Incan Spirits and Inka Cola in Text-Based ‘To The City Of The Clouds’

It’s not really a secret that I love text-based games, and I’ve written many times about the awesome interactive fiction adventures that Choice of Games makes and publishes. Their latest is called To The City Of The Clouds, and it’s being released today.

In To The City Of The Clouds, players take on the role of a young archaeologist seeking riches, academic glory, and the lost Incan city known as La Ciudad de las Nubes in Colombia. Players will customise their characters, beyond a typical character selection of hair and eye color, players will choose their own goals and motivations, and their orientation and relationship status, ke in Choice of Games’ previous title Heroes Rise: The Prodigy.

Throughout the game, your choices determine what you’ll encounter, but the gameworld includes tropical diseases, lustful students and fellow archaeologists, academic sniping, dangerous pit vipers (obligatory Indiana Jones joke goes here), ancient Incan spirits and a guerrilla army. So far in my playthough, I’ve found a chili pepper next to my name on ratemyprofessor.com, and I later stopped for some Inka Cola. Really nice touches from writer Catherine Bailey. There are subtle jokes and references for players with an archaeological background, but there’s plenty of story and activity for those who don’t think that failing to gather a consistent volume sample or choosing an irresponsible screening mesh size are comedy gold. (They’re totally hilarious, right? It’s not just me?)

Like the other Choice Of… adventures, the game can be downloaded to play on iOS and Android devices, or just played in your browser. The game is entirely text-based.