I really wonder how I missed this one. While I’m sure most of you have already been playing this, I only discovered it a few days ago and have been hooked ever since. It’s called Digital: A Love Story, and it’s an interactive story set in 1988, written/created by Christine Love. The interface of the game is the Amiga Workbench, and you progress through the story by reading, replying, and hacking BBSs using your modem.
I don’t really know how to describe what exactly Digital is. The interface is basically a replica of version 1.0 of the Amiga Workbench, and you progress through the story by using your modem to dial into several bulletin board bystems. You also need to hack the phone system to dial into long distance BBSs, and use several other AmigaOS utilities to unravel the story.
Since I haven’t completed the game/story yet, I can’t say too much about how it will develop, but so far, the main storyline hasn’t let me down. The characters you meet on the bulletin boards feel alive and real (at one point I realised I actually cared about the people involved), and aside from the main plot, you’ll end up in all sorts of funny discussions and debates all too reminiscent of the web today. The beauty here is that you never see your own messages – just those that are being sent to you, which tickles your imagination to fill in the blanks. Inventive.
I can’t guarantee you’ll like it, and some of you will be put off by the “work” you need to do to progress the story, but trust me – it’s totally worth it. It’s available as a free download for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X. It’s written in the Ren’Py visual novel engine, and in case you’re worried Digital has Japanese influences: it doesn’t.
Not available for AmigaOS4.1 or Morphos?
That makes me feel sad.
Ironic, no?
And you forgot AROS. That makes me feel sad.
I’ve seen a lot of discussion about this game on IRC as well, I haven’t tried it yet but am going to give it a download and see what it is like. Seems like a pretty interesting idea.
Back when BBS were huge, I never even thought about the consiquences of downloading files, running them, releasing personal information, etc.
How things have changed.
When playing this game it asked me to do those exact things and even though I knew it was a game, I hesitated for a moment and wondered if I really should do it. I had to convince myself that it was just a game and “it’s OK”.
How things have changed.
I just finished it.
Wow.
It’s good. Beautiful stuff. Endearing, really.
That was quick.
Just out of interest, how many hours game play was it?
(I’m looking for a new game to pass a few hours but I’m such a casual gamer that I rarely complete any I start)
OH a few hours, maybe 2 or 3 if you take your time. I played in short stints over the past few days, so I wouldn’t know.
I mean, Dragon Age: Origins: Awakening is spinning in my Xbox 360.
Someone should port the engine over to the iPhone. Seems like a great portable title.
I didn’t really noticed this Game until this post. Well, it is certainly worth to be download…
But why i have to be worried Digital has Japanese influences ? I think, this is pity …
Well, personal meaning.
I mentioned that since a lot of people I know dislike typically Japanese things like manga and visual style novels – me being one of them, I simply thought it was important to note that even though the game is made using a tool for Japanese visual novels, it contains no Japanese influences.
This and a quality article about copyright being 300 years old, OSNews is on a roll today
It doesn’t multitask D:
uh, it actually does.
…sort of like a blast from the past when I was a kid in the 80/90s and on BBSes… and an IF game all rolled into one. (I still remember and sometimes play some of the old Infocom adventures now and then… as well as some of the newer free ones.)
…never had an Amiga though.
Downloading it now(Windows version as I will be trashing my Ubuntu install soon for a complete brand new release since I decided that it would just be easier to archive necessary data and start fresh rather than poking around everywhere to free up disk space. Probably faster in the end as I would also start fresh installing extra apps and giving EXT4 a shot… crossing fingers…)
Dang. I must buy an Amiga computer someday.
Although I have never owned an Amiga I have to say this is pretty cool. I found myself doing several old school things like breaking out paper to write things down like numbers and codes… hmmm whatever happened to the 950’s??? -_^
Ok, played it to the end now too. Quite fun. Although quite repetetive with dialing the phonenumbers over and over again.
TT___TT Nice game, even though the reply system is somewhat frustrating. You get used to the dialing thing after a while, its frustrating behavior is part of the fun
I would like more original gameplay like this in modern games. AFAIK, we’ve only got some nice freeware on PC (like this one, Endgame:Singularity, or 20K light years into space. Plus a lot of nice flash games of course, flash player is horrible but software using it can make wonders…), and on the console it’s even poorer due to the low-end controllers being used (Heavy Rain, some Wii games, and I think that’s it).
As much as I found python’s performance deceptive when I was writing python apps (while liking the rest of the language overall, except for this annoying “self” everywhere), I’m always amazed by the things people make with it.
Edited 2010-04-13 09:57 UTC
It doesn’t look or act much like AmigaOS at all. A simple 5 minutes research would have revealed this to the developers. eg. titlebars are wrong, gadgets are wrong, menus are missing, etc. Also, it’s grossly bloated.
Well, I think they made this to avoid Copyrights Infrangements…
The interface is SIMILAR to that of Amiga but it is not really a true reply of the real Amiga interface.
BTW, seems to me strange that they used standard fonts for the BBS program too…
Terminal & BBS programs on Amiga had their own screen interface with their colors and fonts that were usually far better than the Amiga system fonts and were more readable when staying various times connected to BBS.
@ ALL…
Yes calling BBS phone numbers again and again was a pain in the as* in the real world too, either on Amiga and on PC, but you could automate the process by adding shortcuts with the name of the BBS and their phone numbers and just click on the BBS name link, then the modem had been instructed to call the correct phone number automatically and align to correct parameters 8,N,1 or 7,E,1 (Bits, parity, stop bit) depending from BBS settings.
Sure, unlike ADSL, you couldn’t call once and stay connected forever. It was private number to private nmber connection upon normal phone line (BBS were held by privates) and after a certain time usually you were disconnected to leave other people the free to connect themselves.
I just finished it too. Great stuff. Anyone else feel a bit disappointed when dropped back to their boring modern desktop? I wonder if I can find an 8bit themed window manager for X…