Trials of the Thief-Taker Demo

Modern people have come to rely on the fact that those who break the law are pursued by justice, but things weren’t always like this. Hence, in the past it was much easier to get away with crimes if there weren’t any witnesses around, or if you were quick enough to escape when the authorities came after you. The police force was considerable smaller back in the day as well.

Trials of the Thief-Taker is a text-based adventure game in which you play the role of a thief-taker, namely a person who hunts criminals for the police in order to bring them to justice. The goal of the game is to let you decide everything about the plot and your character, so you can enjoy multiple playthroughs without witnessing the same events or reaching the same conclusion in the end.

As mentioned above, everything about your character is left up to you, including name, gender and sexual orientation. You can also decide on a couple of skills, although it can be a tad difficult to figure it out sometimes, given the fact that it’s presented to you in the form of tricky questions. Your ongoing exploits also affect your character’s traits, as well as how he/she is perceived by other people.

Romance is part of the equation as well, even if you can avoid it entirely if you want to focus on other things. Speaking of which, the plot is fairly malleable, which means that it’s possible to reach many different endings depending on what you say or do over the course of the story. This encourages replayability, but sometimes it feels like the other characters adapt too quickly to your ever-changing state of mind.

Granted, it’s difficult to make a truly great interactive story, because a lot of substance is lost when the plot is not constructed with a clear progression in mind. Even so, you can have a lot of fun with it if you like to control every aspect of what you are reading. On the other hand, the text-based interface might be a tad too simple for modern gamers, especially if you are used to the finer things.

Trials of the Thief-Taker is far from original or complex in terms of story, but it should be intriguing enough to keep you engaged for a few hours. The multitude of choices can convince you to go through the plot multiple times.