Trackless

Part walking simulator, part text adventure. Most of the game is spent wandering around, exploring - the other half of it is inputting simple verbs through a text interface to interact with objects, solve puzzles, and progress in the game. It's a pretty fantastic little game, short, sweet, and meditative. I don't know that it necessarily comes all together at the end, but it left me thinking for awhile, and that's always a sign of a game doing something right.

Well, I played it. Beat it in 2 hours. It was interesting. /// I'm going through and re-reading all 87 of my reviews, almost done and got to this one. Maybe I was a bit unfair to this dev. He or she (only two genders after all, and they're biological in nature regardless of what anyone says...in fact I'd delete the word gender entirely if it was up to me and substitute "sex") worked rather hard on this game to put the word descriptions on objects and try to make it a bit of a detective mystery. Maybe it just seemed easy to me because I've read so much that if you were to take everything I've read in my life, put it on paper and stack it, you'd probably reach the moon. Something bothers me about the take that it wasn't good enough and I think there's likely value to be had in this type of interface. Imagine if our AIs could convert between imagery and those large language models easily and what that would mean for blind people. In any case, not changing the recommendation sinc...

Trackless is another game I bought on a whim a while back after seeing some of the screenshots and such. Plus, I love a good walking simulator/adventure type game. So, was it worth it? [h1]Story[/h1] Honestly, the story in Trackless is pretty basic on it surface, and the story variants tend to veer away from the product page description in favor of pursuing a more conspiracy oriented story. That said, you are still a seeker as has been described on the product page, trying to complete a set of vague trials that will allow you to witness "The Object". The Object was kind of a let down, and the story, while fun and quirky, ended up with this seeming world cult and the object they worship being nothing more than a trip to a convoluted amusement park. 5/10 [h1]Gameplay[/h1] The gameplay in Trackless consists mostly of wandering around, interacting with objects and people, and solving minor puzzles. However, one very cool wrinkle is that ll your decisions are text based, meaning, you n...

If you're looking for a chill game without all the mindless violence, yet one that still requires you to think, look no further. The thing I like about Trackless is that it lets you progress by solving puzzles using verbs. It requires you to stop and think, yet its not difficult to come up with answers. Also, if you just want to explore and not worry about high score then you can actually reuse old verbs when applicable. Otherwise there are multiple answers that are expected to interact with the environment. Overall it was a treat to see an old premise get revived in this way. In the end the game was very enjoyable to play through. When it comes to sound, it also was excellent and the ost essentially added to the atmosphere. I`ll definately check out the artist. The voice overs were meh, but they did not detract from the gameplay. It was a good choice to leave them in so you can use multiple senses while exploring. The only cons that come to mind are slow movment speed for the first...

Walking simulator + text puzzle with unusual art style and weird futuristic setting. Puzzles are not very diffucult, you must guess one of several proper verbs. Some puzzles are optional.

The game plays like a 2D P&C, but in a 3D world, so you can stick to the given path, but also wander off to explore a side-quest or two, or maybe find one of the alternative endings. Exploration is rewarded, which, together with several bonuses, adds to the replayability factor — as does the main mechanic. In short, you talk to people, solve puzzles, explore, and write. For more precise interactions, verb input is required. Trackless improves the historically often tedious word search by allowing for a larger range of words for each interaction and rewarding the player for originality or precision, so a player, who wants to move on, can do so with the most plain of word, while others can take their time to get more bonus points. These points are by no means important for progress (with one exception), but allow you to spice things up a little. Some of the upgrades you can get will be more helpful than others. Not much is told about them, and you might even miss them being upgrades (...

A first-person adventure game with a text parser? Sign me up! Cleverness abounds from this low-budget indie game. Your vocabulary skills equal points, so e.g. if you "take" an object you get less points than if you, say, "acquire" or "retrieve" it. But all that is just flavor and don't influence the game itself, which is a smart move. The wonkiness of the graphics (2D flat sprites in a 3D world) would seem like a downfall of any other game, but here it adds to the otherworldly mysteriousness of it all. Combine that with an excellent musical score by Makeup And Vanity Set and you've got a dream-like atmosphere like no other. Only downside (for me) is that when I streamed this game, I kept getting copyright strikes from Makeup And Vanity Set's publishers. Licensing music to a game and then cracking down on YouTubers who try to play said game is NOT cool.

Really thoughtfully crafted!!

That's how it feels to wake up from an extended nap cause you forgot to set the alarm.

One of my favourite games, built around a divisive single word parser that either lights your brain on fire („I‘m a genius!“) or you see it as trivial verb guessing. Every found solution made me (not a native English speaker) feel like the cleverest person of all time (which I am definitely not). So thanks for that. I adore the combination of walkable 3D environments, word puzzles and atmospheric music. Also best intro monorail ride since [i]Half-Life[/i].