Open Sorcery

I first played Open Sorcery almost 3 years ago. I can't believe how time flies. It was a fun little choice-laden text-adventure with many, many branching paths and options and outcomes. Kind of like Long Live the Queen. I liked to play both of those games with two of my friends, acting as a sort of council of three, making democratic decisions on what course of action to take. It was fun, it was also slow, and it has been increasingly infrequent, as people seem to be more busy. So it sat in my library for quite a while until I decided to finish it alone today.

Open Sorcery is basically a multiple choice text game. You are an elemental firewall in a sort of techno-magical world (The setting wasn't explored very much, but I loved what glimpses I got.), tasked with guarding some places of importance. Your decisions can increase your relationships with people, make you learn new things, and somewhat shape the world around you. A single playthrough may take at most an hour if you're reading through everything and don't lose early. Of course you don't limit yourself to one playthrough with these kinds of games - you explore all the different paths and options. Subsequent playthroughs might be closer to a couple dozen minutes each, or if running on speed mode (which skips most text and choices in favor of only the important ones), even just a few minutes each.

Overall, it's a short game which can be systematically explored in a few of hours, but might provide entertainment for closer to a dozen, if going slow. It's very bare-bones, having almost no artwork, no background music whatsoever, and only a handful of small sound effects. On the upside, usage of text is masterful. I'd say the story is decent, but it's really, very short, being more of some preparatory events followed by the main event you must then resolve with the preparation you've had.
In a sentence: Too short, too bare, but otherwise lovely. I'd recommend it but not very strongly. It will go on my list, below the line.