Untold, a story-based RPG that’s made up almost entirely of menus and text, will soon be entering open beta, and anyone interested in trying it out can sign up right now.
The game has players exploring the lands of Tem Khiris as they struggle to survive in a world full of clashing city-states and violent followers of ancient gods. It promises to be a game with an open-ended story in the choose-your-own-adventure mold, with a branching narrative that reacts to players’ choices.
This kind of narrative is, of course, difficult to pull off, so the game has opted to forgo graphics in the traditional sense, with all the action and environments being described in text, and all the choices taking the form of menus and buttons.
That’s not to say that the only thing that players will see is text on a screen, however. The game does feature some scenic backgrounds to set the tone, and also lets players move around on a map, albeit a minimalist one made up of points, lines, and labels.
The game also includes your standard-fare RPG character growth, complete with abilities, a leveling system, and equipment to find and use on your quests. The combat appears to be a variant on the now-ubiquitous active time battle system, where players have to wait for a menu bar to fill up all the way before they can strike their enemies.
Text-based games are nothing new — in fact, they used to be the only type of adventure game available on early PCs. Untold, however, seems to be putting some work into both focusing on a constantly-shifting narrative while still providing a slick presentation and many of the elements that are commonplace in modern RPGs, despite the lack of any visuals that are often such a big draw for players.
Whether or not the game will fulfill its narrative potential remains to be seen, but if its free-range story is compelling, there may end up being plenty of fans despite the absence of graphics.
Source: Alpha Beta Gamer
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