Paranoid

Maybe you'll also think that nineties graphics hold up pretty well if you don't have to stare at pixelated faces second after second. Paranoid is a text adventure with minimal graphics that takes you on a journey through the grimy station of some space vessel. Whether you're an astronaut or an alien isn't really that important — what matters is mastering the onboard systems and gradually figuring out what actually happened here.

It plays the classic way: you type a command, the game gives you an answer. Exploring locations, collecting items, combining them and using them — that's the recipe that made adventure games in the nineties without exception. The parser has to understand what you want from it, so you often waste time with precise wording. It's not Monkey Island with its easy icon controls, but it's also not psychotically difficult like some Sierra classics. The game guides you gradually, so you're not completely lost.

The graphics are segmented, sometimes rather schematic — colors, simple shapes, occasionally some ascii art. But that doesn't hurt gameplay in any way, quite the opposite actually. The atmosphere is created mainly by text and sound design. Back in the nineties, computers would tremble under the strain when the game would take them for a spin through a text tavern, and Paranoid keeps that tradition alive.

What's aged a bit from today's perspective: the parser sometimes doesn't satisfy, guess what vocabulary the authors came up with. Solving adventure puzzles isn't a problem, but being frustrated because the game doesn't know what you mean by "take water" or "open door" — that hurts. The game does give you hints, but still sometimes you feel like you're communicating in a foreign language.

Paranoid is a blast from the past, when adventures were played exactly like this — without friendly graphic menus, without hand-holding. It's an experiment with atmosphere that works, even though it doesn't play easily today. If you have a heart for text stories and the nerves to hit the parser's wall of incomprehension a few times, you've got something to spend some time on here.