Ratings and Reviews by End Master

If you’re familiar with the old scifi show Farscape or the even older Buck Rogers, Out There combines both of being a frozen astronaut being flung very far from known space several centuries later and you trying to find your way back home. It’s certainly a premise that sets itself up for plenty of adventure.

At it’s core, it’s a CYOA style graphic IF with a lot of resource management. The background visuals themselves are nice and have a comic book style look about them. You’ll have to visit planets constantly to get the elements you need for your ship to keep it running while along the way you’ll get events popping up where you have to make a choice which can have good or bad results. You’ll also encounter aliens which you can eventually learn to communicate with more clearly as you learn certain words with each passing encounter. You don’t need to ever have to worry about any sort of combat stat since there isn’t really any fighting in the game. There’s a couple of choices which might involve references to combat, but those are rare and just dependent on randomness. And you never fight with any of the aliens you might encounter on planets.

Your survival is highly luck dependent at times, which to some extent is fitting with the overall theme which has a nihilistic tone even if it is wrapped up in colorful exploration. You really are just one lone human in the deep reaches of space, your existence is pretty meaningless in the scheme of things.

And you’ll find out more about that if you even manage to survive that long. From that point, you’ll sort of have new branches opening up as far as endings go. It’s still a difficult journey even if you go for the easiest one, and most of the endings aren’t sunny ones. Even the added endings with the new content updates are still a bit bleak.

It’s a pretty tough game to win with any of the endings given the high luck factor involved, but if you don’t mind that sort of thing or a narrative that takes a more grim tone, the game is worth playing through multiple times.

Basing an IF game off of an already established book is always a bit challenging since you have to make it entertaining while still adhering to the source. Make it too similar to the source and you’ll get complaints about it feeling too confined. Make it too different than the source and you get complaints about it not being anything like the book.

80 Days is one of the few that managed to maintain that balance and be a fun game. Though the choice to go the completely steampunk direction is sort of a no brainer given the time period and the fact that the original was a Jules Verne work in the first place. Most of the existing views here cover a lot of the positives of the game, I’ll probably go over those a bit briefly before going into the few negatives.

First, the writing and branching are well done. While there’s some places where it has a “fake choice” not really mattering too much which choice you pick, most of the time there is at least a bit of a consequence for it even if it’s a minor change in your character’s hidden stats or something similar. Besides all that, there are enough events and locations to explore that it’s hardly noticeable.

The resource management portion of the game is implemented very well too. Not just determining what might be directly useful on your trip at any given time, but also a bit of a trader mini-game since some items aren’t really useful directly but you can sell them for a large profit at certain locations which is somewhat important as you’ll definitely need a good supply of money on this journey

Plenty of variety of events, ways to travel and secrets to uncover so replay value is high. It’s worth derailing from the original goal just to uncover new things.

If I had any complaints about the game it would be the lack of danger or rather the lack of genuine danger since the game does a good enough job of making you feel like you’re in danger a lot of times. But it’s almost impossible to actually DIE in this game. Fogg has a heart meter which can go up or down, but other than one place, it doesn’t really effect much. It’s sort of a “fake stat” which is a bit disappointing really. There are many instances where I think the adventure of the game could have been better with some risk involved.

It’s not a deal breaker, indeed several video games like the old SCUMM point and click adventure games eliminated death and were still very enjoyable, but I’ll always appreciate a game that has genuine risk involved a little more. In fact, this one could have done the deaths very well given the one main example of it occurring and the writing in general.

Other than that, the game is excellent (especially with the added content) in just about every other way.

At CYS, we’ve long been aware of this little experiment and even more amused that the creator used popular CYS stories at the time as the foundation to create the monster. We even spoke directly with the creator who popped up on our forums and discord, everything was generally civil.

I know some folks were going on about some stuff about monetary compensation for using our works without at least even asking first. Not sure how likely that is to happen, however I’ve never really written “for the money.” If I did, I’d surely grow to hate writing altogether. I can’t enjoy a hobby if it becomes work. I primarily write for my own enjoyment and if others like it, that’s fine. If they don’t well that’s fine too.

However over the years as I’ve done this hobby of mine I’ll be the first to admit, I don’t mind my influence being spread to far reaching corners of the internet. Surprising more than one would think considering I virtually use no social media at all and my name or stories still pop up in some of the oddest places on the web.

So what does this exercise in pontificating about my own ego have to do with AI Dungeon? Quite a lot since most of the stories used to help build the foundation were mine. As a result various names of characters, places, monsters and other things pop up enough in AI Dungeon stories that people on its Reddit and Discord have lists of them, asking who they are, what they are and ultimately linking to the original sources of said things, which is as you guessed it, to most of my stories.

I’ve played through AI Dungeon myself on more than one occasion and I feel like I’m playing fan fiction of my own stories at times. I’ve spoken to some of the players of AI Dungeon on their discord given them a bit of background on the origins various names they keep wondering about which was probably more fun than actually playing the game itself since the AI is very “forgetful” and inconsistent. I know programming something like this probably difficult and I can appreciate the ambition, but it just really doesn’t work excessively well as a game. Boredom inevitably ensues as the AI generations get repetitive.

I know they’ve updated and reworked it a bit to try to curb some of the “CYS references” but apparently they keep popping up since people still keep mentioning them (or complaining about them). Well maybe you should have thought twice about building your mansion on top of an underground necropolis. You’re stuck with the undead roaming about now pal.

Other changes I know they’ve made is “cleaning it up” so certain words can’t be used or they get altered. Pretty sure that’s drawn complaints too since I’m fairly certain at least more than half of the users are just creating weird sex fetishes on the stuff. Take some of that away and you’re eliminating most of the fanbase right there. I think they recently added a “payment” plan too so you can only take so many actions before you have to wait to play some more unless you pay money. I definitely know that is causing some ire from the fans (or soon to be ex-fans) of the game.

Still, this game is basically like a monument to CYS. So even if I feel like it falls short of what it tries to actually accomplish, I can’t help but like it on some level since its helped in spreading our glorious influence. (And mine in particular)

To sum up, as a game it has several flaws and isn’t that great. As an indirect advertising tool for CYS on a mass scale, it’s actually pretty good considering we got someone else to do for us without even asking.

So now we’ve come to the last of the four games and given that the questionnaire “story” is the best of the bunch really says it all on how bad the other were.

Now don’t get me wrong, this is probably the worst story and worst game of the four since it fails to do either that the other three at least attempted. This one is just a questionnaire which leads me to wonder why the hell it’s on here in the first place.

However, there is a certain “creepy” vibe to this one that I thought MAYBE the author was leading up to midway through it, but that was misplaced hope I suppose.

A few of the questions towards the end start to ask if you’d rather murder people or if you fear being murdered and similar questions like that. I feel like this would have been a good jumping off point for the questionnaire to start going into horror territory. I have seen stories done in “quiz” format before and done successfully. It’s difficult to do, but it’s possible.

Not saying it would have even been a five star story or even three, but it might have at least gotten a two.

As I said though, if the author was attempting to do this then they failed in such an endeavor. I suppose the whole sudden “Thank you for your submission” at the very end could be considered a little creepy as it may make the reader briefly wonder if the data is actually being collected and what exactly for.

But more than likely, the reader is going to just wonder why the hell they wasted their time and not dwell on whatever this was supposed to be as soon as they finish.

Moving on to the third game, this one seems more like a rant about the medical system rather than a game.

Someone also mentioned that it seemed autobiographical which I’d agree with too given how it comes across. This is also probably why out of the four games recently uploaded from this author, this one was the most annoying despite it having the most plotted out storyline. The last thing I want to do is play as the author insert complaining about whatever isn’t going right in their lives. Just not a fan of IFs being used a personal soapbox.

Even ignoring that potentially being the case, there is no real game here even from a CYOA perspective. It’s mostly linear with a few fake choices here and there that just change the text rather than leading to any different endings. This would have worked better as an angry blog entry than a game considering the lack of branching.

Definitely the worst of the four.

So moving on to the second game, this one is about playing as a detective trying to catch murderer. The beginning claims that it’s neither a tragedy or comedy which may depend on how amusing or tragic you find wasting your time.

Though perhaps it’s comedy for the author and tragedy for the reader in that case, but even in an “author trolls the reader” sort of way it doesn’t really do a good job since it’s short enough that it wouldn’t really annoy a reader that much.

There isn’t much here in general, there’s like two choices in a mostly linear game and only one of which changes the ending. The odder thing is the killer changes gender mid way through the story. In the beginning they are referred to as she, then later as he. Not sure if that was intentional or just the author getting so bored with the story that they couldn’t be bothered with consistency.

If it hadn’t been for the sudden sex changed murderer, the story would have had even less for me to write about in the review.

So four short twine games suddenly showed up on the IFDB and everyone seemed to be saying how bad they were so I decided to see for myself starting with this one.

It’s not a very promising start.

The “game” basically boils down to judging how successful your life is based on how much sex you’ve had. Have sex in more rooms than you cried in and congrats you’ve won! Do the the opposite and you’ve lost. Not sure why constantly picking neither is considered the “worst” life of all since I’m fairly certain that would still be way better than crying all the time, but I guess the author had his own world view of things.

In any case there isn’t much sense to this one and the title makes even less sense. Could have been called Chad and incel and it would have made just as much sense (And been a little more amusing)

If there was supposed to be any deeper meaning behind it then the author failed in conveying it and I’m not exactly motivated in analyzing it further to discover such a hidden meaning.