Game: Ghosts Within by Kyriakos Athanasopoulos (TADS)
It's cool that this game is also one of the first ones Jizaboz checked out. I chose to play it first mostly because it was the only TADS game entered into this year's competition (well, and also because the writer's Greek...I felt like I owed Theodorakis that much, RIP). I was curious to see if this game would help keep up the TADSmentum that Jay Schilling's Edge of Chaos, Deelzebub, and Captivity established last year. Interestingly, like EoC and Captivity, Ghosts Within also puts a major focus on conversations with NPCs. Perhaps TADS will become the language of choice for dialogue-heavy parser games.
Jizaboz might be judging the writing a little harshly because I don't consider Ghosts Within to be a poorly written game. Admittedly, I do tend to cut IF writers some slack if they're clearly not native English speakers, and most dudes named Kyriakos Athanasopoulos this side of Melbourne, Australia aren't native English language speakers. Nikos has been communicating with us for years solely through grunts, squeals, and rhythmic toe tapping yet we can still generally decipher the Hugor changelogs. In any case, I'm grateful Kyriakos chose to write his game in English instead of focusing on the lucrative Greek IF market.
Conversation in Ghosts Within generally follows the ASK CHARACTER ABOUT X format though there's some support for direct inputs like bye and yes/no. You can ask characters repeatedly about the same thing to get different responses which makes it at times feel like an RPG where you keep talking to people until you've exhausted the unique dialogue responses. I wasn't crazy about this approach for a couple of reasons. For one thing, this approach to dialogue can feel mechanical. You can save on typing with judicious use of the up key, but it's at the cost of engagement and conversational flow. The other thing I wasn't too fond of is it felt like Kyriakos deliberately makes some characters give really short responses with the knowledge that players will keep asking about topics to get more details. A topic that could easily have been covered in a few sentences in an initial dialogue response can now require three different ASK CHARACTER ABOUT X inputs.
In general, I would say the conversations in this game don't flow as well as the conversations in EoC and Captivity even though there are suggested topics given and you can often ask characters about a variety of other things that aren't listed. Perhaps the lack of flow is partly because this game is very much a mystery. You are trying to figure out who you are, what's going on, what's the deal with the laboratory, and if ghosts are really real among other things. Not every character wants you find out the truth about these topics so they have every reason not to be forthcoming and they often aren't. Deadline had a similar dynamic, but that game had a host of memorable characters with big personalities who were fascinating to talk to and discreetly observe. The characters in Ghosts Within are much less interesting to interact with, but I literally just compared this game to literally one of my favorite games ever which is arguably not too fair. GW is interesting enough and I do want to solve its mysteries even if it's not the best game EVARRR.
One interesting aspect of this game is it offers multiple starting paths and apparently also has multiple endings. You start out in rough condition in a forest and have the opportunity to choose one of three starting locations which will affect various aspects of your playthrough (though you will be able to visit the other locations after you've been nursed back to health). I personally recommend going to the laboratory first for your first game because it has the best initial NPC interactions and gives you the most background information, but I've got saves going for every starting location and there's something to be recommended for each one. Your choice of starting location can have some surprising impacts on how your game goes. For instance, if you go to the village first you get helped by a villager and get to meet her father. Later on, you can ask her about her father. If you meet her after having chosen a different starting location, you don't meet her father and can't ask her about him even though she constantly mentions him. In all honesty, this seemed really weird to me and could possibly be a bug, but suffice it to say your first initial choice in the game is an important one.
Download Link:
Ghosts Within by Kyriakos Athanasopoulos