Thank you Chris Radford for providing us with a review copy!

Video games have come a long way. I was born in the golden era of gaming, with a Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) in the house and that I was capable of turning on and playing before I was fully out of diapers. In other words, I grew up after the era of Atari, DOS, and the Commodore 64. Even in my years of gaming since, I have had very little chance or desire to go back into those days of yore and experience the true grandfathers of video games. I once tried to play King's Quest for roughly 5 minutes before getting fed up and going back to whichever MMO I was hooked on at the time (it was Maple Story).

So, while I had experienced some text-heavy games before, I'd never had the full-blown text-based adventure game experience that The Forgotten Nightmare Series seeks to recapture. In modern gaming, where graphics cards seek to churn out visuals so lifelike as to mimic real life, something like this is a lost art form. My research into The Forgotten Nightmare Series trying to cross-reference release platforms and dates turned up the fact that this current iteration is actually a collection of 3 individual chapters that had been released on mobile platforms as early as 2012. Those original iterations had a very different style, though I like the look there as well. This iteration seeks to compile those three individual chapters into one game with a truly retro-inspired look and feel.

The story of The Forgotten Nightmare Series is that you play as John, a man living through the Tribulation, with the twist that you begin the game by getting into a car wreck and come to with amnesia. I'd consider the portion about the Tribulation and the Rapture spoilers, but it becomes very evident very quickly what is going on if you are familiar with either of these events. Books and movies like Left Behind as well as plenty of media, both Christian and modern parody, have portrayed the Rapture and the ensuing chaos afterwards enough times for it to be more or less a part of the zeitgeist. The amnesia more serves as the catalyst that moves John through the opening chapter and gets him embroiled with several others who had been left behind but became converts after seeing the truth of the Bible playing out before their very eyes. Each of the three chapters ends with a thorough telling of the Gospel, giving John (and thus the player) an opportunity to hear the truth of Jesus' sacrifice for sins and accept His gift for themselves.

Given that graphics are not the emphasis here, the story takes center stage and becomes the single most important aspect of the gameplay. So how does it hold up? Pretty well, all considered. The first chapter, in my opinion, is the strongest, given the nature of wandering around in an empty town with no memory, leaving the exploration very open-ended until the end. The second chapter is rather short but is also fast-paced, so it works relatively well. I think the third chapter slows down a bit, giving plenty of space to wander about but not doing as good a job of keeping the player motivated to explore it. I also didn't personally find the ending of the game very satisfying; there is some closure for John, just not for every aspect of his story in the way I would otherwise like a narrative to fully wrap up.

Now just because the graphics are simple doesn't mean there isn't an art here to them. The entire game is made to look like an old console screen, and it pulls this off fantastically. Even the little intro when loading a game shows a series of commands that make it look like it's booting it from an old drive. What's more, the player has a few options of which console color scheme they like. I personally was fine leaving it green, but there is also amber, white, and color (which just means it's not fully monochrome). There are also options to change the font style and size.

What's more, for those like me who have a hard time visualizing spacial markers in stories, the developer had the absolute brilliance to add...A MAP. Yes, it's completely hand-drawn pencil-on-paper style, and it only fills in as you explore, but I cannot tell you how much of a game changer this was for me when I found the button there several hours into the first chapter. It's a subtle quality of life improvement that makes the game far more accessible to a wider audience.

What's also impressive is how well the game is set up for either controller or keyboard input. One of the settings allows you to switch between needing to type in commands by hand or having a "command layout", where there are tabs for each type of supported command: Exits, Commands, Inventory, Items, and Doors. You can still use the Command Layout setting on keyboard, but it's basically a necessity if you want to play on controller or mobile. There are no controller layout instructions, but it's mostly a matter of using the control pad through the items on each tab and using the shoulder buttons to cycle through the command tabs.

Now if you're like me and find yourself getting stuck, thinking you've gone everywhere and tried everything, there are two options. The first is the "GET A HINT" command. Unfortunately, I found the hints to be less than helpful most of the time, stuff I knew I needed to do but not how ("If you had a wrench, you could do X." `Okay, game, but where do I find the wrench?!`). Luckily, there is also a full walkthrough embedded in the Help menu for each chapter. It doesn't spoil the story, just gives simple command-by-command instructions that will lead you to the end credits of each chapter. You can have it show every step or only the ones you haven't completed yet. I did find on one occasion that the directions given from one location to the next were actually incorrect, so that may be an issue, but I got completely stuck once on every chapter, and the walkthrough saved me each time. Two of those times were because there was a door I had simply forgotten to open. In my defense, in the Command Layout, directions are grayed out unless you can move those directions, and you can't move through a closed door. So if you're not paying close attention and there is a closed door and you don't think to try "OPEN [specific] DOOR", as you're rushing around the map, you'll never see the direction light up as a valid way to explore. It's very much the kind of thing that you'd probably only experience in this genre of game, and I am just thankful that the walkthrough was included as part of the game itself for inexperienced Millennials like me.

In terms of stability, The Forgotten Nightmare Series is mostly solid. The game crashed on me twice in the 12 hours or so that I played it, but the game auto-saves, and both times I picked up exactly where I left off. There are also a couple typos, but for a game developed by a single person with enough text to likely fill an entire novel, that's barely worth mentioning. Outside of that, the game runs just fine.

Morally, you are living in an apocalyptic time when tons of people have either been swept up off the face of the earth or died, and in a time where Christians are being rounded up and killed for their beliefs. John doesn't start the game as a Christian, but he does end up becoming friends with some, which puts him outside the law just by association. Further, for the sake of survival, you will often be asked to break into homes and closed businesses, steal items, and hide from the police. The police, for their part, murder Christians in cold blood or round them up into prison. The Antichrist also murders several Christians in a news story that is watched by John and his friends. There are also some cases of suicide, including one where John stumbles upon a corpse and has to bury it. Finally, the Antichrist and most of the remaining non-Christians are all staunchly anti-Israel, and the news shows the attempted invasion of Israel and eradication of the Jews.

The Forgotten Nightmare Series is both a love letter to old text-based games and the Gospel message. As I said, the game altogether took me roughly 12 hours, but I also missed several Easter eggs; each chapter has one, and the one I experienced was quite silly. I absolutely love how the developer managed to make a game that largely encapsulates that retro experience while also adding in enough creature comforts that make it accessible to players of any skill level as long as they're a decent reader. What's more, the game can be gotten for free on the Windows Store, Google Play, App Store, and itch.io. The game is only $2.99 on Steam, and the itch.io page has a "Name your own price" feature, if you absolutely love this style of game or just want to support a Christian game developer.

- maestro_dana