Ghosts In the Shell is a Puzzle / Interactive Novel game in which you, armed with only a computer terminal and a few Unix commands, solve a 300 year old mystery.
Fair Warnings: -This is a heavily story-based and spoil-able game. Do not read the comments below until finishing it. -This game is basically all reading. If you don't like reading, you won't like this game. -The game favours people with Unix terminal experience. If you don't have any, try it anyway. My friend had no Unix experience until playing this game but finished it nevertheless.
All the time I wanted to press TAB and use `cat` or `less` instead of `nano`. =) Also, I experienced kinda discomfort about cursor's position and scrollbar, but it's not that important. Gameplay idea is cool! Command line based quest - that's what they call 'ancient technology'! =) And thank you for awsome green colors.
Really wonderful. I also experienced the scrollbar and cursor issues. Other than that, the story was super intriguing and great, and the name is the best one I've seen so far this LD
From A Linux User Before I tell u this is cool it really grabbed my interest with the different commands that most of them is real linux commands and with the relaxed and cool game play :D 5/5
Wow, this game is exceedingly well done. It contains exactly what it needs with nothing more or less and I can't find any rough edges. A clear 5/5 if I ever saw one.
Really well written entry. If there's ever an updates version I would be curious about other endings (whatever they might be)... I really like the kinds of stories where you have to piece together the story yourself using diary entries etc - so I enjoyed it a lot!
That's what I call good game without any art! =) Good job on writing it. I didn't beat the game yet (stuck with teacher's password), but I like it so far.
I missed the ability to autocomplete with tab key, but I understand it's not the point of the game to emulate terminal.
Awesome work! I too missed the ability to hit tab.
I wonder if you could actually make this on real Linux distro like arch, package up the whole filesystem and then tell the players to chroot into it? I think that would make an amazing game (I'm actually thinking about that for next LD :P)
A
Asaldar30 Aug 2016, 14:32
Interesting game, fun to play, very nice work !
One small critic : I would have expected a final stage once you finished the job. To explain why someone cares about a 300 years old story. Maybe an exchange of mail with the Boss or the person paying for the job ...
Even though I understand that the time limit is short :)
A little bit anti-climactic end, but otherwise I loved it. If you would ever like to take this idea further, it would be fun to actually have to use some sort of program, say grep or pipe some programs together etc.
thats a cool idea. Too bad tabbing does not work, especially because it opens the url input in chrome instead. Had to constantly click in the game window again because I always tab when working with a CLI :-)
Innovation: It's a cool take on a text adventure. I've seen other games in past LDs where you hack at a terminal but I don't think I've seen people take that aspect to this level. Fun: I really enjoyed trying to work out everyone's passwords and the sequence of events. (I kept a text file with notes hah). It's a great idea that the player has to get the passwords from the story, even piecing together multiple pieces of information, to figure out a password. I find it frustrating when AAA games have sticky notes all over the place saying "Dear user we reset your password to blahblah". Your sort of system is way more interesting. Theme: Fine take on the theme. Graphics: Sorta N/A but it's a good looking and well implemented terminal. Audio: N/A Humor: Even though the story covers some serious issues you managed to squeeze some humour in there without it seeming out of place, nice job. Mood: Fine, although maybe some sound would have added to it? (Bonus category) Writing: Great job - the characters are believable and the story is coherent and has real substance which is hard to achieve in the time limit. (The line "ending 1/1" confused me a bit... does it mean I 100%ed it?) Overall: A great story and a fun way to find it out!
I didn't even finish the game to understand it was an excelent entry for this LD. You used the theme in a very creative way. The game interface is also very interesting. I personally really like those kind of text games. Congratulations, it is really, really good. PS: as others users pointed, the characters are well made, considering you only had text to give personalities to them. Congrats, again! xD
Comments30
Gameplay idea is cool! Command line based quest - that's what they call 'ancient technology'! =) And thank you for awsome green colors.
Finely crafted experience.
If there's ever an updates version I would be curious about other endings (whatever they might be)...
I really like the kinds of stories where you have to piece together the story yourself using diary entries etc - so I enjoyed it a lot!
I missed the ability to autocomplete with tab key, but I understand it's not the point of the game to emulate terminal.
Great job!
I wonder if you could actually make this on real Linux distro like arch, package up the whole filesystem and then tell the players to chroot into it? I think that would make an amazing game (I'm actually thinking about that for next LD :P)
One small critic : I would have expected a final stage once you finished the job. To explain why someone cares about a 300 years old story. Maybe an exchange of mail with the Boss or the person paying for the job ...
Even though I understand that the time limit is short :)
Fun: I really enjoyed trying to work out everyone's passwords and the sequence of events. (I kept a text file with notes hah). It's a great idea that the player has to get the passwords from the story, even piecing together multiple pieces of information, to figure out a password. I find it frustrating when AAA games have sticky notes all over the place saying "Dear user we reset your password to blahblah". Your sort of system is way more interesting.
Theme: Fine take on the theme.
Graphics: Sorta N/A but it's a good looking and well implemented terminal.
Audio: N/A
Humor: Even though the story covers some serious issues you managed to squeeze some humour in there without it seeming out of place, nice job.
Mood: Fine, although maybe some sound would have added to it?
(Bonus category) Writing: Great job - the characters are believable and the story is coherent and has real substance which is hard to achieve in the time limit. (The line "ending 1/1" confused me a bit... does it mean I 100%ed it?)
Overall: A great story and a fun way to find it out!
PS: as others users pointed, the characters are well made, considering you only had text to give personalities to them. Congrats, again! xD