To the City of the Clouds

I had to laugh real loud. as one of commenters on amazon put it: “a naughty Indiana Jones”

look! You can choose your sexual orientation! a very meaningful choice! And so you can use your favorite choice of an interactive penis/vagina, we’ve spread some naughty companions you’ll met in your mindless cyoa adventuring romp reaching ultimate nirvana…

it’s not suitable for kids! It’s a mature-themed work! :laughing: :laughing: :laughing: :laughing: :laughing: :laughing: :laughing: :laughing:

bonus point for the cheap text-adventure and gamebook bashing

oh, I’ll be damned for this I know it…

Gender choices are an interesting topic. Personally, I think that, if you’re given a choice between male and female, the choices that result should be more meaningful than what the NPCs call you and the gender of the people you run into (“Hey, look, it’s Bill/Jill, the college student who we’ll make out with and then who will die in Act 2”).

And I definitely don’t like it when NPCs suddenly turn orientation-ambiguous for no apparent reason. There’s one game I played with an interesting NPC I was able to date as a female, and who I thought would be an interesting friend as a male. Nope, turns out he’s a love interest for either gender. I suppose that goes more to malleable versus static (subjective versus objective?) world-building than anything else, but it still bugs me.

I don’t think those are digs at other adventures and gamebooks, just “why we’re taking it further”, by the way. And now I’m kind of tempted to check this out to see how it plays. Oo, sweet, free to play, nice. I hope it’s really naughty, and not “squeak past the iOS censors” naughty. I guess I’ll find out!

ETA, okay, I think I’m in love. The gender disambiguation is hilarious and bold and I’m loving the character generation choices. Maybe it’s just this gorgeous spring day, but I’m really enjoying this. Thanks for mentioning it!

Sadly, the free version does cut off before things really get rolling, so don’t get into it too fast if you don’t wanna pay for it XD

I think choice-based games should offer more meaningful choices than gender choice

because, how will they sell this kind of thing as being a more meaninful work than “old text-adventures” just because you can choose to be a lesbian in said game? Who says I can’t be a lesbian in Zork? As a nondescript character, the PC can be whatever you want, even a humanoid fungus from Mars!

more importantly: just as in Zork, this is a treasure hunting game at heart! In what way texting treasure hunting will improve your virtual interactive sex life and vice versa?

I’m not shocked that you didn’t like this game (though I do); I think it’s our worst reviewed game to date. Have you replayed it? I think you’ll find that the choices have more effect than is obvious. (Though that’s still arguably the fault of the writing, for not clarifying the impact of your decisions.)

Maybe try Choice of the Deathless, Slammed!, or The Orpheus Ruse. Or, if you like puzzles, try Paradox Factor.

(Though, it looks like you’re referencing the e-Ink Kindle description, implying that you played on a Kindle. Unfortunately, none of the games listed above are available on Kindle, for…reasons.)

to be sure, I didn’t even play it. Just LOLed at the description… hey, we’re not talking about reviews here, right?

I played somewhat a few COG entries before. Not particularly impressed…

Yep, over too soon! One for the list if I should I get my iPad back, I think. I liked the tone quite a bit, very appropriate and fun given the theme, and there was a surprising amount of detail about history and archaeology that I wasn’t expecting. I didn’t get to meet anyone I’d consider a real NPC, though, which is kind of a bummer!

Personally, I don’t think I would have used all the prep work as the demo; it was fun but I think a more exciting segment would have been a better hook. Now I’m kind of wondering if there will be more excitement ahead or if it’ll be more of the same; I feel nicely intrigued (I think the detail really helped with that) but uncertain.

Well, I tend to think of it the same way I think of fiction. Sometimes I want to read a complicated, gritty police procedural where everyone involved (including me) ends up sadder but wiser. And sometimes I want to read a juicy paranormal potboiler where hot otherworldly men are madly in love with spastic klutzes who happen to be Ye Chosen One.

The fact that I enjoy one doesn’t prevent me from the enjoying the other, any more than liking hamburgers prevents me from enjoying roast chicken.

By the way, the “naughty” seems to be handled as straightforward statements, which actually feels pretty appropriately blended with the rest of the story (I’m still laughing about the gender disambiguation questions). I’ll probably go back and tear through it a few times just to see how the choices affect the stats, it was a bit opaque.

With no named NPC love interests, I wasn’t really able to gauge what the impact of my chargen choices would be (another bummer) or if there’d be much of any. Which is too bad.

What’s this - the forum’s resident CYOA hater bashing a CYOA game? Will wonders never cease?

haters never get their genuine questions answered by lovers

Is this your genuine question? Because I’m not sure it’s even a sentence.

Oh, my bad, I thought that you’d try playing the game before writing about it. I won’t make that mistake again!

oh come on

you should be thanking me for bringing this one up. any ad is good ad :mrgreen:

If you like you can think of this as a fun, somewhat frivolous flip-side of Infidel. It is one of the best games to ever deal with its subject because so few do: it isn’t often you are confronted in the middle of a play session with a genuinely funny “berdache” joke. If you have any interest in archaeology or anthropology field work, you will probably find it at least amusing enough to cover the low cost of admission.