Lots of housekeeping on demos today, the Monorail Stories demo included. Available on Steam some months ago, it’s taken longer to do this write-up than play it.
From Stelex Software, Monorail Stories is about interacting with your fellow humans and perhaps impacting their day in one way or another. It’s almost like the butterfly effect in that a subtle action can profoundly improve (or ruin) another person’s day.
You get to play two characters in the demo: Silvie and Ahmal. The former is with her friend Mark and lost her scarf. The second playable character is Ahmal, who has found the scarf and decides to put in the lost and found or keep it for themselves. Bastard!
They are interconnected through the fabrics of time. In this case, a scarf. Is it ok to use the obligatory Zak McKraken and the Alien Mindbenders reference for the month? Switching through characters, you can pass objects to one another – if you choose.
Cue the fetch quest of going back and forth along the monorail to retrieve a password to open the lost and found box. Couldn’t Silvie at least be able to run? Surely the destination station is nearby – what about the scarf?!
After a ridiculous combination (Password 123 is probably the login for the monorail staff’s bank accounts), you soon engage with another commuter and console them about losing their job. The people here are busy bodies, but it’s nice they care.
Sharing is caring, and after you complete a day on the monorail, you’ll get a summary of your actions where you’ll get an +1 for all the good deeds you did in Monorail Stories. Well, there are only several deeds as after the day was over (less than ten minutes), the demo was over.
Still, it was an interesting insight to prove that you may be able to make a difference to others. Perhaps try out the quick demo yourself and put in a bit of practice to carry that through to real life?
Now, where did I leave my scarf…
