A text adventure that is written almost entirely in gibberish. Players must puzzle out the general meaning of the game's text in order to progress.
Reviews View More
The gostak distims the doshes.
Or doatching it engoped, it's an interofgan halpock by Carl Muckenhoupt where your fesh it to pell through deaves, tunking louks to abvate how to tund dedges - perhaps even how to gnurr.
The halpock's rorm and very snave. Rask a reb, maybe.
Or doatching it engoped, it's an interofgan halpock by Carl Muckenhoupt where your fesh it to pell through deaves, tunking louks to abvate how to tund dedges - perhaps even how to gnurr.
The halpock's rorm and very snave. Rask a reb, maybe.
The Gostak is an incredibly unique game that utilizes its format to present gameplay no other genre of game could. It is a singular experience that is masterfully executed and one of my favorite examples of interactive fiction.
The premise is that all the language in the game is alien and made up. The play is more about learning how to read the game's descriptions and how to give commands than about solving the puzzles in the world of the Gostak.
The way things are presented, like a regular text adventure, allows you to infer nouns and verbs as well as how they are used. The feeling of playing the game is one of perpetual confusion punctuated by moments of satisfying realization. Alien descriptions married with alien actions with unfamiliar structure and usage means you form a mental model of the world and reassess that model again and again, finally landing on something that isn't quite contradictory, and doesn't exactly make sense. By the end of the game, you will have an understanding of the language that is workable, but not quite enough like English to let you truly feel comfortable with it.
The creation and presentation of this entirely alien world described by an alien language is a triumph of both writing and design.
The Gostak is a really great piece of interactive fiction that anyone interested in what games can be should give a shot. Working past the strangeness and frustration inherent in learning the language of the game as you play it is definitely worth it.
The premise is that all the language in the game is alien and made up. The play is more about learning how to read the game's descriptions and how to give commands than about solving the puzzles in the world of the Gostak.
The way things are presented, like a regular text adventure, allows you to infer nouns and verbs as well as how they are used. The feeling of playing the game is one of perpetual confusion punctuated by moments of satisfying realization. Alien descriptions married with alien actions with unfamiliar structure and usage means you form a mental model of the world and reassess that model again and again, finally landing on something that isn't quite contradictory, and doesn't exactly make sense. By the end of the game, you will have an understanding of the language that is workable, but not quite enough like English to let you truly feel comfortable with it.
The creation and presentation of this entirely alien world described by an alien language is a triumph of both writing and design.
The Gostak is a really great piece of interactive fiction that anyone interested in what games can be should give a shot. Working past the strangeness and frustration inherent in learning the language of the game as you play it is definitely worth it.