Z-Machine Matter

I'll admit, I'm a bit of a sucker for old-school Interactive Fiction.  So I went ahead and bought what looks like a great retro cyberpunk noir game called Cypher by the Cabrera Brothers, two enthusiastic gamers from Buenos Aires, Argentina.  I'm not sure when I'm going to have time to play it since I'm already behind a backlog of work, games and real life.  But I thought the web site and game feelies looked so cool, I just had to support their efforts.  Also, it was on sale.

Here's a video the good brothers put together.  

Cypher appears to go beyond the classic Inform-style all-text layout to provide a split screen approach with graphics and sounds that add to the atmosphere.  Some of the press reviews look pretty good, but there's been a lot of questions raised about the grammar and limited capabilities of the homegrown parser.  Lets hope it's not a triumph of style over substance and they put some more polish in those areas with additional updates.  

• Cebrera Brothers: Cypher, News, IndieLife blog, Facebook
• Reviews: The Verge, Games Are Evil, Penny Arcade, Adventure Gamers, Rock Paper Shotgun
• Intfiction forum: Cypher - Cyberpunk text adventure thread