The Silent Age - click adventure

[Kasey Chang]

The Silent Age is like a throw-back to the old age of click adventures (like the 2nd gen Sierra adventures) where you click on things to reveal things, get items, use items, etc.

Episode 1 is free, and they're asking for donations and such to make episode 2 and more.

You're a janitor in the 1970's, doing an unremarkable job. And you're just given a promotion to take care of a new floor.

Except you just found a guy... who claims he's from the future... and was mortally shot. Before he succumbed, he gave you this time travel device. And he asked you to find him... his younger self... and stop him... You ran out to find help, then you're arrested by the FBI...

You're locked in the room with two FBI agent?

Then they asked you what this device does.

You pressed the button...

And that's just chapter 1. You can play up o chapter 5's end. That's episode 1.

Available for Android and iOS.

[MonkeyFinger]

My concern with episodic content like this is wondering if all of the episodes will ever see the light of day. They're looking for donations for episode two but I couldn't find anything that noted how many episodes they needed for the whole story... any idea?

Oh and... they are 'point and click' adventures. Can't forget the pointing before the clicking.

[Hipolito]

They've met their total funding goal.

Edit: er, maybe the funding is just for episode 2, not all episodes.

[Hipolito]

I've finished this game. It's pretty short, just needing an evening or two to beat. (So, naturally, it took me five years to do so.)

At first I was pretty annoyed with the game. Most of the puzzles involve trying to open a door, and once you use the right inventory item to do so, that item disappears even when it makes no sense to lose it. So you have to find some other object on the ground or in a container to open the next door. It gets tedious.

Also, the humor of the game is inappropriate for what's supposed to be a grim and suspenseful story. Sometimes your janitor will exclaim "far out!" in a dorky voice. And he makes tons of wry observations. But I did laugh at some of them, and eventually allowed myself to just relax and enjoy the humor. I was reminded of Beneath a Steel Sky, another adventure game in a nightmarish setting that had tons of humor.

The story ends up being pretty good. But like any time travel tale, it brings up paradoxes and causality loops and explains them away somehow. Trying to make sense of this stuff always makes my head hurt.

It's a decent adventure game, but there other plenty of other, better ones to play.

[Rumpy]

Yeah, I played it and agree. While it is well made and quite a bit of fun, I felt I had played way better games in this style. I did like the concept though of being able to switch between realities. I think this would be a great game to have a followup and see more of the concept.

At times it felt awkwardly amateurish, feeling like the developer was figuring it out as he went along, and you can certainly feel that at the beginning. If the beginning were a demo, it wouldn't leave me with a good impression. But eventually the game opens up and when the switching is available, it becomes more interesting.

[Suitably Ironic Moniker]

I played it on the iPad years ago, and I enjoyed it quite a bit judged as a mobile device adventure game. It definitely would lose a few tentacles if I had played it on the PC.

[Rumpy]

And see, that's where publishers in general lose points for me. If they'd be honest up front about certain games being mobile ports, then I'd judge accordingly, but all too often there's no distinction made, just offered up as-is, as if they were PC games, which I think would be important to state when selling on a PC games store.