Acolyte

This would be a fun, immersive little ARG, if not for one thing... After only 18 months (at the time of my writing this), the game is already starting to show its age. It relies on some fictional accounts buried in Twitter. But now, since the platform's transition to X, I had to create a throwaway account just to get in and grab the data I needed to continue. At some point, you need to unzip password protected files buried in the installation folders and move some things around, but you get Windows 11 error messages now, when you try to do that. The elements that rely on Google's services still work (so far) but that company is notorious for sun-setting its product offerings, so... I hit about the 50% progress point when this started to feel more like a helpdesk job than a game. It was unfortunate, because those first few hours were really fun. This isn't a dig against the hardworking folks at Superstring. If an "Acolyte 2.0" ever materializes, I'll totally be down to check it out. Hopefully they'll apply some lessons-learned and avoid relying on 3rd-party platforms belonging to fickle billionaires and future-proof against OS security updates.

[table][th] Review by [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/34633003-Gaming-Masterpieces/lists/] Gaming Masterpieces [/url] - The greatest games of all time on Steam. [/th][/table] Is this game a masterpiece? No, but it is fun and quite unique. As a new QA tester for a (tiny but very powerful) hightech company you are assigned to test a revolutionary new AI (called an Acolyte) to help to get it ready for the mass market. The AI is kind of an advanced Alexa/Cortana/Siri personal assistant. She's even often called Cortana in the game - guess they changed that later because the devs are afraid of Microsoft? You chat with her like with a chat-bot. Quite funny, reminds me of playing text adventures 40 years ago. Of course, the result is the same as 40 years ago - the AI often doesn't understand you. Could you please rephrase that? You receive testing tasks via e-mail. You have to report bugs, or a strange behavior of the AI... which of course happens rather soon. Maybe the creation of the new AI was a bit troubled... even more than most IT projects are. You need to find out what happened during development (or to some former developers). The game plays on a screen the size of a mobile phone. When you ask the AI to send you the manual, you receive a dropbox link to the manual - which you can download on your real computer. I haven't seen such a mix of an adventure game with real-life internet for a long time. You receive information in the game which you can work on using your real computer, like deciphering binary code... quite interesting. The solution to jailbreak the app took me some time to think about it... a really cool puzzle. You need to Google-search for topics from the game and you will find real websites... like the website of the hightech company, articles about it, social network pages of the employees, youtube videos - let's hope the pages will stay online for some time, or the game becomes unplayable. [u][b] Conclusion:[/b][/u] Dystopian detective game where you are required to access your PC and (fake webpages in) the real internet.

The game is advertised as including ARG, but it's all incredibly unintuitive. The game does not help you very much in how or what to find the ARG information. It's fine at first, like googling articles or looking at the company's fake website, but then you have to do things like look at a website's source code, which the game does not inform you of in any way. Just to progress at all, I had to rely entirely on a walkthrough. At one point, I had to take an image from the game's folder and upload it to a website (which I also only found through the walkthrough) to get its metadata. Except the metadata didn't include any location information. There was also a frustrating part with decoding an email that required another website. And again, the ONLY way I progressed was through the walkthrough. I really wanted to like this game because it has some great ideas. Presenting it in a smart phone sized window is clever. But the ARG aspect of the game is far too frustrating to progress without a walkthrough. I refunded this game before the 2 hours was up.

I've played the Prologue and now that the game is discounted in the Autumn Sale, I thought I'd buy the whole game. However, it appears to be quite outdated, using links to Twitter instead of X which don't work, and using websites impossible to find because of the new algorythms. My biggest issue was, after viewing a guide written by🍒 Lilly (🌸◠‿◠), I was unable to use the password on the hidden caches. Therefore my game stranded and I couldn't continue without skipping steps of the story. However, I already cheated by looking at the spoilers, and I refuse to finish a game by simply using a guide. Right now, I wouldn't consider buying this game even if it's on discount.

confusing arg mechanics and not updated for the change in twitter last i checked. i had to look up a guide bc i had no idea when the arg elements were coming into play, and when i found them i was either baffled by their relevance or meaning, or it was a DUH moment where i didnt need arg to tell me what i should have been allowed to guess. inside the game itself im confused on how to interact with the character/s bc nothing seems to please her? and the messages are just.... sigh ngl i got irritated af and will not be finishing this game. its pretty well made but its more work than i bargained for. i hate to do this to small devs but it just really wasnt the game for me.

Meh. I refunded this, The options in game are terrible. Can't even change text size. And it's not clear from the store page that the game runs in a small vertical window. The idea for this game is incredibly attractive but I have to pass.

[code]For other game reviews, please [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/40640212/]follow us at What The Game?[/url][/code] At its heart, Acolyte is a game that offers a deep, dark, and mature mystery at a reasonable price. That comes with a couple caveats, however. Two of the bigger selling points for the game are the AI chatbot client that runs the game, and the ARG aspects, and those are really what I'm going to focus on. I'll get the simple stuff out of the way first – the graphics in-game for the AI client are very nice, and give a good amount of emotion and character. There's an ambient soundtrack which serves its purpose perfectly well. But the AI is..not always the best. Their store page emphasizes how you're using an actual chatbot with natural language processing, but she often won't understand very basic phrases or words, like “maybe”. For all the talk of “you can have a natural conversation”, I regularly had to use simple sentences and rather stilted language to get her to understand. The game paints her as your “partner” in the investigation, yet her participation is wildly inconsistent. Sometimes she clearly is waiting on you to utter a key phrase (which you can do without trying to be conversational) before unlocking her canned dialogue/lore dump on the topic. Once she has something to say, however, she will literally ignore whatever you say while she makes a multi-post rant. Afterward, she'll respond to what you said, usually in confusion because she thinks you're responding to the last thing she said. (You weren't, you were commenting on something prior to it, but she doesn't understand you.) On occasion, she'll respond essentially with nonsense – contextually, it makes zero sense in response to ANYTHING you've said, because some aspect triggered a canned response. In short, it's JUST like dealing with the majority of chatbots online. In this case, though, it breaks the immersion because (obvious, but minor spoiler) she's supposed to be very advanced. (For reference, I actually have dealt with much better AI bots online. This feels much more akin to a customer service bot.) There's a gameplay hook as to why you need to use specific phrases, but the execution often feels (somewhat ironically) artificial. At no point did I feel like I was dealing with actual intelligence, artificial or otherwise, and though I understand the reality (this is a game, this tech doesn't exist) it kind of breaks the immersion. You really have to work to suspend your disbelief here, as the game is telling you “This is amazing. You need to be shocked,” and I personally didn't ever feel that level of connection to the world, Ana, or the narrative. The ARG aspects are really just concerned with you going to websites to process clues and a handful of fake websites/social media profiles to find other clues. I understand the desire to increase immersion, and overall, it works, but I feel like this story could have been told completely within the game and everything would have worked just fine, and nothing from the story would have lost impact at all. We all know this is a work of fiction. It's worth noting that if you're not deeply familiar with more complex puzzles, like cyphers, etc, this may not be the game for you. They're not lying when they say you need to think outside of the box. All that being said, however, this game is an earnest, solid effort that I will recommend. The price is reasonable, and the game itself is generally well-written and coherent. Even at full price, it's a low-risk venture. Just be aware that your mileage may vary, and if you're not familiar with puzzle/mystery games, you might not see it through to its conclusion without a walkthrough (either due to skill or lack of interest).

Ever heard of Bot Colony? Same level of AI comprehension. There are free AI bots with more brains and free TTS that sound more natural.

Acolyte is a mobile-assistant themed investigative game. Your interactions are primarily through a AI Chatbot-esque setup. With the most recent update the Acolyte is entirely voiced by way of a text to speech engine. Strong suggestion: ask your Acolyte for the user manual. Pros: -Interesting if a bit tropey story. The twists are fairly easy to guess. -Game concept is somewhat unique. -Game makes you think and observe closely if you want to progress successfully. -Art, SE and music are unoffensive and support the game's story. -Some optional secrets to uncover leading to Acolyte cosmetics which in turn lead to achievements. Cons: -Dependency on external sites and file repositories is immersive yet could lead to issues in the future if the files were no longer present, or referenced sites were unavailable, necessitating game patching (or, of course, the use of a guide). -Opening some files may require programs (free or not) that someone doesn't have currently (low risk though). -Chatbot interface is as annoying as any other chatbot interface, at least in terms of getting it to reply with something normal-sounding, unless you manage to use the correct keywords. -Changing and following lines of inquiry can be troublesome especially if the Acolyte is already stuck in a scripted section. Occasionally you have to repeat yourself. -Text-to-speech engine adds a layer of immersion, but like any text-to-speech engine, it is absolutely not perfect. In a way, it can break the immersion, because that's really not what you'd expect from an AI partner assistant that's supposed to be the new hotness and breakout product for a corporation. Warnings: Not as casual as the art style might lead some to believe. Requires some critical thinking as well as basic knowledge in file navigation (example, using a file manager) for example. Low point of entry, but perhaps frustrating to the average casual gamer. Subjective: Replayability is low if you remember the story and potentially annoying if you keep being stumped by the text interface (i.e. finding the keywords to make it respond with what you want). However, to get all the achievements, the game has to be played through at least twice as the final "good" endings branch near the end for two achievements. General Observations: Interesting game, somewhat short game. Potentially annoying interface on occasion. Reasonably priced. Makes you think. Potential issues in the future stemming from numerous external references, but they're also somewhat easily addressed if need be with future updates. New game, so unlikely that such a thing will happen in the near future.

while the concept behind this game is very good it is difficult to play as it requires a moderate degree of technological ability outside of the game. Also, asking questions and interacting with ANA need to be done in a particular way to be recognised which made [spoiler]sharing clues and completing the investigation routes tedious.[/spoiler]