After seeing so many top game lists on the internet, I decided to share my own opinions with the world. It took a lot of agonizing and weeping, but I finally picked out my best interactive fiction games. Mind you, there are spoilers in this list! Also, since I’m too cheap to pick up a paid DS or computer VN, I haven’t put titles like 999 on this list. So with that in mind, here they are:
#5 Surviving High School
SHS is an app that puts out a new story every week about some high school kids. Most of these stories only have one good, “true” ending, but getting to it requires good choices and a little thinking. Given my weakness for teen stories, I got hooked the first time I played it and have snapped up the free weekly stories for years.
#4 Heroes Rise: The Prodigy
This CoG is about living as a budding powered hero who is eventually pit against archnemesis Prodigal-who, by the way, sealed her fate of death when she outed my hero. The intense story and hero customization made it well worth the 3 bucks, even if the linearity did knock down the replay value of the game.
#3 Infamous 2
This ps3 game about a man with electric powers is a little different from the rest, but it’s here for good reason. The karma system is just awesome, giving you extra ice powers if you’re good and fire powers if you’re evil. The two endings hinge on one huge choice: sacrifice yourself and the other conduits to fix an incurable plague, or save yourself and let humanity die off from said plague. Even though I ultimately saved humanity, I couldn’t help but cry after sacrificing poor Cole.
#2 Katawa Shoujo
This heartwarming VN lets a handicapped boy romance 1 of 5 fellow handicapped girls. Having 5 complex girls to choose from, each with at least two endings, gives hours and hours of replay time. The quality is insanely good for a free VN. The stories are so in depth, the artwork so well done, that you would’ve expected the makers to charge something for it. I, for one, am glad they didn’t.
and finally, #1 The Hero Project
In this Heroes Rise sequel, the hero competes with others on a hero reality show. This story is even more intense, and the finicky alliances make it wonderfully unpredictable. But this game also does what no game could-it made me regret my evil actions. Usually, after one heroic playthrough of a game, I go back and do evil, evil things to unlock all the endings (ie, wiping out the entire human race). But until I betrayed Null and let her get hit with Victon’s creepy toy, I NEVER sat back and thought, I really shouldn’t have done that.
And those are my top 5 IF games! This post may sound a little opinionated, since I’m trying to get into writing game reviews and opinions. This is a first step for me, so if you have polite and constructive feedback, feel free to post it.