For an explanation, skip to page 3 and 4.
Here’s a funny thing. ‘Trials of The Outsider’ does not appear to
exist. Games do not just disappear. This is actually unnerves me a little. I’ve even asked around, but nobody knows what I’m talking about. Anyway, I’ve decided to do a Let’s Play to see if there’s anyone out there on the web who knows what it is, since I haven’t asked around on this forum. Hopefully this’ll jolt your memory. Or perhaps this game has faded into obscurity so much it really has just disappeared.
So!
Trials of The Outsider came out… I actually don’t know. To be honest, I don’t know much about this game. I just found it in program files about a week ago. Which is weird, because it’s definitely a game and my laptop has been re-imaged so many times it’s not the same laptop. It even had its hard drive replaced once. But I found it, played through a bit and it was okay. So I moved it to my documents for easy access, as you do. But that doesn't matter. Here’s the really weird thing:
Correct me if I’m wrong but it needs more than that to run, right? I’ll be honest with you, I haven’t been thinking much about this and right now, I’m a little creeped out. But however it works, it does. So I’m going to play it.
In case you're wondering, I changed it to a .txt file to see if there was anything there that might explain it. No joy. Quite frankly I don't know why I did it.
There’s no intro movie. The game starts automatically.
Our protagonist awakes. His name is never given. He is only ever referred to as ‘The Outsider’. For those of you who aren’t fanatical followers of ascii (and what the hell is wrong with you?), he’s the @ symbol. Common enough.
Sorry for the wonky editing. I'm trying to make the pictures look clean
Let’s have a look around then. The text parser accepts 'l'
Our protagonist, ladies and gentlemen. Speaking of which, let’s get a look at him.
Yep, our protagonist is something of a Tabula Rasa. Something for me to project my image onto when I’m playing, which is probably what the developers intended. I quite like it. There are only two things that we can be certain about with The Outsider. That he’s a man,
And that. Ominous. Asking about it gets us the exact same line so we won’t bother.
Well, okay mysterious stranger. Let’s get-a going. You move using the directional pad, and everything else is controlled by the text parser except for space, which pauses the game when you press it unless you're typing something, when it works as a spacebar.Incidentally, during my first playthrough, wherein I played for fifteen minutes and got called away, I got sick of typing examine so I typed in ‘autoexamine on’ and it worked, funnily enough. It means every time you near an object it displays what the object’s name is and what direction it’s in. I’d say it inspired Dwarf Fortress, but a) this game doesn’t appear to really exist (or something. I’m trying not to think about it) and b) that’d be blasphemy. It starts turned off, and I’ll leave it that way for now. Anyway, out we go.
Outside we have grass, a forest, and a lake. The colors dictate the shallowness, presumably. I haven’t been swimming. The lake appears to be calm anyway. It’s not moving. But hang on, who was doing the talking? Are they around the other side of the house?
What are they hiding in the forest or something? Where is that voice coming from?
JESUS FUCK
Original. In case you’re wondering, this seems to be a cutscene. I can’t move, and that little down arrow thing doesn’t appear, the words just change after a period of time. Seems pointless but there you go.
And it was all a dream. Wonderful. Anyway, that’s the start of Trials of The Outsider. This will continue until I’ve beaten the game. I’ve only played a little after that point, so we’ll be figuring it out together. Give me suggestions on what to do next, as this seems to be a text adventure. I’ll go with what I feel is best, including my own choice in case you all ask me things along the lines of ‘eat a bookcase’.
Let’s see where this goes.
Author
Topic: Trials of The Outsider (Read 5964 times)