What's this all about?

I'm a guy with way too many interests and way too much time on my hands. A while back I realized that I spend a lot of my time just telling people I know about the various media I consume, so I just figured what the hell, let's just lay it all out. On here, you'll see my reviews of video games, films, books, tv shows, and more, but I've also decided to upload my hobbies here as well because why not?

Ord.: Telling a Story, Three Words at a Time

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Not sure what I expected there, guess I won't go down that path now.

Ord. is a choose-your-own-adventure game with a twist. Instead of choosing myriad options and going on a vast adventure, Ord.'s stories are told in single words, three to be exact. It's quite a novel way to tell a story, and a great way to exercise your imagination through the simplicity of the details given.

So far there are four stories/adventures to go on: "Adventure", "World", "Dimensions", and "Foul Things". Each of these are pretty different from each other, though "Foul Things" and "Adventure" each seem to take place in some sort of fantasy/modern world. Each has an element of tongue-in-cheek and absurdist charm, which can most certainly ease the blow from having to restart after being killed by mutant rats. You'll die a fair deal playing this game, which can be frustrating due to the punishing lack of any margin of error and forced restart. If there was one thing I wish there was in this game, I wish that there was a way to see if there were any paths I missed, as that's the big draw of CYA's. In terms of audio and visual aesthetic, Ord. adopts a less-is-more approach in regards to its presentation, letting the player's imagination fill in most of the canvas themselves. It's definitely something I haven't seen in a game before, and it works quite well, especially paired with the few 'scene shifts', meaning a mild visual effect, like some rain and changing the color of the text to represent change in location. There's really not much else to say about this Ord. besides this, it could do with a bit more content, and I'd like to see some sort of story creator (since there's definitely merit to the simple gameplay), but for what it is it's a great novel game.

Ord. isn't the most deep game, and it is truthfully basic in the most basic sense, but I believe that's what the studio was going for when they made Ord. Stories told three words at a time, Ord. does what it says on the can, does a game really need to be more than that? It's also quite cheap (three bucks normally and two on sale) and very small, with an extremely fast boot-up and play time, making it a great game for a quick bit of choice-based gameplay.

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