The Abyss

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.