I would spend hours playing The Oregon Trail with DOSBox in 2011. I'd often play to my own mix of music only consisting of Sufjan Steven's The Tallest Man, the Broadest Shoulders, and The Go! Team's Yosemite Theme. Once I felt I mastered the rhythms of The Oregon Trail, the move to the sequels and similar games like Cross Country Canada didn't reach the same height. Years later, when I discovered 80 Days, I felt like I'd found the game I'd wanted back in 2011.

80 Days is brilliant; it's so simple but so well executed. It has a nice learning curve where you won't get stuck seeing the same parts multiple times, and it always feels like there's more to see or a different path you can take. A nice feature is that game doesn't end if you don't make it finish in eighty days, so unsuccessful playthroughs don't feel like a waste of time. I don't know what it is about games where you mostly look at a map, but they always deliver.

I never really thought about my games of the decade at the end of the 2010s, but 80 Days is definitely one.

This review was adapted from one I published on Steam in 2018.

"I See That It Is By No Means Useless To Travel, If A Man Wants To See Something New"

80 Days is a fantastic adventure game that provides a compelling narrative, descriptive and detailed environments, and simple yet engaging gameplay. Up to this point I haven't given this game the praise that it deserves, so with this review I will hopefully convince anyone reading to try out and (likely) enjoy this title.

In 80 Days , you play as Jean Passepartout, a servant to a certain Monsieur Phileas Fogg who has taken up a wager to travel across the entire globe within 80 days. Based off of the famous novel by Jules Verne, this game explores a 19th century world filled with bustling cities, wondrous mechanical achievements, and a diversity of both ample allies and fierce foes. Nearly every city imaginable is included in this world, with a great amount of description and depth to go along with them - all of which having a personality of their own. When a text-based adventure can allow you to imagine its locations in such grandiose ways, it has achieved something spectacular!

Gameplay is a simple, yet satisfying affair. You must manage your funds, luggage, and your own masters' health as you discover a route around the world. Your journey may take you into the harsh colds of Prussia, across the harrowing depths of the Pacific Ocean, or through the bustling, dangerous streets of Hong Kong. There are many methods of travel, all of which provide unique stories and outcomes. One second you may be traveling on a mechanical bird (a la Bioshock Infinite ), and in others you could be speeding through the Midwestern United States on a locomotive avoiding the likes of the notorious train robber Jesse James. Each playthrough provides a new tale of wonder and exploration across an incredibly diverse and rich world, and their is a small yet effective random seed generator that switches up aspects of the journey.

Everything including timing, money, health, and relations with multiple characters can affect your journey. Do you bribe a train conductor to leave a few days early for nearly all of your funds? Do you leap from a horse-driven carriage in hopes of avoiding a pirate-led aircraft in full pursuit? Do you clean Monsieur Fogg's shoes?! All of these decisions can greatly impact your journey, and all play a part in crafting a spectacular homage to book that sounds more and more appealing to me with each subsequent playthrough of this title.

The art is good, although I would have preferred a bit more detail in the characters you come across. However, the machines and cities you venture to, while only given a few drawings in the background, are something else entirely. The visions of a conquered, war-torn Paris, a highly technologically advanced Stockholm, and a newly populated and gritty San Francisco all provide environments that can tell a story of their own, much like their real-life counterparts. This makes the world believable, yet doesn't ground itself too harshly in the reality we have come to know.

All in all, if you are looking for a grand adventure across a 19th century world filled with ruthless rogues, mechanical camels, and some of the finest attention to detail ever poured into a text-based adventure game, you would be doing yourself a disservice if you didn't pick up 80 Days . It is easy to pick up and play for a few minutes or a few hours, and each playthrough is different as long as you choose it to be as such. I highly Recommend this title as it provides enough intrigue, variability, and charm to last hours upon hours.

Final Verdict: 8/10 (Great)

I write this journal having finished my run in the 80 Days in 80 Days race that I organized. It took me 68 days, both in the real world and in the game. This experience, and watching so many people go through it with me, has given me a new appreciation for both the successes and the failings of this game.

Plunging several dozen people into it, many of whom had never played before, with other peoples' routes to compare themselves to has thrown into relief just how frustrating the 80 Days' foibles can be. There are a number of UI issues that create pure misery, especially in the context of a game with a constantly-ticking clock. Why is it to hard to tell that you can often purchase extra luggage? Why does clicking on the background boot you from the market? Why does the game allow you to pay good money to accelerate a departure you can't afford anyway?

Despite all of this, I'm still convinced this is a masterpiece. These are ultimately quibbles—they undeniably suck for first-time players, but they're easy enough to learn to avoid. The other thing this race has taught me is just how much variety is packed into the game. I've kept a map of everyone's routes, and it's crisscrossed all over the place. Every player took a unique route and had a unique experience, even on the same starting seed. It's a delight to see, and I wish there was any other game like it.

Det her er et digitalt story-board game! Kan og bør spilles af folk, der ikke er største fans af spil generelt men er vild med interaktive fortællinger. Det er indbegrebet af "interaktiv tekst" og done right. (At vi kalder det spil er blot en dækkende medieteknologi-betegnelse, I think. "Spillet" bliver trods alt solgt i digitale spilbutikker på lige fod med spil-spil.)

Du kan gennemføre det på en aften. Du kan genspille det og plotte en ny vej omkring jorden, hvilket leder til nye fortællinger undervejs. Hvis du gennemfører spillet én, så åbner du op for nye passager rundt om jorden.

Virkelig, virkelig imponerende og fint spil. Referencen er jo til en anden bog fra en anden tid. Men spillet leger med sin verden og dens teknologiske fremskridt og momentum og gør det til sit eget. Find ud af hvem Passerpartout og Monsieur Fogg kan være!

En af de bedste gennemspilninger så mig forsøge at krydse Nordpolen. I did not anticipate what happened next!

Skrev også mindre opgave om den her på Uni. Spillet fremstiller "tid" på en ret interessant narratologisk måde, idet det både forsøger at være tekst (altså rumliggjort tidsfremstilling) og virtuel verden (faktisk kvantificeret tid med ur der tikker) på forskellige tidspunkter.

Se eu tivesse que descrever 80 Days em uma palavra, a palavra seria "subversivo". Felizmente não sou limitado a usar apenas uma palavra para descrevê-lo!

80 Days subverte Jules Verne de duas formas. Primeiro, e de forma mais óbvia, há a pegada steampunk que o estúdio inkle dá a história. Esses elementos steampunk se integram perfeitamente à obra original, que tem um grande foco nas movas formas de transporte da época e o alcance global do império britânico. Se coisas como ferrovias e barcos à vapor não impressionam tanto os leitores modernos como faziam em para os do século XIX, com a abordagem steampunk a sensação de deslumbramento é resgatada — descobrir que formas intrigantes de transporte vamos encontrar pela frente, sejam camelos mecânicos ou cidades flutuantes, é uma das partes mais prazerosas do game.

A segunda forma de subversão é como o texto colonialista e imperialista do original ganha aqui um subtexto anti-colonial. Essa subversão é profunda, já que não se limita ao autor. É uma desconstrução do próprio gênero de literatura de viagens do original e do steampunk da nova obra. Esses dois gêneros são quase que inerentemente coloniais e imperialistas: o primeiro fruto da era das Grandes Navegações e apresentando ao público europeu um mundo novo selvagem e exótico; e o segundo fundando-se numa extensão fantástica da primeira revolução industrial. Mas esses gêneros não precisam ser assim, e a roteirista Meg Jayanth consegue brilhantemente inverter essa epistemologia. Viajar é uma forma de conhecer novos lugares, aprender sobre novas culturas e, ao final da jornada, mudar a si mesmo. E nesse mundo steampunk em que você viaja e descobre, a fantasia é usada não para repetir no imaginário as estruturas de dominação da realidade, mas para imaginar caminhos não seguidos por aqueles que bravamente resistiram a dominação. Isso sim é botar o punk em steampunk.

80 Days binds the fantastic to the mundane. Repack your suitcase too slowly and you’ll miss that once-a-week train to a city full of robots and riot. Big choices or small, great interactive fiction doesn’t discriminate.

You encounter wonderfully diverse – and historically overlooked – people on your journey. As they share their stories, your servant-character too begins to define himself beyond his oblivious master and a vain 80-day wager.

This evokes a richer sense of world, beyond Jules Verne’s imagining, and something essential about travel: that feeling of missing out. How one choice eliminates countless others. How once is never enough.

Easily one of the best visual novel/choose your own adventure game that I've played. Large variety of options, from deciding on your path, what paths you discover, how you choose to explore areas, what items you buy, who you choose to talk to, and what you say to people. Excellent writing with very different events to discover politics, technology, and side activities in each area with the world often making use of steampunk style technology and dealing with the effects of colonialism. A lot of different ways that you can play your character. Newspapers that can be read while in transit can tell you what happened with some of the people or events that you interacted with. You will likely want to play through the game multiple times, and still have much to discover. I will definitely be playing through the game again.

Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/661216613824262144
https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/661202675623587840

When I first played this just after it launched, I was blown away by how gracefully it interwove narrative and mechanical interests to inspire a feeling of wonder and infinite possibility. In the eight years since then, I've often compared it to other "modular narrative" games that also try use mechanics to allow players to guide themselves through story, and almost every time found 80 Days to come out on top.

Eight years is a long time, though, and I began to wonder if I might be remembering this game as more magnificent than it actually was—and thereby holding other games to not just a high standard, but an impossible one. So I decided to boot it up again on its 8th anniversary and see how well it held up.

Dear readers, it held up well. It really is true that almost nothing I've played since builds a self-guided narrative so effectively (with Sunless Skies being one notable exception). The formula itself isn't very complex: have many places that the player can traverse non-linearly; give each place (and each route between) them its own little micronarrative; create occasional connections between these narratives; and tie all of these into a simple resource system. But this simple formula gives rise to an incredible sense that every run is its own unique story told in tandem by the player and the game.

Le Tour du monde en quatre-vingts jour é uma obra (extremamente) colonialista e imperialista. 80 Days é uma obra sobre o colonialismo e imperialismo.

Jules Verne era um burguês europeu típico do século XIX. Isso não justifica o exacerbado imperialismo e racismo de suas obras, apenas o explica. Entender as razões do porquê uma obra de seu tempo é problemática em nosso tempo não a torna mais digerível.

Não obstante, a obra de Verne não era somente imperialismo e racismo. As preocupações e interesses dele eram outros, muito mais pautados em avanços da geografia, cartografia e meios de transporte de seu século. Seu legado, por mais problemático que seja, é inegavelmente importante para a literatura, especialmente de ficção científica. Entretanto, não é como se pudéssemos simplesmente ignorar as partes problemáticas do trabalho do autor e só nos focarmos nos aspectos mais palatáveis. Os próprios avanços científicos e tecnológicos que tanto interessavam Verne por vezes eram consequência do imperialismo, por outras o alicerçavam.

Ao adaptar uma das obras mais famosas de Verne para o meio digital através de 80 Days, o estúdio Inkle decide sabiamente desconstruir frontalmente seu caráter neocolonial em vez de ignorá-lo. O resultado é um mundo que parece genuíno, com vários problemas e contradições, mas também muito a se descobrir e ponderar.

Phileas Fogg continua sendo o über inglês fleumático e inexpressivo do livro. A perniciosa ação de seu império continua sendo inescapável não importa que parte do globo você vá. Mas aqui as várias localidades que você visita não são meras colônias inglesas que deveriam ser gratas por estarem sendo "civilizadas", ou povos subalternos exóticos que só podem ser compreendidos quando comparados negativamente com o Reino Unido. Cada lugarzinho em que você passa tem sua própria história e as formas de resistência e apropriação que fazem do legado do colonialismo europeu é expressa em deliciosa prosa que nunca me canso de ler.

O jogo adiciona elementos de steampunk à narrativa de Verne, algo que pode parecer supérfluo ou que de forma contraproducente exacerbaria ainda mais o caráter imperialista-colonial da obra original. Em verdade é o contrário. O steampunk é aqui pensado com uma historicidade similar à própria Revolução Industrial: um fenômeno global, não uma exclusividade inglesa. Presenciar a enorme diversidade de autômatos, airships, submarinos e armas que cada nação representada criou e adaptou para sua realidade é fascinante e um dos pontos fortes do jogo.

Esse elemento de steampunk cria algumas oportunidades bem legais. Mais do que representações de resistência e apropriação, 80 Days nos permite pensar em legados além do imperialismo. Pegue algumas rotas passando pelo continente africano ou pelo Pólo Norte para ver isso.

Falando em rotas: que jogo cheio de possibilidades. Eu zerei ele umas dez vezes, fora partidas que comecei e reiniciei. Cada uma das partidas foi uma experiência diferente, com novas facetas do mundo se revelando para mim, e ainda tem muito do jogo que ainda não vi. Cada uma das partidas pareceu de fato uma volta ao mundo — mas em umas duas horinhas, em vez de oitenta dias.