Explore a small country town with a twisted secret in this dark, Twin Peaks-inspired mystery text adventure that combines the best elements of classic interactive fiction, visual novels, and gamebooks.
All Reviews:
Positive (13) - 84% of the 13 user reviews for this game are positive.
Release Date:
Aug 1, 2016
Developer:

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Reviews

“This is a must play if you are a fan of the genre”
8.3/10 – Mediaman Reviews

“At its heart, Shady Brook is a story that is experienced as an interactive adventure. It is infinitely more engaging than pure reading and includes all the elements of a good novel: an interesting plot, characters you can empathize with, and a series of twists and turns that lead to an unexpected ending.”
B+ – Just Adventure

“The story is extremely well written with some completely unexpected twists and turns. The music suits the virtual environment very well and the limited graphics are very pretty as well as perfectly balanced without taking the attention away from the storyline and text based engine of Shady Brook.”
Lloyd of Gamebooks

About This Game

Relive the days of classic gaming with Shady Brook, a dark mystery text adventure inspired by the television series Twin Peaks in which players take on the role of author Jake Torrent in his search of a small town's twisted secrets.

Gameplay


Shady Brook combines the best elements of interactive fiction, visual novels, and gamebooks with a graphic user interface that emulates the look of early 1990s text adventures. It features beautiful artwork and cinematic music. In place of a text parser is a context-specific multiple choice menu. A compass allows you to travel from room to room, and separate inventory, map, journal, and character screens are available at the push of a button.

Shady Brook plays like an interactive novel. You make a series of choices that determine what happens next in the story. But unlike traditional gamebooks and choose-your-own adventures, Shady Brook also features more advanced adventure game mechanics, including locations to explore, items to collect and use, characters to meet and interact with, and puzzles to solve.

Story


Author Jake Torrent, alongside his blind father Wayne, moves to the small, peaceful country town of Shady Brook. At first, everything seems idyllic. His neighbor, Tim, is always willing to lend a hand, and the Ekan family invites him to dinner.

But soon, Jake learns that his home's previous occupant committed suicide, and mysterious things begin to occur. When another resident also commits suicide, Jake starts to suspect foul play. Could this town take part in a conspiracy to cover up a murder?

As Jake investigates, he gets more than he bargained for: a town secret so terrifying that there is no turning back...

Features

  • EXPLORE a small country town
  • INTERACT with nearly two dozen characters
  • CHOOSE your path--your actions alter the course of the story
  • PICK UP, COMBINE, and USE a multitude of inventory items
  • SOLVE a variety of challenging and unique puzzles
  • DISCOVER the town's terrifying secrets in a truly dark and mature storyline
  • ENJOY over 250 pieces of original artwork and an hour-long soundtrack
  • UNLOCK 33 achievements to view a special post-game bonus scene
  • PLAY 8+ hours of content with over 117,000 words--the text equivalent of a full-length novel!

Mature Content Description

The developers describe the content like this:

Shady Brook contains mature content, including strong language, disturbing imagery, sexual situations, and nudity. A censored mode can be activated at the start of a new game that will disable mature content, graphic visuals and text. This will not disrupt the story experience.

System Requirements

    Minimum:
    • OS *: Windows XP or later
    • Processor: Pentium 4
    • Memory: 2 MB RAM
    • Graphics: any
    • DirectX: Version 9.0
    • Storage: 120 MB available space
    • Sound Card: optional but recommended
    • Additional Notes: Native resolution: 1366x768; rescales to fill screen
* Starting January 1st, 2024, the Steam Client will only support Windows 10 and later versions.

Customer reviews for Shady Brook - A Dark Mystery Text Adventure

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