Decode.  Disarm.  Survive.

Bad day to start your new job -- Rookie on the Liberty City bomb squad.  The world's gone crazy.  Bombs are going off all over the city, and your Sergeant just informed you they are too short-handed to field a team.  Which means you're flying solo.  Better learn fast, newbie.

Countdown City features 8 puzzles of increasing difficulty.  The first interactive fiction/parser game written for the new story engine, Taleweaver++, brings the world of text adventures to a new generation.  Don't just talk with NPCs - persuade them, threaten them, console them.  No more single moves with output from a brittle parser -- talk/type with multiple moves and commands -- all the while the objects in the story obey the laws of physics and reality.  Solve a mystery in a mystery -- you are not just fighting the Freedonian separatists -- something more sinister is afoot -- can you figure it out before all of Liberty City is reduced to rubble?

Notes on the Game

-- This is the first game released written for the new AI-enabled interactive fiction parser, Taleweaver++, and each chapter highlights a new feature of the parser.

-- Warning:  lots of violence (though cartoonish -- still violence) including animal cruelty, torture, explosions, scatalogical humor.

-- If you've played interactive fiction games before, you will recognize some of these devices/puzzles.  However, the new parser enables a whole new set of interactions and games -- so enjoy some new experiences, and let us know how to make them better.

-- Warning:  the final puzzles are a bit difficult, and a couple of them are derived from Oxford/Cambridge admission exams.  So if you get all the way through... Congrats, smartie!  Consider something more relaxing next, maybe the MENSA exam.

-- The AI-parser is pinging a live server, so sometimes there is a lag.  Apologies in advance.  We are very, very interested in getting your feedback.  Our number one goal is to make this game fun.  Please help us get there.

How to Play

A note on this type of parser game:  This is not your grandfather's parser game -- we've tried to harness the full power of the latest LLM's.  Rest assured -- the story is entirely human-created -- the parser/interpreter/translator is a specially trained LLM.   

How to Play:  Just start talking or typing, depending on how you access the game.  If you are new to the genre, welcome.  You are in for a metric ton of fun.  Just start exploring the room, the objects, the other characters, etc.  And feel free to use them how you like -- pick them up, throw them, combine them, taste them -- whatever strikes you as a way to solve the puzzle.  However, sometimes the order in which you do things matters.  Proper grammar and spelling, on the other hand, rarely matter.  You are welcome to type in complete sentences -- or fragments -- or even grunts.  Just. Start. Talking.  

If you have played interactive fiction games/stories before, you will find that this new story engine, Taleweaver++, allows more freedom and unconstrained input.  Feel free to type in as many game moves as you like in a single command.  Examine six objects all at once. Use as many different verbs, nouns, and adjectives as you want.  The world should obey the laws of physics and reality, so many puzzles will have multiple solutions.  Your job is to JUST GET THE JOB DONE.  Creativity is rewarded.

In the before days, you might have needed to take 10 turns to get something done -- something like this:  "go north, open door, enter the kitchen, open drawer, open oven, examine drawer, take knife".  With TaleWeaver++, just say:  "Head to the litchen and root around to see if there's anything useful or interesting."  It'll save you a ton of typing and waiting -- and get you to the fun part:  solving the puzzle.  This is the value of no longer being limited by COBOL punch cards and shared time on Ross Perot's mainframe.  Welcome to the 21st Century, my friend!

About the AI/narrator:  The voice describing the room is simply a narrator – granted, a wise-cracking, slightly snarky narrator at times – but not an all-knowing one.  The narrator cannot give you hints, help you solve puzzles, act as a calculator or translator, or generally give you advice on how to advance your romantic life, extract meaning from Plutarch's scribbles, or even reliably help you tie your shoes.  If you are looking for pleasant conversations, please feel free to engage the other characters in the story – they will have much to tell you, if you can persuade them."

The Artwork On This Page

100% AI-generated -- we used OpenAI 4o.   That's probably why the wirecutters don't look like they close.  Spent forever trying to fix that -- did not succeed.