claims at a few points in his playthrough that the 'calm' soundtrack doesn't fit the immediate...

I get many vibes from Buried such as X-Files, Lovecraft, The Thing, The Mist as well as some good old fashioned original creepiness. The game does a great job of describing just what kind of bleak dread is going on around you. You play as a logger who wakes up after being knocked unconscious from some kind of blast to find his site in ruins, some of his crew dead and many missing. From there things only get more strange and worse for him. You get to make many choices throughout the game and one thing that was always in my mind was the feeling that even if you make the choice that seems like the “good” or “honorable” choice that you will just cause yourself some kind of harm down the road. That if you chose the option that may help others that you will suffer for it later. I love it when a game can make me feel that way because let’s face it: life seldom gives you options where everyone comes out a winner so this game can get pretty real. The soundtrack was well done and serv...