Echo Bazaar is addictive...

[dragoness_e]

Now I see why certain acquaintances are so fond of this game. Echo Bazaar is addictive, if you have a taste for gothic, indeed Lovecraftian, Victoriana, and many of us do. Think of it as a choose-your-own-adventure game set in a fantastic 19th century London that's fallen into the Underdark.

It's a web-browser game that uses either your Twitter account or your Facebook account for login services. I don't have a Facebook account--no real use for one, and I don't like attaching my Real Life info to a public social network--but Twitter turns out to be happily unconcerned with my anonymity or lack thereof. It's also very easy to set up an account--all you need is an e-mail address that works and the ability to imagine a suitable username/password pair. So now I have a Twitter feed--though about all I use it for is Echo Bazaar snippets.

EB keeps you from racing through the content by restricting your actions per day and per hour; it's a turn-based game, and without turns ("actions" in EB parlance), about all you can do is look at your options for what you could do if you had spare actions, and trade in the Bazaar. This does somewhat ameliorate the common MMORPG problem of players "beating the game" (i.e., experiencing all the content) in hours or days, getting bored, and quitting or worse, trolling/griefing other players for lulz.

So far, it's fascinating, and there is some opportunity for social interaction with other players, though most of the action is solo vs. the world. Or something like that.

Comments

[seawasp]

I've tried a few of these games and the interest mostly escapes me. I either want big-scale production values, or real roleplaying, and these games give me neither, for the most part. (Ideally, I'd like real roleplaying AND big-scale production values, but that's currently beyond the state of the technology)

[dragoness-e.livejournal.com]

I also play two full-grown MMORPGs, Everquest (original) and Dark Age of Camelot, albiet casually.

Web games like Echo Bazaar and Pony Island attract me precisely because they don't require the time investment of a game like Evercrack.

[seawasp]

Hm. For me, the MMORPGs are worse than the others; all the disadvantages of computer RPGs AND of playing real RPGs with people you don't know rolled up into one. They do have some pretty graphics, but no better than the FF series -- and those I don't have to deal with some teenage lusers with nothing better to do than wait around to whack a newbie.