Blue Signal (working title) is a 2D graphical adventure for PC in the style of early command-line quests such as Police Quest 1–2, Leisure Suit Larry 1–2 and others. Those games were from the 80s, and our story also takes place in the nostalgically-tinged 80s. The visuals are stylized as retro (a shader simulating a CRT display) and perhaps with a touch of retrowave. And, as in early Sierra games, a key element is the command line interface where the player types commands as text. This is a reincarnation of the old text interface at a modern level, because user input is analyzed by a compact small language model (SLM) running locally right in the game. This model is guaranteed to be sufficient to correctly recognize what the player wants, compose appropriate responses, and serve as a mediator between the player and the pre-authored game world. Technically this is feasible and already verified.
The setting can be described as a “romantic cyber-noir.” The action is tied to the computer revolution of the 80s: a world of monochrome terminals, early video games, telephone modems, elusive hackers stealing the secrets of big corporations and breaking into mysterious military mainframes, in whose depths something dreadful is ripening. But this hidden world is available only to the initiated. It conceals itself behind foggy night streets washed in neon light, where people with boomboxes dance breakdance, while the hero must conduct an investigation that begins with a harmless trifle…
The game is not aimed only at geeks. However, hackers here are not some autistic hooded guys who only need to bang on any keyboard to magically “get on the net and hack anything.” We try to portray and explain more or less realistically how it was or could have been, giving enough technical details to hint to a specialist what is actually happening, while at the same time not forcing the player to truly understand all of it. It is simply juicy techno-texture, part of the setting.
AI-powered 80s cyber-noir adventure
Films:
War Games (1983), Three Days of the Condor (1975), Max Headroom (1985), Miami Vice (1985–88); Severance (2022).
Books:
J. Varley — Press Enter (1984), R. Zelazny — Turns of Chance (1982), K. Mitnick — The Ghost in the Wires (and other books)
A small but stylish game in an unusual setting, telling an interesting story and offering a fresh gameplay experience using AI (parser revival). Retro, but on-trend :)
This is a niche product that leans on a large amount of text, narrative, stylistics, and innovation combined with “continuing classic traditions.” There is demand for such products, as evidenced by the success of Disco Elysium and Broken Age. For a team of 3–5 people, such a project can quite possibly be profitable and will likely attract the attention of the indie gamer community.
The retro-wave style and the aesthetics of “pseudo-80s” are still trending, as is nostalgia for early home computers and games, cassettes, vinyl, VHS, and analog devices.
According to Google Trends, interest in the queries “synthwave art” and “vaporwave aesthetic” remained stable from 2021 to 2025, with temporary spikes on the release of new films/games (Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty, Katana ZERO). There is an interesting direct connection with music and vintage equipment:
After the release of the series Stranger Things 4 (2022), sales of Yamaha DX7 and Juno-106 synthesizers on eBay grew by 38%, and searches for “vintage synth vst” — by +60% (Gearnews, 2023).
Spotify has “Retrowave / Synthwave / Outrun” sections with millions of listeners. YouTube channels like NewRetroWave, Asthenic, and ThePrimeThanatos have accumulated >1 billion views.
As in all games of this genre, the player’s character walks through locations/game screens and solves puzzles by manipulating objects in the game world and talking to NPCs.
Point-and-click navigation
All routine or obvious actions (like moving the character, opening doors, calling elevators, etc.) are performed with the mouse. You can also click on objects to get their description. One mouse button is “go/interact,” the other is “examine.”
Some important parts of locations are separate game screens. For example, the player clicks on a desk in an office and then sees the desk from first-person view, with a computer on it, notes, drawers, which can also be clicked for simple interactions (open/close, on/off).
Inventory
The player can pick up and carry certain items. They can be examined with the mouse. But unlike typical point-and-click quests, you cannot apply items by dragging them with the mouse. We do not want the player to think in a paradigm of “I need to click everything here” or “I need to brute force all applications.” That’s what the command line is for.
Command line
Used for all actions that require thinking and searching for a solution. Supports history and Tab autocompletion. The player must explicitly write what they want to do. Thanks to SLM, they have freedom — they can write anything, and the SLM will translate their request into actions supported by the game engine, or come up with a witty rejection if the action cannot be performed. Game actions can be:
Some things can also trigger special animations (for key moments in the game), but the main emphasis is on text, not on detailed graphics. So if the player goes to a club and decides to dance (and this is not a key plot moment), the game will describe how they danced and how the crowd reacted (a text window will cover the image), rather than show an animation. If they command “take the stone,” the item itself will disappear from the location and appear in the inventory, but there will be no animation.