Text-Based Game 'Lifeline' Named App of the Week, Available for Free

Thursday January 14, 2016 5:29 PM PST by Juli Clover
Popular text-based adventure game Lifeline was named Apple's App of the Week, and as a result, it's available to download for free for the first time since it launched in April of 2015.

Lifeline is a text-based game that asks players to make life or death decisions to help navigate Taylor, the protagonist, through the storyline. Written by Dave Justus, the story walks players through the aftermath of a crash landing on the moon of an alien planet.

lifeline
Lifeline is a playable, branching story of survival against all odds. Using your iPhone, iPad, or Apple Watch, you will help Taylor make life or death decisions, and face the consequences together.

Lifeline is a deep, immersive story of survival and perseverance, with many possible outcomes. Taylor is relying on YOU.
What's unique about Lifeline is its realtime gameplay. The story progresses in actual real world time, with the game sending players notifications throughout the day to make decisions about where the storyline should go. Players can answer as the notifications come in or catch up on their own timelines.

Lifeline is also notable because it was one the first games to be made available on the Apple Watch. When notifications come in, players can respond on the Apple Watch or directly from the iPhone's Home screen without needing to open the actual game. Since its release, Lifeline has earned 4.5 stars in the App Store with more than 9,000 reviews.

Lifeline will be available for free from the iOS App Store for the next seven days. [Direct Link]

Tag: Lifeline
31 comments


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Anonymous Freak
34 months ago

The realtime aspect sounds both cool and annoying. I don't need or want to play a game throughout the work day.


You could just disable notifications for it. It's not like it's so real time that if you don't respond, bad things happen. If you don't respond, it just "saves them up" until you decide to respond. So if you turn off notifications, you can just come back to it in the app and "catch up".

Yeah, it means you can't just sit down and play the game all the way through in one sitting, since it does take real-world time for various events to happen, but neither do you have to play it exactly when the notifications would pop up.
Rating: 4 Votes
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Kajje
34 months ago
The first game on the iPhone 6S 128GB that is compatible with a 20 year old Nokia 2110
Rating: 3 Votes
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Aston441
34 months ago
It's a knock off of a game from the 80s on the Apple II, which was a knock off of a few old games that were floating around on mainframes since the 60s.

An old concept. Very easy to code.
Rating: 2 Votes
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ArtOfWarfare
34 months ago
The realtime aspect sounds both cool and annoying. I don't need or want to play a game throughout the work day.
Rating: 2 Votes
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E.Lizardo
34 months ago

It's a knock off of a game from the 80s on the Apple II, which was a knock off of a few old games that were floating around on mainframes since the 60s.

An old concept. Very easy to code.

Kind of like books,no? Old concept,easy to write,writing a good one however...
Rating: 2 Votes
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BuffaloTF
34 months ago
Interesting. Thinking about it... It's surprising that this hasn't been done yet. A choose-your-own-adventure book in app form. I can't imagine I'm the only one to have blown thru all of them in my library some 25-30 years ago.
Rating: 1 Votes
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ncbetz
34 months ago
I love it. I have wanted this app for a while, but not enough to pay for it. I just didn't know if it was worth it... I love how it supports Apple Watch.
Rating: 1 Votes
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Kajje
34 months ago
I've been playing this game since the day mum bought her first cell. I'm now playing Girlfriend version 3.1
Rating: 1 Votes
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mr.steevo
34 months ago

I'm surprised there hasn't been any knockoffs of it yet. The idea is interesting and could easily be expanded into more genres.


I just finished the game. I agree that there is something interesting playing a text based game with time delay's. It certainly makes more sense having this type of game on your phone as you can be walking around doing your own thing and then have to respond to your lost astronaut. I was disappointed that as I came closer to the end the pace picked up with almost no delay's which for me took away from the suspension of the story.

Good game!
Rating: 1 Votes
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furi0usbee
34 months ago
In 10th grade I wrote something like this, though not as complex, in BASIC. It was a go N/S/E/W, talk to people type game. But it was just done in my spare time. Depending on what you said or did or which direction you went, things happened. If text-based games make a comeback, maybe I'll be tempted to write one.

For games like this, you need a better imagination than coding skills. But touch adds another dimension to it. Because you can do some cool things like if you enter a room, and hear someone whispering, you can animate a voice bubble that you must click on, that can say, randomly appear at any part of the screen for a very short time, thus needing to be quick to find the person, presumably in the dark. You can keep it mostly text, but make it interactive with finger input, etc.
Rating: 1 Votes
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