Ghosts In the Shell is a Puzzle / Interactive Novel game in which you, armed with only a computer terminal and a few Unix commands, solve a 300 year old mystery.
Fair Warnings:
-This is a heavily story-based and spoil-able game. Do not read the comments below until finishing it.
-This game is basically all reading. If you don't like reading, you won't like this game.
-The game favours people with Unix terminal experience. If you don't have any, try it anyway. My friend had no Unix experience until playing this game but finished it nevertheless.
Downloads and Links
Comments
Fits the theme very well, I lack experience with Unix bash but minGW filled in the gaps
lovely idea. the interface was ever slightly so clunky, but the storytelling was excellent.
Great idea, love the mix of puzzle/inovel with unix command line. Thumbs up!
Really fun interface. It reminds me the good old days playing Zork. Too bad we cannot use the TAB command (I know I'm being demanding here ^^).
All the time I wanted to press TAB and use `cat` or `less` instead of `nano`. =) Also, I experienced kinda discomfort about cursor's position and scrollbar, but it's not that important.
Gameplay idea is cool! Command line based quest - that's what they call 'ancient technology'! =) And thank you for awsome green colors.
@Yngvarr Sorry about the cursor and scrollbar. That's a bug that only seems to come up about 1 in 20 times. I don't know what causes it.
Really wonderful. I also experienced the scrollbar and cursor issues. Other than that, the story was super intriguing and great, and the name is the best one I've seen so far this LD
I love it. The first thought I had for the LD was pretty much something like this. But I ended up making a DOS-like thingy.
Finely crafted experience.
From A Linux User Before I tell u this is cool it really grabbed my interest with the different commands that most of them is real linux commands and with the relaxed and cool game play :D 5/5
Wow, this game is exceedingly well done. It contains exactly what it needs with nothing more or less and I can't find any rough edges. A clear 5/5 if I ever saw one.
Really well written entry.
If there's ever an updates version I would be curious about other endings (whatever they might be)...
I really like the kinds of stories where you have to piece together the story yourself using diary entries etc - so I enjoyed it a lot!
Amazing idea, The gameplay is really good and the story is awesome, I love the Unix terminal, overall, a great game!
That's what I call good game without any art! =) Good job on writing it. I didn't beat the game yet (stuck with teacher's password), but I like it so far.
I missed the ability to autocomplete with tab key, but I understand it's not the point of the game to emulate terminal.
Great job!
Awesome work! I too missed the ability to hit tab.
I wonder if you could actually make this on real Linux distro like arch, package up the whole filesystem and then tell the players to chroot into it? I think that would make an amazing game (I'm actually thinking about that for next LD :P)
Interesting game, fun to play, very nice work !
One small critic : I would have expected a final stage once you finished the job. To explain why someone cares about a 300 years old story. Maybe an exchange of mail with the Boss or the person paying for the job ...
Even though I understand that the time limit is short :)
A little bit anti-climactic end, but otherwise I loved it. If you would ever like to take this idea further, it would be fun to actually have to use some sort of program, say grep or pipe some programs together etc.
thats a cool idea. Too bad tabbing does not work, especially because it opens the url input in chrome instead. Had to constantly click in the game window again because I always tab when working with a CLI :-)
The game does not show up for me, just a black dot on a white background. I use Firefox on a 32 bit XP.
Really neat interface but I couldnt find the password. Still nice game!
Excellent story, good difficulty, very interesting. I've been developing ideas for a terminal-based game, and am inspired by this one! Very nice job!
Innovation: It's a cool take on a text adventure. I've seen other games in past LDs where you hack at a terminal but I don't think I've seen people take that aspect to this level.
Fun: I really enjoyed trying to work out everyone's passwords and the sequence of events. (I kept a text file with notes hah). It's a great idea that the player has to get the passwords from the story, even piecing together multiple pieces of information, to figure out a password. I find it frustrating when AAA games have sticky notes all over the place saying "Dear user we reset your password to blahblah". Your sort of system is way more interesting.
Theme: Fine take on the theme.
Graphics: Sorta N/A but it's a good looking and well implemented terminal.
Audio: N/A
Humor: Even though the story covers some serious issues you managed to squeeze some humour in there without it seeming out of place, nice job.
Mood: Fine, although maybe some sound would have added to it?
(Bonus category) Writing: Great job - the characters are believable and the story is coherent and has real substance which is hard to achieve in the time limit. (The line "ending 1/1" confused me a bit... does it mean I 100%ed it?)
Overall: A great story and a fun way to find it out!
I didn't even finish the game to understand it was an excelent entry for this LD. You used the theme in a very creative way. The game interface is also very interesting. I personally really like those kind of text games. Congratulations, it is really, really good.
PS: as others users pointed, the characters are well made, considering you only had text to give personalities to them. Congrats, again! xD
You must sign in to comment.
Mini Submission FAQ
TEAMS: Teams entering the Jam should pick a single representative to submit your game, or create a team specific account you can share. We currently do not support Team Voting, but sharing an account and together playing and rating games is acceptable.
CAN I ENTER BOTH EVENTS?: You should pick 1 event, whichever you think it’ll do better in. If the idea is strong, and everything plays well enough, you can go Compo. If you’re a perfectionist, and would prefer people to play a more polished game, do the Jam. Many solo participants enter the Jam.
If you made 2 games, unfortunately, the website doesn’t support multiple submissions per user. To submit your 2nd game, you will have to make a 2nd account. Only do this if you made 2 games. Alternatively, if one game is better than the other, then consider just entering the better game.
CAN I KEEP WORKING UNTIL THE DEADLINE?: Yes! Immediately after the 48 or 72 hours, we do something called Submission Hour. As the name suggests, it’s an extra hour for you to package, upload, and submit your games. If there were catastrophic issues trying submitting your game, or you misunderstood how submissions work, that’s okay. It happens. We’re flexible. If you need advice, check with the folks on IRC. If you need an admin, get in touch.
CAN I KEEP WORKING ON MY GAME?: Oh definitely! You should! But for the sake of judging, keep the Compo or Jam version around. You can include a link to the Post-Compo/Post-Jam version of your game on your games page, but sure your main links are the original version.
PORTS: Ports to other platforms can be done after the deadline. That said, the sooner you finish your port, the sooner people can play your game, improving your chances of placing in the final results. For best results, provide a Web version of your game, or a Windows version with no dependencies. Also be sure to rate at least 20 games to improve your visibility (Coolness).
MY GAME CRASHES, IS UNBEATABLE, OR I MADE A TYPO: We allow you to fix crashes, win condition, or tiny bugs after the deadline. In a sense, this is like “porting” to support more players. We leave this open to interpretation, but generally speaking your game should be identical to the game you submitted. No new features, just fixing mistakes you should have caught had you been better rested.
MY GAME DOESN’T SHOW UP: If you can’t find your game, it’s usually because the URL to your downloads are missing ‘http://‘. Fix your URLs (http://mysite.com/mygame.zip) and you will show up. Alternatively, if you just posted it, wait a minute. The cache may not have refreshed yet.
NOT LOGGED IN?: If you get a message about not being logged in, even though you are, it’s because your web browser cached the non-logged in page. You can fix this by either refreshing your cache or clearing your cache. CTRL+F5 in many browsers. Chrome is a bit more work. Press F12 to enable Developer Mode, then you can right click on the refresh button and select “Empty Cache and Hard Reload”. This option is unavailable if you are not in Developer Mode.
Amazing game (and also is pretty long), but might be hard for anyone who never used unix systems. Pretty good idea!