Welcome to the world of Geneforge.
Just a quick heads-up as I begin playing this for review. The latest in Spiderweb Software’s low-res high-sci fi series Geneforge has been released for the Mac. I’ll confess my standing sense of goodwill toward Spiderweb reaching all the way back to 1997 when a high-school boyfriend showed me a little game called Exile on his “Macintrash” (how little I knew). Despite looking like something from the NES, Exile was one of the first truly branching RPGs I had ever played, and certainly the first one I’d ever experienced where your actions actually changed the way people acted toward you.
The Exile Trilogy was followed by the Avernum series, which was basically a higher-tech remake of Spiderweb’s fantasy RPG. Geneforge came later, casting you as a Shaper with the power to create, control and destroy creatures who may or may not have native intelligence.
As I said, I’ve yet to play Geneforge 5, but I look forward to doing it. If you don’t want to wait and you’re a Mac user, check out Spiderweb’s truly epic demo. PC users, you’ll have to hang on until March.
Playing With My Weiner 