As Grayout begins, you’ve just woken up in a hospital. You’re told there was an explosion at your home and that you’ve suffered a traumatic brain injury, which is why it’s so hard for you to form sentences—and why you can’t move.
But how much of that is true?
Grayout does a masterful job of making you guess, not only as you solve its puzzles—in which you rearrange seemingly random words until you find the correct response to others’ questions—but also as you dig deeper into its story.
Beyond each plot-propelling challenge is a bigger mystery. As you meet new people and learn more about your condition, your sense of who you can trust and how (or if) you can get yourself out of this situation will oscillate wildly.
We’d expect nothing less from the developers of Blackbar, another wonderful, unsettling text adventure. Grayout serves as its prequel, and although Blackbar’s gameplay is quite different (it has you deducing words redacted by government censors), both games explore issues of freedom and self-determination in a totalitarian state.
Escaping that hospital bed will take some serious brainpower. As you ponder a way out, Grayout gives you plenty to think about.