With the variety so high though, Simulacra has a few issues. The story isn’t predictable or basic, throwing twists and turns at you, pulling your allegiance between characters, and making your question everything you see and who you can trust. That keeps you invested in finding out what has happened. The characters are clearly all from the MSN days, rarely sending a message with more than three words in it, but they come through quickly, ensuring you’re not sat waiting for something to think about or reply to. Thankfully, the conversations move along at a decent pace. When you get three or so reply options, they’ll each illicit different reactions, possibly impacting how the conversation goes from there. That also means you need to quickly work out how to reply to each of them. The writing is great, making the characters seem believable and developing their personalities with messaging quirks, typos, and a particular way of talking.

There’s Taylor, who is Anna quirky match, her dodgy ex-boyfriend Greg, and some others who pop up every now and again. The majority of what you’re doing is talking to a small groups of characters via text and a Tinder equivalent called Spark. None of it is even remotely taxing, but the variety keeps everything interesting. You’ll need to watch videos, unscramble pictures, find hidden messages in the equivalent tweets, and phone people. The gameplay is deeper than just selecting options though, which makes it far more engaging than other text adventures. You’re still given some freedom though, choosing text replies or tackling tasks in different orders, which impacts which ending you see. You’re led through different conversations and apps with smaller aims that work towards the larger goal of finding Anna. Characters chat with you, joining you as a detective or being an obstacle to your efforts, back ups add more clues, and time changes what you’re looking for. However, it’s not just making your way through a bank of information. Texts, dating app chat logs, emails, search history, photo albums, and social media are all there to be looked through, and each has its own selection of clues.

While, like Her Story, you still need to trawl through files and backups to get clues that help you solve a mystery, Simulacra adds horror to the mix.Ī girl named Anna has gone missing and you need to try and find her by looking through her lost phone. Games like Emily Is Away, Her Story, and A Normal Lost Phone, which tell stories through chat logs and video clips on a phone or PC, have become more and more frequent over the last few years and Simulacra is the next.

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