It is finally here, the next step in artificial intelligence, and it wants to hang out with you!
Coming from the developers at Not a Sailor Studios (and self-published) and currently scheduled for a December 10th release on the Steam platform, Buddy Simulator 1984 invokes the magical era of yesteryear when being a computer nerd meant you were on the bleeding edge of technology, kids believed they could be anything, and Bill Cosby was a national treasure.
The title invokes a bit of Pony Island in all of its glory, exhibiting a positive exterior that absolutely does not have creepy vibes hanging under its glossy sheen of happiness and pleasantries.
Everything is fine.
We’re just going to be having a jolly time with an AI, and that never turns out badly.
The gameplay trailer that released today for Buddy Simulator 1984 is definitely invoking creepy vibes that continue to escalate throughout the video, never totally removing its external projection of happiness, yet as it continues it becomes clear that something is absolutely going awry within the program that is just desperate to play with you.
From text adventures to Rock, Paper, Scissors, the title appears to culminate in a retro-aesthetic that hearkens to ASCII interfaces that were all the rage as the player becomes intertwined with the AI on a deeper level.
There’s even a demo for you to peek around within on Steam, and it absolutely slaps every step of the way as you and the AI begin to explore each other; the title gradually opens up further and further while managing to offer more than a few moments of goosebumps and oddities that will sink its hook deep into your flesh, making you count down the moments until the full title finally arrives.
A fascinating ability, considering that the medium for storytelling starts off greatly limited with simple text; veterans of text-based games, however, know that there is far more to text-adventures than meet the eye, and it opens into a title with a GUI relatively quickly; the text never feels like a barrier to entry into the actual meat of the game that ultimately surrounds a dance with AI.
It’s spicy and unique, if readily recalling other titles that have tread in the bizarre horror genre before, and it sinks its teeth into you before you have even realized that the exploration of this virtual world relies on you, as much as you rely on it. All that’s needed is a simple command: ‘buddy.system_access = true’.