Digital: A Love Story

[Scout]

Digital: A Love Story



A computer mystery/romance set five minutes into the future of 1988.

I can guarantee at least ONE of the following is a real feature:
* Discover a vast conspiracy lurking on the internet!
* Save the world by exploiting a buffer overflow!
* Get away with telephone fraud!
* HACK THE GIBSON!

Which one? You'll just have to dial in and see. Welcome to the 20th century.


Edit: If you downloaded version 1.0, replace it with 1.1. Sorry!

[The extension exe has been deactivated and can no longer be displayed.]

digital-1.1.tar.bz2

Linux.

(35.27 MiB) Downloaded 331 times

Mac version (1.1)

[chunderbunny]

This game is good! I'll wait until I get to the end before posting a proper review, but as a pre-NaNo snack this is very tasty!

Almost every other screen makes me smile.

Edit: Now I have finished and I have to thank Scout for writing another good story. I love all the little in jokes (especially "Lake City" hoho) and all the way the backstory unfolds is really well done.

[CaesMRaenes]

First, my emotional input:

Oh my holy crackers was that a deep story. After the intro and getting used to the dialing and the interface, I got panicky because I really, really, REALLY wanted to save *Emilia and then to learn what happened after just wrenched my heart and tore me to pieces. Holy - oh geez- did I just wanna yell at the screen, "No! I can't do that! I just saved you! You stubborn AI!" I also have to say that you totally placed in the creepy factor for the *Reaper. Never got to interact with him but - wow - did I feel scared every time he was mentioned.

Overall, I enjoyed the game and felt blessed to have downloaded it. The GUI reminded me of good ol' interfacing with Windows and the older computers. It was really nostalgic. The story alone and how it was executed was as wonderful as an oyster to a pearl.

My only problem while playing was that I encountered countless errors which hindered my gameplay a little. But, as I had mentioned beforehand, the story kept me going, enticing my curiosity and pretty much left me feeling bittersweet.

(Haha. Wow. I didn't notice the 1.1. Well, just to correct confusion and if the errors were handled, I wrote for 1.0.)

[RayRayTea]

What a nice game! Love the understated humour and the execution. Thanks for giving it away for free!

...I think I got stuck though,

my screen got "blinded" and there are no new messages anywhere. I'm down to one long-distance call code and have no idea what to do... Things I have tried so far: PMing everybody, replying to every message on all boards, logging to Underground BBS and clicking on every message (but I get disconnected no matter what)...

any hints?

[Scout]

Thanks! I'm very glad to hear that had an emotional impact on you-- I was very concerned that both of those would fall flat. :x

any hints?

One of the earliest messages on The Matrix is about that. Reply to it.

[jack_norton]

The style/look is really cool. Reminds me of the old BBS times...! A great work

[RayRayTea]

Thanks! I'm very glad to hear that had an emotional impact on you-- I was very concerned that both of those would fall flat.

Haha far from it, I enjoyed it immensely. I'm a bit disappointed I didn't bump into Guru Meditation though Or will it appear later?

any hints?

One of the earliest messages on The Matrix is about that. Reply to it.

I did -

as I wrote in the previous spoiler I both replied to all the messages and PMed everybody on Matrix (all the "reply" buttons are greyed out). I expected the guy that was talking about stdlib problems to be a clue, but nope...

[Scout]

any hints?

One of the earliest messages on The Matrix is about that. Reply to it.

I did -

as I wrote in the previous spoiler I both replied to all the messages and PMed everybody on Matrix (all the "reply" buttons are greyed out). I expected the guy that was talking about stdlib problems to be a clue, but nope...

Reply to the message "VRAM overflow". The reply contains the solution: download that, save, and restart the game.

[Asphodel]

Just finished it.

Wow.

This is my single favorite Ren'Py game ever, by a broad margin.

Well done.

[Taroku]

Noooo!! *Emilia!!! T_T

[luminarious]

When at the very-very beginning I try to access the BBS via the number supplied by Mr. Wong (698-5519), I get "Unable to connect". Really weird, because there is nothing else for me to do there apart from listening to music..

[Scout]

When at the very-very beginning I try to access the BBS via the number supplied by Mr. Wong (698-5519), I get "Unable to connect". Really weird, because there is nothing else for me to do there apart from listening to music..

That's... very strange. Did you somehow skip through the user creation segment? Does it still happen if you start a new game?

I really can't imagine how that happened, it shouldn't be possible.

[luminarious]

When at the very-very beginning I try to access the BBS via the number supplied by Mr. Wong (698-5519), I get "Unable to connect". Really weird, because there is nothing else for me to do there apart from listening to music..

That's... very strange. Did you somehow skip through the user creation segment? Does it still happen if you start a new game?

I really can't imagine how that happened, it shouldn't be possible.

I started a new game and it's working. But I may have closed the real name box from the corner.

[luminarious]

This is the most.. complete game I have seen done with Ren'py so far. The programming was downright impressive, music very good, graphics appropriate and the story? Befittingly for a tired softy, it made me cry. Since I was actively participating the entire time, I felt so much more involved and thus the impact hit me that much harder. Really well done!

[RayRayTea]

Just finished playing this, my thoughts:

It's just great. In places it reminded me of how Dan Simmons used Yeats in Hyperion, which is a good thing in my book. The amount of research that went into this game is super impressive, although I can't help but feel that the consultant / source of inspiration was a bit on the geeky side I also enjoyed the art direction and all the little touches, one thing that really worked well was the way the protagonist "communicates" with other characters (leaves just enough space for projections). The length was also just about right and I liked that there is a nice conclusive ending.

Things I thought weren't so well done:
The "blinded" animation was nice but it halved the framerate on my computer, as did some other interface elements (starting Dictionary for example). The communication aspect was not really clear at all times, for example I was watching somebody else playing this and she got stuck at the exactly same place I did - maybe I just hang out with friends that are as stupid as I am The thing that I disliked the most was purely personal (*Emilia is like from some Hollywood movie) so probably not worth discussing.