Gaming preservation is important, we all need that, but sometimes it needs to be taken one step further. That’s why our heroes in the game are tasked with finding and bringing back the only copy of the most influential game of all time. It will be a dangerous heist and the only one who could help them is… us! Let’s go heisting in our Delete After Reading review.

The story goes that our main character meets a group of kids: Nina, Cinco, and Tomate. They all have their definitive quirks, like being a ghost or a dog, as it happens. They are on a mission to recover the only copy of The Curse of Penguin Island, the best and most influential game ever. It has been stolen by billionaire Martin Skrilhlex. Together they are planning a heist to get the game back, so they need to go all 007 and Mission Impossible on us.

Delete After Reading is a narrative adventure game designed like a full-on interactive text adventure. By clicking on certain words or interacting with certain images, you are able to advance the story. It works like one of those children’s books which can be turned around and interacted with in many different ways. Clues can be gathered from audio, video and, of course, text as well.

The way Delete After Reading incorporates elements of graphical and text adventure in one single neat package is quite a breath of fresh air, especially if you’ve been stuck playing many classic point-and-click graphical adventures. Still, this is one game that is definitely aimed at lovers of puzzles as there is not much besides gathering clues (a notepad also comes in handy for that) and solving them.

Still, the design is quite interesting, even though it might clearly be more adept to be played on a mobile device, rather than a PC monitor. It is definitely more fun and immediate to jump around on the screen by using touch. Also, with text being quite lighthearted and not overly long, it is easy to enjoy even on a smaller device. The audio design is also quite well done, both in terms of soundtrack and the sparse voice acting, but also for the spatial audio which works great with headphones to immerse the player.

Strangely the game does not save. This makes sense, as the chapters are not very long but still, in 2023 that weirded me out a bit. Speaking of accessibility, I am not 100% sure if the game is also accessible to hard-of-hearing gamers, as it does not feature subtitles for its audio clues. That might be something for the developers to work on, as overall the game’s options seem to be quite limited at the moment: switch language, adjust resolutions on PC and modify volumes of individual sources.

The cartoon graphic design is simple but quite colorful, reminding me of the late 70s/early 80s cartoons I used to watch on TV. It keeps things also simple, so the player does not need to click (or touch) all over the various images to find clues or things to interact with. No pixel hunting in Delete After Reading, for sure.

This is an adventure that can definitely be more fun to be played with someone else right next to you, perhaps a significant other or even a young child, as the subject matter can be fun for all ages. The team have developed a strong interactive adventure, that might need some work on accessibility, but it is a great proposition for mobile devices at the right price point.

Our Delete After Reading review was made possible with a key provided by PR. Delete After Reading is available on Steam, Apple store and Google Play Store.