The Abyss

This game reminds me a lot of creepypasta: intense writing with something of a neglect of proper writing techniques (such as grammar and some other things that careful testing could fix). However, it has an intensity of emotion that makes it more enjoyable than a polished, bloodless game.

You play someone who has a dark secret inside of them, which affects them throughout their life. Eventually, you must journey to your own psyche to confront this secret.

It's fairly long, with choices that felt mostly meaningful. It features combat. It has some profanity and violent sequences.

I'm not a huge fan of CYOA, so take my negative feelings with a grain of salt. My 2 stars doesn't reflect negatively on the technical implementation, and I think most of the writing was adequate, but the actual game elements were lacking.

I felt like there was a lot of text to wade through--it was mostly well-written, but just a lot, and I didn't feel like I had a good idea of what was going to influence what. Many times my actions produced the opposite outcome, and I didn't really see why, or how I could choose differently in the next situation.

My main problem with (many) CYOA games is I feel like the choice is meaningless, because I don't get enough data or feedback to make my choices intelligently. I felt that way with this game as well.

It has a good atmosphere, but the insistence on making the person playing the game the actual character (through the use of non-specific nouns and identifiers) hurt the immersion for me. The opening has several (potentially) strong scenes with "your parent"--not dad, father, mother, mom, etc, but "your parent", which killed any emotional impact it may have had for me.

I think it is better to be brave and risk not representing everyone by choosing a parent and making it a little more specific, when going for narrative immersion in emotional topics. I wasn't particularly interested in pursuing romance with the non-specific figure I met at a cafe.

I think if you like heavy text games and want to explore themes of alienation and loneliness this may be a good game for you, as it does do that. While I finished it (getting a bad ending), I wasn't interested in trying again to get another ending. The 2 stars reflects my subjective feeling about the style of the game--it is very well done for what it is.