PARANOIA

Some familiarity with Observation Duty before going into this game is helpful. The translation of a largely visual puzzle mechanic into a text-based experience is a challenging endeavor but I think Paranoia is off to a good start!

I had a good time exploring each iteration of the room (tasting everything was my favorite part). The game did a good job of testing my attention to detail, gaslighting me and challenging me to look for what's actually there rather than what I expect to find--all hallmarks of the genre. With knowing how many "levels" there were and the clear progression counter tension ramped pretty high in the later attempts. While being a much different play experience than OD, Paranoia captured the feeling of the inspiration source well.

It took me a couple of runs to get through to the end and the "anomalies" I found were on the more obvious side but I think this could be adapted into a more complex play experience well. I liked it!

So, you may have played this before, possibly in the newspaper even. There's two pictures side by side. At first glance, it's just two copies of the same picture. But no, there's something different between them. Maybe a few very subtle differences, even. And you have to spot all of the differences and then report what they were to solve the puzzle.

That is what Paranoia is, but it's done as a text adventure. You are in a room. There are various objects in the room. You have to decide what if anything about the room is different between the last time you pushed a button. You must use every sense here to detect any slightest change.

Paranoia responds to almost every single thing you try to interact with correctly. Not quite everything but most everything is either correctly implemented as scenery. I suppose it achieved this by keeping it all in a single "room" (from the player's perspective, anyway, I guess that this might be implemented as a bunch of very, very similar "rooms" in the game engine with small differences).

That's it in a nutshell. If you love difficult puzzles, you will probably love this. Accept the challenge! If not, this probably isn't your thing. Paranoia is well implemented.

This game is pretty different from most other parser games.

In it, you are part of a yes-no experiment. You are placed in a room with several background items like walls, a table, a chair, etc.

You are told that the lights will go out and assistants will change the room (or not). When the lights go back on, you have to compare the room to the original room for any differences.

The game really keeps you on your toes. UNDO is forbidden, but I did use SAVE and RESTORE after a while, but tried my best on each level. It was wild to check everything in the room with every sense (I copy and pasted Touch it. Taste it. Smell it. listen to it. and used it a lot).

Sometimes the differences are obviously apparent, and sometimes not. I was always paranoid something very tiny would change (like the taste of a button). Twice I was fooled by something small; there is at least one thing that has two similar responses that are slightly different but don't count as 'different' to the game.

The ending was anticlimactic. I wonder if I missed something? But the game did make me genuinely agitated; it is named well.

Very very fun. With a wrong guess you are put back to zero, so I enjoyed how the tension builds more as you correctly identify anomalies or non anomalies and progress through the game.

Really would love a more in depth version of this, it's a great concept and I enjoyed interacting with the room and the objects.

PARANOIA is a short spot-the-difference parser, where you are tested on your attention and memory skills. Set in a testing chambers, you are tasked to spot differences between the first version of the room and any other potential changes between rounds. You will need 13 correct answers in a row to finish the game. But if you make a mistake, you’re right back at 0.

The game is pretty easy, with the differences quite obvious (or at least the one I got): something appears or disappears, something looks different, something sounds different. While you can use all your senses, I got by with only examining the room (and even, it didn’t feel necessary, I just went and double-checked just in case). If it hadn’t been made in just a week, I would have wished there were a bit more of the less-obvious differences.
EDIT: APPARENTLY I MIGHT BE INCREDIBLE LUCKY WITH ME RUN! THANK YOU RNG GOD!

BUT because of the error rule (sending you back to 0 if your make an error), the further you get into the test, the more anxious you become: you don’t want to make a mistake and have to start it all over again. It is a bit insidious how such a simple premise just creeps up on you and hold you by the throat like this. I felt so proud getting to the end in one go!

If the game is ever released as an extended version, I will play it as soon as it comes out.