The ORPHEUS Ruse Demo

Every child dreams of superpowers and special abilities, because at that age, being able to shoot lasers from your eyes is a lot more important than money, fame, or anything else. Comic books cash in on this by providing the said children with thousands of stories featuring exceptional heroes, not to mention the video games that practically give you the freedom to unleash hell in a virtual environment.

The ORPHEUS Ruse is a text-based role-playing game in which you can decide how the story progresses and how your character reacts to what’s happening around him. Almost every scene has a multitude of outcomes that depend on your personal approach, which means that you can replay the game a couple of times and experience entirely different events. However, you’ll have to do so without any kind of graphics or sound effects.

The main story puts you in the role of a spy with special powers, who can jump from one body to the other and thus disguise himself to get past security checks. You have to use this ability to infiltrate organizations and find out their secrets, although there is obviously more to it than that. Naturally, everything from the name, genre and sexual orientation of the character is left up to you.

The game keeps track of your choices and decisions, and they usually affect a lot of things in the long run. Whether you are deadly, discrete or sociable, your stats influence the way people around look at you, and obviously the plot. It can be difficult to know what choice affects one stat or the other, but you can always check on them and see your current progress.

As mentioned before, the game lacks any kind of visual artwork and sound, which means that your imagination is the one that must render every bit of the story. This might sound boring to some people, but once you give the gimmick a try and see just how vivid the mental images can be, you’ll quickly get used to it. It is always possible to play your own music in the background if it helps.

Even if The ORPHEUS Ruse might not appeal to everyone, the experience it offers is definitely special and worth the effort. Thus, if you are not afraid to do a bit of reading, this can be a great way to kick back and relax for a few hours.