I, Cyborg — Outfly, outshoot, and outwit all your enemies!

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We’re proud to announce that I, Cyborg, the latest in our popular “Choice of Games” line of multiple-choice interactive-fiction games, is now available for Steam, Android, and on iOS in the Choice of Games Omnibus app. It’s 33% off until July 5th!

Outfly, outshoot, and outwit your enemies as an outlaw cyborg on the run! You’re a cyborg copy of Ypsilanti Rowe, the interstellar outlaw, whose enemies (and exes) are gunning for you. Can you upgrade your brain and pull one last heist?

I, Cyborg is a 300,000-word interactive science-fiction novel by Tracy Canfield. It’s entirely text-based, without graphics or sound effects, and fueled by the vast, unstoppable power of your imagination.

Being a cyborg copy of the famous outlaw Ypsilanti Rowe comes with plenty of advantages. But when your cybernetic brain begins to fail only a rare and obsolete part can make your systems function again. Journey across the galaxy as you hunt down the missing piece. Along the way you’ll shoot down enemy ships, or jam their sensors so they never know you’re there; seduce Ypsilanti’s old flames—or just stay out of their gunsights; dogfight beneath high-gravity stormclouds and race pirates through a mined-out asteroid’s rocky tunnels.

When Ypsilanti turns up in the original flesh, will the two of you make the perfect team? Or is there only room in this galaxy for one of you?

• Play as male or female; gay, straight, bisexual, or asexual.
• Boost your skills with cybernetic upgrades: you’re a cyborg!
• Ambush a weapons shipment above a gas giant’s rings.
• Smuggle alien pets, penetrate the walls of a comet prison, and befriend an intelligent starship.
• Work for the local crime lords, set them at each others’ throats, or rat them out to the Intersolar Police.
• Infiltrate the halls of power and steal top-secret data with a touch of your augmented fingertips.
• Choose to favor your human instincts, your custom software, or a balance between the two.

We hope you enjoy playing I, Cyborg. We encourage you to tell your friends about it, and recommend the game on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and other sites. Don’t forget: our initial download rate determines our ranking on the App Store. The more times you download in the first week, the better our games will rank.

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First! And Congratulations!!

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This looks really cool so far - I love the setting and the space opera feel!

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Alright, so I played through it once(I’m actually a pretty fast reader, depending on the day)

Personal thoughts…it’s fine. If you are expecting the kind of androids that outrun trains and shrug off shotguns, you aren’t going to get that. Which was my initial hopes, but once I got over that, I decided that I didn’t really mind the story.

If you are looking for something science fiction about piloting starships, then you’re going to find that.

If I’m going to actually complain about anything…I don’t feel like I have time to actually develop a really opinion about the important characters other than they are supposedly criminal masterminds whose genius plans just boil down to “I paid someone else to do it for me! Aren’t I brilliant?”

It feels that a lot of the time, all they really are there for is giving huge info and exposition dumps and romancing them feels a lot trying to get with a news bulletin board.

That’s not to say they aren’t different from each other. But it’s something that happens in a lot of games that people have talked about before, is that you don’t ever really feel like you have time for things to properly develop in that aspect.

Overall? 3.5/5. I’m being a little biased likely, since Science Fiction isn’t my personal favorite category, but I’d say that makes it more important to note than someone who naturally adores Sci-Fi. I can’t find anything really wrong with it and overall didn’t mind it even if I’m not the ideal audience for it. Thus, it stands to reason, that ideal audience will love it.

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I’m a bit confused, are we an Android or a Cyborg? It seems like we’re an Android

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Wasn’t bad, but it is another game that for me is too tied to stats, making me fail and dumping me in places I didn’t care for. Overall, the story was fine, although since I was not into committing crimes I had an uphill struggle in most cases, and no other option in many.

Can’t say much more at the moment, being tired and a bit under the weather, but for me it was a mixed bag - I loved some parts and other parts made me realise the choices didn’t mean what I thought, and with no save or going back I felt a bit frustrated at times. I prefer choices matter more than stats matter, now I constantly was trying to game the system rather than playing the game as I wanted.

Overall, I enjoyed it well enough, but I probably won’t revisit it anytime soon.

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Are there any biological components to the MC, or are they all purely machine?

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Ahhh I finally get a good ending (get a clean job, end up with Marley) after 7 attempts (I know, I have no life) :slight_smile:

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I loved this overall. If there was one thing I could suggest, it’d be the ability to save/ go back as mentioned by the others, this story is pretty tied to stats… And trust me, you wouldn’t want to try all over again (days) to get the good ending… Or I’m just slow… :stuck_out_tongue:

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In the game universe, a cyborg is a being with a mechanical body, and a mind that’s a digital copy of a human mind.

While these cyborgs aren’t organic, they have a connection to a human identity that’s important throughout the story. For them, humanity isn’t something to be achieved, but it is something that can be lost.

(During the game you can meet cyborgs who’ve kept up appearances so scrupulously most people think they’re human; AI minds that began as human but are now so changed they’re barely comprehensible; and cyborgs who’ve struck a balance between the two extremes.)

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The writing and the story are great. The initial 4 statistics representing skills are okay because you generally aren’t going to ‘lose’ any. The 4 stats representing emotions are downright frustrating. I’ve had three deeply unsatisfying runs so far where I felt I played a specific set of characteristics but ended up without enough of any one stat to do anything important.

As games are growing in length and clever use of variables, the inability to go back or restore save points is becoming really unpleasant. As it is now, I do NOT want to play this game again for yet another frustrating round of incompetence whereas I could see myself coming back to this several times over if I could exercise some control over choices that didn’t require a repeat of dozens and dozens of choices.

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I already mentioned this on another thread, actually.

A cyborg can still be defined as a mammal. A cyborg is a living biological with mechanical implants.

A android is something mechanical by design but either human like in appearance or with a human like ai, but purely mechanical.

Ironically, Android 17 and 18 are actually cyborgs. Teen Titan Cyborg is a Cyborg.

Of course, it’s entirely possible that this isn’t the same definition that they use in-universe.

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Overall, I enjoyed the game.

I had fun with its varied cast and the inter play between them and the MC.

I will agree that the lack of save or back pedalling is a tad frustrating. This is especially true when seeking a different outcome of an unforeseen or unfavorable consequence can mean restarting and replaying the game again with the hope that you get right and dont have restart from scratch once more.

The long trek can diminish enjoyment on an otherwise favorable read.

The character read out also felt a bit jumbled near the bottom in that some of the characters info ran together, at least on my game.
This made me mistake one characters relationship bar for another character who didnt have one.

To that end, I have some questions:

  • Does every character have a relationship and/or knowledge bar?
  • Sphinx and the Detective are the two that mixed together for me
  • Who are all the available romance options?
  • Is it possible to keep Sphinx from dying? Or to keep her on as your number 2? Or more?
  • Same question for Leo

But on the whole, great job and great read

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I really enjoyed this game, after betaing it was happy to buy the game and support the author. Probably one of my favorite sci fi releases, and I could see this game becoming a series where Ypsilante constantly gets our character in trouble.

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The character read out also felt a bit jumbled near the bottom in that some of the characters info ran together, at least on my game.

This (and some other formatting inconsistencies on the Stats Page) should all be fixed in the new set of files, along with some other Day 1 bugs that were reported.

And here are the answers for the rest of your questions. (I’ve unhidden one where the question itself didn’t seem like a spoiler, in case anyone reading is interested in that particular answer.)

first question, about underlying stats:

Does every character have a relationship and/or knowledge bar?

No, though there are quite a few of them. The Relationship stats are
Relationship: Kishore
Relationship: Quillon
Relationship: Pehlivan
Relationship: Onbekend
Relationship: Smárason/Smáradottir
Relationship: REGN/BOGN
Relationship: Police
Relationship: Greeblie poachers
Relationship: Ypsilanti

and the Knowledge stats are
Knowledge: Kishore
Knowledge: Quillon
Knowledge: Pehlivan
Knowledge: Ypsilanti
Knowledge: Governor

second question (“Who are all the available romance options?”)

You can have longer relationships with Marley Onbekend and Quillon, and flings with the Sphinx, Ypsilanti, and REGN/BOGN. Though opinions might differ whether REGN/BOGN counts as a romance.

third question, about an NPC’s possible fates:

Is it possible to keep the Sphinx from dying? Or to keep him/her on as your #2? Or more?

You can save her/him; if so you’ll meet up again in the last chapter, assuming you make it to the last chapter.

It didn’t occur to me that people would want the Sphinx to join their crew until it started coming up in playtesting! So no, that doesn’t come up as an option.

and the last question, about a different NPC:

Same question for Leo/Lydia Pehlivan. Can you keep him/her from dying?

yep!

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anyone figure out how to get 65000 credits so that they can purchase the Phaeton? Been trying to figure it out for ages

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anyone figure out how to get 65000 credits so that they can purchase the Phaeton? Been trying to figure it out for ages

If you don’t mind getting the Phaeton late in the game, the easiest way to get that much money is to

make friends with REGN/BOGN. Then, during your downtime in the Game of Cat and Sphinx chapter, talk to REGN/BOGN and ask it for money at the end of the conversation.

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If you complete three “jobs” you should have enough.

After the wine factory and brain retrieval jobs I had enough to get it … ymmv.

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How do I get Quillon to stop breaking up with me?

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I liked this game, particularly the romance with Gamaliel (Quillon). He’s adorably cute and just the right amount of silly to offset his more grim bad-boy traits.
Wish we had more scenes with him though. And I was slightly disappointed we never got the opportunity to set up that threesome with him and our look alike he alluded to.

The airshow and its reliance on opposed stats drove me to frustration though, the only part in the game to do so and I had to peek at the code to get on with it and win the damned thing.
Which leads me to agree with some of the other posters this game, and many of the newer and/or longer CoG games really, desperately do need a save feature, as there are some I cannot even finish in a single evening for one playthrough anymore. This one skirted the edge of that and caused me to cut about an hour into my nap time.

Look out for number 1 more. The romance isn’t exactly a rivalry romance, but it is bad boy seeks bad boy. Gamaliel isn’t really attracted to good guys as they tend to reject many of the things he considers fun.
As a side note, winning the silly, giant plushie for him before the airshow was an adorable scene.

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