Machinations: Fog of War Demo

Being an assassin is not a very easy job, especially when you consider the fact that you are operating outside the law and every workday is potentially the day you get caught and spent many decades in prison. However, back in the day assassins were used by emperors and powerful people without worrying about repercussions.

Machinations: Fog of War is a text-based role-playing game that takes place in an alternate universe in which sentient androids were invented around the time of the muskets and the occasional sword fight. Not only that, but these androids are actually machines to operate in complete secrecy and act as assassins, which makes them very feared amongst those who have reasons to worry about enemies.

The story puts you in the role of such an android, and your task is to navigate dialog trees and choose the desired path for your character. You can choose to remain loyal to your master and obey his commands, or you can choose a more selfish path and do everything in order to achieve the goals you personally decide for your character. Granted, the story is a tad too convoluted to make too much sense in the beginning, but it gets better if you play it at least twice.

Although it’s nice to have what to choose from, sometimes too much can be a bad thing as well. In this case, you are confronted with too many choices from the beginning, which is especially confusing when you are not familiar with the story yet, or how your actions affect the future. Granted, this not a problem if you decide to give it a second playthrough, but very few people might have the patience to do that.

As always, there are no graphics to distract you from the action, although maybe it would have been better to look at a piece of artwork every now and again than to try and understand the story. The lack of graphics is obviously not a major issue, especially if you enjoy reading, but that’s usually the case if the story itself is worth reading, which is this case is questionable.

All things considered, Machinations: Fog of War is not the best CYOA game out there, but at least it’s different and it tries to surprise you in other ways. Thus, if you are ready to make some concessions in regards to quality, the game can still keep you busy and entertained for a few hours.