The Intruder

Presumably a time will come when the author base of Quest format adventures ripens, but at this time of writing, it remains that the majority of these games (almost all of which are published online) are of the quality of learning exercises. Such is the case with The Intruder. This teeny CYOA of binary choices see the player waking one morning to the sounds of someone or something else in the house. Doing the wrong thing at any point leads you to a scary picture and sound which act as the Game Over message. In these circumstances, maybe it is scarier to convey Game Over without the use of any text, and without including any means of undoing or even restarting the game from within the main window. The trouble is that The Intruder has almost no content; the prose is ultra spare, the results of the handful of choices available are either predictable or boring – though in a broad sense you can probably intuit which choice is the wiser one to make of the two presented to you each time – and the whole thing is far too short.

In spite of all this, the "urban myth explained" win screen is curiously effective, though also likely to provoke head-scratching or laughter, since it says that (Spoiler - click to show)a man, an escaped lunatic, was the person who menaced you, but the scary graphic seems to be of a female and/or non-human monster.

The Intruder, is a pick your own adventure game, like we aren't tired of these kinds of games. I'd rather enjoy a book than play a game in this format. Though I shouldn't be to rough on it as it is quite short and will only prove itself as a game in which children can play and not feel afraid by the content ie Dark Seed. If you like your games short and very limited in a style that children from the early 80's would say is a lame style of entertainment then check this game out.