Decade is a tech-noir adventure game where you send children back in time to prevent metal rain from pulping the planet

Create multiple futures from a doomed past

One of my biggest challenges as a writer has been tempering my love of vague gestures at metaphysical concepts with the revelation that the people who read my articles also, apparently, can’t read my mind. Pah. A skill issue if I ever saw one, honestly. Decade is a fascinating adventure game that drew me in with its apparent vagueness but then, like some sort of considerate, sensible coward, went on to explain itself well in on its Steam page.

It’s the end of the world, and you’re not too happy about it, so you’ll be shoving children in a time machine with little more than a rotting Lunchly and some instructions to help you figure out exactly what went wrong.

What are you dressing as for Halloween? Me, I’m dressing as someone trying to bring back “tray-tray” in an effort to give Edwin a seizure. Here’s the tray-tray:

“Decade is a narrative point-and-click adventure game where you will send children back into the past - ten years at a time - to learn how the world ended, and what you can do to change it,” reads the Steam page. “Investigate documents, technologies, and artefacts to understand history, manage the children and their abilities as they age dramatically, and try to make the right decisions as you create multiple futures that you can venture into.”

“The world is dead. A metal rain has battered the earth into a pulp, making life unsustainable, “ it continues. “You were twelve when you left the crumbling facilities designed to protect the last of humanity. Thirteen when you, and three younger children you managed to protect, the last people alive, found safety in a sophisticated bunker. Now you're seventeen. This bunker won't protect you forever, but it does contain a time machine that you now know how to use.”

There’s no release date on this one yet, but if you’re up for a weighty, poetic adventure game in the meantime, I don’t think I’ve had the chance to shout about Norco nearly enough on this website yet. Would “it’s tied with Disco Elysium as the best written game I’ve ever played” tempt you?