“One of the most essential iOS games of the year. Proves just how interesting and vital gaming as a medium can be. 9/10” —Pocket Gamer “Grayout is exceptional as a game, as a compelling narrative, as an experiment in communication. It is simple, poignant, and horrifying.” —Gamezebo Grayout is an aphasiac text game set in a medical dystopia. It’s a prequel to the censorship game Blackbar. In Grayout, you play Alaine, a rebelious resident of the totalitarian community called The Neighborhood, who wakes up in a hospital research lab following an accident… or so she is told. The game is a series of conversations with hospital staff, made challenging by Alaine’s post-traumatic aphasia—a disorder that affects one’s ability to process language. Grayout simulates the experience of having a word on the tip of your tongue, the frustration of knowing what you mean but not how to say it, the feeling of being overwhelmed by the runaway thoughts inside your head and struggling to reign them in. This is a game for fans of text adventures, interactive fiction, word puzzles, story-driven games, and emotional simulations. “Marvelous.” —The Guardian, The best iPhone and iPad apps of 2015 “Liked Blackbar? This is harder but also cleverer. Lots more feels too. Prepare your brain.” —Sam Barlow of 'Her Story' We hope your stay in the Neighborhood Hospital is pleasant and brief. Get well.
Interesting concept but short and sometimes irritating
I applaud the designers for this unique idea, but I found the “right” sentences were not always logical, or other possibilities that were equally valid — e.g. “Yeah sure” instead of “Yeah right”—were not accepted. And the game is very short for the money.
United StatesAmaZinG ... hOurS oF FUn
As a class we did Grayout over the course of 3 weeks. The kids say: creepy, fascinating disturbing... but in a good way. Exciting and full of twists. Make a new one! We already did Blackbar.
United StatesLess than an hour of gameplay
A very interesting concept, but the story is lazy, as it seems most of the effort went into the word play (which was often clever). Beyond that, it provided less than an hour of gameplay. To be fair, that may be because I had to look up instructions online. Not answers: instructions. The game provided none. Do I use all the words? Am I supposed to form grammatically correct sentences or just whatever gets my message across? Even with instructions, it was difficult to know what I was trying to say, what my response was supposed to be. Maybe I missed something, but this game was not worth the price it asks for. Bonus points for mentioning a polyamorous relationship though, I guess.
United StatesWell written but broken
Am interesting world and concept and I liked Blackbar- unfortunately there’s a game breaking bug that makes it impossible to progress past the (irritatingly obscure) “waiting for godot” reference. I checked a couple of walkthroughs, the “correct” answer doesn’t work, impossible to move forward...
United StatesNot a recommendation of mine
Logic isn’t great from clue to clue. No ability for hints, not really great leading. It ended up being mostly a waste of time and I’m deleting it without finishing because I’m so bored with it.
United StatesGood story, not really a game.
I loved Blackbar, so gave Grayout a whirl, too. The story is wonderful; it places you in a chilling dystopian scenario with sadistic keepers and little hope of escape. I enjoyed it. But as for gameplay, there’s not much here. The only “puzzle” comes from trying to figure out what the game designers thought my responses to other characters ought to be. And if the game designers thought, for example, that I ought to respond “That’s the right answer” then saying “That is correct” or “You’re right” or “That is right” or “You’re not wrong there” or even “That is the right answer” won’t be accepted by the game. I understand they wanted me to experience the frustration of helplessness and aphasia. But this is just the frustration of pure guessing, like randomly trying numbers on a bike lock until it opens. There’s never the delighted feeling you get when you finally figure out a puzzle based on cleverly hidden clues. There are barely any hidden / contextual clues to discover. The rest is just moving words around until you guess right.
United StatesBad Design
The app still does not support the iPhone X and has very few design elements. Changing it to support it would be easy. Dev is either unskilled or lazy.
United States
• Updated to fix a crash in iOS 13 • Properly supports newer iPhones
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