Text adventures go back to the earliest days of computer gaming, when players got their first glimpse (in their mind’s eye anyway) of the lonely house that proved to be the entrance to the underworld of Zork. Then computer graphics started to evolve in a major way, and for a while text adventures were all but forgotten other than a few gems pumped out by specialized developers like Infocom. Today, graphical fidelity is almost a given in computer games, with some nearly approaching reality. But even so, there is something both special and amazing about well-written interactive fiction, especially when presented with meaningful choices in a video game format. If it’s done well, no graphics are required.
One area where text adventures are really popular today is with horror games, and specifically titles in the Vampire The Masquerade (VTM) and World of Darkness universe. There are two main developers who are becoming known for VTM titles. The first is Draw Distance whose excellent titles include the amazing Coteries of New York and Shadows of New York graphic novels. That series kind of fell flat due to the lukewarm ending of the trilogy in Reckoning of New York, but they were a great bunch of titles nonetheless. And then there is developer and publisher Choice of Games, which only recently got the World of Darkness license. Before that, they mostly published romance type titles and other kinds of mundane stories, but they have really broadened the scope of their content since getting the rights to this new setting and genre.
Choice of Games has come out with quite a few decent titles like Out For Blood and Parliament of Knives. They also published what I consider to be the best vampire-themed interactive novel ever made, Night Road, which was written by Jeffrey Dean. Night Road was divided up into multiple chapters and tightly integrated with the role-playing system so that players could customize just about everything about their character including abilities, equipment, haven and even what kind of car they drove – all of which mattered to the story.
Hunter The Reckoning: The Beast of Glenkildove, which is available on Steam, does not quite measure up to Night Road, but it is still very good, and much better than some other text adventures that have recently been released. And like in Out For Blood, you don’t play a supernatural creature this time. Instead players are an ordinary human who can choose to become a hunter of monsters. However, while there are vampires in the story this time, the main culprit and enemy in The Beast of Glenkildove is going to be werewolves.
The Beast of Glenkildove does a lot of things right, even if it never quite reaches the pinnacle of storytelling and RPGing that Night Road did. For one, the story jumps around in time over about a ten year span from the point where the main character, a young person who lives in London, starts to spend their summer vacations in Ireland helping their eccentric aunt run a country pub and inn. It is in the hills of Ireland that the character first sees The Beast. It’s so horrific that the main character mostly blocks it out until years later when a mysterious call from an old friend draws them back to Ireland.
At that point, it’s pretty clear that the main character will develop into a hunter, one of the select few mortals who hunt monsters and the undead. However, the story is pretty open in terms of how your hunter acts and what they believe. For example, you can evolve them into a kind of peacemaker type who tries to mediate disputes and keep the humans and supernatural beings from harming one another. Or you can have the character become a more traditional hunter and learn all that you can about the monsters that stalk the night so that you can flip the tables on them and make them your prey.
The one thing you should probably not do in The Beast of Glenkildove is to try and become a jack of all trades in terms of your character’s attributes and skills. Experience points are pretty limited in this adventure, so you really need to specialize in key areas to min and max your stats as much as possible. There are quite a few very difficult skill checks in the story, especially in later chapters, and a character who does not excel at one or two things is going to have trouble finding an option that will likely pass those checks. The Beast of Glenkildove is kind of unbalanced compared with most of the other text-based VTM or World of Darkness adventures I have played. Whenever I tried to spread points out, I would get locked into a series of bad choices. Only when I specialized in a group like physical statistics did I start to breeze through the chapters with ease.
The Beast of Glenkildove is innovative beyond just the time-skipping aspects of the story and the inclusion of Irish folklore. It also introduces a new concept and mechanic called Desperation that you can tap into in some critical situations. When it’s offered in the title, you will still see several normal choices whose success or failure will be based on your character’s statistics like adding the Strength (attribute) and the Survival (skill) together. But if you don’t think you can make any of them, there might be a Desperation option too, which will be bolded. Generally, it will be something morally bad, like buying alcohol or drugs for an addict to get them to tell you what they know. While that option will offer an automatic success, it will increase the Desperation score. That in turn could give your character nightmares which will lower your stats if they become overly tired. So, it’s an interesting mechanic if you have to get a success in the story, but also a slippery slope that players should approach with extreme caution.
The story of The Beast of Glenkildove is well-told, although it gets drawn out a little bit in the middle part of the adventure, especially when your hunter is being recruited by just about every faction in the World of Darkness. You will have to listen to a lot of pitches. And because players can even work with the overtly bad factions in the title if they choose to do so, they will need to decide who to align with and who to double cross. Players can also choose to be a loner, but from what I have seen, aligning with a powerful faction has a lot of advantages and very few drawbacks, so long as you generally align with their way of thinking and methods.
There is about six hours of gameplay in The Beast of Glenkildove depending on how fast a person reads and how long they agonize over difficult choices before making a selection. And the story does end with a bang most of the time depending on what path is chosen. The epilogues were also interesting and for the most part extremely satisfying, which is sadly a rarity in adventures set in the World of Darkness.
Hunter The Reckoning: The Beast of Glenkildove is yet another strong entry in the World of Darkness universe, and it’s also a big win for Choice of Games, which stumbled a little bit with Parliament of Knives. It’s available on Steam for under $10, which is a good value if you are looking for a haunting tale to enjoy alongside some light RPGing.