Shady Brook - A Dark Mystery Text Adventure Reviews

Lifestream, Shady Brook and The Filmmaker are the first three episodes (in this order) of a planned long series, whose fourth episode is Stonewall Penitentiary and the upcoming fifth one is Summit of the Wolf. These episodes are (seemingly) very loosely connected, so each of them can be played on their own, but it is easy to see the connections and the slowly emerging overarching themes. The first three episodes have a certain kind of choose-your-adventure-style interface, but the author still manages to integrate meaningful puzzles, which are mostly inventory-based. The main draw of these games however are the stories. All the stories are very different and their mood ranges from dark to extremely dark. :) But for lovers of good stories they are very much recommended.

Real creepy GUI-driven text adventure, starts slow but decent value Positives: + Creepy story, far better than the puzzles + GUI-driven text adventure like the mid 90's (in game mapping and such) + About 8 hours of game play + Cost only a few bucks, less if on discount, so decent value for money + Some dialog choices seem to affect the storyline + Walkthrough available on devs website Negatives: - Takes over an hour to start getting into the plot (in the end this adds to the creepyness, but it still is slow) - You spend alot of time walking back and forth in the town, trying to find items or the next "trigger" for an event (for the middle part I ended up just going through the walktrough to get to the final act) - Some of the puzzles are frustrating to find the right combination to solve (see below) - No way to save your progress as a backup to go back and choose a different path (your saves are automatic as you progress) Neutrals: -/+ Like Lifestream, the GUI means that you can only chose from certain actions, unlike a true text adventure where you can type anything into the parser (this makes it less frustrating to play but you miss some of the fun) -/+ Decent artwork (each location has a still graphic and there are several cut-scene stills) -/+ A few timed choices (not sure if it affects the final outcome) -/+ Apparently a remake of a game from 2004 For an example of the puzzle frustration (very mild spoiler below), if you need to put batteries into a tape player, you should: [spoiler]1. Put the batteries into a flashlight 2. Equip the flashlight 3. Look at the tape player 4. Use the flashlight on the tape player [/spoiler] Really? Makes perfect sense... Most of the puzzles aren't this conflagarated, but there are a few.

Well this one kicked up a notch both in adult themes and creepyness. It literally don't pull any punches to the player/reader (you'll see ;) and from the three interactive fiction stories released from Unimatrix Productions (Lifestream, Shady Brook, Filmmaker) it got the most disturbing concept (the game really deserve the psychological horror label as even the ending will make you shiver). Much of the Gameplay is oriented on exploration and introduced on this title are time based events (it means some events will skip time and if you didn't take care to talk to everyone and explore around before proceding with the story you lose the chance to accumulate points: more than 1400 in this title. This make hard archivements and also to unlock the bonus scene. As the Game is in my opinion longer than 10 hours it make difficult also the replay value if not the "hardcore" player). Puzzles in my opinion remain logical but easy to resolve (the only ones that made me really cringe were the puzzles to find the correct Mountain paths) oh and the "Boss battle" at the end (my complain remain that with static images results difficult the choice of where "dodge" and this sucker at the end is a unreadable powerhouse. But aside technical difficulties I enjoyed the gimmick. This time (playing in order after Lifestream) there is only one Main Character: Jake Torrent. 26, writer and single with a elderly blind father (Loved the moments of interactions between this two characters and how you as Jake try to live and integrate yourself in a little country town. Many interactions with the locals are aviables and in no time you end up to know most of them and their routine. To put it simply: I loved the immersive story. Story creators made a good job in pulling you in the mystery and make you feel like "there is something wrong here" but can't pint point "what exactly?". In the End a good "Horror" story even if at first glance you will never guess it (not from the first hours of gameplay or the Soundtrack: Western themes in this game are awesomes and pull off well the Southern little town vibe).

Hardware: i5 3570, nVidia GTX 1070, Windows 10. Bought it because: I like old-school text adventures. A hybrid text-based adventure game with a graphical overlay, reminiscent of the old Legend games engine used to make games such as Xanth, Shannara and Death Gate. It has a simple inventory system, and is non-linear; your choices can affect the outcome. The writing is decent, and it has music to go along with stills of the various areas you visit. I'm enjoying it so far. I was a little put off by a startup option in which I had to select whether or not to see content involving extreme gore and sex (!); I chose to enable the content and will reserve judgment as to whether it was really necessary to include when I get to the parts in question. It is, after all, a town with a dark secret. This would also do well on iOS or Android (iOS first, as it has a larger American / English audience).

I'm not too far into this, but it is a good game. You play a pre-made character and try to solve the mystery of what is going on in your new "home" town.

It's my third game from this developer but this title is definitely the most disturbing by far! It should have been labelled horror or psychological horror. You play as a writer moving into a small mountain town with your aging father. The game starts slow, but as the story progresses, it gets creepier and creepier, and I mean really creepy... (There is a possibility at the start of the game to censor some of the game content). I don't know if the devs also write thrillers or horror books, but if they don't, they should, because they are really good at storytelling. As the other titles from this developer, Shady Brook (which is in fact a remake of the original game that came out in 2005) is a mix of text and point and click adventure. The writing and suspense is very well done. To progress in the game, you have to inspect everything, talk to everyone many times. There are also a few puzzles to solve that are not too difficult if you carefully inspect everything and pay attention to what you read. This is not a game for everyone, but if you enjoy reading and like horror stories, you might try it out.

The plot of this is a little simple, although I suppose I liked the resolution. What is interesting about it, is that it attempts to create a classic text adventure without requiring the player to do any typing. It has kind of mixed results. Perhaps one of the tantalizing things about text adventures is the player input could be ANYTHING. This is unlike more modern adventure games where you are limited to INTERACT, USE ITEM, COMBINE ITEMS, and the like. The text parser, on the other hand, can involve creativity. One of my favorite moments in such game was in the final puzzle of Yahtzee Croshaw's Chzo mythos episode that had a text parser. You had to type something you really didn't expect and when it crosses your mind--well, I got a real kick out of it. Here, you end up with more of a Lucas Arts-style experience, where you never really feel like you can get stuck, because even if you don't understand why you should do something, you could always just combine objects until something lets you move forward. (The pleasant exception to this is the couple of times where you have to solve a maze using riddles) However--it does kind of work here. It's a bit nicer to read dialogue in this way than in the Lucas Arts-style games, and it feels like it has a brisker pace to me because you don't have to watch the same walking animations all the time. I could see games in this style being really fun on the phone or tablet. It's more interactive than a lot of interactive fiction that I've tried on those platforms which seem to be more along the lines of verbose Choose Your Own Adventures--often with some romance options. So, I guess, I would like to try another game of this style, just with a more surprising plot--I mean I've certainly seen movies with this exact plot several times, all the way to the black and white era. (although again the very end of this game was nicely done). Also, on a side note, this story has really none of the feeling of Twin Peaks, I don't know why the store page name drops it. There is practically no humor, and the little humor I did smile at I'm not sure was intentional, the characters aren't quirky, and nothing surreal ever happens. So, yeah, I guess i wouldn't recommend this, but I would be willing to try another game with this game engine. It would just have to have a more creative storyline.

Entertaining at first, but turned out that the game system mainly wants you to repeatedly walk around and just talk with everyone. Word to the devs. If you make an Adventure or a game, there has to be some interactivity and decision making. Not that the player just clicks through your story. Though this wasn't the worst case, this game needs more in order to be considered a game and in order to be sold on steam instead of being free. It is close enough, but not there. Story and music were otherwise nice, but the story was *lazy* - just a corridor

Well, all i can say about this game: I definitely enjoyed it. It`s pretty similar to its previous game, Lifestream. Both games have no story connection though. That means boh games can be played independently. Shady Brook is a simplistic puzzle game and features many point & click adventure elements. You`ll have to click to move between the screens and change the location. The pictures are all fine, the interface is great and fits the setting perfectly. The story is also... weirdly... good. Sure reccommend this for point & click adventure fans who want to experience a nice relaxing story with some puzzles. Achievements are all pretty easy to get. Wish you fun then ^^

Shady Brook is a text adventure game where you take on the role of Jake Torrent, a fiction writer looking for a quite place to live and work with his elderly father. However, it becomes apparent that not everything is as it seems as Jake is soon caught in some kind of dark mystery. Pros: Very simple controls Puzzles to solve Puzzles range from easy to hard A mystery unfolds as you play Cons: Fairly linear The one and only ending was unsatisfactory Your choices don't really matter The story is fairly solid although I have to acknowledge, I did deduce what was about to happen. With that said, I wasn't too surprised when it came time for the big reveal. However, some of the details I did overlook, which led me to not trust someone when I should have trusted them. Nevertheless, your choices don't really matter. The story is going to unfold in a very narrow field. Since this is a text adventure game, there is no real graphics to talk about, all the same, there are some impressionist drawing to give the player an idea of what they are looking at which is nice. I did enjoy this game, but I have to say the ending was very disappointing. I sat in front of my computer, shaking my head and muttering to myself, “Well, that sucks”. At the time of this review, Shady Brook was selling for $2.99. It took me 12 hours to complete this game (including getting all of the achievements). 12 hours vs $2.99, this game is definitely worth it