Officially — and easily — the best thing I’ve played today, from seemingly out of nowhere comes Guilded Youth, from writer and designer Jim Munroe and illustrator Matt Hammill (known best for his gorgeously illustrated puzzler Gesundheit). Originally conceived of at Toronto’s TOJam, Youth is another in Munroe’s series of interactive-fiction-plus type games that combine text-adventure tradition with illustrated & sound enhancements, like his excellent & understated 2008 suburban adventure Everybody Dies.

Guided Youth is brief enough that delving too far into its story & structure would give away the ghost, so suffice it to say that it’s one of the most evocative portrayals of our collective disaffected BBS-enhanced adolescence I’ve experience in a game, effortlessly giving surprisingly rounded life to characters you only know briefly via a few descriptive lines and Hammill’s skilled caricature.

In short: eke out a half hour to play through this now via Munroe’s site, and get a bit more background from Munroe afterward.