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Let Tom Francis tell you all what it's like, being male, middle-class and white.
 

 

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GalCiv 2 War Diary
The saga of my race of impolitic space-rabbits in a twenty-day game against eleven genius artificial intelligence races.
Masq
My introduction to the deceptively simple Flash adventure about sex, lies, corruption and fashion.
 

 

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Masq

 
 

I’d maximised my bonuses and minimised my damage, and by my newly invented Man Metric, I’d won. “Oh!” Susan groaned. I felt empty.

Nikki

My tale of betrayal, lust, exploitation and character portrayal in the fifth dimension is up, and it’s about a freeware Flash game.

What I don’t mention in my discussion of its lofty artistic accomplishments is that Masq is incredibly accessible, fun and addictive. Everyone I told about it wanted to play it, and everyone who played it loved it - to the extent that there’s an “I’m addicted to Masq” group on Facebook and I didn’t create it. If you’re convinced but haven’t read the piece yet, play the game first and read my waffle later.

Bonus points if you can solve the murder on your first time through, and special bonus points if you can get yourself arrested for it.

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roBurky: I remember playing this ages ago. I ended up really disliking it because of its limitations. While there are a lot of possible endings, some of the plot is railroaded. I had no idea what was going on when that guy from work kept driving me to the bad guy's house halfway through, because my first few tries I wasn't reacting the way the game was expecting me to and it lost all sense of logical continuity in order to carry on with its essential scenes.

The_B: I can't seem to play this since upgrading my computer. I keep getting the list error thing, where the web site says the solution is to have more memory. I have 2GB, and more than 100GB HDD space, so it's not that... :(

The_B: Hurrah. It's working again, although I literally didn't change anything. Perhaps a restart of the computer was all that was required, but other than that I have no idea why.

Iain: I've been playing it all night, and it's really good. On my last play through I managed to sleep with both Nikki and Susan. \o/

I haven't solved the murder of Carlos yet, though.

Jason L: Darn, another of my Big Cool Game Ideas implemented before I can never learn to create computer stuff - although in my algorithmic text adventure the recurring characters were going to be in a variety of stories, and as iterations accumulated the constancy of the characters would begin serving clues.

So on the other hand, yay, a game I wanted to see made got made. Here's hoping it spawns a genre.

Iain: (Warning: Spoilers ahead!)

I've been playing this all week now, and I've managed to find out who killed Carlos, I've been shot by Williams, shot by Nikki, thrown in jail, had Susan get abducted, had Susan leave me, had Peter get killed by Williams and been framed for the murder, and lots, lots more.

The level of intricacy in the multi-branching is amazing - and there are still at least five endings shown in the "Scenes you may have missed" that I've not found how to get to yet: Nikki tied up in the MASQ costume, Susan punching Williams in the face, ending up with Nikki and Andrew on the beach and getting confronted by the police when Williams tries to have Capricho killed at the show...

Any ideas on how to get the beach ending? I really struggling with that one.

 		 
 

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